9. Третья сторона человеческой жизни: жизнь духовная. Главные проявления духовной жизни: страх Божий, совесть и жажда Бога. Достоинство человека

You write: “I tried to keep my thoughts serious and just couldn’t. I thought that this depended on my lack of habit of reasoning, and I took a good book so that with its help I could keep my mind thinking about practical things - and here it is the same. The mind keeps running to the side, and everything to trifles. Finally, I started to really think about where I hadn’t been and what stories I hadn’t told. One of our people brought me to my senses with the question: “Why are you getting philosophical? About what?" And I didn’t philosophize at all, but dreamed. This is how it always happened, but before I didn’t pay attention to it. Now I see, and I see that this should not have happened; but what to do? You can’t cope with your thoughts.” How to deal with this, I will tell you later, and now I ask you to add another thing to your observation: try to spend at least one day without anger and annoyance and tell me how you succeed. Then you ask me a question: “You have concluded: here is your soul and soul life. But you don’t indicate everything that happens in the soul. Not a word about virtues or piety. And I see that in our family, among relatives and among many acquaintances, they come first not only in word, but also in deed. How come they weren’t mentioned?” I was just about to write about this. Last time I wanted to say what I will say now, but I thought to wait and see how you look at everything that was said. And here's your question. Thank you for your serious consideration of what is proposed. This is worthy of your so well-built head. The omission you noticed is not an omission, but talking about what you thought was omitted was completely out of place here. It’s not the soul’s business to deal with those subjects. That is why there is a spirit, and the entire soul is focused exclusively on the organization of our temporary life - earthly. And all of her knowledge is built only on the basis of what experience gives, and her activity is directed toward satisfying the needs of temporary life, and her feelings are generated and maintained only from her visible states and positions. Anything higher than this is none of her business. Although there is something more than what has been said in her, these are guests who come to her from another, higher region - namely, the region of the spirit. What kind of spirit is this? This is the power that God breathed into the face of man, completing his creation. All kinds of land creatures were destroyed by the earth at the command of God. Every soul of living creatures also came out of the earth. The human soul, although similar to the soul of animals in its lower part, is incomparably superior to it in its higher part. What it is like in a person depends on its combination with the spirit. The spirit breathed in by God, combining with her, elevated her so much above every non-human soul. That is why within ourselves we notice, in addition to what is seen in animals, what is characteristic of the spiritualized human soul, and above that, what is characteristic of the spirit itself. The spirit, as a force emanating from God, knows God, seeks God and finds peace in Him alone. Convincing himself of his origin from God by some innermost spiritual instinct, he feels his complete dependence on Him and recognizes himself as obligated to please Him in every possible way and to live only for Him and by Him. More tangible manifestations of these movements of the life of the spirit are the following. 1. Fear of God. All people, no matter what levels of development they are at, know that there is a supreme being, God, who created everything, contains everything and controls everything, that they depend on Him in everything and must please Him, that He is the Judge and Rewarder of everyone according to their deeds. This is the natural creed, written in the spirit. Confessing it, the spirit reveres God and is filled with the fear of God. 2. Conscience. Conscious of being obligated to please God, the spirit would not know how to satisfy this obligation if conscience did not guide it in this. Having communicated to the spirit a piece of His omniscience in the indicated natural symbol of faith, God inscribed in it the requirements of His holiness, truth and goodness, instructing it to observe their fulfillment and judge itself whether it is correct or not. This side of the spirit is conscience, which indicates what is right and what is not right, what pleases God and what does not please, what should and should not be done; having indicated, he imperiously compels one to do it, and then rewards it with consolation for fulfillment, and punishes it with remorse for non-fulfillment. Conscience is a legislator, guardian of the law, judge and rewarder. It is the natural tablet of God’s covenant, which extends to all people. And we see in all people, along with the fear of God, the actions of conscience. 3. Thirst for God. It is expressed in the universal desire for the all-perfect good and is also more clearly visible in the general dissatisfaction with anything created. What does this dissatisfaction mean? The fact that nothing created can satisfy our spirit. Having come from God, he seeks God, desires to taste Him, and, being in living union and combination with Him, he calms down in Him. When he achieves this, he is at peace, but until he achieves this, he cannot have peace. No matter how many created things and blessings someone has, everything is not enough for him. And everyone, as you have already noticed, is searching and searching. They search and find, but having found it, they give it up and start looking again, so that, having found it, they also give it up. So endlessly. This means that they are looking for the wrong thing and in the wrong place, and what should be looked for and where. Doesn’t this tangibly show that there is a power within us that draws us from the earth and earthly grief to the Heavenly? I am not explaining to you in detail all these manifestations of the spirit, I am only directing your thoughts to its presence in us and asking you to think more about this and bring yourself to the full conviction that there is definitely a spirit in us. For it is the distinctive feature of man. The human soul makes us small, nothing higher than animals, and the spirit shows us small, nothing lower than the Angels. You, of course, know the meaning of the phrases we hear: the spirit of the writer, the spirit of the people. This is a set of distinctive features, real, but in some way ideal, recognizable by the mind, elusive and intangible. The spirit of man is the same; only the spirit of the writer, for example, is seen ideally, and the spirit of man is inherent in him as a living force, testifying to its presence with living and tangible movements. From what I have said, I would like you to draw the following conclusion: someone who does not have movements and actions of the spirit does not stand on a level with human dignity. You might be interested in: