My words are incomprehensible and obscure. "Wait: they will be cleared up later, and forgive me my ineptitude and haste, but do not accuse me of incoherence and mistakes. Think better how high our goal is! "We raise God from the abyss of non-existence, save Him from destruction, restore Him, return ourselves to Him, so that He may be again. With every deed, with every thought, we do the work of God, we build up the beautiful Body of Christ. It seems impossible to you. "But we live, act, and think by the power of God, and what is impossible for men is possible for God. Are you afraid that this is not enough for us? Are you afraid that without threats and lashes we will not build up the Body of God? Remember, then, that Christ suffers, that God in Him suffers and awaits our work, languishing in the twilight of a half-existence. Of course, He does not need our help, for even in His non-existence He does not cease to be. Of course, we restore Him by His own power, and in Him we have already done all that we still have to do. But He is both waiting for our help and suffering. For what we have already accomplished in Him is what we are now doing and what we will still do. If my words still seem to you impious and destroy the meaning of your activity, then it is better to think in the old way for the time being, for you have not yet understood my words and the Truth in your naïve thoughts is even closer to you.

8. God is not this, not another, not a third... He is nothing that exists, the Detached. But He is not so detached that this, the other, the third... was something outside of Him. He is so Detached that everything in Him and everything is Him, i.e. He is not Detached at all. God is the non-Definite, the non-Conditioned; but not in such a way that there is no definite or conditioned definition and conditioning in Him. He is the best, but it is not that He is among other things, although He is the best, and it is not that there is anything outside of Him. Therefore He is neither the Indeterminate nor the Best. Whichever of God's names we take, each in its imperfection reveals God's ineffable perfection, which cannot be called perfection. The more God's names we pronounce, the deeper we delve into each of them, the farther God is from our understanding and the closer we are to Him. Thus we reach the limits of thought and thought, comprehension and comprehension; and only then do we begin to commune with God, not thinking His thoughts or comprehending Him. Everything is spinning on an unattainable height, and everything is whirling unshakable. And something is revealed about which nothing can be said, but in which everything is the basis of everything, in which everything arises, in which everything is and nothing is. It's all and nothing. You think and comprehend, and suddenly you feel that you are comprehension, and then that comprehension wavers, floats, melts, and in it you perish, sink into nothingness; but nothing is the fullness of everything. Your comprehension floats and melts, and in it you melt. But you melt and dissolve into something, and this "something" is fullness. And are you melting? Does not Fullness itself dissolve in Itself, perish and blossom with Fullness, glimmering in you for a moment?

The concept of absolute or unconditioned is relative to the concept of relative or conditioned. The absolute is that which does not depend on the relative, known or thought by us, in particular on ourselves. Consequently, the Absolute must be the only thing, and therefore all that is and can be, i.e., by us. But by its very conception the Absolute depends on the relative and, consequently, is not absolute. We think of the Absolute in His relation to us; we think of the Unconditioned as conditioning us, and therefore conditioned by us. And it is no longer unconditional, not absolute.

Thus, in trying to know the Absolute, we discover in the depths of Him or above Him something which can no longer be called the Absolute, for it is higher than the Absolute. It is the Incomprehensible and the Ineffable, outside of which there is nothing, and which therefore we are, for we still exist. But when we identify ourselves with the Absolute in the Incomprehensible, we immediately see that we ourselves (and, therefore, the Absolute) are something incomplete, only striving towards the ideal, only becoming it, perfecting itself in it, and conditioned by it. In the Incomprehensible itself we find insufficiency, and the insufficiency is twofold. It is (1) separation into the perfect and the imperfect or incomplete, and (2) separation from the self and the other (us). Without the elimination or overcoming of the second, the separated cannot™ be eliminated or overcome by the first. Apparently, we are unable to eliminate the second. We can, however, say that on the threshold of Incomprehensibility we disappear. But we were, we are only disappearing, and therefore we must be in the Incomprehensible, for what is in us is always in Him.

Disunity is possible only if there is a dissociable or primordial unity. Therefore, the Incomprehensible is not only disunity, but also 1) the unity of Self as perfect with Itself as imperfect and 2) the unity of Self with the "other" (with us). Contemplating God from us (from the other), we see Him perfecting, becoming. But how is it possible in the Incomprehensible, and more than in the Absolute, of self-formation and self-perfection without diminishment? And how is diminution possible without primordial perfection? And the primordial perfection — how can It be diminished?

The incomprehensible is not outside the Absolute, not above Him, and does not exclude Him from Himself; It contains Him in Itself, and therefore contains in Itself both the relative (and us). Thinking of the Incomprehensible as the Absolute (It is the Absolute), we think of Him in relation to His relation to the other, conditioned by Him, i.e., to us, we think of Him in a different definite way, i.e., no longer absolutely. And yet we comprehend the Incomprehensible as truly the Absolute, i.e., without relation to anything. And therefore we think of the Incomprehensible as conditioning and, consequently, conditioned, that we also think of Him as truly Unconditioned. And therefore we are able to think of Him as truly Unconditional, that we think of Him as conditioned. The incomprehensible and confronts the relative (us) as the Conditioner and is one with the relative, transcending opposition but not denying it. Only by virtue of this can we think of the difference between the relative and the Absolute (§ 1), we have knowledge of the True God and knowledge in general.

In the words of Anselm of Canterbury, the Deity is "ens quo maius cogitari nequit," i.e., the Most Perfect. But He is not the Most Perfect in the sense of opposition to that which is diminished and perfected. It contains in Itself both the perfect and the diminishing-perfecting. The most perfect must be all, and outside of Him there can be nothing, there can not even be a difference between Him and the other. If there were something outside of Him, it would not be the Most Perfect. But then it would contain Him in itself something that still contains something else; and this something would be the Most Perfect. Outside of the Most Perfect, it is impossible to conceive not only something qualitatively different, but even something that only "repeats" Him. Everything is only God, and there is nothing but God. Apart from God, there is only "pitch darkness," absolute nothingness. And God is the perfect all-unity of Himself and the other, the relative, which is really opposed to Him.

9. Every moment of relative being (in particular, each of us) passes from its absolute non-being, from "nothing" in a given quality, to being in it. This "new" was not in me before and I was absolutely not one.

A fool will plead that the new was previously "unconscious" in me, and that before "unconsciously" I was already the very new that I am now "consciously." But this is not an objection, but a circumvention of the problem, a special case. — The "

consciousness" is something undoubtedly new, which has not previously existed in its given content at all. Consciously or unconsciously, each of us instantly becomes new, from what was not "this" becomes "this", acquires something that did not exist before in him and as him (cf. § 5). You can break up the new as much as you like, decompose it into arbitrarily small particles: it will never be possible to destroy it. Let an infinitesimal magnitude be added to the former in becoming, it is still a magnitude, it is nevertheless added, and it did not exist earlier in the mastering one.

If I am constantly becoming "new," constantly acquiring and mastering new things, and how joyful it is when I recognize in the "new" the gift of God! — it is necessary to assume that I receive new things from the outside. It is somehow "first" to me, somehow "pre-exists" to me, although, perhaps, not temporarily. Everything that I know is not only the things I perceive, but also the very acts of my perception, my desires and feelings, "the states of my consciousness in general, I myself am 'new' — in a sense I 'pre-exist'. S a m I "pre-exist" myself, however absurd it may seem at first glance; I am actual, I "pre-exist" to me that which is potential, and I that exist to me that which does not yet exist. And in my empirical being I never become actual or fully existent by me, for no matter how long I exist, there are always inexhaustible possibilities for my further becoming, and I never realize all that is possible.

This is a very peculiar and philosophizing fact – the opposition of me, the imperfect, to the perfect myself. "I-imperfect, I become perfect, but I-imperfect, not yet I-perfect, and in empiricism I will never fully become one, although both 'I's' are one and the same myself. If, on the other hand, I, the perfect I, possess such a fullness of being that I exist even when I, the imperfect, do not yet exist, there is no reason to suppose that the perfect I, when I, the imperfect, cease to be this moment of the perfect me, and cease to be at all. In this way, the perfect self not only "pre-exists" the imperfect me, but also "after-exists" to it. In general, the "pre-existence" and "post-existence" of my perfection should not be understood as temporary. In my perfection are also all temporal relations, all the "time" of my imperfection (§ 7). Perfection embraces and contains all its imperfections.

The perfect self is opposed to the imperfect me, so that many of the qualities of the first and the perfection of all of them are absolutely absent in the second: in relation to them, the imperfect self is potentiality, absolute non-being. In me, the imperfect, there is absolutely no perfect me, since in the second there are qualities still or not at all inherent in the first. The "new" comes into me from without, from my perfection, although when it comes, it is completely mastered by me and becomes myself, for it comes from my perfection. There is no hidden existence of perfection in imperfection. The predisposition to admit it is due to the fact that we are confused by the general term "me," behind which lies some reality. Its meaning will become clear later, if it is not already clear to the reader for reasons of §§ 4 and 5.

The theory of the world of ideas, which is inextricably linked with the theory of creation from nothingness, rests on the awareness of our becoming from non-existence into being, and on the indisputability of the truth: "ex nihilo nil fit." The theory of the world of ideas is obscure and incomplete without the Christian doctrine of creation out of nothing; And the Christian teaching reveals the need for a theory of the world of ideas. Thus, Plato no less foreshadows Christianity than Moses.