80. Once Upon A Time
Four words only, and yet, like a magic spell, they have power over every man to recall the memory of some special event or sensation when he hears or repeats them. It is like the effect of music, these four words find their way straight to man's spirit, to his ego; of course only to those who have not put away and buried their spirit and thus deprived themselves of that which constitutes a human being on earth.
Spontaneously and involuntarily some special occurrence out of his former experiences will come to life again, accompanied by the sensations that he had at the time: a longing felt in a sentimental mood, moments of mournful happiness, and again an unappeased desire never expressed in words. With others, sensations of pride, anger, horror or hatred will re-echo. It will always be some experience that made an exceptional impression on the man but which he thought was long since forgotten.
Man loses nothing of what he has once personally experienced. He can call all he has experienced his own, his indestructible possession. But it must be something that has gone to his heart, for no other sensation will be resuscitated at these words. If a man assiduously studies himself and carefully investigates, he will soon find out what belongs to his real self, his living ego, and what may be called dead — the soulless shells of valueless memories.
It is only such experiences during his mundane life, which have impressed his soul sufficiently deeply to leave an indelible stamp behind, that can help or be of use to man spiritually. These alone can build up his soul and assist in its further development.
In truth, only what has made a deep impression belongs to real life. All else flits away leaving no imprint, unless, may be, it helps to prepare the way for events which then would be able to make an indelible impression. Happy the man, who has many memories of such powerful experiences to carry over with him. No matter whether joyful or sad, these impressions will constitute the most valuable possessions that man can have for his future life in the next world.
Purely mundane reasoning (as we have it in modern times), if put to good use, only serves to ease physical life on earth. If you will consider, you will see that is the purpose of all intellectual work. Nothing else is the aim of all study and all work done, no matter in what department, whether for the State or for the family, or for single individuals, for the nation or for mankind in general. Unfortunately, man has subjected everything unconditionally to his intellect, and he therefore lies heavily fettered within the bounds of limited understanding. This has brought about the most disastrous results in all happenings, and is still doing so. There is but one exception in the whole world. And this is not the Church, as so many may perhaps think it is, and indeed as it should be, but it is Art. In this one instance, intellect plays a second role, and where it manages to get the upper hand, Art immediately becomes a craft — and is sadly degraded from its lofty position. This result is so natural that not a single exception can be pointed to. The same reasoning applies to all other cases. Does not this make man think? It surely must be as though scales fell from his eyes! The thinker who can compare will clearly perceive that where the intellect rules, he only gets a make- shift — something inferior. And this fact should show man what place by rights belongs to the intellect; in what place nature meant it to be to produce anything of real value. Art alone is born of the living spirit and living perception. It alone has a natural origin and healthy development. Spirit does not speak through the intellect but expresses itself in what the Germans call Gemuet, which the intellectual man of today loves to ridicule and deride. In so doing, he scorns what is most valuable in man, what makes a man a human being. Spirit has nothing to do with intellect. If men seek and desire general improvement, they must think of Christ's words: “By their works ye shall know them.” The time is approaching, when this will happen. The works of the spirit have life, therefore, they are of lasting value. All else must wither and die away, when the blossom is over, and expose its hollowness and barrenness when the time comes for fruit to appear.
Look at History. Only works of the spirit outlive nations that die out in spite of the work of their cold and lifeless intellect. Their high culture, their much prized knowledge could not save them. Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, then the French, and now the Germans: but the genuine works of Art have outlived them all. These can never be lost. Yet no one perceived the strict regularity in the constant recurrence of these phenomena. No man thought to enquire into the root of this serious evil. Instead of doing this and preventing the repetition of such declines of peoples and empires, men only lamented the hopelessness of any possible measures being of use and blindly gave in to what could not be altered.
Now the evil has taken hold of all mankind, much misery lies behind us, more still awaits us in the future; and the multitudes that are affected are already suffering distress and affliction.
Think of the nations that declined as soon as their civilisation had reached its culminating point and their intelligence was at the zenith of its development. The fruits that matured were always the same: licentiousness, shamelessness and gluttony in diverse forms, on which decline and ruin inevitably followed. Surely every one must be struck with the astonishing resemblance in the process, and the thoughtful man must see the strict consistency of the working of the law.
One after another, the aforesaid nations had finally to learn that their power and their glory were but surface appearances, were only kept up artificially by force and compulsion and had no sound, independent existence whatever.
Instead, however, of despairing, open your eyes, look around you, learn from the past, and compare it with the messages which have come to you from above for thousands of years past, and you will come upon this festering sore, the one hindrance to man's development. The road upwards will not be free until this grievance is utterly done away with. The general advance will then endure because it will be animated by the living spirit, which has hitherto been impossible.
Before going into the subject more closely, I will explain what spirit, the only really living part of man, is. Spirit is not wit, nor intellect, nor is it the result of learning. A man may be a born student, a keen observer, a brilliant, witty and original speaker and yet have nothing of the spirit withal.
Spirit is different; it is of independent consistency; it belongs to its own world which is quite different from that portion of Creation to which the earth and the physical bodies of its inhabitants belong. The spiritual world lies higher; it is the uppermost and lightest part of Creation. The task of the spirit in man is to uplift him. Its natural impulse, owing to its consistency, is to revert to the spiritual world, and this it can do as soon as man has cast off all his material coverings (bodies). When a man has reached a certain stage of maturity, he will feel this impulse working within him and it will up-lift him to his compeers in the spiritual world by virtue of the law of attraction of what is homogeneous.*
But though the spirit has no relation to the human intellect, it has affinity to all those feelings that come from the heart.
If a man would at any time analyse his sensations, he would find it helpful to begin by saying Once upon a time. That will enlighten many, and if they inquire further, they will distinguish between what has been useful in the life of their soul on earth and what has only served to facilitate their work and make their lives pleasant in the mundane sense; whether they laid up treasure for their future life, or only had care for temporal interests. The treasure they can take over with them, all the rest they must leave behind as it has no further value for them. What they leave behind are but tools they have used to help themselves on earth — nothing more.
A tool is useful for the work it is meant to do, but if more than that is expected of it, and it is accounted worthy of higher work, its abuse will have bad results.
The first and foremost of these tools is the human intellect. This product of the brain, like all other physical matter, has strict limits to its sphere of action, and all the work, that the human brain accomplishes, shares in the same limited possibilities and must be subject to the laws governing matter. Thus human intellect has a very limited power of conception, only embracing things of this world and limited within space and time. Originating in inert matter, it has no independent life and can, therefore, put no life into its work. This undeniable fact is the key to the unhappy conditions which have existed as long as man has inhabited this earth.
It is high time for man to learn to distinguish between the spirit and the intellect, between the living spirit and its tool. If this tool is ranked before the spirit, as has hitherto been the case, it will bring forth unwholesome and dead fruit; it will strangle the spirit and cut it adrift from its own sphere and necessary work of development till at the crumbling and fall of the lifeless shell, it escapes yet unripe from the ruins.
If instead of the words Once upon a time we ask: How was it in former times?, how different the effect will be. The first phrase speaks to the heart which is in connection with the spirit, but the second appeals to the intellect. Quite other scenes are conjured up. They are limited, cold and lifeless, because the intellect has nothing else to give. It was man's fault from the very beginning that he set his intellect (which can but bring forth imperfect and lifeless matter) on such a high pinnacle, and, as it were, danced around it, and worshipped it. A place was given it that by rights only belonged to the spirit.
For this reason its work cannot be really successful, but must break down when the time of harvest comes. This is quite natural; it is what always must happen except in the case of technical achievements. These have been brought to a high state of perfection by the human intellect and will be brought to still greater heights in the future. But this fact only serves to prove the truth of what I affirm, for technical work is always purely mundane and lifeless. Intellect likewise belongs to physical matter, thus it can do marvels in technology and achieve brilliant success. There intelligence is in its right place. That is the proper field for it to unfold its capabilities. But where it is a question of something purely human, intelligence alone will not suffice and, unless guided by the spirit, must turn out a failure. Spirit alone is life. Mundane intellect can never do spiritual work. Thus it is a grievous sin in man to rank his intellect higher than his living spirit. In this way man, in the face of Divine ordinance, turned the natural order of things topsy-turvy by putting intellect, which should come in the second place, into the first place which only belongs to the living spirit.
The natural consequence is that man is now obliged painfully
to seek his salvation from below upwards, his intellect all the while obstructing his outlook, instead of being able to look down through the spirit and recognise the path he is to take, from above.
If he will awake, he must change the position of the lights and put his intellect back into the place for which nature intended it, and raise the spirit to its original exalted position. The change of order that man introduced in by-gone times, was absolutely opposed to the Will of the Creator. This was the Fall of Man. Its consequences were terrible, it developed original sin i.e. inherited sin, which was the uplifting of the intellect to be ruler over all things. Hence man, by over-cultivating his intellect, even influenced the structure of the brain itself. That part which has to do with mundane work was over-developed and the other part neglected and allowed to degenerate. The
only sign of its existence this neglected and degenerate part displays is in dreaming, but these dreams are subject to and under the strict control of the day brain, the intellectual part. The cerebellum was intended to be a bridge between the spiritual and the physical world. This bridge is now well-nigh broken down, and connection interrupted, and man is thus prevented from spiritualising his intellect, and from putting life and soul into his work. Both sides of the brain should have been uniformly developed so as to be able to work together harmoniously like all else in the body; the spirit steering and directing, the intellect executing its orders here on earth. Considering existing circumstances, it is natural that the activities of the body and the body itself can never be what they should be. This pernicious influence, resulting from thus disturbing the balance, penetrates everywhere, for the principal agent in mundane happening is missing, i.e. the spirit. This unnatural hindrance brought about estrangement from Almighty God, as the way to Him was blocked. Another disadvantage for man resulted from this: for thousands of years past, the structural formation of the brain of every child born into the world, was hereditarily influenced so that the frontal brain was developed out of all proportion to the rest, with the result that as soon as the child's brain was developed, its intellect became the master. The cleft between the two parts of the brain have now become so wide and the working possibilities on both sides so out of all proportion that in most cases improvement can only be hoped for as a result of some catastrophe.
The intellectual man of today is no longer normal. The principal part of the brain of every perfect human being, having been neglected for thousands of years, is absolutely undeveloped. The normal brain of every intellectual man is crippled. Just think of it! Men with crippled brains have been ruling the world for thousands of years; they look upon a normal man as an enemy and seek to subjugate him. In their blindness, they imagine they are accomplishing wonders, whereas a normal man could do ten times as much, and besides his work would be lasting and of far more value than the work done today. The way is open to every serious seeker to acquire this ability.
It will not be easy, however, for a one-sided intellectual man to understand work that belongs to the part of his brain now stunted and starved. It is simply impossible for him to do so, even if he would. In his voluntary self-restriction, he laughs at all that is out of his reach and which will always be out of his reach, thanks to his degenerate and undeveloped brain. The harmonious working together of the two parts of the brain, so indispensable for a normal human being is out of the question for the intellectual man of today — the materialist.
It is no recommendation to be called a materialist: the term designates a starved brain.
Thus we see that, up till now, the unnatural brain has ruled. Its influence must necessarily bring forth decay and ruin in all things. Its degeneracy is reflected in the unsound and inharmonious work it produces.
Here no help can be of avail; one must patiently wait for the tottering building to fall. Then the day of resurrection has come for the spirit and with it a new life! The slave of the intellect, who has reigned for thousands of years, will be cast down from his high estate, and he will not be able to rise again till his own personal experience proves to him how poor he is in spirit, and how sick in mind; he will be compelled to bow voluntarily before what he could not understand. He will never have the opportunity of opposing the spirit. He will not be able to deride it, nor to proceed against it — as has been done in by- gone times — by force, supported and justified by seemingly logical arguments, against which the Son of God had to fight. Then there would still have been time to prevent much misery. But now it is too late, for in the further course of development, the connection between the two parts of the brain has been still further loosened, and the cleft between no longer allows of being bridged over.
Many intellectuals will be inclined to deride what I here state; their arguments, however, will only consist of empty commonplaces, they will not find a single sound counter- argument. Every honest seeker and thinker will look on such cavilling and invective as fresh proof of the truth of what I say. But there are people who cannot do this even if they give themselves ever so much trouble. Let us call them mentally disordered, patients who will soon need help. Let us wait and see! Contention and violence are not necessary to compel progress in enlightenment, for the end will come of itself. Here the law of returns will punctually and inexorably control and determine the course of events. A new generation will come, as has been so often prophesied. It has already been noticed and commented on in California and Australia that children recently born into the world are gifted with a new sense. This new generation will, however, not only consist of children, the greater part will consist of those now alive who will shortly have their spiritual eyes opened to the events coming to pass. And this is nothing more than the ability to stand in the world with open eyes, untrammelled and free from the tutelage of the intellect. In refusing to be subjugated by the intellect, man frees himself from original sin or rather inherited sin which will then cease to be. This gift of vision has nothing to do with accomplishments acquired by occult training. Man will simply become what the normal man should be. This extended power of vision has nothing to do with clairvoyance, but is more closely allied to natural insight and understanding. Man will then be in a position to look at all things uninfluenced, that is to say his judgment will be unbiased. In his eyes the intellectual man will appear in his true light: proud and presumptuous, lusting for power and of such narrow limitation as to be a danger to his compeers. He will see how man has suffered in one way or another under the yoke of such as these for thousands of years. It will become clear that this is the hereditary arch-enemy of all free development of the human spirit, which is the whole purport of man's life on earth. Nothing will escape him. Nor will he be spared knowledge of the bitter truth that all mankind's misery, suffering and fall are due to the same evil, for it limited man's power of conception from the outset, preventing all improvement and enlightenment whatever.
With the awakening, all the power, authority and the influence of the intellectual man will cease for all time. A new and better era will begin for mankind where what is old will be done away with. This will be the victory of the spirit over the intellect, longed for and expected by thousands of men. Many out of the masses led astray will then see how completely they misinterpreted the expression intellect.
Following the example of others, most men were satisfied to set up intellect as an idol, without further examination. And the adherents ably seconded by custom, compulsion and legislation successfully played the role of infallible and omnipotent masters. Few gave themselves the trouble of enquiring into and exposing the hollowness and deficiencies of their claims. Nevertheless, during the last decades, there have been some who have persistently fought the enemy sometimes from under cover, and sometimes openly, and these were often exposed to bitter persecution. But they fought without knowing their enemy, and that made the battle harder and victory impossible. The warriors' swords were blunted by doing work of secondary importance; they swerved aside into the void. The fighters wasted their strength, and disorganisation developed into the discord that we observe today.
In truth, mankind has but one enemy, and that is: the unlimited sway of the intellect. It caused the fall of man; it was his gravest sin and brought all evil in its train. It developed original or rather inherited sin and finally it is Antichrist, of whom it is written that he will up-lift his head. To state this still more clearly: the sway of the intellect is the pitfall by which he ensnares mankind. They fall a prey to him, the enemy of God, Antichrist himself, Lucifer!
We are now living in this time, for Antichrist is at work in every man, ready to ruin him, for it is naturally his purpose straightway to turn man away from God. He cuts off man's connection with the spirit as soon as he is allowed to rule.
Therefore, be keenly watchful!
This does not mean that man is to belittle his intellect; he is to make it the tool that it is, but not the ruling will, not the master.
Men of the coming generation will look upon the present time with disgust, horror and shame. Their feelings will resemble ours, when we inspect a torture chamber of old times. There again we see the deplorable results of the rule of the intellect. It cannot be denied that no human being whose heart is ever so little enlightened by the spirit could ever have conceived such horrors.
Still, generally speaking, conditions are not very different today, although things have been whitewashed. The misery of the masses is the same rotten fruit, as the tortures of individuals at that time.
When in the future man looks back, his astonishment will know no bounds. He will ask himself: how was it possible to bear such abuses for thousands of years? The answer is plain enough, it was all the result of compulsion. Whichever way one looks, this is only too evident. We need not go back to ancient times; we need only enter the torture chambers which are to be found everywhere, and which have not been in disuse for so very long.
We shudder when we look at the old implements there. What cold brutality, what bestiality they reveal. Hardly a man of today can doubt that the gravest crimes were committed there. The tormentors were greater criminals than the tormented. But besides criminals, innocent persons were torn from the bosom of their families and cast into these cells. What lamentations, what shrieks of pain from helpless victims died away unheard. One cannot but shudder with horror even to think of the tortures human beings were put to, and one involuntarily asks oneself how it was possible that defenceless human beings could really have been treated thus. These proceedings were moreover sanctioned and enforced by human law. And furthermore prisoners were put to the torture to incriminate others who were suspected, so that these could be done to death at pleasure. Though these compulsory indictments were only made to escape the agonies of torture, they sufficed, for the judge needed these confessions to satisfy the letter of the law.
Did these short-sighted fools really imagine that they could wash themselves clean before God in this manner? That they could escape the inexorable law of reciprocal action?
These men who dared to pass sentence on others were either the very scum of humanity, or else here again we see the fruit of the work of one-sided human intellect.
Divine Law ordains that every person in authority, every judge, no matter what his department may be, should, like every ordinary man, be personally responsible for all he does officially and should in no case be able to claim protection from a higher authority above him, and this spiritually as well as mentally. This would make every one more serious and more careful; so-called errors of judgment, the fatal results of which are irreparable, would occur less frequently, not to mention the physical and moral suffering of the accused and of his relatives.
But let us cast a glance at the chapter on witchcraft and the trials of so-called witches.
He who has ever had access to the records of such trials will be overwhelmed with shame and regret that he belongs to such a race. If some individual happened to have knowledge of the properties of herbs and healed those who came to him for help, he was inevitably subjected to torture and ended his life at the stake, unless indeed he did not succumb to his cruel torments before.
Even physical beauty, specially in cases of unyielding chastity, was a dangerous gift at that time. Then the horrors of the Inquisition! Comparatively speaking, it is not so very long since then. The humbler classes felt and recognised this injustice then just as we do today, for with them their intellects had not as yet stifled the feelings of their hearts and the latter occasionally came to the surface.
Cannot one see the absolute limitation of human intellect in all this? The irresponsible stupidity?
Although one speaks of these things with an air of superiority, and shrugs one's shoulders, the truth is that the principle has in nowise changed. The presumption with which all that is not understood is looked down upon, is just the same. Only instead of physical torture, men publicly deride and scoff at what they cannot understand.
A man should pause and consider all this without extenuating, without sparing himself or others. Every human being who knows something that is concealed from the general public, who perhaps has the gift of seeing transcendental phenomena with his inner sight (quite a natural gift), a fact which soon no one will be able to deny, much less brutally oppose — is looked upon as a swindler, often even summoned before a court of law.
And woe unto the person who does not know how to make use of his gift, but who naively speaks of what he has seen or heard; he must be in a state of constant terror as were the early Christians, who were persecuted by Nero. And if indeed a man has other abilities such as the intellectuals will never understand, he is mercilessly hunted down, maligned and ostracised, and if possible, interned somewhere. Nobody has qualms of conscience on his account; he is a puppet at the mercy of those whose inner worth is of a most doubtful quality, for the more limited the understanding, the greater the arrogance and assumption of sagacity.
Man has learnt nothing by these doings of former times, torture, burnings at the stake and ridiculous trials, for today, too, everybody can still offend and impugn all that is uncommon and not understood. The proceedings of the Inquisition were still more damnatory than those of the courts of law; for they were instigated by the Church, and the shrieks of the victims were drowned by the prayers of the pious — a mockery of Divine Will in Creation. The representatives of the Church of that time proved that they had not the faintest idea of the true doctrine of Christ, nor of the Almighty nor of the Divine Laws on which Creation rests and which govern all things from the very beginning to the end of time.
God endowed man with free will as a component part of his spirit, only with its help can he mature as he should, and get rid of his faults. That is the only way. If the activity of his free- will is restrained he is hindered if not indeed violently thrown back. The Christian Churches and many other religions waged war against this principle established by God with the greatest cruelty. By torture and death they wanted to force men to lead lives against their will and to confess what was contrary to their conviction. This was trespassing against God's Holy Law, but not only this, it was hindering man's spiritual advancement and throwing him back centuries.
Had there been but a spark of real feeling in their hearts, i.e. a breath of the spirit, this would not have been possible. These inhuman doings were only the cold-blooded work of the brain, the intellect.
We read in history of more than one Pope who had his adversaries poisoned or stabbed by the hand of hired villains merely for the sake of mundane advantages. Here again it was the human intellect alone, overthrowing and subjugating all things on its victorious march, that could instigate such crimes. Nevertheless the Will of Our Creator is unalterable and directs the course of events from above. When the soul passes over into the ethereal world, it is deprived of all earthly power and of the protection that it affords. Name and position, all is left behind. It is only a poor human soul that goes over to receive the return of what it sowed. There is no exception possible. And on its way it must pass through all the intersecting wheels of the reciprocal action of Divine Justice. There the soul will find no church and no state, there will only be single individuals who must personally account for every error they have been guilty of.
He who transgresses, that is to say sins against God's Laws in Creation, subjects himself to the consequences which result, no matter who he may be and what his excuse. It may be a single individual acting under the authority of the Church or of the Law, but — whether the crime committed be against the body or the soul — it is crime. It cannot be altered, even with a semblance of justification; this justification would also be illusory, for naturally these laws were made by intellectual men, and must be tainted with mundane limitation.
Look at the laws in some States, especially in those of Central and South America. The man who stands at the head of the government today, enjoying its privileges and honours, can be thrown into prison on the morrow and executed if his opponent is lucky enough to succeed in seizing the reins of government.
If he is not successful, then it is he, who, instead of reigning, is the criminal, and is pursued. And the government functionaries are as willing to serve the one party as the other. Even the globe-trotter, if he wishes to keep up his reputation, must change his principles when he travels from one country to another. What is considered a crime in one country is permissible in another, if it does not meet with full approval.
All this is only possible in things which have been promulgated by the intellect, but never where the latter has been relegated to its proper place as tool of the living spirit. He who harkens to the spirit will never neglect Divine Laws. What is built up on a spiritual foundation is neither defective nor incomplete, there only peace and happiness dwell.
Everywhere and in every case the expressions of the spirit are in perfect accord and never contradict each other.
In the same way jurisprudence, medicine and statecraft will only be makeshifts where intellect is the foundation and the spirit lacking. It is not possible for it to be otherwise.
Knowledge is a product, but spirit is life, the value and power of which can only be estimated by the quality and intensity of its relation to the origin of all spiritual substance. The closer the connection of a human spirit with its origin, the greater its value and efficacy; the looser the connection, the more distant, alien, solitary and weak that man must be.
It is evident that things cannot be otherwise, and one cannot understand how the misguided intellectuals again and again pass by without seeing, for what nourishment the root provides, the trunk, the flower and the fruit receive. And here again one finds this hopeless self-imposed limitation. They have toiled to erect a wall that they cannot look over, much less look through.
They smile with conceited superiority at those whose spirit is alive and not so encased. Poor demented fools they appear. Although one pities them, one must leave them to their delusion, for their conception is too limited to perceive facts or be impressed by proofs to the contrary. Efforts to improve them would be as fruitless as expecting to heal a sick body by hanging a new and resplendent cloak round its shoulders.
Now that materialism has passed the height of its possible achievements, failure on all sides will accelerate its decline, and it will gradually collapse, not without, however, tearing down much that is good. The devotees of its teaching have arrived at their wit's end and will get confused in their work and in their thoughts, without seeing the abyss that has opened before them. Soon they will be a herd without a shepherd, mistrusting each other, each going his own way, proudly looking down on his contemporaries and thoughtlessly clinging to time- honoured habits. They will finally fall into the abyss, their shallowness and insignificance evident to all. They regard the product of their brains as living spirit. How can lifeless matter produce living spirit? They are proud of thinking exactly in many respects, but unscrupulously leave gaps in the principal things.
Every new step, every effort at improvement again shows up the barrenness of their brain-work and bears the stamp of its inevitable doom.
What I am saying here is not prophecy, nor empty foretelling, but gives the certain result of the Almighty's Will in Creation, the ruling laws of which I have been explaining in many of my previous Lectures. There the path has been distinctly and unmistakably indicated, and he who is able to follow me in the spirit will be able to see the inevitable deduction arrived at. Premonitory signs are observable at the present time.
Men lament, are disgusted and cry out at the incredible and deplorable excrescences and eccentricities of materialism. They pray for deliverance from these evils and to be rescued from sinking in this swamp of degeneracy which proudly styles itself progress. The few who escape suffocation, feel like outcasts and aliens, and are laughed at as such by the soulless followers of modernity.
Those who have had the courage to refrain from joining the masses, who proudly remained on the steep upward path deserve a laurel wreath!
You who are walking in your sleep and complaining, open your eyes! Do you not see that what is oppressing you is the beginning of the end, the sudden end of materialism, which is now only apparently ruling? The whole building is crumbling and this without the agency of those who suffered and are still suffering under its dominion. Intellectual mankind must now reap what it brought forth, nourished, bred and admired for thousands of years.
For man a long time, but for the self-acting mills of God a short span. Whichever way we look, we are faced by failure. The tide has turned. The failures have accumulated and heaped up an immense wall which will fall down on its admirers and bury them under its ruins. The expression of the implacable law of reciprocal action will this time be terrible, for, in spite of the many experiences gained in thousands of years, no effort was made to aspire, and the road in the wrong direction steadily became wider and wider. You who have been so cruelly humbled and put to shame by the injustice and stupidity of others do not despond but look the opponents who would crush you, boldly in the face. The time is at hand! Their fine raiment is tattered and torn and their true selves appear through the rents. Intellect, the woebegone product of the brain, enthroned as spirit, less confident perhaps, but not less conceited, peeps forth and is — confounded!
Do not hesitate to tear the bandage off your eyes and look about you keenly. Much will strike the clear-sighted on glancing at even better class daily papers. One notices the convulsive efforts to keep up old delusions, hiding the growing want of understanding in arrogant phrases and silly witticisms. A man will pass sentence in insipid language on subjects which it is patent are quite beyond his comprehension. In their helplessness even well-disposed people have recourse to crooked by-paths rather than confess that so many things are beyond the power of their intellect to grasp. They do not perceive where the vulnerable points are, nor feel the absurdity of their proceedings in adding to them.
Soon they will stand face to face with the truth, confused and blinded; then they will mournfully look back on their misspent time on earth, and finally will be obliged to recognise with shame that what they took for wisdom was foolishness.
What have we come to today? The man of muscle is the hero! Has a serious scientist who, after decades of hard work, has discovered a serum for the protection and help of hundreds and thousands of old and young against fatal diseases, ever celebrated such triumphs as a boxer who, in virtue of his purely physical brute force can throw his adversary in the ring, or an airman, who, with no more courage than the soldier needs in the field, has made a long and successful flight by virtue of his excellent machine? In our days these things are considered of the greatest moment, but does a single human soul derive profit or advantage therefrom? All is mundane, and mundane alone, that is to say the lowest plane in Creation. And as in the olden times they worshipped the golden calf, they now all bow down before the intellect, the earthbound effigy of a monarch ruling over narrow-minded mankind. And no one sees the mad race down the steep incline into the gruesome abyss.
He, who senses it, keeps silent, for he knows he will be laughed at if he speaks. A growing feeling of misgiving, a consciousness of helplessness perturb many. But the stubbornness and conceit of the majority, not to speak of their dread and horror of coming events increase their exasperation and they utterly refuse to consider the breakdown of the proud and stately building to which they so tenaciously cling. This may be compared to the Tower of Babel, like that, it will also totter and fall! That materialism which has been able to hold its own for so long is doomed, becomes more and more evident every month.
Yet something is astir in many souls in all parts of the world. Moreover the glorious truth is but covered with the thin layer of erroneous views. In the general regeneration coming the first breath of fresh air will clear it away and expose the spiritual light within. This will unite itself to many others and they will form a complex of radiation that will mount, a thank offering, to the realm of pure joy at the feet of the Creator. That will be the time the glorious promise of the longed-for Millenium will be fulfilled. Then the grievous sin against the Holy Spirit, which kept man bound to earth will be atoned, and the path clear for him to return to his natural state. The Creator wants man to do great things and to be inspired by living sentiments. It will be the victory of the Spirit, but at the same time it will be the victory of purest Love!
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*) Lecture No. 63: I am the Resurrection and the Life
Spontaneously and involuntarily some special occurrence out of his former experiences will come to life again, accompanied by the sensations that he had at the time: a longing felt in a sentimental mood, moments of mournful happiness, and again an unappeased desire never expressed in words. With others, sensations of pride, anger, horror or hatred will re-echo. It will always be some experience that made an exceptional impression on the man but which he thought was long since forgotten.
Man loses nothing of what he has once personally experienced. He can call all he has experienced his own, his indestructible possession. But it must be something that has gone to his heart, for no other sensation will be resuscitated at these words. If a man assiduously studies himself and carefully investigates, he will soon find out what belongs to his real self, his living ego, and what may be called dead — the soulless shells of valueless memories.
It is only such experiences during his mundane life, which have impressed his soul sufficiently deeply to leave an indelible stamp behind, that can help or be of use to man spiritually. These alone can build up his soul and assist in its further development.
In truth, only what has made a deep impression belongs to real life. All else flits away leaving no imprint, unless, may be, it helps to prepare the way for events which then would be able to make an indelible impression. Happy the man, who has many memories of such powerful experiences to carry over with him. No matter whether joyful or sad, these impressions will constitute the most valuable possessions that man can have for his future life in the next world.
Purely mundane reasoning (as we have it in modern times), if put to good use, only serves to ease physical life on earth. If you will consider, you will see that is the purpose of all intellectual work. Nothing else is the aim of all study and all work done, no matter in what department, whether for the State or for the family, or for single individuals, for the nation or for mankind in general. Unfortunately, man has subjected everything unconditionally to his intellect, and he therefore lies heavily fettered within the bounds of limited understanding. This has brought about the most disastrous results in all happenings, and is still doing so. There is but one exception in the whole world. And this is not the Church, as so many may perhaps think it is, and indeed as it should be, but it is Art. In this one instance, intellect plays a second role, and where it manages to get the upper hand, Art immediately becomes a craft — and is sadly degraded from its lofty position. This result is so natural that not a single exception can be pointed to. The same reasoning applies to all other cases. Does not this make man think? It surely must be as though scales fell from his eyes! The thinker who can compare will clearly perceive that where the intellect rules, he only gets a make- shift — something inferior. And this fact should show man what place by rights belongs to the intellect; in what place nature meant it to be to produce anything of real value. Art alone is born of the living spirit and living perception. It alone has a natural origin and healthy development. Spirit does not speak through the intellect but expresses itself in what the Germans call Gemuet, which the intellectual man of today loves to ridicule and deride. In so doing, he scorns what is most valuable in man, what makes a man a human being. Spirit has nothing to do with intellect. If men seek and desire general improvement, they must think of Christ's words: “By their works ye shall know them.” The time is approaching, when this will happen. The works of the spirit have life, therefore, they are of lasting value. All else must wither and die away, when the blossom is over, and expose its hollowness and barrenness when the time comes for fruit to appear.
Look at History. Only works of the spirit outlive nations that die out in spite of the work of their cold and lifeless intellect. Their high culture, their much prized knowledge could not save them. Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, then the French, and now the Germans: but the genuine works of Art have outlived them all. These can never be lost. Yet no one perceived the strict regularity in the constant recurrence of these phenomena. No man thought to enquire into the root of this serious evil. Instead of doing this and preventing the repetition of such declines of peoples and empires, men only lamented the hopelessness of any possible measures being of use and blindly gave in to what could not be altered.
Now the evil has taken hold of all mankind, much misery lies behind us, more still awaits us in the future; and the multitudes that are affected are already suffering distress and affliction.
Think of the nations that declined as soon as their civilisation had reached its culminating point and their intelligence was at the zenith of its development. The fruits that matured were always the same: licentiousness, shamelessness and gluttony in diverse forms, on which decline and ruin inevitably followed. Surely every one must be struck with the astonishing resemblance in the process, and the thoughtful man must see the strict consistency of the working of the law.
One after another, the aforesaid nations had finally to learn that their power and their glory were but surface appearances, were only kept up artificially by force and compulsion and had no sound, independent existence whatever.
Instead, however, of despairing, open your eyes, look around you, learn from the past, and compare it with the messages which have come to you from above for thousands of years past, and you will come upon this festering sore, the one hindrance to man's development. The road upwards will not be free until this grievance is utterly done away with. The general advance will then endure because it will be animated by the living spirit, which has hitherto been impossible.
Before going into the subject more closely, I will explain what spirit, the only really living part of man, is. Spirit is not wit, nor intellect, nor is it the result of learning. A man may be a born student, a keen observer, a brilliant, witty and original speaker and yet have nothing of the spirit withal.
Spirit is different; it is of independent consistency; it belongs to its own world which is quite different from that portion of Creation to which the earth and the physical bodies of its inhabitants belong. The spiritual world lies higher; it is the uppermost and lightest part of Creation. The task of the spirit in man is to uplift him. Its natural impulse, owing to its consistency, is to revert to the spiritual world, and this it can do as soon as man has cast off all his material coverings (bodies). When a man has reached a certain stage of maturity, he will feel this impulse working within him and it will up-lift him to his compeers in the spiritual world by virtue of the law of attraction of what is homogeneous.*
But though the spirit has no relation to the human intellect, it has affinity to all those feelings that come from the heart.
If a man would at any time analyse his sensations, he would find it helpful to begin by saying Once upon a time. That will enlighten many, and if they inquire further, they will distinguish between what has been useful in the life of their soul on earth and what has only served to facilitate their work and make their lives pleasant in the mundane sense; whether they laid up treasure for their future life, or only had care for temporal interests. The treasure they can take over with them, all the rest they must leave behind as it has no further value for them. What they leave behind are but tools they have used to help themselves on earth — nothing more.
A tool is useful for the work it is meant to do, but if more than that is expected of it, and it is accounted worthy of higher work, its abuse will have bad results.
The first and foremost of these tools is the human intellect. This product of the brain, like all other physical matter, has strict limits to its sphere of action, and all the work, that the human brain accomplishes, shares in the same limited possibilities and must be subject to the laws governing matter. Thus human intellect has a very limited power of conception, only embracing things of this world and limited within space and time. Originating in inert matter, it has no independent life and can, therefore, put no life into its work. This undeniable fact is the key to the unhappy conditions which have existed as long as man has inhabited this earth.
It is high time for man to learn to distinguish between the spirit and the intellect, between the living spirit and its tool. If this tool is ranked before the spirit, as has hitherto been the case, it will bring forth unwholesome and dead fruit; it will strangle the spirit and cut it adrift from its own sphere and necessary work of development till at the crumbling and fall of the lifeless shell, it escapes yet unripe from the ruins.
If instead of the words Once upon a time we ask: How was it in former times?, how different the effect will be. The first phrase speaks to the heart which is in connection with the spirit, but the second appeals to the intellect. Quite other scenes are conjured up. They are limited, cold and lifeless, because the intellect has nothing else to give. It was man's fault from the very beginning that he set his intellect (which can but bring forth imperfect and lifeless matter) on such a high pinnacle, and, as it were, danced around it, and worshipped it. A place was given it that by rights only belonged to the spirit.
For this reason its work cannot be really successful, but must break down when the time of harvest comes. This is quite natural; it is what always must happen except in the case of technical achievements. These have been brought to a high state of perfection by the human intellect and will be brought to still greater heights in the future. But this fact only serves to prove the truth of what I affirm, for technical work is always purely mundane and lifeless. Intellect likewise belongs to physical matter, thus it can do marvels in technology and achieve brilliant success. There intelligence is in its right place. That is the proper field for it to unfold its capabilities. But where it is a question of something purely human, intelligence alone will not suffice and, unless guided by the spirit, must turn out a failure. Spirit alone is life. Mundane intellect can never do spiritual work. Thus it is a grievous sin in man to rank his intellect higher than his living spirit. In this way man, in the face of Divine ordinance, turned the natural order of things topsy-turvy by putting intellect, which should come in the second place, into the first place which only belongs to the living spirit.
The natural consequence is that man is now obliged painfully
to seek his salvation from below upwards, his intellect all the while obstructing his outlook, instead of being able to look down through the spirit and recognise the path he is to take, from above.
If he will awake, he must change the position of the lights and put his intellect back into the place for which nature intended it, and raise the spirit to its original exalted position. The change of order that man introduced in by-gone times, was absolutely opposed to the Will of the Creator. This was the Fall of Man. Its consequences were terrible, it developed original sin i.e. inherited sin, which was the uplifting of the intellect to be ruler over all things. Hence man, by over-cultivating his intellect, even influenced the structure of the brain itself. That part which has to do with mundane work was over-developed and the other part neglected and allowed to degenerate. The
only sign of its existence this neglected and degenerate part displays is in dreaming, but these dreams are subject to and under the strict control of the day brain, the intellectual part. The cerebellum was intended to be a bridge between the spiritual and the physical world. This bridge is now well-nigh broken down, and connection interrupted, and man is thus prevented from spiritualising his intellect, and from putting life and soul into his work. Both sides of the brain should have been uniformly developed so as to be able to work together harmoniously like all else in the body; the spirit steering and directing, the intellect executing its orders here on earth. Considering existing circumstances, it is natural that the activities of the body and the body itself can never be what they should be. This pernicious influence, resulting from thus disturbing the balance, penetrates everywhere, for the principal agent in mundane happening is missing, i.e. the spirit. This unnatural hindrance brought about estrangement from Almighty God, as the way to Him was blocked. Another disadvantage for man resulted from this: for thousands of years past, the structural formation of the brain of every child born into the world, was hereditarily influenced so that the frontal brain was developed out of all proportion to the rest, with the result that as soon as the child's brain was developed, its intellect became the master. The cleft between the two parts of the brain have now become so wide and the working possibilities on both sides so out of all proportion that in most cases improvement can only be hoped for as a result of some catastrophe.
The intellectual man of today is no longer normal. The principal part of the brain of every perfect human being, having been neglected for thousands of years, is absolutely undeveloped. The normal brain of every intellectual man is crippled. Just think of it! Men with crippled brains have been ruling the world for thousands of years; they look upon a normal man as an enemy and seek to subjugate him. In their blindness, they imagine they are accomplishing wonders, whereas a normal man could do ten times as much, and besides his work would be lasting and of far more value than the work done today. The way is open to every serious seeker to acquire this ability.
It will not be easy, however, for a one-sided intellectual man to understand work that belongs to the part of his brain now stunted and starved. It is simply impossible for him to do so, even if he would. In his voluntary self-restriction, he laughs at all that is out of his reach and which will always be out of his reach, thanks to his degenerate and undeveloped brain. The harmonious working together of the two parts of the brain, so indispensable for a normal human being is out of the question for the intellectual man of today — the materialist.
It is no recommendation to be called a materialist: the term designates a starved brain.
Thus we see that, up till now, the unnatural brain has ruled. Its influence must necessarily bring forth decay and ruin in all things. Its degeneracy is reflected in the unsound and inharmonious work it produces.
Here no help can be of avail; one must patiently wait for the tottering building to fall. Then the day of resurrection has come for the spirit and with it a new life! The slave of the intellect, who has reigned for thousands of years, will be cast down from his high estate, and he will not be able to rise again till his own personal experience proves to him how poor he is in spirit, and how sick in mind; he will be compelled to bow voluntarily before what he could not understand. He will never have the opportunity of opposing the spirit. He will not be able to deride it, nor to proceed against it — as has been done in by- gone times — by force, supported and justified by seemingly logical arguments, against which the Son of God had to fight. Then there would still have been time to prevent much misery. But now it is too late, for in the further course of development, the connection between the two parts of the brain has been still further loosened, and the cleft between no longer allows of being bridged over.
Many intellectuals will be inclined to deride what I here state; their arguments, however, will only consist of empty commonplaces, they will not find a single sound counter- argument. Every honest seeker and thinker will look on such cavilling and invective as fresh proof of the truth of what I say. But there are people who cannot do this even if they give themselves ever so much trouble. Let us call them mentally disordered, patients who will soon need help. Let us wait and see! Contention and violence are not necessary to compel progress in enlightenment, for the end will come of itself. Here the law of returns will punctually and inexorably control and determine the course of events. A new generation will come, as has been so often prophesied. It has already been noticed and commented on in California and Australia that children recently born into the world are gifted with a new sense. This new generation will, however, not only consist of children, the greater part will consist of those now alive who will shortly have their spiritual eyes opened to the events coming to pass. And this is nothing more than the ability to stand in the world with open eyes, untrammelled and free from the tutelage of the intellect. In refusing to be subjugated by the intellect, man frees himself from original sin or rather inherited sin which will then cease to be. This gift of vision has nothing to do with accomplishments acquired by occult training. Man will simply become what the normal man should be. This extended power of vision has nothing to do with clairvoyance, but is more closely allied to natural insight and understanding. Man will then be in a position to look at all things uninfluenced, that is to say his judgment will be unbiased. In his eyes the intellectual man will appear in his true light: proud and presumptuous, lusting for power and of such narrow limitation as to be a danger to his compeers. He will see how man has suffered in one way or another under the yoke of such as these for thousands of years. It will become clear that this is the hereditary arch-enemy of all free development of the human spirit, which is the whole purport of man's life on earth. Nothing will escape him. Nor will he be spared knowledge of the bitter truth that all mankind's misery, suffering and fall are due to the same evil, for it limited man's power of conception from the outset, preventing all improvement and enlightenment whatever.
With the awakening, all the power, authority and the influence of the intellectual man will cease for all time. A new and better era will begin for mankind where what is old will be done away with. This will be the victory of the spirit over the intellect, longed for and expected by thousands of men. Many out of the masses led astray will then see how completely they misinterpreted the expression intellect.
Following the example of others, most men were satisfied to set up intellect as an idol, without further examination. And the adherents ably seconded by custom, compulsion and legislation successfully played the role of infallible and omnipotent masters. Few gave themselves the trouble of enquiring into and exposing the hollowness and deficiencies of their claims. Nevertheless, during the last decades, there have been some who have persistently fought the enemy sometimes from under cover, and sometimes openly, and these were often exposed to bitter persecution. But they fought without knowing their enemy, and that made the battle harder and victory impossible. The warriors' swords were blunted by doing work of secondary importance; they swerved aside into the void. The fighters wasted their strength, and disorganisation developed into the discord that we observe today.
In truth, mankind has but one enemy, and that is: the unlimited sway of the intellect. It caused the fall of man; it was his gravest sin and brought all evil in its train. It developed original or rather inherited sin and finally it is Antichrist, of whom it is written that he will up-lift his head. To state this still more clearly: the sway of the intellect is the pitfall by which he ensnares mankind. They fall a prey to him, the enemy of God, Antichrist himself, Lucifer!
We are now living in this time, for Antichrist is at work in every man, ready to ruin him, for it is naturally his purpose straightway to turn man away from God. He cuts off man's connection with the spirit as soon as he is allowed to rule.
Therefore, be keenly watchful!
This does not mean that man is to belittle his intellect; he is to make it the tool that it is, but not the ruling will, not the master.
Men of the coming generation will look upon the present time with disgust, horror and shame. Their feelings will resemble ours, when we inspect a torture chamber of old times. There again we see the deplorable results of the rule of the intellect. It cannot be denied that no human being whose heart is ever so little enlightened by the spirit could ever have conceived such horrors.
Still, generally speaking, conditions are not very different today, although things have been whitewashed. The misery of the masses is the same rotten fruit, as the tortures of individuals at that time.
When in the future man looks back, his astonishment will know no bounds. He will ask himself: how was it possible to bear such abuses for thousands of years? The answer is plain enough, it was all the result of compulsion. Whichever way one looks, this is only too evident. We need not go back to ancient times; we need only enter the torture chambers which are to be found everywhere, and which have not been in disuse for so very long.
We shudder when we look at the old implements there. What cold brutality, what bestiality they reveal. Hardly a man of today can doubt that the gravest crimes were committed there. The tormentors were greater criminals than the tormented. But besides criminals, innocent persons were torn from the bosom of their families and cast into these cells. What lamentations, what shrieks of pain from helpless victims died away unheard. One cannot but shudder with horror even to think of the tortures human beings were put to, and one involuntarily asks oneself how it was possible that defenceless human beings could really have been treated thus. These proceedings were moreover sanctioned and enforced by human law. And furthermore prisoners were put to the torture to incriminate others who were suspected, so that these could be done to death at pleasure. Though these compulsory indictments were only made to escape the agonies of torture, they sufficed, for the judge needed these confessions to satisfy the letter of the law.
Did these short-sighted fools really imagine that they could wash themselves clean before God in this manner? That they could escape the inexorable law of reciprocal action?
These men who dared to pass sentence on others were either the very scum of humanity, or else here again we see the fruit of the work of one-sided human intellect.
Divine Law ordains that every person in authority, every judge, no matter what his department may be, should, like every ordinary man, be personally responsible for all he does officially and should in no case be able to claim protection from a higher authority above him, and this spiritually as well as mentally. This would make every one more serious and more careful; so-called errors of judgment, the fatal results of which are irreparable, would occur less frequently, not to mention the physical and moral suffering of the accused and of his relatives.
But let us cast a glance at the chapter on witchcraft and the trials of so-called witches.
He who has ever had access to the records of such trials will be overwhelmed with shame and regret that he belongs to such a race. If some individual happened to have knowledge of the properties of herbs and healed those who came to him for help, he was inevitably subjected to torture and ended his life at the stake, unless indeed he did not succumb to his cruel torments before.
Even physical beauty, specially in cases of unyielding chastity, was a dangerous gift at that time. Then the horrors of the Inquisition! Comparatively speaking, it is not so very long since then. The humbler classes felt and recognised this injustice then just as we do today, for with them their intellects had not as yet stifled the feelings of their hearts and the latter occasionally came to the surface.
Cannot one see the absolute limitation of human intellect in all this? The irresponsible stupidity?
Although one speaks of these things with an air of superiority, and shrugs one's shoulders, the truth is that the principle has in nowise changed. The presumption with which all that is not understood is looked down upon, is just the same. Only instead of physical torture, men publicly deride and scoff at what they cannot understand.
A man should pause and consider all this without extenuating, without sparing himself or others. Every human being who knows something that is concealed from the general public, who perhaps has the gift of seeing transcendental phenomena with his inner sight (quite a natural gift), a fact which soon no one will be able to deny, much less brutally oppose — is looked upon as a swindler, often even summoned before a court of law.
And woe unto the person who does not know how to make use of his gift, but who naively speaks of what he has seen or heard; he must be in a state of constant terror as were the early Christians, who were persecuted by Nero. And if indeed a man has other abilities such as the intellectuals will never understand, he is mercilessly hunted down, maligned and ostracised, and if possible, interned somewhere. Nobody has qualms of conscience on his account; he is a puppet at the mercy of those whose inner worth is of a most doubtful quality, for the more limited the understanding, the greater the arrogance and assumption of sagacity.
Man has learnt nothing by these doings of former times, torture, burnings at the stake and ridiculous trials, for today, too, everybody can still offend and impugn all that is uncommon and not understood. The proceedings of the Inquisition were still more damnatory than those of the courts of law; for they were instigated by the Church, and the shrieks of the victims were drowned by the prayers of the pious — a mockery of Divine Will in Creation. The representatives of the Church of that time proved that they had not the faintest idea of the true doctrine of Christ, nor of the Almighty nor of the Divine Laws on which Creation rests and which govern all things from the very beginning to the end of time.
God endowed man with free will as a component part of his spirit, only with its help can he mature as he should, and get rid of his faults. That is the only way. If the activity of his free- will is restrained he is hindered if not indeed violently thrown back. The Christian Churches and many other religions waged war against this principle established by God with the greatest cruelty. By torture and death they wanted to force men to lead lives against their will and to confess what was contrary to their conviction. This was trespassing against God's Holy Law, but not only this, it was hindering man's spiritual advancement and throwing him back centuries.
Had there been but a spark of real feeling in their hearts, i.e. a breath of the spirit, this would not have been possible. These inhuman doings were only the cold-blooded work of the brain, the intellect.
We read in history of more than one Pope who had his adversaries poisoned or stabbed by the hand of hired villains merely for the sake of mundane advantages. Here again it was the human intellect alone, overthrowing and subjugating all things on its victorious march, that could instigate such crimes. Nevertheless the Will of Our Creator is unalterable and directs the course of events from above. When the soul passes over into the ethereal world, it is deprived of all earthly power and of the protection that it affords. Name and position, all is left behind. It is only a poor human soul that goes over to receive the return of what it sowed. There is no exception possible. And on its way it must pass through all the intersecting wheels of the reciprocal action of Divine Justice. There the soul will find no church and no state, there will only be single individuals who must personally account for every error they have been guilty of.
He who transgresses, that is to say sins against God's Laws in Creation, subjects himself to the consequences which result, no matter who he may be and what his excuse. It may be a single individual acting under the authority of the Church or of the Law, but — whether the crime committed be against the body or the soul — it is crime. It cannot be altered, even with a semblance of justification; this justification would also be illusory, for naturally these laws were made by intellectual men, and must be tainted with mundane limitation.
Look at the laws in some States, especially in those of Central and South America. The man who stands at the head of the government today, enjoying its privileges and honours, can be thrown into prison on the morrow and executed if his opponent is lucky enough to succeed in seizing the reins of government.
If he is not successful, then it is he, who, instead of reigning, is the criminal, and is pursued. And the government functionaries are as willing to serve the one party as the other. Even the globe-trotter, if he wishes to keep up his reputation, must change his principles when he travels from one country to another. What is considered a crime in one country is permissible in another, if it does not meet with full approval.
All this is only possible in things which have been promulgated by the intellect, but never where the latter has been relegated to its proper place as tool of the living spirit. He who harkens to the spirit will never neglect Divine Laws. What is built up on a spiritual foundation is neither defective nor incomplete, there only peace and happiness dwell.
Everywhere and in every case the expressions of the spirit are in perfect accord and never contradict each other.
In the same way jurisprudence, medicine and statecraft will only be makeshifts where intellect is the foundation and the spirit lacking. It is not possible for it to be otherwise.
Knowledge is a product, but spirit is life, the value and power of which can only be estimated by the quality and intensity of its relation to the origin of all spiritual substance. The closer the connection of a human spirit with its origin, the greater its value and efficacy; the looser the connection, the more distant, alien, solitary and weak that man must be.
It is evident that things cannot be otherwise, and one cannot understand how the misguided intellectuals again and again pass by without seeing, for what nourishment the root provides, the trunk, the flower and the fruit receive. And here again one finds this hopeless self-imposed limitation. They have toiled to erect a wall that they cannot look over, much less look through.
They smile with conceited superiority at those whose spirit is alive and not so encased. Poor demented fools they appear. Although one pities them, one must leave them to their delusion, for their conception is too limited to perceive facts or be impressed by proofs to the contrary. Efforts to improve them would be as fruitless as expecting to heal a sick body by hanging a new and resplendent cloak round its shoulders.
Now that materialism has passed the height of its possible achievements, failure on all sides will accelerate its decline, and it will gradually collapse, not without, however, tearing down much that is good. The devotees of its teaching have arrived at their wit's end and will get confused in their work and in their thoughts, without seeing the abyss that has opened before them. Soon they will be a herd without a shepherd, mistrusting each other, each going his own way, proudly looking down on his contemporaries and thoughtlessly clinging to time- honoured habits. They will finally fall into the abyss, their shallowness and insignificance evident to all. They regard the product of their brains as living spirit. How can lifeless matter produce living spirit? They are proud of thinking exactly in many respects, but unscrupulously leave gaps in the principal things.
Every new step, every effort at improvement again shows up the barrenness of their brain-work and bears the stamp of its inevitable doom.
What I am saying here is not prophecy, nor empty foretelling, but gives the certain result of the Almighty's Will in Creation, the ruling laws of which I have been explaining in many of my previous Lectures. There the path has been distinctly and unmistakably indicated, and he who is able to follow me in the spirit will be able to see the inevitable deduction arrived at. Premonitory signs are observable at the present time.
Men lament, are disgusted and cry out at the incredible and deplorable excrescences and eccentricities of materialism. They pray for deliverance from these evils and to be rescued from sinking in this swamp of degeneracy which proudly styles itself progress. The few who escape suffocation, feel like outcasts and aliens, and are laughed at as such by the soulless followers of modernity.
Those who have had the courage to refrain from joining the masses, who proudly remained on the steep upward path deserve a laurel wreath!
You who are walking in your sleep and complaining, open your eyes! Do you not see that what is oppressing you is the beginning of the end, the sudden end of materialism, which is now only apparently ruling? The whole building is crumbling and this without the agency of those who suffered and are still suffering under its dominion. Intellectual mankind must now reap what it brought forth, nourished, bred and admired for thousands of years.
For man a long time, but for the self-acting mills of God a short span. Whichever way we look, we are faced by failure. The tide has turned. The failures have accumulated and heaped up an immense wall which will fall down on its admirers and bury them under its ruins. The expression of the implacable law of reciprocal action will this time be terrible, for, in spite of the many experiences gained in thousands of years, no effort was made to aspire, and the road in the wrong direction steadily became wider and wider. You who have been so cruelly humbled and put to shame by the injustice and stupidity of others do not despond but look the opponents who would crush you, boldly in the face. The time is at hand! Their fine raiment is tattered and torn and their true selves appear through the rents. Intellect, the woebegone product of the brain, enthroned as spirit, less confident perhaps, but not less conceited, peeps forth and is — confounded!
Do not hesitate to tear the bandage off your eyes and look about you keenly. Much will strike the clear-sighted on glancing at even better class daily papers. One notices the convulsive efforts to keep up old delusions, hiding the growing want of understanding in arrogant phrases and silly witticisms. A man will pass sentence in insipid language on subjects which it is patent are quite beyond his comprehension. In their helplessness even well-disposed people have recourse to crooked by-paths rather than confess that so many things are beyond the power of their intellect to grasp. They do not perceive where the vulnerable points are, nor feel the absurdity of their proceedings in adding to them.
Soon they will stand face to face with the truth, confused and blinded; then they will mournfully look back on their misspent time on earth, and finally will be obliged to recognise with shame that what they took for wisdom was foolishness.
What have we come to today? The man of muscle is the hero! Has a serious scientist who, after decades of hard work, has discovered a serum for the protection and help of hundreds and thousands of old and young against fatal diseases, ever celebrated such triumphs as a boxer who, in virtue of his purely physical brute force can throw his adversary in the ring, or an airman, who, with no more courage than the soldier needs in the field, has made a long and successful flight by virtue of his excellent machine? In our days these things are considered of the greatest moment, but does a single human soul derive profit or advantage therefrom? All is mundane, and mundane alone, that is to say the lowest plane in Creation. And as in the olden times they worshipped the golden calf, they now all bow down before the intellect, the earthbound effigy of a monarch ruling over narrow-minded mankind. And no one sees the mad race down the steep incline into the gruesome abyss.
He, who senses it, keeps silent, for he knows he will be laughed at if he speaks. A growing feeling of misgiving, a consciousness of helplessness perturb many. But the stubbornness and conceit of the majority, not to speak of their dread and horror of coming events increase their exasperation and they utterly refuse to consider the breakdown of the proud and stately building to which they so tenaciously cling. This may be compared to the Tower of Babel, like that, it will also totter and fall! That materialism which has been able to hold its own for so long is doomed, becomes more and more evident every month.
Yet something is astir in many souls in all parts of the world. Moreover the glorious truth is but covered with the thin layer of erroneous views. In the general regeneration coming the first breath of fresh air will clear it away and expose the spiritual light within. This will unite itself to many others and they will form a complex of radiation that will mount, a thank offering, to the realm of pure joy at the feet of the Creator. That will be the time the glorious promise of the longed-for Millenium will be fulfilled. Then the grievous sin against the Holy Spirit, which kept man bound to earth will be atoned, and the path clear for him to return to his natural state. The Creator wants man to do great things and to be inspired by living sentiments. It will be the victory of the Spirit, but at the same time it will be the victory of purest Love!
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*) Lecture No. 63: I am the Resurrection and the Life
