The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 31 -
Mathael speaks about the path to the goal of true life.
Cyrenius says, "Alright, I am going to listen, but I shall be a sharp judge!
2
So tell me, wise Mathael, if life occurs as you have already pointedly reasoned, what have millions to face who know nothing about all this, and the many millions who in the future will be born on the Earth after us and will also never hear a syllable; what happens to their eternal life?"
3
Mathael says, "Quite good! They all had a doctrine which was enough to keep the imagination of the soul alive too. In such an imagination the soul in time settles and finally lives in it like in a dream, and can live for thousands of years in such a dream.
4
But that is not a real eternal life by far; such souls have to survive great battles and tests in the so-called spirit world, if they want to enter the true eternal life, for the battle is there as I casually mentioned before.
5
But whoever goes here along this path achieves admittedly, with no little effort and with true wise seriousness of life the eternal life in all truth, clarity and full solidity in a few years already here, which he otherwise would only achieve after hundreds or even many thousands of years according to the sleepy nature of the soul, if it is possible at all. If something goes wrong a spoiled soul here or there can enjoy a highly miserable dream life for eons and eons in which it in no way ever reaches any notion or perception of anything true or real outside its own existence besides itself and its highly pitiful figment of its own imagination. Nevertheless it makes the bitterest discoveries that it is surrounded by nothing but enemies, against whom it cannot defend itself because it can see them just as little as a completely blind person can see anything in this world, and cannot see where the enemy is coming from or where else a danger is lurking!
6
You see, a completely blind person, despite all his blindness, is not in the end fully without light; for the fantasy of his soul is in itself a light, and the blind man sees things which illuminate themselves like the things of the natural world present themselves, but they have no substance, neither does their light. One minute it is bright, the next it is dull again and often it disappears completely so that such a blind man is perfectly without light or being for a time.
7
And look, it is similar for a soul in its full seclusion; it has light one moment, the next, night again. But neither the light nor the darkness of the soul has any truth; instead only a temporal glimmer of what the soul takes up from the external world without its own knowledge or desire, just as a drop of dew hanging on a piece of grass takes on the image of the sun. The drop is now well lit, but it has no knowledge of where the light in its being came from.
8
What I am saying here in the name of my four brothers is a matter of our experience which was linked to great suffering and separated from the real, truly free, independent life.
9
You have here a suffering and constrained life, and an independent and therefore free godly life before you; whether you want the one or the other depends on your will alone; but this is how things are, and no god can give you any other valid existence.
10
Look, now I will tell you something else. My soul, which is now crossing over to a constantly clearer vision, sees and already recognizes the savior who through the power of His free godly life freed it just recently from a large number of invisible enemies of the higher, free life; look, there is more in Him than in the whole visible realm of creation.
11
He, as the self-aware focus of all being and all life since eternity, now wants to reconfirm His life, and thereby the life of all people, even more through His life; but He will only achieve this through unheard-of self-denial. He will forego this present life of His in order to enter the eternal magnificence of all life for Himself and thereby also for all people. Only then will all creation in a certain way take on another face and another inner order; but nonetheless the phrase will remain: Each one must take the burden of external misery onto his own shoulders and follow Me! Do you understand this now?"
12
Cyrenius says, still a little moodily, "Yes, certainly, I understand you well and cannot avoid agreeing that you have spoken the truth; but nonetheless such conditions for life are hard to listen to!"