THE WORD “childlike” is an expression which is in most cases wrongly applied by human beings in their careless and thoughtless manner of speaking.

Hampered by indolence of the spirit, this expression is not perceived intuitively enough to be properly grasped. But he who has not grasped it in its entirety will never be able to use it aright either.

And yet it is just childlikeness that offers mankind a strong bridge for ascent to Luminous Heights, for giving every human spirit the possibility to mature, and for reaching perfection in order to live eternally in this Creation, which is the House of God the Father that He places at the disposal of men, provided … they remain guests therein who are agreeable to Him. Guests who do not cause damage in the rooms so graciously made over to them solely for their use, with a table at all times richly spread.

But how far removed is man now from the childlikeness he so needs!

Yet without it he can achieve nothing for his spirit. The spirit must possess childlikeness; for it is and remains a child of Creation, even when it has gained full maturity.

A child of Creation! In this lies the deep meaning; for the spirit must develop into a child of God. Whether it will ever achieve this depends entirely on the degree of recognition it is willing to acquire on its wanderings through all the Spheres of Matter.

But with this willingness the deed must also manifest. In the Spiritual Planes will is at the same time also deed. There will and deed are always one. However, this is only so in the Spiritual Planes, not in the Worlds of Matter. The more dense and heavy a plane of the World of Matter is, the further removed is the deed from the will.

The fact that density causes obstruction is demonstrated even by sound, which as it travels has to struggle through material substance, which obstructs it according to the nature of the density. This can be clearly observed even over shorter distances.

When a man chops wood or drives nails into the timbers of a building, the impact of his tool can be clearly seen, yet the sound of it only arrives a few seconds later. This is so noticeable that everybody must have experienced it at one time or another.

The process is similar, but still more ponderous, between the will and the deed of man on earth. The will flares up in the spirit, and is immediately deed in the spirit. But to make the will visible in the Gross Material World, the spirit also needs the physical body. Only on impulse does a physical body already act within a few seconds of the flaring up of the will. Thereby the more tedious work of the frontal brain is eliminated, which otherwise has to mediate the way of the will right up to the impression on the activity of the body.

The normal way takes rather longer. Sometimes the result is only a feeble action, or none at all; because on its extended way the volition is weakened, or altogether suppressed, by the pondering intellect.

In this connection, although not strictly relevant here, I would like to make a reference to the effects of Creation’s Law of the Attraction of Homogeneous Species, which are overlooked and yet so clearly visible also in human activity:

Human-earthly laws have been worked out by the earthly intellect, and are also carried into effect by it. For this reason schemes pondered with the intellect, thus premeditated actions, are as such more severely punished and judged as more evil than actions committed on the impulse of the moment, thus unpremeditated. In most cases these latter are treated more leniently.

In reality, there is a connection which is imperceptible to men, in the homogeneity of intellectual activity under the compulsion of the Law of Creation, for all those who unconditionally submit to the intellect. To them this is quite understandable.

Without knowing about it, the greater part of the atonement for an impulsive action is therewith assigned to the Spiritual Plane. Legislators and judges have no idea of this, because they proceed from quite different, purely intellectual principles. With deeper reflection, however, and knowledge of the active Laws of Creation, all this appears in an entirely different light.

Nevertheless, in other earthly sentences and judgements, the Living Laws of God in Creation work quite independently on their own, uninfluenced by earthly-human laws and conceptions. It will surely not occur to any serious-minded person to think that real guilt, not merely what men first designate as guilt, could also be expiated at the same time before the Laws of God through a paid penalty dictated by the earthly intellect!

Already for thousands of years these have been, as it were, two separate worlds, separated by men’s actions and thoughts, although they should only be one world in which God’s Laws alone operate.

Through such earthly punishment, atonement can only ensue if the laws and the punishments are completely in accord with God’s Laws in Creation.

Now there are two kinds of unpremeditated actions. Firstly, those already described, which should really be called impulse; and then the kind that flashes up in the frontal brain, thus not in the spirit, and belongs to the intellectual category. The latter are unpremeditated, but should not receive the same mitigation as impulse-actions.

However, to find out exactly the just difference between the two will only become possible to those human beings who know all the Laws of God in Creation and are familiar with their effects. This must be reserved for a time to come, when there will also be no more arbitrary actions among men, because they will have a spiritual maturity that lets them swing only in the Laws of God in all their deeds and thoughts.

This digression is merely to induce reflection, it did not belong to the real purpose of the lecture.

Take note, then, that in the Spiritual Planes will and deed are one, but in the Material Planes they are separated through the nature of the substance. That is why Jesus once said to men: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!” The flesh, which refers here to the gross material substance of the body, does not convert into deed everything that has already been will and deed in the spirit.

But also on earth the spirit in its gross material garment could compel its volition always to become a gross material deed, if it were not too lazy to do so. It cannot hold the body responsible for this indolence; for the body was given to each spirit only as an instrument, which it must learn to control in order to use it properly. —

Thus the spirit is a child of Creation. And it must be childlike therein if it wishes to fulfil the purpose for which it stands in Creation. The arrogance of the intellect caused the spirit to withdraw from childlikeness, because the intellect could not “understand” what it really is. As a result, however, the spirit lost its foothold in Creation, which in order to remain healthy itself must now expel it as a stranger, an intruder and a dangerous creature.

And so it will come to pass that through their wrong thoughts and actions men will dig their own graves. —

How strange it is that every man who wishes to experience the Christmas Festival in the true sense must first try to recall his childhood!

This can surely be regarded as a clear enough sign of the fact that as an adult he is quite incapable of experiencing the Christmas Festival with his intuitive perception. It is definite proof that he has lost something he possessed as a child! Why does this not make men reflect!

Again it is spiritual indolence that prevents them from serious reflection on such matters. “That is for children”, they think, “and grown-ups have simply no time for it! They have to think about more serious matters.”

More serious matters! By these more serious matters they mean only the pursuit of earthly ends, thus the work of the intellect! The intellect quickly represses memories, so as not to lose its supremacy if the intuitive perception is for once yielded to!

The greatest things could be recognised in all these apparently so trivial facts, if only the intellect would allow time for it. But it has the upper hand, and fights for it with all craftiness and cunning. That is to say, it is not the intellect that fights, but actually that which uses it as a tool and hides behind it: the Darkness!

The Darkness does not want the Light to be found in memories. And how the spirit longs to find the Light, to draw new strength from It, can be recognised by the fact that with the memories of childhood Christmas Festivals there also awakens an undefined, almost painful longing, able to move many people for a brief moment to tenderness.

If such tenderness were used at once and with all one’s strength, it could become the best soil for the awakening! But unfortunately this only sends adults into a reverie, whereby the rising power is wasted and lost. And in the reverie the opportunity also slips by without the possibility of bringing benefit, or of having been used.

Even though many a person sheds a few tears, he feels ashamed and tries to hide them, pulling himself together with a physical jerk that so often betrays unconscious defiance.

How much could people learn from all this. It is no coincidence that a tender sadness also weaves itself into the memories of childhood days. It is the subconscious sensing that something has been lost, leaving an emptiness, the inability still to perceive intuitively like a child.

But you have surely often noticed the wonderful and refreshing influence of the mere quiet presence of any person from whose eyes a childlike radiance sometimes glows.

The adult must not forget that childlike is not childish. But you do not know whence the childlike has such an effect, what it really is! And why Jesus said: “Become as little children!”

To fathom what childlike is, you must first be clear that the childlike is by no means bound up with the child itself. No doubt you yourselves know children who lack the true beautiful childlikeness! Thus there are children without childlikeness! A malicious child will never have a childlike effect, nor an unruly one who is really ill-bred!

This clearly shows that childlikeness and the child are two things independent in themselves.

That which is called childlike on earth is a branch of the effect from out of Purity! Purity in its higher, not merely earthly-human sense. The human being who lives in the ray of Divine Purity, who makes room for the ray of Purity within himself, has thereby also acquired childlikeness, whether it be still in childhood or already as an adult.

Childlikeness is the result of inner purity, or the sign that such a human being has submitted to Purity and serves It. All these are merely different modes of expression, but in reality they always amount to the same thing.

Thus only a child who is pure within itself, and an adult who cultivates purity within himself, can have a childlike effect. That is why he has a refreshing and vitalising effect, and also inspires confidence!

And wherever there is true purity, genuine love can also enter, for God’s Love works in the ray of Purity. The ray of Purity is the path It treads. It could not possibly walk on any other.

The ray of Divine Love can never find its way to him who has not absorbed the ray of Purity!

Man, however, has deprived himself of childlikeness by turning away from the Light through his one-sided intellectual thinking, to which he has sacrificed everything that might have uplifted him. Thus he has firmly chained himself with a thousand fetters to this earth, that is, to the World of Gross Matter, which will hold him in its grip until he liberates himself from it. This, however, cannot come to him through earthly death, but only through spiritual awakening.

 

CHASTITY is a concept that has been so unbelievably narrowed-down by earthmen that absolutely nothing of its real meaning is left. It has even been dragged on to a wrong course; and as the natural and inevitable consequence this distortion has brought needless oppression, and even very often untold suffering, upon many people.

Ask where you will what chastity is, and everywhere in reply you will find explained in one way or another the concept of physical virginity; in any case, this is the highest that the perception of earthmen can reach.

This proves completely the inferior way of thinking of those who subordinate themselves to the intellect, which has itself set the limits to everything earthly, because it cannot reach any further with its faculties that are born of the earthly.

How easy it would then be for man to be regarded as chaste and so create a reputation, while sunning himself in vain self-glorification. But this does not bring him one step upwards on the road to the Luminous Gardens, which as Paradise are the blissful and final goal of a human spirit.

It is of no avail to earthman if he keeps his physical body chaste and defiles his spirit, which can then never cross the thresholds that lead upwards from one step to the next.

Chastity is different from men’s idea of it, far more comprehensive and greater. It does not demand that man should go against nature; for this would be an offence against the Laws vibrating in God’s Creation, and could only have harmful results.

Chastity is the earthly concept of Purity, which is Divine. For every human spirit it is the endeavour to manifest gross-materially what is sensed as a reflection of something that really exists in the Divine Sphere. Purity is Divine, chastity its representation by the human spirit; thus a spiritual image, which can and should become evident in earthly conduct.

This should suffice as a fundamental Law for every matured human spirit in order to realise chastity. But on earth, urged on by many a selfish desire, man is inclined to imagine he possesses something which he actually does not, solely for the purpose of having his wishes fulfilled.

Selfishness takes the lead, and dulls the truly pure volition! Man will never admit this to himself, but simply allows himself to drift along. And when he can no longer persuade himself otherwise, he describes this often very obvious attempt to satisfy his questionable selfish desires as a decree of fate to which one must submit.

Therefore to guide and support him he needs still other hints which will let him experience and recognise what in truth chastity is as it lies in the Will of God, Who does not want any separation from nature on earth.

In the Divine Sphere Purity is closely united with Love! Hence if he is to derive blessing from them, man must not try to separate the two on earth either.

But on earth love is also no more than an evil caricature of what it really is. Thus unless it first undergoes a change it cannot unite with the true concept of purity.

To all those who strive to attain chastity, I herewith give a hint which provides the support that man needs on earth in order to live in such a way as rests in the Law of Creation, and as is therefore also pleasing to God:

“He who in his actions always remembers not to harm his fellow-man who reposes trust in him, not to do anything that may later oppress him, will always act in such a way as to remain spiritually unburdened, and may therefore be called truly chaste!”

These simple words, rightly understood, can fully protect and guide man through the entire Creation, and lead him upwards into the Luminous Gardens, his true home. These words are the key to all rightful activity on earth; for genuine chastity lies in them.

The Son of God Jesus expressed precisely the same in the words:

“Love thy neighbour as thyself!”

But you must beware of falling back into the old human faults, and of once more construing and partly distorting the meaning of the words so as to make them serve your own purpose, soothe you in your wrong-doing, and lull your fellow-men into carelessness or even help to mislead them.

Absorb such words as they are truly meant to be absorbed, not as appears convenient to you and suits your stubborn volition. Then for you they will be like the keenest sword in your hand, with which you can slay all Darkness if you but will. Let them become alive within you in the right way so that, filled with gratitude, you may grasp life on earth as jubilant victors!

 

LET MY Word become alive within you; for this alone can bring you that benefit which you need, enabling your spirit to ascend to the Luminous Heights of the Eternal Gardens of God.

It is of no avail to know of the Word! And if you could recite my entire Message sentence by sentence from memory, in order to teach yourselves and your fellow-men … it is of no avail unless you act accordingly, think in the sense of my Word, and adjust your whole earth-life to it as a matter of course, as something which has become an integral part of your being, which cannot be separated from you. Only then will you be able to draw from my Message the eternal values it holds for you.

“By their works ye shall know them!” This saying of Christ is primarily intended for all the readers of my Message! By their works means by their activity, that is, by their thinking and deeds in their daily life on earth! Your deeds also include your speech, not only your actions; for speaking is action, the effect of which you have hitherto under-estimated. Even your thoughts are included here.

Men are in the habit of saying that thoughts are “free”. By this they wish to imply that they cannot be held accountable on earth for their thoughts, because these are on a level which is inaccessible to human hands.

Therefore they often play with thoughts in the most careless way or, better expressed, they play in thoughts. Unfortunately often a very dangerous game, in the light-hearted illusion that they can emerge from it unharmed.

But here they err; for thoughts too belong to the World of Gross Matter, and must in all circumstances also be redeemed in it before a spirit becomes capable of swinging itself freely upwards, once it has severed the connection with its earthly body.

Therefore seek at all times to swing even with your thoughts in the sense of my Message, in such a way that you desire only what is noble, and do not lower yourselves because you imagine that nobody can see or hear it.

Thoughts, words and the visible deed all belong to the Realm of Gross Matter in this Creation!

Thoughts operate in the World of Fine Gross Matter, words in the World of Medium Gross Matter, and visible actions take form in the World of coarsest, that is, densest Gross Matter. These three kinds of your activity are gross material!

But the forms of all three are closely connected with each other, their effects are interwoven. What that implies for you, how incisive and decisive its effect often is in the course of your existence, you cannot estimate all at once.

It means nothing else than that also a thought, automatically working on according to its nature, can strengthen a homogeneous type in the World of Medium Matter, thereby producing more powerful forms; likewise then, deducing from this, it again continues to work on within this intensification, and arises in a visible active form in the coarsest World of Matter, without you yourselves seeming to be directly concerned with it.

It comes as a shock to know this, when one realises how superficial and careless these earthmen are in their thinking.

Thus without knowing it you participate in many a deed perpetrated by one or other of your fellow-men, simply because he has received the intensification in the way I have just explained to you. It became capable of driving him to the crudest perpetration of something that had hitherto slumbered within him, with which previously he had always merely toyed in his thoughts.

Thus many a person on earth very often looks with disapproval upon some action of one of his fellow-men, angrily repudiating and condemning it, and yet he is partially responsible for it before the Eternal Laws of God! In this someone who is a complete stranger to him may be involved, and it may concern a deed which he himself would never have committed in the Realm of Coarsest Matter.

Think yourselves deeply into such happenings for once, and you will then all the more understand why I call to you in my Message: “Keep the hearth of your thoughts pure, by so doing you will bring peace and be happy!”

But when you have become sufficiently strong in this respect through your own purification, far fewer crimes than hitherto, in which many have been unknowingly implicated, will be committed on earth.

The time and place of such deeds as you may become implicated in are of no importance here. Even if they occurred at the opposite end of the earth to where you live, in places where you have never set foot, of whose existence you have no knowledge whatever. Through your toying with thoughts intensifications will strike wherever they discover homogeneous types, independent of distances, nation and country.

Thus in the course of time thoughts of hate and envy may thrust themselves upon individuals, groups or whole nations, wherever they find homogeneity, impelling them to actions expressed in forms entirely different from those that first arose through your toying with thoughts.

The final result may then manifest according to the inner state of the perpetrator at the time of the deed. Thus you may have contributed to the perpetration of such horrible deeds as you yourselves have never really contemplated, and yet you are connected with them, and a part of the reaction must burden your spirit, must hang on it like a weight when it severs itself from the body.

But on the other hand you can also contribute even more powerfully to the peace and happiness of humanity, and through pure, joyful thinking can have a share in works that develop through total strangers.

From this the blessing also naturally flows back to you, and you do not realise why.

If you could but once see how the immutable Justice of God’s All-Holy Will is always fulfilled in the self-acting Laws of this Creation for every single thought you harbour, you would strive with all your might to attain purity in your thinking!

Only then will you have become such human beings as the Creator in His Work will mercifully guide to the knowledge that bestows eternal life upon them, allowing them to become helpers in Creation worthy to receive the high blessings destined for the human spirit; so that these may be joyfully and gratefully transformed and passed on to those creatures who are only able to absorb them through such a transformation by man, and who today, through the decline of the human spirit, remain wantonly cut off from them, after it had already been possible for them to come into existence in times of a better and more purely swinging humanity.

With this, however, you will have made only one sentence from my Message glow with vitality for yourselves on earth!

For you it is the most difficult one, which will then make all the rest much easier, whose fulfilment must already let miracle upon miracle arise before you in earthly visible and tangible form. —

When you have conquered yourselves in this, you will be confronted on your path with yet another danger resulting from the distortion of human thinking: You will recognise in it a power which you will wish to press all too readily into quite definite forms, so that it may serve this or that special purpose made up of selfish desires!

Already today I wish to warn you against this; for the danger can engulf you, you would perish in it, even after you have set out on the right path.

Beware of a desperate struggle to enforce this purity of thoughts; for in so doing you would already press them into definite channels, and your effort would become an illusion, would always be only artificially enforced, and could never have the great effect that it should have. Your efforts would bring harm rather than benefit, because they lack the genuineness of the free intuition. Again it would be a product of your intellectual volition, but never the work of your spirit! Against this I warn you.

Remember my Word of the Message which tells you that all true greatness can lie only in simplicity, since true greatness is simple! You may be better able to understand that simplicity which I mean here, if for the time being you use instead the human-earthly concept of being unassuming. This perhaps comes nearer to your comprehension, and you will hit upon the true meaning.

You cannot give the purity that I mean to your thoughts through your thought-volition; but the pure volition, unassuming and boundless, must well up within you from your intuitive perception, not compressed into a word which can only give rise to a limited concept. That must not be; but an all-embracing urge for the good, able to envelop your thoughts as they arise and to permeate them even before they take form, is the right thing which you need.

It is not difficult, indeed much easier than the other attempts, once you become unassuming, whereby intellectual conceit about your own abilities and your own power cannot arise. Empty yourselves of thoughts, and set free within you the urge for what is noble and good. Then you will have that foundation for thinking which comes from the volition of your spirit; and whatever arises from that you can then safely leave to the work of your intellect to carry out in the Realm of Densest Gross Matter. Nothing wrong can ever develop.

Cast off all the torment caused by thoughts, and trust instead in your spirit, which will surely find the right way if you yourselves do not wall it up. Become free in spirit, which means nothing else than let the spirit within you have its way! Then it simply cannot do other than journey towards the height; for its very nature draws it upwards with all certainty. Hitherto you have restrained it so that it could no longer unfold, thereby you had restricted its flight or bound its wings.

The foundation for the upbuilding of a new humanity, which you cannot and must not evade, rests in the one sentence: Keep the hearth of your thoughts pure!

And it is with this that man must begin! That is his first task which will make him what he must become. An example to all who strive for Light and Truth, who wish to serve the Creator gratefully through the nature of their whole being. He who fulfils this needs no further directions. He is as he should be, and will thus receive the full measure of help that awaits him in Creation and leads him upwards without interruption.

 

THE WORLD! When man uses this word he often utters it thoughtlessly, without forming a picture of what this world he speaks of is really like.

Many, however, who try to picture something definite visualise countless celestial bodies of the most varied nature and size arranged in solar systems, pursuing their courses in the Universe. They know that ever new and more celestial bodies can be seen as stronger and more far-reaching instruments are produced. The average man is then satisfied with the word “infinity”, and thereby the error of a wrong conception sets in with him.

The World is not infinite. It is the material Creation, that is, the Work of the Creator. This Work, like every work, stands beside the Creator, and as such is finite.

So-called advanced thinkers often pride themselves on having the recognition that God rests in all Creation, in every flower, every stone; that the driving forces of nature are God, thus everything that is beyond investigation, what is sensed but cannot really be grasped. An ever-active Primordial Energy, the Source of Power, Itself eternally evolving anew, the Unsubstantiate Primordial Light. They consider themselves mightily advanced in the consciousness of finding God everywhere, of encountering Him everywhere, as an all-pervading driving Power, ever working towards the one goal of further development to perfection.

But only in a certain sense is this true. What we encounter in all Creation is only His Will and thus His Spirit, His Power. He Himself stands far above Creation.

From its very inception the Material Creation was bound to the unalterable Laws of evolution and dissolution; for what we call the Laws of Nature are the Creative Will of God, which in its activity is continually forming and dissolving worlds. This Creative Will is uniform in all Creation, to which the Ethereal World and the Gross Material World belong as one.

The absolute and immutable uniformity of the Primordial Laws, thus of the Primordial Will, ordains that in the most minute process of the gross material earth the course is always exactly the same as it must be in every happening, thus also in the most stupendous events of the entire Creation, and in the creative process itself.

The strict form of the Primordial Will is plain and simple. Once it is recognised we easily discover it in everything. The complexity and incomprehensibility of many happenings lies solely in the manifold interlacing of the detours and by-paths formed by the varied volitions of men.

Thus the Work of God, the World, is as Creation subject to the Divine Laws, which are constant in all things and perfect; it also issued from them, and is therefore finite.

The artist, for example, also is in his work, merges with it, and yet personally stands beside it. The work is limited and transient, but not the talent of the artist on that account. The artist, that is, the creator of the work, can destroy his work, in which lies his volition, without himself being affected by it. Nevertheless he will still remain the artist.

We recognise and discern the artist in his work, and he becomes familiar to us without our needing to see him personally. We have his works, his volition lies in them and influences us, he confronts us in them, and yet may himself be living his own life far away from us.

The creative artist and his work faintly reflect the relation of the Creation to the Creator.

It is only the cycle of Creation, in its continuous coming into being, disintegration and re-formation, that is eternal and without end, thus infinite.

All the revelations and prophecies, too, are fulfilled within this happening. Finally the “Last Judgement” for the earth will also be fulfilled in it!

The Last, that is, the Final Judgement, comes one day for each material celestial globe, but it does not take place simultaneously in the whole of Creation.

It is a process necessary in that particular part of Creation which reaches the point in its cycle where its disintegration must set in, so that it can form itself anew on its further course.

This eternal cycle does not refer to the orbit of the earth and other stars around their suns, but to the great and mightier cycle which must in turn be followed by all the solar systems, while they in themselves also carry out their own movements separately.

Again, by reason of the consistency of the Natural Laws, the point at which disintegration of each celestial globe must begin is precisely determined. A very definite place at which the process of disintegration must develop, irrespective of the condition of the celestial globe concerned and of its inhabitants.

The cycle drives every celestial globe irresistibly towards this point, the hour of disintegration will be fulfilled without delay; as with everything in Creation this actually denotes only a transformation, the opportunity for a further development. Then the hour of the “either — or” has come for every human being. Either he is raised high towards the Light if he strives for the spiritual, or he remains chained to the World of Matter, to which he clings if out of conviction he declares that only material things are of value.

In that case, through the lawful consequence of his own volition, he is unable to rise from the World of Matter, and on the last stretch of the way he is drawn with it into disintegration. This then is spiritual death! Equivalent to effacement from the Book of Life.

This process, in itself quite natural, is also designated as eternal damnation, because he who is thus drawn along into disintegration “must cease to be personal”. It is the most dreadful thing that can befall man. He is considered as a “rejected stone”, which cannot be used for a spiritual building and must therefore be ground to dust.

This separation of spirit from matter, likewise taking place by reason of quite natural processes and Laws is the so-called “Last Judgement”, which is connected with great upheavals and transformations.

Surely everyone will readily understand that this disintegration will not take place in one earth day; for in world events a thousand years are as one day.

But we are well into the early stages of this epoch. The earth now approaches the point at which it diverges from its hitherto existing course, which must also make itself strongly felt in gross matter. Then the separation among all men, which has already been prepared for some time, but which until now has only manifested itself in “opinions and convictions”, will set in more sharply.

Every hour of an earth-life is therefore more precious than ever. He who earnestly seeks, and is willing to learn, should exert all his strength to tear himself from base thoughts, which must chain him to earthly things. Otherwise he is in danger of remaining attached to the World of Matter, and being drawn with it towards complete disintegration.

Those who strive for the Light, however, will gradually become detached from the World of Matter, and will finally be uplifted to the home of all that is spiritual.

Then the division between Light and Darkness will be finally accomplished, and the Judgement fulfilled.

It is not “the World”, that is to say all Creation, which will perish thereby, but the celestial globes will only be drawn into the disintegrating process when their course reaches the point where dissolution, and with it also the preceding separation, is due to set in.

This is accomplished through the natural effect of the Divine Laws, which have lain in Creation from its very beginnings, which brought forth Creation itself, and which also now and in the future unswervingly bear the Will of the Creator. In the eternal cycle there is a perpetual creating, sowing, ripening, harvesting and dissolving, so that, newly invigorated through the change in the combination, other forms may again evolve, speeding towards a new cycle.

In considering this cycle of Creation, one may picture a gigantic funnel or a gigantic cave, from which in an incessant stream there perpetually gushes forth primordial seed, striving in rotating movements towards fresh union and development. Exactly as science already knows and has correctly noted.

Through friction and amalgamation dense nebulae are formed, and from these again celestial globes, which through immutable Laws group themselves with absolute consistency into solar systems; and rotating individually, they must unitedly follow the great cycle which is the eternal one.

Exactly as it is in the process that is visible to the physical eye in connection with plant, animal and human bodies, where there ensue from the seed the development, forming, maturity and harvest or decay, thus entailing a change, a disintegration, leading to further development, so is it also in great world events. The gross materially visible celestial globes, surrounded as they are by a far greater ethereal environment that is therefore invisible to the physical eye, are subject to the same process in their eternal cycle, because the same Laws are active in them.

Not even the most fanatical sceptic is able to deny the existence of primordial seed, and yet it cannot be seen by any physical eye because it is of a different substance which lies in the “beyond”. Let us again simply call it ethereal.

Nor is it difficult to understand that in the natural order of things the world that first forms itself from primordial seed is equally ethereal, and not discernible with the physical eyes. Only later the coarsest precipitation further resulting from it gradually forms, dependent on the Ethereal World, the Gross Material World with its gross material bodies; and it is only that which can be observed from its minutest beginnings with the physical eyes and with all additional gross material aids.

It is no different with the covering of the real man in his spiritual nature, of whom I shall yet speak later. During his wanderings through the various worlds his garment, cloak, shell, body or instrument, no matter what one cares to call the covering, must always be of the same substance as the particular environment which he enters, so that he can make use of it as a protection and necessary aid if he wishes to be able to work directly and effectively therein.

Since the Gross Material World is dependent upon the Ethereal World, it follows that whatever happens in the Gross Material World also reacts on the Ethereal World.

This immense ethereal environment has likewise been created from the primordial seed. It takes part in the eternal cycle, and is finally also driven towards and sucked into the rear end of the aforesaid gigantic funnel, where disintegration takes place, in order to be thrust out again at the other end as primordial seed for a new cycle.

As with the action of the heart and the blood circulation, the funnel is like the heart of material creation. Thus the process of disintegration involves the whole of Creation, including the ethereal part, because everything that is material is again dissolved into primordial seed in order to form itself anew. There is nothing arbitrary in this, but everything develops out of the natural consistency of the Primordial Laws, which permit of no other course.

Hence at a certain point of the great cycle the moment arrives for all that is created, whether gross material or ethereal, when the process of disintegration is prepared independently from out of what is created, and finally breaks through.

Now this Ethereal World is the transitional dwelling-place of the earthly departed, the so-called beyond. It is closely connected with the Gross Material World, which is part of it and one with it. At the moment of death man, with his ethereal body, which he bears along with the gross material body, enters the homogeneous ethereal environment of the Gross Material World, while he leaves the gross material body behind on the latter.

Now this Ethereal World, the beyond, belonging as it does to Creation, is subject to the same Laws of continuous development and disintegration. With the setting-in of decay, a separation of the spiritual from the material again takes place in a perfectly natural way. According to man’s spiritual state in the Gross Material World as well as in the Ethereal World, the spiritual man, the real “ego”, must either move upwards or remain chained to the World of Matter.

The serious longing for Truth and Light will, by virtue of the change it works in him, make each person spiritually purer and thus more luminous, so that this condition must naturally detach him more and more from dense matter, and drive him upwards in proportion to his purity and lightness.

However, he who believes only in matter keeps himself bound to matter by his conviction, remaining chained to it, and thus cannot be driven upwards. Through a decision personally desired by each individual, a separation therefore takes place between those striving towards the Light and those connected with the Darkness, in accordance with the existing natural Laws of Spiritual Gravitation.

Thus it becomes clear that one day there will be a definite end also to the possibility of development through the purification-process in the so-called beyond for those who have departed this earth. A final decision! Men in both worlds will either be so far ennobled that they can be uplifted to the Regions of Light, or they will remain bound in their base nature through their own volition and thereby be finally hurled down into “eternal damnation”. This means that together with matter, from which they cannot detach themselves, they will be drawn towards disintegration, will themselves suffer painful disintegration, and therewith cease to be personal.

They will be scattered like chaff in the wind, crumbled to dust and thereby erased from the Golden Book of Life!

Hence this so-called “Last Judgement”, that is, the Final Judgement, is likewise a happening which through the operation of the Laws upholding Creation takes place in an absolutely natural manner, and in such a way that it could not be otherwise. Here, too, man always receives only the fruits of what he himself has willed, that is to say, what he himself brings about through his conviction.

It does not diminish the greatness of the Creator, but can only give cause to regard Him as even more sublime, to know that all that happens in Creation is strictly consistent and takes place automatically, that the direction of men’s fate is always determined by themselves alone through their wishes and volition, and that the Creator does not look on and intervene to reward or punish.

The greatness lies in the perfection of His Work, and this compels us to look upwards in reverential awe, since the greatest Love and the most incorruptible Justice must lie without distinction in the mightiest as well as in the most minute happening.

Great also is man, placed as such in Creation as master of his own destiny! Through his will he is able to lift himself out of the Work, and at the same time contribute to its higher evolution; or he can drag it down and become entangled in it so that he can no longer free himself and will continue with it towards dissolution, whether in the Gross Material World or in the Ethereal World.

Therefore strive to free yourselves from all ties arising from base feelings; for it is high time! The hour approaches when the period allotted for this will have expired! Awake in yourselves the longing for the pure, the true and the noble! —

Far above the eternal cycle of Creation there floats like a crown in the centre an “Azure Island”, the abode of the blessed, of the purified spirits, who may already dwell in the Regions of Light! This Island is separate from the World. Therefore it has no part in the cycle; but in spite of its height above the rotating Creation, it constitutes the support and the centre for the outgoing spiritual forces. It is the island that bears on its height the much-praised city with its streets of gold. Here nothing is subject any longer to change. No “Last Judgement” is to be feared any more. Those who can dwell there are “at home”.

But as the last, as the highest on this Azure Island, inaccessible to those not specially called, stands the ... Grail Castle, so often spoken of in poetry!

Encompassed by legends, the object of longing to so many, it stands there in the Light of Greatest Glory and harbours the Sacred Vessel of the Pure Love of the Almighty, the Grail!

The purest of spirits are appointed as guardians. They are bearers of Divine Love in its purest form, which is very different from what men on earth imagine it to be, although they experience it daily and hourly.

Through revelations, tidings of the Castle were brought down stage by stage the immense distance from the Azure Island through the Ethereal World, until finally, through a few deeply inspired poets, they also became known among people of the gross material earth. Passed on downwards step by step, the Truth also unintentionally suffered various misrepresentations, so that the final version could only be an increasingly dimmed reflection, which gave rise to many errors.

If now from some part of the great Creation in dire distress, suffering and ardent appeals rise to the Creator, then a Servant of the Vessel is sent forth as a bearer of this Love to intervene helpingly in the spiritual need. What floats merely as a myth and a legend in the Work of Creation then enters Creation as a living reality!

Such missions, however, do not often occur. Each time they are accompanied by incisive changes and great upheavals. Those who are thus sent bring Light and Truth to the erring, Peace to the despairing; with their message they stretch forth their hands to all who seek, offering them new courage and new strength, and guiding them through all Darkness up to the Light.

They come only for those who long for help from the Light, but not for the scoffers and the self-righteous.