But man became a man when a special principle appeared in him, which rises above all this. If we take the best – I emphasize, the best representatives of humanity: great sages, saints, poets, artists, heroes – we will immediately see that for the sake of their inner world, for the sake of their principles, ideas, convictions, they often went against the needs of the body. They could stay awake at night, go without food for a long time, sacrifice comfort, family, comfort, even life. And when a person aspired only to material things, he began to stifle these higher needs in himself.

And two models emerged. One model is real acquisitiveness. Real acquisitiveness means that a person is entirely focused on material benefits. This disease still exists all over the world. How does it end? A catastrophe, a special catastrophe, because here man deceives his nature and, satiated, begins to rage. That's where suicide, drug addiction, and so on come from in highly developed countries.

The second model is utopia, when material well-being is not given, but endlessly promised. And that is why people strive for it for decades, through all kinds of sacrifices, as to some unattainable goal, and in the end they do not achieve either spiritual or material. All this, too, ends in a deep moral, social, and economic crisis.

Only harmony between the spiritual, physical and mental in a person can ensure normal, harmonious development.

Faith is the core in which a person finds the unity of his own "I". Therefore, potentially, every person, even a militant atheist, is a believer in his subconscious. There are no non-believers, because the human spirit is programmed to unconsciously strive for the Higher Principle. The history of the twentieth century has proved this to us with extraordinary clarity. It is not for nothing that Mao Zedong told one of the journalists before his death that he understood the meaning of the mystery of God only when thinking about his own cult. He understood that a person who is devoid of the concept of God will eventually deify anything. And this turned out to be quite obvious.

In all countries where the concept of the Divine principle was tried in one way or another, it was immediately replaced by something else, much more vulgar, much more insignificant; An idol was created, the role of which turned out to be either abstract social ghosts or political figures, more than half of whom were scoundrels – always, in all ages.

Thus, faith is man's unconscious striving for the higher meaning of existence, its acceptance. Moreover, faith is a state of the human spirit, which is achieved by this unconscious perception of the meaning of existence. If there is a meaning, it is worth living. When the meaning is completely destroyed, it is as if a person loses the core of life and dies alive. There is a conscious faith – such is the Christian faith. It is aware of what a person strives for and why. It is she who tells us about the one God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.

This is the first point of the Symbol of Faith. God is one. Why? Because man has always felt something unified behind the variety of spiritual and physical principles. And science was on the same path. A meteorite falls. Scientists are studying its composition. It turns out that they are the same elements as on Earth. Spectral analysis penetrates into the depths of stars, discovers their composition — there is the same periodic table. Everywhere there are general laws, everything seems to be subordinated to a single plan. It is not for nothing that the famous English astronomer James Jeans said that the universe today is more like a huge thought than a huge machine.

What is behind this perfection of the universe? Where does this pattern come from? When we are told that there are no miracles, I immediately think that the greatest miracle is the existence of the world, and a miracle that a person can know.

Aristotle said that any knowledge, including scientific knowledge, begins with surprise. A person is amazed at what he sees. Echoing him, Albert Einstein wrote that one who has lost the ability to wonder is mentally dead. To know that there is a hidden reality that appears as supreme wisdom and perfect beauty is knowledge, this conviction, is the core of true religiosity.

In the era of classical mechanics, which preceded Einstein's understanding of the world, one of the founders of celestial mechanics, Johannes Kepler, said: "When I study the laws of the universe, it is as if I touch God with my hands."

In the 18th century, the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, who created the classification of animals and plants that we still use today, wrote after finishing his work: "God passed by me, I saw Him in His creations." The founder of experimental science, Francis Bacon, wrote: "Only superficial knowledge leads away from God, deep knowledge, on the contrary, returns to Him again."

A few years ago, the book "Dialogues" was published in Moscow. In particular, there is an article by physicist Charles Townes, one of the creators of masers, our contemporary. This article is called "The Unity of Science and Religion."

As science comprehends the material part of the world, so faith cognizes its spiritual basis. But both are closely connected with each other, because both ultimately come to know the Creator and the Mystery. It is amazing that a person is able to feel the Creator simply intuitively. In fact, our deepest intuitive knowledge is the organ that can comprehend the "Father of all."