OBSTACLES TO TRUE LIFE.

61. During infancy and childhood, and sometimes even later, man lives as an animal, fulfilling the will of God then known to him as the desire for the welfare of his own separate being; and he knows no other life.

62. Having awakened to reasonable consciousness, man still continues to consider as himself this separate body, although he knows that his life is really in his spiritual being, and owing to contracted habits of animal life he performs acts directed towards the welfare of the separate being, and which are contrary to love.

63. By so doing man not only deprives himself of the welfare of true life, but fails to obtain the welfare of his separate

being: acting thus, he commits sins.*

It

is these sins that constitute the inborn obstacles to the manifestation of love in man.

64. And these obstacles are increased by the circumstance that men of former generations, having committed sins, transImitted the habits and forms of them to succeeding generations.

65. So that having in childhood acquired habits connected with the personal life of his separate being, and having also these same habits of personal life transmitted to him from his ancestors by tradition, every man is always liable to sins-obstacles to the manifestation of love.

* The reader is requested to bear in mind that words such as sin, snare, prayer etc., are here used by the author not in any theological meaning, but in the sense which he clearly defines when he first introduces them. Thus, wherever further used, the term sins implies obstacles to the manifestation of love. (TRANS.)

THREE KINDS OF SINS.

66. There are three kinds of sins.

(a) Sins which proceed from the ineradicable tendency of man towards his own personal welfare while living in the body-innate, natural sins.

(b) Sins which proceed from the traditions of the institutions and customs directed to the increase of the welfare of separate persons-traditional, social sins.

(c) Sins which proceed from the tendency of individual man towards the greater and greater augmentation of the welfare of his separate being-personal, artificial sins.

67. Men commit innate sins when they place their welfare in the preservation and increase of the animal welfare of their separate personalities. Every activity

directed towards increasing the animal welfare of one's personality is such an innate sin.

68. Traditional sins are those which men commit when they profit by existing modes of adding to the welfare of their separate personalities-modes instituted by men who have lived in former times. All profiting by institutions and customs established for the welfare of one's personality is traditional sin.

69. Personal or artificial sins are those which men commit when, in addition to traditional ones, they invent new modes of increasing the welfare of their separate personalities. Every new mode invented by man for the increase of the welfare of his separate personality is such a personal sin.

CLASSIFICATION OF SINS.

70. There are six sins or obstacles to the manifestation of love in man:

I. The sensual sin, which consists in preparing for oneself pleasure by the satisfaction of one's needs.

II. The sin of idleness, which consists in liberating oneself from the labour necessary to the satisfaction of one's needs.

III. The sin of avarice, which consists in acquiring for oneself power to satisfy one's needs in the future.

IV. The sin of ambition, which consists in subjugating to oneself one's fellow

creatures.

V. The sexual sin, which consists in arranging for oneself pleasure from sexual instinct.

VI. The sin of intoxication, which consists in producing artificial excitement of one's physical and mental faculties.