A GREY veil shrouds all that appertains to the figure of Lucifer, and it is as though everybody shrinks from lifting a corner of it.
In truth this shrinking back is nothing but man’s inability to penetrate into the realm of Darkness. Again this inability simply lies in the order of things, for here as elsewhere a limit is set upon the human spirit owing to its nature, which prevents it from penetrating so far. Just as it is unable to reach the Highest Heights, so also is it unable to penetrate to the deepest depths, nor will it ever be able to do so!
Thus the imagination created substitutes for what was missing; it created a diversity of beings! People speak of the devil in the most adventurous forms, of the fallen and expelled archangel, of the embodiment of the evil principle, and all the rest of it. Nothing is understood of Lucifer’s true nature, although the human spirit is often struck by him, and consequently thrown into a state of great inner conflict, which can be likened to a battle!
Those who speak of a fallen archangel, as also those who speak of the embodiment of the evil principle, come closest to the truth. But here also a false attitude prevails, giving a false picture of everything. An embodiment of the evil principle makes one think of the summit, of the final goal, of all evil having been invested with life and body, thus the crowning, the complete culmination!
On the contrary, however, Lucifer is the origin, the starting point and the driving power of the wrong principle! One should really not call the principle he brings forth the evil principle, but the wrong principle! The field of action of this wrong principle is the World of Matter.
It is only here that the effects of the Light and the effects of Darkness, the two opposing principles, meet with one another, and constantly influence the human soul while it is developing on its journey through the World of Matter. Whichever of the two the human soul favours, in accordance with its own wishes, proves decisive for its ascent toward the Light or for its descent toward Darkness.
The gulf which lies between Light and Darkness is immense. It is filled by that part of Creation called the World of Matter, which is subject to the transient nature of the forms, that is, to the disintegration of the forms existing at the time and to a subsequent reconstruction.
Since according to the Laws which the Will of God the Father has placed in Creation a cycle can only be considered completed and fulfilled when it ends up by returning to its origin, so also the cycle of a human spirit can only be considered fulfilled when it returns to the Spiritual Realm, because that is where its spirit-germ originated.
If a human spirit permits itself to deviate towards Darkness, it runs the risk of being drawn beyond the outermost circle of its normal course towards a depth from which it can then no longer find its way back in order to ascend. Nor can it step even deeper over the extreme boundary of densest and deepest ethereal darkness and thus completely out of the World of Matter, as it could do in the upward direction into the Realm of Spiritual Substantiality, because the latter is its point of origin. And so it is constantly drawn along in the mighty cycle of material Creation until it is finally drawn into disintegration, because its ethereally dark and therefore dense and heavy garment, which is also called the ethereal body, holds it down.
This disintegration then dissolves the spiritual personality it has acquired on its course through Creation, so that it suffers spiritual death and is dispersed to primordial spiritual seed.
Lucifer himself stands outside material Creation and will therefore not be drawn into the disintegration which is the fate of the victims of his principle, because Lucifer is eternal. His origin lies in a part of the Sphere of Divine Substantiality. The dissension started after the creation of all matter had begun. Sent out to support Spiritual Substantiality and further its development in the World of Matter, he failed to carry out his mission in accordance with the Creative Will of God the Father but, through a volition which came to him while working in matter, he chose ways other than those ordained by this Creative Will.
Misusing the power delegated to him, he introduced among other things the principle of temptation in place of the principle of supporting help, which is identical with serving love; serving love in the Divine sense, which has nothing in common with slavish servility, but only has the spiritual ascent and thereby the eternal happiness of his fellow man at heart and acts accordingly!
The principle of temptation, however, is identical with the setting of snares which cause creatures who are not sufficiently strong within themselves quickly to stumble, fall and become lost, whereas others, it is true, grow stronger and more alert so as to blossom forth powerfully towards spiritual heights. But all that is weak is irrevocably abandoned to destruction from the start. This principle knows of no goodness, no compassion; it is wanting in the love of God the Father, and therewith also in the mightiest power to ascend and in the strongest support available.
The temptation in Paradise described in the Bible shows the effect produced by the application of the Lucifer principle. It depicts how, through temptation, it tries to test the strength or steadfastness of the human couple, only to thrust them pitilessly on the road to destruction at the least sign of wavering.
Steadfastness would have been identical with a joyful adjustment to the Will of God which lies in the simple Laws of Nature or Laws of Creation. And this Will, the Divine Command, was well known to the human couple. Not to hesitate would have been the same as obeying these laws. Only through such obedience can man make proper and unlimited use of them and thus become truly »a lord in Creation« because he is »in harmony with them«! If he does not put himself into opposition, all the powers will serve him and work automatically in his favour.
This then holds the fulfilment of the Creator’s commandments which have but one aim — to preserve and maintain undimmed and unhampered all the possibilities of development that lie in His wonderful work. The simple observance of this means in turn consciously to co-operate in the further sound development of Creation or of the World of Matter.
He who fails in this is an obstacle which must either be hewn into the right shape or left to be crushed in the wheels of the world’s mechanism, that is, in the Laws of Creation. He who will not bend must break, as there can be no stagnation!
Lucifer refuses to wait with kindness for man gradually to mature and become strong. He refuses to be the loving gardener that he should be, caring for, supporting and tending the plants entrusted to him. With him »the wolf« literally »came to mind the sheep«! His goal is the destruction of all that is weak, and he works relentlessly towards that end.
At the same time he despises the victims who succumb to his temptations and snares, and it is his wish that they should be destroyed in their weakness!
He is also contemptuous of the baseness and meanness which these fallen victims show in the working out of his principle, for it is only men who turn it into the loathsome villainy which is so evident. Through this they only incense Lucifer the more to regard them as creatures who deserve nothing but destruction, not love and care!
To achieve this destruction not a little is contributed by the principle of »letting oneself go«, which follows as a natural consequence of the principle of temptation. This »letting oneself go« takes place in the lower regions of Darkness but, through so-called psycho-analysis, some practitioners have already accepted it on the assumption that here on earth also »letting oneself go« liberates and matures.
But what dreadful misery must the practice of this principle cause here on earth! What mischief must it bring since, in contrast with the regions of Darkness where only homogeneous species are together, on earth both darker and lighter souls dwell side by side! In this respect you need only to think of sexual life and similar things. If such a principle was put into practice and let loose on mankind, it must ultimately create nothing but a Sodom and Gomorrah from which there would be no escape, and only the most abject terror could bring it to an end!
Quite apart from this, however, one already sees numerous victims of similar therapies wandering about today without any hold on life, whose little bit of self-reliance and, on the whole, all their individual thinking have been completely picked to pieces and destroyed when they had confidently expected help. They are like people whose clothing has been systematically torn from their bodies so that they are then forced to put on the new garments handed to them. However, in most cases these denuded ones unfortunately can no longer see why they should put on any new clothing at all!
Through the systematic intrusion into their most intimate affairs and rights they have gradually lost the feeling of shame which is an integral part of personal self-consciousness, a part of the personality, and without which there can be nothing individual.
On such uprooted soil no new solid building can then be erected. With few exceptions these people remain dependent and sometimes actually become helpless, because the small hold they formerly possessed has been taken from them.
Both the principles of »letting oneself go« and of temptation are so closely connected that temptation must without doubt precede »letting oneself go«. The latter is thus a direct following and spreading of the Lucifer principle.
The true physician of the soul does not need to tear down. He recognises the slumbering good qualities, awakens them and then builds upon them. The true principle brings about a transformation of wrong desires through a spiritual understanding!
The application of his loveless principle, however, quite naturally separated Lucifer more and more from the Loving Will of the Almighty Creator, causing him to be cut off and cast out from the Light. Consequently he fell ever deeper. Lucifer is one who has severed himself from the Light, which is equivalent to having been cast out.
This expulsion was also bound to occur according to the existing Primordial Laws, the irrevocable Holy Will of God the Father! It could not possibly happen otherwise!
Since only the Will of God the Father, of the Creator of all things, is omnipotent, and is also firmly anchored in material Creation and its development, Lucifer can quite well send his principle into the material sphere, but the resulting effects will always and only operate within the Primordial Laws ordained by God the Father and must form themselves accordingly!
Thus, in pursuit of his erroneous principle, Lucifer can incite men to set out on a road dangerous to them, but he is unable in any way to force men into something unless they themselves decide upon it voluntarily!
In fact Lucifer can only lure! But man as such stands more firmly in material Creation than he does, therefore with much greater security and power than any influence Lucifer could ever wield over him. Thus every man is so well protected that it is a tenfold shame upon him if he permits himself to be enticed by this power, which is a relatively weaker power than his! He should remember that Lucifer himself stands outside the material sphere, while he himself is firmly rooted in familiar soil!
In order to apply his principle Lucifer is forced to make use of his auxiliary troops, composed of human spirits who have succumbed to his temptations!
The spirit of every man striving upwards is not only fully able to deal with them, but is far superior in strength. One single, serious volition suffices to make an army of them vanish without trace, providing their enticements meet with no response or approval to which they can cling.
Lucifer would indeed be quite powerless if mankind would make the effort to recognise and follow the Primordial Laws given by the Creator. Unfortunately, however, men increasingly support the wrong principle through their present behaviour, and the greater part of them will therefore have to perish!
It is impossible for any human spirit to fight a battle against Lucifer himself for the simple reason that, owing to the difference in the nature of their species, it cannot penetrate to him. The human spirit can only come in contact with those who have fallen through the wrong principle because they are basically of the same species.
The origin of Lucifer requires that only he who is of the same or of a higher origin can personally approach and face him, and so none other can penetrate to him. It must be a Divine Envoy, armed with the sacred seriousness of His Mission and with perfect trust in the Source of All Power, in God the Father Himself!
This task has been delegated to the prophesied Son of Man!
The combat will be a personal one, face to face, not only a general symbolical one, as many investigators want to interpret from the prophecies. It is the fulfilment of the promise given in Parsifal. Lucifer has wrongly used the »Holy Spear«, the Power, and through his principle inflicted a painful wound with it upon humanity and thus upon the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality. The Spear will be wrested from him in this combat. Then, in the »proper hands«, that is, by applying the true Grail principle of pure, severe love, it will heal the wound previously inflicted by it while in the wrong hand, that is, through its wrong use.
Through the Lucifer principle, that is, through the wrong application of Divine Power, which is the same as the »Holy Spear« being wielded in the wrong hand, a wound that cannot heal has been inflicted upon the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality. In the legend this thought is portrayed in striking manner, for the happening does resemble an open wound that will not heal.
It should be realised that the human spirits, as unconscious spirit-germs or sparks, leap or flow over the boundary of the lowest region of Spiritual Substantiality into material Creation! The expectation is that these outflowing particles, having been awakened and developed to personal consciousness during their wanderings in the World of Matter, will return thereafter to the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality in order to complete their cycles. This is similar to the circulation of the blood in the physical body.
The Lucifer principle, however, diverts a large portion of this circulating spiritual stream. Thus the necessary cycle cannot be closed, the result being a weakening as from the continual draining of an open wound!
When now the »Holy Spear«, i.e., the Divine Power, is wielded in the proper hand, acting according to the Will of the Creator and showing the right way to spiritual substance which constitutes an animating factor in Matter, thereby leading it upwards to its point of origin, to the luminous Kingdom of God the Father, the spiritual substance will no longer become lost, but will flow back to its origin as the blood does to the heart. As a result the exuding wound, which up till then weakened the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality, will be closed! Thus the healing can only take place through the same Spear as inflicted the wound!
To achieve this, however, the Spear must first be wrested from Lucifer and come into the proper hand, and this takes place in the personal combat between Parsifal and Lucifer!
The further battles which extend into the Ethereal and Gross Material Worlds are but the after-effects of this one great combat, which must bring about the promised binding of Lucifer and herald the beginning of the Millennium! They mean the extermination of the consequences of the Lucifer principle!
This principle is opposed to the reign of Divine Love, the blessings of which fall to man’s share on his journey through the World of Matter. If men would simply strive after this Divine Love they would immediately become completely invulnerable to every temptation of Lucifer, and he would be robbed of all the terror the human spirit has woven around him.
The monstrous and hideous forms which man erroneously tries to give to Lucifer are but the confused phantasies of the human brain! In truth, for the simple reason that there is a difference in species, no human eye was ever able to behold him, not even the eye which already during life on earth is often able to recognise the Ethereal World of the beyond!
Contrary to all ideas Lucifer may be called proud and stately, of a supernatural beauty and sombre majesty, with large, clear blue eyes which, however, in their ice-cold expression bear witness to a lack of love! He is not only a conception, as he is generally represented when all other interpretations fail, but he is personal!
Mankind should learn to understand that for them too, on account of their particular species, a limit is set which they can never cross, naturally not even in their thoughts, and that messages can only come to them from beyond this limit as an act of Grace. This cannot happen through mediums, who are unable to change their species even under supernatural conditions, and just as little through science. Indeed it is just science which by means of chemistry has the opportunity to discover that the difference of species can create in-surmountable barriers! These laws, however, proceed from the Highest Source and are not merely to be found in the work of Creation!
WHEN one looks at pictures supposed to represent life in the so-called hell, one shrugs one’s shoulders and dismisses them with a half-ironical, half-contemptuous smile, thinking that only morbid imagination or fanatical blind faith can conjure up such scenes. Very rarely will anyone seek even for the slightest grain of truth in these pictures. And yet the most gruesome imagination can hardly contrive a picture that comes anywhere near depicting the torments of life in the dark regions!
Poor deluded fools who imagine they can carelessly dismiss it with a mocking shrug of the shoulders! In the moment when the appalling truth dawns upon them such carelessness will revenge itself bitterly! It will be of no avail to struggle or turn aside; they will be drawn into the whirlpool awaiting them, unless they can rid themselves in time of the deep-seated ignorance which always characterises the hollowness and narrow-mindedness of such people!
The ethereal body will hardly have detached itself from the physical body (* see Lecture: »Death«) before these souls receive their first great surprise by experiencing that this has not brought conscious being and life to an end. As a result they first of all become confused, and then follows an unexpected apprehension, which again often gives place to a state of dull resignation or dreadful despair. All resistance is vain; vain are their lamentations and even their pleading, for they must reap what they have sown during their life on earth!
If they ridiculed the Word brought down to them from God, which points towards life after physical death and the consequent responsibility for every serious thought and action, the least that is awaiting them will be what they themselves willed — utter darkness! Their ethereal eyes, ears and mouths are closed through their own volition. They are blind, deaf and dumb in their new surroundings!
That is the most favourable thing that can happen to them! A guide and helper from the beyond cannot make himself understood because they keep themselves closed to such a possibility. A sad condition indeed, which can only be gradually changed by the slow inner maturing of such a soul, which in turn can only come about through an increasing desperation! Thus with this ever-increasing longing for light, rising upwards like a perpetual cry for help from such an oppressed and tormented soul, lighter conditions will ultimately prevail around it, until in fact it may also learn to discern others in the same need of help!
If such a one then feels a desire to help those souls still languishing in greater darkness towards lighter conditions, the exertion required by the effort to help will bring it increased strength, so that others still further advanced may in turn approach and help this soul onwards to more luminous regions.
Thus these souls squat about dejectedly because their ethereal bodies have become too enfeebled to walk owing to their negative attitude. And if there is any movement at all, it is but a cumbersome and uncertain crawling along the ground!
Others again grope about in this darkness, and stumble and fall, but quickly get up again, only to bump themselves against this and that, inevitably suffering painful injuries. Depending entirely on the nature of its own darkness, and on its consequent density and weight, a human soul sinks into that region which exactly accords with its own ethereal gravity and which is thus of the same ethereal species. Its new environment will therefore be just as tangible, perceptible and impenetrable as is the gross material environment for a physical body. Every knock, every fall, or every injury will be just as painfully felt there as the physical body experienced during its life on the gross material earth.
Such is the case in every region regardless of its depth or height! Everything of like substance has a like tangibleness and a like mutual impenetrability. But every higher region or, in other words, every lighter species of substance can penetrate the lower, denser species of substance unhindered; as, for instance, all ethereal substance can penetrate the different texture of the gross material substance.
The case is different with those souls who, in addition, have to atone for some kind of injustice. This is a question which stands on its own, but it can be redeemed the moment the perpetrator can obtain full and genuine pardon from the person he has harmed.
But what binds a human soul more firmly is a propensity or craving which is the mainspring to one or more deeds! This propensity lives on in a human soul, even when the latter has passed into the beyond after severance from its physical body. As soon as the limitations of everything to do with gross matter fall away, the propensity will immediately become even more pronounced in the ethereal body, because then the intuitive perceptions work with much greater animation and less restraint.
And again it is such a propensity which will define the density and thus the weight of the ethereal body! The result is that, after its liberation from the physical body, the ethereal body will immediately sink to that region which exactly corresponds to its weight and density. And there it will also find all those which indulge the same propensity. Through their radiations its propensity will be further nourished and intensified, causing it to rage madly while indulging it! All the others there will naturally do likewise!
That such unrestrained raging must be a torment for the surroundings is not hard to understand. As in those regions this happens only on a mutual basis, however, every single soul will have to suffer bitterly from the others what in turn it is trying continuously to inflict upon them. Thus life there becomes hell, until such a human soul gradually tires of and intuitively feels disgusted by it! Then, after a long while, the desire will gradually awaken to get away from such an environment!
This desire and disgust are the beginning of improvement. They will grow into a cry for help and finally into a prayer. Only then can a hand be stretched forth to help the soul ascend, but decades, centuries or sometimes even longer may often pass before this happens. It is thus the propensity of a human soul which weighs upon and encumbers it most!
Hence it follows that an unpremeditated deed can be much more easily and quickly atoned for than a propensity clinging to a human being, no matter whether it is expressed in a deed or not!
A person with an unclean propensity which he has never expressed in a deed because his earthly circumstances have favoured him will therefore have to make greater amends than a person who has inadvertently erred through one or more deeds without evil intent. The latter can be immediately forgiven his unpremeditated actions without developing evil karma, but a propensity can only be forgiven when it has been completely eradicated from a human being. And there are many kinds of propensities! Be it greed and its cousin avarice, sordid sensuality, the urge to steal or murder, incendiarism, or merely fraud or careless negligence; no matter what it is, such a propensity will make the soul concerned sink or be dragged to the region where it will be among its own kind!
It serves no purpose to give pictures of life in those regions. They are often so terrible that a human spirit on earth can hardly believe in their reality without seeing them. Even then he would still think they must only be the visions of a feverish and highly fanciful imagination! Thus he should be content intuitively to feel a moral shyness in regard to all such evils! This will liberate him from the bonds of all that is base so that there will no longer be any obstacle barring his ascent towards the Light.
Such are the dark regions resulting from the principle Lucifer strives to introduce. The eternal cycle of Creation rotates and reaches the point where disintegration begins and all matter loses its form and reverts to primordial seed which, in rotating further, brings a new blending and new forms with fresh power and virgin soil. What until then could not detach itself from gross and ethereal matter to cross over the highest, finest and lightest boundary and enter the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality, thereby leaving all matter behind, will inevitably be drawn into the disintegration, whereby its form and whatever else is personal about it will be destroyed! And that alone is eternal damnation, the extinction of all conscious personality!
RADIANT light! Dazzling purity! A blissful feeling of lightness!
All this speaks for itself so clearly that it is hardly necessary to go into details. The less the ethereal body, i.e., the cloak of the human spirit in the beyond, is burdened with some base propensity or with a desire for material things and pleasures, the less it will be attracted by them. In this case the ethereal body, which is formed according to its volition, will be less dense and consequently less heavy. Through its lightness it will all the more quickly be uplifted to the luminous regions which correspond to its lesser density.
The less dense, the freer and finer this ethereal body becomes when it is cleansed of base desires, the brighter and the more luminous it must appear; for then the core of spiritual substantiality within the human soul, which as such is radiant by nature, will more and more shine forth from within as the ethereal body grows ever more transparent; whereas in the lower regions this radiant core is hidden through the greater density and gravity of the ethereal body and thus remains darkened!
In the regions of Light every human soul will also meet other souls with ethereal bodies homogeneous to its own, those of a like nature. As only that which is truly noble and of genuine goodwill is able to strive upwards free from all base desires, such a human soul will only encounter other souls of equal nobility. It is also easy to understand that the dweller in such a region has no torments to suffer, but only delights in the blessing of the nobleness radiating there, sharing in the joy of others which it also arouses by its own deeds. It can truly say that it is wandering in the fields of the blessed, where all is bliss.
Thus encouraged, its joy for all that is pure and sublime grows ever stronger, lifting it higher and higher! Permeated by this intuitive feeling, its ethereal body will become ever finer and less dense, enabling the shining core of spiritual substance to break through ever more radiantly, and finally causing the last remnants of the ethereal body to fall away as if consumed by flames. Then the human spirit, having attained a complete and conscious personality by reason of its perfect spiritual nature, can cross the border into the Realm of Spiritual Substantiality. Only then does it enter the Eternal Kingdom of God the father, the everlasting Paradise!
Just as it is impossible for a painter to portray the torments of real life in the dark regions, so is it equally impossible for him to depict the rapture which life holds in the light regions, even if these regions still belong to the transient World of Ethereal Matter before the boundary to the Eternal Kingdom of God has been crossed!
Every painting and every attempt to portray this life in pictures would definitely mean belittling it, and therefore inevitably harm instead of benefit the soul of man!
THERE is no greater danger to a cause than to leave a gap in its presentation which needs filling up, as may often be intuitively sensed. It is of no avail to pass it over because such a gap hinders all progress. Any building erected over it will inevitably collapse sooner or later, even if the greatest skill and best materials have been used.
Such is the case with the various Christian religious communities of today. They persistently close their eyes and ears to certain points in their teaching which can be sensed as illogical. They try to dismiss them with empty phrases instead of taking thought in all seriousness.
They readily apprehend the danger that one day the temporary bridges they have built over such gaps through a teaching of blind faith will no longer suffice, and they dread the moment when enlightenment will show up the flimsy character of these structures. Moreover they know that they will then no longer be able to persuade anybody to follow such a deceitful course, with the natural result that all the rest of their teaching, however sound, will also be discarded. They also realise that a single flash of fresh truth must sweep away such artificial constructions.
Still, for want of something better, they seek to maintain their swaying plank in spite of every danger. Even worse, they are prepared to defend their position by every means in their power, and would destroy him who dared to provide a firmer crossing over the gap through the Truth Itself! Without any hesitation they would try to repeat what occurred here on earth nearly two thousand years ago, and which still casts its shadow right down to the present day. Yet they themselves, while using that event as the subject of a great accusation against the blindness and pernicious stubbornness of mankind, also make it the focal point of their own teaching and faith.
It was the church dignitaries and scholars of that time, with their narrow dogmatism and a conceit which betrayed their weakness, who were unable to recognise the Truth and the Son of God. They also closed themselves against it, hating and persecuting Him and His followers out of envy and fear, whereas other people more readily opened themselves to the recognition and were quicker to perceive the Truth of the Word.
Although the present heads of Christian religious communities lay special stress on the Son of God’s path of suffering, they have learned and profited nothing from this fact. It is just the present leaders of communities based on Christ’s teaching, as well as the leaders of newer movements, who would today try to eliminate any man who, by revealing the Truth Itself, could endanger the swaying bridges over the precarious gaps in their teachings and interpretations. They would persecute him with a hatred born of fear and even more of vanity, exactly as happened once before.
They would lack the greatness to endure the fact that their own knowledge was insufficient to enable them to recognise the Truth and fill the gaps, and thus help to smooth the path for mankind towards an easier understanding and complete grasping of It.
And yet it is only possible for mankind to ascend by fully grasping the Truth; but they can never do so by blind ignorant faith!
One such gap created by an erroneous transmission concerns the concept of the »Son of Man«. People cling to it morbidly, like the Pharisees who did not want to open themselves to the Truth brought by the Son of God, which opposed their conventional and rigid teachings. Christ spoke of Himself only as the Son of God. It was far from His thoughts to be so illogical as to call Himself also the Son of Man. Even if, as a result of their own doubts, people have tried with the greatest artistry and skill in every direction to clarify this obvious contradiction between the Son of God and the Son of Man, which is intuitively sensed by every person who reflects quietly, it cannot be asserted in spite of all their efforts that they have managed to unify them. The most favourable of all the interpretations could but repeatedly show a dual personality each standing beside the other, but never appearing as one!
This is quite in the natural order of things. The Son of God cannot become the Son of Man just because He had to be born of a human body so as to enable Him to walk on earth.
Every Christian knows that the Son of God came only on a spiritual mission, and that all His words referred to the Spiritual Kingdom and were thus meant spiritually. Consequently His repeated references to the Son of Man may not from the very outset be interpreted in any other way! Why should an exception be made here? In the spiritual sense, however, Christ was and remained only the Son of God!
Therefore when He spoke of the Son of Man He could not possibly mean Himself! There is something far more stupendous in all this than is indicated in the present interpretations of the Christian religions. This obvious contradiction should long ago have induced men to more serious reflection, had it not been for the fetters of dogmatism darkening everything! Instead of making the serious investigations which are absolutely necessary to such incisive matters, they clung tenaciously to the transmitted words, thus putting on »blinkers« that hindered a free view.
The natural consequence is that these interpreters and teachers, although they stand in the Creation of their God, are not even able to understand this Creation aright. Yet this carries the only possible prospect of coming closer to the Creator Himself, the Origin of all that is created!
In the first place Christ taught absolute naturalness, which means adjusting oneself to the Laws of Nature, and thus of Creation. But only he who knows these laws can adapt himself to them. Again these Laws of Nature embody the Will of the Creator, and therefore provide the path to the recognition of the Creator Himself.
Whoever knows the Laws of Nature will also experience with what absolute precision they gear into each other. He therefore knows that their activity is unchangeable in the steady consistency with which it drives forward, as is also the Will of the Creator, God the Father.
Every divergence would mean a change of the Divine Will. A change, however, would indicate imperfection. But since the Primordial Source of All Being, God the Father, is unity and perfection, it follows that even the minutest deviation in the Laws of Nature, thus the laws of development, would be simply impossible and out of the question from the very start. This fact imposes the condition that the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of natural science must in every respect coincide in perfect clarity and consistency if they are to represent the Truth!
That natural science today still has a very limited range of knowledge compared with the whole of Creation is not denied, as it has merely kept to the World of Gross Matter, because the intellect of today can only tackle what is bound to time and space. The one absolutely unpardonable mistake made is that the disciples of this science try to ridicule and deny the existence of anything which goes beyond its range, except for a few scientists who have lifted themselves above the average and become more far-sighted, and who refused to cloak their ignorance with conceit.
Although the science of religion extends much further, it nevertheless remains dependent upon the Natural Laws which reach out beyond all that is bound to time and space and which, coming from the Primordial Source, extend down into what is physically visible without a break or change in their nature.
For this reason there may be neither gaps nor contradictions in religious teachings if they are really to accord with the Truth and thus with the Laws of Nature or the Divine Will, that is if they are to harbour the Truth. Leading and responsible teachings cannot permit themselves the liberty of a blind faith!
The erroneous conception concerning the Son of Man therefore weighs heavily upon the followers of the true Christian teachings, because they quietly accept and carry on wrong transmissions, in spite of the fact that from time to time a contrary intuition quietly warns many people.
It is the very immutability and perfection of the Divine Will which precludes any arbitrary interference of God in Creation. And it is this same perfection which is unable simply to eliminate Lucifer after he had fallen through his wrong actions! (* See Lecture: »The mystery of Lucifer«) It also has to allow men to misuse the Natural Laws, the Divine Will, because the human spirit, in virtue of its origin from the eternal Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality, has been granted the freedom of decision. (* See Lecture: »Responsibility«.)
It is just because of this immutable perfection of the Creator’s Will that it must appear bound to a certain extent when it evidences itself in the happenings of ethereal and gross material Creation! But upon this being recognised, only inferior and small human spirits will regard it as a limitation of the Power and Magnitude. Such a view would merely be the result of their own narrow-mindedness!
It is the vastness of the whole problem that confuses them, because actually they can only envisage it within the narrower limits which correspond to their own understanding!
He, however, who makes an honest effort to recognise his Creator in His Work will, when he follows the sure road of the Natural Laws, receive a convincing idea of the vastness and extent of the manifestations that have their beginning in the Primordial Source, i.e., the starting point of all happenings, whence they spread through Creation like irremovable railway lines, along which all further life unrolls itself according to the position of the points.
The turning of the points, however, is done automatically (* see Lecture: »Man and his free will«) by the human spirit on its journey through the World of Matter. Unfortunately the majority allow themselves to be induced through Lucifer’s principle to turn the points in the wrong direction; and so their lives, in accordance with the immutable laws of continuous development which pervade all material Creation like railway lines, roll more and more downward towards a very definite final goal, a goal conforming to their attitude!
The direction in which the free decision turns the points can be exactly observed or intuitively perceived from the Point of Origin On High, making it possible clearly to recognise what will be the further course, which can only run along those lines which the Laws anchored in Creation have laid down according to the decision taken.
This circumstance enables many events to be foreseen, because the Laws of Nature or Creation never deviate in their urge to develop. Here millennia make no difference. Out of these clearly foreseen and final irrevocable goals come forth the great revelations shown to the specially blessed in spiritual pictures which, when passed on, come to the knowledge of mankind.
One thing, however, cannot be accurately predicted — the earthly time at which these revelations and promises find their fulfilment!
This will come to pass at the hour when such a life, travelling along the line it has chosen, reaches a foreseen intermediate station or the terminus. The fate of man, of the nation, indeed of all humanity, may be compared to a train standing and waiting on a single track connected to lines leading in all directions. Man switches the points as it pleases him, jumps on to the engine and turns on the steam, which means he animates it.
As soon as he turns on to the line he has chosen one can mention each station and the terminus only, but never give the exact hour of arrival, for this depends on the speed at which the train travels, and that may vary according to the nature of people. For it is man who animates the engine, and he will drive it forward in accordance with his own nature, either with quiet evenness or impetuous temperament, or with alternate variations. The nearer such a train — whether representing a single individual, a nation, or all mankind — gets to a station lying on the line of its fate, the more surely can its arrival be foreseen and foretold!
Connected to the network of lines are a few branch lines which, by turning the points occasionally during the journey, can be used to change its direction and so reach another terminus than the one first contemplated. It is obviously necessary in this case to slow down when reaching such points, and then to stop and turn them. The slowing down represents the act of reflection, and the stopping the decision taken by man, which he is always free to make until he reaches the last opportunity to choose. The turning of the points is the deed that follows his decision.
The Divine Will which, like railway lines, penetrates the World of Matter in the form of the firmly established Natural Laws, may also be called the nerves in the work of Creation, which detect every unevenness in the gigantic body of Creation and report it to the starting point, the Creative Primordial Source.
This precise survey which, through the immutable laws, the Creator possesses over everything to its final end, causes Him to supplement His revelations with promises proclaiming the advent of helpers to be sent by Him in time, when a train is seen to be approaching the most dangerous curves, intermediary stations and termini!
Properly equipped by Him, such helpers are intended to open the eyes of those human spirits who are travelling along the wrong track, by proclaiming the Truth shortly before inevitable catastrophes and dangerous changes take place! This serves to enable mankind to change the points in time, thus avoiding the increasingly dangerous places and also escaping the fatal terminus by taking a new direction!
As the Creator cannot alter the Perfection of His own Will, He will also, in connection with this help, keep exactly to the existing laws. In other words, His Will is perfect from the Primordial beginning. Every new expression of His Will must naturally also be perfect! This presupposes that every new Act of Will issuing from Him must also bear within itself the same laws as those that preceded it. Consequently it will fit itself precisely into the course of development prevailing in the Ethereal and Gross Material Worlds.
By virtue of the Perfection of God any other possibility is absolutely excluded! It was through this already explained foreseeing that the promise of the coming of the Son of God in the flesh was given. By proclaiming the Truth He was to induce mankind to turn their points!
According to the laws, however, the act of turning the points is reserved to the human spirits themselves. As a result it is not possible to foresee how they will decide. It is only those lines already chosen by the human spirits, in which they have already fixed the points according to their free decisions, which can be exactly surveyed with all the stations and curves right to the terminus.
This naturally excludes those turning-points which are still to be determined by a free decision of mankind, for this right is also just as immutable as everything else, due to the natural lawfulness of coming into existence and development through the Perfection of God. And as the Creator has granted this right to the human spirits because of their origin in the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality, He does not demand to know beforehand what their decision will be!
It is only the consequence of such a decision which He can clearly recognise to its very end, because it will then have to work itself out within His Will which rests in the laws governing Ethereal and Gross Material Creation. If it were otherwise the reason could only be found in a lack of perfection, and this is absolutely out of the question!
Thus man should always be fully aware of this his immense responsibility, that he is really independent in his basic decisions! Unfortunately, however, he imagines himself either as a totally dependent slave or, over-rating himself, as a part of the Divine!
The probable reason for this is that in both cases he considers himself relieved of all responsibility; in the one case as being too low and dependent a creature, and in the other as standing far above it! Both of these views are wrong! He should look upon himself as an administrator who has the free right of decision in certain matters, but also full responsibility; who thus enjoys great confidence, but who must not abuse it by being a bad householder!
And it is just this perfection which makes it necessary that, when sending direct help to mankind travelling on a wrong course, the Creator must reckon with the possibility of their failing to come to a right decision! In His Wisdom and Love, which are the inherent, lawful and natural attributes of the Creator, He has still other means in reserve to afford help in such cases. These join up as a continuation with the former course, which had been cut off through the failure of mankind.
Thus before the Son of God was incarnated upon earth, another revelation of the Truth was being prepared in the Eternal Kingdom of the Father, in case humanity should fail in spite of the Father’s great sacrifice of Love. If mankind did not heed the warning of the Son of God, with His Pure Divine attitude, to the extent that they turned the points in the direction He indicated, but blindly continued on their course leading to destruction, then another Messenger should be sent out Who could stand closer to the inmost nature of mankind than did the Son of God. He was once more to admonish and lead them in the last hour if ... they desired to listen to His call of Truth! That is the Son of Man!
Christ as the Son of God knew about this! On recognising during His Mission how choked and parched were the souls of men, it became clear to Him that His Ministration on earth would not bear the fruit which, given the good volition of mankind, should have ripened. He grieved deeply about this, for He knew so well the Laws of Creation that bear the Will of His Father, and He could clearly foresee the way things were bound to develop towards the inevitable end, which the nature and volition of man were certain to bring about!
It was then that he began to speak about the Son of Man, Whose advent would become necessary because of the course events had taken. His great Mission left two ways open for mankind to decide upon — either to follow His teaching and so ascend, avoiding all that brings destruction, or to fail and descend still further on the downward road leading to destruction. The further He came towards the fulfilment of His great Mission the more clearly He saw that the decision of the great majority of mankind was inclined towards failure and thus towards destruction!
Consequently His utterances about the Son of Man formed themselves into direct promises and proclamations, such as when He declared: »But when the Son of Man cometh ...«, etc.!
Therewith He marked the time just prior to the danger of destruction, which was bound to be the ultimate end according to the Divine Laws operating in the World of Matter, because of the failure of mankind towards His Mission and their insistence on continuing their chosen course. This realisation caused Him intense suffering, for He was Love incarnate!
Every transmission affirming that Jesus, the Son of God, at the same time called Himself the Son of Man is wrong! The Divine Laws cannot hold anything so illogical, nor can it be ascribed to the Son of God Who Himself knew the Laws and carried them within Him!
The disciples could not grasp this, as was evident from their questions. They alone spread the error which has prevailed up to the present day. They thought that the Son of God meant Himself when He used the expression »the Son of Man« and, acting on this assumption, transmitted this error to posterity! Neither did succeeding generations trouble to concern themselves more seriously with the want of logic inherent in it than did the disciples themselves! They simply disregarded it, partly from diffidence and partly from indolence, although the all-embracing Love of the Creator would have evidenced itself all the more clearly and powerfully by a rectification of the error.
Following in the footsteps of the Son of God, that is, taking up and carrying on His Mission, the Son of Man will face mankind on earth as the Envoy of God the Father, so as to drag them back from their present course by proclaiming the Truth, and induce them voluntarily to decide to change their attitude. This will lead them away from the destruction that now awaits them!
Son of God and Son of Man! Surely it is not so hard to discover that there must be a difference between these Two? Each of these words has its own clearly defined, strictly marked meaning, and those who would mix and fuse them into one must forthwith be stamped as too indolent to think. Hearers and readers of my lectures will be aware of how the natural process of development, beginning with Primordial Light, which is God the Father, descends right down to the globes of the Gross Material World. The Son of God came from Divinity Unsubstantiate, quickly passing through all the spheres until He was incarnated in the World of Gross Matter. This is a process of radiation! Therefore it is absolutely right to call Him the Son of God Who became flesh. His rapid transit through the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality (it is only there that the human spirit has its origin) permitted Him neither there, nor subsequently in the ethereal part of Creation, to gain a foothold strong enough so that His core of Divine Unsubstantiality could obtain the strong protecting covers of these different natures. Consequently these covers, which otherwise serve as a protective armour, remained thin!
This had the advantage that His innermost Divine nature burst through and shone forth more easily and strongly, but it also had the drawback that in the regions of the earth hostile to the Light it was all the more quickly opposed and furiously attacked because it stood out. The strong Divine part, which was only thinly veiled in the physical vessel, had to remain a stranger among men, something which stood too far apart.
Figuratively speaking, one might say that His Divine core was insufficiently armed and equipped for the lower Gross Material Sphere, through lack of absorption from the Sphere of Spiritual Substantiality and the Ethereal World. The gulf between the Divine and earthly parts was but slightly bridged.
As mankind neither heeded nor treasured this gift of Divine Love but, through the natural driving power of all Darkness, faced the luminous Son of God with animosity and hatred, a second Envoy, better equipped for the World of Gross Matter, had to come — the Son of Man!
The Son of Man is also an Envoy of God and has issued from Divinity Unsubstantiate, which was also a process of radiation! Before beginning His Mission in the World of Gross Matter, He was incarnated in the World of Primordial Spiritual Substantiality, and was thus closely connected with that spiritual species in which the seed-germ of the human spirit originates. Thus the Divine Unsubstantiate core of this second Envoy comes nearer to the origin of the human spirit; thereby gaining greater protection and direct power against it!
It was only after being in this sphere that He was sent down on His Mission to the World of Gross Matter at that time which enabled Him to arrive at the proper hour on the field of battle, there to show the right way into the Kingdom of the Father to all those seriously seeking God and asking for spiritual guidance and, at the same time, to protect them against the attacks of those who are hostile and striving downwards!
Therefore, be on your guard, so that you may recognise Him as soon as His time is come, for that will also be your time!
TO MAKE clear the difference in origin of man and animal it is necessary to go more deeply into the various spheres of Creation than has been done hitherto.
Such conventional catch-words as the »group soul« of the animal as distinct from the personal »ego« of man no longer suffice for this purpose, although as such they are quite correct. For these give only a general outline and deal with what lies nearest the earth, but do not indicate the essential difference!
It is necessary to know about the development of Creation as explained in the lecture: »The development of Creation«!
For the sake of a more comprehensive view, the main spheres from above downwards are reproduced here: —
| 1. The Divine: | Unsubstantiality Divine = God Divine-Substantiality |
| 2. Spiritual-Substantiality: | Conscious Spiritual Substantiality Unconscious Spiritual Substantiality |
| 3. Animistic Substantiality: | Conscious Animistic Substantiality Unconscious Animistic Substantiality |
| 4. Material: | Ethereal Substance Gross Matter |
Man has his spiritual origin in Unconscious Spiritual Substantiality, whereas the animal has its animistic origin in Unconscious Animistic Substantiality. There is a huge difference between these two spheres. The animating core of man is spirit. The animating core of the animal, however, is animistic substantiality.
In this case a spirit stands above animistic substantiality; the origin of the inner man is consequently higher than that of the animal, while both have only the origin of their physical bodies in common. The spirit of man, however, has over the ages developed his original purely animal body to a higher state of perfection than was possible for the animistic substantiality of the animal.
The theory of the natural development of the physical body from the lowest form of animal body right up to the human body is therefore correct. It shows in every respect the continuous and uninterrupted working upwards of the Creative Will in Nature, a proof of its perfection.
But with this theory one very great mistake was made, that man did not take into account what lay beyond the World of Gross Matter!
If it is said that the human body, i.e., the gross material cloak of man, originates from the animal body which existed before the human body, this is correct. These bodies, however, comprise neither the human being as such nor the animal as such, but solely serve as something necessary in the World of Gross Matter. If one were to infer from this that the inner life of man also originated from that of the animal, this is an unpardonable and misleading error that must cause a conflict!
As a result of this conflict a sound intuitive feeling arises in many people against such a false assumption. On the one hand they are attracted by the correctness of the assumption as far as the body is concerned, but on the other hand they are repulsed by the gross negligence which without further argument wants to apply the same precept to the origin of the inner man!
It is true that up till now science could hardly do otherwise than assert that in his natural development man must finally have originated from the animal and, above all, from an ape-like animal which in its form most closely resembled the human body. This was because science was hitherto only able to concern itself with matter, and mainly with gross matter, which constitutes only a very minute part of Creation. And of this science knows only the coarsest manifestations, thus very little indeed!
Today at last science has become capable of making use of various things that are valuable without, however, knowing their essential nature, but it is forced to use certain alien terms to do duty for lack of knowledge! These terms merely denote the provisional classification of something existing which they can already use, but the essential nature of which they do not know, much less its origin!
Animistic substantiality and, to a far greater degree, spiritual substantiality stand above all matter. Regarded from the earth upwards, they are the continuation up to the origin of all that exists, or looking downwards from On High, which is the more natural way, they are what preceded the World of Matter in the process of development.
It must be remembered that all that belongs to spiritual substantiality as well as to animistic substantiality naturally, and in accordance with its development, needs the cloak of a physical body as soon as, in obedience to the laws of development, it penetrates into the World of Gross Matter as an entity with a living core able to shape matter! Every dissension will immediately be eliminated when at last all men’s investigations either penetrate higher into the regions beyond the Sphere of Matter, or they become capable of following the natural process of development from On High downwards.
The time has come when the first move in this direction should be made. But the greatest care must be exercised lest the spiritual knowledge which bears the unmistakable stamp of logic is imperceptibly degraded to the level of ignorant phantasy! It should be noted that animistic substantiality and spiritual substantiality can only be approached with a free, clear spirit, and not, as is the case in the World of Matter, with scales, scalpels and test tubes!
Nor can it be done with a constrained spirit or one hampered by prejudice, as is so often attempted! The existing Laws of Creation make this automatically and irrevocably impossible. In this matter the small human creature, even when possessed of the greatest presumption, can alter nothing of the perfection of the adamant Will of its Creator!
The essential difference between man and animal lies solely within. An animal can only return to animistic substantiality after casting aside its physical body, whereas man returns to spiritual substantiality, which is far higher.
It is true that in a certain sense man can often descend to the level of the animal, but he must nevertheless always remain a human being, as he cannot shirk his responsibility, which is an inherent part of his spiritual origin! On the other hand an animal, originating as it does from animistic substantiality, can never swing itself upwards to the level of a human being. The difference between the bodies, however, lies only in the outer form, which has been more nobly developed in man by the spirit after it had entered the physical body. (* See Lecture: »The creation of man«.)
