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 39 -
The dangers of advanced scientific education.
1
(Raphael) "Incidentally a people that have a big imagination are never educated academically too profoundly because the too powerful imagination and the fantasy originating from it always hinder that. It suits these people better to look at all kinds of silly pictures in their imagination, than to really think logically about one or the other appearance; by the way, the strict penances that you saw do not occur as often as you think and were told. A rich man frees himself, and the poor man will only be convened to it, if he really committed a significant offence against the existing laws. Thus, there still exists in India a patriarchal order against which one cannot just lay about one with lightning and fire from the skies. To be sure, there is a most stark mass of the greatest superstition, which should be steered; but because such superstition is for sure always the richest fruit with all those peoples who have a very active imagination, one cannot lay about one straight away with the most violent beatings!
2
It is still better to leave people in superstition, than to initiate them into all the sciences; superstition fastens the Indian on the ground, while science would all too soon give him eagle's wings to immediately spread out ruinously across the whole world. Yes, if it was possible to transfer all the Indian people with one blow into a state of purest knowledge without any effort on their part, they would be astonished for a while about how they could have allowed the great and absurd folly to rule over them for so long. However, soon afterwards they would flare up in rage and fury towards their priests and at the same time towards all other people's personalities so that these would all have to jump over the sharpest blades. They would carry out a purification from which the whole earth would very soon look blood-red. And what would have been won by it in the end? The ignorant part of the people would be, of course, massacred and from the academically awoken people would arise nothing but blood thirsty tigers!
3
The fact that it would happen like that you proved as a purely reasonable person through your great anger towards all divinities and especially towards their so-called representatives. If you had my power! Oh, how fast you would put an end to all priesthood in the entire world! But what would happen hereafter with the other people who cling to their priests' neck and crop and let themselves be led in all directions like the lambs by their shepherds?! Would you be able to transfer them all into your pure reason through a dictum? I tell you: This would be a difficult task! If everyone knew equally much, everyone would also have to own equally much in material means, if one did not want to starve. Because if he went to his neighbor and offered him his services and said, 'I know this and that!', the neighbor would say, 'I know the same, have arranged everything accordingly for a long time and do not need anything from anybody! Everyone should provide for himself! '
4
If a father said to his children, 'Do and learn this and that!', the children would say, 'What should we still learn and do? We can do and know everything you can do and know, and act accordingly! What more do you require from us?'
5
If in your old age, when every person becomes weaker and frailer, you needed a servant and would say to the next best one who could do something for you, 'Look, I have become weak and need your help for which I want to pay you well and will do so; if I die, I want to appoint you as my heir!', - do you know what the addressed would say to the one in need of help? Listen, he would say exactly what you yourself would say to somebody, if he addressed you with regard to a constant physical service! You would say to him, 'Friend, I do not need to be somebody's menial and servant because I am as well-to-do myself as you are and do not need to go into service to earn my living by the sweat of my brow! Who needs it, can slave away for his neighbor; I will let it be!' "See, what I tell you now, was the case for many hundred years in old Egypt! All the people became wise, and everyone was rich."