The essence of Christianity after F.M.Dostoevsky. Suffering & Reward.

1. Suffering

Thinking about his epileptic state, prince Myshkin discerns that it contains a step, just before the crisis, when suddenly “through the sadness, spiritual darkness and pressure, some moments his brain becomes absolutely clear, and with an extraordinary force gathers all his life powers once again. Life perceiving, self-conscience nearly disappears in this instant which continues like a lightening. The mind, the heart – are illuminated by a strange light; all his concerns, all his doubts, all his worries turn peaceful suddenly… they resolve themselves in a sort of higher stillness full of lucid and harmonic happiness and hope, full of reason…” (“The Idiot” F.M. Dostoevsky)
Prince Myshkin thought these moments are sparks of the higher reason, or maybe even – of the higher being… - beauty and prayer.
This is the way of sufferance.
Being able to suffer, and suffering as state is to be considered as a great gift…for there’s also much joy in this, much gratitude and life.

In “the Karamazov Brothers” Lise tells a strange story to Alexei. She says that a jew has cut by 4 fingers on the both hands of his four aged child, and then crucified him on the wall. He died in 4 hours. And that man said this was quickly.
She even laughed telling this and exclaimed: “This is good!”. She confessed that she’d probably do the same and, more over, she would take a glass of juice to watch upon this little suffering boy. She also pointed out that it is good being despised, too...
This macabre passage has a profound meaning.
We will not rest upon the idea of contemplating someone else's suffering. We would stop on the thought that a great purification takes place through the experience of pain, and the little boy crucified on the wall has attained, before anyone else, the true happiness. Why? In the case of Myshkin and of anyone else who knows what suffering means, the life power grows vigurously and high above everything. Thus, some seconds are really enough to come to an absolute understanding and perception of Being. The example Jesus Christ gave is just a confirmation of the exposed ideas.


2. Reward

Starets Zosima talks about his brother who used to say that “Heaven begins the very second we come to understand that we are all guilty each in front of other, thus embracing each other and crying.”
Heaven: it is not a certain state of “after”, it is not even in “other” world, when we die. It is – yes – in other life, but this new life begins here, for we begin living once again since the revelation. There’s no way back. And it may not be associated in a direct way with splendid gardens and a peaceful mankind… but these could be symbols for what happens inside and the new way of contemplating the Creation, both the outer world, with its immense landscapes, beings and phenomenon and the self, sensitive and overwhelmed, too. Heaven is not a place, it’s a mystical experience that has no equivalent in words (true is the expression of Wittgenstein, who says that “There are, really, things that cannot be named in words. These things should be shown. These things are what is mystical.”) But a fact is still clear – it begins exactly when we want to understand some essential and elementary things. However, this understanding is not about a rational and dull approach upon the unspeakable, but more of “seeing”, and seeing differently.
Only the experience of heaven could make clear what is intended to be shown here. Those who wait for the heaven, for they believe it should come after time, will never find it. But those who pass near the experience of heaven, lives the same way – in the slavery of bread, miserable and low… we don’t need other clarification for what hell is, for – where the paradise misses we meet its opposite.
Much is to be understood behind words, much is to be seen without reading, much is to be experienced…