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12 - A Confession - Leo Tolstory · Philosophy and Faith

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twelve of a confession by Leo Tolstoy. The consciousness
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  Speaker 1: of the error in reasonable knowledge helped me to free
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  Speaker 1: myself from the temptation of ido readiocination. The conviction that
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  Speaker 1: knowledge of truth can only be found by living led
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  Speaker 1: me to doubt the rightness of my life. But I
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  Speaker 1: was saved only by the fact that I was able
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  Speaker 1: to tear myself from my exclusiveness and to see the
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  Speaker 1: real life of the plain working people, and to understand
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  Speaker 1: that that alone is real life. I understood that if
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  Speaker 1: I wished to understand life and its meaning, I must
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  Speaker 1: not live the life of a parasite, but must live
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  Speaker 1: a real life, and taking the meaning given to life
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  Speaker 1: by the real humanity, and merging myself in that life
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  Speaker 1: verify it. During that time, this is what happened to me,
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  Speaker 1: during that whole year, when I was asking myself almost
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  Speaker 1: every moment whether or not I should end matters with
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  Speaker 1: a noose or a bullet. All that time, together with
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  Speaker 1: my course of thought and the observation about which I
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  Speaker 1: have spoken, my heart was oppressed with a painful feeling
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  Speaker 1: which I can only describe as a search for God.
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  Speaker 1: I say that that search for God was not reasoning,
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  Speaker 1: but a feeling, because that search proceeded not from the
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  Speaker 1: course of my thoughts, it was even directly contrary to them,
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  Speaker 1: but proceeded from the heart. It was a feeling of fear, orphanage,
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  Speaker 1: isolation in a strange land, and a hope of help
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  Speaker 1: from someone. Though I was quite convinced of the impossibility
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  Speaker 1: of proving the existence of a deity, cont had shown,
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  Speaker 1: and I quite understood him that it could not be proven.
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  Speaker 1: I had yet sought for God, hoping that I could
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  Speaker 1: find him, and from old habit addressed prayers to that
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  Speaker 1: which I had sought but had not found. I went
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  Speaker 1: over in my mind the arguments of Kant and Schopenhauer
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  Speaker 1: showing the impossibility of proving the existence of a God,
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  Speaker 1: and I began to verify those arguments and refute them. Cause,
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  Speaker 1: said I to myself, is not a category of thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: such as are time and space. If I exist, there
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  Speaker 1: must be some cause of it, and a cause for causes.
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  Speaker 1: And that first cause of all is what men have
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  Speaker 1: called God. And I paused on that thought and tried
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  Speaker 1: with all my being to recognize the presence of that cause.
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  Speaker 1: And as soon as I acknowledged that there is a
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  Speaker 1: force in whose power I am. I at once felt
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  Speaker 1: that I could live. But I asked myself, what is
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  Speaker 1: that cause, that force? How am I to think of it?
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  Speaker 1: What are my relations to that which I call God?
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  Speaker 1: And only the familiar replies occurred to me, He is
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  Speaker 1: the creator and the preserver. This reply did not satisfy me,
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  Speaker 1: and I felt that I was losing within me what
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  Speaker 1: I needed for my life. I became terrified and began
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  Speaker 1: to pray to him whom I sought, that he should
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  Speaker 1: help me. But the more I prayed, the more apparent
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  Speaker 1: it became to me that he did not hear me,
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  Speaker 1: and that there was no one to whom I could
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  Speaker 1: address myself. And with despair in my heart that there
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  Speaker 1: is no God at all, I said, Lord, have mercy,
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  Speaker 1: save me, Lord teach me. But no one had mercy
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  Speaker 1: on me, and I felt that my life was coming
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  Speaker 1: to a standstill. But again and again, from varying sides,
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  Speaker 1: I returned to the same conclusion that I could not
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  Speaker 1: have come into the world without any cause or reason
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  Speaker 1: or meaning. I could not be such a fledgling fallen
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  Speaker 1: from its nest. As I felt myself to be or
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  Speaker 1: granting that I be such lying on my back crying
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  Speaker 1: in the high grass. Even then I cried because I
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  Speaker 1: know a mother has borne me within her, has hatched me,
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  Speaker 1: warned me, fed me, and loved me. Where is she
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  Speaker 1: that mother? If I had been deserted, who has deserted me?
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  Speaker 1: I cannot hide from myself that someone bored me loving me.
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  Speaker 1: Who was that someone? Again, God, he knows and sees
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  Speaker 1: my searching, my despair and my struggle. He exists, said
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  Speaker 1: I to myself. And I had only for an instant
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  Speaker 1: to admit that, and at once life rose within me,
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  Speaker 1: and I felt the possibility and joy of being. But again,
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  Speaker 1: from the admission of the existence of a God, I
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  Speaker 1: went out to search my relation with him. And again
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  Speaker 1: I imagined that God, our creator in three persons, who
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  Speaker 1: sent his son, the Savior. And again that God detached
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  Speaker 1: from the world and from me, melted like a block
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  Speaker 1: of ice, melted before my eyes. And again nothing remained,
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  Speaker 1: and again the spring of life dried up within me,
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  Speaker 1: and I despaired and felt that I had nothing to
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  Speaker 1: do but kill myself. And worst of all was that
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  Speaker 1: I could not do it, not twice or three times,
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  Speaker 1: but tens and hundreds of times I reached those conditions,
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  Speaker 1: first of joy and animation, and then of despair and
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  Speaker 1: consciousness of the impossibility of living. I remember that it
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  Speaker 1: was in early spring. I was alone in the woods,
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  Speaker 1: listening to its sounds. I listened and thought, ever of
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  Speaker 1: the same thing as I had continually done during those
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  Speaker 1: last three years. I was again seeking God. Very well.
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  Speaker 1: There is no God, said I to myself. There is
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  Speaker 1: no one who is not my imagination but a reality
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  Speaker 1: like my whole life. He does not exist, and no
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  Speaker 1: miracles can prove his existence, because the miracles would be
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  Speaker 1: my imagination, besides being irrational, But my perception of God,
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  Speaker 1: of Him whom I seek, I asked myself, where is
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  Speaker 1: that perception come from? And again, at this thought, the
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  Speaker 1: glad waves of life rose within me. All that was
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  Speaker 1: around me came to life and received a meaning. But
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  Speaker 1: my joy did not last long. My mind continued its work.
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  Speaker 1: The conception of God is not God, said I to myself.
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  Speaker 1: The conception is what takes place within me. The conception
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  Speaker 1: of God is something I can evoke or can refrain
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  Speaker 1: from evoking in myself. That is not what I seek.
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  Speaker 1: I seek that without which there can be no life,
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  Speaker 1: and again all around me and within me began to die.
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  Speaker 1: And again I wished to kill myself. But then I
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  Speaker 1: turned my gaze upon myself on what went on within me.
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  Speaker 1: I remembered all those cessations of life and reanimations that
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  Speaker 1: had reoccurred within me hundreds of times. I remembered that
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  Speaker 1: I only lived at those times when I believed in God.
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  Speaker 1: As it was before, so it was now. I need
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  Speaker 1: only be aware of God. To live, I needed only
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  Speaker 1: to forget Him or disbelieve Him, and I died. What
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  Speaker 1: is this animation? In dying? I do not live when
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  Speaker 1: I lose belief in the existence of God. I should
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  Speaker 1: long ago have killed myself had I not a dim
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  Speaker 1: hope of finding him. I live, really live only when
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  Speaker 1: I feel Him and seek Him. What more do you seek?
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  Speaker 1: Exclaimed a voice within me. This is He. He is
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  Speaker 1: that without which one cannot live. To know God and
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  Speaker 1: to live is one and the same thing. God is life.
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  Speaker 1: Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.
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  Speaker 1: And more than ever before, all within me and around
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  Speaker 1: me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me,
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  Speaker 1: and I was saved from suicide. When and how this
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  Speaker 1: change occurred? In me, I could not say, as imperceptibly
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  Speaker 1: and gradually the force of life in me had been destroyed,
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  Speaker 1: and I had reached the impossibility of living, a cessation
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  Speaker 1: of life and the necessity of suicide. So imperceptibly and
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  Speaker 1: gradually did the force of life return to me. And
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  Speaker 1: strange to say that the strength of life which returned
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  Speaker 1: me was not new, but quite old, the same that
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  Speaker 1: had borne me along in my earliest days. I quite
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  Speaker 1: returned to way belonged to my earliest childhood and youth.
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  Speaker 1: I returned to the belief in that will which produced
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  Speaker 1: me and desire something of me. I returned to the
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  Speaker 1: belief that the chief and only aim of my life
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  Speaker 1: is to be better, I e. To live in accord
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  Speaker 1: with that will. And I returned to the belief that
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  Speaker 1: I can find expression of that will in what humanity,
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  Speaker 1: in the distant past, hidden from has produced for its guidance.
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  Speaker 1: That is to say, I returned to a belief in God,
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  Speaker 1: in moral perfection, and in a tradition transmitting the meaning
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  Speaker 1: of life. There was only this difference that then all
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  Speaker 1: this was accepted unconsciously, while now I knew that without
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  Speaker 1: it I could not live. What happened to me was
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  Speaker 1: something like this. I was put into a boat I
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  Speaker 1: do not remember when, and pushed off from an unknown shore,
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  Speaker 1: shown the direction of the opposite shore, had ores put
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  Speaker 1: in my unpracticed hands, and was left alone. I rowed
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  Speaker 1: as best as I could and moved forward. But the
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  Speaker 1: further I advanced towards the middle of the stream, the
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  Speaker 1: more rapid grew the current bearing me away from my goal,
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  Speaker 1: and the more frequently did I encounter others like myself
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  Speaker 1: borne away by the stream. There were few rowers who
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  Speaker 1: continued to row. There were others who had abandoned their oars.
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  Speaker 1: There were large boats and immense vessels full of people.
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  Speaker 1: Some struggled against the current, others yielded to it. And
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  Speaker 1: the further I went, the more seeing the progress down
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  Speaker 1: the current of all those who were adrift, I forgot
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  Speaker 1: the direction given to me. In the very center of
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  Speaker 1: the stream, amid the crowds of boats and vessels which
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  Speaker 1: were being borne down stream, I quite lost my direction
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  Speaker 1: and abandoned my oars. Around me on all sides, with
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  Speaker 1: mirth and rejoicing, people with sails and oars were borne
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  Speaker 1: down the stream, assuring me and each other that no
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  Speaker 1: other direction was possible, and I believed them and floated
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  Speaker 1: with them. No. I was carried far, so far that
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  Speaker 1: I heard the roar of the rapids in which I
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  Speaker 1: must be shattered, and I saw boats shattered in them,
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  Speaker 1: and I recollected myself. I was long unable to understand
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  Speaker 1: what had happened to me. I saw before me nothing
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  Speaker 1: but destruction, towards which I was rushing, in which I feared.
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  Speaker 1: I saw no safety anywhere, and did not know what
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  Speaker 1: to do. But looking back, I perceived innumerable boats, which
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  Speaker 1: unceasingly and strenuously pushed against the stream. And I remembered
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  Speaker 1: about the shore, the oars in the direction, and began
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  Speaker 1: to pull back upwards against the stream and towards the shore.
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  Speaker 1: That shore was God, and the direction was tradition. The
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  Speaker 1: oars were the freedom given to me to pull for
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  Speaker 1: the shore and unite with God. And so the force
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  Speaker 1: of life was renewed in me, and I again began
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  Speaker 1: to live. End of Chapter twelve.