The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in the region of Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 175 -
The doctor finds no explanation for the nature of Raphael.
On this, the doctor came very close to Raphael and felt his hands. When he was finished with that, he said: "Yes, beautiful, and certainly also blessed friend, your exterior is unmistakably of a spiritual nature, because the indescribable softness and fairness of the skin of your body and the ethereal of your folded garment proclaim loudly that such thing was never experienced or seen by man. But your firm and strong arms that I felt now have nothing spiritual as such, and shows that, apart from your spiritual might and power, you also could compete with many wrestlers because of the natural strength of your muscles and your solidness. And nevertheless, you are completely a pure spirit. How can this be understood?"
2
Raphael said: "Just be a little more patient, then you will more clearly realize and understand it. Now touch me once more, and convince yourself whether there is still something physical on me, and make then an opinion with the clearness of your mind and with the power of your reason."
3
Then the doctor touched Raphael's hands once more. However, when he took them with his fingers with manly power, he only felt air, because his fingers came unhindered to the palm of his own hand and felt nothing physical in between. And still, the doctor saw Raphael standing before him just like before, but of course, more with the eyes of his soul than with those of his body. After he experienced also that, he was embarrassed and did not know what he had to say about that.
4
Only after having deeply thought about it, he said - not so much to Raphael, but more to himself (the doctor): "This looks like existing and not existing. One time, a very firm body, and now, although still the same form, but nothing of a tangible being. How can the human mind understand that, and how can even the sharpest human intellect evaluate that? Here, my mind and reason are really standing still. O highest lovely and blessed friend, you should explain that to me, otherwise it will be even more difficult for us Greeks to understand more clearly and better of what the Kingdom of God consists.
5
You are here, for I can see you, and hear your clear voice, and still, according to the feeling of my hands you are not here at all. But even if I can see you now more with the eyes of my soul than with those of my body, I touched you the second time with my physical hands just like the first time when I could very well see your body. How can that be? Or did I perhaps only touch you with the hands of my soul, just like in a dream, which is to the physical maybe as unreal as the psychical or spiritual is to the physical? But if this is so, it is difficult for the human mind to discover something really existent in the material world of bodies as well as in that of the spirits, because the first one has as good as no value for the second one, and vice versa the same. And still, for the sense of sight and the hearing they are standing in front of each other as something existing.
6
How can that be? Who can understand that? You are something that exists, but at the same time, for my sense of touch, you do not exist at all. And I must be the same from your viewpoint. And so we both are something visible and hearable as something existent, and nevertheless, what concerns the life's feeling, not existent at all. What is that? An existence without existence, and also a non-existence without non-existence. Friend, no man can understand that with his reason. And his mind becomes by that like an iron pillar, at which the wild storms of time will lick as long as it finally will go completely to ruin despite its hardness.
7
Who and what are these storms? No human eye has actually seen their actual being, only the sense of touch feels their fleeting motion. But the pillar is mighty, and it stands there, visibly before all the sense organs of man. How can these futile storms in time cause its destruction? And why does the pillar, which is existent for all the life's sense organs of man, not destroy the storms? What is the mind of man that invented the pillars and put them down, despite all the storms? Its works last longer than the mind itself, and this mind, which is their creator, is dead and can never more command the futile storms to spare its strong works.
8
O my heavenly friend, with the experience that I have had with you now, it is not exactly easy for us human beings to understand the nature of the Kingdom of God, unless you yourself will explain this matter to us more in detail and more specifically. I could think about it until the end of all times - if that would be possible - and still remain on the same spot as I am standing now. Are you something or are you nothing, or am I nothing, despite my feeling that I exist now?"