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OTHER_SINS

                                             September 2, 2010
                                             September 8, 2013

Dostevsky's                  POSSESSED
"The Possessed"
(1872),                                 I'm not sure about
"The Sins of Others" p. 133             edition or translator
                                        just now


    "You judge from yourself, perhaps."

    "Every one cannot judge except for himself,"
    he said, reddening.  "There will be full
    freedom when it will be just the same to live
    as not to live. That's the goal for all."

    "The goal?  But perhaps no one will care
    to live then?"

    "No one," he pronounced with decision.

    "Man fears death because he loves life.
    That's how I understand it," I observed,
    "and that's determined by nature."

    "That's abject; and that's where the deception
    comes in."  His eyes flashed.  "Life is pain,
    life is terror, and man is unhappy.  Now all
    is pain and terror.  Now man loves life,
    because he loves pain and terror, and so they
    have done according.  Life is given now for
    pain and terror, and that's the deception.
    Now man is not yet what he will be.  There
    will be a new man, happy and proud. For whom
    it will be the same to live or not to live, he
    will be the new man. He who will conquer pain
    and terror will himself be a god.  And this
    God will not be."

    "Then this God does exist according to you?"

    "He does not exist, but He is. In the stone
    there is no pain, but in the fear of the stone
    is the pain. God is the pain of the fear of
    death. He who will conquer pain and terror
    will become himself a god. Then there will be
    a new life, a new man; everything will be
    new... then they will divide history into two
    parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of
    God, and from the annihilation of God to... "

    "To the gorilla?"

    "... To the transformation of the earth, and
    of man physically. Man will be God, and will
    be transformed physically, and the world wil
    be transformed and things will be transformed
    and thoughts and all feelings. What do you
    think: will man be changed phyically then?"

    "If it will be just the same living or not
    living, all will kill themselves, and perhaps
    that's what the change will be?"

    "That's no matter.  They will kill deception.
    Every one who wants the supreme freedom must
    dare to kill himself, the deception.  There is
    no freedom beyond; that is all, and there is
    nothing beyond.  He who dares kill himself is
    God.  Now every one can do so that there shall
    be no God and shall be nothing.  But no one
    has once done it yet."

    "There have been millions of suicides."

    "But always not for that; always with terror
    and not for that object.  Not to kill fear.
    He who kills himself only to kill fear will
    become a god at once."

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