The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in the region of Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 21 -
The substance of the soul and his gradual liberation from matter.
There is however still a third reason which is already known by all My disciples, and you also will come to know this more precisely in the future than it can be explained to you now, for your inner reason would not be able to grasp this. But as an indication, I can tell you this for now: that everything, and still more, that the Earth contains, from its center up to far above the highest region of the air, is soul substance. But that substance stands for a certain time until it is liberated in very different conditions of judgment, from hard to soft. And because of that, it becomes, for the physical eye as well as for the feeling of man in this world, visible and tangible, as completely dead matter, harder or tender. To these belong firstly all kinds of stones, minerals, different soils, water, air and every still unbound matter in it.
2
Then there is the whole kingdom of the plants, in the water and on the ground, together with its transition to the animal kingdom. In that kingdom, the judgment is already milder, and the soul substance stands already more in the stage of a certain liberation compared to its former hard condition of judgment. The soul substance that was formerly as if chaotically mixed together is now, for the sake of the development of intelligence, sorted and formed as independent entities, and so you can see a great variety in this second kingdom.
3
While the soul substance had to go through a greater sorting in the second kingdom because of its special development of intelligence, it must be brought to an ever greater unification of separate intelligences in the third kingdom of the animals - which has a much greater diversity - in order to come to a clearer and freer individual intelligence. That is why in that animal kingdom numberless soul substance particles of all kinds of different small animals combine to one bigger animal soul, for example that of a bigger worm or an insect.
4
Once they have lost their material casing in which they were closed up, numberless different kinds of insects unify again to an animal soul of a bigger and more perfected kind. And this continues up to the big and perfected animals, which are partly wild and are later partly gentle - and only after the last unification of those animal souls will arise the human souls who are provided with all possible intelligent abilities.
5
When man is born in this world and still has to carry a body for the sake of his complete liberation, then it is extremely wisely arranged by God that he as a complete soul cannot remember all the necessary former conditions in separate forms of existence that he as transition had to go through. He can remember them just as little as your eye can see and distinguish the little separate drops of the sea. For if this would be given to a human soul, he would not be able to bear the unification of so endlessly different particles of soul substance and intelligence, but would try to dissolve himself as soon as possible, just like a drop of water dissolves itself on a red-hot iron.
6
In order to preserve the soul of man, every remembrance of former forms of existence must be completely taken away by the arrangement of the body that encloses him, until the time that he becomes innerly completely one with his spirit of love from God. Because that spirit is as the glue by which all those endless different soul particles of intelligence are solidly unified with each other as an eternal indestructible complete being. Then they will shine through, recognize and understand each other in all clearness, and they will glorify and praise God's love, wisdom and might as a perfected being that is similar to God."