5. Три стороны человеческой жизни. Первая сторона: жизнь телесная, ее органы и потребности; нормальная и излишняя заботливость о теле

How many questions have you asked about the previous two letters! This shows you to be a diligent, lively and receptive student and promises success. The more willing I am to write. But I won’t answer you everything now, leaving the answers until next time. I'll do what interests you most. You write: “Your words about the sides, strengths and needs of human nature lead me inside myself. I'm coming in. I see some, but most of it is either foggy or completely invisible to me. I really want to know what the spiritual, mental and physical side is in a person, what each need is and how they are satisfied. I would really like to hold myself at the level of human dignity - true, as we are assigned to be by the Creator.” Good, sir! You touch on the very foundations of our life, the explanation of which will give us the basis for all subsequent reasoning. How else could a person live if not the way he was designed? Having established sound concepts of how a person works, we will receive the surest indication of how he should live. It seems to me that many people do not live as they should because they think that the rules about this worthy life are imposed from outside, and do not come from the very nature of man and are not required by them. If we were sure that this was the case, we would not contradict them and retreat from them. So, please listen. Our body consists of different organs. Of which each performs his own function, which is essential for bodily life. There are three main organs: 1) the stomach with the lungs, heart, arteries and veins, lymphatic vessels and many other vessels, vessels and glands that serve for various departments of the blood and juices of the body; the sending of all of them is the nourishment of the body, or embodiment; 2) a system of muscles and bones, the direction of which is movement within and without, and 3) a system of nerves, the center of which is the head, spinal cord and ganglion system - somewhere under the abdominal and thoracic barrier, and the branches penetrate the entire body; its origin is sensitivity. When the course of these functions and their mutual relations are in order, the body is healthy and life is not in danger, but when this order is disrupted, the body becomes ill and life is in danger. Each departure has its own need, which makes itself vividly felt by the living, demanding satisfaction. The needs of the gastric, or nutritious and carnal, part are food, drink, air, sleep; the need of the muscular-skeletal part is the need to tense the muscles, which everyone feels after sitting for a long time, and directly the need for movement, which makes you walk, walk, do something; The need of the nervous part is a pleasant irritation of the nerves of the whole body, like the measure of heat and cold and the like, and especially a pleasant irritation of our five senses, in which the nervous system has come out to communicate with the outside world. All this, as you see, is bodily - the soul doesn’t care about all this. But just as she, through the closest combination with the body, accepted it into her personality, then she considers all bodily needs to be hers. That’s why we say: I want to eat, drink, sleep, I want to walk, walk, work, I want to see different colors, hear different voices, smell different smells, and so on. Having assimilated all bodily needs, the soul considers it its business to satisfy them and worries about food, drink, sleep, clothing, shelter and everything else, in every possible way wanting to ensure that the body is calm and does not disturb it with its annoying demands. This relationship of the soul to the body, which it maintains without learning, but by itself, by some internal compulsion, is revealed in it like a kind of instinct - love of life, love of the body, the desire to rest the body and get everything needed for that. The totality of all this is the bodily side of human life. But not everything here is equally bodily, or carnal and sensual. Only the nutritional part is firmly carnal, but it is also ennobled by adapting its satisfaction to the needs and goals of the soul itself. The organs of movement and feeling serve more the needs of the soul than the body. And one organ, seemingly standing outside the system of other organs, namely the organ of the word, is exclusively an organ of the soul, designated to serve it alone. Corporeal, carnal, sensual - morally disapproving - life is one when a person, carried away by extreme love of life and love of the body, sets the peace of the body as his main goal and concern, or the comprehensive satisfaction of only bodily needs, forgetting about the soul and, even more so, about the spirit. Moreover, each bodily need, naturally simple, develops into many instilled needs through habit and addiction to different ways of satisfying it. Take food, or drink, or clothing. What seems to be the easiest thing to do here? And meanwhile, there are so many inseparable needs: even if you die, give! That is why we see that some people do not have free minutes, running after what they need to satisfy them, despite the fact that dozens of other people are busy doing the same thing for them. Such people must inevitably have a hungry soul and spirit, if they are not yet completely drowned out, clogged and immersed in sensuality. Please think about all this. About the soul - until the next letter. You might be interested in: