10) To carry over one’s “self” from the bodily to the spiritual, that means to consciously wish only the spiritual. My body can unconsciously strive for the fleshly, but I consciously desire nothing of the fleshly, as when I do not desire to fall, but can not but submit to the law of gravitation.

11) If you have transferred your “self” to your spiritual being, you will feel the same pain in violating love as you will feel physical pain when you violate the good of the body. The indicator is just as direct and true. And I already feel it.

12) Sin is the strengthening of the consciousness of life in one’s separate being, or the weakening of one’s reasoning consciousness, which shows the inconsistency of animal life. For the first end, the activity of reason is directed to the strengthening of the delusion of a separate life: 1, food; 2, lust; 3, vanity, strengthened by reason. For the second end, are used the means of weakening reason: tobacco, opium, wine.

13) Temptation is the assertion that it is permitted to violate love for the greater good: 1, to oneself; it is necessary to feed, cure, educate, calm oneself, in order to be in condition to serve men, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 2, one must secure, preserve, and educate the family, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 3, one has to organise, secure, protect the community, the state, and for this it is permitted to violate love; 4, one has to contribute to the salvation of the souls of people by violent suggestion, through education, and for this it is permitted to violate love.

14) The essay on art has to be begun with a discussion of the fact, that for the picture here, which it has cost the master 1000 working days, he is given 40 thousand working days: for an opera, a novel, still more. And then, some say of these works, that they are beautiful; others, that they are absolutely bad. And there is no incontestable criterion. There is no such argument about water, food, and good works. Why is that so?

15) What is the result of a man recognising as his “self” not his own separate being, but God living in him? In the first place, not consciously desiring the good for his own separate being, that man will not, or will less eagerly, take the good away from others; in the second place, having recognised as his “self” God, who desires the good for all that exists, man also will desire it.

16) Why do people hold on so passionately to the principle of family, the producing and bringing up of children? Because to a man who has not yet transferred his consciousness from his separate being to that of God, it is the only seemingly satisfactory explanation of the meaning of life.

17) The meaning of life becomes clear to man when he recognises as himself, his divine essence which is enclosed in his bodily envelope. The meaning of this lies in the fact that this being, striving for its emancipation, for the broadening of the realm of love, accomplishes through this broadening the work of God, which consists in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.

18) Violence can neither weaken nor strengthen a spiritual movement. To act on spiritual activity by force is just like catching the rays of the sun—no matter how you cover them, they will always be on top.

19) I have noted down: “Do you imagine your life in the wood which is being burned down or in the fire which burns?”