THERE are people who excuse many of their faults, even to themselves, as being due to their temperament!

That is wrong! He who acts in this manner shows that he has become nothing but a slave to himself. Man is of the spirit, which remains as the highest form of all that is self-conscious in this Subsequent Creation, thereby influencing, forming and leading all else, no matter whether he acts in full awareness of it or whether he knows nothing at all about it.

This ruling or influencing in Subsequent Creation is anchored in the nature of the spirit in accordance with the Laws of Creation. Through its very existence, therefore, the human spirit works in Subsequent Creation in this manner, because it issues from the Spiritual Realm. The temperament, however, cannot be attributed to the spirit, for it is only produced by the radiations of a certain species of matter when the latter is animated and completely permeated by the animistic, which moves, warms and forms all that is of matter. This radiation emanates from the blood.

Thus it is not wrong to use the popular expression concerning certain qualities which people possess: »It runs in the blood!« In most cases they mean that it has been »inherited«. And often this is the case because gross material heredity does occur, while spiritual heredity is impossible. With that which is spiritual it is the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species which counts, the effects of which do outwardly resemble heredity in our life on earth, and can therefore easily be confused with it.

Temperament, however, comes from the World of Matter and may therefore be partly inherited, and it also remains closely connected with all that is matter. Its cause lies in animistic activity. Here again some idea of this is contained in another popular saying. The wisdom of such expressions has always originated in the natural intuitive perception of those people of sound mind whose manner of living in Creation has remained simple and undistorted. This popular saying speaks of light blood, hot blood, heavy blood, and blood which can be easily excited. All these terms are applied to the temperament with the correct perception that the blood plays the major role in these matters. In reality it is a definite radiation which develops through the type of blood composition in each case. It first of all produces an equivalent effect in the brain, which subsequently becomes strongly perceptible in the feeling of the entire body.

In accordance with the blood composition there will therefore always be a type of temperament predominating in different people which is decisive for them.

In the healthy blood of a human being are anchored all the radiations which the blood is capable of producing and consequently all the temperaments. I am always and only referring to the healthy physical body, for sickness brings confusion into the radiations.

As the physical body ages the blood composition also changes. Thus when healthy blood changes through increasing age a corresponding change of temperament occurs at the same time.

Besides advancing age in the body, however, there are still other things which have an influence on the change in blood composition, such as the characteristics of the different regions and everything pertaining to them, i.e., the climate, the radiations of the stars, different kinds of nourishment, and many other things as well. They all affect the temperaments directly because they are part of the World of Matter and therefore linked very closely with it.

In general one can distinguish between four basic temperaments in mankind — the sanguine, the melancholic, the choleric and the phlegmatic — and men themselves are described accordingly. In reality, however, there are seven temperaments and, with all the gradations, even twelve. But the principal temperaments are four in number.

In a person with an absolutely healthy blood condition they can be classified into four age periods, in each of which the composition of the blood changes. First of all there is the period of childhood, resembling the sanguine temperament, the carefree life of the moment. Then comes early manhood or womanhood, which is like the melancholic temperament of dreaming and longing. Thereafter follow the years of man’s and woman’s full estate which is the choleric temperament urging them to action. And finally comes old age, or the phlegmatic temperament of quiet reflection.

This is the normal and healthy condition in the temperate zone as distinct from the abnormal zone.

How closely all this is connected with and works in a similar way in the World of Matter you can even witness on the gross material earth in the seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter. In spring an impetuous awakening, in summer a dreamy development with an urge towards ripening, in autumn the full activity of the fruits, and in winter a quiet transition with all the gathered experiences to a new awakening!

Even nations and races bear very definite characteristics of common temperaments. This may be traced back to the part of the earth where they came into existence and where they live, to the consequent form of nutrition there, to their exposure to similar gross material radiations by the stars, and last but not least to the spiritual maturity of the entire nation. A people of sanguine temperament are still, figuratively speaking, in their childhood, or have through some circumstances retrogressed to this stage. The latter category not only comprises the sunny South Sea islanders but to a greater extent the Latin peoples. People of melancholic temperament stand before their actual deeds. The Germans and all Germanic people belong to this group. They stand at their awakening, prepared for action!

That is why the period of early manhood and womanhood is also the age of the melancholic temperament, because only as the spirit breaks through in the generative power does it find a direct connection with the species of Creation. Thus man becomes responsible for his deeds in Creation, fully responsible for every individual thought, for every word, and for every one of his actions, because all the vibrations thereof are pressing in full power, thereby penetrating the spheres of animistic species and producing forms. Thus forms arise in Subsequent Creation in accordance with the vibrations sent forth by man.

Consequently if a person is unrestrained in his temperament he thereby creates new and unhealthy forms in Creation which can never produce harmony, but which are bound to have a disturbing influence upon all that exists.

Since by virtue of his origin the human spirit stands at the highest point in Subsequent Creation, he has not only the power but also the duty to control every species different to him in Creation. In fact he cannot do otherwise, he must dominate owing to his nature!

He must now think of this every moment! With each individual thought, with each stirring of his soul, he creates ever new forms in this Subsequent Creation! Try to grasp this clearly, as you are indeed responsible for it, and everything you form in the course of your existence clings to you. What is good uplifts you, what is low must pull you down in accordance with the Law of Gravity, which takes effect irrevocably, regardless of whether you yourselves are aware of it or completely indifferent to it. It operates and works around you in a constant weaving. It is true that you are the starting point of all that must be formed or produced in this loom, yet you are unable to stop it even for one moment!

Just try to envisage this one picture clearly! It must suffice to rouse you from the trifling things for which you are often willing to sacrifice so much time and strength. You must be horrified at the frivolous manner in which you have hitherto spent your life, and stand ashamed before your Creator, Who thereby bestowed such a great gift upon you. But you have paid no attention to it, you only dabbled with this enormous power to the detriment of the Subsequent Creation entrusted to you, which you can transform into a Paradise for yourselves if at last you wish to do so.

Consider! The entire disorder which you have brought about through your ignorance of the Divine Laws is now bound to confuse and overwhelm you! It is your fault that you do not yet know these laws. Since you stand in Creation it is your most sacred duty personally to concern yourselves with them.

But instead men have mocked and sneered at the messengers who were able to indicate the way which is bound to bring recognition. Without effort, however, no prize can be won, for that is against the Law of unceasing Movement in Creation, which is a necessary factor for the maintenance and further development of everything. Movement in the spirit and of the body! Everything which does not move, or which does not move in the right way, will be ejected, because it does nothing but disturb the swinging harmony of Creation. It is ejected as being a diseased part which does not want to move along in rhythm.

I have already spoken to you about the necessity of continual movement as a law.

The spirit must dominate, no matter whether it wants to or not. It cannot do otherwise! And thus it must now also exert itself at last to dominate spiritually in full consciousness, unless it wishes to bring nothing but harm. However, it can only dominate consciously if it is familiar with and adjusts itself to all the laws resting in Creation. There is no alternative! Only then does it fill the post to which it has been appointed, and which it can never alter or rearrange.

Thus the human spirit must also stand above the temperaments, it must restrain and rule them, so that harmony will be achieved first of all in its own body and then extend beneficially to the immediate surroundings; they will radiate and manifest in forms in the entire Subsequent Creation.

Only that man who makes good use of all the four temperaments in proper sequence and at the appropriate times stands truly firm in this Creation. For he needs these temperaments so as to climb the steps of his earth-life with security and certainty and to neglect nothing which is necessary for his spiritual maturing.

Temperaments which are well controlled and properly employed are like wearing good boots on the road through material substance on earth! Pay greater attention to them than you have done so far! You cannot do without them, but neither must you yield to them, as then they become tyrants which torment you and your surroundings also, instead of serving you.

But make use of them, for they are your best companions during your life on earth! They are your friends if you control them. The child develops best when it is sanguine, therefore the composition of its blood is such as to produce the sanguine temperament. The blood composition changes at the time of increasing physical maturity and then brings with it the melancholic temperament.

This in turn is the best aid for the time of maturing! It can direct the spirit towards the Light, towards purity and loyalty, during the years when the spirit’s connection with Creation is being completed, at which time it takes the active lead and gears into the entire weaving and working which is in constant movements therein. In this way it may become the greatest helper to the human spirit in its essential being, more decisive than he is now able to imagine.

Therefore the child must be allowed the undimmed joy of the moment which is derived from the sanguine temperament and, on the other hand, the youth and maiden must be left to the healthy daydreams in which they so often indulge. He who destroys such reveries in order to make these young people conform to the sobriety of their surroundings becomes a brigand of the spirit on its way to the Light! Beware of this, for all the consequences will also fall upon you!

The choleric temperament in a clarified form is needed by every man of action! I purposely say in a clarified form, for the spirit must dominate in the years of manhood and womanhood, it must ennoble and transfigure everything, it must send forth and spread light radiations throughout the entire Creation!

In old age, however, the phlegmatic temperament gradually helps to loosen the spirit more and more from its body, to re-examine past experiences of earth-life in order to retain the lessons learned as something personal, and to prepare itself little by little in this way for the necessary step into the Ethereal World of Creation. It is thereby made easy for such a person, becoming quite a natural event which means nothing but progress, and involves no suffering in obeying the Law of this Creation.

Pay attention to the temperaments, therefore, and further them whenever you can, but always and only at their proper time and so long as they do not become tyrants through lack of restraint! He who wishes to change or suppress them destroys the best help there is for the development of earthman as willed by God. In so doing he also disturbs all healthiness, causing confusion as well as undreamt-of eccentricities, which will bring discord, envy, hatred and anger, not to mention robbery and murder. All this because the temperaments were disregarded at the essential time by the coldly-calculating intellect, and broken when they should have been developed and observed!

The temperaments are given to you by the Will of God in the Laws of Nature, which are always tended and kept fresh for you by the elemental beings in order to facilitate the course of your life on earth if you live as God wills that you should. Thank the Lord for this and joyously take up the gifts which lie ready for you everywhere in Creation! Exert yourselves in order to recognise them aright at last!

 

ALTHOUGH the Message contains everything that is needed to show the way which men must take through Creation if they wish to ascend to the Luminous Heights, yet for each individual there is a repeated anxious questioning: What shall I do really to proceed aright?

Very many persons are troubled by this intuitive perception, because man likes to make everything more complicated than it really is. He needs this curious method of making everything more difficult for himself, because he does not possess the inner strength to pursue with earnestness and zeal that which is simple. He has no longer sufficient ability to do so!

If he sees no difficulties confronting him he never succeeds in putting forth powers in order to use them, for a lack of difficulties soon makes him slothful and finally paralyses his entire activity. Therefore he pays no attention to what is simple but, as soon as he can, he even distorts everything that is simple into something which is incomprehensible, purely for the purpose of giving himself a hard time to recognise yet again in this distortion just what is right, which remains anchored only in simplicity. Thus man constantly wastes time and energy!

Man needs obstacles in order to attain to the goal; only in this way does he still gather all his strength, which he is no longer able to do when he is confronted with it in a simple way!

This at first sounds as if it were something great, yet it is only the sign of deepest weakness! Just as a weakened body needs stimulants to enable it to carry on its activity, so the human spirit, in order to attain any goal, first needs the incentive of knowing that it must overcome something and thereby exert its strength to do so! Out of this there once came into existence the so-called science, which disdains all that is simple, reaching out to the ridiculous for the sole purpose of excelling others and »shining«!

But it is not only science which has been acting in this manner over a long period, erecting with much trouble a false structure which is supposed to lend an air of greatness to something that in Creation is actually inferior, artificial, cramped and distorted, indeed often hindering!

Even from the very beginning each individual has allowed his earth-life to be built up on a wrong basis. It is much too complicated to be healthy, and only incites the indolent spirit in its conceit to distinguish itself before others. For it is this aspiration alone which is the true reason for the mutilation and confusion of all naturalness and simplicity by these human spirits. The ambition to excel, the conceit to investigate and lay down laws from a knowledge that can never really become knowledge as long as man struggles against receiving humbly and simply in devotion to God’s Magnitude — all this holds him down!

There is not a single thing that man could really create without taking it from that which has already come into existence through the Will of God! He would be unable to create anew a single grain of sand without finding all the material for it already to hand in Creation!

As yet he cannot recognise how ridiculous he appears, but the day will come when he will be unspeakably ashamed of himself and only too glad to efface the time when he imagined himself as being so great and knowing!

With tolerant indulgence, sometimes even with a sarcastic smile, man now passes by every great simplicity of the Divine Laws. He does not realise that in so doing he exposes the greatest weakness of which a human being is capable and puts himself in the lowest place among all creatures, because he alone forgot how to receive and use the gifts from Creation rightly. Man considers himself too great and too exalted to accept gratefully from his Creator all that he needs, and therefore he is no longer worthy to enjoy such mercies further!

And yet the Laws in Creation should be quite natural, simple and without confusion to every creature, because each creature came into existence through them!

But what has man made of them in his vain imaginings!

What he can produce in the way of unintelligible and unwieldy institutions you can observe for yourselves in all the human laws governing the social order! A lifetime hardly suffices to study all of them thoroughly for one country alone. Specially trained scholars are needed to interpret them aright. And these often dispute among themselves as to how and where they can be applied. This proves that even among these lawyers there is no clarity about the actual meaning.

But wherever there is room for dispute there is also no clarity. Where there is no clarity, accuracy and thus also justification are lacking!

At present every individual person would have to become a learned scholar of these laws established by men in order to go through life unscathed! What folly lies in this fact! And yet it is so! Often enough experts have been heard to observe that according to mundane law every person living on earth could be indicted and in some way found guilty, wherever this was tried! Unfortunately this is true! And yet every individual is made subject to these laws without being able to be properly informed about them!

This will also have to fall into ruin of its own accord, because it is an impossible outgrowth of a most unhealthy confusion.

The human spirit has now thoroughly proved its incompetence in these matters. An unworthy enslavement resulted from its failure to link up the earthly laws with the Primordial Laws of Creation, which it never endeavoured to study. Only if it is built upon their soil can any benefit arise, no matter what! It is the same with justice! And this again, like all basic laws, lies only in clear and great simplicity.

That which is not inherently simple will never last! The simplicity of the Divine Laws does not permit otherwise! Will man never learn to understand?

He can quite clearly recognise in the events of every era that great success could only come about where all the power was focussed upon one point! This indicates clearly enough the necessity of simplification! You should at last discover something in this! Everybody knows the danger which always threatens through a splitting up.

Observe therein the Law of the Power of every Simplification; the victorious greatness which only becomes effective in simplicity!

But you can no longer perceive the value of all that is simple! It is only in simplicity that true strength, genuine nobility, knowledge, and grace become manifest. Also in simplicity of expression and movement!

You all know about this quite well! And yet you do not learn to appreciate the actual value, and therefore you cannot grasp it, cannot transfer it to your thinking so that it can find expression in your words and in your deeds!

Man is unable to be as simple as he should learn to be in Creation. It not only comes hard to man to attain to the greatness of simplicity in his thinking and activity, but he is utterly unable to achieve it! It has already passed beyond his reach!

He therefore no longer understands the simplicity of the language and the explanations resting in the Message. In the perversity of his thinking he assumes that this only right and great way is too childlike for him, and therefore cannot contain anything of value. Thus its actual values remain closed to him because he is incapable of absorbing them. He neither sees nor recognises what is great and powerful as soon as it is clothed in simple words!

This is due to his incapacity! For simplicity and clearness the spirit must develop strength within itself while in the case of obstacles due to confusion the impulse for the development of strength approaches man from without. Unfortunately, however, the human spirit of today needs this impetus from outside in order to enable it to be at least a little astir. Therefore man cannot stand simplicity and clearness. Simplicity lulls him to sleep, it paralyses him because he is too indolent to develop of his own accord that inner strength which alone can bring him real benefit and help him to ascend.

He is unable to keep himself active with simplicity and clearness around him. His strength is no longer sufficient for this because he never developed it. It is natural that owing to this indolence he creates for himself continual obstacles. Today these obstacles serve a few people as incentives or stimulants in the sense already explained. But in order to overcome these self-created obstacles the strength arising at the sight of them, which is lamentably small, is used up and nothing remains for real progress and ascent, which could only begin after overcoming the obstacles.

When the path before them again becomes simple and clear they weary on account of this simplicity. It is not »interesting« enough, because they can no longer conceive of their personal greatness, and once more they bring about further confusion, so that what they do will »appear« or »sound« like something important!

All this happens over and over again because the human spirits of today lack real greatness of their own.

You can observe the same physically with gymnasts. During the presentation of their gymnastic exercises they develop strength and suppleness with a grace of movement which shows the control over their bodies. But only a few of all the gymnasts upon earth show continual bodily control, i.e., also in every-day life.

Their posture when sitting, speaking, standing, and also when walking is often deplorable! This proves that they develop strength only when they practise or appear in public, i.e., when they want to exhibit something. However, to control the body energetically all day long, which requires real strength and from which the body derives ten times more benefit than from a few hours of gymnastics, this strength they are unable to bring up without some impetus from outside, for this requires more, much more!

All gymnastics and special exercises could safely be abolished if man really controlled himself and his body; for then every muscle must remain in constant movement, which demands strength and will. All special exercises offer nothing but a pitiful substitute for the conscious strength of that great simplicity which lies in the naturalness of perpetual self-control.

As it is with gymnastics so it is with all things! Man does not need to perform anything extraordinary if he wanders through Creation in the right way. Everything is given to him in simplicity and everything is within him, without his having to resort to artificial assistance. In the same way as men add all kinds of possible and impossible stimulants to their nourishment in order to energise their bodies, as they use such things as smoking and intoxicating narcotics in order to whip up the nerves of their body and the brain, deluding themselves into the belief that it will enhance their thought processes, so they use confusion for their spirit in order to indulge their conceit.

That is why I am compelled again and again to formulate many words about things just to make them to some extent comprehensible to you, when in reality they should be grasped immediately in one very simple conception. I continually struggle to find new interpretations for everything that has already been said because you are incapable of accepting that which is simple and plain, both in regard to truth and to life as well as to Creation, in which your path and your entire existence also lie anchored.

You should not at all need to ask what you must or must not do! Just demolish the maze within you, which you so carefully nurse and foster, thereby creating ever new entanglements by your thoughts! You think too much, and for this reason you can think nothing real, nothing which is of benefit to you.

The Law of Almighty God for you is:

You are permitted to wander through Creation! Go in such a manner as to cause no harm to others in pursuit of your personal desires! Otherwise threads will be woven into the carpet of your paths which will hold you down and prevent you from ascending to the Luminous Heights of conscious and joyful activity in the gardens of all the Realms of your God!

That is the basic law containing everything you need to know! If you follow this nothing can happen to you. You will only be led upwards by all the threads created by your thinking, volition and actions.

That is why the Son of God once said in all simplicity: »Love thy neighbour as thyself«! Fundamentally this has exactly the same meaning!

You are allowed to wander through the Creations! This holds the command to constant movement! You must not stand still! You could not in fact do so, because the self-created threads which form your paths always drive you forward according to their nature — either upwards or straight ahead for a time or also downwards. You can never stop, even if you yourselves should wish to do so!

And during this wandering you shall not harm any others, who like you are also journeying through Creation, just to satisfy some personal desire!

It is not difficult to grasp this aright, for when your perception is calm you are quite well aware of when, where and how you harm others. All that remains for you to do in this matter is to become clear as to everything which falls into the category of desiring! However, you have already been told this clearly in the Commandments! It is not necessary for me to repeat it again!

You may enjoy everything here in Creation, you may taste of everything, but it must not bring harm to your fellow-man! Again, this only occurs if you become a slave to your desires!

But you must not get too one-sided an idea of what this desiring implies! Not only earthly property and the physical body are included, but also the desire to undermine the reputation of your fellow-man, giving way to your own weaknesses, and many other things!

Today in particular far too little attention is paid to this giving way to one’s own weaknesses, and yet it falls into the category of fulfilling one’s own desires to the detriment or suffering of your neighbour! The threads which become knotted thereby are dense and thus hold down every soul which has acted in this fashion.

Such weaknesses comprise distrust and envy, irritability, coarseness and rudeness, in a word the lack of self-control and refinement, the latter signifying nothing less than the necessary consideration for your fellow-men, which must be present if harmony is to prevail. For harmony alone furthers Creation and yourselves!

It is a close weaving which comes about through such weaknesses, forcing many to fall just because so little attention is paid to it, although it inflicts disquietude, pressure, annoyance and often even severe suffering upon your fellow-men. But in each case harm!

If men let themselves go to such an extent there immediately arises through the radiation of the slightly or greatly excited blood a strongly dimmed layer which places itself separatingly between man’s spirit and his luminous guidance! He thus immediately stands alone and also completely unprotected, which may cause such damage as proves to be irreparable.

Everyone wishing to ascend should engrave this upon his mind!

This advice is a lifebelt which may save him from drowning, from destruction. It is of the utmost importance for everybody in their earthly existence.

You may journey through Creation consciously! However, you must not harm others in order to satisfy your personal desires. Live accordingly, and you will then be happy and wander upwards into the Luminous Gardens of your God, there to help in joyful activity with the further and eternal development of this Creation!

 

I HAVE told you: »At your desire you are allowed to wander through the Creations, thereby becoming self-conscious, but in so doing you must not harm others in order to satisfy your personal desires!«

There is nothing in Creation you would not be allowed to enjoy in the sense in which Creation gives it to you, i.e., for the same purpose as that for which it is developed. However, you do not know the real purpose of so many things, and erroneously commit many excesses which are bound to bring harm instead of benefit. Thus the desire to taste, to get to know and to enjoy often increases until it becomes a propensity, which finally keeps you enchained and quickly enslaves your free volition, so that through your own selves you become servants instead of masters.

Never let yourselves be subjugated through enjoying, but take only what is necessary in life on earth for the maintenance and development of the good things entrusted to you. You hinder all development by excess, no matter whether the body or the soul is involved. Just as you hold things up through excess, so also through negligence or imperfection! You disturb the great God-willed development! Everything which you now wish to do with the best volition to adjust and compensate for such mistakes remains nothing but patchwork, leaving traces of repair which do not look nice and which can never be the same as one uniform and unpatched work.

The fulfilment of the promise that »everything must become new« does not contain the sense of remodelling, but of forming anew everything that has been distorted and poisoned by the human spirit after it has collapsed. And as there is nothing which has not yet been touched and poisoned by man in his conceit, everything must collapse in order afterwards to become new again; not, however, in accordance with men’s volition as hitherto, but according to the Will of God, which has never yet been understood by the human soul that has begun to decay through its obstinacy.

Mankind has touched everything created by the Will of God, but has not recognised it, as it should have been the task of every human spirit to do. In his presumptuous imagining that he was master man touched everything, but thereby only devalued and soiled all purity.

What does man really know of the conception of purity! What has he already made of the boundless sublimity of true purity in his atrocious pettiness! He has dimmed and debased this conception, dragging it down to his own low and dirty cravings, wherein he no longer knows the intuitive perception of his spirit but only follows the narrow limitations of his feeling, which is produced by his intellect through the retrospective effect of its thinking. But in the future the feeling shall again become pure!

Feeling in relation to the intuitive perception is what the intellect should become in relation to the spirit — a tool for activity in gross material life! Today, however, the feeling is debased and dragged down to be the implement of the intellect, and has thus become dishonoured. In the same manner as the spirit bearing the intuitive perception with which to express its working has already been forced down and fettered by the hereditary sin of intellectual domination, so also the coarser feeling produced by the intellect was simultaneously and automatically bound to triumph over the purity of the spiritual intuitive perception, suppressing the latter and cutting it off from the possibility of a wholesome working in Creation.

In the natural course of things one fault consequently brought the other in its train. Thus it is that today men also in this matter only hold lead in their hands instead of gold without realising it, and they consider this lead to be gold, although they no longer have any knowledge whatever of pure intuitive perception.

However, as the spirit must be rightly balanced and connected with the intellect, i.e., the spirit dominating and leading, and the intellect as an implement serving, preparing the way and bringing about possibilities for carrying the spiritual volition into effect in the World of Matter, so also must the intuitive perception at the same time have a leading and animating influence, while the feeling in following this lead transforms the activity into the gross material. Then at last will the feeling also very soon and speedily take on nobler forms, quickly effacing by its upward soaring the wretched moral breakdown in conceptions, which could only arise out of the domination of the present-day feeling!

If the activity of the feeling is guided by the intuitive perception, all thinking and doing is filled only with beauty, balance, and ennoblement. There is never any desiring, only the sacred wish to give! This must be taken to heart in everything, including love and marriage!

With your short-sighted and narrow-minded attitude you often consider certain persons to be pure when in reality, according to the Laws in Creation, they belong to the most depraved class of men. There are many actions which without further ado you think in your narrow-mindedness are impure, yet which radiate with purity, while many things considered pure by you are impure.

The purity of the intuitive perception uplifts many an action to heights undreamt-of by you, yet which here you still wish to soil with your scorn and mockery. For this reason first of all liberate your intuitive perception so that you may judge aright and weigh good and evil, otherwise you are bound to go astray!

Also do not think that you have »overcome« this or that within you so long as you have not been endangered, and faced the possibility of yielding to your weaknesses in the certainty that nobody will hear about it! Neither does an escape into solitude bring real benefit to anyone! This merely proves that such a person feels himself too weak or is too tired for the struggle, is perhaps even afraid of himself that he will fall at a given opportunity.

Being strong is different, it manifests in a different way! The strong one pursues his path unswervingly and unerringly amid all dangers. He cannot be upset, nor does he deviate of his own accord, but he knows and sees his high goal, the personal attainment of which is more valuable than anything else that may present itself before him.

Man must now become new in everything, new and strong within himself!

I give you some advice regarding this new activity:

»No longer cause any harm to your fellow men in order to fulfil your personal desires thereby!«

You have not yet grasped all that this contains. It is the best staff for a man’s journey through the various parts of Creation to Paradise.

In addition I give you a second piece of advice:

»Take care of the good things entrusted to you upon earth, which also include your physical body, in the right manner. Never let pleasure become a propensity, and you will then remain free from the chains holding you down!«

It should be a condition for everyone striving seriously upon earth that the addressing of a person as »Thou« (»Du« in German) must be kept strictly sacred among each other. (This refers to the German language only.) Only in exceptional cases may it be used or offered. This is different in the Ethereal World, the so-called »beyond«. There the barriers of spiritual maturity are strictly established and cannot just be transgressed. There the real homogeneous species live together in accordance with the Law of Creation, and it is solely the homogeneous species which justifies the address of »Du«!

In the Gross Material World, however, these barriers must first be established. Here the gross material earth body makes it possible for spirits of all degrees of maturity to live closely together in a way which occurs nowhere on other planes again.

Therefore establish a barrier for the future, the necessity and great value of which you probably cannot quite understand.

Already once in my Message I have pointed this out in the lecture: »The Kiss of Friendship«. Part of this is the poison-spreading habit of calling each other »Du«, and thus bursting through and transgressing one of the most necessary barriers in the World of Gross Matter. A barrier offering you support, the value of which you are not capable of measuring!

Thus it must become a command for everyone striving for the Light that he follows the habit of offering the familiar »Du« to his fellow-men sparingly. Best of all he should avoid it entirely!

If it should be offered to you reject it, except in those cases where a serious union for earth-life is intended, i.e., in marriage! Years later you will recognise the value resting in this command. A shudder always comes over me when I hear of it, for I know the corruption contained in this habit. But no man has any idea of it!

With this German »Du«, which embodies a very special conception, every soul enters into a bond capable of reaching beyond the earthly grave!

Special threads which are by no means harmless immediately link one to the other with the use of this »Du« — threads which may hold the spirits down, even those capable of ascent! For very seldom will it happen that two spirits of the same maturity in all things are thereby linked together, two which actually stand on the same step spiritually.

And wherever two link up who are unequal, the law ordains that the higher one is pulled down, but the lower one never ascends! For in Creation the higher one alone can descend to lower planes, but no spirit can ever succeed in raising itself even one step above the place where it stands!

Thus in the case of a voluntary and close union between two spirits who are unequal in their maturity the higher one must either descend or be retarded by the other, who remained backward in his maturity and hangs upon him like a weight through this tie. Not everyone possesses the strength to lead the less mature one in such a way that he comes upward to him. These are exceptions which one may not take into account. And a complete severance from a voluntary union is not easy!

This contains a fact the dreadfulness of which earthman has never yet taken into account. He frivolously passes over this unfathomable deep in earthly existence, and is hampered in every case without exception as soon as he trespasses against the law. Like a swimmer who dives into the water at places he does not know he is often hampered by invisible creepers!

The time will come when you will one day be free from this danger, to which many fall victim every day and every hour upon earth. You will become free through the knowledge! But then marriages will also be different, as well as friendships and other unions, all of which quite distinctly bear the name »binding«. Then all quarrels between friends will be ended, all spitefulness and misunderstandings will disappear. In observing this law, which until today has not been understood, everything will turn into the fullest harmony.

Until then, however, you can only be helped by the advice to be careful with the familiar »Du«! If you observe this you will be protected from great suffering! You can shorten your spiritual ascent by thousands of years! Do not forget this, even when you do not understand it today. I thereby give you the best weapon with which to avoid creepers of an ethereal nature!

You need more commandments in the World of Gross Matter than is necessary in the Ethereal Worlds, where all human spirits cannot but associate with their homogeneous species, even if this species carries many gradations and therefore also shows very many and varied forms.

In following this advice you will now become free from the heavy and unnecessary load with which mankind burden themselves ever anew.

Do not look for an example to the beyond, which is subject to simpler laws. Those in the beyond must also first learn for themselves in the new time, in the promised Millennium. They are no wiser than you yourselves and only know what is necessary for their plane. Therefore the bond will still have to be torn asunder for spiritists, where it brings nothing but harm due to misunderstandings and stupid conceit; the conceit which has already brought so many wrong interpretations of much that is valuable, thus leading the masses astray or preventing them from recognising the Truth now.

Do not let yourselves be misled, but heed my advice! It is for your help, and you could easily recognise its value even now if you looked around you more attentively! You must not perhaps break off without cause what exists. That would bring no solution! It would be an attempt at false and unhealthy transformation! But now you must act differently in these matters, no longer in a thoughtless and frivolous manner! You must build up entirely anew. What is old will fall away of itself.

And when I now also say to you:

»Man shall never live together with another whom he cannot respect!« then you have for your earth-life that which will enable you to stay free from karma. Take these principles along with you on your path!

So that you may ascend there must in addition to all this be the inner yearning for the pure and luminous Realm of God! The yearning for it carries the spirit upwards! Therefore think upon God and His Will at all times! But do not make a picture of it for yourselves! It would certainly prove wrong because the human spirit cannot grasp the conception of God. Therefore it is given to him to grasp the Will of God, for which he must seek honestly and in humility. If he has found the Will he will then recognise God therein! That is the only way to Him!

So far, however, man has not yet exerted himself in the right way to grasp the Will of God, to find It, but he has always given precedence to the human volition which originated within himself, embodying the human wishes and the instinct for self-preservation. This is not in harmony with the automatic upward swinging of all the Primordial Laws of Creation.

Therefore find the way to the true Will of God in Creation, and then you will recognise God therein!

 

THE FULFILMENT of duty has always been considered man’s greatest virtue. Among all peoples it ranked higher than everything else, higher even than life itself. It was held in such esteem that it retained first place even among the intellectuals who ultimately regarded nothing as sacred any more but their own intellect, to which they submitted like slaves.

The consciousness of the need to fulfil one’s duty remained; not even the domination of the intellect was able to upset this! However, the Darkness found a point of attack after all, and gnawed at its root. As everywhere so also here it distorted the conception. The idea of the fulfilment of duty remained, but the duties themselves were set up by the intellect and thus became earthbound, piecework and imperfect.

It is therefore only natural that a person of intuitive perception is often unable to acknowledge that the duties assigned to him are right. He comes into conflict with himself. He, too, considers the fulfilment of duty to be one of the supreme laws which a person must observe, and yet at the same time he is bound to admit to himself that in fulfilling the duties laid upon him he sometimes acts against his own convictions.

As a result of this condition forms arise not only in the inner man, who thus torments himself, but also in the Ethereal World, forms which also cause discontent and discord in others. Thus a craving for fault-finding and grumbling spreads over the widest circles without anybody being able to discover the actual cause, which cannot be recognised because the effect comes from the Ethereal World through the living forms created by a person of intuitive perception, arising out of the conflict between his urge to fulfil his duty and his intuitive perception which wills otherwise.

There must now be a change in this matter in order to redress the evil. Duty and inner conviction must always harmonise with each other. It is wrong for a person to risk his life in the fulfilment of a duty which he cannot acknowledge within himself as being right.

Each sacrifice becomes of genuine value only when conviction harmonises with duty. But if a man only risks his life in the fulfilment of duty without conviction he thereby degrades himself to the position of a mercenary who, in the service of another, fights for the sake of money, similar to the lansquenets. Fighting of that kind thus becomes murder!

If, however, someone risks his life out of conviction, he also bears within himself love for the cause for which he voluntarily resolved to fight.

And this alone has high value for him! He must do it for the sake of love, out of love for the cause! Thereby the duty he thus fulfils comes to life and is so uplifted that he places its fulfilment before everything else.

Thus the dead, rigid performance of duty automatically separates itself from the living. And only the living has spiritual value and effect! Everything else can only serve and advantage earthly and intellectual purposes. Not for any length of time either, but only temporarily, because only what is living becomes of lasting duration!

Thus the fulfilment of duty arising out of conviction becomes genuine, self-willed loyalty, and natural to the one carrying it out. He is neither desirous nor capable of acting otherwise. He cannot stumble and fall because with him loyalty is genuine, is closely connected with him, indeed it is a part of him which he is unable to lay aside.

Blind obedience and blind fulfilment of duty are therefore of as little worth as is blind belief! Both are lacking life because they lack love!

From this alone man immediately recognises the difference between a genuine sense of duty and a feeling of duty which has only been imparted to him. The one bursts forth from out of the intuitive perception, and the other is grasped by the intellect only. Therefore love and duty can never oppose each other but are one where the perception is genuine, and from this blossoms forth loyalty.

Where love is missing there is also no life, there all is dead! Christ has often pointed this out. It is inherent in the Primordial Laws of Creation, and is therefore universal without exception.

The performance of duty which voluntarily breaks forth radiantly from a human soul can never be confused with a duty carried out for the sake of earthly reward, but each can quite easily be recognised. Therefore let genuine loyalty arise within you, or hold aloof where you cannot be loyal!

Loyalty! So often praised, yet never understood! As with everything else, earthman has also deeply debased the conception of loyalty, narrowing and compressing it into rigid forms. Its greatness, freedom and beauty became cold and devoid of all expression. Its naturalness became forced!

According to present conceptions loyalty ceased to be part of the soul’s nobility and was made a quality of the character. A difference like day and night! Thus loyalty became soulless. Where it is required it has devolved into a duty. Man has thus declared it to be independent, it stands upon its own feet, all by itself, and therefore ... wrong! Loyalty, too, was twisted and distorted by the human mind!

Loyalty is not something which is independent, but only a quality of love! Of the right love, which embraces everything! To embrace everything, however, does not hold the meaning of embracing everything at once in accordance with human understanding, which is expressed in the well-known words »embracing the whole world«! To embrace everything means: To have the capacity of being directed upon everything, upon personal as well as upon impersonal matters. It is not merely bound to something specific, nor is it meant to be one-sided.

Right love does not exclude anything that is pure or kept pure, no matter whether this concerns persons or one’s native land, also such things as work or Nature. That is what is meant by embracing. And the quality of this right love is loyalty, which must no more be considered of small, earthly narrowness than is the conception of chastity.

There is no real loyalty without love, just as there is no true love without loyalty either. But the earthman of today regards fulfilment of duty as loyalty, a rigid form with which the soul does not need to vibrate. This is wrong! Loyalty is nothing but a quality of true love, which is merged with justice, but has nothing to do with being »in love«.

Loyalty rests in the vibrations of the intuitive perception of the spirit, and thus becomes a quality of the soul.

In performing his duty today a person often gives reliable service to someone whom he must inwardly despise. This, of course, cannot be described as loyalty, but remains merely the fulfilment of earthly duties which he has undertaken. It is purely an external affair, which in the reciprocal action can also bring nothing but outward benefit to the person concerned, be it improvement in his earthly means or earthly reputation.

In such cases true loyalty cannot manifest because it wants to be offered freely with love, from which it cannot be separated. Therefore loyalty cannot exert an influence of itself either!

However, if men would live on a basis of true love, as is willed by God, this condition alone would provide the impetus to alter many things among them, in fact everything! No man who is inwardly base would then be able to exist any longer, much less gain any success here upon earth. A great purification would set in immediately!

Men who are inwardly base would not enjoy earthly honours, nor would they hold office, for intellectual knowledge of itself shall not suffice to place them in authoritative positions.

Thus the fulfilment of duty would then always become an absolute pleasure and all work would become enjoyment, because all thinking and all working would be completely penetrated by true, God-willed love, and bring in its train not only an unshakable intuitive perception of justice but also loyalty, that loyalty which as a matter of course remains unchangeable in its essence, and does not consider this as a merit that must be rewarded.