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 38 -
Purpose of the works of penance in India.
1
(Raphael) "You were in India probably and saw quite a lot of abuses, in particular the strong penances. Such a thing is for the pure rationalist an obvious folly, linked with at least an apparent cruel arbitrariness of the priest caste there. Only it is not exactly as it appears. These people live in a land, which has the greatest growth ability for plants as well as for animals and people on earth. Go in the woods in the mountains in this land and can walk around for days to find just one small, dry sprig on an old tree; if you break off a twig from a tree and put it down completely loosely and openly even on sandy soil, you can come after one year, and you will find the twig certainly still quite green, very often even with roots driven in the earth.
2
So viability, especially in the highland regions, is very strong in plants as well as in animals. One can significantly wound an animal or even a person, and the wound will cause no great pains because the air covering it there is more beneficial than the most beneficial patch here. If somebody strikes you here with a cane or a rod, it will hurt for several days; there, you can get a thousand strikes with a rod, and you will hardly feel a strike until the next one. Try to put a nail in your flesh here and you will feel pain that will become intolerable! You will swell up; the most burning inflammation, even a deadly burn can appear, or the wound will start to fester and cause you unspeakable pains; not in the aforementioned regions of India! You can walk around for years with a nail in your flesh and you will notice almost no pain from it soon after putting it in because the air is so balmy beneficial there that an inflammation can almost never occur with wounds. If this does not occur, there can be no talk of pain; at least not an intolerable one.
3
At the same time, however, the people there are always very excited because they are animated by too many natural elements and would go over into degeneracy unequaled on earth especially in the sphere of the mating desire. The harsh penances keep them the most from that. Their flesh is in a certain way deadened by the harsh mortifications, and in addition they are persuaded by the engrained fear of the fire of hell, which the priests portray as lively as possible so that it starts burning them from the description; the Indian fears fire the most because this causes him the greatest pain his flesh is able to feel here already. Through the harsh penances which God the Lord allowed and tolerated for the Indians until now and for much longer, the soul of these people will be preserved in its human life form and then, in the eternal afterlife, will be able to go over into a higher perfect existence.
4
You will, of course, object to that and say, 'Let these people form in a scholarly way and they will certainly not go over into all sorts of fornication degeneracy!' "They will not, my most treasured friend, in spite of your pure reason! For people whose imagination is naturally too roused, science is a true poison for life! Let us assume that the imaginative and visionary Indians possessed the scholarship of Greece, Rome and Alexandria and the whole world would not be safe from them! Arts and sciences would only put in their hands all sorts of means to become one of the most dreadful and degenerated people on earth because they would soon bring to light things that would surpass by the highest degree everything done at one time by Babylon and Nineveh and entire Egypt, Athens and Rome. The mountains would have to give way to their wantonness, they would build cities which would immediately reach over entire most fertile lands and they would dam rivers and streams, so that immense lakes would form. In a nutshell, the Indians initiated in all sciences would become the most terrible people in the entire world, even if now they have such meek tempers and looks!"