The Dialectic of Unity. The Principle of Paired Virtues

How Are Criminals Born?

First, parents, forgetting about God and love, indulge their desires and merge their souls. Every person must be internally completely alone. Only then, to overcome this loneliness, will they strive for unity with God.

If there isn’t enough internal solitude, a person must become externally alone. That’s why people would retreat to monasteries, live in seclusion, or take vows of silence.

If a person’s ultimate happiness is internal unity with a beloved, such a worldview will inevitably lead to external loneliness. This can result in infidelity, divorces, etc. But that is not the worst part.

Children are born without spiritual immunity. Even the slightest warm feelings toward another person cause their soul to immediately start merging. And as strange as it may sound, to save their soul, a person becomes a criminal. On one hand, they feel they cannot love others because it’s dangerous for them.

On the other hand, they feel that the best way to relate to another person is like a calf you must slaughter in the fall. Consequently, their feelings remain even, calm, without strain.

We all remember the words of Jesus Christ: «Love your neighbor as yourself» — and we try to follow them. But, first of all, this was said long before Christ. If we read the Old Testament, we will see this. Secondly, while we remember Christ's commandment to love one another, we forget His other words: «A man's enemies will be the members of his own household.»

It is precisely those close to us, who, by becoming internally attached and merging souls, kill us by making us forget about God and lose the sense of love that connects us to Him. We don’t know how to think dialectically. We think in categories of either good or evil, right or wrong.

It’s hard for us to understand that family members can be both a great blessing and good for us, while also being a great danger to our souls. Socialism has taught us not to think dialectically. Yet every religion, balancing Divine and human interests, helps us to think dialectically. One of the brilliant dialectical thinkers was Jesus Christ.

However, long before Him, Judaism and Indian philosophy provided magnificent examples of harmonious thinking.

A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that Indian philosophy has a concept of paired virtues. A virtue cannot exist on its own. It must be balanced by its opposite. A generous person can become wasteful and extravagant. Therefore, generosity must be balanced by frugality. Courage must be balanced by caution. Love by detachment. Kindness by strictness. Sociability by withdrawal, and so on.

Looking at modern technological achievements, we call ourselves civilized and wise people. In reality, we are only just learning how to think, and not always successfully. What is intelligence? It is abstract thinking.

To abstract from the chair we are sitting on, we must create the concept of «chair,» and for this, we must emotionally detach from attachment to a particular chair while maintaining a connection to its essence.

To sever external ties, we must learn to endure pain, to restrain our attachments and desires, and to let go of familiar connections, including life itself.

To maintain unity with the essence of a phenomenon or object, we need the feeling of love.

Therefore, higher feelings and the development of consciousness are impossible without love for God, for only it allows us to sever external ties and detach from the loved one while maintaining love for them as an expression of the Divine.

S. N. Lazarev, «Diagnosis of Karma, Book 10»