LIKE DEEPEST NIGHT ethereal darkness lies spread over this earth! For a very long time already. So dense and firm is the suffocating embrace in which it holds the earth that every ascending light-perception is like a flame which, without oxygen, loses its power and quickly fading dies out.
This ethereal condition, now manifesting at its worst, is dreadful. Anyone permitted for only five seconds to glimpse what is happening would from sheer horror be deprived of all hope of salvation! –
And all this has been brought about through the guilt of men themselves. Through the guilt of their propensity for what is base. Here mankind have been their own worst enemy. Now even those few who are once more earnestly striving upwards are also in danger of being swept into the depths, towards which others are now developing at a sinister speed.
It is like a close embrace, which is followed inevitably by fatal absorption. Absorption into the sultry, tenacious swamp, in which everything sinks without a sound. There is no longer a struggling, but only a still, silent, gruesome choking.
And man does not recognize it. Spiritual indolence blinds him to this fateful happening.
But all the time the swamp is sending forth its poisonous emanations, which slowly weary those who are still strong and alert, so that they, too, will fall asleep and sink away powerless.
That is the state of affairs on earth today. It is not a picture that I am unfolding therewith, but life! Since all ethereal matter bears forms, created and animated through men’s intuitive perceptions, such a happening actually takes place continually. And this is the environment that awaits men when they must leave this earth, and cannot be led upwards to the more luminous and beautiful regions.
But the Darkness grows ever more dense.
Therefore the time draws near when for a while this earth must be left to the rule of Darkness, without direct help from the Light, because humanity enforced this through their volition. The consequences of the volition of the majority were bound to bring this ending. – It is the time which John was once permitted to behold, when God will veil His Countenance. –
Everywhere there is night. Yet during the deepest affliction when everything, including what is better, is also in danger of sinking away, at the same time dawn will now break! But the dawn will first bring the travail of a great purification, which is inevitable before the salvation of all serious seekers can begin; for no helping hand can be offered to all those who pursue base ends! They shall fall headlong into those terrible depths where alone they can still hope for an awakening through such torments that they must come to loathe themselves.
Those who with sneers and apparent impunity have hitherto been able to hinder the upward striving ones will become silent and more pensive, until finally, begging and whimpering, they will supplicate for the Truth.
Then it will not be so easy for such; they will be irresistibly led through the millstones of the inexorable Laws of Divine Justice, until in the experiencingthey come to the recognition of their errors. –
In the course of my travels I could see that a firebrand was hurled among the indolent human spirits with my Word, which declares that no man can lay claim to Divinity; whereas just at this time much effort is bent upon discovering God within oneself, so that ultimately man himself might also become God!
Hence disquiet has often awakened with my Word, mankind rebelliously seeking to defend themselves against it, because they only wish to hear soothing and reassuring words that seem pleasant to them!
Those who so rebel are simply cowards, who would like nothing better than to evade the personal issue, only to remain in obscurity, where they can indulge in sweet and peaceful dreams to their heart’s content.
Not everyone can bear to be exposed to the Light of Truth, which clearly and mercilessly shows up the defects and spots on one’s garment.
With smiles, scoffing or with enmity such people would like to prevent the coming of the day when the feet of clay supporting that flimsily constructed idol, their “ego”, will be clearly revealed. Such fools are only masquerading with themselves, which will be relentlessly followed by the grey Ash Wednesday. With their wrong views they really want only to idolize themselves, and thereby they feel well and comfortable on earth. From the outset they regard anyone who disturbs them from this indolent placidity as an enemy!
However, this time no resistance will be of any avail to them!
The self-idolatry evident in the assertion that there is Divinity in man is a base attempt to grasp at the sublimity and purity of your God, thereby defiling for you the most Holy, to which you look up in the most blissful trust! –
There is within you an altar which should serve for the worship of your God. This altar is your intuitive faculty. If this is pure it is directly connected with the Spiritual Realm and thus with Paradise! Then there are moments when you too can fully perceive the nearness of your God, as often happens in times of deepest sorrow and greatest joy!
You then perceive His nearness in the same way as is constantly experienced by the eternal Primordial Spirits in Paradise, with whom you are closely connected at such moments. The strong vibration caused by the emotion of great joy or deep sorrow for a few seconds pushes everything earthly and low far into the background, thereby setting free the purity of the intuitive perception, which thus immediately forms the bridge to the homogeneous purity that animates Paradise!
This is the most supreme happiness for the human spirit. The eternal ones in Paradise live in it continually. It brings the glorious certainty of being protected. They are then fully conscious of the nearness of their great God, in Whose Power they stand, yet at the same time they also realize as a matter of course that they have reached their greatest height, and will never be able to behold God.
This, however, does not depress them, but in the recognition of His unapproachable Majesty they give jubilant thanks for the inexpressible mercy He has always shown in regard to the arrogant creature.
And this happiness can already be enjoyed by man on earth. It is quite right to say that in deeply solemn moments earthman senses the nearness of his God. But it is sacrilege if man asserts that he himself possesses a spark of the Godhead within, because of this wonderful bridge which grants him the awareness of Divine nearness.
Hand in hand with this assertion also goes the debasing of Divine Love. How can God’s Love be measured by the standard of human love? Moreover, how can It be valued even below this human love? Look at those people who picture Divine Love as the highest ideal, just silently enduring and also forgiving everything! They want to recognize Divinity by the fact that It tolerates any misbehavior from lower creatures, such as only the greatest weakling or the most cowardly human being would do, for which they are despised. Just reflect what a monstrous insult this implies!
Men would like to sin unpunished, and then finally even please their God by allowing Him to forgive their wrong-doing without having to atone for it themselves! Such presumption shows either the utmost narrow-mindedness, unpardonable laziness, or the realization of how hopelessly weak they are in bringing forth the good volition to strive upwards: The one, however, is as reprehensible as the other.
Picture to yourselves Divine Love! Crystal clear, radiant, pure and great! Can you then imagine that It is as sentimentally weak and ignobly yielding as mankind would so like it to be? They want to build up a false greatness where they wish for weakness, they give a false picture only to deceive and reassure themselves about their own shortcomings, which make them willing servants of the Darkness.
Where then is to be found the freshness and power that unquestionably belong to the crystal purity of Divine Love? Divine Love is inseparable from the utmost severity of Divine Justice. Indeed It even is Divine Justice. Justice is Love, and Love again lies only in Justice. In this alone lies also Divine Forgiveness.
The churches are right in saying that God forgives everything! And reallyforgives! Contrary to man, who goes on condemning a person even after he has atoned for some trivial offense, and thus burdens himself with a double guilt by such thoughts, because he does not act according to the Will of God. Here human love is lacking in justice.
The activity of the Divine Creative Will purifies every human spirit of its guilt as soon as it strives upwards, whether through its own experiences or through its voluntary efforts at improvement.
If it returns to the Spiritual Realm from these mills in the World of Matter, it will then stand pure in the Kingdom of its Creator; it matters not what its guilt may have been! Just as pure as one who has never yet sinned. But firsthis path will take him through the activity of the Divine Laws, and in thisfact lies the guarantee of Divine Forgiveness, of His Mercy!
Do we not often hear today the fearful questioning: How could God allow such years of tribulation? Where does love, where does justice come in? The question is asked by mankind, by nations, often by families and the individual human being! Should this not rather prove to him that, after all,God’s Love is probably different from what many would like to imagine it? Just try in this way to visualize to the end the all-forgiving Love of God, as man insists on portraying It! Demanding no self-atonement, tolerating everything, and ultimately even offering generous forgiveness. It must produce a lamentable result! Does man consider himself so precious that his God should suffer under this? Thus more precious even than God Himself? To what lengths does men’s presumption go. –
On thinking it over calmly you must stumble over a thousand obstacles, and can only come to a conclusion when you belittle God and make Him imperfect.
But He was, and is, and remains perfect, regardless of men’s attitude to this.
His Forgiveness lies in Justice. Nothing else. And in this unconditional Justice also lies the great Love which has hitherto been so misunderstood!
Rid yourselves of the habit of measuring according to earthly standards! God’s Justice and God’s Love are concerned with the human spirit. Material substance has nothing whatever to do with this. It is only formed by the human spirit itself, and has no life without spirit.
Why do you so often torment yourselves with mere earthly trifles which you perceive to be sin, but which are not really so.
It is only what the spirit wills in any action that is decisive for the Divine Laws in Creation. This spiritual will, however, is not thought-activity, but the deepest intuitive perception, the actual volition within man, which alone can set in motion the Laws of the beyond, and indeed does so automatically.
Divine Love cannot be degraded by men; for in It rest in Creation also the inexorable Laws of His Will, Which is borne by Love. And these Laws take effect according to how man adjusts himself in Creation. They may link him with the proximity of his God, or they form a dividing wall that can never be destroyed unless man at last adapts himself to them, which means obeys them, in which alone he can find his salvation, his happiness.
It is one perfect whole, the great Work shows no flaws, no gaps. Any fool or simpleton who would have it otherwise will meet with his doom. –
Divine Love weaves therein only what benefits every human spirit, but not what pleases and seems agreeable to it on earth. Divine Love goes farbeyond this, because it governs the whole of existence. –
At present many a person very often thinks: If tribulation and destruction are to be expected in order to bring about a great purification, then God must be so just as to send out in advance preachers calling for repentance. Man must certainly be forewarned. Where is John who proclaims what is to come?
These are wretched ones who think themselves so wise, but are so empty-minded! Such cries merely conceal an utterly hollow presumption. They would only scourge him and throw him into prison!
Do open your eyes and ears! But man goes dancing frivolously away over all the suffering and misery of his fellow-men! He does not want to see and hear! –
Already two thousand years ago a preacher also first appeared, calling for repentance, and following on his heels the Word Incarnate. Yet mankind have made strenuous efforts to efface and obscure the pure luster of the Word, so that the magnetic power of Its radiance should gradually become extinct. –
And all those who wish to disentangle the Word from the clinging vines must soon perceive how desperately the messengers of Darkness try to prevent every joyful awakening!
But today there will be no recurrence of what happened in Christ’s time!At that time the Word came! Mankind had their free will, and the majority then decided to reject and repudiate this Word! From that time onwards they were subject to the Laws, which were automatically linked to the free decision then carried out in this way. Thereafter men found all the fruits of their own volition on their self-chosen path.
Soon the ring will close. Things are piling up ever more, rising like a rampart which will soon collapse and crash down upon mankind, who go on living unsuspectingly in spiritual apathy. Finally, at the time of fulfillment, they will naturally no longer have the free choice!
They must now just reap what they sowed at that time, and also later on their wrong ways.
All who once rejected the Word at the time of Christ are today reincarnated on this earth to settle accounts. Now they no longer have the right to be forewarned, and to make a second decision. In the two thousand years they have had time enough to change their minds! Also he who absorbs a wrong interpretation of God and His Creation, and does not exert himself to grasp It more purely, has not absorbed It at all. Indeed, it is far worse, for a wrong belief keeps one back from grasping the Truth.
But woe unto him who, in order to attract followers, falsifies or perverts the Truth because men find it more agreeable in an easier form. He not only burdens himself with the guilt of falsification and deception, but in addition he also bears the whole responsibility for those whom he was able to attract to himself by making it more convenient or acceptable. When his hour of retribution comes he will not be helped. He will fall into the abyss from which there can be no return, and rightly so! – This John was also permitted to see and warn against in his Revelation.
And when the great purification begins man will now have no time to rebel, or even to stem this happening. The Divine Laws which man so much likes to picture wrongly will then take inexorable effect.
Just in the most terrible tribulation of the times that the earth has ever experienced, humanity will at last learn that God’s Love is far removed from the softness and weakness which man so audaciously ascribed to It.
More than half of all the men living at the present time do not belong on this earth at all!
Already for thousands of years this mankind have sunk so low, and live sostrongly in the Darkness, that through their unclean volition they have built many bridges to dark spheres which are far below this earth-plane. There live those who have sunk deeply, whose ethereal weight would never have permitted the possibility of their rising to this earth-plane.
This formed a protection both for all those living on earth and for these dark ones themselves. They are separated by the natural Law of Ethereal Gravity. Down below they can give full vent to their passions, and all baseness, without doing any harm. On the contrary. There their unrestrained indulgence only strikes those of a like nature, whose base way of living similarly also affects them. Thus they suffer mutually, which leads to maturing but not to further guilt. For through the suffering, loathing for themselves may in time awaken, and with it also the desire to escape from this region. Gradually the desire leads to an agonizing despair, which may finally result in the most fervent prayers, and therewith in an earnest volition to do better.
This is how it should be. But through men’s wrong volition things developed differently!
Through their dark volition men built a bridge to the region of Darkness. Thus they held out a hand to those living there, making it possible for them to rise to the earth through the power of attraction of similar species. Here they naturally also found the opportunity for a fresh incarnation, which was not yet intended for them in the normal course of world events.
For on the earth-plane, where through the medium of gross matter they can live together with those who are more luminous and better, they only do harm and thereby burden themselves with fresh guilt. This they cannot do in their lower regions; for the depravity is only beneficial to their homogeneous kind, because ultimately they only recognize themselves as they really are, and come to abhor their baseness, which helps towards improvement.
Man has now disrupted this normal course in all development through the base use of his free will, with which he formed ethereal bridges to the region of Darkness, so that those who had sunk there could be thrown onto the earth-plane like a rabble, who now joyfully populate the greater part of it.
Since luminous souls must retreat before the Darkness wherever the latter has gained a firm foothold, it was easy for the darker souls, who had no right to be on the earth-plane, also to incarnate sometimes where otherwise only a luminous soul would have entered. In such a case the dark soul has found an anchorage through some person near the prospective mother, enabling it to assert itself and push aside the light soul, even when mother or father belong to the more luminous ones.
This also clears up the puzzle of how many a black sheep could come to good parents. However, if a prospective mother takes more heed of herself and of her immediate surroundings, of those with whom she associates, this can nothappen.
Thus one can recognize it only as Love when at last the final effect of the Laws sweeps away from the earth-plane in full justice those who do notbelong here, so that they fall into that realm of Darkness to which by their nature they definitely belong. Thus they can no longer hinder the ascent of the more luminous ones, nor burden themselves with fresh guilt, but perhaps still, after all, mature through disgust at their own experiences. –
The time will certainly come when the hearts of all men will be seized with an iron grip, when spiritual arrogance will be uprooted in every human creature with terrible relentlessness. Then every doubt which today prevents the human spirit from recognizing that Divinity is not in him, but high above him, will also disappear. That It can only stand as the purestimage on the altar of his inner life, to which he looks up in humble prayer. –
It is no error but sin when a human spirit confesses his desire also to be Divine. Such presumption must cause his fall; for it is equivalent to an attempt to tear the scepter from the Hand of his God, and degrade Him to the same level as man occupies, and on which until now he has never even fulfilled his task, because he wanted to be more, and aspires to heights which he can never possibly reach, nor even recognize. Thus he heedlessly overlooked all reality, not only making himself quite useless in Creation, but far worse, making himself directly harmful!
In the end, brought about through his own wrong attitude, it will be proved to him with uncanny clarity that in his present so degenerated state he does not even represent the shadow of Divinity. The whole hoard of earthly knowledge that he has laboriously accumulated over these thousands of years will then prove before the horrified gaze of his eyes to be as nothing;helpless, he will experience with himself how the fruits of his one-sided earthly aspirations become useless and sometimes even a curse to him.Then he may reflect upon his own divinity, if he can! – –
A mighty voice will sound forth and compel him: “Down on your knees, creature, before your God and Lord! Do not sacrilegiously try to lift yourself up to the level of God!” – –
The self-centeredness of the indolent human spirit cannot continue. Only then can this humanity really think of an ascent. That will also be the time when everything that does not stand on a sound foundation will collapse. The sham forms of life, the false prophets and the organizations surrounding them, will disintegrate from within! Therewith the wrong courses that have hitherto prevailed will also be exposed.
Then many a self-complacent person will probably also be terrified to realize that he is standing on the brink of an abyss and, through being wrongly guided, is swiftly gliding downwards when he proudly imagined himself already to be ascending and nearing the Light! That he opened protective gates without having the full strength of defense behind them. That he attracted dangers which in the natural course of events he would have passed over. Happy is he who then finds the right way back!