p13 Tolstoy's big question

An Example of Question-Guided Search for Truth

By John Taylor; 2008 May 29, 13 `Azamat, 165 BE

 

Tolstoy, Confession, Translated by David Patterson, Norton, New York, 1996

I am going to devote several essays to excerpts and comments on Leo Tolstoy's story of his spiritual awakening as told in his book, Confession. Here is the blurb.

 

"Marking a shift in his career from the aesthetic to the religious, Tolstoy's Confession relates his spiritual crisis, posing the question: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my death? It is a timeless account of an individual's struggle for faith and meaning."

I think it is an important text for anybody to read, but especially for Baha'is living in areas where secularism, atheism and agnosticism predominate, and where there is an antipathy to religion.

 

But first, this.

 

The Universal House of Justice wrote an important letter to a believer in a Nordic country prescribing several steps to take for spiritualizing oneself in the face of the challenge of living and teaching in places where anti-theism predominates. I highly recommend the whole letter, but here is an excerpt.

 

"Europe has suffered so appallingly in past centuries from persecutions and conflicts inspired by religious differences and fanaticism that there has been a revulsion against religion. Many Europeans have become skeptical, scornful of religious practices, and reluctant either to discuss religious subjects or to give credence to the power of faith. This turning away from religion has been powerfully reinforced by the growth of materialism, and has produced a combination of physical well-being and spiritual aridity that is having catastrophic results, socially and psychologically, on the population."

"This intellectual and emotional atmosphere creates problems for the Baha'i community in two ways. Its effect upon a large proportion of the non-Baha'i population makes it difficult for Baha'is to convey the Message to others. Its effect upon the Baha'is is more subtle, but no less harmful; if not consciously combated it can lead the believers to neglect those spiritual exercises which are the very fountainhead of their spiritual strength and the nourishment of their souls." (The Universal House of Justice, 1983 Sept 01, On Steps to Spiritual Growth)

 

I hope that this gives a hint at my reasoning for reading Tolstoy's Confession. It is a sort of primer for spiritual enlightenment. It is a handbook for understanding the process of spiritual advance. The Master picked up on Tolstoy's search for truth, and my former roommate, Jan Jasion, wrote a book about what happened next. It is called, I think, Tolstoy and the Baha'i Faith.

 

Anyway, Tolstoy's turning to faith issues makes the Confession not just an inspiring read, but more than that it is a foundational document in the so-called justice movement. The whole idea of non-violent resistance came out of his strict reading of the Sermon on the Mount, which most Christians had dismissed as impracticable for centuries. Martin Luther King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and Gandhi corresponded with Tolstoy for the last year of the latter's life, and named one of his communes after Tolstoy. This makes it one of the most influential reformist manifestos of the 20th Century.

 

The trick that Tolstoy learned is to get down to basics, and retain your ability to be ruthlessly self-critical. Plus, he kept the right questions in mind. There are only a few big questions that every seeker sooner or later must answer satisfactorily, which I call the "Questions Five." These questions permeate the talks and writings of Abdu'l-Baha, and few others. Tolstoy, in Confessions, goes through them quite systematically. Here they are:

 

What do or can I know?

Who or what am I? or, How do I define myself?

Why am I here at all?

How should I behave?

What is to come of me?

 

Here is how Tolstoy dealt with what he thought was the biggest of the big questions,

 

Tolstoy's big question

 

My question, the question that had brought me to the edge of suicide when I was fifty years old, was the simplest question lying in the soul of every human being, from a silly child to the wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible; such was the way I felt about the matter. The question is this:

 

"What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will come of my entire life?"

 

Expressed differently, the question may be: Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death? (Tolstoy, Confession, pp. 34-35)

 

Throughout human knowledge I sought an answer to this question, which is one and the same question in the various expressions of it. And I found that in regard to this question the sum of human knowledge is divided as if into two hemispheres lying opposite each other, into two opposite extremes occupying two poles, one positive and one negative. But there were no answers to the question of life at either pole.

 

One field of knowledge does not even acknowledge the question, even though it clearly and precisely answers the questions that it has posed independently. This is the field of experimental science, and at its extreme end is mathematics. The other field of knowledge acknowledges the questions but does not answer it. This is the field of speculative philosophy, and at its extreme end is metaphysics.

 

From my early youth I had studied speculative philosophy, but later both mathematics and the natural sciences attracted me. And until I had clearly put my question to myself, until the question itself grew within me and urgently demanded a resolution, I was satisfied with the counterfeit answers that knowledge had to offer.

 

In regard to the realm of experience, I said to myself, "Everything is developing and being differentiated, becoming more complex and moving toward perfection, and there are laws governing this process. You are part of the whole. If you learn as much as possible about the whole and if you learn the law of its development, you will come to know your place in the whole and to know yourself." As much as I am ashamed to admit it, there was a time when I seemed to be satisfied with this. (35)

 

Another big question: why do I live?

 

Generally the relation between the experimental sciences and the question of life may be expressed in this way: Question -- why do I live? Answer -- in infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles undergo modifications of infinite complexity, and when you understand the laws that govern these modifications, then you will understand why you live. (37)

 

Then along more speculative lines I would say to myself, `All of mankind lives and develops according to the spiritual principles, according to the ideals that guide it. These ideals find expression in the religions, the sciences, the arts, and the forms of government. As these ideals rise higher and higher, mankind proceeds on to its greater happiness. I am a part of mankind and my mission, therefore, lies in helping mankind through the consciousness and realization of these ideals.' (37-38)

 

... In addition to the careless inaccuracy with which this type of knowledge draws its conclusions and makes general claims about humanity after having studied only a small part of it; in addition to the mutual contradiction among the various advocates of this view with respect to what the ideals of mankind are, the strangeness, if not the stupidity, of this view is that in order to answer the question that occurs to every man -- "What am I?" or "Why do I live?" or "What am I to do?" -another question must first be settled: "What is the life of the humanity that is unknown to us, the life of which we can know only a small portion over a short period of time?" In order to know what he is, a man must first know what the sum of this mysterious humanity is, a humanity made up of people who, like himself, do not understand what they are.

 

I must confess that there was a time when I believed this. It was during the time when I had my own pet ideals to justify my whims, when I tried to devise one theory or another so that I could look upon my whims as laws that govern mankind. But as soon as the question of life began to emerge in my soul in all its clarity, his reply immediately crumbled into dust. And I realized that within the experimental sciences there are those that are genuinely scientific and those that are only half scientific, trying to give answers to questions that lie completely out of their realm; thus I realized that there is a whole series of the most widely diversified fields of knowledge that try to answer questions beyond their scope. Those that are only half scientific include the judicial, social, and historical sciences; in its own way each of these sciences attempts to decide the questions concerning the individual by seemingly deciding the question of life that concerns all of mankind." (38-39)