The Great Gospel of John
Volume 4
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 144 -
The causes of catastrophies.
1
(The Lord:) "I say to you: Live only for fifty years according to the proper divine order, - and you will never again see, hear, taste and endure any calamity!
2
I tell you: All calamities, epidemics, all sorts of disease among humans and animals, bad weather, lean and unproductive years, devastating hailstorms, great, all-destructive floods, gales, great storms, locust-plagues and such like are merely consequences of the wrong actions of man!
3
If man was, as far as possible, living within the given order, he would not have to expect any of these things. The years would pass by like pearls on a string, one as blessed as the next, and the habitable part of the earth would never be afflicted by too much cold or too much heat. However, since the clever and exceedingly shrewd people undertake projects by far exceeding their needs, as for instance, erecting too great edifices and under-taking excessive improvements, levelling whole mountains in order to construct highways for making war, destroying many hundreds of thousands of acres of the finest forest lands, digging too deeply into the mountains for the sake of gaining gold and silver and, lastly, living in continual quarrel and discord with one another, while on the other hand, they are at all times surrounded by a great number of intelligent nature spirits who are responsible for the earth's weather as well as for the purity and wholesomeness of the air, the water and the soil, - is it any wonder if this earth is more and more visited by an infinite number of evils of every kind and type?
4
Miserly and avaricious people equip their barns with locks and bolts and even keep armed guards who watch over their overflowing treasures and possessions, and woe betide him who would approach them without being authorized; truly, he would instantly be sharply dealt with!
5
By this, I do not mean to say that nobody should be allowed to protect his hard-earned property; I am here talking of the highly unnecessary, excessive abundance. Would it not be advisable to build also barns which are open to all the poor and weak, although under the supervision of a wise donor, so that no one might take more than what he needs? If, in this way, avarice and miserliness disappeared from the earth, also - now listen well to what I am saying! - all lean years would disappear from the earth.
6
You ask how this is possible. And I answer: In the most natural way of the world. Anyone in the least familiar with the inner workings of the whole of nature must soon comprehend this.
7
There, in front of us, is still the healing herb and there, a little further to the front, the very harmful poisonous plant. Do not both get their nourishment from the very same water, the very same air, the very same light and its warmth? And yet, this plant is full of healing properties and the other full of deadly poison!
8
Why is that so? Because the medicinal plant, being of a well-ordered inner nature, in keeping with its good qualities influences all its surrounding nature-spirits so much so that these, in peace and harmony, conform to it within and from outside and nourish it. Thus, the whole plant becomes wholesome and healing, and in the sunlight during the day its evaporations and the nature-spirits surrounding it up to a good distance, exert a most beneficial influence on humans and animals.
9
With the poisonous plant, whose nature is of a selfish and angry character, the surrounding nature-spirits are seized by that same disposition and thus become perverted. They then, likewise, conform to the plant, nourishing it, and their whole nature then becomes homogeneous with the plant's original nature. Also its surroundings and evaporation, as it were, are poisonous and harmful to man, and the animals, with their sensitive nostrils, keep out of its way."