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 61 -
The re-cognitional power of love. The inadequacy of mind and reason.
1
(The Lord) "But love, again, is a result of the stimulation of the inner life which has been acted on by something.
2
The inner life is love, thus a fire possessing warmth. If this fire is acted upon by a thing which itself has fire within and is thus nourished, as the fire in the hearth is nourished by good firewood, it will begin to burn more vigorously, and there will be more stirred-up vital warmth for the inflammable substance. Thus, the flames will grow stronger and their light brighter, and the soul will soon obtain much light on a matter previously quite unknown to it. Thereby the love for the object will keep growing, and one will not give it up until it has become thoroughly familiar and one is fully aware of its worth and all it contains. But this happens only when the love for the object keeps getting greater and more intense.
3
However, if the life is not stimulated by something, it remains cool and is not in the least interested in the ever so memorable thing, just as the flame does not lick at the logs of wood which are too far removed.
4
Therefore, before man can think living thoughts of warmth about something, he must be stimulated by it. The cold truth, being a glimmer of the remote stars, can never arouse the inner life because its inner warmth is thereby not increased, but diminished.
5
Up till now you have only searched with the icy-cold intellect, the lever to your search being your equally cold reason which accepted nothing as truth unless it could somehow be perceived through one of the senses.
6
Thus, you were looking for God with the abacus held in your hand, trying to find the A but could not even find the basic lines of this significant letter. You were looking for plants on the snowy and icy expanses of the North but could not find anything whilst the brightness of the snow rendered you nearly blind.
7
By the snowy and icy expanses I mean here the cold, calculating intellect and the still colder, calculating reason which, since it is grossly material, cannot possibly be aroused by anything purely spiritual and is thus incapable of an inner spiritual contemplation.
8
Many a thing struck you as peculiar, as for instance the incessant repetition of the same forms in nature, which to you appears to be creative. You were thinking in terms of an exponentiated intelligent life force fully aware of itself, which is forever consolidating itself and, being able to penetrate and seize everything, again and again conjures up the same forms out of the crude forces. You used to regard the whole earth, the moon, the sun and the stars as a temple which was finally even inhabited by invisible magi. In India you found many a seeming confirmation of this belief, and for this reason you were amongst those mainly responsible for establishing your magic chamber at Essaea.
9
Since you did everything with the cold intellect, never allowing your heart's understanding to awaken, you did not find the ground of life, no matter how closely you approached it with your reason, and became again immersed in the cold and dead matter, trying to find salvation therein both for yourself and for all other people.
10
Things have been progressing for you successfully for quite some time, for you were - and still are - a head of this institute, which is quite apt to plunge the ignorant into the darkest superstition and the better - and thinking - part of mankind into the crassest and crudest materialism. To be sure, you have destroyed many a living heathenish temple without, however, building something better in its place. You had death within you and even greeted it as a welcome guest, for with you non-existence counted for more than all life.
11
Why did things take such a turn with you? Because you have never had any love in your heart. You have never kindled the living fire within you into an ever so moderate flame. Never having activated the outer side of your heart, how could you possibly have stimulated the inner and innermost life-elements of the spiritual part of the heart, which would soon have made your heart beat with the flame of true life and illumined your consciousness to the point of clear self-recognition, which leads to the recognition of God.