The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 111 -
The path to knowledge and love of God.
Hereupon the scribe was quiet, but I said to the priestess: "Listen, you strong world-wise priestess, it was one and the same whether I or this disciple has spoken to you; for any of My disciples who opens his mouth in My name, cannot speak differently from the words which I Myself have put into his mouth! He has precisely said to you what I would have told you! That you loose stoics does not feel anything else but death in you and the final total destruction of your existence, is nobodies fault than your own.
2
Why are so many heathens who not only believe firmly and undoubtedly in a life of the soul after death like the best Jews, but also are firmly and livingly conscious about all this?! Why not you?
3
But I will tell you what problem is in and with you! See, the problem is your arrogance, your self-love and the greed to shine before the people as pompous know-it-all and to argue everyone into the ground with the old chunks of world-wisdom! Who can say something or give any advice to you, if you constantly emphasize that everyone can only be taught by you, however, you by nobody? Therein lies the most dangerous arrogance and the saying applies: Who cannot be advised can also not be helped anymore!
4
For as long you will prevail in this haughtiness, for as long you only will feel the everlasting death in you instead of life; since haughtiness drives the soul with all power into the flesh of its body, and the soul, in itself more and more inflated, becomes one with its flesh and in such condition she can feel nothing else than the death of the flesh.
5
However, where the soul retreats from its arrogance and humbles itself, she also isolates herself more and more from her body's coarse flesh and is only connected to it by its related nerve-spirit. Once this has taken place in the soul, she begins to become life-feeling, and if she furthers her love for her fellow-men and thereby also the pure love for God, whom she will soon and easily find in her humility, she thereby awakens her transcendental spirit out of God and begins to unite with it. Once this is in progress, she already enters the perfect, everlasting life and thereby starts to resemble God in everything more and more and the everlasting life has become a great clarity in her.
6
However, for as long a soul remains in her world of haughtiness and allows beyond measure for her fellow-men to shower her with incense over incense, for as long she immerses herself more and more in her coarse flesh and therefore necessarily also more and more in the flesh's death. Which words and which deeds can then provide for such deathful soul the proof that she continues to live after the death of the body and that their exist only one and true God?!
7
You now think of course that a highly wise, omniscient and almighty God, in one way or another, could give to such people a light, so that he could become aware where he is standing. God always does this, but the haughtiness of man does not allow it that man could become aware of all this in himself.
8
I say to you: Who begins to think that a God exists, who maintains and guides everything what is created, will soon recognized that everything that there is, is arranged well and purposefully. From the wise arrangement he also will see that the Creator, based on everything there is, must be extremely good. If man thinks about this a lot and judges in this way the Creator and the creatures, he will begin to love the Creator and from day to day, more and more the love for God in the heart of man will increase and become more firm and this love is then the transcendental spirit of man whose light penetrates the soul and whose life-warmth enlivens the soul. And once this is the case with a person, it is not possible for him to think about death in himself anymore.
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That every person can easily accomplish this with and in himself, you can infer thereby that every person has eyes to see, ears to listen, the smell-sense, taste, feelings and for everything the mind, reason and hands and feet and a free will, through which he can freely put his limbs into action and order his love. Thus equipped, he sees the sun go up and down and also the moon. He sees the stars and countless many species and types of creatures, which he can observe and from which he can recognize God the Lord more and more.
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Every mountain, every valley with the many fruit, every stream, all the different and with beauty decorated grasses, plants, brushes and trees and all the animals provide him with sufficient material to think about their origin and existence.
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If a person thinks about it, an inner voice will tell him, that everything could not have produced itself but that there had to be a highly wise, most loving and almighty Creator, who created and ordered all this, still maintains it and will maintain it forever in an always more ennobled and more perfect way, since for the human mind unimaginable long periods of time, He maintained everything until now.
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Who thus imagines himself a God and Creator, must also have a great respect for Him and awakens in himself an always growing love for Him. Once this is there, also the beginning for the soul to become alive in her spirit is there and continues to grow with an increase in the love for God, which increase takes place even more easily, because the love-spirit increasingly enlightens the soul and she increasingly attains more clarity about the being of God.
13
If in this way a person has found the road to God and thus to the true, everlasting life, he can out of neighbourly love show such to his fellow-men and become a proper guide for them and for that he will be provided by God with even more light and wisdom and his disciples will love him and support him in everything necessary.
14
If you would have done this a long time ago - as you have been on quite a good road already through your mentor who was a Platonist -, you would not try to argue us to death with your Diogenes; for you would have a lot life-fullness in you already. But your Diogenes and your secretly big arrogance have completely blinded you, and as such you will have to develop your inner life right from the beginning according to this My teaching given to you. With a lot of zeal and love you will soon make a lot progress; but if you remain in your stubborness, you will also remain in your inner death. - Have you understood this quite well?"
15
Said the priestess: "Yes, Lord and Master, this was clear, and I have recognized the truth of all this quite well; but from the standpoint of a one, true and almighty God it should have been quite easy, to let the spirit of our deceased mentor appear to us, because he promised this to us under the most ceremonious oath as proof of his soul-life-teaching. If he would have appeared to us, we would have become affixed to his teaching and would have arranged our whole life accordingly; but since he still owes us this until now, it is self-evident that we therefore started to doubt the truth of his teaching. Why didn't he appear to us?"
16
Said I: "He has appeared to you seven times in your dreams and has given to you always the same reason, why he cannot otherwise than to visit you in dreams. Why didn't you believe him? Because as very beautiful daughters of a high-priest you already became too vainly and too arrogant and have laughed more at your honest mentor than have listened to him with a happy life-zeal! Your souls crept too mightily into the flesh; thereby you lost the necessary outer-life-ether-sphere for seeing spirits and therefore it was impossible for him to appear to you visibly.
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However, who also has outside his body a life-sphere through the fullness of his inner life, can see the souls of deceased people and can talk to them about the most important issues of life whenever he wants to. But this requires of course a nearly total inner life-perfection.
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But now think about this, discuss this with your husbands, who already have received My teaching, and you will come to the right conclusion in you! Once this has taken place, in the evening we will add something to it which will enlighten you a little more.
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The people of this earth have the great destination, to become self-powerful children of God; therefore they must be exercised and developed in all self-activity out of themselves. - And this will be all until evening!"
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Thereupon the women became quiet and I, the disciples and the people of the house went outside.