The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 25 -
Mathael's philosophy of nature.
1
(The Seer) There is certainly an order on the Earth and some kind of equilibrium from which one can soon be convinced that there must be a highest wise God who has created things as they are now to be seen and understood; but on the other hand one often notices again an unlimited disorder and immeasurable capriciousness so that one had to say to oneself in the end: Yes, there is finally no God!
2
Just take the changeability of the weather! Where is there any sort of order or any sort of equilibrium to be discovered? Look at the various trees standing among one another in a wood, or the grass in the field; further the very uneven measure of the mountains, the seas, the rivers, the streams, the brooks and the springs! There is no equilibrium or order, at least not for our understanding. The sea, according to situation, makes greater or lesser waves for its uneven banks. Only man can make a dam here and there; nothing ever happens through the highest wise God.
3
So man just creates a sort of ordered garden and orders the vines and the fields, and he recognizes only the noble fruits and cuts them away from the ignoble ones, cares for them and makes them useful. But where is there a garden of any order on the whole Earth which God has laid Himself, where an ordered river? The plates of the Earth lie so chaotically that one can only see the blindest power of pure fate; terribly little is seen of any all-powerful divine wisdom and you can do what you want or think whatever you can and want, and it never happens that they say to us "Look, there is a quite competent order of God!"
4
Yes, everything taken individually would obviously have very meaningful traces of some original divine power and ordered wisdom; but if one then observes the occasional muddle of the created things, so it seems to me: God has either become tired of order and either takes little or no care of all the creation at all, as it seems to some, or he doesn't exist at all. Instead the accidentally created somethings, after eternities in the endlessness of space, form themselves gradually - according to their natural laws created through their accidental existence - into things of some weight, gradually expand, in time become worlds, suns and moons; the worlds then develop in themselves, depending on their size and weight, new laws which then become the basis for new creations.
5
The more varied yet necessary things gradually became and more and more developed on a heavenly body the things gradually became, the more different if smaller things had necessarily to follow. The finally very diverse things on the worlds and the immense multiplication of the worlds caused laws and effects, from which the first traces of a sensitive life began to proceed; once just one spark of life is formed from the previous necessities, a second had to follow, and over time billions who created new laws among themselves, which are the cause for the development of a more perfect life. And if life has developed into a highest life force through the laws found within itself, then the deeply intelligent life power, conscious of itself and its surroundings, begins to organize the previously mute nature and to make it subservient!
6
But if everything came into existence in this quite natural way, then certainly there are only life forces under highly different degrees from the smallest mosquito to that perfection of life which the more instructed man calls the divine. On this way a good, but also in contrast an evil divinity may well have developed over unthinkably long eras. Once the two divinities have developed, they must exist as counter powers until most probably the evil power, according to our moral conceptions, is taken up by the more powerful good to make ordered contrasts, out of which marriage after an unthinkably long time then everything that is still mute, unconscious and dead will cross over to a full life with free will and free consciousness!
7
But in these times everything is as disordered as in a true muddled war and seems to be due to this: the now good and highest life power that we call God is not yet in the desired order, instead in a continuing war of subjugation with the bad life power that we call Satan; for the evil power would not fight at once so that there is no reason to wage war.
8
Satan must however have a mute pleasure in good and therefore wants to place the whole positive life force beneath him; but exactly through this striving he always takes more of the positive into himself and thereby makes his evil better without wanting to. But thereby more order comes into his being, more consciousness and correct insight, and he can finally do nothing else but to totally give in because he cannot prevent through his nature and his drive that he would not constantly be defeated.
9
He will always remain an opposite to the pure good after his full conquering, but an ordered one, like salt is a contrast to pure sweet oil; but if the oil tree did not have enough salt in the correct order in its roots, in the trunk, in branches, twigs and leaves, its fruit would never give a sweet oil!
10
I am losing myself now somewhat in explanations which certainly cannot be understood by you in the way they deserve to be understood. But that doesn't really matter; for it is not like me to want to deceive you with untruthful teaching, instead just as a hypothesis, to which a soul is led through many and unbearable sufferings in which it receives no lessening despite all pleading with God.
11
The soul or the actual primitive intelligent power of life becomes brighter through great suffering and pain of the body; it sees and hears everything that lies far from the eyes and ears of a natural human, and you mustn't wonder if I make mention of several celestial bodies. For my soul has seen it better and more clearly than you have ever seen this Earth or will ever see in this life, and therefore I can inform you with good reason about everything which it has seen in endless space! But now an end to everything, and tell us what we should do now! For we cannot possibly remain here!"
12
Mark says, "Only for a little while, until the savior, who has healed you here before our eyes, commands it!"