The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 79 -
Reason for the diversity of human talents.
1
(Raphael) "The so-called external falling in love in a beautiful object is thus in itself not a sin, but it can become a sin - that means a mistake in the order of life - if it constantly depends more and more on the external form, where it then naturally becomes more difficult to separate such a spirit from the beautiful exterior and lead it back to the place of its order.
2
In such cases the Lord allows all sorts of painful admonitions and even scourging, through which a confused spirit returns with time to the old order and leaves everything external, returns the nobility to its order and thus truly enlivens.
3
It is therefore a great difference between people of your sort and people of Ribar"s sort. What you might seek for years in order to receive it, a person such as Ribar can achieve it in a few days, yes often in a few hours if he gets the right leading and seriously wants it himself. Do you understand this?"
4
Suetal, seeming somewhat gloomy, says, "Yes, I understand it well, but on the other hand I don't see the reason why the creator puts a person into the world so mature and spiritually receptive and another again as thick as a piece of wood!"
5
The angel says, "Yes, my dear, if you begin to ask such things we will not be finished for a long time; for your spirit is still stuck too deeply under the skin of your flesh while Ribar"s spirit has already risen much higher than his skin and it is thus easy to talk to him. You could just as well ask why God has created so many stones on the Earth and why not sheer soft fruitful earth, why so much water above whose wide area no fields and vineyard lay root, why so much thorns and so many types of thistle which truly no grapes and no figs grow. But I tell you that everything is extremely necessary and that one could not exist without the other; but to show you all the wise reasons for it would need briefly and superficially a time period of many thousand years, while everything endlessly much can possess an awakened and mature spirit in a few moments if it is interested in it. But since a perfect spirit has quite higher and better things before it in life than to investigate the ground of the stones, the water, the thorns and the thistles, he leaves such things to the wisest care of the Lord of infinity."
6
Suetal says, "If that is so, then it is not my fault if I am stupider than Ribar who as far as I know despite his open lying spirit has still not brought the divine wisdom into himself!"
7
Raphael says, "People like you must have a sharp understanding so that their much stupider soul has a path to their spirit which is certainly much longer and bumpier than that which the spirits of love have to walk on; for a spirit of love obviously has as the element of life what the blunt spirit PER LONGUM ET LATUM [in a complicated way] with correct use of their sharp external sense can achieve.
8
You see what effort it would cost you to reach love! But Ribar is full of love. This needs only to be a little regulated and ordered and it is then quite finished; but you must come to love through your boring reason in order to possess it without which it is impossible to regulate and order! Do you understand that?"
9
Suetal says, "If so, then God is unjust and very biased!"
10
The angel says, "In a certain way of course, but naturally only seen from the angle of the short-sighted human understanding; but if you are building a house, why do you build a foundation using the biggest, heaviest and hardest stones?
11
What have these stones ever done to you before that you push them firstly into the darkest trench and lay all the burden on their backs? Don't you have any mercy then with the poor stones? What pressure must the stones under the enormous burden of a mountain bear?
12
Or don't the roots of a tree deserve your mercy that they constantly must hide in the dark depths of decay of the Earth while the branches of the tree are proudly resplendent in the ether of air and the all-enlivening light?
13
You see, are those not sheer cases of "unjustness" in the lowest layers of created nature?! How could such a wise God as the Creator act against all healthy understanding indifferently and unfeelingly?
14
Likewise even your feet could complain about your hands and say, "Why are then we, who are just as much flesh and blood as you, dammed to carry you while you without effort can move around in the free air so cheerfully?"
15
And so a number of other limbs could also raise a very justified sounding complaint against the head; but who would not immediately see the foolishness of such a complaint?
16
You see, in the same way the Lord has given talent to to the people of this Earth, some with greater and some with lesser, but to no-one is the gate in the great temple closed completely, but the way is given to everyone, and therefore no-one can complain and say: Lord, why didn't You give me the talents too which my brothers can rejoice in extremely?! For then the Lord would say to him: Do you feel a lack, go to you brother and he will help you out! If I had given every person the same, none would have a lack in comparison with another, the brother would never need his brother! How would then the enlivening love for others be awakened and strengthened in a person ?
17
What would a person be without love for his neighbor, and how would he find the true love to God without it, without which an eternal life of the soul cannot be thought about?!
18
You see, in order that a person can serve others and thereby achieve their love, he must however be able to do something that another cannot do so easily because he is lacking in appropriate talents; thereby a person will become a need for the other and through mutual needed service the love is first awoken and through the good of such mutual service constantly more and more strengthened.
19
In the strength of the love for another, however, lies the innermost revelation of pure divine love and in this the eternal life.
20
But if you now can claim in yourself that nothing can attract you to any love, neither a beautiful figure nor any other excellent good act, then I would like to hear from you through which third unknown means love can be awakened in a person"s heart and through what can it strengthen it until the power of revelation of the divine, purest love in the heart!?
21
But wherever this is not revealed in word or deed, then the eternal life of the soul after death of the body looks very gloomy and overcast!
22
Briefly, if in your hearts there is any doubt about the further existence of the soul after the death of the body, the revelation of life has not been successful; but whatever a person does not have, he doubts in it constantly that he will ever have it, if he wants to have it. But if you have found eternal life of the soul through the revelation of the pure divine love in your heart like a lost penny, then you will never have any doubt about the full possession of what you in all truth and reality possess!
23
But such a thing can only be achieved through love for your neighbor; and therefore Ribar is much closer than you to the true goal of life, who has enlightened your brain with the natural light of this world but your heart is allowed to stagger around without fire or light like a wild animal in the darkest denseness of the swamp forests of Europe!
24
Therefore I advise you to pay attention to what I have said to you, otherwise your mind will become hollow and the golden fruit on your tree of life will be eaten by worms long before maturity; and the worms mean doubt which at the end will eat through your whole skull, and your fruit of life will become a stinking carcass which will serve as contemptible food for the birds of prey! Have you understood me?!"