53. I Am The Lord Thy God!

  
Where are those humans who really live this highest of all Commandments? Where is the priest who teaches it purely and truthfully?
 
“I am the Lord your God, you should have no other gods before Me!" These words are stated so plainly, so unambiguously, that a deviation should be utterly impossible! Christ also pointed this out repeatedly with great clarity and severity. All the more deplorable it is that millions of humans heedlessly overlook it and devote themselves to cults that stand in stark opposition to this highest of all commandments. Worst of all is that they disregard this commandment of their God and Lord with devout fervour, in the delusion that in this obvious transgression of the commandment they are honouring God and being pleasing to Him!

This great error can only remain alive in a blind faith in which all examination is switched off; for blind faith is nothing but thoughtlessness and spiritual indolence on the part of such humans who, like sluggards and late risers, try as far as possible to avoid awakening and getting up because this brings obligations, the fulfilment of which they shun. Every effort appears to them as an abomination. Indeed, it is much more comfortable to let others work and think for them.
 
But whoever allows others to think for them gives these others power over themself, debases themself as a slave and thereby makes themself subordinate. However, God gave humans the power of free decision, gave them the ability to think, to perceive intuitively, and must therefore naturally also give an account for all that this free decision brings in its train! God wanted free human beings, not slaves!
 
It is sad when a human makes themself a slave in earthly matters due to laziness, but with terrible consequences when they degrade themself spiritually to the extent that they become dull-witted follower of teachings that contradict the precise Commandments of their God. It does them no good if they try to lull the doubts that arise here and there with the excuse that the greatest responsibility must ultimately be borne by those who introduced deviations into the teachings. That is in itself quite correct, but besides that, each individual is also particularly responsible for everything they themself think and do. Without exception; nothing of this can be remitted.

Whoever does not exercise the abilities of intuitive perception and thinking that have been given to them, to the full extent that is possible for them, makes themself guilty!

It is not a sin but a duty that each one, upon awakening to maturity, by which they enter into full responsibility for themself, should also begin to think about what has been taught to them up to then. If they cannot bring their intuitive perceptions into harmony with anything in it, they should not blindly accept it as correct. In doing so they harm only themself, as in the case of a bad purchase. What they cannot retain out of conviction they should leave alone; for otherwise their thinking and their conduct become hypocrisy.

The one who omits this or that which is truly good because they cannot understand it is by no means as contemptible as those who, without conviction, place themself within a cult that they do not fully understand. All actions and thoughts that arise out of such lack of understanding are hollow, and from such hollowness there can naturally come no good reciprocal effect, because in hollowness there is no living ground for anything good. It thereby becomes hypocrisy that is equivalent to blasphemy, because with it humans try to pretend before God something that is not there: the lack of living intuitions! This makes the practitioner contemptible, an outcast!
 
The millions of humans, who in thoughtlessness pay homage to things that downright contradict the divine Commandments are, in spite of their, absolutely bound and completely cut off from spiritual ascent.
 
Only free conviction is alive and can thus create living things! But conviction can only be awakened through rigorous examination and awakened inner intuitive perception. Where there is the slightest lack of understanding, not to mention doubt, conviction can never arise.
 
Only full, complete understanding is synonymous with conviction, which alone has spiritual value!

It is downright painful to watch how in churches the masses mindlessly making the sign of the Cross, bow, and knee down.
Such automatons cannot be counted among thinking human beings. The sign of the cross is the sign of Truth, and thus a sign of God! Whoever uses this sign of Truth while their inner being at that moment is not simultaneously genuine in every respect, when all their intuitive perceptions are not wholly directed towards the absolute Truth, loads guilt upon themself. It would be a hundred times better for such humans to refrain from this crossing and to reserve it for moments in which they have attuned their whole soul to Truth, and thus also to God Himself and His Will; for God, their Lord, is the Truth.
 
But it is idolatry and open transgression of the holiest of all Commandments of their God for them to pay homage to a symbol that belongs to God alone!
 
“I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before Me!” is expressly stated. Concise, explicit and clear, without allowing even the slightest deviation. Christ also placed particular emphasis on this necessary adherence. He purposely and meaningfully called it, and that precisely before the Pharisees, the Supreme Law, that is, the Law that must under no circumstances be broken or altered in any way. This designation at the same time says that all other good things and all other forms of faith cannot gain full value if this Supreme Law is not strictly observed without curtailment! Indeed, that everything depends upon it!

Let us consider, for example, the veneration of the monstrance without prejudice! For many people there is a contradiction with the clear supreme commandment.
 
Do humans expect their God to descend into this replaceable wafer, as declaration that He allows divine honours to be bestowed upon it? Or that God is forced down into such a wafer by the consecration of? One is as inconceivable as the other. Just as little, however, can a direct connection with God be created through such a consecration; for the path to it is neither so simple nor so easy. It cannot be traversed to the final goal either by humans in the flesh or by human spirits.
 
If, then, one human prostrates before a wooden figure, another before the sun, and a third before the monstrance, then each one transgresses thereby against the supreme Law of God as soon as they see in it something Divine, that is, the Living God Himself, and therefore expect direct Divine grace and blessing from it! In such a false assumption, expectation and intuitive perception lies the actual transgression, undisguised idolatry!
 
And such idolatry is often fervently practised by adherents of many religions, albeit in different forms.
 
But every human who exercises the duty of serious thinking arising from their abilities must come into conflict here, which they can only for a time temporarily and violently smother through the wrong of blind faith, just as idlers neglect their daily duties through the sleep of laziness. Serious-minded individuals, however, will inevitably feel that they must first and foremost seek clarity in everything that is to become sacred to them!
 
How often did Christ explain that one should live according to His teachings in order to gain benefit from them, that is, in order to ascend spiritually and attain eternal life. In the words “eternal life” spiritual liveliness alone is already expressed, not spiritual indolence. With the reference to living according to His teachings He expressly and clearly warned against a dull acceptance of these teachings as wrong and useless.
 
By its very nature, experience can only ever occur in conviction, never otherwise. Conviction, however, presupposes full understanding. Understanding, in turn, requires deep reflection and personal examination. One must weigh the teachings against one’s own intuitions. This leads by itself to the conclusion that blind faith is completely wrong. Everything wrong, however, can easily lead to ruin, to descent, but never to ascent. Ascent is synonymous with liberation from all pressures. As long as pressure still weighs down somewhere, there can be no talk of liberation or redemption. That which is misunderstood is a pressure that does not get released until the pressure point or gap is removed through full understanding.
 
Blind faith always remains synonymous with a lack of understanding, and therefore can never be conviction, nor can it bring liberation or redemption! Humans who have confined themselves to blind faith cannot be spiritually alive. They are like the dead and have no value.
 
If now someone begins to think correctly, to calmly and attentively follow all events and to string them together logically, they will come of their own accord to the conviction that God, according to His own Creative Will, in His Perfect Purity, cannot come to earth!
 
The absolute Purity and Perfection, to be precise, Divine Essentiality, precludes a descent into the World of Matter. The difference is too great for a direct connection to be possible at all, without taking into account the necessary transitions that the intermediate kinds of substantiality and matter demand. Taking these transitions into account can only be accomplished by incarnation in accordance with the Laws of Creation, as happened in the case of the Son of God!
 
Now that He has “returned to the Father”, that is, back to His origin, He now stands once again in the Divine and is thus completely separated from the earthly.

Any exception to this would mean a bending of the Divine Creative Will, which in turn would reveal a lack of perfection.
 
But since Perfection is inseparable from Divinity, there is no other possibility than that His Creative Will is also perfect, which must be taken as synonymous with unbendable. If humans were likewise perfect, then by the very nature of their being, then it would have to follow from the nature of the matter that each one would and could always take exactly the same path as any other.
 
Only imperfection allows for differences!
 
It is precisely in the fulfilment of the perfect Divine Laws that it has become impossible for the Son of God, after His “going in to the Father”, just as for the Father Himself, to be personally present in the World of Matter, that is, to come down to the earth, except through incarnation that strictly accords with the Laws of Creation!
 
For these reasons any Divine veneration of any material thing on earth must be tantamount to transgression of the supreme Law of God; since only the Living God can be given Divine honours, and He, precisely because of His Divinity, cannot be on earth.
 
According to the perfection of God in His Will of Creation, the gross material body of the Son of God also had to be purely earthly and therefore cannot be described or regarded as Divine.
 
Anything that is a contradiction to this logically testifies to doubts about the unconditional Perfection of God and must therefore also be false! This is indisputably an infallible measure for true faith in God.
 
Symbolism is an entirely different matter here. Every symbol serves a good purpose as long as it is taken seriously as such; for its sight helps many people to achieve greater and more focussed concentration. It will be easier for many, on seeing the symbols of their religion, to direct their thoughts more calmly towards the Creator, regardless of the name by which He is understandable to them. It would therefore be wrong to doubt the high value of religious customs and symbolism, provided that nothing in them is allowed to rise to the level of worship and literal veneration.
 
Since God Himself cannot come to earth into coarse matter, it is solely up to the human spirit to ascend the path to Spiritual Essentiality from which it originates. And to show this path, someone Divine came down through incarnation, because in the Divine alone lies the Primordial Force from which the Living Word can flow forth. But humans must not imagine that the Divine remained on earth so that anyone, as soon as the wish arises, can be immediately be pardoned in a very special way. For the attainment of pardon, there are the ironclad Laws of God in Creation, the unconditional observance of which alone can bring pardon! Let whoever wishes to reach the Luminous Heights follow these Laws!
 
No one should compare the perfect God with an earthly king who, in his imperfect human judgement, can carry out arbitrary acts of clemency with respect to sentences pronounced by judges similar to himself. Such a thing is not possible in the perfection of the Creator and His Will, which is one with Him!
 
The human spirit must at last come to terms with the idea that it must take the initiative and act with great vigour in order to obtain mercy and forgiveness, and in doing so finally fulfil the duty it has indolently neglected. It must pull itself together and work upon itself if it does not wish to plunge into the darkness of the damned! To rely on one’s Saviour means to rely on His words. To bring to life through action what He said! Nothing else can help! Empty faith is of no use to them. To believe in Him means nothing other than to believe what He said. Irrevocably lost is anyone who does not diligently pull themself up by that rope which has been placed in their hand through the Word of the Son of God!

If humans truly want their Saviour, they must finally rouse themselves to spiritual activity and work that is not solely directed towards earthly advantages and pleasures, and must strive upwards towards Him. They must not presumptuously expect Him to come down to them. The way to Him is given by the Word. God does not chase after humanity, begging, when they form a false image of Him, turns away from Him and goes down false paths. It is not as cosy as that. But since such a nonsensical view has become ingrained in many people due to a false notion, humanity will have to learn to fear its God again, recognizing in the inevitable reciprocal effect of a complacent or dead faith that His Will stands firm in perfection and cannot be bent. Whoever does not align themself with Divine Laws will be harmed or even crushed, as must ultimately happen to those who worship such idolatry, showing Divine homage to the ungodly! Humanity must come to the realization: The Saviour is waiting for them, but He will not come to fetch them!

The faith, or more correctly called the delusion, which the greater part of mankind carries within itself today, must fail and even lead to distress and ruin, because it is dead and harbours no true life!
 
Just as Christ once cleansed the Temple of the money-changers, so must humans first be whipped up from all the indolence of its thinking and feeling towards their God! But let whoever will not have it otherwise continue to sleep on in peace, and stretch themself out comfortably on the soft cushion of self-deception, believing that they are right when they think very little, and that pondering is in the end sinful. Terrible will their awakening be, which stands nearer before them than they suspect. According to their indolence they shall then be measured!
 
How can one who believes in God, who has contemplated His Nature and His Greatness, and who knows above all how the perfect Will of God rests in Creation as the Laws of Nature, expect their sins to be forgiven through some imposed penance, completely contrary to the Divine Laws of absolute reciprocal actions? Even for the Creator, this would not be possible; for the Laws of Creation and development that proceed from His Perfection carry in their effects, solely and completely, the reward or punishment, working automatically with immutable justice, through the ripening and reaping of good or bad sowing of the human spirit.
 
Whatever God wills, each of His new Acts of Will, must always carry perfection within itself, and therefore cannot bring the slightest deviation from the previous Acts of Will, but must agree with them in every respect. Everything, absolutely everything, must, through the Perfection of God, always follow the same path. Therefore, forgiveness other than through the fulfilment of the Divine Laws which lie in Creation and through which every human spirit must absolutely pass on its way if it wants to enter the Kingdom of God, is an impossibility, as is immediate forgiveness.
 
How can anyone with some thinking expect any deviations? This would indeed be an outright diminution of their Perfect God! When during His life on earth Christ said to this or that individual: “Your sins are forgiven”, this was entirely correct; for in earnest entreaty and in firm faith lies the assurance that the individual in question would in the future live according to the teachings of Christ, and thereby they had to receive the forgiveness of sins, because they thereby correctly align themself with the Divine Laws of Creation and no longer act contrary to them.
 
If now one human imposes penances on another at their own discretion, to then declare their sins to be forgiven, they thereby deceives themself and also the individuals seeking help from them, whether consciously or unconsciously, and unscrupulously set oneself far above the Godhead Itself!

If only humans would finally regard their God more naturally! Him, Whose Acts of Will first created living Nature. But as it is, in their blind delusion of faith they only make of Him an illusion, whereas He is anything but that. It is precisely in natural perfection or perfect naturalness, as the Primordial Source of all being, and the starting point of all living things, that God’s greatness is so immense and incomprehensible to the human spirit. Yet in the tenets of many doctrines there is often forcible distortion and entanglement, making pure faith unnecessarily difficult and sometimes completely impossible for humans, because they are forced to forego all naturalness. And how many incredible contradictions some doctrines contain!
 
For example, many often have as their fundamental idea the Omniscience and Perfection of the Will and the Word of God that emerges from It! But this must also naturally imply an unalterable immutability that cannot be shifted by a hair’s breadth, because perfection cannot be conceived otherwise. The actions of many religious office-holders, however, show doubt in their own teachings, since they are in direct contradiction to it and through their actions openly deny its foundations! Audible confession followed by penances, for example, the sale of indulgences through money or prayers that are supposed to bring immediate forgiveness of sins, and other similar practices are, upon calm reflection, a denial of the Divine Will resting in the Laws of Creation. Whoever does not let their thoughts leap into unsteady, floating fancies can find nothing but an absolute belittling of the Perfection of God.
 
It is only natural that the humanly erroneous assumption of being able to offer forgiveness of sins, along with other similar attacks on the perfection of the Divine Will, had to lead to gross aberrations. How long will the folly persist that one should imagine being able to strike such an impure bargain with the just God and His unchangeable Will!

When Jesus, as the Son of God, once said to His Disciples: “Whose soever sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them”, He was not referring to a general right to act and arbitrarily.
 
That would indeed have been tantamount to an overthrow of the Divine Will in the immutable force of the reciprocal action, which inherently carry reward and punishment in incorruptible, thus Divine and therefore perfect Justice.
 
Jesus could never have done that, nor would He have done so, as He came to “fulfill” the Laws, not to overturn them!
 
By these words He meant the lawful process resting in the Creator’s Will, that one can forgive another for what has been done to them personally as a wrong by that individual! The right and also the power to forgive rests with the one affected; for through their sincere forgiveness, the karma that would otherwise inevitably develop for the perpetrator in the reciprocal action has its tip cut off from the outset and deprived of its force, in which living process lies at the same time true forgiveness.

However, this can only proceed from those who are themselves affected, towards the perpetrator or offender, and not otherwise. That is why there is so much blessing and deliverance lies in personal forgiveness, as soon as it is sincerely meant and intuitively felt.
 
Someone who is not directly involved is, by the very nature of the matter, excluded from the threads of reciprocal action and is also unable to intervene in a living, thus effective, way because they are not connected. Only intercession in prayer is possible for them, the effect of which, however, remains dependent on the state of soul of those directly involved in the matters in question. Those who are not connected must remain on the outside and therefore cannot bring forgiveness. This rests solely in God’s Will, which reveals Itself in the just Law of Reciprocal Action, against which God Himself would never act, for they are perfect from the beginning, having issued from His Will.
 
It is in God’s Justice that whatever happens or has happened, only the injured party can forgive, whether on earth or later in the Ethereal World; otherwise, the force of the reciprocal action must strike the perpetrator, the effect of which then, of course, will then expiate the guilt. But, at the same time, this effect will also bring about the forgiveness of the affected individual, in some manner woven into the outworking, or the affected individual is woven into it. Since the connecting threads remain unresolved for so long, it cannot be otherwise. This is not only an advantage for the perpetrator, but also for the individual affected, since the latter could not fully enter into the Light without granting forgiveness. Relentlessness would have to hold the victim back.
 
Thus no human is able to forgive another’s sins in which they are not personally affected. The Law of Reciprocal Action would remain unaffected by everything that is not interwoven with it by a living thread, which only direct involvement can create. Reformation alone is the living path to forgiveness!
 
“I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods beside Me!” should remain burned into every human spirit as if in flaming script as a natural protection against all idolatry!
 
Whoever truly recognizes God in His Greatness must regard all deviant actions as blasphemy.
 
One can and should go to a priest for instruction, as long as the priest is able to give it. If, however, someone demands the diminution of the Perfection of God through some action or false way of thinking, they should turn away from them; for a servant of God is not at the same time an authorized representative of God who could have the right to demand and grant in His Name.
 
Here, too, there is a very natural and simple explanation that shows you the right way without ambiguity.
 
An authorized representative of God cannot, from the nature of the matter, be a human, unless this individual had come directly from the Divine and thus bore Divinity within themselves! Only in this can authority lie.
 
But since human is not Divine, it is also an impossibility that they can be an authorized vicar or representative of God. The Force of God cannot be transferred to any human, because Divine force lies solely in Divinity Itself!

This logical fact, in its unconditional simplicity, also of itself rules out every humanly-made choice of an earthly vicar of God or the proclamation of a Christ entirely. Every attempt in this regard must, in this respect, be stamped with the mark of impossibility.

In such matters, therefore, neither an election nor a proclamation by humans can come into consideration, but only a direct Mission from God Himself!
 
Human opinion does not carry weight in this matter. On the contrary, according to everything that has happened so far, they have always been far removed from reality and were not in harmony with God’s Will. It is incomprehensible to thinking minds with what pathological exaltation humans repeatedly try to reach beyond their actual value. They, who in their highest spiritual perfection can attain at most the lowest level of the consciousness in the eternal Spiritual Essentiality! And yet, especially today, a large number of earth’s humans do not even differ much from the most highly developed animals in their perception, thoughts and striving, apart from their great intellect.

Like insects they scuttle and crawl around busily as if it were a matter of reaching the highest goal in an eager chase and race. But as soon as their goals are examined more closely and attentively, the hollowness and futility of their feverish strivings, which is in fact not worthy of such zeal, soon become apparent. And out of the chaos of this swarming swings the insane arrogance of being able to choose, acknowledge or reject a Messenger of God. This would entail a judgement of that which they can never be capable of comprehending, unless this Higher One inclines to them in a manner that makes Himself understandable. Presently, on all sides, the trend is towards science, reason, and logic, all while accepting the grossest absurdities that are currently in vogue.
 
For thousands, it is not worth wasting words on this. They are so consumed in their knowledge that they have lost all ability to think about anything simply and naturally. These words apply only to those who have been able to preserve so much naturalness that they can develop their own sound judgement as soon as a guiding thread is placed into their hand; who do not blindly follow now this and now that fashionable trend, only then, at the first doubt expressed by the ignorant, to abandon it again just as quickly.
 
It does not take much, upon calm reflection, to come to the realization that one type of species cannot arise from another that has nothing in common with the first. The simplest knowledge of the natural sciences suffices to find this. But since the ramifications of the Laws of Nature in the World of Coarse Matter come from the Living Primordial Source of God, it is clear that they must also be found on the further path to Him in the same unshakeable logic and rigour, indeed even purer and clearer the closer they stand to the point of origin.
 
No more than the spirit of a human can be transplanted into an animal on earth so that a living animal becomes a human, so also is it impossible for Divinity to be transplanted into humans. Never can anything other develop than that which the origin carried within it. The origin does indeed allow, in the course of development, various kinds and forms of combinations, as can be seen from grafting trees or from mixing in breeding, but even the most astonishing results must remain within the basic substances given by the origin.
 
A mixture between earthly humans and animal can only remain within the boundaries of the coarse material bodies, since these have their origin in the same materiality. The inner origin of human and animal cannot be bridged.
 
It is impossible to bring something in or take out that stands above the actual origin, that is, something that was not contained in it, as is the case with the difference between the spiritual origin of humans and the Divine.
 
Christ came as the Son of God from the Divine Inessentiality; He bore the Divine within Himself from His origin. It would, however, have been impossible for Him to transfer this Living Divinity to another human, who can only originate from the Spiritual Essentiality. Accordingly, He was also unable to authorize anyone to perform acts that belong solely to the Divine, such as the forgiveness of sins. This can only take place in the outworking of the Divine Principles of Will resting in Creation through the precisely self-balancing reciprocal effects, wherein the unchangeable Justice of the Creator lives autonomously in the perfection incomprehensible to the human spirit.
 
A commission from the Son of God to humans could therefore, logically, relate only to such things as are human according to the origin of the human spirit, never to what is Divine!
 
Of course, human origin can logically be traced back to God, but it does not lie in God Himself, rather outside of the Divine; therefore, humans originate from God only indirectly. Therein lies the great difference.
 
A full authority, such as belongs, for example, to the office of “governors”, could only autonomously lie in the same direct descent. This can be easily understood by anyone, because an authorized representative must possess all the abilities of the principal giving the authority in order to be able, in their place, to act in some function or office. An authorized representative would therefore have to come directly out of the Divine Inessentiality, as Christ did.
 
If nevertheless a human undertakes this, even in good faith, then again, out of the nature of the matter, it follows that their appointment can have no greater validity and no more life than purely earthly. Those who see more in them go thereby after a delusion that will become clear as such to them only after they have passed over, and that lets their whole time on earth be lost for ascent. Lost sheep that follow a false shepherd. 
Just like this Supreme Law: “I am the Lord your God, you shall have no other gods before Me”, so too are the other laws very often transgressed and disobeyed through lack of understanding.
 
And yet the Commandments are in reality nothing other than the declaration of the Divine Will, which has rested in Creation from the very beginning and which cannot be circumvented by a hair’s breadth.
 
How foolish, under this consideration, is the principle of so many humans that “the end justifies the means”! which is contradictory to every Divine Principle, every perfection. What utter confusion there would surely be in the Laws of Divine Will if they could be shifted about in this way. Whoever can form even the slightest concept of perfection has no choice but to reject such impossibilities from the outset. As soon as someone tries to form a true picture of the Perfection of God, this can serve as a guiding staff and make it easier for them to have a grasp of all the happenings in Creation! Knowing and keeping in mind the Perfection of God is the key to understanding the Work of God, to which humans also belong.
 
Then they recognize the compelling force and serious warning of the word: “God will not be mocked!” In other words: His Laws fulfil themselves or have an unalterable effect. He keeps the wheels turning as He set them in motion at the time of Creation. A little human will change nothing in it. If they attempt it, at most they can achieve that all those who follow them blindly will be torn to pieces along with them. It avails them nothing if they believe otherwise.

Blessing can come only to those who are fully and completely align themselves with the Will of God, which bears Creation in the Laws of Nature. Only the one who rightly knows these Laws is able to do this.
 
Teachings that demand blind faith are to be rejected as dead and therefore harmful; only those which, like Christ, call to come alive, that is, to reflection and to examination, so that real understanding can grow into conviction, bring liberation and redemption!
 
Only the most reprehensible thoughtlessness can imagine that the purpose of human existence lies primarily in the pursuit of the acquisition of physical necessities and pleasures, in order to finally free themselves from all guilt and from the consequences of their lazy negligence in earthly life, through some external form and beautiful words in tranquillity. The passage through earthly life and the step into the beyond at death is not like an everyday journey for which one only needs to buy the ticket at the last moment.
 
With such belief, humanity doubles its guilt! For every doubt about the incorruptible Justice of the Perfect God is blasphemy! Belief in the arbitrary and effortless forgiveness of sins is, however, an open testimony of doubt in the incorruptible Justice of God and His Laws; more than that, it directly confirms belief in arbitrariness on the part God, which would be equivalent to imperfection and deficiency!
 
Poor, pitiable believers!
 
It would be better for them to still be unbelievers; then they could find the path they already assume they have more easily and freely.
 
Salvation lies only in not timidly suppressing nascent thoughts and the doubts that awaken about so many things; for therein stirs the healthy urge for Truth!

Wrestling with doubt, however, is the testing process, which must indisputably be followed by the discarding of dogmatic ballast. Only a spirit completely freed from all misunderstanding is able to soar with joyful conviction to the Luminous Heights, to Paradise!