Mystical discussion about the Truth

There is an opinion that sincerity is straightforwardness, a person’s ability to say what he really thinks and act in accordance with what he really thinks and feels.

However, how much can a person know what he actually thinks and feels?

It may be fair to say that a person knows less about himself than others, while others know less about him than he does. All his reactions, his behavior, personality, mental states and emotions are all transient and changeable. Having lived one “personality”, a person will start another, and soon no one will remember the former. Things done by that “person” will be forgotten, and they will look at things anew.

Having realized such a mechanism, a person may wonder and want to question who he actually is, and what he possesses, if all the enormous “diversity” of his reactions and “personalities” actually don’t have an inherent existence.

Are any of his reactions, thoughts, feelings and actions sincere if they can change? If sincerity is truthfulness, but there is no truth in it, then can a person really be sincere?

I would like to give an interesting and well-known excerpt from "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov.

- Do you know such people, - Pilate went on, not taking his eyes off the prisoner, - a certain Dismas, another Gestas and a third Var-rabbi?

- I do not know these kind people, - the prisoner replied.
- Truth?
- Truth.
- Now tell me that you always use the words "good people"? Do you call everyone that?
- Everyone, - the convict answered, - there are no evil people in the world.
- I hear about this for the first time, - Pilate said, grinning, - but maybe I know little about life! You may not write further.
He turned to the secretary, although he didn’t write anything, and continued to tell the prisoner.
- Have you read about this in any of the Greek books?
- No, I have come to this with my mind.
- And you preach it? But, for example, the centurion Mark, he was nicknamed the Ratman, is he kind?
- Yes, - answered the convict, - he is, however, an unhappy person. Since the good people mutilated him, he became cruel and callous. It would be interesting to know who crippled him?
- I can willingly report this, - Pilate answered, - for I have witnessed this. Kind people rushed at him, like dogs on a bear. The Germans clung to his neck, arms, legs. The infantry maniple fell into the bag, and if the cavalry turma had not been cut off from the flank, and I had commanded it, you, philosopher, would not have had to talk to the Ratman. It was at the battle of Idistaviso, in the Valley of the Maidens.
- If I could talk to him, - the prisoner suddenly said dreamily, - I’m sure that he would have changed dramatically.

In fact, this seemed to be a paradoxical attitude to people who behave like dogs rushing at a bear, and in other cases can behave even worse. However, what if there really are no "evil people in the world"? Indeed, if many of the “personalities” and reactions of people turn out to be superficial and transient, and if over time there is nothing left of them, not even a memory, then aren’t they false? The answer seems negative, based on at least the fact that a person’s sins can be forgiven. If they could not be forgiven, then they would be something enduring and sincere. It seems that the evil caused by man is his delusions, which he can abandon by realizing these delusions and repenting for them. But there is something enduring, that is, Truth. It is unchanging, and it conquers everything.

Truth, perhaps, is an absolute knowledge of how everything really is. Its shadow is a delusion, that is, an illusion. The erring person is estranged from the Truth, and in fact, is sick, because he has lost touch with the truly real world. In fact, an erring person is hallucinating. Is it possible to treat a person who is sick differently than with compassion? Otherwise, only a person who is just as sick as the first one could relate without compassion but with envy, for example, or with malice.

In fact, Truth heals, and gives a person the power not to fall into the slavery of an illusion that brings both illusory joys and illusory sorrows. However, not wanting to abandon illusory joys, a man could not refuse illusory sorrows, since both of them connect him with illusion.

In fact, evil draws a person to matter, forcing him to obey it. There can be no freedom in evil, and there can be no freedom in attraction to illusion, even if a person has adapted to control this illusion and receive from it whatever he wants.

Just the ability not to succumb to the circumstances of life, and the ability to bring these circumstances into line with your desire, rising above your own weaknesses and emotions, there can be no final goal, since a person will not cease to be insincere, abandon slavery to illusion , and will not become free without giving up permissiveness, in which evil is also permitted.

This situation is very similar to lucid dreams, in which one can gain power over circumstances and not obey them, but at the same time only enslave his own soul, carried away by the game in the Almighty Lord. Perhaps the proponents of black magic are very similar to such "flirting" "masters" of illusions.

Despite the paradoxical ways of arriving to the final conclusions, they will surely turn out to be extremely simple. Unfortunately, because of aspirations for reasoning, people cease to believe in such simple phrases as "good overcomes evil" and "there are no evil people." People ridicule and try to distort such ideas, or simply contradict them. It may turn out that if it sounds true on a gross, material level, that “People are evil”, in the intermediate area between matter and spirit, the statement “People who are evil are actually kind” shall gain prominence. Furthermore, on the spiritual sphere the conclusion will be completely paradoxical: "There are no evil people".

However, it can be assumed that one who possesses the ultimate Truth will possess true power, or, through the true understanding, will come to the wisdom that will transform him, a man, into a Man, returning to him the memory of who he is, and will make impossible for him any obstacles of the material world that previously caused him troubles, or with which he was amused, turning them into favorable circumstances, at different stages of coming to this perfection.

Author of the article © Eric Midnight

Translated into English from Russian by © Viktoria Polikarpova & Ankit Sinha, 2019