THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 175 -
The stoic world view of the fisherman Aziona.
Says Aziona: "Well, that would then depend on whether it was fully dependent on my will or not! Certainly we do not easily accept something if we have not seen some striking effects of it beforehand. Now, there is by no means a lack of visible effects for the reasons that I have given; my food larder is full of edibles, and now here the wine from the purest water! That would be, as one says, very prettily tangible proof of it! But now it only depends on knowing clearly whether you then do not possess some very secret specifics, through the addition of even a very small amount of which all pure water must become wine! It will probably not be the case here; but one cannot totally resist such a thought at the observance of this pure miracle; but as long as one cannot do that, the total certainty is just as much nothing as the effect of this full faith well described by you! And therefore I see in advance only too well that all we inhabitants of this place will never be able to create the taste of wine in even a drop of water!
2
We are indeed situated here as miserably as possible "our food consists only of goat milk, fish and water; for nothing else is available in this complete desert "but we are satisfied with this in our very purest natural condition. This does not exclude the experiences which we have made many times in other places. We went far and wide across all the world; for we were singers and magicians, and I learnt the art of apothecary in Athens, to prepare certain secret specifics, with which one was able to perform a number of miracles for the many lay people.
3
Short and sweet, I am, as simple as I may appear here now, equipped with a large amount of all sorts of knowledge and experiences! I know the herbs of life of the king snake and know the miracle stone of Bezoar. I know Asia down as far as India, I know Europe, I was in Spain, in the land of the Gauls and was also in Britannia, I know the traditions and tongues of these lands, I came back again to Greece and got to know there wise men from the school of the great wise man Diogenes and said then: Oh, what a great fool man is! He roams through lands and great kingdoms for the sake of foolish money; Diogenes, the greatest wise man, was happy in his barrel, because he had seen, understood and proved the full nothingness of the world, its treasures and the fullest worthlessness of the passing earthly life very clearly like no other!
4
I then left Athens ten years ago with my company and moved into this desert away from the entire world. Here we built these huts for ourselves in which we now live very satisfactorily. The small herd of goats that we took with us and the fish that are richly available here, with the abundance of which we undertook a small trade with the city Caesarea simply for the sake of salt, feed us.
5
But since this city fell prey to the flames a few days ago, naturally this trade also reached its end, and to our great joy in the last four days we all have now made the experience that one can also live without salt, because one has been damned already by some invisible power of nature to live.
6
For I and all of us consider life to be a punishment for those small natures which are separated from the great general nature, which we animated beings represent. The thinking, self-aware being must feel all the stimuli of life in order to then in the end have to be separated from them through certain death all the more painfully. Therefore the main idea of the true wise man is this: Learn to despise completely the most worthless things in time, and observe death as the conciliation with the great nature and consider it as the greatest bliss for every living being! If a person has become great and competent, he also has achieved the only true and greatest happiness in life. He then lives quite satisfied and longs quite through and through for death, which is the greatest friend of every living being.
7
We have a great joy in everyone for whom we can do a service with our smallest means; but we also pity out of good and deeply true reasons every person who makes every effort to achieve something in the world. Why should we plague ourselves and care for something which exists only from today to tomorrow? But whoever wants to make us believe something else, we will simply show them the graves of the dead, from which no being has ever come forth revived! Whatever one was, one becomes it again, namely earth for the food of the lucky plants, which are there and do not feel that they are, and do not think that they will pass away. Oh, how great and holy is nothingness in comparison with clearly conscious life!
8
You all seem to be a very best-placed society of artists and to try to achieve a so-called earthly happiness!? We very happy ones can only feel regret for you, if you want to seek the true happiness in life on some other field than only on that which is to be found remaining. Stay there and build yourselves small huts to live in just like ours! Be satisfied in this void meaningless life which signifies nothing with the least possible, and you will only then gradually see and know how very right and true what I have just said to you!
9
And you, main speaker, will also understand that this real knowledge of mine is of very much more value than your firm, undoubting full faith! What good is it for you if you with your full faith replace also whole rows of mountains, but in the end must still die and cross into the never-ending destruction? We are all nothing but a game of the great nature between Earth, moon and sun! Between these three laws are casually built, and their consequences immediately animate the face of the Earth. The blind weakly-animated certainly do not see that, but we, who have been penetrated by many beams of the sun, have recognized that and can announce with the best conscience in the world to anyone what life is and what one has to expect from it!"
10
At this Aziona was silent.