A Gate Opens (eBook)

NO TIME FOR SPIRITUAL THINGS!

How little time indeed has man for any spiritual happening, although he himself, his real ego, his spirit, is a part of this happening, simply through the very fact that he originates in the Spiritual Realm. There is his Paradisal home, which he has left in the urge and longing to become conscious.

Even on earth a man who emigrates to another country does not forget his homeland, he at least thinks back to it now and then, if he is not even overcome by homesickness for the land of his earthly origin.

But he no longer knows anything of his spiritual home, which lies above in Paradise. Not even a divining of it arises within him. And yet the spirit, filled with repressed longing, is always waiting for the dark walls built around it by human guilt to be torn down, so that his gaze may become free towards the Light.

Man always has time enough for earthly things and earthly customs, but there is no time to spare for spiritual investigating and seeking, although it is actually so essential for his ascent out of this world of perishable matter, which indeed is only meant for him temporarily as a place of learning, of investigating and of development.

Man should indeed produce earthly goods and enjoy them with pleasure, but he must not place the acquisition of earthly possessionsabove spiritual gain, which alone mediates eternal values to him.

Only these values which he is able to acquire through genuine inner experiencing give him strong support in the beyond, firm confidence, and genuine trust in God. But the earthly values which he has acquired with the help of his intellect remain behind after death and pass away like the brain which produces the intellect.

It is just the intellect that so often stifles the rising longing of the spirit, pushing aside fruitful recognitions and experiences, declaring that it has no time for them.

May the human being in the pressure of earthly activity swing himself upwards more and more to devote sufficient time to the spiritual. It will bring the spirit multiple gain, here as well as over there in the other world, which no earthly wealth however great can outweigh.

Whether the search for the spiritual relates for example to the question of the origin of the human spirit, its task in Creation, life after death, the spiritual power by which it lives and exists, or whether it concerns its free will, its responsibility, its fate and its repeated earth-lives.

No time for spiritual things! This can only be a lazy excuse of the intellect, because by its nature it is in no position whatever to grasp spiritual things. Its field is the earthly.

The spirit, however, which is eternal, does not know this excuse. It always has time for spiritual things, as soon as and as long as it goes on striving to keep awake its longing for the Luminous Heights!

(Part III, Chapter 6)