"Through many things I went to the meaning of life," said one desperate young man, "through many things and through many people, but, alas! Both things and people brought me to the accursed crossroads, to the coal-burning crossroads, and left me alone, surprised, stunned and ridiculed. Yes, ridiculed. Both through things and through people, someone laughed at me vilely, someone who was stronger than both things and people. And I could not endure this tyranny without a curse, for it was a tyranny of the worst kind. Mocked, I fled alone along your paths, and philosophy, and yours, science, and yours, culture, and all of them ended in pathlessness and wilderness. Yes, by the pathlessness and wilderness, from which my soul has become wild in my narrow body. And I sent her through many theories and hypotheses for an enduring value, but she came back to me all beaten and wounded. I sent her away exhausted, and she returned to me even more burdened with torment, even more burdened with horrors, and in her solitude gave birth to a hundred-headed hydra of despair. And I had to think the terrible thought of my newborn: a slippery worm, a long, long worm, is the axis of the universe. And in my mad despair, I myself rolled up and molded my soul around my long-suffering body and, ah, rolled it around the cross and the crucifix. Does not my body symbolize the cross? Are not my head, my feet, and my arms spread out, the cross and the crucifix, on which midnight rests, and around which the ghosts dance in a circle? By the psychophysical structure of his being, man is placed at the most cruel crossroads: between spirit and matter, good and evil, visible and invisible, sensual and intangible, these and that, "I" and "you"..."

Man is a path to new horrors and new sufferings. A certain monster is marching through a person, and who knows where? The human body serves him as a means of transport, the last stop of which is death. Death is an impenetrable wall; death is the inability to move forward... When a man chooses (and he is obliged to choose) something for the meaning of life, then let him cut short this nothing by death and find himself at a coal-burning crossroads, at which man cannot endure without God, without at least some kind of God. They say that culture is the meaning of life. Interrupt it with death, what will remain of this meaning? Interrupt by death all that man has created and all that humanism has created: can any of this be the meaning of life?

Man is the measure of all things, visible and invisible, this is the basic principle and criterion of humanism. But since man possesses neither the absolute meaning of life nor the absolute truth, then everything human is relative. Relativism is the soul of humanism. Einstein's theory of relativity is the final, final consequence of humanism and all its philosophical, scientific, religious, and cultural branches.

But not only that: at its last frontier, humanism is nihilism. How can a man not be a nihilist if he does not recognize any absolute value? Following the logical path to the end, we will inevitably come to the conclusion: relativism is the father of anarchism. Since all values are relative, then does any of them have the right to present themselves as supreme, as the highest and most important? Everyone else has the right to an anarchic revolt against it. There is no doubt that nihilism and anarchism are the inevitable, final, apocalyptic form of humanism and its relativism.

Humanism follows its specific logic in everything, when it renounces God, because it proclaimed man to be God. But carried to its conclusion, this logic denies both the world and man. Acosmism is the most natural and most logical consequence of atheism. For a person who consciously renounces God cannot but end up denying the world and man, if he does not fill them with meaning and truth. And that this is impossible for him, man has already irrefutably proved and shown in the most diverse ways.

Man loves to be God. This shows humanism. But none of the gods compromised himself so terribly as the man-worshipper. He could not comprehend death, suffering, or life. Can a person then be calm and satisfied with such a god? Does not man feel how the leech of death greedily sucks the apple of his soul and that of every other person? And he also boasts of man!

He who has surrounded himself as a wall with a man will find neither rest nor peace for his rebellious mind: he has not entered into a quiet refuge. All human paths lead to the grave; in it one is gathered, in it they remain, in it and are completed; In it, all the knots remain untied. Only then does man finally feel the weakness of his mind, his will, and his heart. Infirmity and bankruptcy. And this bankruptcy forces him to go further than man, above man, to a higher and stronger being than man: to All-being, All-Meaning and All-Meaning. Then he painfully and with all his strength feels that a person is something that needs to be completed, supplemented. Man has begun, but is incomplete. All man's striving for progress, for knowledge, all his search for something that transcends man, shows that man, remaining himself only with his nature, is insufficient for himself and is inadequate. He is the "arrow that yearns" for that shore, for that man, more complete and perfect, for the God-man.

How can a person complete himself? Is he Skadar on the Infinity Boyan? [* A legendary city from Serbian folklore, in which what was built during the day was destroyed again at night...] What he builds in a day, someone destroys at night. Man's unwillingness to accomplish himself, to complete his construction, means the resignation of progress, the impossibility of getting out of despair, out of skepticism, out of solipsistic hell. This reluctance comes from a defeated humanism.

Humanism has severely tormented and desperately disappointed man. European man is tired of idolatry. Having tormented man with terror, humanism gave up its breath from unprecedented madness – from the European war. And left the European man in the cemetery, in the European cemetery. And he, tired of troubles, burdened with the burden of existence, crushed by the European cemetery, weeps and waits for someone to rest him and free him from a heavy burden. And while he weeps and waits in contrition, the meek and good call of the God-Man rushes over the European cemetery: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest: take My yoke upon yourselves, and learn from Me that I am meek and lowly in heart, and find rest for your souls." For my yoke is easy, and my burden is easy to eat (Matt. 11:28-30). Thus the good and only true Lover of mankind calls to Himself the unfortunate European man. Will he hear Him? Will he hear? Will he want to hear?..

Прогресс в мельнице смерти

 Существует некий космический заговор против нашей планеты, ибо нигде во вселенной не умирают, только на земле. Остров смерти, единственный остров смерти, на котором все умирает, - это наша туманная планета. И над ней, и около нее, и под ней кружатся бесконечные миллиарды звезд, на которых нет смерти, на которых не умирают. Нашу же планету со всех сторон окружает бездна смерти. Где тот путь, что начинается на земле и не срывается в бездну смерти? Где то существо, которое может избежать смерти на земле? Все умирают, все умирает на этом жутком острове смерти. Нет тяжелее судьбы, чем судьба земная, нет трагедии, более приводящей в отчаяние, чем трагедия человека.

Для чего дается жизнь человеку, когда он отовсюду окружен смертью? Ловушки смерти раскинуты повсюду, во мрак облечена стезя человеческая. Как огромный, как огромный мерзкий паук, смерть сплетает густые сети вокруг нашей покрыто сажей звезды и в них ловит людей, как беспомощных мух. Со всех сторон людоедские страхи гонят человека, а он и не знает куда бежать, ибо смерть затворила его отовсюду.

Для чего дается человеку сознание, когда оно всюду и во всем натыкается на смерть? Для чего даны человеку ощущения? Для того ли, чтобы почувствовать, что могила ему отец, а черви – братья? Смерть назвах отца моего быти, матерь же и сестру ми – гной [ гробу скажу: ты отец мой, червю: ты мать моя и сестра моя] (Иов 17: 14) Сознание – горький и страшный дар человеку, но гораздо более горький и гораздо более страшный дар – ощущение.

А чувства? Для чего они даны человеку? Для того разве, чтобы быть ему щупальцами, с помощью которых можно на каждом шагу истории рода людского нащупать смерть? Пошлите мысль свою на этот остров смерти, чтобы она вам нашла смысл человеческого существования, и она к вам возвратится опечаленная и грустная, вся осыпанная ледяным пеплом смерти. Пошлите свое ощущение, и оно к вам вернется израненное и избитое в непроходимых ущельях смерти; прочувствуйте до конца любое существо в истории, и ваше чувство в качестве предела его, его окончания, несомненно, нащупает смерть.