But if there is no religiosity without the dualism of man with God, the ideal of religiosity is in their complete unity. A religious act is impossible without dualism. It is impossible without unity, and not only the initial one.

Let us try to imagine the complete separation of man from God, which is unnatural, and therefore not at all easy. "Then God will turn out to be absolute for us (i.e., God) only in the sense of His absolute inaccessibility to us. Then we will be perplexed to ask ourselves, not only "whence do we get the idea of God," but also: "Whence do we get the idea of the absolute, i.e., in the end, Divine inaccessibility to us of anything and that" (cf. § 1). Then our idea of God is not God Himself in any sense or to any degree, but either our invention or a copy of God which is in us and is only ours. (Note that we have already made two illegitimate assumptions: first, we have admitted in ourselves the idea of God, i.e., of the absolute, although we consider ourselves relative, and have not explained where it comes from; secondly, we have admitted the existence in us of a copy of God, without also explaining its origin.) So, the idea of God is either our invention or our copy of God. But we cannot say whether our "copy" is correct or not (for lack of an original), nor even whether our idea of God is a copy or an invention. From this it follows that any further knowledge of God is objectively unfounded, i.e., meaningless. But once religious knowledge is meaningless, religious feeling and religious activity lose all meaning, since neither the second nor the third exists outside and without the first. The dualism we have noted turns out to be a dualism between our "I" at the moment and our "I" as an imaginary (but by no means real) state of our imaginary unity with an imaginary God. This state can be considered as my "ideal" or my "absolute task". But when the objectivity of God is rejected, it ceases to be real, and religiosity ceases to be religiosity, i.e., to exist at all.

Assuming the absolute and only dualism of man with God, we must, not only for the sake of explanation, but even for the simple description and understanding of the fact of our religiosity, establish the concepts of: (1) our "I" in itself, and (2) God, to whom it strives and desires union with it, as with something outside it. Since we have already recognized our complete separation from God's otherness, i.e., we have limited our "I" to Him alone, we are obliged to recognize God as this "I" only. From this it follows that the "I" is broader than the "I in himself" (I): it is both the "I in himself," outside of God (1), and I as God (2), E = e + d. Our "I" (E) is both the "I" proper, which is absolutely outside of God, and our "imaginary" God (d), which is absolutely outside the "I" (e), and the unity of the "I" with this God, i.e., e + d. By transferring the whole religious problem into our "consciousness" or "I," we try to overcome the irreconcilability of dualism with unity by admitting our "big I" (E). But it is either the unity in k d, which is the negation of dualism and makes it impossible, or the separation of e and d, which explains nothing, or it is both unity and duality end. The last statement, which remains to us, can be expressed schematically as follows: 1) E = e + d, 2) E = e, 3) E = d, but 4) e not = d. We call this relation duality, and by E we do not think of anything third that goes beyond e and d.

In trying to eliminate the incompatibility of duality with unity, we assumed the absolute and only dualism of man with God, i.e., we rejected God. And we have come to a paradoxical duality within man. But then it turns out that with the help of our saving assumption we have gained nothing, but, perhaps, lost a great deal, even if we do not talk about our intermediate assumptions. In fact, we must recognize the very reality and the same degree of dualism that were given to us in our religious experience even before we were admitted, i.e., we must recognize the objective reality of God. And since it is possible to explain religiosity within our "I" with the help of such a paradoxical concept as duality, it is incomprehensible why it is impossible to accept the same duality without any subjective assumption, i.e., without denying God. In this case, we will not have to contradict our experience and build deliberately unfounded hypotheses.

How—let's leave our assumption valid for a moment—is E at once e, d, and e = d? Either e is deducible from E, or d and E are deducible from e. If the latter is true, how does it create from nothing in the most literal and precise sense of the word, and moreover perceive what it does (d and E) as something else? The old truth fully reveals its indisputability: while it is still possible (?) to deduce "potentiality" from an "act," an "act" cannot be deduced from "potentiality." In addition, under this assumption, the whole meaning of religious experience is lost. Religiosity is comprehensible only if God is before the religious man and is, as it were, complete in His fullness, and is not created by man out of nothing to the measure of human need, and is not a problematic magnitude. For all these reasons it is necessary to assume that e is deducible from E. But then E is richer and fuller than e: it already contains in itself all that it will become and what it can become at all. E is the completeness, completeness, and reality of both e and d, i.e., it is God as the duality of God with man, and not human subjective consciousness (e) and not God only in man (d), which can be explained only if E is really D. — D (E) = e + d.

Thus, the analysis of the religious reveals the duality of God with man, or God-manhood, as the basic religious aporia. As a paradoxical fact of religious consciousness, this aporia does not depend on whether we recognize or deny the existence of God. But in the second case, religious life itself loses all meaning and some specific difficulties arise. Be that as it may, the denial of the existence of God does not make the religious aporia more intelligible, and in fact is not due to the desire to understand it. It would be more correct to assert that the denial of the existence of God, or rather the doubt in it, follows from religious aporia. After all, it does not consist in the fact that man is partly one with God, and partly opposes Him. Its meaning is that man is wholly and one and dual with God, dual in every moment and moment of his existence. And the complete duality of man with God, their complete separation, is nothing but man's denial of God (cf. § 3).

5. Man is not always and not in all his discoveries actual-religious. But from the undoubted unity of the human soul it necessarily follows that there is nothing absolutely non-religious in man, if by non-religious we mean not the simple absence or insufficiency of the religious, but some specific being, other than the religious. There is nothing absolutely human in man, for then it would be absolutely-relative, i.e., it would either not exist at all or would coincide with the Divine. The religious is that which is connected with God, and everything is connected with God; He must be all in all, everything; and there can be no human who opposes the Divine outside of their unity (§ 4).

In our soulfulness we observe a constant and uninterrupted transition of the "non-religious" into the actually religious; and thus it itself reveals the former as "potentially-religious" or "yet-non-religious." Any thought, any volition and feeling can also be experienced in relation to God, can become religious: it can expand, be enriched, transformed, while remaining fully self. And when the moment of my soulfulness becomes actual-religious, it is not joined by some common quality that is the same for all moments; but he himself becomes religious. If it is destroyed, the religious in its given specificity will also be destroyed, since there is no abstract religious. The moment is different, but it is not done either; is transformed, but also remains the same. It is wholly actualized into the religious, although it would suffice for us to show that in it at least something, while remaining itself, becomes religious. It may be pointed out to us that in its religious transformation the moment loses something. Even if so, he may not lose anything. But it is impossible to consider soulfulness in terms applicable only to a spatially separated world, to add and subtract from each other the moments of soulfulness. In soulfulness, loss is a diminution and imperfection, not at all analogous to the taking away of a part of a material object. Diminished or not diminished, the moment in its religious actualization nevertheless remains itself. Otherwise, it is pointless to talk about its actualization. "At first it was "non-religious", then it became religious. Consequently, "non-religiosity" is nothing but potential religiosity or "yet-not-religiosity", a lack of it.

There is no distinction between "non-religious" and "religious" like the distinction between two "essences" or originalities. There is only a distinction between the actual and the potentially religious, i.e., the insufficiently religious; and the absolutely-non-religious is that which does not exist at all. Religiosity is not the specificity of being, but being itself, a degree greater than non-religiosity. And if we say: "At first the moment was non-religious, then it became religious," it means: "At first the moment was not or was not enough, and then it became." Such an understanding does not at all compel us to abandon the very convenient and useful distinction between the "religious" and the "non-religious," although we prefer to speak of the religious, the religious, the more or less religious. The final basis of our assertion lies in our understanding of the Godhead, which is clarified only later. And in connection with this clarification we will be able to solve another problem that naturally arises before us: "how is the specificity of that which is only the insufficiency of being possible?" as already stated (§ 4), by his own business. Being potentially religious, it was nothing in its religious quality or in its self-manifestation, absolute nothing, and nothing can come out of nothing. Hence, it is necessary to admit a kind of "primacy" and greater reality of the actuality of the moment (i.e., of the moment itself as religious-actual) in relation to its religious potentiality (i.e., to itself as potential-religious). And this will be nothing more than a new expression of the fact that the actuality of religiosity is being, and its potentiality is the lack of being.

A religiously actual moment is a greater fullness of reality than the same moment as actualizing or becoming. Nevertheless, becoming itself in its specificity (i.e., the moment itself as actualizing) is a reality, and moreover it is not contained in actuality, since actuality is already established. If so, then the reality must also be the potentiality of the moment, without which there is no becoming, and which is in each of its moments. Non-existence must be some kind of being! We still have before us the task of resolving this new aporia implicitly given in the basic religious aporia. For the moment we will only note that in connection with it, potentiality is being only in becoming, and not in itself and in itself.

Thus we come to understand the religious moment (and every moment is religious) as the unity of its actuality, becoming, and potentiality, how, to use Nicholas of Cusa's term, "p o ss-e-s t," neither actuality, nor potentiality, nor becoming, exist separately from each other, but are moments of the moment. Let us call the moment M, the potentiality of him or him as a potential is p, the becoming is /, the actuality is a. Then 1) M = p + f + a, 2) M = a, M = p, M = f; but 3) and not = p, not = f, f not = p. This will be the formula of the trinity. Let us explain it as follows. "At first" the moment is its full potentiality, i.e., "at first" it does not exist at all. "Then" it continuously becomes or actualizes from non-being into the fullness of its being, being as it were a mixture of non-being (potentiality) with being (actuality) and the movement from the first to the second, as a being of a special kind. "Finally," the moment ceases to be becoming and is its fullness or actuality, which is inconceivable only as containing both potentiality and becoming. But our "first," "then," and "finally" are only auxiliary concepts, expressing in the language of temporality that which is above time, although it contains it in itself. Let us discard them, and we have the concept of the Trinity that we need (cf. § 4).

The triune moment is not yet a perfect moment. Although we think of its actuality as containing its potentiality and its becoming, we really distinguish becoming from actuality. The moment really becomes from potentiality to actuality, grows, perfects. In his becoming he is poorer than himself in his actuality, but in his potentiality he is completely insignificant, he is not. Becoming is contained in actuality; but there is no actuality in becoming, although it can exist only if there is actuality and if it is itself in actuality. Obviously, the moment is insufficient in its entirety. And the problem becomes even more acute when we turn from general reasoning to empirical reality. In our experience we are given a becoming which contains in itself neither actuality nor potentiality, and they themselves are given in an extreme impoverishment of™ them. Empirically, we know becoming (in the fullness of its specificity?) and impoverished actuality and potentiality. Everything that exists empirically can and does come only from actuality, which is completeness and perfection. Otherwise, the becoming of the moment is inexplicable, just as self-emergence in general is inexplicable. In order for any moment of empiricism to be possible and to exist, in order for it to become possible from potentiality-non-being to actuality-being, it is necessary to "pre-exist" the perfection of the moment and the diminution of this perfection into potentiality-non-being, which becomes fullness or is perfected in it. But how is the fall of perfection possible?

6. It is clear and does not require special proof that the conclusions we have reached in § 5 are applicable not only to the moment of man's being, but to his whole being, to man as a whole. His whole being is religious (potential or actual). Everything in us is in a certain opposition to God and in a certain unity with Him, although it is necessary to distinguish the recognizable religious from the unidentifiable religious, becoming from non-existence from being established in being. Thus we come to the recognition of man as triune in his potentiality (non-being) — becoming — actuality (being) and to the problem of the relationship of imperfect man to his own perfection.

In the most general terms, we have so far clarified the basic religious aporia to which the analysis of the religious act has led us. We must recognize the duality of God with man. At the same time, we must distinguish between the perfect man and his own imperfect, which confronts us with a problem that is still insoluble for us: how is the imperfection of perfection possible?