Book: Confession. Page 1

I could not be deceived. All is vanity. Happy is he who is born, death is better than life.

Now and then a clear recognition and confession of Orthodoxy is mostly met in people stupid, cruel and immoral and consider themselves very important. The mind, honesty, integrity, kindness and morality were for the most part to be found in the people claiming to be disbelievers.

Long ago an old Eastern fable about a traveler who was caught in the desert furious beast. Escape the beast the traveler jumps into a waterless well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon rusanovskogo mouth to eat him. And miserable, not daring to come out to perish by an enraged beast, and not daring to jump down the well, not to be devoured by the dragon, gripping at the branches growing in the crevices of the well wild of the Bush and rests on it. His hands weaken, and he feels that soon will have to surrender to death, with both sides waiting for him; but he holds, and while he rests, he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and the other white, evenly avoiding Stalino Bush, on which it hangs, gnawing away at her. That's itself will break off and will break the Bush, and he falls into the jaws of the dragon. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while he was hanging, he is looking around and finds on the leaves of the Bush drops of honey, takes out their tongue and licks them. So I cling to the branch of life, knowing that inevitably awaits the dragon of death, ready to devour me, and I can't understand why I got to this torment. And I'm trying to suck the honey, which had formerly consoled me; but this honey does not attract me, and the white and the black mouse day and night, gnawing away at the branch that I hold. I clearly see the dragon, and the honey has lost its sweetness. I see only the inevitable dragon and the mice, and I can turn my eyes from them. And it's not a tale but a true, irrefutable and understood the truth.

The state of mind that was expressed to me thus: my life is what someone played me stupid and a bad joke. Despite the fact that I did not recognize there is no "someone" that I created, this form of representation that someone made fun of me the evil and stupid, making me into the light, was to me the most natural form of representation.

I grew sick of life - some irresistible force was leading me to somehow get rid of her. It was not that I wanted to kill myself. The force that drove me away from life was stronger, fuller, General volition. It was a strength similar to the previous desire of life, only in inverse proportion. I tried and tried to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as before came the thought of improvement of life. This idea was so tempting that I had to use cunning against myself in order not to go through with it too hastily. I don't want to rush it just because I wanted to use every effort to unravel! If you do not unravel, it will always have the time, I told myself. ... I did not know what I wanted: I feared life, I struggled to get away from her and, meanwhile, something else was hoping from her.

My life stopped. I could breathe, eat, drink, sleep, and could not breathe, not eat, not drink, not sleep; but life was not, because no such desires whose satisfaction I would find reasonable. If I wanted something, I forward knew that, will satisfy or not satisfy my desire, nothing will come of it. If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my desires, I wouldn't know what to say. If I have not desires but the habits of old desires, in a drunken minute, I'm sober minutes know it's the deception that there is nothing to desire. Even to know the truth, I couldn't ask, because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless.

I was looking for in all knowledge and not only found, but found that all those who are just like me, looking for knowledge, similarly, found nothing. And not only found, but clearly recognized that the very thing that has brought me to despair - the meaningless of life, is the only absolute knowledge attainable to man.

The "family"... ' I thought to myself; - but the family - wife, children, are people too. They are in the same conditions in which I: they must either live in the lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why would I want to love them, to cherish, to grow and to observe them? For the same despair that's in me, or for stupidity! Love them, I can't hide from them the truth - each step in knowledge leads them to this truth. And the truth is death.

The essence of any faith is that it gives life a meaning that cannot be destroyed by death.

I told my brother, smart and honest man. Years 26 already, once on the bed while hunting, by an old childhood habit, was the evening for prayer. It was on the hunt. Our elder brother Nikolai was already lying on the hay and looked at him. When Sergei came and started to lay down, Nicholas said, "so you still do the prayer?" And more they said nothing to each other. Brother Sergei from that day stopped praying and going to Church. And now 30 years not to pray, not partake and do not go to Church. And not because he believed his brother, but because it was an indication that he hasn't stayed from the faith, and it was just a meaningless habit. It was and is, I think, with the vast majority of people. I'm talking about the people our education and talk about people truthful with ourselves, not those who are the objects of faith make a means to achieve any time goals.

The renunciation of faith occurred in me, I think at least somewhat more complicated than that, as I see it, it occurs without exception in all the smart people of our time. It is, I think, is in most cases so that a variety of knowledge and even philosophical - mathematical, natural, historical, art, experience of life in General (not attacking the creed) with its light and warmth, imperceptibly, but inevitably melt artificial building faith.