When the holy elder was tired of fruitless contemplation, a voice came to him from heaven: "Anthony! These are the destinies of God. Their study is harmful to the soul. Pay attention to yourself" (Patericon of Skete).

"Take heed to yourself, O man! Enter into the work and research that are essential for you, necessary for you. Determine with precision yourself, your relationship to God and to all parts of the vast universe known to you. Determine what is given to you to understand, what is left to your contemplation alone, and what is hidden from you. Determine the degree and limits of your ability to think and understand. This faculty, as the faculty of a limited being, naturally has both its degree and its limits. Human concepts, in their known forms, are called complete and perfect by science; but they always remain relative to man's faculty of thought and understanding: they are perfect to the extent that man is perfect. Attain the important knowledge that a perfect understanding of anything is not proper and impossible for a limited mind. Perfect understanding belongs to the perfect Mind alone. Without this knowledge, knowledge of the faithful and holy, the correctness of the situation and the correctness of activity will always be alien to the genius himself. The position and activity here are understood to be spiritual, in which each of us is obliged to develop by the development appointed and prescribed for the rational creature by its Creator. There is no mention here of the urgent situation and of the urgent activity into which we are placed for the shortest possible time during our earthly pilgrimage as members of human society.

It seems: what is closer to me? What do I know more than I do? I am constantly with myself; by natural necessity I must constantly pay attention to myself; I pay attention to other subjects, as much as it is necessary for me. Love for myself is set for me by the law of God to the measure of love for my neighbor. And I, who undertake to recognize the distant in the depths of the earth and the sea, in the depths of the heavens and beyond the vaults of the sky, come to a difficulty, to complete bewilderment, I do not know what to answer me when I hear the question: Who am I, and what am I? Who am I? Is it a being? But I am subject to extraordinary changes from the day of my conception to the day of my death. A being, in the full sense, should not be subject to change; it must constantly manifest the same, always equal to itself force of life. There is no testimony of life in me that is wholly within myself; I am subjected to a complete exhaustion of the vital force in my body: I am dying. Not only is my mortal body subject to death; but even my soul itself does not have in itself the condition of an indestructible life: the sacred tradition of the Orthodox Church teaches me this. The soul, as well as the Angels, has been granted immortality by God: it is not their property, not their natural belonging [19]. The body, in order to sustain its life, needs to be nourished by the air and the products of the earth; the soul, in order to maintain and preserve its immortality, needs the mysterious action of the Divine right hand upon itself. Who am I? Phenomenon? But I feel my existence. For many years someone pondered over a satisfactory answer to the proposed question, pondered, delving into self-contemplation by the light of the lamp – the Spirit of God. After many years of reflection, he was led to the following relative definition of man: "Man is a reflection of a being and borrows from this Being the character of a being" [20]. God, the only One (Deuteronomy 6; 4) is reflected in a person's life. This is how the sun depicts itself in a pure raindrop. In a raindrop we see the sun; but what we see in it is not the sun. The sun is there, at an unattainable height. What is my soul? What is my body? What is my mind? What are the feelings of the heart? What are the feelings of the body? What are the powers of the soul and the body? What is life? Unsolved questions, unsolvable questions! For thousands of years, the human race has begun to discuss these questions, tried to solve them and departed from them, becoming convinced of their insolubility. What can be more familiar to us than our body? Having feelings, it is subject to the action of all these senses: knowledge of the body should be the most satisfactory, as it is acquired by both reason and senses. It is exactly the same in relation to knowledge of the soul, of its properties and powers, of objects not subject to the senses of the body [21]; together it is a knowledge that is extremely inadequate in relation to the conditions under which knowledge can be recognized as complete and perfect.

In order to find out the meaning of any substance, science is obliged to decompose it into its component, indecomposable parts, and then to recreate the decomposed substance from the component parts. Science accepts the knowledge of matter obtained in this way as correct: assumptions, until they are positively proved, are not admitted into the composition of knowledge, into the treasury of science, although human arbitrariness proclaims them both orally and in print, as if about truths, mocking the ignorance and credulity of mankind. In order to decompose the human body satisfactorily, it is necessary to do so while the body is still alive. There is no way to determine the meaning of this life except by grasping it and considering it in itself. The correctness of decomposition must be proved by the formation of a living body from its component parts. This is impossible. We decompose only corpses,[22] not knowing what it leaves life in the body it has left behind, and what it carries away with it. In uncovering the corpses, we become acquainted with the structure of a machine hidden in the interior of the body, but a machine no longer capable of movement and action, a machine already deprived of its essential significance. What do we know about our body? Something far removed from the knowledge of the complete and perfect.

Let us make a request to our mind, this main instrument for the acquisition of knowledge, that it should give an essential definition of itself, what is it? Soul strength? But this expresses only the concept that has appeared in us from the impressions produced by the actions of the mind—it does not determine the essence of the mind. We must say exactly the same about the human spirit, that is, about those sublime feelings of the heart which animals lack, about the feelings by which the heart of man differs from the heart of animals, and which constitute an elegant excess of feelings in the human heart before the hearts of animals. Spirit is the power of the soul. In what way are the powers of the soul united with the soul itself? The image of union is incomprehensible, since the image of the union of the body with its senses, sight, hearing, and other diverse sense of touch is incomprehensible. The feelings of the body leave the body at the time when it leaves its life, are carried away from it by the departing soul. This means that the bodily senses belong to the soul proper, and when it is in the body, they become, as it were, the senses of the body. From this follows the necessary natural consequence: the ability of the soul to feel the same as the body feels; The affinity of the soul with the body is not the perfect opposite which some have rashly ascribed to the soul and created spirits, and which is hitherto ascribed to them by ignorance. There is gradualness between creatures and a difference arising from gradualness, as well as between numbers. The difference can be very significant; but it does not destroy either affinity or gradualness. In this gradualness, the one is coarser towards us, the other more subtle; but everything created, limited, existing in space and time, cannot be alien to matter, this inseparable belonging to all that is limited. God alone is immaterial: He is distinguished by a decisive distinction from all creatures; It is opposite to them in essence and properties, just as the infinite is opposite to numbers, all without exception. This is what we know about our soul, about our mind, about our heart! What do we know? Something, the most limited something.

Who knows all this with all satisfaction? There is only one God! He, by virtue of the nature of the infinite, has a perfect concept of everything, devoid of any defect, and He proved this concept by a perfect proof: the creation out of nothing of innumerable worlds, visible to us and invisible, known and unknown. It is characteristic of the infinite to animate the non-existent into existence, which no number, no matter how great they may be, can create. The proof of the infinity of the Mind which governs the universe continues to be magnificently expressed by the existence of all that exists. The smallest number of laws of creativity and existence, and even then to some extent, is comprehended by people. They also comprehended the fact that the whole of nature is embraced by legislation that surpasses human comprehension. If the mind is needed to comprehend a particle of laws, so much the more necessary is He to compose them.

Person! "Pay attention to yourself", examine yourself! From a clear understanding of yourself, as far as possible, you will look more clearly and correctly at everything that is subject to your gaze outside of you. In what way, on what occasion did I come into existence and appear in the field of earthly life? I appeared in this field involuntarily and unconsciously; I do not know the reason for the entry into existence from non-existence. I ponder, search for the cause, and cannot but confess that I must of necessity recognize it in the definition of the unlimited, unknown, incomprehensible Will, to which I am unconditionally subject. I came with the faculties of soul and body, as with appurtenances: they were given to me, not chosen by me. I appeared with various infirmities, as if already sealed by execution; He was a sufferer and doomed to suffering. I found myself in circumstances and surroundings, which I found or which were prepared for me, I do not know. On the path of earthly pilgrimage I can very seldom act according to my will, fulfill my desire: almost always I am forcibly drawn by some invisible, omnipotent Hand, some stream to which I cannot offer any resistance. Almost constantly I encounter one unexpected and unforeseen thing. I depart from earthly life most suddenly, without any consent of mine to this, without any attention to my earthly needs, to the needs of those around me, for whom, in my judgment and theirs, I am necessary. I'm leaving the land forever, not knowing where I'm going! I'm leaving in terrible loneliness! In an unknown land, into which I am entering by death, one new will meet me, one that has never been seen before. In order to enter an unknown land, I must leave all earthly things on earth, I must throw off my very body. From there, from an unknown country, I cannot send any news of myself to the earth: because it is impossible for anyone clothed in a shell of earthly, coarse matter to hear the news from there. My life in this visible world is an uninterrupted struggle with death; Such is it from my cradle to my grave. I can die daily and hourly, but I do not know the day and hour of death. I know that I will die; There is not and cannot be the slightest doubt about this, but I live as if I were immortal: because I feel myself immortal. The presentiment of death has been taken away from me, and I would not have believed that it was possible for a man to die, if I had not seen in all men that death is the inevitable fate of every man. The Gospel correctly depicts the weakness of our power over us. "No matter how much effort you make," says the Gospel to man, "you cannot add one cubit to your age (Matthew 6:27), and make your white hair black" (Matthew 5:36).

"Why is it done this way? It must be confessed that much of what has been said here has been said with palpable justice. The suffering state of mankind on earth, the condition before the eyes of all, must have its cause. But how can the offspring be guilty of the sin of the forefather, who is distant from the offspring and is already alien to the offspring? Posterity is punished: this is obvious. Why is it, the innocent, punished? Why does it carry a terrible eternal punishment? The execution passes from generation to generation, falls ponderously on each generation, wipes out each generation from the face of the earth, having previously subjected each generation to innumerable torments. Each generation appears on the face of the earth unconsciously, involuntarily, forcibly. Every man enters earthly life without the ability to voluntarily act with faculties, which in an infant must be likened to seeds rather than to germinations. What kind of participation of posterity in the sin of the forefather, participation worthy of such punishments, when there was and is no very possibility for posterity to take part in sin, either by subtle heartfelt agreement, or by the slightest deviation of the mind? Where is God's justice here? Where is goodness? I see one thing that is contrary to them." Thus cries the feeble man, blinded by his sinful, material life. Thus he cries, and calls before him to interrogate the fate of God.

Thus cries out the ignorance of God! Thus does human pride cry out! Such is man's ignorance of himself! Thus cries out a false conception of oneself and of one's whole situation! Thus they cry out, and no one hearkens to the cry. By means of such exclamations, men, without realizing it, reveal only the affliction of self-conceit and self-deception that has seized them: by means of such exclamations they denounce the consciousness that lives in them of the ability and desire to be the administrators of the universe, the judges and guides of God in His administration of the world, and no one gives them lofty thrones beyond the clouds, on which the rebellious angels wanted to sit on men who had previously been indignant. A reckless undertaking sinks, as in a dark abyss, in its recklessness, tormenting the victims who have recklessly given themselves over to this undertaking, tormenting them with fruitless torments in insoluble chains. Events go on as they go, there is no change in the economy of the universe, God's destinies remain immutable. The insignificance and self-deception of people is proved to them positively and irrefutably by harsh experience.

The most precise mathematical consideration explains to man with all certainty the infinite difference between him and God, both in essence and in properties, although the same words are used to depict both because of the poverty of human language. The infinite is governed by quite different laws than anything that can be represented by numbers according to the method of positive science, on which all other sciences are based, just as the whole constitution of man is based on bones. From this axiom follows another axiom: the actions of the infinite are naturally inaccessible to the comprehension of all rational creatures that are depicted by number. A number, no matter how much it increases, remains a number, and differs from the infinite by an infinite difference, by which all numbers differ equally from the infinite. The striving to comprehend the incomprehensible is nothing but the consequence of false knowledge composed of false concepts. This striving cannot but act in accordance with its origin: it must lead to the most disastrous consequences by the nature of all actions proceeding from falsehood. Where did this aspiration come from? Obviously: from a proud, erroneous opinion of oneself, which leads a person to give himself a meaning other than that given to him in the boundless universe.

I'm looking at myself! And here is the spectacle that was depicted before me when I examined myself! That is how I am described indisputably, described with true features, with living colors, described by the very experiences, the very events of my life! What conclusion should I draw about myself from this painting? The conclusion that I am by no means an original and independent being, that I am deprived of the most basic, most vital knowledge of myself. There is a real need, a need for someone to explain me more satisfactorily, to announce to me my purpose, to show me the right activity, and thus to protect me from activity without meaning and without purpose.

This urgent need, this necessity, was recognized by God Himself. He recognized it and gave people a revealed teaching that leads us to knowledge that is inaccessible to our own comprehension. In the divinely revealed teaching, God revealed Himself to man, to what extent the unlimited and inexplicable God can be explained and revealed to limited man. In the divinely revealed teaching, God revealed to man the meaning and purpose of man, his relationship to God and to the worlds, visible and invisible. God revealed to man the knowledge of man, as far as this knowledge is accessible to the mind of man. The complete and perfect knowledge of man, like that of every other creature, is possessed by one who is capable of the complete and perfect knowledge of all things: the all-perfect God.

Divine revealed teaching, being compared with the knowledge given to man by an accurate examination of himself, is confirmed by this knowledge and confirms it. Knowledge, confirmed by one another, stands before humanity in the bright light of irrefutable truth.

The divine revealed teaching proclaims to me, the experiences of life prove to me that I am a creature of God. I am a creature of my God! I am a slave of my God, a slave wholly subject to the power of God, encompassing, contained by His authority, an unlimited power, autocratic in the strict sense of the word. The authority does not consult with anyone, the authority does not give any account of its assumptions and actions to anyone: neither man nor angel is able to give advice, or to listen, or to understand the account. From time immemorial His Word was unto God (John 1:2).