From Leo Tolstoy and his book “The Kingdom of God is Within You”
Continuing from (a previous post, The Kingdom is Within You III “If we take no thought for the morrow, what we shall eat and what we shall drink or wherewithal we shall be clothed, do not defend our life, nor resist evil force (p.72), lay down our life for others, and observe perfect chastity, the human race would cease to exist,” they say.
And they are perfectly right if they take the principle of perfection given by Christ’s teaching as a rule which everyone is bound to fulfill, just as in the state principles of life everyone is bound to carry out the rule of paying taxes, supporting the law and so on. The misconception is based precisely on the fact that the teaching of Christ guides us differently from the way in which the precepts founded on the lower conception of life guide us. The precepts of the state conception of life only guide by requiring the exact fulfillment of rules or laws. Christ’s teachings guide by pointing us to the infinite perfection of our Heavenly Father, to which he independently and voluntarily struggled. . . . .
The misunderstanding of men who judge the Christian principle from the point of view of the state principle, consist in the supposition that the perfection that Christ points to, can be fully attained. They ask themselves (just as they ask them the same question on the supposition that state laws will be carried out) what will be the result of all this being carried out? This supposition cannot be made, because the perfection held up to (mortal) Christians is infinite and can never be attained; and Christ lays down his principle, that striving toward absolute, infinite perfection will continue to increase the blessedness of men and women and that this blessedness may be increased to infinity thereby.
Christ is teaching not angels, but men and women, living and moving in the animal life. And so to this the animal force of movement Christ, as it were, applies the new force—the recognition of Divine perfection—and thereby directs the movement by the resultant of these two forces.
To suppose that human life is going in the direction to which Christ pointed it, is just like supposing that a little boat afloat on a rapid river, and directing its course almost exactly against the current will progress in that direction.
Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the parallelogram, of both eternal indestructible forces of which the life of a man is compounded: the force of his animal nature and the force of consciousness of kinship to God. Saying nothing of the animal force which exerts itself, remains always the same, and therefore independent of human will. Christ speaks only of the Divine force calling upon us (p.73) to know more closely, to set us more free from all that retards us, and to carry us to a higher degree of intensity. In the process of liberating, of strengthening this force, the true life of men and women, according of Christ’s teaching consists in an ever closer approximation of divine perfection held up before everyone, and recognized within by everyone, in an ever closer and closer approach to the perfect fusion of their will in the will of God, that fusion towards which we strive, and attainment of which would be the destruction of the life we know. Divine perfection is the asymptote* of human life to which it is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be reached in infinity. ~~~Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is Within You (Barnes & Noble, Inc. 122 Fifth Ave, New York, NY 1001) p.72-73*
* asymptote — a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance.
