BOOK X
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43 |
Let us accept all patiently, let us use all modestly, let us abandon all wisely. Therefore, we shall have all and we shall be possessed by nothing, we shall savour the world and we shall not be poisoned, we shall handle the fire and we shall not be consumed.
Let us not plunge anyone into death through belated reproaches, through useless exclusions or through hazardous condemnations. Let us offer love that understands all, that excuses all, that comforts, that enlightens and that leads back without constraint to the way of the truth of the Unique One. "Let us never adopt the tone of a master with anyone, so as not to offend God's freedom that lies dormant in each one of us." |
43' |
Humanity that has gone astray no longer knows how to nourish itself, how to rest, how to reproduce. It has forgotten prayer, meditation and play. Its men no longer know the earth, their skin has forgotten the sun, the wind and the rain, and their eyes no longer see the stars. Their mouths no longer taste healthy herbs, their noses are filled with smoke and their ears reverberate with nothing but the noise of death. They have lost the simplicity and the intelligence of their primary nature. They have blunted the astonishment that led them up to God, and the vision of the world around them no longer instructs them. They have become senseless and miserable through their proud madness. They tear each other apart and break up the world with the obstinacy of blind madness. |
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64 |
Everyone wastes his time and his life before God: believers and the impious, honest men and criminals, workers and idlers, intelligent men and idiots, ascetics and libertines, scholars and ignorant men, geniuses and mediocre men, the glorious and the unknown, the skilled and the clumsy, the young and the old, the rich and the poor, the civilised and the savage, everyone, except he who searches madly for his Lord here below without distraction and without repose, except he who puts his hand on the primary slime and does the work of God.
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64' |
The scholars and the intelligent shall be ridiculed before God and driven far away from his light; only the simple and the believers shall find grace before him. As for the sages and the saints, their heart has always been with the Lord of wisdom and love. "The Book in which God has written his secret is heaven and earth. Therefore, the holy and wise man studies the science of the Lord in the peace of the garden of Eden." |
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