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 35 -
Roklus points at the heart as the seat of the true godhood.
1
(Roklus,) "But these representatives of god in Jerusalem are first of all addlebrained like the night owls during daytime, at the same time voracious like the wolves, power-hungry and jealous like a red rooster, and still rough, cloddish and abhorrent like the wild boars! Who can live with such neighbors in peace and unity?! Who must in his just exasperation not testify against them under such versatile circumstances?! Such rejects before humankind must be confronted with the pure truth every now and then before all people; in well-meaning way those must be shown with what kind of most foul scoundrels they are dealing! Thereby we will not take away from humanity anything other than its old blindness!
2
The fact that this is not very agreeable to the old, in heart and soul petrified children of Abraham, is quite easily imaginable; but we are truly not responsible for it, and it would be high time to clean this old Augean stable! These guys label us as godless and call us blasphemers of the holy of holies. Where is their god whom we defamed and what is their holy of holies?! Their temple, the curtain in it, or the half-iron and half-wooden Ark of the Covenant with the naphtha flame, or anciently with a pillar of smoke, which was naturally a little more difficult to fabricate than the naphtha flame?! Or should the gigantic so-called cherubs represent the holy of holies, or the old manna in the ark, Aaron's staff, or the old oxen horn trombones from whose sound Jericho's walls collapsed, David's golden harp and his crown, or the whole so-called holy script, which the Pharisees may no longer read, but only worship?! In short, I would once like to see the Jews' god and his holy of holies somewhere else, or perceive it in something other than in such antique junk, in which nothing else is evident and discernible than an old, typically Egyptian ungainliness of human artist hands, which is much more distant from something purely divine than the blue of the sky from the earth! If, however, one defames something that is actually nothing but an old, most shameful lie, - what is wrong in that?!
3
Or should one become a eulogist for an old and rusted human deception in order to do a nice service to the Jewish divinity which, like the Roman Zeus, is a complete zero?! No, an honest Essenian will never do such a thing! We know another holy of holies, and that is an honest and worthy human heart! In it, is the place of true divinity! Every true and honest person should recognize this in himself, as well as in his fellow-men! If he does that, he respects his human dignity in his fellow-men as well; if, however, he does not do that, he gives himself a miserably bad mark and degrades himself beneath the most unreasoning animal. Yes, there can be a god; but man finds him only in the true life depth of his own heart, and this true god's name is 'love'! That is the only and true divinity; except for that, there is none other anywhere! Who really found this, has found the principle of life and will find with it something more, maybe even an eternal, not wasteful life!
4
One should collect in himself love through love and thus make it mightier and mightier! Through such concentrated vitality one will be able to maybe quite easily and certainly defy with success those other hostile forces and as a winner will be able to forever secure in the midst of thousand of hostile forces acting on him blindly his life continuity, even if not bodily, still in a certain way spiritually, which primarily is and must be a force; what we get to see once is no longer the working force, but only its work. If, however, we take a closer look at the works of the universal natural force, we will soon and easily find that some forces, as parts of the universal primordial force, must have consolidated themselves under some conditions discovered automatically, otherwise, by always being the same, they would not be able to always bring about the same effects. The same effects always presume the same causes. However, a force that manifests itself as being unchanged through the same, always unchanged effects must have in itself a full consciousness and a bright intelligence sufficient for its work, through which it provides itself at all costs with appropriate weapons, by means of which it can and will at all times arise triumphant from a fight with other, even more raw forces; if it could be defeated at all or be dissipated completely, that which it had produced through its work would certainly never ever appear. If we assume that the invisible force from whose work, for example, the fig results, could be dissipated by other forces, no fig would ever appear!
5
Through such observation we must recognize in the various effects, which are always of the same kind, a countless amount of forces as indestructibly consolidated, and also see how even we people continually regenerate according to our form and primordial nature. That is why we can also accept as certain that the force from which we have arisen has essentially consolidated itself forever as a remaining life principle. If this preserved itself, every human life can also consolidate itself and afterward survive spiritually forever and ever if it has truly found its life principle and cultivated it with the right means. I reckon that a life force, once self-conscious and thinking, once it properly found itself and fully recognizes itself and its surroundings, will never find it too difficult to invent means by which it can most definitely forever defy an overpowering, but only raw and blindly acting force, as such is also shown by the people in this world. Let loose all hurricanes and a million lightnings over the pyramids of Egypt! Will they be able to harm the person in their innermost catacombs? In short, even in this world the people show that they know quite well how to protect themselves from the rawest and most angrily acting forces. Who taught them this? Experience, their sharp reason and necessity!
6
If a generally very little educated person is able to do that, of how much more will he be capable as a consolidated spiritual life! Thus on a scientific field we have an established outlook on the continued existence of the human spirit after the loss of the body and do not need either a Zeus, just as little a Lama of the Indians or a Jehovah of the Jews; pure reason gives us the same in the purest and brightest light.
7
And thus, my great friend, I have clearly and precisely shown you the reasons for my current atheism and also that my reasons are certainly not made up out of thin air, but are solidly based on many experiences! However, I did not want to remove myself from theism for good! Show me other reasons, and I am a theist! How is it now with this miraculously emerged house for Markus and his family? Give me just a hint because now you know me quite completely!"