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 71 -
The afterlife fate of the soul that has become materialistic.
1
(The Lord:) "If that is so, of what use is it to the soul to win for the physical man all material treasures of the earth and unite with the flesh and its base animal desires, whilst at the same time suffering damage in its spiritual sphere and losing the reality of true life? From where in the beyond will it then take something with which to form a true entity, since it has itself become a nonentity along with the nothingness of matter?
2
Yes, friend, he who has gains with every gift, so that he has even more. But it is a different matter with that which really is nothing and has nothing. How could one give anything to that which has first allowed itself to be caught and annihilated by falsehood?
3
Or can you pour liquid into a vessel which exists merely in your imagination and nowhere else, or - should there be a vessel - with so many holes on all sides that one could hardly count them? Will it retain even one drop?
4
Oh, if matter as such, and as it is, were a permanent and immutable reality - which, however, is impossible -, it would be a truth as what it is, and he who won and owned it would be the owner of a truth; and if then the soul united with the matter, it would become a true and permanent reality.
5
However, since matter is merely a judgment of the spiritual, which can - and must - remain only until the spiritual primal element concentrates in the same, recognizes itself and, once it has gained sufficient strength, dissolves the matter surrounding it, turning it into the corresponding spiritual, then a worldly soul that has become all matter must in the end share the fate of matter.
6
When matter is dissolved, this also happens to the soul. It is dissolved, at least for the greatest part, into the substantial psycho-etheric primal-energy-atoms, and all that remains to the soul proper after the shedding of the flesh is one or the other archetype of an animal skeleton shape, without light and often without life, which bears not the slightest resemblance to a human being.
7
Such a soul is found then in a condition which the ancient patriarchs who were endowed with a spiritual vision called 'She oul a' (hell = thirst for life) a very true and correct description.
8
But accordingly the whole Earth and everything that you are ever capable of perceiving with your material senses is a true Sheoula. That is the death of the soul, which is or, rather, is destined to become a spirit; for whoever has ceased to exist as that which he had been, is also completely dead as that which he had been.
9
A soul who for the above reasons has almost lost its human nature, so that, at the most, an animal skeleton is left of it, is dead after the shedding of the body. For you unthinkable eons will have to pass until such a soul buried in matter will again become a near-human being, and it will take much longer until such a soul becomes fully human.
10
You certainly think now that all these things must be possible for God in an instant. And I tell you that all things are indeed possible with God. If God wants puppets and robots, an instant will be sufficient to fill the whole visible space with them.
11
But all these beings cannot have their own and free will, nor their own existing, independent life. They will stir and move only according to the will of God that comes to them. Their eye will be the eye of God and their thoughts will be the thoughts of God. Such creatures will be just like the individual limbs of a body that cannot move or be active in themselves without your recognition and desire.
12
] Is it not a totally different matter with your children, who have issued from your flesh and blood? They no longer depend on your will; they have a life, cognition and volition fully their own. To be sure, they will obey you and accept precepts and commandments from you, yet not according to your will but invariably according to their very own will, without which you could not teach them any more than some carved image or a stone.
13
] And behold, beings endowed with free cognition and free will, who have to perfect themselves voluntarily so that they will forever be free beings retaining their self-determination, must be created by God in a manner that makes possible such an achievement.
14
God can only, so to speak, create the seed enclosed as in a husk and endowed with every possible viability; the future free development and cultivation of life must be left to the seed itself. It must begin to attract the life out of God, which surrounds it without, and form from it an independent life of its own.
15
And behold, it does not happen as quickly as you think, because the embryonic life cannot be as powerful and capable of actions as the most perfected life in God that has existed since eternity!
16
And because every soul, however depraved, has always the same destiny, it cannot possibly, even in the beyond, be helped in any other way toward its salvation than that it helps itself with the few means still at its disposal as in accordance with the eternal order of God it also has to help itself.
17
I hope to have made it sufficiently clear to you what is actually meant by Satan, hell and eternal death, and you should hardly have to ask another question on this matter. However, if you should still be in doubt about something, do ask; for behold, the sun will soon be setting and we shall then have our evening meal!"