Pascal,
SELF-RENUNCIATION
SELF-RENUNCIATION
The happiness of a man's life is in communion with God and with his fellow-beings through love. Sins prevent this communion. The cause of sins is in that the man seeks to build his happiness upon the gratification of the passions of his body and not the love of God and of his fellow-man. Therefore the happiness of man lies in the deliverance from sins. The deliverance from sins is in the effort to renounce the life of the flesh.
I.
The Law of Life Is In the Renunciation of the
Flesh
1. All the sins of the body: adultery, luxury, sloth, covetousness and malice, are due to the acknowledgment of the body as one's real "I," that is, due to the subjection of the soul to the body. The deliverance from sins is only in the acknowledgment of the soul as one's "I," in the subjection of the body to the soul.
2. "Then said Jesus unto his disciples, if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" Matthew XVI, 24-26.
3. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.
"No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to
take it up again. This OHninandment have I received of my Father." John X, 17-18.
The mere fact that a man can renounce the life of his body dearly shows that there is something in man for the sake of which he renounces.
5. The more you yield to that which is of the body, the more you lose of the spiritual.
The more you surrender of the things that are of the body, the more you will gain of the things that are of the spirit. Judge which of the two is more needful to you.
6. Self-renunciation is not the renunciation of self, but the removal of your "I" from the animal being into the spiritual. To renounce self is not to renounce life. On the contrary, to renounce carnal life is to increase your true spiritual life.
7. Reason demonstrates to man that the gratification of the demands of his body can not be his true happiness, therefore reason irresistibly draws man to that happiness which is his prerogative, but for which there is no room in his bodily life.
It is commonly said and believed that renunciation of physical life is a heroic act: this is untrue. The renunciation of the physical life is not a heroic deed, but an inevitable condition of human life. In the case of the animal the wellbeing of the physical life and the continuity of species resulting therefrom is the supreme purpose of life. But with man the life of the body and the continuity of species are only a phase of existence in which the true blessedness of his life is revealed to him, and this does not coincide , with his bodily wellbeing. For man the life of the body is not all of life, but merely a necessary prerequisite of the true life which consists in the ever-increasing union with the spiritual principle of the world.
II.
The Inevitableness of Death Nece&aarily Leads Man to
the ConwtousnesB of Spiritual Life Which is
Not Subject to Death
\. When an infant is bora it seems to him that he is the only thing in the world. He yields to no one, to nothing, he does not care to know anyone: only give him that which he craves. He even does not know his mother, but knows her breast only. Days, months and years pass, and the child begins to understand that there are other beings like him, and what he craves for himself, others crave for themselves also. And the longer he lives, the more he realizes that he is not alone in the world, and that he must— if he be strong—fight with others for that which he craves, or if he be weak, he mmt submit to that which is. And moreover the longer a man lives, the more he realizes that his life is but for a season and may terminate at any moment in death. He observes death seizing now this one, now that one before his very eyes and knows that any moment the same may happen to him, as sooner or later it most surely will. And he can not escape the realization that there is no true life in his body, and whatever he may do for his body in this life, it is to no purpose.
And when man has clearly realized this, he will also realize that the spirit which dwells in him does not dwell in him alone, but dwells in all, in the whole world, and that this spirit is the spirit of God. And having realized this, man will cease to ascribe any significance to his bodily life, but will divert his purpose to the attainment of a tmion with the spirit of God, with that which is eternal.
2. Death, death, death waits for you every instant. Your life is passing in the sight of death. It you labor for the future of your bodily life, you know in your own heart
that the future has only one thing in store for you: death. And this death destroys all that you labor for. You may say that you labor for the good of generations to come, but they also will vanish and no trace will remain of them. Therefore life for the sake of material things has no sense. Death destroys all life of this kind. In order that your life may have a meaning, you must live so that death could not destroy the work of your life. Such is the life that Christ reveals to men. He reveals to men that alongside of that bodily life which is a mere shadow of life there is also another, a true life which gives true blessedness to man, and that every man knows this life in his heart. The teaching of Christ is the teaching of the unreality of personal life, of the necessity of renouncing it and of transferring the meaning and the purpose of life into divine Hfe, the life of humanity as a whole, the life of the Son of Man.
3. In order to understand the teaching of Christ as to the salvation of life, it is necessary to understand clearly what Solomon, and Buddha, and all the wise men said of the personal life of man. It is possible, as Pascal says, to ignore all these things, to carry with us little screens that would hide from our eyes the abyss of death towards which we are rushing; but it suffices to think for a moment what is the bodily life of an individual man, in order to realize that this life, if it be the life of the body merely, has no sense, that it be a cruel mockery of the heart, of the reason of man and of all that is good within him. And therefore in order to understand the teaching of Christ it is necessary first of all to bethink yourself and to take heed, it is necessary to experience that in your inner self which Christ's precursor John preached to men who were beset with perplexities even as we. He said: "First of all repent, then come to your senses or you will all perish." And
Christ commencing his sermon said the same: "Take heed, or you will perish." Speaking of the Galileans whom Pilate had slain, Christ said: "Did you think that these Galileans were more sinful than any other Galileans that they suffered so much? No, I say unto you, but if you do not repent, you will all likewise perish." Death, the inevitable, is before us all. We strive in vain to forget about it, but this will not save us; on the contrary, when it comes unexpectedly it will be all the more dreadful. There is but one salvation: renounce the life which dieth, and live the life for which there is no death.
4. It suffices to renounce for a moment our customary life and to look at it from the outside, as it were, in order to see that all the things we undertake for the supposed security of our life, we do not undertake to make our life more secure, but merely to busy our mind with this fictitious security and to forget that nothing can ever make our life secure. Not content with deceiving ourselves and imperiling our true life for the sake of the imaginary hfe, this striving for security more often than not ruins the very things we would make secure. The rich man seeks the security of his life in money, and this money tempts a robber to slay him. The nervous man tries to secure his life with medicines, and these medicines slowly kill him, or if they do not kill him, they surely deprive him of true life. It is the same with nations which arm themselves to secure their life and liberty, and yet this same striving for security leads to wars and to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of men on battlefields, and to the loss of the liberty of the nations as well.