Ivan Aleksandrovich Ilyin Singing heart. A book of quiet contemplations. Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin. Singing Heart Preface. About reading

Heart HEART. This word is suitable for describing all kinds of impulses and desires, but one thing remains unchanged: the heart becomes the object of a gift - either unrecognized or rejected.1. The heart is an organ of desire (the heart tenses, falls, etc., like the sexual

HEART OR CENTER The heart, being the focus (center) of all energies, is thus the center in which they are all SYNTHESIS, i.e. fused together. This position is true for every organism, from the macrocosmic to the smallest microorganism. One

Soul-heart Looking for a place in the human body in which the soul could be located, the ancients discovered in the very middle of the chest, inside a bone cell, an amazing organ resembling a bag, hollow inside. This organ was called the “heart,” that is, the core, the center

God in the Heart A description of God in the heart, similar to the Vedic concept of the Oversoul, is also found in Islam. Al-Hamadani (1048–1140) stated: “O friend, the heart is the vantage point of God.” The founder of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi order, Saint Bahauddin Naqshbandi, said

II. A Plundered Heart There are two significant columns in the last newspaper. Left is told tragic death suicide of multimillionaire K.; on the same sheet to the right is reported the suicide of seventy-five-year-old D.I.K., also a multimillionaire. left

Philosopher, writer and publicist, supporter of the White movement and consistent critic of communist power in Russia, ideologist of the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS).

Born March 28-April 99) 1883 in Moscow into a noble aristocratic family. Ivan Ilyin’s father is Alexander Ivanovich Ilyin (1851-1921), godson of Emperor Alexander II, provincial secretary, attorney at law for the District of the Moscow Court Chamber, since 1885 - owner of the Bolshie Polyany estate in the Ryazan province; vowel of the Pronsky district zemstvo assembly.

Ivan Ilyin’s mother is a Russian German Caroline Louise Schweikert von Stadion (1858-1942), a Lutheran, the daughter of a collegiate adviser Julius Schweikert von Stadion (1805-1876), converted to Orthodoxy (in marriage - Ekaterina Yulievna Ilyina) after her wedding in 1880 in the Church of the Nativity village of Bykovo, Bronnitsky district, Moscow province.

Ilyin studied for the first five years at the Fifth Moscow Gymnasium, and for the last three years at the First Moscow Gymnasium. In 1901 he graduated from high school with a gold medal, having received a classical education, in particular, knowledge of Latin, Greek, Church Slavonic, French and German.

In 1906 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Imperial Moscow University and remained to work there. He also gave lectures at the Higher Women's Courses in Moscow.

In 1909 - private assistant professor of the department of history of law and encyclopedia of law.

In 1910, Ilyin was on a scientific trip to Germany and France, studying the latest trends European philosophy, including philosophy of life and phenomenology.

In 1918, he defended his dissertation on the topic “Hegel’s philosophy as a doctrine of the concreteness of God and man” and became a professor of jurisprudence. The official opponents are Professor P.I. Novgorodtsev and Professor Prince E.N. Trubetskoy.

During the years of the first Russian revolution, Ilyin was a man of rather radical views, but after 1906 he turned to a scientific career, and politically migrated towards the right wing of the Kadet Party.

In 1922, he was expelled from Russia along with other 160 philosophers, historians and economists on a ship for anti-communist activities.

From 1923 to 1934 he worked as a professor at the Russian scientific institute in Berlin, supported by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. After 1930, funding for RNI by the German government practically ceased, and Ilyin made money by speaking at anti-communist rallies and publishing in circles of so-called “political Protestantism” (Eckart Publishing House). From the 1920s, Ilyin became one of the main ideologists of the Russian White movement in exile, and from 1927 to 1930 he was the editor and publisher of the Russian Bell magazine.

In 1934 he was fired from his job and persecuted by the Gestapo. In 1938, he left Germany, moving to Switzerland, where he gained a foothold thanks to the initial financial support Sergei Rachmaninov. In the Zurich suburb of Zollikon, Ivan Alexandrovich continued his scientific activities until the end of his days. The books “The Singing Heart” were written here. The Book of Quiet Contemplations,” “The Path to Evidence,” and “Axioms of Religious Experience.”

In October 2005, the ashes of I. A. Ilyin and his wife were reburied in the necropolis of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow, next to the grave of A. I. Denikin and not far from the grave of I. S. Shmelev.

Main works:

On the essence of legal consciousness

General doctrine of law and state

Hegel's philosophy as a doctrine of the concreteness of God and man

About resisting evil by force

Our tasks

Axioms of religious experience

Concepts of monarchy and republic

SINGING HEART

PREFACE ABOUT READING

Every writer worries about how they will be read? Will they understand? Will they see what he wanted to prove? Will they feel what his heart loved? And who will be his reader? So much depends on this... And above all, will he have the desired, spiritual meeting with those distant but close ones for whom he secretly wrote his book?
The fact is that not all readers master the art of reading: the eyes run over the letters, “some word always comes out of the letters” (Gogol) and every word “means” something; words and their meanings are connected with each other, and the reader imagines something - “second-hand”, vague, sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes pleasantly fleeting, which is quickly carried away into the forgotten past... And this is called “reading”. A mechanism without a spirit. Irresponsible fun. "Innocent" fun. But in reality it is a culture of superficiality and a stream of vulgarity.
No writer desires such “reading” for himself. We all fear such “readers.” For real reading happens completely differently and has a completely different meaning...
How did what you wrote come into being, how did it mature?
Someone lived, loved, suffered and enjoyed; observed, thought, wished, hoped and despaired. And he wanted to tell us about something that for everyone It is important for us that we need to spiritually see, feel, think through and assimilate. That means something significant about something important and precious. And so he began to look for the right images, clear and deep thoughts and precise words. It was not easy, it was not always possible and not immediately. A responsible writer nurtures his book for a long time: for years, sometimes for his whole life; does not part with her either day or night; gives her his best strength, his inspired hours; “sick” with its theme and “healed” by writing. He searches at once for truth, and beauty, and “precision” (in Pushkin’s words), and the right style, and the right rhythm, and all in order to tell, without distorting, the vision of his heart... And finally, the work is ready. Last viewing with a stern, watchful eye; the last corrections - and the book breaks away and goes to the reader, unknown, distant, maybe frivolous and capricious, maybe hostile and picky... It leaves - without him, without the author. He turns himself off and leaves the reader “alone” with his book.
And so we, the readers, take on this book. Before us is an accumulation of feelings, comprehensions, ideas, images, volitional discharges, instructions, calls, evidence, a whole building of the spirit, which is given to us in secret, as if using a code. It is hidden behind these black dead hooks, behind these well-known, faded words, behind these publicly available images, behind these abstract concepts. Life, brightness, strength, meaning, spirit - must be obtained from them the reader himself. He must recreate in himself what the author created; and if he doesn’t know how, doesn’t want and won’t do it, then for him no one will do this: his “reading” will be in vain and the book will pass by him. People usually think that reading is accessible to anyone who is literate... But, unfortunately, this is not the case at all. Why?
Because a real reader gives the book his free attention, all his spiritual abilities and his ability to evoke in himself that correct spiritual attitude that is necessary for understanding this books. Real reading is not a matter of running printed words through the mind; it requires concentrated attention and a strong desire to truly hear the author's voice. Reason alone and empty imagination are not enough for reading. Necessary feel with the heart and contemplate from the heart. You must experience passion - with a passionate feeling; one must survive drama and tragedy with a living will; in a tender lyrical poem one must listen to all the sighs, tremble with all the tenderness, look into all the depths and distances; and a great idea may require no more and no less than total person.
This means that the reader is called upon to faithfully reproduce within himself the emotional and spiritual act of the writer, to live by this act and trustingly surrender to it. Only under this condition will the desired meeting between both take place and the reader will discover what is important and significant about what the writer was worried about and what he worked on. True reading is a kind of artistic clairvoyance, which is called and capable of faithfully and fully reproducing the spiritual visions of another person, living in them, enjoying them and being enriched by them. The art of reading conquers loneliness, separation, distance and era. This is the power of the spirit - to revive letters, reveal the perspective of images and meaning behind words, fill the internal “spaces” of the soul, contemplate the intangible, identify with unknown or even dead people and, together with the author, artistically and mentally comprehend the essence of the God-created world.
Reading means search and find: for the reader, as it were, is looking for a spiritual treasure hidden by the writer, wanting to find it in its entirety and appropriate it for himself. It's there creative process, because to reproduce means to create. This is a struggle for a spiritual meeting: this is free association with the one who first acquired and buried the sought-after treasure. And to those who have never achieved this or experienced this, it will always seem that the “impossible” is being demanded of him.
The art of reading must be acquired and developed in oneself. Reading must be in-depth; it must become creative and contemplative. And only then will its spiritual value and its soul-forming power be revealed to us all. Then we will understand what should be read and what should not be read, for there is reading that deepens a person’s soul and builds his character, and there is reading that corrupts and weakens.
By reading you can recognize and identify a person. For each of us is something What he reads; and every man is how he reads; and we all become imperceptibly what we read from what we read - like a bouquet of flowers we collected in reading...
The book for which I am writing this preface is born in the heart, written from the heart and speaks of heartfelt singing. Therefore, it cannot be understood in a heartless reading. But I believe that it will find its readers who will understand it correctly and see that it was written for Russians about Russia.

I. FIRST RAYS

1. WITHOUT LOVE (From a letter to my son)

So, you think you can live without love: with a strong will, a good purpose, justice and an angry fight against pests? You write to me: “It’s better not to talk about love: it No in people. It’s better not to call for love: who will awaken it in hard hearts?
My dear! You are both right and wrong. Please gather your impatient patience and delve into my thought.
It is forbidden a person can live without love, because it she herself awakens in it and takes possession of it. And this is given to us from God and from nature. We are not allowed to arbitrarily dispose of our inner world, remove some spiritual forces, replace them with others and implant new ones that are not characteristic of us. You can educate yourself, but you cannot break yourself and rebuild yourself at your own discretion. Look how a person's life goes. The child applies himself to his mother with needs, expectations, hope, pleasure, consolation, reassurance and gratitude; and when all this adds up to the first and most tender love, then this determines his personal fate. The child looks for his father, expects greetings, help, protection and guidance from him, enjoys his love and loves him in return; he is proud of him, imitates him and senses his blood in himself. This voice of blood speaks within him throughout his life, connecting him with his brothers and sisters, and with all his kinship. And when he later lights up with adult love for “her” (or, accordingly, she for “him”), then the task is to turn this “urge of nature” into a genuine “visit of God” and accept it as his destiny. And isn't it natural for him to love? their children with the love that he expected from his parents in his childhood dreams?.. How can one do without love? What to replace it with? How to fill the terrible void created by its absence?
It is forbidden the main choosing force in life. Life is like a huge, endless stream in all directions that falls on us and carries us with it. Can't live everyone, what it carries: you cannot give yourself over to this swirling chaos of contents. Whoever tries to do this will waste and destroy himself: nothing will come of him, for he will perish in all confusion. Necessary choose: to give up a lot for the sake of relatively little; This little must be attracted, protected, appreciated, saved, grown and improved. And this is how you build your personality. There is a choosing force Love: it is she who “prefers,” “accepts,” “cleaves,” values, cherishes, pursues, and is faithful. And will is only an instrument of love in this life's work. Will without love is empty, callous, harsh, violent and, most importantly, indifferent to good and evil. She will quickly turn life around into hard labor discipline under the command of vicious people. There is already in the world a whole series organizations built on such principles. May the Lord protect us from them and from their influence... No, we cannot live without love: it is a great gift - see the best, choose it and live by it. It is the necessary and precious ability to say yes, to accept, and to engage in selfless service. How terrible is the life of a person deprived of this gift! What a desert, what vulgarity his life is turning into!
It is forbidden a person can live without love and because it exists the main creative force of man.
After all, human creativity does not arise in emptiness and does not proceed in an arbitrary combination of elements, as many superficial people now think. No, you can only create having accepted the God-created world, entering it, growing into its wonderful structure and merging with its mysterious paths and patterns. And for this we need all the power of love, all the gift of artistic transformation given to man. Man does not create out of emptiness: he creates from what has already been created, from existing, creating something new within the limits of the nature given to it - externally material and internally spiritual. A creative person must heed the depth of the world and sing from it himself. He must learn contemplate with the heart to see with love, to leave one’s small personal shell into the bright spaces of God, to find in them Great – related – co-belonging, feel into it and create new from the ancient and unprecedented from the eternal. This is the case in all the main spheres of human creativity: in all arts and science, in prayer and in legal life, in human communication and in all culture. Culture without love is a dead, doomed and hopeless cause. And everything great and brilliant that was created by man was created from contemplating and singing heart.
It is forbidden a person can live without love because the most important and precious thing in his life is revealed to his heart. Only contemplative love reveals to us someone else's soul for faithful, heartfelt communication, for mutual understanding, for friendship, for marriage, for raising children. All this is inaccessible to heartless people. Only contemplative love reveals to a person his homeland that is, his spiritual connection with his native people, his national identity, his mental and spiritual womb on earth. Having a homeland is happiness, but you can have it only through love. It is no coincidence that people of hatred, modern revolutionaries, turn out to be internationalists: dead in love, they are deprived of a homeland. Only contemplative love gives a person access to religiosity and to God. Do not be surprised, my dear, at the unbelief and lack of faith of the Western peoples: they accepted from the Roman Church an incorrect religious act, beginning with the will and ending with rational thought, and, having accepted it, they neglected the heart and lost its contemplation. This predetermined the religious crisis that they are now experiencing.
You dream of a strong will. This is good and necessary. But it is terrible and destructive if it does not grow from a contemplating heart. You want to serve a good purpose. This is true and excellent. But how will you see your goal if not through heartfelt contemplation? How will you recognize her if not by the conscience of your heart? How can you be faithful to her if not with love? You want justice, and we should all seek it. But it requires from us artistic individualization in the perception of people, and only love is capable of this. Angry pest control is necessary and failure to do so can make a person a sentimental traitor. But this anger must be born of love he must be himself its embodiment in order to find justification and measure in it...
That's why I said you are "both right and wrong."
And one more thing: I understand your sentence “it’s better not to talk about love.” This is true: you have to live it and not talk about her. But look: open and insane propaganda of hatred has been heard in the world; A persistent and cruel persecution of love arose in the world - a campaign against family, denial of the homeland, suppression of faith and religion. The practical heartlessness of some culminated in the outright preaching of hatred by others. Callousness has found its apologists. Anger has become a doctrine. And this means that the time has come talk about love and stand up for her.
Yes, there is little love in people. They excluded it from their cultural act: from science, from faith, from art, from ethics, from politics and from education. And as a result of this, modern humanity has entered into a spiritual crisis, unprecedented in its depth and scope. Seeing this, understanding this, it is natural for us to ask ourselves: who will awaken love in hard hearts if it is not awakened by the life and word of Christ, the Son of God? How can we take on this with our small human strength?
But this doubt will soon disappear if we listen to the voice of our heartfelt contemplation, which assures us that Christ is both in us and with us...
No, my dear! We cannot live without love. Without her we doomed with all our culture. In it is our hope and our salvation. And how impatiently I will now wait for your letter confirming this.

2. ABOUT JUSTICE

Since time immemorial, people have been talking and writing about justice: perhaps even since they began to speak and write at all... But the question, apparently, has not been resolved - what is justice and how to implement it in life? It is difficult for people to agree on this matter, because they feel vital practical significance this question, they foresee unfavorable consequences for themselves and therefore they argue as if they were interested, restless and suspicious: look, you “agree” “on your own head” - and then what?
Each of us desires justice and demands to be treated fairly; everyone complains about all sorts of injustices inflicted on himself, and begins to interpret justice in such a way that it comes out a clear injustice in his favor. At the same time, he is convinced that his interpretation is correct and that he treats others “absolutely fairly,” but does not want to notice that everyone is indignant at his
“justice” and feel oppressed and left out. The poorer, cramped and more violent people's lives are, the more acutely they experience all this and the more difficult it is for them to come to an agreement and agree with each other. As a result, it turns out that there are as many “justices” as there are dissatisfied people and it is impossible to find a single, real Justice. But, strictly speaking, that’s the only thing worth talking about.
This means that interests and passions distort the great question, the mind does not find the right solution and everything is overgrown with bad and cunning prejudices. From prejudices arise false teachings; they lead to violence and revolution, and revolutions bring only suffering and blood in order to disappoint and sober up people stunned by their passions. Thus whole generations of people live in prejudice and languish in disappointment; and sometimes it happens that the very word “justice” is met with an ironic smile and mockery.
However, all this does not compromise or shake the old, noble idea of ​​justice, and we must still oppose it to all unscrupulous exploitation, all class struggle and all revolutionary equalization. We can be firmly confident that the future belongs to her. And the whole point is to correctly comprehend its essence.
The French Revolution of the eighteenth century proclaimed and spread the harmful prejudice that people are by birth or nature “equal” and that, as a result, all people should be treated “equally”... This prejudice natural equality is the main obstacle to solving our main problem. For the essence of justice consists precisely in treating different people differently.
If people were truly equal, that is, identical in body, soul and spirit, then life would be terribly simple and finding justice would be extremely easy. One would only have to say: “the same people get the same share” or “everyone gets the same share” - and the issue would be resolved. Then justice could be found arithmetically and carried out mechanically; and everyone would be happy, because people would really be like equal atoms, like balls mechanically rolling from place to place, indistinguishably identical both internally and externally. What could be more naive, simpler and more vulgar than this theory? What kind of superficiality - or even outright blindness - leads people to such dead and harmful views? 150 years have passed since the French Revolution. One would hope that this blind materialistic prejudice has long since outlived its usefulness. And suddenly he appears again, wins blind hearts, triumphs in victory and brings down an avalanche of misfortune on people...
In fact People unequal from nature and not the same neither body, nor soul, nor spirit. They will be born as creatures of different sexes; they are naturally of unequal age, unequal strength and different health; they are given different abilities and inclinations, different attractions, gifts and desires; they are so different from each other physically and mentally that it is generally impossible to find two identical people in the world. Born from different parents, different blood and heredity, in different countries raised, brought up differently, accustomed to different climates, unequally educated, with different habits and talents - people create differently and create unequal and unequal things. They are also spiritually different: they all have different minds, different kindnesses, different tastes; each with his own views and his own special sense of justice. In a word, they are different in everyone relationships. And justice requires that they be treated according to their individual characteristics, without equalizing unequals or giving people undue advantages. You can't put the same pressure on them responsibilities: the elderly, the sick, women and children are not subject to military service. You can't give them the same rights: children, madmen and criminals do not participate in political votes. It is forbidden collect from everyone the same: there are minors and the insane, less is exacted from them; there are those called to power, they must be exacted more strictly, etc. And so, whoever puts aside prejudices and looks at life impartially will soon be convinced that people unequal by nature unequal according to his strength and ability, unequal and in my own way social status; So what justice cannot require equal treatment of different people; on the contrary, she demands inequalities for unequals, But such inequality which corresponded would be the actual inequality of people.
This is where the main difficulty of the question is revealed. There are an infinite number of people; they are all different. How can we ensure that everyone receives in life according to their individuality? How to keep up with all these countless idiosyncrasies? How to “give to each his due” (according to the formula of Roman jurisprudence)? They Not are the same; This means that they must not be treated equally - according to their uniqueness... Otherwise injustice will arise...
So, justice does not require equality at all. She demands subject-based inequality. The child must be protected and protected; this gives him a whole range fair privileges. The weak must be spared. For the tired, indulgence is due. The weak-willed need more severity. The honest and sincere should be given more trust. You need to be careful with a talkative person. It is fair to demand more from a gifted person. A hero is entitled to honors that a non-hero should not claim. And so - in everything and always...
Therefore there is justice the art of inequality. It is based on attention to human individuality and differences in life. But it is also based living conscience and living love to a person. There is a special gift of justice which is not common to all people. This gift presupposes in a person kind, loving heart, which does not want to increase the number of offended, suffering and bitter people on earth. This gift presupposes a still alive observation, heightened sensitivity to human uniqueness, and the ability to empathize with others. Fair people They reject the mechanical interpretation of people based on abstract characteristics. They are contemplative and intuitive. They want to consider each person individually and comprehend the hidden depth of his soul...
That's why justice is the beginning artistic: she contemplates life with her heart, grasps the uniqueness of each person, tries to evaluate him correctly and treat him substantively. She is “attentive”, “careful”, “social”; she maintains a sense of proportion; she is inclined to compassion, to delicate condescension and forgiveness. It has a lot in common with “tact.” It is closely related to a sense of responsibility. She by her very essence loving: it is born from the heart and is a living manifestation of love.
It is madness to seek justice based on hatred, because hatred is envious, it does not lead to justice, but to universal equality. It is madness to seek justice in revolution, because revolution breathes hatred and revenge, it is blind, it is destructive; she is the enemy of just inequality; she does not honor “higher abilities” (Dostoevsky). And justice in itself is one of the highest abilities of man, and its calling is to recognize and cherish higher abilities...
People will exercise justice in life when All or at least many will become her living artists and learn the art of subject inequality. And then a just system will come down not to the mechanics of just institutions, but to organic intuitive finding of objective judgments and objective treatments for the continuous vital flow of human idiosyncrasies. Justice is not a bird that needs to be caught and locked in a cage. Justice is not an abstract rule for all cases and for all people, for such a rule equalizes and not "objectifies"(from the word “object”) life. Justice should not be imagined in terms of “once for all”, “for all people”, “everywhere”. Because she is exactly Not"once for all" and a live stream of individual retreats. It is not “for all people”, but for everyone in particular. She is not “everywhere”, but lives exceptions.
Justice cannot be found in any form general rules, nor in the form of government agencies. It is not a “system”, but life. It needs to be imagined as a flow of living and objective love for people. Only such love can solve the problem: it will create justice in life, create more and more new things in people’s lives and relationships subject inequality.
This is why the most important thing in life is not "found once and for all" justice: it is an illusion, a chimera, a harmful and stupid utopia. What matters most in life a living heart that sincerely desires creative justice; and one more thing - general confidence that people are truly sincere they want creative justice and honestly seek it. And if this There is, then people will easily put up with the inevitable injustices of life - conditional, temporary or accidental, and will willingly cover them sacrificial mood. For everyone will know what awaits him ahead true, i.e. artistic-love justice.

3. HIS HATE

How painful, almost unbearable this feeling is that “he hates me”... What a feeling of one’s own powerlessness takes over the soul... I want not to think about it; and sometimes it works. But, without even thinking, you feel through the spiritual ether this current, this current of someone else’s disgust, contempt and malice. And you don’t know what to start; and you can’t completely forget; and you carry this curse on yourself through life.
Every person - whether he knows it or not - is a living, radiating personal center. Every look, every word, every smile, every action radiates into the general spiritual ether of existence a special energy of warmth and light, which wants to act in it, wants to be perceived, admitted into other people’s souls and recognized by them, wants to call them to a response and engage with them a living stream of positive, creative communication. And even when a person, apparently, does not manifest himself in anything or is simply absent, we feel the rays he sends, and, moreover, the stronger, the more definite and intense, the more significant and unique his spiritual personality is.