The Great Gospel of John
Volume 7
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord on the Mount of Olives. (cont.) Gospel of John, Chapter 8
- Chapter 155 -
The 3 degrees of inner life perfection.
I said. "To promise is much easier than to do what has been promised. You are still too much attached to the world and to your great treasures, on which is sticking a lot of blood of widows and orphans, and this creates for worldly men always an almost unbridgeable gap.
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However, as with God all things are possible, so it is also possible for the most hardened worldly man and sinner to change himself quickly and efficiently if he sincerely, in full faith and trust in God, does what the divine wisdom is advising him. He must then perform a true miracle on himself by a strict reversing of his will. This by a total self-denial of all his former weaknesses, habits, lusts and bad tendencies that arise from the unfermented and very impure nature spirits of his body in his soul, and polluting and disfiguring him.
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Do count how many different passions you have. Take a serious decision to overcome them all and then follow Me. If you can do that, then you also can attain quickly to the inner life perfection, but if you cannot do that, it will be very difficult."
4
The Pharisees said: "As far as the firm will is concerned, we are not lacking it. For if we had the earnest will to sin, then why could we not have the same to do what is good?"
5
I said: "Yes, yes, that is not a bad reasoning. But the will to sin finds in man always a lot of support, and more precisely in the pricks and tendencies of his body. But for the will to do what is good, his body does not find any support. This he finds only in the faith in a true God, and most of all in the love for Him, and also in the hope that the promises that God has given him will be completely fulfilled.
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Therefore, whoever can battle against all the bad passions of his body, and in this way has become master over himself by the firm and living faith, by the love for God and fellowman and by the unwavering hope, will then also soon become lord over the whole visible nature. And then he already finds himself in the first degree of the true inner life perfection, because he has become fully a lord over himself, although he still will oftentimes not lack all kinds of temptation that will prick him to make one or the other light sin.
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If he then also succeeds in making a firm pact with all his sense-organs to turn away from all earthly pricks and to turn only towards the pure spiritual, then this is already a sure sign full of the light of life that the inner Spirit out of God has totally filled the soul, and then man is already in the second degree of the inner true life perfection.
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In this degree, man has already received such great strength and life freedom that he, because in his soul he is completely filled with God's will and can act according to it, can nevermore commit any sin, for when he himself has become pure, everything is also pure to him.
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But although man is then already a perfect lord over the whole nature and has within him the complete conviction that he can sin no more, because all his actions are guided by the true wisdom out of God, yet he still remains thereby in the second degree of the inner life perfection.
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But there is still a third and most high degree of inner life perfection.
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Of what does it consist, and how can man attain to it?
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It consists in the fact that the perfect man, who knows very well now that he is a powerful lord of the whole nature, and without sinning can do whatever he wants, still, in a humble and meek way, controls his willpower and might, and in all his actions, out of pure love for God, only waits until he receives for this reason from God an assignment, which is for the perfect lord of nature still a very difficult task, because he, in his full wisdom always realizes that according to the will out of God that lives in him, can only do the right thing.
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But an even more profound spirit will also realize that between the special will of God in him and the most free and endless universal will in God there is still a big difference, by which he makes his special will completely subordinate to the universal divine will, and will only do something of his own power when he directly receives an assignment for it by the only self-will in God. He who does that, has attained within him to the innermost and highest life perfection, and this is the life perfection in the third degree.
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Whoever has attained to it is also completely one with God and possesses just like God the highest might and power over everything in Heaven and on Earth, and nobody can ever take it away from him because he is completely one with God.
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But nobody can reach this highest life perfection wherein the archangels are, before first having attained to the first and second degree of life perfection.
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Every archangel has the power to achieve at once everything that God can achieve unlimitedly Himself. But still, no archangel does anything out of himself, but only when he receives the assignment from God. Therefore, even the highest archangels are asking God to assign them to do this or that, especially when they can see that the people of this Earth are lacking one thing or the other.
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See this young man. He is completely in the third degree of inner life perfection, and what he wills is already as good as an accomplished deed, but still he does not do anything out of himself or for himself, but only what I will. However, if I tell him: 'Act now only out of yourself, and as you think is right', then he also will show what is within him and will act accordingly."
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The Pharisees said: "Thus this young man is already equal to an archangel, because Your inner being is the full pure Spirit of God?"
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I said: "Yes, yes, happy the one who believes that in his heart."