IN MEMORY OF HOLY FRIDAY

IN MEMORY OF HOLY FRIDAY

Extract from the Conference"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

"The bringing of this yet unknown Truth alone made it necessary for Christ to come to the earth. Nothing else. For without truly recognizing the Will of God in Creation no man can find the road of ascent to the Luminous Realm, much less walk upon it. Instead of simply accepting these facts as such, immersing themselves in the Message and living accordingly, as the Bringer of Truth repeatedly and emphatically demanded, the founders of the Christian religions and churches created a personal cult as the principal foundation, which forced them to make the suffering of Christ into something entirely different from what it really was.

They needed it for this cult! Finally, in the course of further development, this quite naturally produced one great error after another, preventing them from even recognizing the right way at all. This false structure alone, which was founded in a lack of objectivity, brought about the distortion in all of the happenings. Unbiased naturalness was bound to be lost as soon as the main cult became purely personal! With this arose the desire to anchor the Mission of the Son of God mainly in His life on earth. Indeed this became a necessity. However, Christ Himself proved by His whole attitude that it was the wrong course to take.

More than once He clearly and sharply rejected the attention given to his person. With every word and every action He always pointed to God the Father, Whose Will He fulfilled and in Whose Power He stood and acted. He explained how mankind should henceforth learn to look up to God the Father, but He never spoke of Himself in this connection. But since His words in this regard were not heeded, it became inevitable in the end that Christ's suffering on earth was presented as necessary, and as ordained by God, even branded as the main task of His coming to earth!

According to the resulting view, He came from the Luminous Heights only in order to suffer here on earth! As He had not burdened Himself with any guilt, there remained only one explanation: He must have taken the sins of others upon Himself in order to redeem these sins for them! What was left but to continue to build in that manner on the foundation thus established. And the well-known overestimation of self-worth, from which all mankind suffer, provided the nourishing power and fertile soil for this. It is the result of the great Fall of Man, which was directed against the spirit, and which I have often explained in detail. In valuating his intellect too highly man is concerned only with himself and not with his God, all of the bridges to Whom he has thus destroyed.

Only a few here and there still have a very weak pathway to the Spiritual Sphere which, however, allows them to gain but a small sense, never real knowledge. For this reason, the proper and natural thought, completely to disassociate the earthly suffering of Christ from the Divine Message as being a separate happening, occurred to no one. Nor did anyone recognize all the hostility, persecution and torture as the serious and most brutal crimes that they really were. It is a new and great wrong to euphemize them by depicting them as a necessity!

His sufferings and agonizing death on the cross certainly deserve the radiant light of highest glory since the Son of God did not shrink from such evil reception among the arrogant and vengeful people, a reception which was to be expected after the Fall of Man, but in spite of all this, He brought His so urgently needed Message of Truth to the earth for the sake of the few who were good. The act is to be valued all the more highly, because it is really only a small proportion of mankind who wish to save themselves thereby.

But it is a new sacrilege against God when the crimes mankind committed at that time are supposed to be so mitigated through false assumptions as to make it appear that men had only been the tools of a necessary fulfillment. It is because of these errors that many thinking men are so uncertain about the consequences of the action of Judas Iscariot! With full justification.

For if the death on the cross was necessary for mankind, then Judas and his betrayal provided the necessary tool, and in the spiritual sense he should not really have been punishable. The truth about the actual happening, however, removes all such conflicts, the justified emergence of which only confirms the fact that the assumption accepted in the past must really be false. Where the right view prevails there is no room for such unresolved questions, and the quite natural happening can be considered from every point of view without running into an obstacle. Man should at last have the courage to recognize the diminishment of the true nature of this crime, i.e. the euphemizing of it, as cowardice, which is only kept concealed by the cleverness of his earthbound intellect, the greatest enemy of everything that is able to rise above it, just as this fact always shows itself with every base fellow.

Or it may show as veiled self-aggrandizement which springs from the same source! Isn’t it nice to be able to imagine being valued so highly as to have a deity take on suffering and fight only to be able to offer a place of honor in the Divine Realm of Bliss to this small human being! In reality such is man’s basic view, plainly and bluntly expressed! This is the way it looks as soon as a firm hand tears away the glitter from its forms! I need hardly point out that such a view can only be the result of a most seriously restricted capacity to comprehend all non-earthly happenings. Ever and again it is one of the grave consequences of the glorification of the earthly intellect which prevents any free, broad outlook. Worship of this idol, the intellect has naturally grown steadily since the Fall of Man, until it has now developed into the earthly powerful Antichrist or, more explicitly, into all that is anti-spiritual! 

This is clearly evident today wherever one looks. This no longer requires a keen eye. And since the spiritual alone can provide the bridge to approach and to understand all that is Divine, the granting of supreme power to the earthly intellect, to which all the sciences proudly confess today, is nothing but an open declaration of war against God! Not only the sciences, but all mankind today moves under this banner! Even anyone calling himself a serious seeker carries this poison about with him. It is therefore not unnatural for the Church also to contain much of it. In the rendering and interpreting of all the words of the Savior, therefore, much has crept in which has its origin only in the earthly intellectual cleverness! This also is the serpent which seduces man ever again and of which the Bible story warns! This serpent of intellectual cleverness alone, confronts every man with the misleading decision: “Yea, that God said..?”

As long as every decision is left to the serpent, i.e., to the intellect alone, it will always, as has been rightly indicated in the Bible, choose what is hostile to or what leads away from God, that which is purely earthly and much lower, to which the intellect belongs as its highest manifestation. Thus it cannot grasp what is higher. Man has been endowed with intellect so that in every life on earth he has a counterbalance pulling downwards to balance the upward-striving pure spirituality. It was given to him for the purpose of preventing him from floating in spiritual heights only, and thereby forgetting his task on earth.

The intellect is also meant to facilitate and make his whole life on earth easier and more comfortable. But, above all, it is intended to transmit the strong upward drive toward what is sublime, pure and perfect, which is an absolutely inherent quality of the spirit, to that which is small and earthly, and to make its effect visible in the material world. It should act as the handyman of the living spirit, as its servant, not as the one to make decisions and take the lead! It is to help create the earthly or material opportunities for the carrying out of spiritual urges. The intellect is to be the tool and the servant of the spirit.

If, however, all decisions are left to the intellect alone, as is done now, then it ceases to be only a counterbalance and helper, but puts only its own weight into the scales of every decision with the only possible result being a sinking lower, on account of its downward pull. No other course is possible because the intellect belongs to the World of Matter and is firmly bound to it, whereas that which is spiritual comes from above. Instead of extending a helping hand to the spiritual, and becoming strong and great in doing so, the intellect, as soon as everything is left up to it, rejects and repudiates the stronger hand proffered by the spiritual. It cannot do otherwise and acts only in accordance with the laws of its own nature. It must be remembered, however, that the earthly intellect becomes the enemy of the spirit only when it is elevated above the latter! Not before.

For if it stands under the dominion of the spirit, as it is set up by nature in accordance with the Creative Will, it remains a faithful servant which can be appreciated as such. But if, contrary to the Laws of Nature, the intellect is given a position of authority, where it does not belong, the consequence is that it will suppress anything that might interfere with its remaining on the usurped throne. It automatically closes the doors which, if kept open, would throw light upon its deficiencies and narrow limitations. This is strictly analogous to the actions of those people, who in well-ordered circumstances and under good leadership feel their abilities grow, and who then over-estimate these abilities and overthrow the old order, and who then, because of their inability to achieve what is higher, plunge a nation into poverty and distress.

Just as such people can never realize their error and, both to themselves and before others, always seek only to blame past circumstances for their own incapacity, so will it be equally hard for the human intellect to recognize that it can never work in the place of the superior spirit without causing gravest harm and finally bringing about destruction. It is always the same picture, the same happening, repeated endlessly. Men should for once think themselves calmly and deeply into this process. Everything would then quickly become understandable to them, and it would also appear most useful. This situation also drew the veil over the great simplicity of Divine Truth for the founders of churches and religions, preventing any possibility of proper understanding.

Mankind could not have burdened themselves with anything more terrible than this voluntary limitation, this incapacity to perceive anything that lies beyond the earth, which is by far the greater part of all happenings. However, as a consequence, these happenings literally lie above their so limited horizon. Now let anyone try to fight against the impenetrability of this wall. He would very soon have to realize the truth of the poet’s words that the gods themselves fight in vain against stupidity!

This tough wall can only be penetrated by the individual himself from within, for it was built up from within. But they do not wish to do so! Therefore there is failure everywhere today. A picture of desolate confusion and much distress wherever one looks! And on top of this pile of ruins there stands, hollow and puffed up with pride, the author of all this wild confusion... “modern man” as he likes best to describe himself. The “progressive” who in reality has constantly retrogressed!

Expecting to be admired he even calls himself a “sober materialist.” — One’s head aches and disgust wells up when one experiences all this, when one sees so much that is good also go down, which, in the right environment, would have flourished. And when one sees so many others suffer under all of this, then a fervent prayer forms: “Lord. You put an end to it! We cannot do it!” Added to this are the many schisms and the ever-increasing hatred toward one another, despite the uniformity of their voluntary enslavement! Neither employer nor employee, neither capital nor lack of it are to blame,nor church or state or the different nations, but the wrong attitude of the individual alone has brought about the present state of affairs!

Even so-called seekers for the Truth are now seldom on the right road. Nine-tenths of them turn into nothing but Pharisees who look arrogantly down upon their fellow-men and criticize them, while at the same time quarrelling among themselves. Everything is wrong! First of all there must come the inevitable fulfillment of a dreadful end before some few can awaken out of their sleep.

As yet reversal is still possible. For everyone! But soon there will come a final “too late” for all time, contrary to the hopes of so many believers who favor the erroneous view that depending on the individual a more or less extended process of purification is necessary, but that in the end his path must lead back to the Light again, to eternal joy and to the bliss of the nearness of God! This thought is an agreeable consolation, but it is not correct and does not correspond to the Truth. — Let us once again calmly and clearly, but in broad outline, survey the great development of Creation and of man who belongs to it.

In so doing bear in mind the Primordial Law of Homogeneous Species which I have often explained, with all it embraces in the way of immutable and necessary consequences in every happening: Being heaviest, the World of Matter moves along like a large field in a gigantic cycle at the lowest edge of the entire Creation.

There, beginning with the primordial seed, all is in constant motion, perpetually developing, increasingly combining and forming, right up to the globes visible to us, to which the earth belongs. In this way maturing towards full blossom and towards the fruit to which our present time corresponds, then automatically decaying in the subsequent stage of over ripeness, according to the Laws of Creation, and to dissolve again back into primordial seed, which will continually receive the opportunity of entering into fresh combinations and new forms. — Such is the overall picture viewed calmly from On High.

Matter as such is nothing but the substance used to create forms or coverings, and comes to life only when it is penetrated by the non-material animistic substantiality in the sphere above it and set aglow by this bonding. This bonding of matter with non-material animistic substantiality provides the basis for further development. All animal souls are formed out of animistic substantiality. Above the two basic segments, that of matter and that of animistic substantiality, there also lies, as the highest segment of Creation, the spiritual one. This is a Creation substance by itself, as my readers already know.

From this spiritual substantiality issue the seed-germs which are intent on developing into self-conscious human spirits. Only in the field of matter can such a seed-germ of the spirit develop into a self-conscious human spirit, much the same as a corn seed in the soil of a field will grow into a ripe ear of corn. Its entry into the field of material substance, however, is not possible until the latter has reached a certain stage of development suitable to the condition of the spiritual which ranks highest in the entire Creation.

That is the time in which Creation produces the most highly developed animal body, after which further enhancement through an animal soul issuing from animistic substantiality is no longer possible. A likeness, a repetition of this great cosmic happening, is continually provided later on for example by the earthly birth of the human soul. Indeed, the entire cosmic happening is reflected in man who is the crown of Creation, and thus the highest created being. The human soul, too, can enter the child’s body developing in its mother's womb only when this body has reached a certain stage of maturity, not before. In fact it is only the requisite stage of development as such which opens the way for the soul to enter. This moment lies in the middle of pregnancy.

Thus in the great cycle of cosmic events the time of the highest development of the animal body also falls in the middle, i.e., midway in the cycle of all matter! Let the reader mark this closely. Because at that point the animistic substantiality of the animal soul had reached the highest point in the development of the physical, this condition automatically opened the way for the entrance of the spiritual standing above it! Being the lowest of its spiritual species, the spirit germ could only enter into the highest masterwork of the lower animistic substantiality, i.e., into the animal body it had developed most highly.

Due to its higher nature the spirit naturally takes over all control immediately upon entering, and can henceforth lead the body it inhabits, as well as its entire earthly environment further along the road of development, something which animistic substantiality would have been unable to accomplish. In this process the spirit itself naturally develops simultaneously. This is a cursory sketch of the activity within Creation, the exact details of which I shall give in later lectures, right down to the most minute parts. We belong to the very first part of this ring of materiality; stand first in the foreground at the top of its cycle.

There was nothing of a similar nature before us, but after us it will continue into eternity. Thus, the part to which we belong experiences all happenings for the first time, ahead of all others. The reason why the earth plays such an exceptionally important role is because, being the most mature of the gross-material bodies in the universe, all of the decisive world events have to take place upon it. Thus what we are experiencing now and what lies ahead for us is not a repetition.

It is by no means something that has ever happened in world events before! — Let us return to the first entry of the human spirit-germs into this World of Matter, i.e., the midway point in the cycle of the World of Matter. The most highly developed animals of that time, which are today erroneously described as Primeval Men, became extinct. Only those bodies among them were developed towards ennoblement into which spirit-germs had entered instead of animistic animal souls.

The spirit-germs in them matured through varied experiences, raised the animal body to the human body as we know it, and separated themselves into races and nations. – The great Fall of Man lay behind them. It was the first act involving a voluntary decision after the spirit-germs had become self-conscious, and was caused by their placing the intellect above the spirit, which in turn caused hereditary sin and very soon had the grave consequences of making the hollow fruits of the dominating intellect become clearly and easily recognizable. Hereditary sin is the one-sided development of the brain through the exaggerated activity of the intellect, which as such is continually passed on as inheritance.

I have often mentioned this fact *(Lecture Nr. 9: Hereditary Sin) and shall in due course speak about it in much greater detail. Hopefully, men will come forward who, following the direction shown them, will be able to help joyfully with the great work of enlightenment. Inexorably the great cosmic cycle continued on its course. But erring mankind brought standstill and confusion into the necessary progress. In the midst of this turmoil the Jewish people came under the well-known cruel scourge of the Egyptians.

Their tribulation and great longing for liberation hastened the maturing of their souls. Thus they surpassed all others spiritually, because this strong, non-sexual emotional upheaval enabled them to first of all look into themselves, and also look into the souls of their oppressors! After they had clearly perceived that neither anything earthly nor the keenest cleverness of the intellect could help any longer, whereby they also recognized the emptiness of their own souls, their spiritual eye learned to see more keenly, and gradually there arose at last a conception of the actual Godhead, truer and higher than any they had had before.

And their anguished prayers rose up again with much greater fervor. Through this the Jewish people became the chosen people who preceded all other peoples spiritually, because for their time they possessed the purest conception of Divinity. As far as it was possible at that time considering the existing maturity of the human soul. Please do not confuse maturity of the spirit with knowledge acquired by learning, but you must always bear in mind that being spiritual is the same as being soulful! It was the advanced spiritual maturity of the Jews at that time which enabled them to receive through Moses the Will of God clearly expressed in the form of laws, which constituted the greatest treasure and the best and most powerful support for further development.

Just as world happenings will quite naturally always concentrate only on the point of highest maturity, so they gradually came to focus at that time upon the spiritually more and more maturing human race of the Jews. — Here again though, world events must not be confused with earthly world history, which is far removed from actual world events and most often only reflects the effects of the so often wrongly applied free will of the human spirit which always casts many stones into the actual happening, thereby often producing temporary distortions and earthly confusion. The Jewish people of that time were ahead of the others in their religious cult and their world view therefore stood closest to the Truth.

The natural consequence was that in accordance with the Law of Reciprocal Action the annunciation of an incarnation out of the Light had to come only upon this road which, being the most correct one, could lead to the closest proximity of Truth. Through their greater distance from the Truth all the other roads were closed to such a possibility, because they were lost in errors. Again, in conformity with the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species, so absolutely necessary for any activity, it was not possible for a Bringer of Truth from the Light to incarnate using any road other than that road which lies closest to the Truth, and most closely resembles it.

Only this provides the necessary support and attraction, whereas erroneous views repel and directly close the road upon which the Light might come and enter. Here too The Law of Reciprocal Action and the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species must inevitably become fully effective. The Primordial Laws either open or close a road in their constant and consistent effects. At the same time this circumstance automatically offers proof that the people among whom Christ, as the great bringer of Truth was incarnated, had to have the purest conception about the Divine and its activity, that all the other religions of that time did not come as close to the Truth."

Catégorie : Enseignements | article publié le : 09 avril 2020