Quotes

"

The value of money, wealth, rank, prestige above all else, the economism that today's man sees as the ultimate realism: it is in fact idealism, albeit in a negative and parodic way. Money is not food, not drink, not clothing, not a work of art, something essentially useless, in fact it does not exist, it is a mere idea and ideal; and the accumulation of this fictitious thing is regarded by modern man as the whole of sanity. The accumulated wealth, which over-abounds beyond necessity, is only a nuisance and a problem, and sooner or later it slips out from under its owner, so that even the necessary will not remain. Rank removes all that is tolerable in man, and sets up senseless barriers, which breed hatred and envy. Validation leads nowhere, because there is always further and further down this road, the desire for validation is an unbearable itch, like a skin disease. In addition, modern man is heaping on himself a pile of the most obdurate community principles in impossible handcuffs. In the confusion of obsessions and emotions, community, nation, race, people, home, public safety, duty, the defence of our borders, the raising of our standard of living, the spread of our culture, have become a man-eating idol. If you look around you: prohibition, coercion, slogan, rubbish, drivel, hogwash, propaganda, profiteering, pushing, fear, insecurity. The intolerance of our systems is something that people today groan about the most and would like to compensate for with some pompous respect for culture: each system calls itself the saviour of culture and the others the destroyers of culture. But today's man, this negative idealist, detached from all reality, wants to adore culture in vain, his adoration is an empty set of words, a grab-bag of measures, a constant cloaking of his own yawns; and he sees culture as a fairground gibberish, an incessant saving of people, nations, communities, a tasteless self-adulation of "geniuses", a social event. Culture is static, calm, non-institutionalizable; the more today's fidgety-moving man jumps around it, the more he crushes it. The more he 'takes culture to heart', the more he seems to have no feeling for it; the more he 'saves and protects' it, the more he seems to need a protection of it. He moves money, armies, a deliberately dumbed-down herd of people, and he is destroyed, when a single breath of culture could save him. But that one breath is missing, and the money, the army, the herd of men continue to grind onwards.
There is only one way out of this cave of human suffering of human life, of human emotions, but it will not happen: if humanity were to change to a sober, stable basis: to satisfy its needs and not its fears and emotions. Since there is no hope of this, each man can only create a tolerable world within himself, for himself, if he is strong enough to renounce all prejudices and see with his own eyes, like a child: Everyone can only achieve realism instead of negative idealism, internal, unshakable security instead of the nightmare of external order, money, wealth, rank, prestige. And only the few can achieve it, even for themselves, who have been given the sense to do so.

"

You'd be wise to eat a grated apple or two every morning, when you wake up and before a meal, on an empty stomach. Apples are a mysterious fruit. It is no coincidence that it is one of the oldest symbols in the consciousness of mankind. The apple tree was the "tree of knowledge", the apple was the forbidden fruit of the Bible. Well, this forbidden fruit has a personal connection with man. Perhaps it played a role when man was cast out of Paradise; we don't know for sure. But I've noticed that raw, grated apples are a sure thing in everyday life hygiene. It is refreshing, soothes the stomach, and regulates the bowels. Especially if you wash the apple carefully with clean hands before grating and then sprinkle it with lemon juice. Longevity is not guaranteed by this gentle nutrient, but your stomach and intestines will gratefully accept this daily gift of pure, healing power. And a man is a man not only with his heart and mind but also with his stomach and intestines.

"

Fight fanaticism always, everywhere, in every way and at every opportunity. Against the foaming-at-the-mouth, whining impulse that bursts out of its human hiding place and wants to carve up and shape the world. To fight fanaticism with patience, with explanation, with reason, with consistent pedagogy. And also with compassion. Pity the fanatic. He lashes out at you, but in the frenzy of the attack, he bites his own tongue and crushes himself.

"

What can frighten you when your soul is calm? If you overcome vanity, lust and greed? What powers can torment you if you do not torment yourself? What is prison if your soul is free? What is death, if you have known the world and your soul, and do not long for superfluous and embarrassing details? Truly, you were like the child who is unhappy because he did not get this or that. Think always of this: "I have neither power nor wealth, perhaps not even health. But how mighty I am, how rich, how superior, for I have adjusted my desires to the truth and reality of things, and my soul is free!" No one can take this from you, no one can give more than this.

"

When you stand face to face with the powerful, always think about who gave these people their power? And what can they do against you? Can they take your goods, your freedom, or your life? And then what? A tiny microbe, a contagious bacterium, can take your life, as fragile and ephemeral as the life of an insect. Nay, even the mightiest lord has no real power over your soul and is therefore powerless if you are just and he is unjust. He can do nothing against thee but find thee in sin, and he is just. Think not, therefore, what you will say to the great lord, how you will behave; think only that you are free as long as you are righteous, and the great lord is powerless against your righteousness.

"

The constant clash between the call and attraction of the world and the worldly performance, which is alien to my being and inclination, has caused me much complication and confusion in my life. For men are social creatures, and this beautiful disposition is by no means to be despised in them: it is right that men should seek each other's company, and learn each other's views in intelligent and friendly conversation, and if they get nothing more from their meetings than a temporary relief from the loneliness of life, this alone is worth the little trouble and inconvenience which such meetings cost. Man is a social creature, and it is in company that he most often unfolds the fine qualities of his character: he who converses fairly and patiently, who endeavours to learn his fellow-men's views of the world and of human destiny in thoughtful and pleasantly phrased dialogue, who answers objections patiently, who does not judge prematurely, who phrases his answers well, and who then, out of accommodation and courtesy, refuses to depart from what he has come to know to be the truth: such a man, in fact, performs the most beautiful of human duties when he goes out into society, and there learns the opinions of his fellow-men, and does not keep silent about his own. But most men are driven rather by vanity, by a desire to escape from boredom, into the circle of their fellow-men; and it is very rare that we have spent a time among men, and afterwards felt no remorse, as if we had been the partakers and accomplices in some debauchery or revelry. Great care must be taken to avoid invitations to houses where the householders expect some mark of social or professional distinction from the "company". In such social gatherings, the invitees are seen as a kind of rare commodity to be sold by the householders in the marketplace of worldly vanity.

I have always avoided social life, its high worldly or artisanal versions. Nor did I resent having to offend people who invited me to their homes for the sake of their vanity or misguided ambition. "To "invite" is a great art, it requires a great deal of spiritual nobility, tact, knowledge of people and situations. And to accept or not to accept an invitation: it is a question of character, like all human questions.

"

Recommendation: I recommend this book to Seneca because he taught us that without morality there is no man. And to Epictetus, because he taught us the power we have. And to Marcus Aurelius, who learned from Epictetus what is in our power - and was patient. And to Montaigne, because he was cheerful and didn't care what happened to his work after death. And to the Stoics in general, who comforted me when there was no consolation on earth, and taught me not to fear death, nor slavery, nor poverty, nor sickness. And one or two men who were my friends and true men. And one or two women.

"

"I am a woman", radiates the flower; "I am a flower", radiates the woman. "I am a man", emanates the trunk of the creating tree; "I am the trunk of the creating tree", emanates the man.
If you want to question it: the rose disappears behind its fragrance, its colour, its form; the fruit tree opens up. If you want to enjoy it: the rose unfolds; the fruit tree disappears behind its fruit.

"

If you arrange the contents of your inner being; if you separate within yourself the changing transitory elements of your person and the unchanging, eternal world of your being: the transitory elements appear to you as objects, plants, animals, so to speak, and you can interact with the factors of the eternal world. Suddenly you notice in your solitude that you are learning from someone without the use of mouth or ears; and at first you do not know whether you are imagining it or whether a disembodied being has descended to you. Your invisible teacher is not a mirage, nor a spirit descended to you, but one of the infinite currents that lie beneath your person. The infinite currents are the formers and guides of the personality, which can be accessed and interrogated after the personality has been broken through. Anyone can be in touch with them, only not everyone knows it; intuition, the sudden realization without precedent, is always a suggestion of one of the infinite currents.
The infinite currents behind the personality are called angels by Christians, gods by the ancient Greeks, and devas by the Indians. Who are these angels, gods, and devas? They are not persons; they are the soul-powers pervading the universe; they are not spirits outside our own being and descending to us, nor are they parts of our own being, but they are the forces of the naked soul emerging from under the cloak of personality; the soul which is not 'my soul' or a 'separate soul', but the 'soul', without limit.
The individuality-obsessed man of today has lost the knowledge of angels; he does not believe in invisible winged creatures descending from the air, and he is right. But he does not know that his personality and his soul are not identical; that behind his temporal personality lies the non-temporal soul, which is not one's soul, but is undivided, boundless; and that the various manifestations of the soul are angels; they are hidden in him like a multitude of colors in a colorless sunbeam. And he who penetrates beneath his transitory person, comes into contact with the angels, as a prisoner who breaks the prison window comes into contact with the pure air.
There are other kinds of angels: an angel of a landscape, an angel of a family, an angel of a nation and many more. And there are devils. An angel or devil is not a person, but it is not a symbol. If you notice in any of your manifestations that which is not temporal, not enclosed, not your own: it is the angel or the devil.
A general human frailty: greed, frivolity, avarice, etc., is as unenclosed and unindividual as the soul. From profligate to profligate, from miser to miser, an invisible current runs, not in space, yet almost palpable: this current is the devil.
Between angel and devil there is no more sharp boundary than between good and bad man. The infinite currents behind your personality, if you access them, behave like angels; if you pile the dross of life on top of them, they behave like devils.

"

Take care whether you think light or dark; for what you have thought you have created.
Nature creates in the natural world, the soul in the spiritual world. When you make a garment, furniture, whatever, you first think it out, that is, you create it in the world of the soul, and only then do you make it in the world of nature, with your natural tools. Your true creation is not in nature, but in the soul; one is sooner or later destroyed, another is ingrained in the moment of its creation. And he who exists not in the present, nor in time, but pervades the whole of time: he watches your creation.

"

Virtue is that which conforms to the eternal standard and lifts us up to perfection; sin is that which opposes the eternal standard and moves us away from perfection.
He who attains to perfection is identified with the eternal measure: he has no virtue and no more sin; just as the nature of fire is not virtue but light, so the nature of a being identified with perfection is not virtue but action according to the eternal measure. In wholeness there is no good and evil, no merit and fault, no reward and punishment.

"

Most people are fatally wounded in sex duels. His vanity cannot endure love, nor unlove; he suffers from loneliness as well as from cohabitation; he flees to pigsties, or to resentful, revengeful lonely roles.

The only way to remain powerful over our emotions is to learn modesty in time. There are no lasting "sensual solutions"; perhaps not even friendship lasts; nothing human lasts. On the plane of human life, there are no emotional "five-year plans"; there are only situations, which are always imperfect. The "great feelings" are the most violently hurt, and always prematurely. The temporary rebellion of our emotions must be endured as one of life's great trials. We must accept that there is no solution, only patience. And if one is so strong as to transform these passions into nobler intentions, to melt the passions in the crucible of work, to distil the vanity from these forces in the flask of humility: one acts wisely. But this is the most difficult task in life.