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66. FALL OF THE SPIRITS; ADAM AND ORIGINAL SIN [1] (The Lord:) “It is the fall of the first-created spirits or the free and animated ideas of God within infinite space that is the great separation of which Moses says: ‘And God divided the light from the darkness’. How this is to be understood in its true and fully right correspondence, I have already made abundantly clear to you; the consequence of which is the necessary material world which, in large and small units such as suns, earth and moons, together with everything upon them, is spread out within infinite space. [2] Concerning Adams’s fall however, this has already more objectivity of course than the so-called fall of the angels, yet is still correspondingly analogous to the fall of the angels. Only with Adam an actual law comes already to the fore, whereas with the fall of the angels, no such commandment could yet be involved, because at that stage only a start had been made with the development of the beings to be liberated, and therefore no intelligence outside of God existed to whom such law could be given. [3] Wherefore, with the so-called fall of the spirits a necessary imposed division took place, whereas the Adamic one, proceeding out of himself, was already a voluntary one and therefore not an enforced one, but an act of free will of the first carnal man, free in all psychical spheres. On the whole however it nevertheless is a foreseen act out of God’s secret order which, whilst not an absolute compulsion, nevertheless is a permitted one, under “thou shall: or thou shall not”, allotted to man’s free will on account of his stabilization, won through his own action. [4] The difference is that between an infant that has to be carried from one place to another, and a robust man who has been walking quite solidly for a lengthy period. [5] Whoever once can walk, surely does not have to be carried to the place one wants to go with an infant; one simply show him the most direct and unmistakable rout to the place. If the healthy and strong-legged man desires to go there, he shall with certainty reach the destination without hazard. If however he is circuitous or deviates knowingly, then he has only himself to blame if he reaches the destination later and with more trouble and effort. [6] This we note with Adam. Had he kept the absolute commandment, then mankind, i.e. man’s perfect soul would not have descended to the very hard, heavy and frail physical body which is now beset with many frailties and shortcomings. [7] But the disobedience of the positive commandment necessarily caused the first man a great deviation, by which he then reaches his aim much later and with much more trouble. [8] But you are thinking by yourself: ‘how can the keeping or non-keeping of a trivial and just moral commandment have such substantive effect on mankind’s nature in aggregate? Even without his foolish indulgence, Adam would have remained the same sensual man that he remained through eating of the apple, and he would have had eventually still to die, as all mankind still does!’ [9] In one respect you are quite right, but also wrong in another. The eating of an apple, which is a salubrious and sweet fruit, certainly is not fatal, or all men eating apples should soon die thereafter. Wherefore there is nothing to the apple itself. But if its eating is prohibited for a certain time, and that only for further stabilizing of the soul; and the soul, conscious of its free will ignore and transgresses the command, then she causes as it were a certain fracture in her being, which then resemble an open wound which is difficult to ever heal again, because even if the wound is reduced to a scar, the scarring then constricts a number of vessels to the extent of impeding future circulation of life-fluids to the soul, hence exerting a constantly painful sensation. [10] Thereby the soul is then distracted from striving for development of the spirit within her, and she busies herself with eliminating the scar. And behold, this scar is called ‘world’! [11] The soul indeed constantly strives to rid herself of this scar, because it pains her in her worldly concerns. Yet the more trouble she takes, the coarser the scar, producing more worldly cares in turn. And in the end the soul has nothing further to do but concern herself with the healing of the scar, i.e. making herself troublefree, finally going over into the scar herself almost completely, paying little attention to her spirit. And behold, this is the so-called original sin”! 67. THE POWER OF HEREDITARY INFLUENCE [1] (The Lord:) “But, it will be asked, how can such be passed on?- Oh, quite easily, particularly within the organic soul-structure. Whatever the latter once has accepted, can remain with her for thousands of years, if this is not brought back to order within her by the spirit. Think of the archetype of a society! If I introduce you to its progenitor, then you shall all see that a substantial resemblance has passed over to all his offspring. If the progenitor was good and gentle man and his wife as well, then with few exceptions the nation shall be better and more gentle than a people with a raging, haughty and domineering progenitor. [2] If a primordial progenitors’ feeble trait is still discernible in his descendants physically and morally after a couple of thousands years, how much more the character trait of the first man of the Earth in all his descendants, in that his soul in the beginning was much more receptive and hence far more irritable than the later souls, in whom the father’s hereditary influence had impregnated them already at procreation in the life-stream seed, and hence could not subsequently in the natural process be wiped away and annihilated. Unfortunately, such scar greatly disfigures such soul, and God has in all times done everything to make it possible for such soul to rid itself of such scar for all times; however, until now not much success could be achieved, and I came to this earth Myself in order to extirpate such old and ugly scar. [3] And I shall do so indeed; but this shall be accomplished through the many wounds inflicted upon My flesh. But at this stage you cannot grasp this; but you shall be able to grasp it when it has come to pass, and the holy spirit of all truth shall then lead out into all wisdom about it. [4] But you have read in the book of Moses, where he speaks of Jehovah’s curse over th earth, where it says: ‘In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.’ And soon after curse of the earth, it says: ‘Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.’ [5] Behold, if you were to take this materially, i.e. if this earnestly were to be so physically, then you would be fully entitled to reproach God for a complete lack of wisdom! But since such a statement can be taken only psychologically and actually spiritually, such reproach falls by the wayside, and man can blame only himself if something in his nature deteriorates, just as he can blame only himself if on some land the harvest is sometimes worse than normal, because not everything about the weather depend upon God’s will but also upon man. [6] Once a soul is fully conscious and achieves sufficient sensibility to well recognize God’s order then, for it has to become active, in accordance of course with the recognized divine order within her. If in some aspect she does not do so or omits it, or even does the contrary, then she obviously is bound to cause herself irreparable harm, from which she shall not be able to free herself on her own accord, since all her action is more or less disorderly, with further consequent soul-restrictions in time, such as all kinds of blindness, foolishness, incomprehension, feeble perception, fear, lack of courage, sadness, frustration, annoyance, rage, anger and ultimately despair itself. [7] And behold, these are the “thorns and thistles” which the soil within the soul, i.e. the depleted intelligence-attributes shall cause to grow within her, akin to the parasitic growths upon otherwise healthy tree-branches! [8] ‘God’s curse’ however is nothing other than the soul’s realization of her own self-destruction in light of God’s perceived order, having to as a consequence of her own blame eat bread ‘by the sweat of her brow’. [9] And the sweat of her brow is the aforementioned ‘worldtrouble’ scar that she herself incurred through eating of the Mosaic apple, which she could have easily avoided. (GGJ Book 5, chap. 66-67) (The Lord:)[2] As regards the sifting of men and all their worldly works of culture, such a sifting at Noah's time visited most parts of the then inhabited earth with small exceptions the way Moses described it, though in metaphors. But a truly wise man familiar with the science of correspondences can easily discover from them the historical facts. [3] But how was humanity, although descending only from the extremely pious and wise Noah, after only a few hundred years? [4] Already at the time of Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, with the other ten cities, were on account of their great depravity destroyed by fire and brimstone from above, including all the people and livestock, so much so that no trace was left of them. Where once these cities stood you now have the Dead Sea, in which to this hour no animal can survive, and even the birds avoid crossing it. [5] At the time of Moses the depraved Egypt was sifted for years through the well-known seven plagues so that two thirds of the people and livestock perished and the Israelites, who were the best workmen of that kingdom and had initially migrated there as the brothers of Joseph a few hundred years earlier out of poverty and who were suffering great suppression and persecution under the cruel Pharaoh, were led out of the country, so that the whole kingdom sank into the greatest poverty and anarchy. But it gradually recovered and became rich and mighty, and when it became too mighty it was again punished through war, famine and pestilence. Look at it now, and you will find it to be like the rest of the world. [6] From these few true facts presented here you will understand that a sifting of sinful mankind does not have by far such a beneficial effect as you imagine, for the moral deterioration of a human being, or a whole generation of men, is not so much due to a fundamentally evil volition on the part of men as you think, but rather to the vital susceptibility of the soul, that is, to the indolence to move earnestly along the recognized paths of light. [7] But because the soul likes rest and inactivity so very much, it seeks helpers and servants who work for it or at least help it. Thereby it soon becomes wealthy, rich and mighty and begins to rule for its own benefit, gives laws and passes all sorts of decrees which bring it some advantage. And behold, in this way it usually turns into a refined soul that is not inclined to activity. This is the reason why the moral condition of whole nations has deteriorated, so much so that the nations more and more abandon the spiritual for the material. [8] Thus the lethargy or the ever-increasing desire for idleness is and remains the root of all evil, and this characteristic of the human soul is that most evil spirit which the Scriptures call ‘Satan’. Therein consists the original sin from which all men suffer and from which no one can free them except a true Messiah who comes from the heavens of the fullest life and its highest activity. [9] All the sages living in the known parts of the world already have seen and recognized that there is an original sin among the people of this earth, but they have not been able to fathom in what it consists and how it can be fought. And exactly this will be the task of the Messiah, to redeem forever through precept and deed the people from this evil, whose outcome is the death of the soul. [10] But man's redemption will be true and effective for him only if he follows the given directions strictly and faithfully, otherwise after the arrival of the Messiah he will be exactly the same sinful man he was prior to it. For the Messiah from the heavens will redeem from his original sin only the one who lives in every respect exactly according to His teaching. No one should hope for any particular magical and wonderful effect from Him as regards the salvation from the mentioned hereditary sin! [11] To be sure, the Messiah will work great miracles to testify that it is He, but the miracles as such will benefit men's souls only insofar as they will awaken the faith and activate the soul into putting the given teaching into practice. [12] Therefore, the Messiah is like a wealthy and good landlord and innkeeper who prepares a great feast and sends his servants to all the hamlets, roads, streets and lanes and kindly invites all to come and take part in the great feast. Poor and rich, small and great, weak and strong, insignificant and mighty alike, they all will hear the voice of the messenger inviting them. Those who come will have their hunger satisfied, but those who do not want to come shall not be forced. Whether or not they come will make no difference to the innkeeper; yet only those following the invitation will receive the blessing of the great feast. [13] The great feast will be the very teaching of the Messiah. Whoever listens to it and acts accordingly will be a true participant in the great feast and receive the blessing in its fullness. However, for him who listens to the precept without fully putting it into practice it will be like a well-laid table is for someone who does not eat of all the good food, and so it will be all the same whether or not he comes to the feast, although he is invited. Well, there you have the Messiah as He is, will be and shall remain. – What do you think now of such a true Messiah?” (GGJ Book 12, chap. 99)
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