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What is Truth?
Not the national idea, but the mind!
The guiding Asterisk
The birth from the Spirit of Truth
The order of the day
The questions asked in the fourth edition of the “The Energy of Eternity” proved to be a tough nut for many of you, and this is not surprising, as it is quite different concept of thinking. We will need to consider this topic, in more detail, in our next issue. For the moment, let’s talk about general issues. We’ll talk about what we are actually dealing with. This is a very important point. The Wisdom of the Cross is almost a criterion that determines a man such as “our own or stranger”. If man can not contain in himself the theology of the Cross or even rejects it, he is not an Orthodox man, by this fact. He has not grown enough or he is of an entirely different spirit.
The theology of the Cross is a Seal of God, in fact, as we can know the essence of God only trough the grace of the Holy Spirit.
What is Truth?
Now, chaos and anarchy reign in our church. As much there people who call themselves Orthodox, as much there are truths. Everyone has its own truth. There are no criteria for determining the true commitment to Christ. The canons, dogmas, apostolic rules, everything became a subject of discussion and bargaining. Therefore, we need to get off this runaway train and return to the origins of the Church. After all, the problem of identification of those who carry the Spirit of Truth and the carriers of the spirit of delusion existed since the birth of the Church.
How did people determine, in the old times, who is their own, and who is a stranger? One of the first Christian symbols is a chrism. The Cross was often combined with an anchor, because the chrism reflects a proper functioning of the mind that allows catching hold of the Truth. Truth is not a simple statement of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Truth is a special functioning of the mind, a specific principle of thinking, based on the knowledge of the essence of God-Man. This is the essence of God-Man which is ontological Truth. Thus, the Truth is that's what precedes thought, which gives birth to the thought. The Truth is the Mind of Christ, which gives birth to thoughts in the Spirit of Truth.
Not the national idea, but the mind!
As we have already repeatedly emphasized, people must be united not around a national idea, but around soborial principle of thinking. Each thought is always secondary; it is the result of the mind action. Therefore, the starting point is always the mind, not thought; the principle of thinking, rather than an idea.
The ancient Christian communities were built on such an order. People should be united by the commonality of mind, by the presence of the Christian principle of thinking, and not by reflections on the theme of love, faith, salvation, God. At all times, many people make diatribes on these subjects and everyone has their own truth, but the Truth is unique, and it is not determined by fine words, but by mode of thinking. It is impossible to cheat here, because only God can gift the Mind of Christ to man. And there are specific criteria that determine the presence of this mind.
“The natural person has no room for the gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognise them, because their value can be assessed only in the Spirit. The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person's value cannot be assessed by anybody else. For: who has ever known the mind of the Lord? Who has ever been his adviser? But we are those who have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:14-16).
Thus, the spiritual person is distinguished from the natural one by the presence of the Mind of Christ. However, how can we distinguish one from another?
In the old Slavonic translation, in place of the word "assess" is used the word "vostyazuetsya".
“The spiritual person, on the other hand, can assess the value of everything, and that person's value cannot be assessed by anybody else”.
"Vostyazuetsya" means to integrate into any path, in some direction, in line of movement. The early Christians fully understand the nature of thinking. The natural person thinks through the flows of time. His consciousness is fragmented; it cannot gather the world in whole, therefore, it cannot make appropriate judgment on spiritual phenomena that has an integral nature. The spiritual person thinks through the single stream of Eternity. His position is several orders of magnitude higher than the flows of time. Therefore, his mind can contain the entire world, through the Saviour. Therefore, the spiritual person can judge everything, but nobody of the lowers can judge him.
The guiding Asterisk
Such was the thinking of the old Christians. They pay attention not to external words, but to the internal structure of thinking. Therefore, we must learn, at the first place, how to integrate our mind in the flow of energy of Eternity. This mode of thinking is reflected in the symbolism of the chrism, the Asterisk and the cross -shaped nimbus. This is the same system here. We have already begun to examine it in our previous issue. Nevertheless, we'll talk in detail next time. For the moment, let’s talk about the common points.
Here are represented the most important symbols of our Church. They reflect the essence of God the Word, the nature that gives birth to the thoughts and the words of Truth. This construction, in form of a cross which folds and unfolds, was called Asterisk by the Holy Fathers. Its main applicability is not to drive away flies as mockingly registered Jews in the synodal textbooks, but to get our perishable mind to the point of birth of the Eternal Divine Mind. Therefore, this object is called “guiding Asterisk”. Whoever who seeks the Truth follows, like the twelve wise men, the star of the Mind of Christ; he is looking for Heavenly wisdom and finds it at the point of refraction of Eternity. It is here that Truth is born.
Therefore, the Asterisk also symbolizes the manger of the Divine Child.
The birth of Truth occurs by incorporating our mind in the cross-shaped flow of Divine Eternity. The fact of obtaining this type of thinking is a criterion of spiritual purity. These people become bishops, teachers of God's people, pillars of faith on which is held the building of the soborial church. Therefore, saints are portrayed in vestments covered with crosses.
The era of the Philadelphia church has a mass character. All processes are moving in Hypostatic-soborial format. Therefore, the spiritual purity becomes widespread.
“Those who are wise will shine as brightly as the expanse of the heavens, and those who have instructed many in uprightness, as bright as stars for all eternity” (Daniel 12:3).
The birth from the Spirit of Truth
The essence of the birth of our mind from the Spirit of Truth is represented in the symbolism of Asterisk. The spiritual mind must be able to refract single Eternity of the Lamb, to obtain four infinite pillars of Creation, then to link them in the fifth gathered eternity, in the King of Glory. If we are able to think in these categories, it means that our mind is integrated into the cross-shaped stream of Divine Eternity. From this moment it begins the process of transformation of the mind and the process of dispensation of grace.
In the iconography, the correct functioning of the Orthodox mind is portrayed by four pillars constructions, with a pyramid on top.
The pillars are centuries, the pyramid - Eternity. Therefore, it is important to root, by our own mind, in the knowledge of the Wisdom of Asterisk. It is a living process; it takes time to integrate into a stream of Eternity. The holiness of the Orthodox faith doesn’t originate from primitive memories of outer outlines of the sacred history events, but from the understanding of what is happening from the perspective of internal processes, from the perspective of the energies of time and Eternity.
The Presentation (of Jesus at the Temple) is an encounter with Eternity. The Presentation is a long-awaited opportunity of humanity to stop the disintegration of their being. The possibility to gather the entire life in whole, and rise above all being, on the stream of Eternity, rise to the level of God. The Presentation is a return of the lost Paradise and the lost God likeness.
In ancient times, the Wisdom of the Life-Giving Cross was a criterion of belonging to the Spirit of the Orthodox Church. And now, in the new era of the Sixth-Seventh Day, this criterion returns and takes a central place, becoming a starting point. It becomes a criterion of Truth and the beginning of a new page of history.
The one, who manages to contain it, has the blessing of God, because we can know the Mind of Christ only trough the Holy Spirit. Whoever wants, but cannot do it, is still a natural person; he is still a prisoner of earthly energies. And we have to work here, to sprout through the asphalt matrix. Whoever is indifferent is not of the Truth, and if he claims to know God, he is simply lying to himself and to other people. And those who rebel against the Cross are simply enemies.
The order of the day
Why those who are indifferent to the Wisdom of the Cross are not of the Truth? Is it not enough to believe in old manner? Why such complications?
Someone go to the synodal church, someone to the church of Old Believers, someone preaches his own vision of Orthodoxy and further development of the church. Why is it necessary to establish a criterion of Truth and measure everything in same manner?
The fact is that every time has its reason, its bells, and its markings. In the epistles to the Churches, our Lord established seven periods of spiritual growth. Each period is a specific sphere with its internal order of time, its objectives, methods and risks, of which the Lord warns. Only after successively climbed the seven spheres of time, we find ourselves in the eternal Kingdom of the Savior. There is even an icon, called "A week of saints." Therefore, everything has its time, its place.
You cannot always live according to the same pattern. There is a time to throw stones, time of persecution where we need to hide, and there is a time to gather stones, when we must leave the catacombs and gather people into a single sobor.
The world has entered the era of the Sixth-Seventh Day. This is a period of Philadelphia church of brotherly love. Now is the time of gathering of the Church, the time of the resurrection of the holy people. Such is the will of God, contained in the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian. Therefore, all those who remain outside soborial process, those who continue to preach their own, local and narrow forms of Christianity, those who do not want to get out of their comfortable shell, will pass into the category of sectarians.
It's time of the Lord’s year of favour. The time of the great common Cause. And the most important thing, which is on the agenda, is a unifying factor.
It’s necessary to have elementary compassion for our own people. All our problems are caused by our disunity. The cause of the disunity consists in the absence of the national assembly point. We are told that we must find a national idea, but it is a false path.
The starting point of the Christian world order is the New Testament Mind of Christ. Only the world of Truth can resist the modern world of lies. And the Truth is born in the manger of Asterisk. The people are truly born from God of Truth. The essence of Truth is the Wisdom of the Cross, therefore, we need, like fresh air, people who are able to contain the Divine Wisdom and be born of the Spirit of Truth. They become sources of living water and the epicenters of the soborial unification.
Thus, the efforts of the Orthodox people, the efforts of the entire Orthodox Church must be focused on the theme of these people of action. We must gather around those whom God blessed by His Mind. Those who manage to contain the Wisdom of the Life-Giving Cross. These people are the protagonists of the coming era. The history is made by people of action and, in order to unite the nation, we need new apostles of the new Holy Russia. Those who continue to live in old manner, in a dilapidated state of mind, become themselves sectarians and renegades, because we cannot preach the Truth if we have no Mind of Christ.
