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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 8 - Page 8 |
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Acquiring the Holy Spirit One of these Russian startsi, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, is reported in a famous passage to have answered an unspoken question of a visitor, M. Motivlolov, as follows: "The Lord has revealed to me," he said to Motivolov, who was visiting him, "that in your childhood you had a great desire to know the aim of our Christian life... But no-one has given you a precise answer. They have said to you: 'Go to church, pray to God, do the commandments of God, do good - that is the aim of the Christian life... do not seek things which are beyond you... But they did not speak as they should. ...Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, do not constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as the indispensable means of reaching this end. The true aim of the Christian life consists in the acquisition of the holy Spirit of God." N. A. Motivolov - 'A Wonderful Revelation To The World' Boris Mouravieff wrote: "Someone has said: "As the bee seeks the flower, it chants; and when it has found it, it falls silent: it is intoxicated by sucking the essence..." And in the Gospel according to Thomas we read: "Jesus said: He who seeks let him not cease seeking until he finds, and when he finds, he will be troubled, and having been troubled, he will be filled with wonder and he will reign over the All." To develop this, I will again quote from Volume II of Mouravieff's Gnosis: "The aim of divulging the oral Doctrine in "Gnosis" can be stated precisely: it is to assist people who are carriers of innate predispositions to put off the old man so as to clothe themselves in the new man. This is the same as saying, in the language of Gnosis - to reach the real 'I' in its bipolarity - for then the two become One - the Man and the Woman in the bosom of the Lord. There they will find the Paradise lost, geometric union of Truth and Happiness where, says an orthodox hymn, "there is neither suffering nor sorrow." To these Faithful, in calling them to holiness, the Apostle said: "Do not lie one to the other, you have cast off the old man and his works and have clothed yourself in the new man who is renewed in Knowledge in the image of He who created him." "This is true in all domains," he added, "but particularly in Esotericism. Knowledge dissipates ignorance and, by this, forms man's best defence against all kinds of snares and dangers. Self-Knowledge is the highest form of Knowledge. (cf. The response of the Pythoness to Socrates), which brings discernment (discrimination). It is painful to work for this."
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