The Great Gospel of John
Volume 2
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the Vicinity of Caesara Philippi (Matthew 16)
- Chapter 224 -
Fall of the spirits; Adam and original sin.
1
(The Lord:) "It is the fall of the first-created spirits or the free and animated ideas of God within infinite space that is the great separation of which Moses says: 'And God divided the light from the darkness'. How this is to be understood in its true and fully right correspondence, I have already made abundantly clear to you; the consequence of which is the necessary material world which, in large and small units such as suns, earth and moons, together with everything upon them, is spread out within infinite space.
2
Concerning Adams's fall however, this has already more objectivity of course than the so-called fall of the angels, yet is still correspondingly analogous to the fall of the angels. Only with Adam an actual law comes already to the fore, - whereas with the fall of the angels, no such commandment could yet be involved, because at that stage only a start had been made with the development of the beings to be liberated, and therefore no intelligence outside of God existed to whom such law could be given.
3
Wherefore, with the so-called fall of the spirits a necessary imposed division took place, whereas the Adamic one, proceeding out of himself, was already a voluntary one and therefore not an enforced one, but an act of free will of the first carnal man, free in all psychical spheres. On the whole however it nevertheless is a foreseen act out of God's secret order which, whilst not an absolute compulsion, nevertheless is a permitted one, under "thou shall: or thou shall not", allotted to man's free will on account of his stabilization, won through his own action.
4
The difference is that between an infant that has to be carried from one place to another, and a robust man who has been walking quite solidly for a lengthy period.
5
Whoever once can walk, surely does not have to be carried to the place one wants to go with an infant; one simply show him the most direct and unmistakeable rout to the place. If the healthy and strong-legged man desires to go there, he shall with certainty reach the destination without hazard. If however he is circuitous or deviates knowingly, then he has only himself to blame if he reaches the destination later and with more trouble and effort.
6
This we note with Adam. Had he kept the absolute commandment, then mankind, i.e. man's perfect soul would not have descended to the very hard, heavy and frail physical body which is now beset with many frailties and shortcomings.
7
But the disobedience of the positive commandment necessarily caused the first man a great deviation, by which he then reaches his aim much later and with much more trouble.
8
But you are thinking by yourself: 'how can the keeping or non-keeping of a trivial and just moral commandment have such substantive effect on mankind's nature in aggregate? Even without his foolish indulgence, Adam would have remained the same sensual man that he remained through eating of the apple, and he would have had eventually still to die, as all mankind still does!'
9
In one respect you are quite right, but also wrong in another. The eating of an apple, which is a salubrious and sweet fruit, certainly is not fatal, or all men eating apples should soon die thereafter. Wherefore there is nothing to the apple itself. But if its eating is prohibited for a certain time, and that only for further stabilizing of the soul; and the soul, conscious of its free will ignore and transgresses the command, then she causes as it were a certain fracture in her being, which then resemble an open wound which is difficult to ever heal again, because even if the wound is reduced to a scar, the scarring then constricts a number of vessels to the extent of impeding future circulation of life-fluids to the soul, hence exerting a constantly painful sensation.
10
Thereby the soul is then distracted from striving for development of the spirit within her, and she busies herself with eliminating the scar. - And behold, this scar is called 'world'!
11
The soul indeed constantly strives to rid herself of this scar, because it pains her in her worldly concerns. Yet the more trouble she takes, the coarser the scar, producing more worldly cares in turn. And in the end the soul has nothing further to do but concern herself with the healing of the scar, i.e. making herself trouble-free, finally going over into the scar herself almost completely, paying little attention to her spirit. - And behold, this is the so-called original sin"!