THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 211 -
Man as an immortal being.
I say, "Well then, I will try to do that, and so pay good attention to this! Your claim consists of saying that namely he who is limited in himself cannot understand the unlimited; and yet I say to you that every man, just like the eternal space around him, hides infinity and eternity in himself, and indeed in every fiber of his material body, not to mention in his soul and quite particularly in his spirit.
2
Just think about the infinite divisibility of every part of your body, however small! Where is the end of it?! Then think about the infinite reproduction capabilities of man, animals and plants! Where does this end?
3
Have you ever discovered the borderline up to which an enlightened soul can lift its thoughts? But if the soul has already an endless area of thought, what do we want to say then about the eternal divine spirit in it, which is in itself power, light and the very life?
4
I tell you: It is this spirit that works and regulates everything in man. Yet the soul is, as it were, only a substantial body, just as the physical body is a vessel of the soul until such time when it has achieved some solidity within it. Once this has happened, it passes more and more into the spirit and, therefore, into actual life, which in and by itself is a true energy and a true light and evermore out of itself creates space, forms, time and the duration of the forms within it, animates them and gives them independence. And as they come forth out of the infinity and eternity of the fullness of true life, they grasp of it also the infinite and eternal for all times of times and eternities of eternities for and in themselves.
5
Therefore, no one can say and maintain that he, as man, is a limited being. There is contained in his minutest parts still something of the infinite and eternal, and for this reason he can grasp the infinite and eternal.
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Whoever believes that he lives only for a very limited time is badly mistaken. No part of man is mortal, although of necessity changeable, just as all earthly matter is and must be changeable, since it is destined for the sake of the purity of life to pass into pure life, which is no longer changeable.
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Therefore, even if the many different components and parts of matter and, thus, of the human body are transformed, they do not cease to be but continue to exist forever in a more spiritualized and, therefore, more noble form and kind. Or who of you can say that he died when only a child because now, as an old man, he has not retained anything of his original child-like form?
8
There you have a grain of wheat. Place it in the earth! It will decay and quite unmistakably pass away as what it is now; but you will see a stalk growing out of the decay and on the top of the same an ear will form, topped with a hundred grains. But which of you now sees such power in this grain, which however must be in it, since otherwise an ear with a hundred grains of the same type could never come forth from this only one grain?
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But we have 100 grains now which we want to place in the earth! From them we will receive 100 ears, each with 100 grains, thus 10,000 grains in total. And behold, the 10,000 grains, the 100 stalks and ears must also already be available spiritually in the one grain, just as this grain itself must be available in that one grain that first fell to a fertile field of this Earth out of the hand of God, since otherwise indeed no reproduction could possibly be thought of. You all have proof once again how even infinity and eternity are at home in such a grain.
10
You all will think and say to yourselves: Yes, that is indeed the case with a grain which is sown again as a seed into the soil; but what happens with that which is ground to flour and then eaten as bread by people or even by animals? I tell you all: Truly, it's fate is even better; for it goes into a more perfect life, in which it as an integral part of a higher life then just as well and even more can multiply into countless ideas and living forms of expression and only the very material husk is cast out as excrement, where it then also becomes a more noble fruit humus of the Earth, from which the spirit of the sprout forms various grains of seed and attracts immortality. But whatever happens with the straw and framework of the plants also happens in a much nobler way with the fleshly body of a person.
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And so you do not find anything perishable and limited in man but only a variability towards a certain spiritual goal, and it is, therefore, quite possible for man to grasp the infinite and eternal, time, space, energy, light and life, because all this is contained within him."
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But certainly it depends above all on the education, which is a light of the soul. If this is lacking, as is now the case among most people, then everything is also lacking, and the human soul sees and understands even less of what is in it without such spiritual light than a blind man in the night understands what is around him and approaches him.
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And now tell Me, Epiphan, how you have understood and accepted this opinion of Mine! Only afterwards will I tell you whether I penetrate with My spirit indeed the endless space and eternity. Now speak quite freely and without shyness!"