The most egregious examples of sentimentality are those novels and films where the characters can be sorted into good and evil groups. The main characters are the most angelic, with whom the reader cries and laughs, almost merges with them; but if you take a closer look at these protagonists, they are not angels at all: they are driven by their petty, greedy, sweet desires. The other characters are classified as good and sympathetic or evil and hateful depending on whether they support or hinder the protagonists. Most of today's people look at the world in the way of sentimental novels: wherever their desires lead them and those who help these desires are the good ones; the inhibitors of his desires are the bad ones.
Today's average knowledge of people is shockingly simple. Most people today only see the surface of you that you show towards their hobbies and needs; he doesn't look at your insides; the woman judges you according to whether you entertain or warm you up, and the man according to how you fit into his principles, plans, and obsessions. He confuses the good with the attractive, seductive; it is no wonder that it is mostly led by adventurers in both private and public life. His disappointment and disillusionment are hereditary, he blames all heavenly and earthly powers, the evil of others, sometimes even his own stupidity; it's just that he doesn't think of looking at his fellow humans not through his needs, but in themselves.
The most common and characteristic symptom of a disordered, foggy spirit: hatred of a community. The causes of all problems are the Jews, or: the Catholics, or: the financiers, etc.: the hated community must be destroyed and everything will be fine. Angry outbursts against the group in question, but preferably when it does not become a nuisance. And the hatred towards each member of the hated community is significantly less than towards the whole community; close acquaintances are exceptions, only others are vulnerable.
This kind of hatred is very easily contagious, because it is easier and more convenient to get rid of the bitterness and disappointment caused by our bad luck with a general temper tantrum than to check ourselves. In fact, there is no group of people that is more justified to hate than, for example, the fat or the tall.
Ask yourself often, "Is there any community or individual that I would lustfully hurt?" And if there is: find out the reason for your tendency to hurt; you will notice that the real reason is never in the person, even if he or she really inconvenienced you, but in yourself, in your unfulfilled desires. With revenge or idle hatred, you will not improve anything, but you will poison your own spirit with it.
Don't harbor any intention to improve society. Because every abstract community is a mist; and whoever runs in the fog sooner or later is a dead tramp.
Respect and cherish your narrower and wider home: family, nation, humanity. But don't confuse any of them with those who claim harm by referring to these concepts.
What is harmful? if you want to help Peter by pushing Paul back. - The nation that wears this on its forehead: it will never perish.
"I identify with Peter, I don't like Paul; I'll kiss Péter, I'll beat Paul" - this is sentimentality; it is the common frame of public ideas; the present is begging for it. You can only help anyone so that it does not come at the expense of others.
You can only improve your people and humanity by improving yourself.
The truth can never redeem humanity, it can always only redeem one person.
There can be four types of leaders at the head of the country: Procrustes, Napoleon, Uncle Samu and Ssolón.
Procrustes is a supporter of an idea that he wants to force his nation into if it breaks, if it splits.
Napoleon is a passionate gambler and whether he wins or loses, he is definitely a waste.
Uncle Samu sits in the royal hall as if in a spice shop, fiddling with dekas and garas.
Solon listens to divine inspiration, all his actions stem from eternal measure and his kingdom flourishes.
"What you give to me, you give to everyone," declares the earthly power.
"What you give to everyone, you give to me", declares the heavenly power.
A nation that wants to be superior to other nations becomes an executioner or a clown.
The life of their nation is bogged down by those who proclaim the real or perceived virtues of their nation and do not want to tolerate merciless criticism.
The greatest blow that can befall a nation is to destroy its judgment through unilateral control. This kind of people gets mad, and the more adventurous an adventurer approaches them, the easier it is for them to throw themselves there. There is no danger from the outside, oppression, thousands of years of oppression, which can overcome this.
The valuing of money, wealth, rank, and achievement above all else, the economism that today's people see as the most complete realism: in fact, idealism, even if in a negative and parodic way. Money is not food, not drink, not clothes, not an object of art, it is basically useless, it actually does not exist, it is just an idea and an ideal; and collecting this fictitious thing is considered by today's man to be complete sanity. Accumulated wealth, which grows beyond what is needed, is only a nuisance and trouble, and sooner or later it slips out of its owner's hands, so that not even what is needed remains. Rank removes you from all tolerable humanity, erects meaningless barriers that incite hatred and envy. Assertion leads nowhere, because there is always further and further on this road, the desire to assert yourself is an unbearable itch, like a skin problem. In addition, today's man collects a pile of impossible shackles from the most nebulous social principles. In the confusion of obsessions and passions, community, nation, race, people, home, public safety, duty, protecting our borders, raising our standard of living, and spreading our culture have become man-eating idols. If you look around: prohibition, coercion, passwords, bargains, poppies, masquerading, propaganda, profiteering, extortion, terror, uncertainty. The intolerance of our systems is what modern man moans about the most and would like to counterbalance it with some kind of uplifting cultural respect: each system calls itself the savior of culture and the others the destroyer of culture. But today's man, this negative idealist detached from all reality, tries in vain to be passionate about culture, his passion is an empty set of words, a pile of measures, manipulation, the continuous covering up of his own yawns; and he also sees culture as a fair trade show, a continuous rescue of people, people and communities, tasteless self-showing of "geniuses", a social event. Culture is static, calm, and cannot be institutionalized; today's excitable man jumps around it more and more, the more he tramples it. The more he takes culture to heart, the more it appears that he has no sense of it; if you say "saves and protects", the more it seems that he would need to protect it. It moves money, an army, a herd of deliberately dumbed-down people and perishes, even though a single breath of culture could save it. However, this single breath is missed, and the money, army, and herd of people continue to grind.
There would be only one way out of this cave of human life and human feelings, but this will not happen: if humanity were to move to a sane, reliable basis: it would satisfy its needs and not its brainstorms and emotions. Since there is no hope for that, everyone can only create a tolerable world for themselves, if they are strong enough to renounce all prejudices and see with their own eyes like a child: Everyone can only achieve realism instead of negative idealism, money, wealth, rank , validation, internal, unbreakable security instead of the nightmare of external orderliness. And only those who have the sense for it can achieve it even for themselves.
To be "a patron of science and art" is almost as ridiculous as calling a religious person "a patron of God." Just as God does not depend on whether people believe in him, neither does science and art depend on whether they care about him. The homeland of science and art is not existence, "esse", but possibility, "posse, and if it manifests itself in existence, then existence becomes richer; it is an infinite humility on the part of science and art that it allows itself to be revealed in existence, since all its shapes and stitches are disabled. And if science and art disappear from human destiny: this is not their destruction, but that of disabled manifestations, and of the master of these manifestations, man.
Why is there a snake at the entrance to the pharmacy? Instead, today's people could paint some cheerful little pigs as soon as they are almost bursting with health.
Why is there a blindfolded goddess above the seat of judgment? Today's man could remove the veil from the eyes of the goddess: let her be like a saleswoman who seeks the pleasure of the public.
How much is the crucified corpse on the altar? Today's man could replace him with a barman, as soon as he offers a port.
Sin is most dangerous not when it openly and boldly opposes virtue, but when it disguises itself as virtue and infects the sense of recognition.
The main enemy of love is not hatred, but sentimental kindness; patriotism is not the denial of one's country, but dignified leechism and self-sacrifice; the morality of love is not amorous immorality, but social decency, which, while it pursues undisguised lasciviousness, offers a hundred kinds of monstrous lascivious substitutes.
The invention of our time is compulsory enthusiasm, officially institutionalized revolution and the revolt of the oppressors against the oppressed.
Today's ruling systems are characterized by the fact that they do not necessarily want their lies to be believed, but only to be accepted. Every military weapon has to sing about itself that it is the most different, without anyone believing it; every citizen must confess that the head of state is wise, a hero, a benefactor, without anyone believing it; and so on.
Now even a believable lie is an unattainable height. We are in a pit, below the frog's perch.
Today's man, cut off from the universal context of existence and shrunk into individuality, will soon lose his individuality, but not upwards, but downwards. Since he cannot stand out from his individuality, he is subdued. Soon, it will be officially determined which leader's picture you must hang on the wall, what books and other objects you can have, what you can eat and drink and when, and not only work, but also entertainment will be mandatory, in a prescribed manner and at a prescribed time; and people who have fallen under their individuality will like it. After the European man was individual for a thousand years in such a way that he pitted his personal whims against universal possibilities: now the diabolical order formed from whims is burying not only his individuality, but also his human existence.
And today's man would be satisfied and happy with this, if the hut did not sway continuously around him.
Helpless suicide is called civic duty, roaring with the crowd is called courage, emotionality is called poetic spirit, the rattling of walnut shells is called progressive spirit, greedy, narrow-minded gluttony is reason, group boredom is fun, and the play of the glands is called enjoyment.
The combination of civic duty, courage, poetic spirit, progressive spirit, reason, fun and enjoyment is called social and economic balance.
The social and economic balance is becoming more and more delicate: there are more and more regulations, restrictions, and punishments; before long the people will abhor peace more than war; finally, the balance must be maintained by a constant state of war. The war begins, in which the desire to win is only a voice inherited from the past, the real, secret goal is to drag the war on: none of the warring parties dares to take on the economic Gordian knot that peace would mean. He will be happy who can be a soldier, because he has better care and greater security than the population; and tries to get to the battlefield, because that is where the greatest possible freedom is promised. Peace will not be order, war will not be chaos, but the other way around; this will be the age of constant war. Not a moment will resemble reverse chess, where the winner is the one whose pieces have been knocked out.
This state has already been partially reached. Now a short, clear period is coming, but this is only the bait sunshine before the long winter, the summer of old women. Not even thirty years have passed and the era begins when it is not man who leads the war, but war leads the man.
All your manifestations, which unfold beautifully, fresh, freely: your gift; all your manifestations that reek of your greed: your excrement. Each one of us produces much more dross than donations, and there is no other help against this than to clean up our dross; instead, from the beginning and more and more, the European man builds a system, law, and morality from his excrement, which he guards with weapons, money, and a prestigious body with an official seal and demands that everyone conform to these excrement palaces and ceremonial statues of excrement. These are constantly cracking and crumbling, spreading a general stench and itching; and they have to be supplemented with more and more, fresher, softer manure. Little by little, humanity raised an entire metropolis of excrement above itself, which now, in the twentieth century, collapsed on its owners. Just as a flood of fire and water poured down on humanity, which had once grown into a giant besieging the sky, now humanity, which had dwindled into a worshiper of cattle, was overtaken by a flood of dung. For centuries, there will be nothing but a suffocating stench, living in filth, warfare with rustling, rotting, dung-smelling weapons instead of the old shiny weapons, until the man of the Ganaj Age is destroyed. Whoever made the whole globe into a cesspool is now drowning in it.
What can be done against the manure flood? to hold our noses, nothing else. Because whoever wants to demolish one of the scum towers, just carries it from one place to another and in the process also increases the ugliness. The dung-flood will flow by itself, slowly, until the man of the dung-era is drowned in it to the last. Anyone who surrendered wholeheartedly to any direction, system, or human idea was overwhelmed by the flood of dung; he who preserves pure feeling, free vision, eternal measure, floats in an ark above the dung-flood. And just as the rainbow appeared in the sky after the flood, as a sign that there will be no more floods: then clean underwear will appear in the sky, as a sign that there will be no more dung floods.
What can you do against the plunge into darkness, general destruction, universal suffering? nothing and everything. This is nothing and everything: if you do not participate in the darkness with your own feelings and create the state of complete humanity in yourself: you are not guided by your desires, but by the eternal measure. The tide will carry you anywhere: to poverty, to prosperity, to forced labor, to the battlefield, to a place of leadership, to a place of loss: do not care about it; the dark power cannot give you anything or take anything from you if the only valid measure works in you. Can your comfort, wealth, health, freedom, life take you there? you'll lose all of this sooner or later anyway, you can't take it to the grave with you; but even the destruction of the world cannot violate the perfect measure that lies deep inside you, so you want to adjust to it. Trust yourself to the eternal measure: this is Noah's ark above the all-encompassing flood.
The only thing you can do for your fellow humans is to let them know the only way to escape. No one can be saved by force when the flood covers everything.
It is not true that the crowd wants to climb onto Noah's ark during the flood. Noah's ark seems to be the weakest, simplest piece of equipment, worth more than the bottom of a bush.
Such a person sees religiosity as a barter: a person's duty is to behave well, to comply with God's commands and prescribed ceremonies; It is God's job to provide man with earthly goods in the same proportion as he behaved well, followed the orders, and performed the ceremonies. According to this, the most religious and best people should be the richest, and the irreligious and law-breaking should be miserable.
Anyone who is religious in order to get the desired goods in return has already proven his greed and unworthiness. God's goodness is not fattening and not a charitable institution. The unchanging radiation of divine love resembles nothing less than charity and the satisfaction of desires. If you can get out of your desires, then you will reach God.
There are many enthusiastic and militant Catholics, Protestants, Israelis, who believe in God only half-way and cannot believe in the dogmas of their religion at all, yet they fight for their religion. Of the locomotive, they only accept the boiler, which is explosive, but not the wheels, which can be used to walk.
For the individual-man, pleasure and profit seem to be the most necessary; it does not distinguish pleasure from good, benefit from purpose. He even imagines improving the lot of humanity as putting more and more people in a more pleasant state. And he imagines salvation as eternal enjoyment and eternal benefit; whereas salvation is the dissolution of the nightmare of the desire for pleasure and profit.
The desire for pleasure and profit is nothing more than an elementary need arising from your physical nature; don't let your soul succumb to this need. The basic need of the soul is different: to be in harmony with everything. And the pursuit of harmony is disturbed by pleasure and profit as soon as it exceeds the need.
Self-torture is mostly a dead end; sometimes very evasive; only very rarely is it the shortest way.
For most people, completely giving up pleasure is just as harmful as overindulging in pleasure. And what is between the two, moderation ("I enjoy, but little by little, carefully, sparingly"): astringent.
Cultivate your desires in such a way that they are not directed towards pleasures and benefits: this way you avoid renunciation, accumulation and moderation. Shape your wishes in such a way that you can either accept the pleasures and benefits of life or the lack of them as incidental, and you don't have to worry much about whether you will benefit from them or not. If your world of feelings is not focused on the changing, but on the constant, if you view the changing from the outside, as a stranger, if you strive for harmony with everything, if you pay attention to the eternal measure: in this way, you pull out the venom of your life's wishes and for you, the good and the bad of life are no longer dangerous, they only affect you superficially.
Be strict with yourself, but don't torture your nature. Break down your whims, your longings, not so that you will be miserable without them, but so that you can flow like water and be sure like the sky.
The rule is not meant to imprison yourself; have your own living room, you can go in and out freely, as you please.
The rule is worthless if you wear it like a resolution, if it clangs on you gloomily and condescendingly; the rule is good if it blends into your feelings and gently and flexibly supports you.
Morality, which you wear forcedly and reluctantly: is not virtue, only weakness.
Virtue always expands. There is no sin that is not closer to virtue than the many shrinking pseudo-virtues.
If you are moral, the test of this is that you do not feel the yoke of your virtue, but its brilliance, flavor, and power.
If you are moral, the test of this is that you love virtue and vice equally and without craving.
It is in vain that you guard against sin if you indulge in false virtue. Virtue and vice are more advanced and broader; the more advanced the pseudo-virtue, the more convulsive it is. There can always be virtue from sin, but from pseudo-virtue it is difficult.
Each of the false virtues is a parasite on some real virtue, with which it is used to be mistaken. The lifeblood of religiosity is impatient sectarianism and anointed devotion, patriotism is violent chauvinism, philanthropy is self-important public zeal, science is pseudo-scientific candor, art is social urgent-spinning artistry-patronage, everyday diligence is mud-sticking wrestling. , that of goodness is charity with a dripping heart and intrusive consolation, that of loving decency is covetousness fishing for a spouse and rummaging in other people's laundry, etc.
Virtue is never violent; on the other hand, it could be the motto of any pseudo-virtue: "What I don't do, no one else should either."
False virtues strangle faith, truth, morality, knowledge, beauty; they poison all that is the permanent treasure of mankind, by making their own shriveledness obligatory by reference to them.
Virtue is everything that is equal to the eternal measure and raises towards perfection; sin is everything that goes against the eternal measure and takes away from completeness.
He who reaches perfection is identified with the eternal measure: he has no more virtue and no more sin; just as light is not the virtue but the nature of fire, so the being identified with completeness is not the virtue but the nature of functioning according to the eternal measure. In wholeness there is no good and bad, no merit and demerit, no reward and punishment.
The individual-man abhors aging: he sees it as weakening, powerlessness, and unworthy humiliation. The real man does not abhor aging, since he can achieve his undisturbed development in it; his years are stairs, ever higher.
If you are not afraid of illness, misery, old age, death, or any kind of calamity: old age will be more and more certain fulfillment for you, poverty will be unencumbered freedom, any disability will increase, and you will know death even before you die.
The natural need of childhood: freedom. And today's child is almost forced into a cage.
The natural need of adulthood: life. And today's adult either barely survives, or lives in hidden ways at the expense of himself and others.
The natural need of old age: peace. And today's old man, since his previous needs could not be satisfied, wants freedom and life even at the edge of the grave.
Would you trade fate with someone?
Do you want to be rich? You would trade your fortune with the billionaire, but not your destiny. Do you want to be a people pleaser? You would trade your power with the king or the leader of the people, but not your destiny. Do you want to be a saint? You would trade your state of development with the saint, but not your destiny.
Everyone can only endure his own fate; it would collapse under the other.
Fate provides everyone with just the right food; but he who cannot like all flavors equally, nibbles one food with satisfaction, and is sickened by another; and he digests one food with difficulty because he gulps it down greedily, another because he wants to spit it out.
The moving object is vulnerable, the movement is invulnerable; the things of life are inviolable, life is inviolable. Separately recognize in yourself that which is moving and the work of life: all this is a temporary part of you; and that which is movement and life itself: all this is your final whole.
Observe the continuous flow of symptoms: all different and always different and yet always the same. Pay attention to your body's pains: there are so many variations, from a dull ache to a sharp, throbbing pain! And these are constantly changing, layering on top of each other, like the motifs of a piece of music, or the lacy texture of leaves, twigs, and flowers on a tree. Observe the intermingling of good intentions, passion, lies, and violence in history, in the present, and in your own everyday life: everything that you know as bad, ugly, and small is woven into a harmony like the migration of clouds or the chain of mountain cones.
Life should be understood like a piece of music. If you can relate to all the pleasant or unpleasant effects that the things of life have on your individuality: you will recognize the common beauty in the play of the waves and in the aches and pains of your body and in the alternation of events and in the flow of your feelings and thoughts and everything. Everything is different and always different and yet always the same. Pay attention not to the role and effect of things, but rather to their pattern and rhythm: only in this way can you understand life, nature, your fellow humans and yourself.
What has not started on the road, or what is at the beginning of the road - the stone, the baby - has not yet acquired any treasure for itself and is worthy of love in and of itself. And the being who has reached fullness, who has already absorbed his acquired treasures and has nothing, just like a stone or a baby: is also worthy of love in and of itself. And the one that hasn't started yet and the one that has already arrived: the same.
A person on the path of growth, who crumbles under half-acquired truncated treasures, can only be loved out of the error caused by the temptation of unlearned treasures, or in connection with kinship, or out of sympathy, or out of the heatless, perfect single-mindedness of infinite love.
The main form of dissolution of wholeness is that it becomes female and male. A small child who is just approaching femininity or masculinity is just as complete as a being who rises above individual separateness, who unites femininity and masculinity, dissolves it into the unchanging.
Just as the female-body and male-body need to be supplemented, so the female-soul and male-soul are truncated. A woman does not know light, a man does not know warmth. The woman lacks the real creative power, the man the real life force. If the woman strives towards the permanent treasure of humanity, she only really understands what is in it, which is like a lively, lively event: she sees the temple of creation as a snack-place, a gossip corner. When the man is placed in the sweet games and warm intimacy of human breeding, he becomes dim, mechanized: he sees the temple of life as an opportunity for comfort. The woman floats loosely in the moving, hot current of life and only pays attention to what is an organic connection, culture, growth: the man paddles closed and bounded in the universe and views the objects of his interest as islands.
If a man sometimes sees into a woman's soul, or observes a woman who exists hidden under his own male being: he sees that in the reddish semi-darkness the intermingling, formless things live in a hot pulsation like germs: if a man-soul is revealed to the woman, or a man hidden in himself his being: he sees that things tremble in a bluish gray light, separated from each other, like statues.
When a woman works, she radiates her joys, sorrows, her whole world into her work; the man, when he works, hides everything else from him in his work. When the woman plays cards, she dissolves into the playing group and wants to win from the players: when the man plays cards, he gets hooked on the alternation of the game and wants to win in the game. When a woman opens an orange and gives you a few slices of it with a good heart, she has almost opened herself, she offers you what belongs to you from her own world of feelings: a man, if he offers food with a good heart, is happy that he can also give you some of it, which is his. The woman wants to fuse the life of the man she loves into one with her own life; the man wants to attach the beloved woman to his own being more closely than ever. The woman seeks the intoxicating fulfillment of her life in love; the man is looking for the intoxicated, ever-increasing whole in love.
The needs of a woman and a man do not overlap: that is why the woman's complement is not the excellent creative man, but the lion who constantly rushes and drags the woman with him, dazzles her again and again, until this double flight finally convinces her of family security; and the man's complement is not the excellent, life-giving woman, but the charmer, who is able to arouse the man's senses, and through this to enthuse his whole being, and moreover, she can take over the convictions, hobbies, and plans of the man in question. As the woman rarely finds the lion and the head of the family in one person, and the man the charming and adaptable, hence the many disappointments.
The man's being is a hard core, the woman's being all aspects. For men, family, financial and other circumstances: the shaper of his life: for women: life itself. We can really get to know a man when we examine him in isolation from his circumstances, a woman when we consider her relationships to people and circumstances.
If the "ideal man" appears in a woman's novel: he is a great conqueror of women, a perfect head of the family, a brave and determined doer, he has an excellent talent for anything, but we don't know where the many excellences fit in him, because his being is nothing more than a dressed-up man-face wooden doll in the window of the clothing store. And the "ideal woman" in the man's novel is full of pink delicacy and golden intelligence, but her only real aspect is that she is in love through fire and water with the man-hero, with whom both the writer and the reader involuntarily identify: she floats so groundlessly in the world, like the sweet angels of Christmas cards.
Which is worth more: the woman or the man? All the same. Anyone can reach the ultimate: wholeness. But each in a different way: the man develops his own closed being to become more and more open and complete; the woman like a soft warmth goes into the ultimate soft, warm nest.