The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 193 -
The essential nature of humans.
1
(The Lord) "Certainly, one might well say here and there and also judge: Yes, yes, it is good to preach about the virtue of generosity and to present greed as a most despicable vice; but who could actually help the fact that the overwhelming tendency towards wasteful generosity has a strong motive in one person, while for another it is the very sheerest greed?! For both people it is the same thing, an external appearance of their inner love, from which a blessed feeling awakes of its own accord which he then, like every other, keeps for himself. But the first man only becomes sad if he does not possess such abundance that he cannot make his poor neighbors happy, and the second becomes sad when he does not receive as much as he wishes - or even loses! That being so, everything lies in the nature of the person from his origin, and then basically there can be neither a vice nor a true virtue. For the greedy person generosity is a vice - and for the generosity greed is just as much so. Can water help the fact that it must be of a softer and more flexible nature, and who can damn a stone because of its hardness?! The water must be what it is, and likewise the stone.
2
On the one hand, this is certainly true; it is the nature of the generous to be generous and the nature of avarice is the exact opposite. But the matter stands thus: Every human is born as a child with the impulse for selfishness and avarice, and such a soul always has within it the coarsest material animal element, which applies particularly to those souls that are not from above but only from this earth. However, also the souls coming from the stars to this earth are not quite free of this element.
3
If man is brought up in this animalistic element, he transforms it more and more into his own life's ground, i.e. into his love. But because this is so animal-like, man remains a wild animal and has nothing human about him but the miserable form, the loosened tongue and due to the orderly construction of his brain a good capacity for cognition which, however, is more and more activated into base activity by the animal element. It can, therefore, recognize as good and conducive to bliss only that which the purely animalistic elements wants.
4
Therefore, if someone wishes to maintain that in the real meaning of truth there is no virtue and, thus, novice and that it is wrong to condemn avarice as opposed to generosity, let him be referred to this My explanation; let him consider and ponder it well.
5
But if a gardener plants two fruit trees in his garden and cares for them as he should, it will surely be of no matter to him if only one of the trees bears fruit, but the other, being of the same kind and standing in the same earth, nourished by the same rain and dew, the same air and the same light, does not bear any fruit, yes, not even a satisfactory canopy to provide shade? The insightful gardener will say then: That is an undutiful, ill tree which consumes all the juices that come to it; we will see whether it cannot be helped! Then the gardener will try all the means he knows and if all these means do not help in the end, he will cut down the unfruitful, ruined tree and plant another one in its place.
6
A miserly and selfish man, therefore, is a spoilt man, within and through himself, and cannot bear any fruit of life because he consumes all life within him.
7
On the other hand a generous person is already in the correct order of life because he bears abundant fruit outwardly.
8
But a tree cannot help the fact that it bears fruit or not; for it does not form the fruit itself, but the spirits rising in its organism from the just richness of nature form them through its power and through the highly simple and therefore also very limited intelligence. But man stands on a point through which the unlimited intelligence of his soul begins to form and to transform itself into a tree bearing the richest abundance of fruit of life.
9
If he does that, for which he has all the means, only then will he become a true person in the true, eternal order of God; but if he does not do that, he remains an animal which has no life in itself as such and therefore also cannot bring any life to his neighbor through good and kind deeds.
10
But therefore the present rescued Persian Jews are already very well-ordered people, and it is now an easy thing to lead them to higher wisdom; for if a lamp is so full of oil that it begins to overflow, and has a well-placed and powerful wick for the life in itself, one only needs to light the fuse and immediately the whole lamp becomes full of light and illuminates well and brightly everything around it in a wide circle!
11
And these Persian Jews along with their wives whom some have bought along with them, are already such well-filled lamps; it will not take much more to make them all full of light!"
12
At this Cyrenius says, "Lord, that is once again a highly important lesson and should be written down and remain until the end of the world!"
13
I say, "You are right to be concerned, and I have therefore ensured that the most important things have been written down on your rolls. But every such document is only as useful for life as a dead guide to a hiker on the many roads and mazes of this world. But what can help everyone and give him wisdom, power and life, will be written down in every man's heart, and in such an indestructible way that these scriptures of eternal correct life and its multifaceted circumstances will be read aloud in the human heart at every action which contradicts the divine order, and the soul will long to return to its original, divine order!
14
If man follows this inner voice, he is instantly on the right road. However, if he does not heed it but acts in accordance with the raging passion of his flesh, he will only have to blame himself if he is swallowed up by the judgment taking place within him. - But I can see our Persians are approaching; we will, therefore, expect them joyfully."