Whichever way you look at him, man is infinite, infinite in his mystery. And the heart of every martyr of thought involuntarily agrees with Njegoš [Petar Njegoš (1813-1851) – Metropolitan, ruler of Montenegro] and repeats with him:

Look at the man from all sides,

Think about a person as you want –

Man is the highest mystery for man.

Like a rainbow, man is stretched across the sky of life; its ends are not visible; one end is immersed in matter, the other in supermatter, in spirit. It is a ladder from minerals to spirit. It is the transition from matter to spirit, and vice versa – the transition from spirit to matter.

"I am the body and only the body," says Nietzsche. Does he not say by this: "I am a mystery and only a mystery?" There is too much that is perishable in the human body, and it is gradually destroyed, until death completely destroys it, incinerates it, and mixes the earth with the earth. And Artsybashev, a passionate worshipper of the flesh, like Nietzsche, stands, pondering "at the last line", stands by the decaying human body, escorting it to the earth with the biblical words: "Thou art the earth, and to the earth shalt thou return" (Gen. 3:19). "I am the body and only the body"... But tell me, why is the spirit in man restless? Why does he constantly tear himself away from the body and, through countless questions, break through to something beyond the body, supra-corporeal and incorporeal? Is it because in a body with five senses he feels like in a dungeon locked with five locks? Nietzsche's definition of man by no means exhausts the mystery of man. It does not exhaust the mystery of his spirit, nor the mystery of his body. Both the spirit and the body are like mysterious hieroglyphs, which we find difficult to read in warehouses and, perhaps, read by mistake. We know one thing: we do not fully know either the nature of the body or the nature of the spirit. Man cannot answer not only the question: what is spirit, but also the question: what is matter. Does not the spirit in the body feel like a mouse in a mousetrap? And does not the body in the spirit feel itself like a bird caught in a strong net? Spirit is a mystery to itself and to matter, but the same applies to matter. The reality of matter is no less fantastic than the reality of spirit. The nature of matter and spirit is hidden in the bottomless depths of unexplored infinities.

From the mysterious marriage of matter with spirit, man was born. Infinity is both in the midst of it and surrounds it on both sides. Therefore, human life is like a terrible dream, an endless dream that matter dreams in the arms of the spirit. And, as in any dream, reality is shown to him, not logically proven. Man has no boundaries. The boundaries of his body are limited by matter, and what are the boundaries of matter? Man feels and is conscious of himself as a man, and does not know his own essence; A person perceives himself as a reality, and does not know the essence of the perceived reality.

We don't know man. If you look at the spirit from the side of the body, it looks like a mockery of the body, if you look at the body from the side of the spirit, it looks like a stubborn resistance to the spirit. And the feelings themselves make the spirit overstep the boundaries of the body. There are abysses everywhere: abysses around each of the five senses, near every thought, near every sensation. Abyss upon abyss, and abyss upon abyss, and there is no sure ground on which the unfortunate man can stand firmly. A constant fall, an incessant fall to a certain bottom, which, perhaps, does not exist; constant dizziness... And man feels powerless, as if despair has come of age in him.

"Be faithful to the earth..." - the European man raves, Nietzsche raves, while the earth is surrounded on all sides by terrible abysses. Earth... What is land? A friend of mine gnashed his teeth and said, "The earth is a rotten brain in the skull of some monster; I carry midnight in my pupil, not noon; the earth is the coming of age of horror; looking at the earth and, alas, living on it, the soul decomposes in me, awakened above the abysses..." It's scary to be human...

Small mysteries spiral into greater ones, and large ones into the greatest. Man out of stubbornness can deny infinity, but not the infinity of mystery. To deny this would not be stubbornness, but deliberate madness. The mystery of the world is endless. And everything in the world, without a doubt, is infinitely mysterious. Not to admit this is not to have narrow-minded thoughts and to cherish consumptive sensations; Does it not mean to think and not to want to think to the end, to feel and not to want to feel to the end? The mystery of suffering, the mystery of pain, the mystery of life, the mystery of death, the mystery of the lily, the mystery of the chamois, the mystery of thy eye – are not all mysteries infinite?

Everything is immersed in an unspeakable mystery. Every creature has one halo – infinity. If there is any truth in anything, it is in this thought: every creature is a symbol of infinity. This truth is felt by anyone who has at least once plunged into the mystery of at least some creature. In this universal mystery only one thing is achieved: the unity of this world and the beyond. In questions and surprise, man is undoubtedly otherworldly. Evil in this world pushes a person to another world. Suffering turns the human body into a question mark, which straightens up, addressed to the other world, and from tension turns into an exclamation mark.

This narrow world is a question that cannot be solved by itself. Unstable man feels himself on the border of two worlds: this worldly draws to himself, the otherworldly to himself, and the poor man stumbles and falls between them. Man is a terribly mysterious creature: he is at a crossroads, on the watershed between this world and this world. It seems to be called upon to be the connecting joint of this world with the otherworldly. And he is trying to be: through science and philosophy, through poetry and religion, especially through religion.

Through religion, man tries with all his might to build a bridge over the abyss between this world and the beyond, between the visible and the invisible, between the sensible and the supersensible, so that the organic unity of this world with the other becomes possible. Through religion, man tries to find his own balance in the universe, so as not to overestimate the otherworldly to the detriment of this worldly and, conversely, the otherworldly to the detriment of the otherworldly. This is not a luxury, but the most necessary necessity; it is not something unnatural, but, on the contrary, constitutes the very essence of human nature. There is something in man that cannot fit into this three-dimensional world, into the categories of time and space. This is what finds its expression and its language in religion. Through religion, a person defeats geocentrism and tries to overcome egoism by appirocentrism.

The feeling of infinity is inherent in every person. When awakened, it manifests itself through religion; remaining in a dormant state, it gives way to irreligiosity, indifference, and atheism. Irreligion and atheism are manifested in those people who have this cosmic, this endless feeling intoxicated with solipsistic egocentrism. If a person begins to look for the meaning of life, a meaning that would be more logical than that of a moth, then a dormant sense of infinity instantly awakens in him. And through religion, man stretches with all his being beyond himself and above himself in search of the desired meaning. In this case, religion becomes a means of victory over egoism, over solipsism; a means of prolonging, expanding, deepening, and endlessly the human personality. Through religion, man fights for the expansion of the circle of reality, for unconditional meaning, for an eternal goal, for inextinguishable optimism, for blissful immortality. This is the meaning and justification of all religions that have arisen on our long-suffering planet.