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Chapter 71 The Great Gospel of John, Book 5

7. Such a soul is found then in a condition which the ancient patriarchs who were endowed with a spiritual vision called 'She oul a' (hell = thirst for life) a very true and correct description.

8. But accordingly the whole Earth and everything that you are ever capable of perceiving with your material senses is a true Sheoula. That is the death of the soul, which is or, rather, is destined to become a spirit; for whoever has ceased to exist as that which he had been, is also completely dead as that which he had been.

9. A soul who for the above reasons has almost lost its human nature, so that, at the most, an animal skeleton is left of it, is dead after the shedding of the body. For you unthinkable eons will have to pass until such a soul buried in matter will again become a near-human being, and it will take much longer until such a soul becomes fully human.

10. You certainly think now that all these things must be possible for God in an instant. And I tell you that all things are indeed possible with God. If God wants puppets and robots, an instant will be sufficient to fill the whole visible space with them.

11. But all these beings cannot have their own and free will, nor their own existing, independent life. They will stir and move only according to the will of God that comes to them. Their eye will be the eye of God and their thoughts will be the thoughts of God. Such creatures will be just like the individual limbs of a body that cannot move or be active in themselves without your recognition and desire.

12. ] Is it not a totally different matter with your children, who have issued from your flesh and blood? They no longer depend on your will; they have a life, cognition and volition fully their own. To be sure, they will obey you and accept precepts and commandments from you, yet not according to your will but invariably according to their very own will, without which you could not teach them any more than some carved image or a stone.

13. ] And behold, beings endowed with free cognition and free will, who have to perfect themselves voluntarily so that they will forever be free beings retaining their self-determination, must be created by God in a manner that makes possible such an achievement.

14. God can only, so to speak, create the seed enclosed as in a husk and endowed with every possible viability; the future free development and cultivation of life must be left to the seed itself. It must begin to attract the life out of God, which surrounds it without, and form from it an independent life of its own.

15. And behold, it does not happen as quickly as you think, because the embryonic life cannot be as powerful and capable of actions as the most perfected life in God that has existed since eternity!

16. And because every soul, however depraved, has always the same destiny, it cannot possibly, even in the beyond, be helped in any other way toward its salvation than that it helps itself with the few means still at its disposal as in accordance with the eternal order of God it also has to help itself.

17. I hope to have made it sufficiently clear to you what is actually meant by Satan, hell and eternal death, and you should hardly have to ask another question on this matter. However, if you should still be in doubt about something, do ask; for behold, the sun will soon be setting and we shall then have our evening meal!"

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