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A Confession and Other Religious Writings (Penguin Classics)

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This book includes some of Tolstoy's essays written during his time of deep internal spiritual struggle. Upon his renunciation of a life of aristocratic wealth and worldly pleasure, Tolstoy longed for the sense of true peace that he saw in the peasant class. Thus he embarked upon a search for meaning and happiness through a life of simple faith, manual labor, and poverty. He formulated his own Christian philosophy based on Christ's Sermon on the Mount stressing the existence of the Kingdom of God within the human heart, civil disobedience, and total pacifism. This "law of love" is explored deeply in confessional form throughout the works in this collection. Although this particular approach to living the life in Christ ultimately did not cultivate in Tolstoy the deep inner peace that he yearned for, I feel that many of his ideas can be beneficial to people both within the Church as well as not. Regardless of the validity of his doctrine, it cannot be denied that this is an authentic, genuine, and very human confession of a man searching for God and the meaning of life on earth. Although I personally disagree with many of Tolstoy's points, I still hold his Confession to be a universal work that deserves a fair exploration by all who have ever felt a similar need for inner peace and true reconciliation with God.

This is a very interesting book. Penned by one of the greatest writers in history, "A Confession..." by Leo Tolstoy provided me with great insight into his life, work, and relationships. I read this for a religion class in college and ended up keeping it. It is rather short and easy to read. Of interest to those who are seeking truth and those who have found it. It is fascinating to follow him thru his early religious experience, falling away from the church, and coming back to a unique faith in the end. Recommended.

Tolstoy was a tremondous writer and intense human being. I approached this work expecting a great deal, and while it was certainly very much worth the effort, it was not as good as I hoped it would be.

After acheiving fame, fortune, artistic achievement, family and everything else that most people long for, Tolstoy had a philosophical crisis in which he searched for the meaning of life. This is his chronicle of his despair and search, which ultimately ended in his acceptance of a unique brand of Christian socialism (not to mention ascetisim, vegetarianism, pacifism, etc.,). However, I thought much of the book, especially its sections on philosophy, to be rather poor in quality: either too simplisitc or complex but very poorly worded and expressed. While this book is ok, if anyone wanted to know Tolstoy's later philosophy of life I would recommend his later short works of fiction such as The Devil, the Kreutzer Sonata, and the Forged Coupon. They are masterpeices, while this work is simply interesting.

Tolstoy's "Confession" is a description of my own religious journey. As with all of the other religious writings of his, the entire book represents a clear explanation of a moral life based on Jesus' teachings, with a thorough rejection of the mysticism and magic that was added to it by men.

In these existential confessions, Tolstoy, at the pinnacle of his career and life, explains how his life "came to a stop" as he came to believe he had accomplished nothing in life and existence was meaningless. Why should I live? Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death? "I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing." He also took to observing other people to see how they responded to this absurdity and found his peers escaping this problem in either ignorance, epicurianism, suicide, or weak survival. Tolstoy feebly chose the latter, holding on to an obscure doubt, a hope of something more. As Carruth writes, "The mind of man, which he did not ask to be given, demands a reason and a meaning." Confession personifies our search for more than just vague answers to questions of meaning which are so vital to man's existence.

Next to the Bible, this is the MOST IMPORTANT Book on Earth

Tolstoy provides revelations about existence, meaning of life, purpose, the root of social horror and only path to peace in a way uncontemplated and unexpressed by this generation. Most of the world, as he says, is caught up in a sheep-think herd mentality, taken captive by a collusion of Scientism and Priest in a horrific flanking and fleecing of a people whose downfall is thinking they are clever, and so easily brainwashed into believing knowledge about materials is intelligence & brings morality, little realizing these are of NO VALUE AT ALL in transforming man's character flaws and lusts, which drive the ruination of earth, man and child in his time and today.

Tolstoy gives a singularly unrivaled and stunning analysis of:
1.) How the 1% Ruling Class Maintains Power
2.) How Scientists Hypnotically Coerce the herd
3.) How Scientists and Priests work together to keep people from what Jesus actually taught
4.) How it's impossible to be human and not be religious
5.) How there is no rival to Jesus' teachings
6.) How Jesus' teachings are THE ONLY SOLUTION to the present crisis
7.) How before Jesus men were barbarians and how it was Jesus who changed that in cultures practicing his teachings.
8.) How absurd is the notion that material scientific discovery can create a moral code. He blows this rubbish away.

I couldn't believe this was written around the turn of the 19th century. Nothing has changed. Tolstoy was right - Christianity did play the largest role in the Enlightenment of man's consciousness. The book below bears this out:
How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization

To read this is to reveal the logic of a great thinker's enlightenment about the real science of Christ's thinking and healing even if under the cloud of domination of an establishment and state church. He was brave to write it out to the extent of his excommunication in 1901. It is a thought opener. Pertinent in thie time of growing spirituality and questioning of religion.

Frederick R. Andresen, Author of "Walking on Ice, An American Businessman in Russia," over sixteen years in Russian business, six years in residence.

There are at least three Tolstoys. There is the Tolstoy whose mind and capacity for creation, whose ability to observe human life and transform it into the highest form of Literature- this is the first Tolstoy. The second Tolstoy is Tolstoy the man of appetite, the sinner who not only endlessly forced himself upon his wife but who took tens of peasant women for his own pleasure. The third Tolstoy is the would- be- saintly Tolstoy of the 'Confession'. This is the Tolstoy who longs for simplicity in life, for renunciation of wealth and sensual pleasure, for a kind of Christian- like total Love and Devotion to others.
It is true that Tolstoy's greatest works were created before he wrote 'The Confession' And it is true that as his age his physical powers diminished somewhat. But both of those Tolstoys remained with him all his life even if in diminished form. And this third Tolstoy this holy character who nonetheless made his wife and some of his childrens' life a torment, he too persisted with Tolstoy to the end.
Is this to say that the great man was a hypocrite? Yes, and more strongly 'no' He was an enormously complicated human being and a very great creator of Literature.
If however to be judged in terms of his relations to the closest people in his life, sainthood would certainly have to be denied him.

Sooner or later my deeds, whatever they may have been, will be forgotten and will no longer exist. How can a person carry on living and fail to perceive this? That is what is so astonishing. It is only possible to go on living while you are intoxicated with life; once sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere trick.

There is an old eastern fable about a traveller who is taken unawares on the steps by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveller hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare to drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks around and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way round the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse - day and night - are gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing, the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.

The delusion of the joys of life that had formerly stifled my fear of the dragon no longer deceived me. No matter how many times I am told; you cannot understand the meaning of life, do not think about it but live, I cannot do so because I have already done it for too long. Now I cannot help but see because it is the only truth. All the rest is a lie. Those two drops of honey, which more than else had diverted my eyes from the cruel truth, my love for my family and for my writing, which I called art - I no longer found sweet.

`The family...,' I said to myself. But my family, my wife and children, are also human beings. They are in exactly the same position as I am: they too must either live a lie, or face the terrible truth. What do they live for? Why do I love them and look after them, bring them up and watch over them? In order to reach the same state of despair that fills me, or in order to be dull-witted. If I love them I cannot conceal the truth from them. Each step taken in knowledge leads them to this truth.

And the truth is death.