61. Errors

 
Many a man raises his eyes in search of light and truth. His yearning is great, but missing very often is an earnest will! More than half of all seekers are not genuine. They bring their own, concluded opinions. If they are to change it even only a little, they would much rather reject everything new for them, even if it contains the Truth.
 
Thousands must thereby fall as a result, because in the entanglement of erroneous conviction they have lost the freedom of movement they need to save themselves by swinging upwards.
 
There is always a number of those in existence, who think they have already grasped everything correctly. They have no intention of subjecting themselves to a rigorous scrutiny based on what they have heard and read.
 
Of such I do not speak of course!
 
Nor do I speak to churches and political parties, nor to religious orders, sects and associations, but only in all simplicity to man himself. Far be it from me to overthrow anything that currently exists; for I build up, add to the as yet unresolved questions, which everyone must carry within himself as soon as he thinks just a little.
 
Only one basic condition is essential for every listener: a serious search for the truth. He should examine the words within himself and let them come alive, but he should pay attention to the speaker. Otherwise there is no profit for him. For all those who do not strive for this, any sacrifice of time is a waste from the beginning.
 
It is incredible how naively the vast majority of people desperately want to remain ignorant about where they come from, what they are and where they are going!
 
Birth and death, such inseparable poles of all earthly existence, should not be a mystery to man.
 
Dissension lies in the views of those who wish to clarify the inner core of man. This is the result of morbid delusions of grandeur of earthlings, who presumptuously boast that the core of their being is Divine!
 
Look at humanity! Can the Divine be found in them? The foolish assertion should be called blasphemy, for it implies a belittling of the Divine.
 
Man does not carry a speck of Divinity within him!
 
The view is only morbid arrogance, which has its sole cause in the consciousness of an inability to understand. Where is the man who can honestly say that such a belief has become a conviction for him? He who seriously goes within himself must deny it. He feels exactly that it is only a longing, a wish to carry the Divine within himself, but not a certainty! It is right to speak of a spark of God that man carries within him. But this spark of God is spirit! It is not a part of Divinity.
 
The expression spark is quite correct. A spark develops from and bursts forth without taking with it or carrying within itself of the nature of the producer. So it is here A spark of God is not itself Divine.
 
Where such errors are already found with regard to the origin of one’s existence, there must be a failure to fathom the whole process of coming into being! If I have built on the wrong foundation, the whole structure must one day totter and fall.
 
After all, the origin provides the support for one’s entire existence and evolution! Whoever now, as usual, tries to reach far beyond the origin, reaches for something incomprehensible to oneself, and thus loses all support in a perfectly natural process.
 
If, for example, I reach for a branch of a tree which, through its earthly nature, has a similarity with my earthly body, I gain a hold on this branch and can therefore swing myself upwards on it.
 
But if I reach beyond this branch, I cannot find a point of support in the different nature of the air and... therefore cannot go up! That is clear.
 
It is exactly the same with the inner nature of man, which is called the soul and the core of which is the spirit.
 
If this spirit wants to get the necessary support from its origin, which it needs, then of course it must not try to grasp the Divine. That would then be unnatural, for the Divine is much too far above it, being of a completely different nature!
 
And yet in his imagination he seeks a connection at this point, which he can never reach, and thereby interrupts natural happenings. Like a low dam, his false desires rise up and obstruct the flow between him and necessary supply of power from the source. He cuts himself off from it.
 
Therefore, away with such errors! Only then will the human spirit be able to unfold its full force, which today it still carelessly overlooks, and become what it can and should be, lord in Creation! But note well, only in Creation, not standing above it.

Only the Divine is above all Creation. ––
 
God Himself, the Source of all being and life, is, as the word itself says, Divine! But man, as it is well known, was created by His Spirit!
 
Man is therefore not directly from God, but from His Spirit! Divine and spiritual are not one and the same, spirit is the Will of God. It is only from this Will the first Creation arose, but not from the Divine! Let us stick to this simple fact, it gives the possibility of a better understanding.
 
Imagine for a moment your own will by way of comparison. It is an act, but not a part of man, otherwise man would have to disintegrate over time in his many acts of will. There would be nothing left of him at all.
 
It is no different with God! His Will created Paradise! His Will, however, is the Spirit, which is called the “Holy Spirit”. Paradise, in turn, is also only the work of the Spirit, not a part of it. Herein lies a new downward gradation. The creative Holy Spirit, thus the Living Will of God, did not enter into His Creation. Nor did he allow a Part of Himself into it, but He Himself remained completely outside of Creation. The Bible already makes this perfectly clear and explicit with the words: “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters”, not God in Person! There is a difference. So man also carries nothing of the Holy Spirit within him, but only of the Spirit, which is a work of the Holy Spirit, an act.
 
Instead of dealing with this fact, man tries with all his might to form a gap here! Just think of the well-known view of the first Creation, of Paradise! It was absolutely expected to be on this earth. So the small human mind drew the events of the necessary millions of years into a narrow circle of space and time and put itself at the centre and axis of all world events. The consequence was that it easily lost the path to the actual starting point of life. In place of this clear path, which he could no longer overlook, he had to find a substitute in his religious views, if he did not want to describe himself as the originator of all existence and life and thus call himself as God. Up until now, this substitute term “faith” was given to him! And with the word “faith” all of humanity has been suffering ever since! Yes, even more, the unrecognized word, which was supposed to supplement everything that was lost, became the cliff that brought about total failure!
 
Only the lazy resign themselves to faith. It is on faith that even the scoffers can anchor themselves. And the word “faith”, wrongly interpreted, is the barrier that today stands in the way of human progress.
 
Faith should not be the cloak that magnanimously hides all indolence of thought, that descends like a sleeping sickness, comfortably paralyzing the spirit of humans! Faith should in reality become conviction. But conviction demands life, the most rigorous testing!
 
Where even one gap remains, one unsolved mystery, conviction becomes impossible. So no one can therefore have true faith as long as a question remains unanswered.

Even the word “blind faith” reveals what is unhealthy!
 
Faith must be alive, as Christ already demanded, otherwise it has no purpose. But liveliness means to stir oneself, to weigh and also to test! Not the dull acceptance of foreign thoughts. Blind faith is clearly means lack of understanding. What a man does not understand cannot be of any spiritual benefit either, for in the lack of understanding nothing can come to life in him.
 
But what he does not fully experience within himself will never become his own! And it is only what is his own that carries him upwards.
 
In the end, no one can tread a path, make progress, if there are huge gaps in the path. Man must stop spiritually where where he cannot go on knowingly. This fact is irrefutable and indeed easy to understand. So whoever wants to make progress spiritually, wake up!
 
He can never find his way to the Light of Truth while asleep! Neither with a blindfold nor with a veil over his eyes.
 
The Creator wants mankind to be seeing in Creation. But seeing means knowing! And knowledge is incompatible with blind faith. Indolence, laziness in thinking lies only in that, not in greatness!
 
The advantage of being able to think also brings with it the duty to test!

To avoid all this, the great Creator has simply been diminished for the sake of convenience, so that arbitrary acts are expected of Him to prove His Omnipotence.
 
Anyone who wants to think a little must find that this is a big mistake. An arbitrary act requires the possibility of deviating from existing Laws of Nature. But where this can happen, perfection is lacking. For where perfection exists, no change can take place. Thus, a large part of humanity erroneously portray the omnipotence of God in such a way that it would to be regarded by those who think more deeply as proof of imperfection. And therein lies the root of much evil.
 
Give God the glory of perfection! Then you will find therein the key to the unsolved mysteries of all that exist. ––
 
My endeavour shall be to bring the earnest seeker to this point. A sigh of relief shall again move through the circles of all seekers of the Truth. They will finally realize that there is no secret in the course of events of the world, no gaps. And then... they will see the path to ascent clearly before them. They only have to walk it. ––
 
Mysticism (secret doctrine) has no justification whatsoever in the whole of Creation! There is no place for it in it; for everything should lie clearly and without gaps before the human spirit, right back to its origin. And this area encompasses the entire Creation. Only that which is above this Creation, the Divine alone, will have to remain the most sacred secret to every human spirit, since it stands above its origin, which is in Creation. That is why he will never understand the Divine. Not with the best of intentions and the greatest knowledge. In this inability to comprehend all that is Divine, however, lies the most natural happening for man that one can think of; for, as is well known, nothing is able to go beyond the composition of its origin. Not even the spirit of man! There is always a fixed boundary in different compositions. And the Divine is of a completely different nature than the spiritual from which the man originates.
 
The animal, for example, even in its fullest spiritual development, can never become human. Under no circumstances can the essential blossom out of the spiritual, which gives birth to the human spirit. There is no basic spiritual nature in the composition of all essential beings. But man, having emerged from a part of spiritual Creation, can never become Divine, for the spiritual does not possess the nature of the Divine. The human spirit can certainly develop to the highest degree of perfection, but it must nevertheless always remain spiritual. It cannot transcend itself into the Divine. Here, too, of course, the other composition forms the upward boundary which can never be crossed. The World of Matter has no part in this, for it has no life of its own, but rather serves as a shell, driven and shaped by the spiritual and the essential.
 
The vast field of the spirit extends through the whole of Creation. Man should and must therefore fully grasp and recognize it! And through his knowledge he will rule in it. But to rule, even the severest rule, rightly understood, means only to serve! ––
 
At no point in the whole of Creation, up to the highest spiritual level, is there any deviation from natural events! This fact really makes everything much more familiar to everyone. The unhealthy and secret timidity, the wanting primarily to hide from so many things that are still unknown, collapses of its own accord. With naturalness, a breath of fresh air moves through the sultry environment of these dark fantasies of those who want to make a name for themselves. Their morbidly fantastic formations, frightening to the weak, a mockery to the strong, appear ridiculous and ridiculously childish before one who is clear-eyed, who finally, freshly and happily, embraces the magnificent naturalness of all the events that happen together, always moving in simple, straight lines that are clearly recognizable.
 
It proceeds uniformly in the strictest regularity and order. And this makes it easier for every seeker to gain a broad, clear view right up to the point of his actual starting point!

He needs neither laborious research nor imagination. The main thing is to keep away from all those who, in their confused secrecy, want to let poor partial knowledge appear greater.
 
Everything is so simple before men that they seldom can come to the realization precisely because of the simplicity, because they assume from the beginning that the great work of Creation must be so much more difficult, more complicated.
 
Thousands stumble over it with good intentions, turning their eyes upwards searchingly and not realizing that they simply only need to look in front of and around them without any effort. They will see that they are already on the right path through their earthly existence, they only need to stride forward calmly! Without haste and without effort, but with an open eye, a free, unfettered mind! Man must learn at last that true greatness is to be found only in the simplest, most natural happenings. That greatness is contingent on this simplicity.
 
As it is in Creation, so it is in himself, who belongs to Creation as a part of it!

Simple thinking and feeling alone can give him clarity! As simple as how children still have it! Calm reflection will make him realize that the simplicity of comprehension is identical with clarity and also with naturalness! One cannot be thought of without the other. It is a triad that expresses a concept! Whoever takes it as the cornerstone of his search will quickly break through the foggy confusion. Every artificially screwed bolt collapses altogether into nothingness.
 
Man realizes that nowhere can natural events be switched off, that nowhere can they be interrupted at any point! And this also reveals the Greatness of God! The unchanging vitality of the self-acting Creative Will! For the Laws of Nature are the firm Laws of God, constantly visible before the eyes of all men, speaking forcefully to them, testifying to the Greatness of the Creator, to unshakeable, unexceptional orderliness! Without exception! For from the grain of oat only oats can come, from wheat also only wheat, and so on.
 
So it is in that first Creation which, as the Creator’s own work, comes closest to perfection. There the basic laws are anchored, so that, driven by the vitality of His Will, they had to result in the emergence of the further Creation down to the last of the cosmic bodies in a most natural way. Only as it became coarser in its ever further development, the Creation moved away from the perfection of its Origin. -–
 
Let us first take a look at Creation.
 
Classify all life, in whatever part it is found, into only two kinds. One is the self-conscious, the other is the unconscious. Keeping these two differences in mind is of the greatest value! It is connected with the “origin of man”. The differences also provide the stimulus for further development, for the apparent struggle. The unconscious is the basis of all that is conscious, but in its composition it is entirely of the same thing. Becoming conscious is progress and development for the unconscious. Which, by being together with the conscious, it constantly receives stimulation to become conscious.
 
The first Creation itself brought three great basic divisions, which developed in succession downwards: the Spiritual, the Primordial Creation, is the highest and uppermost, followed by the denser and therefore heavier World of Essentiality. Lastly, as the lowest and heaviest, because of its greatest density, is the great World of Matter, which, in its gradual descent, separated itself from the Primordial Creation! This left only the Pure Spiritual remained as the highest, for in its pure form it embodies the lightest and most luminous. It is the much spoken of Paradise, the crown of all Creation.
 
With the descent of the more dense, we already touch upon the Law of Gravity, which is not only anchored in matter, but has an effect on the whole of Creation, from the so-called Paradise down to us.
 
The Law of Gravity is of such vital importance that every man should hammer it in; for it is the main lever in the whole development and the process of evolution of the human spirit.
 
I have already said that this gravity does not only apply to earthly qualities, but also has a uniform effect in those parts of Creation which people on earth can no longer observe and therefore simply call the Beyond.
 
For the sake of better understanding, I must still divide matter into two sections. Into the Ethereal Matter and Gross Matter. Ethereal Matter is matter which because its different nature, is not visible to the earthly eye. And yet it is still matter.
 
The so-called “Beyond” must not be confused with the longed-for Paradise, which is purely spiritual. Spiritual is not to be understood as “mental”, but that spiritual is a quality, just as essentiality and materiality is a quality. This Ethereal World is simply called the Beyond because it is beyond earthly vision. The Coarse Material, however, is this world, everything earthly that becomes visible to our coarse material eyes through homogeneity.
 
People should get out of the habit of seeing things that are invisible to them as incomprehensible, unnatural. Everything is natural, even the so-called Beyond and the Paradise, which is still very far away from it.
 
Just as here our gross material body is sensitive to its surroundings of a similar nature, which it can therefore see, hear and feel, so it is in those parts of Creation which are not similar in composition to ours. The ethereal man in the so-called beyond feels, hears and sees only his ethereal surroundings of the same kind, while the higher spiritual man can only feel his spiritual surroundings.
 
Thus it happens that here and there many an inhabitant of the earth sees and hears the Ethereal World with his ethereal body, which he carries within him, before the separation from the gross material earthly body takes place through its death. There is nothing unnatural in this.
 
In addition to the Law of Gravity, there is also the no less valuable Law of Homogeneity.
 
I have already touched on the fact that a species can only ever recognize its own kind. The proverbs: “Birds of a feather flock together” and “Like does not abandon like” seem to be derived from the Primordial Law. It swings alongside the Law of Gravity through the whole of Creation.

In addition to the Laws already mentioned, there is a third Primordial Law in Creation: the Law of Reciprocal Action. It ensures that man must reap what he once sowed, without fail. He cannot reap wheat if he sows rye, nor clover when he scatters thistles. It is the same in the Ethereal World. In the end he will not be able to reap goodness if he felt hatred, nor joy if he has nurtured envy within himself!
 
These three fundamental laws are the landmarks of Divine Will! They alone automatically bring about the reward or punishment of the human spirit, in inexorable justice! So incorruptible, in the most marvellous, finest gradations, that in the monumental world events the thought of the slightest injustice becomes impossible.
 
The effect of these simple Laws takes every human spirit exactly where it belongs according to its inner attitude. It is impossible to err, for the effect of these Laws can only be animated by the innermost state of man, but in every case it is moved without fail! The effect is dependent on the pure spiritual force of man's feelings as a lever for its actuation! Everything else remains ineffective. For this reason alone the actual will, the inner feeling of man, is decisive for what develops for him in the invisible world into which he must enter after his death on earth.
 
No pretence, no self-deception will help. He must then absolutely reap what he has sown with his will! Depending on the strength or weakness of his will, he will more or less set in motion the similar currents of the other worlds, be it hatred, envy or love. A completely natural process, of the greatest simplicity, and yet of the effect of inexorable justice!
 
Whoever tries to think seriously about these other-worldly processes will recognize what incorruptible justice lies in this automatic effect, and will see in it the incomprehensible greatness of God. He does not need to intervene, having given His Will as Laws, thus perfectly, into Creation.
 
He who returns to the Spiritual Realm is purified, for he has first had to pass through the self-acting mills of the Divine Will. There is no other way that leads close to God. And how the mills work on the human spirit is judged by its previous inner life, its own will. They may carry him to clear heights, or they may drag him painfully down into the night of horror, even to utter destruction. –
 
Remember that at the time of earthly birth the human spirit having matured for incarnation already wears an ethereal covering, or body, which it has needed in its course through the Ethereal World. It also remains with him on earth as a link to the earthly body. The Law of Gravity now always exerts its main effect on the densest and coarsest part. In earthly existence, therefore, on the earthly body. But when this body falls back, dies off, the ethereal body becomes free again, unprotected, and at this moment is subject to this Law of Gravity being the coarsest part.
 
When it is said that the spirit forms its own body, this is true of the ethereal body. The inner constitution of man, his desires and his actual will are the basis for this. Will contains the force to form the ethereal body. Through the urge for base things or for earthly pleasures only, the ethereal body becomes dense and therefore heavy and dark, because the fulfilment of such desires lies in Gross Matter. Man thus binds himself to gross, earthly things. His desires draw the ethereal body after him, that is, it becomes so dense that it comes as close as possible to the constitution of his earthly body, in which alone lies the prospect of being able to partake of earthly pleasures or passions once the gross material earthly body has deceased. He who then strives for this must sink in the Law of Gravity.
 
But it is different with those whose spirits are primarily directed towards the high and noble. Here the self-acting will makes the ethereal body lighter and thus also luminous, so that it may come within the reach of all that is the goal of these earnest human desires! Thus to the purity of the Luminous Heights.
 
In other words, the ethereal body in the earthly man is at the same time equipped by the respective goal of the human spirit in such a way that, after the death of the earthly body it can still strive towards this goal, whatever it may be. Here the spirit really forms the body; for its will, being spiritual, also carries within it the power to utilize the ethereal. It can never escape this natural process. It takes place with every desire, whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable. And these forms remain with him as long as he nourishes them with his desires and feelings. They advance or retard him according to their nature, which is subject to the Law of Gravity. But with a change in his desires and feelings, new forms immediately arise, while the previous ones, no longer receiving nourishment through the change of desire, must die and disintegrate. Thus man also changes his destiny.
 
As soon as the earthly anchorage of the earthly body falls through the death, the ethereal body thus detached sinks or floats upwards like a cork into the Ethereal World, which is called the Beyond. It is held fast by the Law of Gravity at that point which has the same weight as it; because then it can go no further, neither upwards nor downwards. Here, of course, he will also find all like-kind or all like-minded souls; for like-kind produces like gravity, and like gravity naturally produces like-kind. Now that he is himself, he will now suffer or rejoice among like-minded people until he changes again inwardly, and with him his ethereal body, which under the effect of the changed weight, must carry him further upwards or downwards.
 
So man can neither complain nor need he give thanks; for if he is lifted up towards the Light, it is his own state that contributed to hurling him up; if he falls down into darkness, it is again his state that compels him to do so.
 
But every man has reason to praise the Creator for the perfection that lies in the working of these three Laws. The human spirit is thus made the absolute, unrestricted master of his own destiny! For his actual will, i.e,, his unadulterated inner state, must raise or lower him.
 
If you try to imagine the effect correctly, singly and interlocked, you will find that in it lies in very precise measure every reward and punishment, mercy or damnation for every man, depending on himself. It is the simplest event, and shows the lifeline through every earnest wish of man, which can never break, never fail. It is the greatness of such simplicity that brings the cognizant one forcibly to his knees before the mighty majesty of the Creator!
 
In every case, in all my explanations, we always clearly and repeatedly encounter the effect of these simple Laws, the wonderful interworking of which I must still describe in particular.
 
If man knows this interaction, he also has the ladder to the Luminous Realm of the spirit, to Paradise. But then he also sees the way down into darkness!
 
He does not even need to walk himself, but is lifted up or pulled down by the automatic mechanism, just as he sets the mechanism for himself through his inner life.

It is always up to his own decision as to which way he wants to be carried.

Man must not allow himself to be put off by scoffers.
 
Doubt and ridicule are, rightly speaking, nothing more than expressed desires. Every doubter, quite unconsciously, utters to himself what he wishes for, and thus reveals his inner worth to the searching gaze. For even in the denial, in defence, there are easily recognizable, deeply hidden desires. The neglect, the poverty that is sometimes revealed here is sad or even scandalous, for it is not uncommon for man to lower himself inwardly than any ignorant animal. One should have pity on people without, however, being indulgent, for indulgence would mean encouraging indolence instead of serious examination. He who seeks earnestly must be sparing with indulgence, otherwise he will end up harming himself without helping the other.
 
But he will stand jubilant with the growing realization before the wonder of such a Creation, and will allow himself to be consciously swung upwards to the Luminous Heights, which he can call home!