FOUR words only, yet they are like a magic formula; for they bear within them the quality of instantly arousing some special intuitive perception in every human being. Seldom is this intuitive perception of the same kind. Similar to the effect music has. Exactly as with music, these four words also find their way straight to the spirit of man, his real “ego”. Naturally only to those who do not keep the spirit completely locked within them, and have thus already lost their real humanity here on earth.
On hearing these words, however, every human being will involuntarily and instantly think back to some former experience. This rises vividly before him, and with the picture also a corresponding intuitive perception.
With one it will be a yearning tenderness, a melancholy happiness, or also a silent longing impossible of fulfilment. With others, however, pride, anger, horror or hatred. Man will always think of some experience which made an exceptional impression upon him, but which he also thought long since extinguished within him.
Yet nothing has been extinguished in him, nothing lost of what he once really experienced within himself. All of it he can still call his own, as really acquired by himself, and thus imperishable. But only that which has been experienced! Nothing else can arise with these words.
Man should for once closely heed this with care and with an alert mind, then he will soon recognise what is really alive within him, and what can be designated as dead, as a soulless shell of useless memories.
Only what has so deeply affected him during his earth-life as to stamp an indelible and ineffaceable imprint on his soul serves to benefit man, by whom we must not imagine the physical body. Only such imprints have an influence on the forming of the human soul and thereby, going further, also on the advancement of the spirit for its continual development.
In reality, therefore, only that which leaves such a deep impression is experienced and thus made one’s own. All else flits ineffectively by, or at best serves to help in the development of events that are capable of calling forth such great impressions.
Happy is he who can call his own many such powerful experiences, no matter whether called forth by joy or sorrow; for the impressions they leave will one day be the most precious that a human soul takes with it on its way into the beyond. —
Purely intellectual work, such as is customary today, when properly applied serves only to facilitate physical life on earth. Closely considered, that is the actual ultimate aim of all intellectual activity! In the final analysis there is never any other result. With all erudition, irrespective of which branch of education, and also with all activities whether in public affairs or in the family, with every individual or with nations, as also finally with humanity as a whole.
But unfortunately everything has subjected itself quite unconditionally to the intellect alone, and therefore lies in heavy chains of earthly limitation of the perceptive capacity, which was naturally bound to bring in its wake disastrous consequences in every activity and happening, and will continue to do so.
To this there is only one exception on this whole earth. This exception, however, is not perhaps offered to us by the church, as many will think and indeed as it should be, but by art! Here now the intellect unquestionably takes second place. But where the intellect gains the upper hand, art is at once reduced to craftsmanship; it is immediately and quite incontestably degraded from its lofty position. This is a logical consequence which in its simple naturalness cannot possibly be otherwise. Not one exception to it can be pointed out.
Of course, the same conclusion must also be drawn in all else! Does this not make man think? Surely it must be as though scales fell from his eyes. This quite plainly indicates to the thinking and discriminating person that with everything else dominated by the intellect he can indeed obtain but one substitute, the inferior! From this fact man should recognise the place assigned by nature to the intellect, if anything that is right and of value is to arise!
So far only art is still born out of the activity of the living spirit, out of the intuitive perception. Art alone has had a natural and therefore a normal and healthy origin and development. The spirit, however, does not express itself in the intellect, but in the intuitive perceptions, and only manifests in what is generally called “deep inner feeling” (“Gemuet”). That is just what the intellectual man of today, who is so inordinately proud of himself, likes to mock and ridicule. Thus he derides what is most valuable in man, yes, the very thing that really makes man a human being!
Spirit has nothing to do with the intellect. If at length man wishes for improvement in all things he must take heed of Christ’s words: “By their works ye shall know them!” The time is at hand when this will come to pass.
Only the works of the spirit from their very origin bear life within them, and with it permanence and stability. Everything else must collapse from within when its time of blossoming is past. As soon as the fruits of it are due to appear, the barrenness will be exposed!
Just look at history! Only the work of the spirit, that is to say art, has outlived the peoples who have already collapsed through the activity of their intellect, which in itself is lifeless and cold. Their great, much-praised knowledge could not offer them any salvation from collapse. Egyptians, Greeks and Romans went this way; later also the Spaniards and the French, now the Germans — yet the works of genuine art have outlived them all! Nor can they ever perish. But no one has perceived with what strict regularity these events have recurred. No person thought of getting to the real root of this great evil.
Instead of searching for this root, and for once calling a halt to the ever-recurring decline, men have blindly submitted to it, and with laments and complaints have resigned themselves to the idea that “nothing can be changed”.
Now finally it will strike all mankind! Much misery already lies behind us, still greater is to come. And deep affliction moves through the dense ranks of those who have even now to some extent been affected by it.
Think of all the peoples who have already had to fall on reaching full bloom, the zenith of the intellect. The fruits which developed from the blossom-time were everywhere the same! Immorality, shamelessness and debauchery in various forms, inevitably followed by decline and ruin.
The complete similarity is very obvious to everyone! And also every thinking person must discover a very definite nature and consistency of the strictest Laws in this happening.
One after the other these peoples had finally to recognise that their greatness, their power and their glory were only apparent, upheld solely by force and compulsion, and not secured by an inner soundness.
If you would only open your eyes, instead of despairing! Look about you, learn from the past, and compare it with the messages that have reached you already thousands of years ago from the Divine, and you must discover the root of the devouring evil, which alone forms the obstacle to the ascent of all mankind.
Only when the evil has been thoroughly eradicated will the path to general ascent be open, not before. And this will then be lasting, because it will be animated by the living spirit, which has hitherto been impossible. —
Before going into this subject more deeply, I want to explain what spirit, as the only really living part in man, is. Spirit is not wit, and not intellect! Nor is spirit acquired knowledge. It is erroneous, therefore, to call a person “rich in spirit” because he has studied, read and observed much and knows how to converse well about it, or because his brilliance expresses itself through original ideas and intellectual wit.
Spirit is something entirely different. It is an independent consistency, coming from the world of its homogeneous species, which is different from the part to which the earth and thus the physical body belong. The spiritual world lies higher, it forms the upper and lightest part of Creation. Owing to its consistency, this spiritual part in man bears within it the task of returning to the Spiritual Realm, as soon as all the material coverings have been severed from it. The urge to do so is set free at a very definite degree of maturity, and then leads the spirit upwards to its homogeneous species, through whose power of attraction it is raised. (* Lecture: “I am the Resurrection and the Life …!”)
Spirit has nothing to do with the earthly intellect, only with the quality which is described as “deep inner feeling” (“Gemuet”). To be rich in spirit, therefore, is the same as “having deep inner feelings” (“gemuetvoll”), but not the same as being highly intellectual.
Just to discover this difference more easily, man should now make use of the expression: “Once upon a time!” That alone will help very many seekers to find clarification. If they observe themselves carefully they can recognise what has so far proved beneficial to their souls in their earth-life, or what has merely served to ease the conditions of their life and work in the earthly environment. In other words, what is of value to them not only on earth but also in the beyond, and what serves only earthly purposes but remains valueless for the beyond. The one can be taken over by man, but the other he leaves behind on his departure as belonging only here, because it can be of no further use to him. What he leaves behind, however, is but the tool for earthly events, an aid for the time on earth, nothing more.
If a tool is not used solely as such, but is valued much more highly, it obviously cannot come up to the higher demands made upon it; it is in the wrong place and will thereby naturally also produce many kinds of deficiencies, which in time will have quite disastrous consequences.
The first and foremost of these tools is the earthly intellect which, as a product of the human brain, must bear within itself the limitation to which anything physical-gross-material by its own consistency is always subject. And the product cannot possibly be different from its origin. It always remains bound to the nature of the origin. Likewise the works that develop through the product.
For the intellect this naturally results in the most limited, purely earthly comprehensive capacity, closely bound to time and space. Since it originates in the World of Gross Matter, itself inert and with no life of its own, the intellect is also without living power. This condition, of course, is likewise perpetuated in all the activities of the intellect, for which it thereby remains impossible to impart life to its works.
In this inflexible natural happening lies the key to the unhappy events during man’s life on this small earth.
We must at last learn to differentiate between the spirit and the intellect, the vital core of man and his tool! When this tool is placed above the living core, as it has hitherto been, the result will be something unsound, which even at its inception must bear within it the germ of death; and thereby the vital, the highest and most valuable part, is constricted, bound and cut off from its necessary activity, until in the inevitable collapse of the lifeless structure it rises free but incomplete from the ruins.
Instead of “once upon a time” let us now picture to ourselves the question: “What was it like in former times?” How different is the effect. The great difference is immediately perceived. The first question speaks to the intuitive perception, which is linked with the spirit. But the second question is directed to the intellect, and entirely different pictures emerge. From the outset they are limited, cold, without warmth of life, because the intellect has nothing else to give.
From the very beginning, however, mankind’s greatest guilt has lain in placing this intellect, which can only produce what is incomplete and without life, on a high pedestal, and virtually dancing around it in worship. It was given a place that should have been reserved for the spirit alone.
This action is entirely opposed to the ordinances of the Creator and thus to nature, because these are anchored in what takes place in nature. Therefore nothing can lead to a true goal either, but everything must fail at the point where the harvest is due to set in. It cannot be otherwise, but is a natural happening that is to be expected.
Only in purely technical science, in all industry, is it different. This has reached great heights through the intellect, and will even advance much further in the future! This fact, however, serves to prove the truth of my explanations. Technical science in all its aspects is and will always remain purely earthly, lifeless. Now since the intellect likewise belongs to all that is earthly it is able to develop brilliantly in the technical sciences, and can accomplish really great things. Here it stands in its right place, in its real task!
But wherever anything “living”, thus purely human, has to be considered as well, the intellect by its nature is not adequate, and must therefore fail if it is not then guided by the spirit! For spirit alone is life. Success of a specific kind can always be achieved only by the activity of the homogeneous kind. The earthly intellect will therefore never be able to do spiritual work! For this reason placing the intellect above life has become the grave offence of this mankind.
Contrary to the creative, thus wholly natural ordinance, man has therewith directly reversed his task, and has, so to speak, turned it upside down by yielding the supreme place that belongs to the living spirit to the intellect, which comes in the second and purely earthly place. Through this it is again quite natural for man now to be obliged painfully to seek from below upwards, whereby the superimposed intellect, with its limited capacity to comprehend, obstructs any broader view, instead of his being able to look down from above through the spirit.
If he wishes to awaken he is compelled first to “transpose the lights”. To put the intellect, which is now above, in the place given to it by nature, and restore the spirit to the supreme position. This necessary transposition is no longer so easy for the man of today. —
The change of order that men introduced in bygone times, so incisively directed against the Will of the Creator, thus against the Laws of Nature, was the actual “fall of man”, the consequences of which cannot be more terrible; for in due course it developed into “inherited sin”, because the elevation of the intellect to the position of sole ruler again brought in its wake the natural consequence that, in the course of time, such one-sided cultivation and activity also strengthened the brain one-sidedly, so that only the part which has to do the work of the intellect grew bigger, and the other part was bound to become stunted. Thereby the part that has become stunted through neglect can only operate today as an unreliable dream-brain, even then being still under the powerful influence of the so-called day-brain, which activates the intellect.
Thus the part of the brain which should form the bridge to the spirit, or rather the bridge from the spirit to everything earthly, is thereby paralysed; a connection is broken, or at least very much loosened, whereby man has cut off for himself all spiritual activity, and with it also the possibility of “animating”, spiritualising and inspiring his intellect.
Both parts of the brain should have been developed absolutely equally, for joint harmonious activity, like everything in the body. The spirit leading and the intellect carrying out here on earth. It is obvious that because of this all the activity of the body too, and even the body itself, can never be what it should be. For naturally what has taken place affects everything! Because the most essential factor for all earthly things is thereby missing!
It is easy to understand that the cutting off was simultaneously linked with the withdrawal and estrangement from the Divine. Indeed, there was no longer any way to It.
Finally this in turn had the disadvantage that already for thousands of years, owing to the ever-increasing hereditary factor, every child’s body that is born brings with it to the earth the frontal intellectual brain so large that, from the outset and because of this condition, each child is again readily submitted to the intellect the moment this brain develops its full activity. The gulf between the two parts of the brain has now grown so wide, and their functions so proportionately unequal, that with the majority of all mankind an improvement can no longer be achieved without catastrophe.
The intellectual man of today is no longer a normal human being, but lacks any development of the principal part of his brain that belongs to the complete human being, because he has allowed it to become stunted for thousands of years. Without exception, every intellectual has only a crippled normal brain! Therefore brain-cripples have been ruling the earth for thousands of years; they regard the normal human being as an enemy and seek to subjugate him. In their crippled condition they imagine that they accomplish a great deal, and they do not know that the normal human being is in a position to achieve ten times as much, producing works of a permanent nature which are more perfect than the present efforts! The way is open to every really serious seeker to acquire this ability!
An intellectual, however, will no longer so easily become able to grasp something that belongs to the activity of this stunted part of his brain! He is simply incapable of it, even if he should desire it; and solely because of his voluntary restriction he ridicules everything that he is unable to attain, and which owing to his really retarded, not normal brain will never at any time be understood by him either.
Just therein lies the most terrible part of the curse of this unnatural aberration. The harmonious co-operation of both parts of the human brain that absolutely belongs to a normal human being, is definitely impossible for the present-day intellectuals, who are called materialists. —
To be a materialist is really no recommendation, but evidence of a stunted brain.
Thus the unnatural brain has hitherto ruled on this earth; and finally its activity must obviously also bring about the inevitable collapse in all things, since everything, no matter what it wishes to produce, naturally contains discord and ill-health even from the very start, owing to the stunting.
Nothing of this can now be changed any more, but one must calmly let the naturally developing collapse come about. Then, however, will be the day of resurrection for the spirit, and also for a new life! The slave of the intellect, who has held the reins for thousands of years, will thus be disposed of for ever! Never again will he be able to arise, because the evidence and his own experience will finally compel him voluntarily to submit at last, ill and spiritually impoverished, to that which he was unable to grasp. Never again will he be given the opportunity to oppose the spirit, either by scoffing or by the semblance of right through imposing force, such as was also used towards the Son of God, Who had to fight against it.
Then there would still have been time to avert such misery. But now it is too late; for in the meantime the loosened connection between the two parts of the brain can no longer be bridged.
Many intellectuals will again try to ridicule the explanations in this lecture, but except for empty platitudes, they will be unable to present even one really objective counter-argument. Yet any serious seeker and thinker will have to take such blind zeal simply as fresh proof of what I have set forth herein. However hard they try, it is impossible for these people. Let us therefore regard them from now on as sick persons, who will soon be in need of help, and ... let us calmly await the time.
No struggle and no act of violence are needed to enforce the necessary progress; for the end will come of itself. Here too, through the immutable Laws of all reciprocal actions, the natural course of events will take effect quite inexorably, and also punctually. — —
Then, according to various prophecies, a “new generation” shall arise. However, this will not only be made up of the newly-born, such as are now already observed in California and also in Australia to be endowed with a “new sense”, but mainly of people already living, who in the near future will become “seeing” through the many impending events. They will then possess the same “sense” as those now newly-born; for this is nothing more than the ability to stand in the world with an open and unrestrained spirit, no longer allowing itself to be suppressed by the limitation of the intellect. Inherited sin will thereby be eliminated!
But all this has nothing to do with what has been hitherto described as “occult faculties”. It is then simply the normal man as he should be! To “become seeing” has nothing to do with “clairvoyance”, but signifies “insight”, recognition.
Men will then be in the position to observe everything impartially, which means nothing else than to assess. They will see the intellectual man as he really is, with the limitation so dangerous to himself and his environment, in which there simultaneously arise the arrogant lust for power, and the disputing that is actually part of it.
They will also see how, with strict consistency, all humanity has suffered under this yoke in one form or another for thousands of years; and how this cancerous sore, as the hereditary enemy, has always been directed against the development of the free human spirit, which is the main object in human existence! Nothing will escape them, also not the bitter certainty that affliction, all suffering, and every downfall, were bound to come about through this evil, and that there could never be any betterment because from the start all insight was ruled out owing to the limitation of the perceptive capacity.
But with this awakening all influence, all power of these intellectuals has ceased. For all time; for then begins a new and better epoch for mankind, in which the old can no longer survive.
Therewith the necessary victory of the spirit over the failing intellect, already longed for by hundreds of thousands today, will come. Many of the masses who have hitherto been led astray will then still recognise that until now they had completely misinterpreted the term “intellect”. The majority simply accepted it as an idol, without examination, just because the others also did so; and because all its adherents always knew how through force and the laws to pose as infallible, absolute rulers. That is why many do not even take the trouble to expose the real hollowness of these people, and the deficiencies it has concealed.
There are certainly also some who already for decades have been fighting against this enemy with tenacious energy and conviction, in secret and to some extent also openly, occasionally also being exposed to most bitter suffering. But they fight without knowing the real enemy! And this has naturally made success more difficult. Indeed, it has made it impossible from the outset. The warriors’ word was not well sharpened, because they were always striking at non-essential things that dented it. With these non-essentials, however, they have always struck to one side, missing the mark, wasting their own strength, and only causing disunion among themselves.
In reality there is only one enemy of mankind all along the line: The hitherto unrestricted rule of the intellect! That was the great fall of man, his most grievous guilt, which brought all evil in its wake. That became the hereditary sin, and that also is the Antichrist of whom it is proclaimed that he will raise his head. More plainly expressed: The mastery of the intellect is his tool, through which men have fallen prey to him. To him, the enemy of God, the Antichrist himself … Lucifer! (* Lecture: “The Antichrist”)
We are in the midst of this time! He dwells today in every human being, ready to ruin him; for his activity immediately brings estrangement from God as quite a natural consequence. As soon as he is allowed to rule he cuts off the spirit.
Therefore, let man be keenly on his guard. —
He must not on that account belittle his intellect, but must make it what it is, his tool; not, however, his authoritative will. Not his master!
The man of the coming generation will be able to regard past times only with disgust, horror and shame. Rather as we feel on entering an old torture chamber. There, too, we perceive the evil fruits of the cold, calculating domination of the intellect. For it is surely quite undeniable that a person possessing only a little inner feeling, and thus spiritual activity, could never have devised such atrocities! Still, on the whole it is no different today, only somewhat more camouflaged; and the miseries of the masses are just as rotten fruits as was the individual torture in olden times.
On looking back into the past, man will only be able to shake his head in sheer amazement. He will ask himself how it was possible to suffer these errors calmly for thousands of years. The answer, of course, is simple: by force! Wherever one looks it can be recognised quite clearly. Leaving aside the times of remote antiquity, we need only enter the aforementioned torture chambers which can still be seen everywhere today, and the use of which does not lie so very far back.
We shudder as we look at these old implements. What cold brutality, what bestiality do they reveal! Hardly anyone today will doubt that the most grievous crime lay in those past proceedings. Upon the criminals an even greater crime was thus perpetrated. But also many an innocent person, dragged away from family and freedom, was roughly cast into these dungeons. What lamentations, what shrieks of suffering died away here from those who, completely defenceless, were at the mercy of their tormentors. People were compelled to suffer things the contemplation of which simply fills one with horror and loathing.
Involuntarily every one asks himself whether it was really humanly possible — all that happened to these defenceless ones, and moreover under the guise of justice. Of a justice that after all once had only been obtained by force. And now again, through physical pain, confessions of guilt were forced from those under suspicion, so that they could then be murdered at leisure. Even though these confessions of guilt were only extracted under compulsion, in order to escape these insane physical tortures, yet they nevertheless satisfied the judges, because they needed them to comply with the “letter” of the law. Did these so narrow-minded ones really imagine that in this way they could also whitewash themselves before the Divine Will, and escape the inexorable working of the basic Law of Reciprocal Action?
Either all those who dared to pass judgement on others were the scum of the most hardened criminals, or it clearly showed the unhealthy limitation of the earthly intellect. There can be nothing between.
According to the Divine Laws of Creation every person in authority, every judge, no matter what office he holds here on earth, should never stand in his actions under some protection of his office, but like any other person he must alone and purely personally, unprotected, bear full responsibility himself for all he does in his office. Not only in the spiritual but also in the earthly sense. Then everyone would regard things much more seriously and carefully. And so-called “errors”, whose consequences are forever irreparable, will certainly not so easily occur again. To say nothing of the physical and psychic suffering of the victims and their relatives.
But let us further consider another aspect of this subject, the trials of so-called “witches”!
Anyone who has ever had access to the court records of such trials would wish, in an outburst of burning shame, never to be numbered among this mankind. In those days if anyone even had knowledge of healing herbs, either through practical experience or tradition, and if he used this knowledge to aid sufferers asking him for help, he was relentlessly tortured for it. Final release from these tortures only came with death at the stake, if his body had not already succumbed to these cruelties.
Even physical beauty, especially chastity that did not yield willingly, could in those days give rise to such tortures.
And then the horrors of the Inquisition! Comparatively speaking, only a few years separate us from “that time”!
Just as today we recognise this injustice, so also did the populace feel at that time. For the “intellect” had not yet limited them to such an extent, and here and there the intuitive perception, the spirit, broke through in them.
Do we not recognise today the absolute narrow-mindedness in all this? The irresponsible stupidity?
Although these things are spoken of with an air of superiority and a shrugging of the shoulders, yet fundamentally nothing has changed. The stupid presumption towards everything not understood is still exactly the same! Except that instead of these tortures men now publicly scoff at everything which, owing to their narrow-mindedness, they do not understand.
Many a person would do better to search his heart for once and think seriously about this without sparing himself. Upholders of the intellect, which means those who are not quite normal, and often even the law courts, will from the outset regard as a swindler every person who possesses the ability to know something that is concealed from others; he may be able also to see the Ethereal World with his ethereal eyes as a natural occurrence, which will very soon no longer be doubted, much less brutally opposed.
And woe unto him who does not himself know what to make of it, but naively speaks of what he has seen and heard. He must fear the consequences as did the first Christians under Nero, with his helpers always ready for murder.
Should he even possess still other abilities which can never be grasped by the out-and-out intellectuals, then he will most certainly be mercilessly hunted, slandered and ostracised unless he complies with everyone’s wishes; if at all possible he will be rendered “harmless”, as it is so charmingly expressed. Nobody has any qualms of conscience about it. Even today such a man is regarded as the free prey of anyone, and sometimes of inwardly very unclean persons. The more narrow-minded, the greater the delusion of cleverness and the propensity to conceit.
Man has learned nothing from these happenings of the olden days, with their tortures, burnings at the stake, and records of ridiculous trials! For even today anyone is still free to defile and insult with impunity all that is unusual and not understood. In this respect it is no different now from what it was then.
The proceedings of the Inquisition, which were instigated by the Church, were even worse than those of the courts of law. Here the shrieks of the tortured were drowned by pious prayers. It was a mockery of the Divine Will in Creation! The ecclesiastical representatives of those days thus proved that they had no idea of Christ’s true teaching, nor of the Godhead and Its Creative Will, Whose Laws lie irrevocably anchored and work on in Creation, the same even from the very beginning to the end of time.
God endowed the human spirit by its very nature with the free will to decide. Only through this can it mature as it should, refine itself and develop fully. Only therein lies the possibility for it to do so. However, should this free will be cut off, then this is a hindrance, if not a violent throwing back.
But in those days the Christian churches, as well as many religions, fought this Divine ordinance, opposing it with the greatest cruelty. By means of torture and finally death, they sought to compel people to pursue courses and make confessions which were against their conviction, thus against their will. Thereby they violated the Divine commandment. And not only that, but they hindered men’s spiritual progress, even throwing them back centuries.
If only a spark of real intuitive perception, thus of the spirit, had shown itself, this should and could never have happened! Therefore such barbarities were only the cold-blooded work of the intellect.
As history proves, many a Pope even permitted the use of poison and dagger to realise his purely earthly wishes and aims. That could only happen under the domination of the intellect, which in its triumphal march subjugated everything and stopped at nothing. —
And supreme over all the Will of our Creator inexorably manifested and manifests in the irrevocable march of events. On passing into the beyond every human being is divested of earthly power and its protection. Name, position, everything is left behind. Only a poor human soul passes over, there to receive and experience what it sowed. Not a single exception is possible! On its path it is led through all the wheels of the relentless reciprocal action of Divine Justice. There is no church, no state, but only individual human souls who must personally account for every error they have made!
He who acts against God’s Will, and thus commits a sin in Creation, is subject to the consequences of this transgression. It matters not who he may be and on what pretext he acted. Be it an individual under the cloak of the church or of the law ... a crime committed against body or soul is and remains a crime! Nothing can alter it, not even the semblance of justice, which is by no means always justice; for of course the laws, too, were made only by intellectuals, and therefore must be subject to earthly limitations.
Just consider the law in so many states, especially in Central and South America. The man who today presides over the government, enjoying all the honours connected with it, may even tomorrow be thrown into prison or executed as a criminal, if his opponent succeeds in seizing the reins of this government through an act of violence. Should he not be successful, then it is he who, instead of being recognised as the ruler, will be looked upon as a criminal and persecuted. And all the public officials are as willing to serve the one as the other. Even a world traveller, to remain in good standing everywhere, must change his conscience as often as he would his clothes when passing from one country to another. What in one country is considered a crime is very often permitted in another and, what is more, may even be welcomed.
This is naturally only possible in the achievements of the earthly intellect, but never where the intellect must occupy its natural place as a tool of the living spirit; for he who listens to the spirit will never neglect the Laws of God. And where these are used as the foundation there can be no flaws, no gaps, but only a uniformity that brings in its wake happiness and peace. In their basic features the expressions of the spirit can always and only be exactly the same everywhere. They will never contradict each other.
Also the arts of justice, healing and statesmanship are bound to remain merely deficient crafts where only intellect can form the foundation, and the spiritual is lacking in them. It cannot possibly be otherwise. Here naturally always starting from the true conception of “spirit”. —
Knowledge is a product, but spirit is life, the value and power of which can only be measured according to its connection with the origin of the spiritual. The closer this connection the more valuable and powerful will be the part which emanated from the origin. But the looser this connection becomes, the more distant, alien, isolated and weak must also be the emanated part, thus the human being concerned.
All these are such simple self-evident facts that it is impossible to comprehend how the erring intellectuals can pass them by over and over again as if they were blind. For what the root provides, sustains the trunk, the blossom and the fruit! But here also this hopeless self-limitation in understanding reveals itself. They have toiled to erect a wall before themselves which they can now no longer see over, much less see through.
However, with their conceited, superior and mocking smile, with their arrogance and looking down upon others less deeply enslaved, they must sometimes appear to all spiritually alive people like poor, sick fools who, in spite of all pity, must be left to their delusion, because their limited understanding even allows facts that prove the contrary to slip by without making any impressions. Every effort to bring about an improvement must simply prove as fruitless as trying to heal a sick person by hanging a new and resplendent cloak around his shoulders.
Even today materialism is past its climax, and now, failing everywhere, it must soon collapse. Not without also tearing down much that is good. Its devotees are already at the end of their ability, and will soon become confused about their work and then about themselves, without perceiving the abyss that has opened up before them. They will soon be like a flock without shepherds, one not trusting the other, each pursuing his own way, and yet still proudly looking down upon others. Not thinking matters out carefully, but merely following old habits.
With all signs of the outward semblance of their hollowness, they will end by blindly falling into the abyss. They still regard as spirit what are only the products of their own brains. But how can lifeless matter produce living spirit? They are proud of their meticulous thinking in many things, but quite unscrupulously and most irresponsibly leave gaps in the most important.
Every new step, every attempt at improvement, will ever again have to carry within it all the barrenness of the intellectual work, and thus the germ of inevitable doom.
All that I am saying here is neither prophecy nor loose prediction, but the unalterable consequence of the all-animating Creative Will, Whose Laws I explain in my lectures. He who follows with me in spirit along the paths that are clearly indicated therein must also survey and recognise the necessary end. And all the signs for it are already here.
People complain and cry out, they see with disgust how the excrescences of materialism today take on scarcely believable forms. They beg and pray for deliverance from the affliction, for improvement and recovery from the overwhelming downfall. The few who have managed to save some stirring of their inner life from the tidal wave of the incredible happenings, who have not suffocated spiritually in the general downfall that deceptively bears the name of “progress” proudly on its brow, feel like outcasts and backward people, and are also regarded and ridiculed as such by the soulless followers of modern life.
A laurel wreath to all those who had the courage to refrain from joining the masses! Who have proudly stayed behind on the steeply sloping path!
He who today still considers himself unfortunate because of this must be a sleepwalker! Open your eyes! Do you not see that everything that oppresses you is already the beginning of the sudden end of materialism, which at the moment only appears still to rule? The whole structure is already collapsing, without any assistance from those who have suffered and must still suffer under it. Intellectual mankind must now reap what for thousands of years they have produced, nourished, reared and acclaimed.
In human reckoning it is a long time, but for God’s self-acting mills in Creation a brief span. Wherever you look there is failure everywhere. It surges back and heaps itself up menacingly like a heavy rampart that will soon topple over and crash down upon its admirers, burying them beneath the ruins. It is the inexorable Law of Reciprocal Action which during this manifestation must have a terrible effect, because in spite of the many kinds of experiences gained there has never in thousands of years been any change towards higher things, but on the contrary the same wrong road has been trampled wider and wider.
Despondent ones, the time is at hand! Hold up your heads, which you have so often had to hang in shame when injustice and stupidity were able to cause you such deep suffering. Now look calmly at the opponent today who thus sought to suppress you!
Already the fine raiment worn up till now is very badly tattered. The figure in its true form is at last visible through all the rents. The exhausted product of the human brain, the intellect, which allowed itself to be enthroned as spirit, less confident but no less conceited, looks forth confounded!
Just confidently take the bandage from your eyes and look about you more keenly. Alone the perusal of newspapers which are otherwise quite good reveals all sorts of things to the clearsighted. There are desperate efforts still to cling to all the old illusions. With arrogance, and often very coarse jokes, people seek to cover up the lack of comprehension that becomes more and more evident. A person will frequently use absurd language to judge something, of which in reality he has quite obviously no shred of understanding.
Today even people with quite good abilities helplessly take refuge in questionable courses rather than confess that so many things are beyond the grasp of their own intellect, on which alone they have hitherto sought to rely. They do not sense the absurdity of their behaviour, do not see the weaknesses which they only help to increase thereby. Confused and dazzled, they will soon stand face to face with the Truth, and mournfully look back over their bankrupt life, at last recognising with shame that stupidity lay just where they thought themselves wise.
What have things already come to today? The man of muscle is the hero! Has an earnest scientist, who after decades of arduous research has discovered a serum giving protection and also help against fatal diseases year after year to hundreds of thousands, young and old, ever been able to celebrate such triumphs as a boxer, who with purely physical, crude brutality overpowers his fellow-man? Yet does this in any way benefit even one human soul? It is only earthly, all earthly, which means low in the whole Work of Creation! Entirely corresponding to the golden calf of intellectual activity. As the triumph of this so earthbound clay effigy of a monarch over narrow-minded mankind! — —
And no one sees this mad rush downwards into the gruesome abyss!
He who intuitively perceives this will still keep silent for the present, in the shameful awareness of being ridiculed in any case should he speak. It is already a wild frenzy in which, however, there is a dawning recognition of powerlessness. And with the growing awareness of that recognition people become even more rebellious, out of sheer obstinacy, out of vanity, and last but not least from fear and horror of the impending events. They simply refuse already to think of the end of this colossal error! Convulsively they cling to the proud structure built up over past millennia, which closely resembles the Tower of Babel, and which will end in the same way!
This hitherto uncurbed materialism carries within it a foreboding of death, which becomes more evident every month! —
Yet in many human souls, in all places, on the entire earth, something is astir! The radiance of the Truth is still only covered by a thin layer of old, false conceptions, which the first gust of a purification will sweep away, thus setting free the core, whose light will unite with that of so many others to unfold its cone of rays, rising like a fire of gratitude to the Realm of Pure Joy, to the Feet of the Creator.
That will be the time of the much-longed-for Millennium, which lies before us in brilliant promise as the great Star of Hope!
And with this the grievous sin of all mankind against the spirit, which has kept the spirit bound on earth through the intellect, is at last redeemed! Only that then is the right way back to what is natural, to the way of the Will of the Creator, Who desires men’s works to be great, and suffused with living intuitive perceptions! The victory of the spirit, however, will at the same time also be the victory of purest Love!
THERE is many a man who lifts up his eyes seekingly for Light and Truth. His longing is great, but very often he lacks earnest volition! More than half of the seekers are not genuine. They bring their own preconceived opinion. Should they have to change it in the slightest degree, then they would much rather reject all that is new to them, even if it contains the Truth.
Thus thousands must go under because, entangled as they are in erroneous convictions, they have restricted the freedom of movement which they need to swing themselves upward to salvation.
There are always some who imagine they have already grasped all that is right. They have no intention of subjecting themselves to a strict examination based on what they have heard and read.
I am naturally not addressing such as these!
Nor do I speak to churches and political parties, to fraternities, sects and societies, but only in all simplicity to man himself. Far be it from me to pull down what exists; for I am building up and completing the answers to questions as yet unsolved, questions that must arise in everyone as soon as he thinks just a little.
Only one basic condition is essential for every listener: Earnest seeking for the Truth. He should inwardly examine the words and let them come to life, but not heed the speaker. Otherwise he derives no benefit. All who do not strive to do this are simply wasting their time from the start.
It is incredible how naively the great majority of people cling tenaciously to their ignorance on such questions as whence they come, what they are, and whither they go!
Birth and death, the inseparable poles of all life on earth, should not be a secret to man.
There is a great deal of contradiction in the views of what constitutes the inner core of man. This is the result of the morbid self-aggrandisement of the earth-dwellers, who presumptuously boast that their inner core is Divine!
Look at humanity! Can you discover anything Divine in them? Such a foolish statement should be branded as blasphemy, because it denotes a debasement of Divinity.
Man does not carry a grain of Divinity within him!
This idea is just morbid presumption, the cause of which is simply the consciousness of being unable to understand. Where is the man who can honestly say that for him such a belief has also become conviction? Whoever examines himself seriously must deny it. He will feel distinctly that it is only a longing and a desire to harbour something Divine within him, but not a certainty! It is quite right to say that man carries within him a spark of God. But this spark of God is spirit! It is not a part of Divinity.
The term spark is a perfectly correct designation. A spark develops and flies out without taking along or bearing within it anything of the quality of the producer. It is the same here. A spark of God is not itself Divine.
Where such mistakes can already be found in regard to the origin of a being, there failure must ensue in the whole development! If I have built on a wrong foundation, then one day the whole structure must totter and fall.
For it is the origin that provides the mainstay for everyone’s whole existence and development! Anyone who seeks to reach far beyond his origin, as usually happens, reaches for something he cannot grasp, and thereby loses all support in the quite natural course of events.
If, for instance, I reach for the branch of a tree which through its material consistency is similar to my earthly body, I can gain a hold on this branch and thus swing myself up on it.
But if I reach beyond this branch, then through the different consistency of the air I can find no support, and … cannot therefore pull myself up either! Surely this is clear enough.
It is exactly the same with the inner consistency of man, called the soul, and its core, the spirit.
If this spirit wishes to have the essential support that it needs from its origin, then it must not of course seek to reach into the Divine. That would be unnatural; for the Divine lies much too far above it, and is of an entirely different consistency!
And yet in his conceit man seeks contact with that sphere to which he can never attain, and thus interrupts the natural order of things. His wrong desire is like a dam forming an obstruction between himself and his necessary supply of power from the origin. He cuts himself off from it.
Therefore away with such errors! Not until then can the human spirit develop its full power, which it still heedlessly disregards today, and become what it can and should be, lord in Creation! But mark well, only in Creation, not standing above it.
Only Divinity stands above all Creation! —
God Himself, the Origin of all being and life, is Divine, as the very word implies! Man was created by His Spirit!
Spirit is the Will of God. Now out of this Will the first Creation came into being. Do let us keep to this simple fact; it provides the possibility for a better understanding.
By way of comparison, just picture your own will. It is an act, but not part of man himself; otherwise man would in time dissolve in his many acts of will. There would be nothing whatever left of him.
It is no different with God! His Will created Paradise! But His Will is the Spirit, designated as the “Holy Spirit”. Paradise, again, was only the work of the Spirit, not part of the Spirit Itself. There is a gradation downwards in this. The Creative Holy Spirit, that is, the Living Will of God, was not absorbed in His Creation. He did not even give one part of Himself to it; but He Himself remained wholly outside Creation. The Bible already states this quite clearly and plainly with the words: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters”, not God Himself! After all, that is different. Thus man does not carry within him anything of the Holy Spirit Itself either, but only of the spirit which is a work of the Holy Spirit, an act.
Instead of concerning himself with this fact, man already exerts all his energy to form a gap here! You have only to think of the prevalent conception of the First Creation, of Paradise! It absolutely had to be on this earth. The small human intellect thereby compressed the event requiring millions of years within its own sphere, limited by space and time, imagining himself to be the centre and axis of all that happens in the world. As a result he immediately lost the way to the actual starting-point of life.
In place of this clear path of which he could no longer command a view, a substitute had to be found in his religious conceptions, if he was not to designate himself as the creator of all being and life, and thus as God. The term “faith” has given him this substitute until now! And all mankind has suffered ever since from the word “faith”! What is more, this misunderstood word, which was meant to restore all that was lost, became a cliff against which everything was wrecked!
Only the indolent one is content with faith. It is also faith which can become the butt of scoffers. And the word “faith”, wrongly interpreted, is the barrier which today obstructs the road to mankind’s progress.
Faith is not meant to be the cloak generously covering all slothful thinking, which like a sleeping-sickness gradually steals over and paralyses the spirit of man! Faith should really become conviction. Conviction however demands life, the keenest examination!
Where even one gap, one unsolved riddle remains, conviction becomes impossible. Therefore no one can have genuine faith so long as he has a question unanswered.
Even the words “blind faith” show that there is something unsound!
Faith must be alive, as Christ already once demanded, otherwise it serves no purpose. But to be alive means to bestir oneself, to weigh and also to examine! Not dumbly accepting the thoughts of others. After all, blind faith plainly means lack of understanding. What a person does not understand, however, cannot bring him spiritual benefit either, for through lack of understanding it cannot come to life within him.
But whatever he does not fully experience within never becomes his own either! And only what is his own helps him to ascend.
After all, no one can walk and go forward along a road containing great yawning clefts. Where man’s knowledge cannot take him any further he must come to a spiritual standstill. This fact is irrefutable and no doubt also easily understood. Hence he who wishes to advance spiritually should awaken!
He can never proceed on his path to the Light of Truth in his sleep! Nor with a bandage or a veil over his eyes.
The Creator wants to have His humanity seeing in Creation. To be seeing, however, means to be knowing! And knowledge does not go with blind faith. Only indolence and slothful thinking lie in such a belief, not greatness!
The privilege of being endowed with the ability to think also brings man the duty to investigate!
In order to avoid all this, man out of laziness has simply so belittled the great Creator as to ascribe to Him arbitrary actions in proof of His Omnipotence.
He who will but think a little must again find a great error therein. An arbitrary act implies the possibility of diverting the existing Laws of Nature. However, where such a thing is possible, perfection is lacking. For where there is perfection there can be no alteration. Thus a large part of humanity erroneously represents the Omnipotence of God in such a way that those who think more deeply would have to regard it as a proof of imperfection. And therein lies the root of much evil.
Give God the honour of perfection! Then you will find the key to the unsolved riddles of all life. —
It shall be my endeavour to bring serious thinkers to this point. A sigh of relief shall go through the circles of all seekers for the Truth. Finally they will joyfully recognise that there is no mystery, no gap in the entire course of world events. And then ... they will see clearly before them the road to ascent. They only need to follow it. —
In all Creation there is no justification whatever for mysticism! There is no room for it, because everything should lie clearly and without gaps before the human spirit, right back to its origin. Only what is above that will have to remain a most sacred mystery to every human spirit. Therefore it will never be able to grasp what is Divine. Not with the best will and the greatest knowledge. But in this inability to grasp what is Divine lies the most natural thing for man that one can think of; for as everyone knows, it is not possible for anything to go beyond the composition of its origin. Nor for the spirit of man either! A boundary is always set by the difference in composition. And the Divine is of an entirely different consistency from the spiritual, in which man originates. (* A still more extensive breakdown in regard to this will be given in later lectures.)
The animal, for instance, can never become a human being, however highly developed its soul may be. From its animistic substance there cannot possibly blossom forth the spiritual which brings forth the human spirit. In the composition of all animistic substance the spiritual basic species is missing. Man, who has issued from the spiritual part of Creation, can in turn never become Divine either, because the spiritual has not the nature of Divine substance. The human spirit may well be able to develop to the highest degree of perfection, but must nevertheless always remain spiritual. It can never go above itself into the Divine. Here again the different consistency naturally forms the ever impassable limitation upwards. The World of Matter does not come into it at all here since it has no life of its own, but serves as a covering, motivated and formed by the spiritual and the animistic.
The mighty field of the spirit extends through all Creation. Therefore man can, should and must fully grasp and recognise Creation! And through his knowledge he will rule therein. But rightly understood, to rule, however severely, simply means to serve! —
At no point in the entire Creation, up to the highest spiritual, is there any deviation from the natural happening! This fact alone surely makes all things much more familiar to everyone. The unhealthy and secret fear, the reluctance to face so many things as yet unknown, thus fall away of their own accord. With naturalness a fresh breeze blows through the sultry atmosphere formed by the morbid imaginings of those who like to cause a great stir. Their sickly fantastic creations, which terrify the weak and are mocked by the strong, have an absurd and childishly foolish effect on the sight that is becoming clear, and that finally, joyful and happy, takes in the glorious naturalness of every happening, which always moves only in simple straight lines that can be clearly recognised.
It runs through everything uniformly, in the strictest regularity and order. And this makes it easier for every seeker to obtain the broad, free view right to the point of his actual origin!
For this he needs neither painstaking research nor imagination. The main thing is for him to stand aloof from all those who in their muddled secretiveness try to make a scanty part-knowledge appear greater.
It all lies so simply before men that owing to the very simplicity they often do not come to recognition, because from the outset they assume that the great work of Creation must be much more difficult and intricate.
Here in spite of the best volition thousands stumble, they raise their eyes seekingly to the heavens, not realising that without effort they have only to look before and around them. They will then see that through their existence on earth they are already standing on the right road, and need only go calmly ahead! Without haste and without effort, but with open eyes and a free, unprejudiced mind! Man must at last learn that true greatness lies only in the most simple and natural happening. That greatness implies this simplicity.
So is it in Creation, so also in himself, who belongs to Creation as a part of it!
Only simple thinking and intuitive perceiving can give him clarity! Such simplicity as children still possess! Calm reflection will show him that, in the ability to comprehend, simplicity is identical with clarity and also with naturalness! The one simply cannot be thought of without the others. They form a triad that expresses one concept! Whoever makes it the foundation-stone of his search will soon break through the nebulous confusion. Everything that has been added artificially will then collapse into nothingness.
Man will realise that the natural order of events may nowhere be eliminated, and that at no place is it interrupted! And therein the greatness of God also reveals itself! The unchangeable vitality of the self-acting Creative Will! For the Laws of Nature are the inexorable Laws of God, continually visible to all men, appealing to them, testifying to the Greatness of the Creator, of an unshakable regularity, admitting of no exception! Of no exception! For a grain of oats can again bring forth only oats, likewise a grain of wheat only wheat, and so forth.
So is it also in that first Creation, which as the Creator’s own Work stands nearest to His Perfection. There the fundamental Laws are anchored in such a way that, driven by the vitality of the Will, they were bound in the most natural order of events to result in the coming into being of the further Creation, right down finally to these celestial globes. Only becoming coarser the further Creation draws away in the process of development from the Perfection of the origin. —
Let us first of all just consider Creation.
Imagine that all life therein, no matter in what part it is found, is of two kinds only. The one kind is self-conscious and the other unconscious of itself. It is of the utmost value to observe these two different categories! This is connected with the “origin of man”. The differences also give the stimulus to further development, to the apparent struggle. The unconscious is the basis of all the conscious, but its composition is of exactly the same nature. To become conscious is progress and development for the unconscious, which through association with the conscious is continually being stimulated also to attain to this consciousness.
In the process of developing downwards, the first Creation itself brought successively three great basic divisions: As uppermost and highest is the spiritual, the Primordial Creation, followed by the denser and thus also gradually heavier Sphere of Animistic Substance. Lastly as the lowest, and because of its greatest density the heaviest, still follows the great Realm of Matter which, severing itself from Primordial Creation, has gradually sunk down! Through this there finally remained as the uppermost only the Primordial Spiritual Substance, because in its pure nature it embodies what is lightest and most luminous. It is the oft-mentioned Paradise, the crown of all Creation.
With the sinking down of that which becomes denser we already touch upon the Law of Gravitation, which is not only anchored in matter, but has an effect in all Creation, from the so-called Paradise down to us.
The Law of Gravitation is of such decisive importance that everyone should hammer it into his mind; for it is the main lever in the whole evolution and process of development of the human spirit.
I have already said that this gravitation applies not only to earthly consistencies, but also works uniformly in those parts of Creation which earthmen can no longer see, and which they therefore simply call the beyond.
For a better understanding I must still divide the World of Matter into two sections. Into ethereal matter and gross matter. Ethereal matter is that matter which cannot become visible to the physical eye, owing to its different nature. And yet it still is matter.
The so-called “beyond” must not be confused with the longed-for Paradise, which is purely spiritual. The spiritual must not be taken as something “to do with thoughts”, but the spiritual is a consistency, just as the animistic and the material are each a consistency. Therefore now this ethereal matter is simply called the “beyond”, because it lies beyond earthly vision. Gross matter, however, is this side, all that is earthly, which on account of its similar species becomes visible to our gross material eyes.
Man should get rid of the habit of regarding things that are invisible to him as also incomprehensible and unnatural. Everything is natural, even the so-called beyond, and Paradise, which is still an immense distance from it.
Now just as here our physical body is sensitive to its surroundings of a homogeneous nature, which it can therefore see, hear and feel, so is it exactly the same in those parts of Creation whose consistency is not like ours. The ethereal man in the so-called beyond feels, hears and sees only his homogeneous ethereal environment; the higher spiritual man again can only feel his spiritual environment.
Thus it happens that many an earth-dweller now and then already sees and hears also the Ethereal World with his ethereal body, which he bears within, before the separation from the gross material earthly body takes place through physical death. There is absolutely nothing unnatural in this.
Side by side and co-operating with the Law of Gravitation is also the no less valuable Law of Homogeneous Species.
I have already touched upon this in saying that one species can only recognise the same species. The proverbs: “Birds of a feather flock together”, and “like father, like son” seem to have been sensed from the Primordial Law. Together with the Law of Gravitation it swings throughout Creation.
In addition to those already mentioned there is a third Primordial Law in Creation: The Law of Reciprocal Action. The effect of this Law is that man must reap what he has once sown, unconditionally. He cannot reap wheat where he sowed rye, nor clover where he sowed thistles. In the Ethereal World it is exactly the same. In the end he will not be able to reap kindness where he felt hatred, nor joy where he nourished envy!
These three fundamental Laws form the corner-stones of the Divine Will! They alone automatically work out reward or punishment for a human spirit, with inexorable justice! So incorruptibly, in the most wonderful delicate gradations, that the thought of a slightest injustice in the gigantic world happening becomes impossible.
The effect of these simple Laws brings every human spirit exactly to the place where, according to his inner attitude, he does belong. Any error here is impossible, because the manifestation of these Laws can only be set in motion by the inmost condition of a human being, which will, however, set it in motion without fail in every case! Thus to bring this about the spiritual power of the intuitive perceptions which is in man is needed as the lever! Nothing else has any effect. For this reason only the real volition, man’s intuitive perception, is decisive for what develops for him in the world that is invisible to him, and which he must enter after his earthly death.
There neither pretence nor self-deception will help him. He must then unconditionally reap what he has sown through his volition! What is more, exactly according to the strength or weakness of his volition, it sets in motion to a greater or lesser degree the homogeneous currents of the other worlds, no matter whether they are hatred, envy or love. An absolutely natural process, of the greatest simplicity, and yet with the inexorable effect of adamantine justice!
He who tries to go seriously and deeply into these happenings in the beyond will recognise what incorruptible justice lies in this automatic working, and will see in this alone the inconceivable Greatness of God. He does not need to interfere, after having given His Will as Laws, thus perfect, into Creation.
He who in the course of his ascent again enters the Spiritual Realm is purified; for he had first to pass through the self-acting mills of the Divine Will. No other road leads to the proximity of God. And how these mills work on the human spirit depends on its former inner life, its own volition. They can carry it blissfully into the Luminous Height; or on the other hand they can also pull it agonisingly down into the night of horror, indeed even drag it to complete destruction. —
It should be realised that at the time of its earthly birth the human spirit which has matured to the point of incarnation already wears an ethereal cloak or body, which it has needed on its journey through the Ethereal World. During its earthly existence this also remains with it as a connecting link to the physical body. Now the Law of Gravitation always exerts its main effect upon the densest and coarsest part. Thus during life on earth upon the physical body. But when this dies and falls away, the ethereal body again becomes free, and in this moment, being unprotected and now the coarsest part, is subject to this Law of Gravitation.
When it is said that the spirit forms its body, that is true as regards the ethereal body. The inner quality of man, his desires and his actual volition lay the foundation for it.
In the volition lies the power to form ethereal matter. Through the urge for what is base or for mere earthly pleasures the ethereal body becomes dense, and therewith heavy and dark, because the fulfilment of such desires lies in the World of Gross Matter. Thereby man binds himself to what is coarse and earthly. His desires draw along the ethereal body, that is to say, it is formed so densely that its consistency resembles as nearly as possible that of the earthly body. This alone holds the prospect of being able to participate in earthly pleasures or passions, as soon as the physical body has fallen away. Whoever strives after such things must sink through the Law of Gravitation.
But it is different with those people whose minds are mainly directed towards higher and nobler things. Here the volition automatically makes the ethereal body lighter and thus also more luminous, so that it can draw near to what to these human beings is the goal of their earnest aspirations! That is, to the purity of the Luminous Height.
Expressed in other words: Through the prevailing goal of the human spirit, the ethereal body in earthman is at the same time so equipped that after the death of the physical body it can strive towards — this goal, whatever kind it may be. Here the spirit really forms the body; for its volition, being spiritual, also bears within it the power to make use of ethereal substance. The spirit can never evade this natural process. It happens with every volition, no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for the spirit. And these forms remain clinging to it as long as the spirit nourishes them through its volition and intuition. They advance or retard the spirit according to their nature, which is subject to the Law of Gravitation.
Yet the moment the spirit changes its volition and intuition new forms will thereby immediately arise, whereas the old ones, no longer receiving nourishment because of this change, must fade and dissolve. In this way man also changes his fate.
Now as soon as the earthly anchorage falls away through the death of the physical body, the ethereal body which is thereby released either sinks down or floats up like a cork in the Ethereal World, which is called the “beyond”. Through the Law of Gravitation it will be held fast exactly in that place which corresponds with its own weight; for then it cannot move further, either up or down. Here it will naturally also find all homogeneous species or all like-minded people; for like nature implies like weight, and like weight of course like nature. According to how man was himself, so will he have to suffer or be able to rejoice among those of like nature, until he changes anew inwardly, and with him his ethereal body, which under the effect of the altered weight must either lead him further upwards or downwards.
Therefore man can neither complain nor need he give thanks; for if he is raised towards the Light it is his own consistency that inevitably causes him to be raised; if he falls into the Darkness, it is again his condition that forces him to do so.
But every human being has reason to glorify and praise the Creator for the perfection that lies in the working of these three Laws. The human spirit is thereby unreservedly made the absolute master of its own fate! For its true volition, thus the genuine inner condition, must cause it either to rise or to sink.
If you try to get a true picture of the effect of these Laws, singly and working together, you will find that they contain reward and punishment, mercy or also damnation, minutely weighed for each one according to his inner state. It is the most simple process, and shows the lifeline provided by every serious volition of a human being, which can never break and never fail. It is the greatness of such simplicity that forcibly drives him who recognises to his knees before the infinite Sublimity of the Creator!
In every happening and in all my explanations we always again and again meet clearly and distinctly the effect of these simple Laws, whose wonderful interaction I must yet describe especially.
Once man knows this interaction he thus also has the step-ladder to the Luminous Realm of the Spirit, to Paradise. But he then also sees the road that leads down to the Darkness!
He need not even tread these steps himself, but the automatic mechanism raises him on high or drags him down, entirely according to how he adjusts the mechanism for himself through his inner life.
Which way he wishes to let himself be borne along is always left to his decision.
Man must not allow himself to be confused by scoffers.
Rightly viewed, doubt and derision are nothing but the expression of wishes. Quite unconsciously every doubter expresses what he wishes for himself, thus exposing his inner self to the searching glance. For denial and defence also harbour deeply hidden wishes which can be easily recognised. It is sad, or even revolting, to see what negligence or poverty of mind is thus sometimes revealed, because just through this a man often drags himself inwardly down below the level of any ignorant animal. One should have compassion for such people without, however, being indulgent; for indulgence would indeed mean cultivating indolence in serious investigation. He who seeks earnestly must become sparing with indulgence; otherwise he will ultimately harm himself without helping the other thereby.
But with growing recognition man will jubilantly stand before the wonder of such a Creation, and consciously let himself be borne aloft to the Luminous Heights which he may call his home!
AS A GREAT grace for your maturing in the coarse World of Matter, the ability to form words has been bestowed upon you human beings by the Creator! You have never recognised the true value of this sublime gift, because you did not trouble yourselves about it, and treated it carelessly. Now you must suffer bitterly under all the consequences of your wrongdoing.
You stand in this affliction, and do not yet know the causes which bring such suffering in their wake.
No one may trifle with gifts of the Almighty without harming himself; such is the Law which rests and works in Creation, and which can never be diverted.
And when you consider that this being able to speak, thus your ability to form words, which anchor your volition in the World of Gross Matter through speaking, is an especially high gift of your Creator, then you will also know that it involves obligations for you, and that an immense responsibility arises therefrom; for it is with the language, and through it, that you are to work in Creation!
The words you form, the sentences, shape your outward fate on this earth. They are like seed in a garden which you build around you; for each human word is part of the most vital thing that you can weave for yourselves in this Creation.
Today I give you this, with an admonition, to think it over: there is a releasing quality in every word, because all words are firmly anchored in the Primordial Laws of Creation!
Every word shaped by man has come into being under the pressure of higher Laws and, according to its application, must manifest formingly in a very definite way!
The application lies in man’s hands according to his free volition; however he is unable to control the effect, which is strictly and justly governed in conformity with the Holy Law by a power hitherto unknown to him.
Therefore in the final reckoning woe will now fall upon every human being who has abused the mysterious working of the word!
But where is the man who has not yet sinned in this respect! For thousands of years the whole earthly race has been deeply entangled in this guilt. What harm has already been spread throughout this earth by the wrong application of this gift of being permitted to speak!
Through ruinous, thoughtless and idle talk all men have sown poison. The seed has duly sprung up, the plant has blossomed forth, and now bears the fruit which you must harvest, whether you like it or not; for it is all the consequences of your actions that are now thrown into your lap!
That this poison must bring forth the most repulsive fruits will not surprise anyone who knows the Laws in Creation, which do not conform to the ideas of men, but serenely pursue their great course, irresistibly, without deviation, from the primordial beginning, and also unchanged unto all eternity.
Look around you, men, clearly and without bias: You must easily recognise the self-acting Divine Laws of the Most Holy Will, because you do have before you the fruits of your sowing! Wherever you look you will find that today high-sounding talk predominates and leads in everything. This seed had to come swiftly to such flower, to reveal now in the ripening its true kernel, whereby it will then collapse as useless.
It had to ripen under the increased pressure from the Light, and must shoot up as if in a hothouse; so that, losing every support through its hollowness, it will fall and bury all who with light-hearted confidence or selfish hope imagined themselves safe under its protection.
The time of harvest has already begun! Therewith all the consequences of wrong speaking now fall back upon the individual, as upon the entire masses who encouraged such talk.
It is quite natural, and shows the strict consistency of the effects of the Divine Laws, that now on the eve of the harvest the greatest talkers must in the end also gain the strongest influence and greatest power, as culmination and fruit of this continual wrong use of the word, whose mysterious working foolish humanity could no longer know, because they have long since closed themselves to the knowledge of it.
They did not listen to the warning voice of Jesus, the Son of God, Who already at that time said:
“Let your communication be yea or nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil!”
There is more in these words than you imagined; for they hold upbuilding or decline for mankind!
Through your propensity for much and useless talk you have chosen decline, which has already come to you. Finally, before the general collapse in the Judgement, it also still shows you quite clearly, as a help towards the saving recognition, all the fruits which you have forcibly brought into being through the wrong application of the word.
The reciprocal power now raises the masters at your own sins to the top, in such a way that you are in danger of being crushed by them, so that through recognition you will at last free yourselves from or be destroyed by them.
That is at the same time justice and help, as only the Will of God in His Perfection can offer you!
Just look around you! You must recognise it, if only you will. And for those who still hesitate to do so, the veil which they themselves hold before their eyes will yet be forcibly torn away from the fruits of their volition through still greater suffering than in the past, so that this earth may be cleansed from the pressure of your great guilt!
The entire mankind has actively participated in this, not merely individuals. They are the blossoms of all the wrongdoing over past centuries, which now had to ripen in these last fruits for the Judgement, so as to perish in this ripeness.
The frivolous, senseless and thoughtless chatter which, however, is always wrong and out of harmony with the Primordial Laws of Creation, had to culminate in the universal disease which is evident today, and must now in fever spasms, as in a storm, also shake off the fruits … they drop into the lap of mankind.
Hence no people should be pitied who must now groan and suffer under this; for these are the fruits of their own volition, which must be consumed even if they taste rotten and bitter and bring destruction to many, because from poisonous seed only poison can be harvested. I have already said: where you sow thistles, no wheat can grow!
Thus out of agitation, mockery and harming your fellow-men there can never come any upbuilding whatever; for each kind of expression and attitude can only bring forth something similar, can only attract what is homogeneous! You must never forget this Law of Creation! It works automatically, and all human volition can never act against it! Never, do you hear that? Impress it upon yourselves, so that you may always heed it in your thinking, speaking and acting; for everything germinates from this and grows into your fate! Therefore never hope for anything else as fruit than always and only the same kind as the seed!
This after all is not so difficult, and yet it is just in this that you continually fail! Slander can again only produce slander, hate only hate, and murder only murder. But dignity, peace, light and joy can in turn only arise from a dignified way of thinking, never otherwise.
Liberation and redemption do not lie in the clamour of individuals and of the masses. A people that permits itself to be led by talkers must inevitably and rightfully fall into bad repute, into sorrow and death, into distress and misery; it is forcibly pushed into the mire.
And if hitherto the fruit and the harvest have so often not appeared in one earth-life, but only in later ones, this is now different; for the fulfilment of the Holy Will of God enforces immediate release of every happening on earth, and therewith also the unravelling of all the fates of men and of the peoples! Final reckoning!
Therefore guard your word! Pay careful attention to your speech; for the human word is also a deed which, however, can only produce forms in the Plane of Fine Gross Matter, that sink into and have an effect on everything earthly.
Yet do not imagine that promises are fulfilled according to their wording and thus grow into deeds, unless at the same time the speaker bears the purest intentions in his soul; but the words form that which from out of the innermost being of the speaker simultaneously vibrates with them. So the same word can produce two kinds of results, and woe unto him with whom it did not truthfully vibrate in complete purity!
I lift the veil covering your ignorance which has prevailed up to now, so that you may henceforth consciously experience the evil consequences, and benefit from them for the future.
As a further help I therefore give you:
Heed your word! Let your speech be simple and true! In accordance with the Holy Will of God, it contains an ability to form in an upbuilding or also in a destroying way, depending on the nature of the words and of the speaker.
Do not squander these sublime gifts which God so mercifully granted you, but seek to recognise them aright in their full value. Up till now the power of speech has been a curse to you through such people, who as Lucifer’s satellites have misused it under the evil influence of the distorted and one-sidedly developed intellect!
Therefore beware of people who talk much; for with these goes disintegration. You, however, are to become upbuilding ones in this Creation, not talkers!
Heed your word! Do not talk merely for the sake of talking. And speak only when, where and how it is necessary! In the human word there shall be a reflection of the splendour of the Word of God, which is Life and will eternally remain Life.
You know that all Creation swings in the Word of the Lord! Does this not make you think? Creation vibrates in Him, as also do you yourselves, who are indeed part of Creation; for it arose out of Him and is maintained through this Word.
It has been clearly proclaimed to mankind:
“In the beginning was the Word! And the Word was with God! And the Word was God!”
Herein lies all knowledge for you, if you would only draw it. But you skim over it and do not heed it. Plainly it tells you:
The Word came out of God! It was and is a part out of Him.
A faint reflection of the power of the Living Word of God, which contains all and embraces all that is outside of God, a faint reflection of this also lies in the human word!
It is true that the human word is only able to send out its effect into the Planes of Fine Gross Matter, but that is enough retroactively to shape the destinies of men and also of peoples here on earth!
Remember that! He who talks much stands only on the ground of the distorted, one-sidedly developed intellect! The two always go hand in hand. By that you can recognise it! And these are words emanating from the low earthly planes, that can never build up. Yet in accordance with the Divine Law the word is to build up. Wherever it does not obey this command it can only bring about the opposite.
Therefore always heed your word! And stand to your word! You have still to be taught the right way to do this in the building up of the Kingdom of God here on earth.
You must first learn to recognise the power of the words which you have hitherto so thoughtlessly and frivolously debased.
Just think for once of the most Holy Word that has been given to you, of the Word: GOD!
You very often speak of God, too often for that awe still to resound in It which would indicate the right intuitive perception when you utter this Word: the awe which will allow you only to whisper the Sublime Word in reverential devotion, so as to shield It carefully from any kind of desecration.
But what have you men made of the most Sacred of all concepts in the Word! Instead of humbly and joyfully preparing your spirit for this most Sublime Expression, so that it may gratefully open itself to an unspeakable Radiation-Power of the Unsubstantiate Light-Sublimity of real Being, Who first permits you as well as all creatures to breathe, you have dared to drag It down to the low planes of your most trivial thinking, using It carelessly as an every-day word, which thereby had now to form itself in your ears into only an empty sound, and thus can find no entrance to your spirit.
It is then obvious that the effect of this most Sublime of all words will be different from the effect on those who whisper It with the proper awe and recognition.
Therefore pay attention to all words; for they hold joy or sorrow for you, they build up or disintegrate, they bring clarity but can also confuse, according to the manner in which they are spoken and applied.
I will later also give you recognition for this, so that you can give thanks with every word which the Creator still permits you to speak now! Then you shall also have earthly happiness, and peace will reign here on this hitherto troubled earth.
THESE words touch upon the sorest spot in Subsequent Creation. That spot which needs the greatest change, the most lasting purification.
Although man of Subsequent Creation has made himself the slave of his own intellect, woman has transgressed to a far greater extent.
Equipped with the greatest delicacy of intuitive perceptions, she should easily swing herself up to the purity of Luminous Heights, and form the bridge to Paradise for all humanity. Woman! Streams of Light should flow through her. Her entire physical, gross material nature is adapted to this. Woman only needs to will honestly, and all the offspring from her womb must be strongly protected and encompassed by the power of the Light even before birth! It could not possibly be otherwise, because every woman through the wealth of her intuitive perception can almost entirely alone influence the spiritual nature of the fruit! Therefore she remains primarily responsible for all her descendants!
In addition she has been richly endowed with unlimited possibilities to influence the entire people, indeed even the whole of Subsequent Creation. Her starting-point of the greatest power is, for her, home and hearth! There alone lies her strength, her unlimited might, but not in public life! In home and family her abilities make her queen. From the quiet, intimate home her incisive virtue extends through the whole people, present and future, and pervades everything.
There is nothing upon which her influence cannot absolutely be brought to bear, if she stands in that place where her inherent womanly abilities fully unfold to blossom. But only if woman is truly womanly does she fulfil the mission which is assigned to her by the Creator. Then she is completely what she can and should be. And it is only genuine womanliness that silently educates the man who, supported by this quiet activity containing undreamed-of power, feels like storming the heavens. Out of an inner naturalness he will then gladly and joyfully seek to protect true womanhood as soon as it only shows itself to be genuine.
But womankind of today trample underfoot their real power and their high mission, they blindly overlook them, wantonly destroy all the sacred gifts they carry within them, and instead of being an upbuilding influence they bring about disintegration, thus being the most poisonous element in Subsequent Creation. They push man as well as children down with them into the abyss.
Look at the woman of today! Just let a ray of Light fall upon her with all the relentlessness and dispassion which are always accompanying conditions of Purity.
You will hardly recognise the high qualities of genuine womanhood, those in which there can be unfolded that pure might which is given only to the finer sensitiveness of womanhood, to be used solely as a blessing.
A man can never develop this pervading nature. The silent weaving of that invisible power which the Creator allows to move through the Universe, first and completely seizes the woman with her more delicate intuitive perception. Man receives it only partially, and then converts it into deeds.
And just as the Living Power of the Creator remains invisible to all men, while yet upholding, nourishing, moving and driving the whole Universe, so the weaving of all genuine womanhood is intended to be; it is that for which she has been created, and that is her high, pure and wonderful goal!
It is ridiculous to use the expression “weak woman”, for woman is psychically stronger than man. Not in herself, but through being more closely connected with the Creative Power, which grants her the more delicate intuitive faculty.
And this is just what the woman tries to hide today; she exerts herself to coarsen or suppress it altogether. In boundless vanity and stupidity she surrenders the most beautiful and valuable gift bestowed on her. Through this she makes herself an outcast from the Light, to whom the way back will remain closed.
What has thereby become of these images of queenly womanhood! One must turn away from them with horror. Where does one still find in the woman of today the genuine feeling of shame, which is the expression of the most delicate intuitive perception of noble womanhood. It is so grossly distorted that is must be exposed to ridicule.
The woman of today is certainly ashamed to wear a long dress if fashion decrees a short one, but she is not ashamed to expose almost three-quarters of her body, offering it to the glances of all on festive occasions. And of course not only to their glances but also, when dancing, unavoidably to their hands! Without hesitation she would also uncover still more if fashion required it, probably even everything judging by present experiences!
This is no exaggeration. For hitherto we have had enough of this disgraceful conduct. It was not a wrong but, alas, only too true a saying that “woman begins to dress herself when she retires for the night”!
Besides, delicate intuitive perceptions also demand a sense of beauty! Unquestionably. But if today the delicacy of womanly intuitive perceptions is still to be assessed on that basis, then affairs are in a deplorable state. Indeed, the type of dress often and plainly enough tells the opposite, and these thinly‑stockinged legs of a woman, or even of a mother, are very difficult to reconcile with womanly dignity. Bobbed hair and modern sports for women are no less harmful to genuine womanhood! Coquetry is the inevitable accompaniment of vain fashion follies, which result in grave dangers for body and soul, to say nothing of the simple domestic happiness. Often enough many a woman prefers the coarse and really insulting flattery of some idler to the faithful labour of her husband.
Thus much, very much more could be cited as visible evidence that a woman of today is lost to her real task in this Subsequent Creation! And likewise all the high values entrusted to her, of which she must now give an account. Accursed be these empty human beings! They are not the victims of circumstances, but they have forced these circumstances into being.
All this talk about progress does not alter the fact that these zealots of progress, together with their faithful followers, only sink deeper, ever deeper. Already they have all buried their real values. The majority of womankind no longer deserve to bear the name of honour, woman! And they can never represent nor become men, thus in the end they remain nothing but drones in Subsequent Creation, which must be exterminated according to the inflexible Laws of Nature.
Of all the creatures in Subsequent Creation, woman stands least in the place where she should stand! In her way she has become the saddest figure among all creatures! She simply had to become corrupt in soul, since she wantonly sacrifices her most noble intuitive perception, her purest power, to outward, absurd vanity, thereby ridiculing and scorning the decree of her Creator. With such superficiality there can be no salvation; for these women would reject words, or be no longer able to understand and grasp them at all.
Thus out of the horrors the new, true woman must first arise, who has to become the mediator, and therewith also provide the foundation for the new God-willed life and human activity in Subsequent Creation, the woman who will have become free from poison and corruption!
“Thy will be done!” People who believe in God utter these words submissively! But a certain sadness always vibrates in their voices or lies in their thoughts, in their intuitive perceptions. These words are used almost exclusively where sorrow that was inescapable has entered. Where man realises that he could do nothing more about it.
Then, if he is a believer, he will say in passive submission: “Thy Will be done!”
It is not humility, however, that prompts him to speak thus, but the words are meant to calm him in face of something he has been powerless to deal with.
That is the origin of the submission which man expresses in such a case. If, however, he were offered the slightest opportunity to alter things in any way, he would not care about the Will of God, but his submissive attitude would again quickly be changed to the form: “My will be done!”
Such is man! — — —
“Do with me as Thou wilt, O Lord!” and similar hymns are often to be heard at funerals. But every mourner bears within him the unshakable wish: “If I could alter it I would do so at once!”
Human submission is never genuine. Deeply implanted in a human soul lies the opposite. Rebellion against the fate that befalls it; and it is this very protest that causes the soul’s suffering, which “oppresses” and bows it down.
What is unhealthy in this is due to the wrong application of the meaning of these words: “Thy Will be done!” They do not belong where man and churches use them.
The Will of God lies in the Laws of this Creation! Whenever man says: “Thy Will be done!” it is tantamount to affirming: “I will honour and obey Thy Laws in Creation!” To honour means to observe them, but to observe them demands to live accordingly! Only thus can man honour the Will of God!
But if he wants to observe It, if he wants to live accordingly, he must also first of all know It!
That is just the point, however, against which mankind on earth has transgressed in the worst way! Until now man has never concerned himself with the Laws of God in Creation! Thus not with the Holy Will of God! And yet he utters over and over again: “Thy Will be done!”
You see how unthinkingly earthman approaches God! How senselessly he seeks to apply the sublime words of Christ. Plaintively, often writhing in anguish, feeling himself defeated, but never with a joyful pledge!
“Thy Will be done” actually means: “I will act according to It” or “I desire Thy Will!” One can just as well also say: “I will obey Thy Will!”
But he who obeys also acts. One who obeys is not inactive; that is implied in the very word. He who obeys also does something.
Yet as the man of today says: “Thy Will be done!” he wishes to do nothing himself, but puts into his intuitive perception the meaning: “I remain still, You do it!”
He considers himself great in this, believing that he has conquered himself and “become merged” with the Will of God. Man even imagines himself superior to all others thereby, and believes he has made a tremendous advance.
All such people, however, are useless weaklings, idlers, enthusiasts, visionaries and fanatics, but no useful links in Creation! They are numbered among those who must be rejected in the Judgement; for they do not want to be labourers in the vineyard of the Lord! The humility of which they boast is nothing but indolence. They are idle servants!
The Lord demands life, which lies in movement! —
Submission! This word should not exist at all for believers in God! Simply replace it with “joyful volition”! God does not want dull submission from men, but joyful activity.
Just look closely at those who are described as “resigned to God’s Will”. They are hypocrites who bear a great lie within them!
Of what use is it to cast a glance of submissive resignation upwards, if at the same time man looks around with cunning, lust, arrogance, conceit or malice! This only makes him doubly guilty.
Submissive people bear the lie within, for submission is absolutely incompatible with “spirit”! Therefore also with a human spirit! All that is “spirit” is utterly unable to bring the quality of true submissiveness to life within itself! Wherever it is attempted it must remain artificial, thus self-delusion or even conscious hypocrisy! But it can never be genuinely felt because the human spirit, being spiritual, is incapable of it. The pressure under which the human spirit stands does not allow the quality of submissiveness to become conscious. The pressure is too strong for this. And therefore man cannot practise it either.
Submissiveness is a quality that lies solely in the animistic! Only in the animal does it find genuine expression. The animal is submissive to its master! But the spirit does not know this designation! Therefore it always remains unnatural for the human being.
Submission was drilled into slaves with difficulty and harshness, because they were put on a par with animals in sale and purchase, as personal property. Yet the submission could never become really genuine in these slaves. It was either dullness, fidelity or love that lay hidden under the submission and gave it expression, but never true submission. Slavery is unnatural among men.
The submission of the animistic finds its enhancement in the spiritual in conscious and willed loyalty! What denotes submission in the animistic, therefore, is loyalty in the spiritual!
Submission does not befit man; because he is of the spirit! Just pay closer attention to the language itself, which indeed expresses in its words what is right, and bears the true meaning in it. It gives you the right picture.
For instance, the victor also says to the vanquished: “Submit!” In this word lies the meaning: “Surrender yourself to me unconditionally so that I may deal with you as I see fit, even over life or death!”
But in this the victor acts wrongly; for even in victory man has to conform strictly to the Laws of God. Otherwise with every neglect of them he makes himself guilty before the Lord. The reciprocal action will then strike him without fail! This applies to the individual as well as to entire peoples!
And now the time has come when everything, everything that has hitherto taken place in the world, must be redeemed! What has been wrong, what is happening on earth today, not one word will remain unatoned for!
The atonement is not reserved for a distant future, but is already taking place in the present time!
Thus the speedy release of all the reciprocal actions is not opposed to the Law of Creation, but lies quite correctly in the Law itself.
The action of the mechanism is at present accelerated by the increased radiation of the Light, which enforces final effects by first driving everything to fruition and over-ripeness, so that the false will decay therein and in withering away judge itself, while the good will become free from the hitherto existing pressure of the wrong and can gain strength!
In the near future this radiation will be so intensified that in very many cases the reciprocal action will come at once, instantaneously!
This is the power which will soon alarm earthmen, and which they will then have to fear in the future! But only those who have done wrong need fear it, and rightly so. Whether they have thought themselves in the right, or have tried to make others believe they were, it will not save them from the blow of the reciprocal effect that operates in the Laws of God!
Even though men have devised different laws on earth, under whose protection many act wrongly and unjustly in the delusion that they are thereby also in the right, it does not absolve them of one particle of their guilt.
The Laws of God, thus the Will of God, do not concern themselves with the opinions of these earthmen, which they have laid down in their mundane laws, even though the whole world has now considered them to be right. Whatever is not in harmony with the Divine Laws, there also the blow of the sword will now strike! Judging in the process of redemption!
All those who in the light of God’s Laws have suffered innocently at the hands of men may now rejoice; for henceforth they shall receive justice, while their adversaries or judges are delivered up to the Justice of God.
Rejoice; for this Divine Justice is near! It is already working in every country on earth! Look at the confusion! This is the effect of the approaching Will of God! It is the setting-in of the purification!
For this reason everything that is wrong among men is already now meeting with its doom, be it in economics, the state, politics, the churches, sects, peoples, families and also in the individual! Everything, everything is now dragged before the Light, so that it may reveal and simultaneously judge itself therein! Also what has hitherto been able to remain hidden must reveal itself as it really is, must become active, and thus finally, despairing of itself and others, disintegrate and turn to dust.
Thus even now there is a boiling up under the pressure of the Light in all countries, everywhere. Every kind of tribulation is increasing to the point of despair, until finally nothing remains but hopelessness, with the realisation that the would-be saviours had only empty words besides selfish desires, but could offer no help! Spiritual warriors are sweeping over all humanity, and striking sharply where a head refuses to bow.
Only then will there be the right soil that pleads once more for God’s help! After murder and fire, starvation, pestilence and death, after man has recognised his own incapacity.
The great upbuilding begins.
Then the despairing ones shall become free, free from the pressure of the Darkness! But they shall also become free within themselves! To become free within, however, can only be achieved by each individual alone. Yet for this he must know what freedom means, what it is.
Only the man who lives in the Laws of God is free! Thus and not otherwise does he stand unoppressed and unconstrained in this Creation. Everything then serves him instead of obstructing his path. It “serves” him because he uses it in the right way.
God’s Laws in Creation are in truth simply all that every man needs for a healthy, happy life in Creation. They are, as it were, nourishment for his well-being! Only he who knows the Will of God and lives accordingly is really free! All the others must bind themselves in many threads of the Laws of this Creation, because they entangle themselves.
Creation originated only in the Will of God, in His Laws. Working together, the threads of these Laws sink deeper and deeper, everywhere enforcing movement towards development, and inevitably branching out more and more in the course of development, while in the continuous movement new creations are perpetually formed around the threads. Thus these Laws provide at the same time the support, the possibility of continued existence and the further expansion of Creation.
Nothing exists without this Will of God, Which alone gives movement. Everything in Creation conforms to It.
Only the human spirit has not adjusted itself to these threads! It has tangled them and thereby entangled itself, because it wanted to follow new roads according to its will, and disregarded those already prepared and in existence.
The increasing power of the Light is now changing this. The threads of all the Divine Laws in Creation are being charged with increased energy, so that they become powerfully taut. This enormous tension causes them to spring back into their original position. What is tangled and knotted is thereby disentangled, so suddenly and irresistibly that everything that cannot still adapt itself to the right position in Creation is simply torn down in this process!
Whatever it may be, whether plant or animal, whether mountains, streams, countries, states or man himself, all will collapse that cannot prove itself at the last moment to be genuine and willed by God!
