Spiritual Wisdom:

"QUESTION: I would like to ask something in connection with the fall of the angels. In Isaiah, it is said that God created good and evil. So God created the evil forces, the luciferic powers too?

"ANSWER: That is a great error. And you will readily understand now, when I remind you of one of the last lectures, how this error could have happened. You will remember that I have explained that God has created this power which He has given to each of His created spirits. This power could be used either way, any way, in free will. Now that explains why or how this error could have occurred. It is technically not correct to say that God created evil. It would be more correct to say God created the possibility for evil, if in free will His power is used against divine law. " (PL #25)

QUESTION: "In the case of war, is the act of killing by a soldier contrary to divine law?
ANSWER: "No, it is not. For, as Jesus Christ has said, man should give God His due and Caesar that which is due him. If human beings on this whole earth sphere are still so far back in development that a war is necessary, a man has to fight for his country. By refusing to fight, even if all men would do so, evil would not be eliminated. War may be temporarily eliminated, but certainly not evil. War is only one of many expressions of evil. War is not the cause, it is only an effect. It would be the same if a father would allow a murderer to come into his house and kill his wife and children without defending them. He must defend those he loves, and evil has to be fought against. In your present state of development, unfortunately war often is still your means of fighting evil. As spiritual development grows, you will learn to go more to the roots of the problems and fight against evil in better ways. As it stands now, mankind is often forced to fight in war against forces that abuse free will and divine law. If people exist who take the power upon themselves to prevent other people to live as God wants them to live and if your world has not found other means as yet to eliminate this wrong, then a war is the lesser evil. From the spiritual point of view, you know that death is not the worst. Spiritual death is the worst, not physical death. Every person is judged individually, and that comprises also the circumstances and environment in which he lives. In the spirit world, the real motives count more than an act, and judgment is not passed generally or collectively. Each person is judged separately, and if a man simply goes to war to defend his country, this will not count against him. His inner attitudes count, his feelings, his reactions, his decency in motives, and his sense of responsibility."

QUESTION: "How does spiritual law correspond with human laws in case of a death sentence with a murderer?
ANSWER: "From the spiritual point of view, capital punishment is wrong. That may sound like a contradiction to you in comparison with the last answer. But it is not. In the case of war, it is a question of defending a nation, mankind. For humanity, war is often the last means. And even the people living in the aggressive nation are often convinced that they are doing their duty; they do not see the whole picture. They have to abide by the laws of their society. Otherwise they might cause more hardship, not only to themselves and thereby becoming incapable of fulfilling their life, but also to others around them. Again we cannot generalize all the way, for there may be isolated instances where it is the duty of a person to violate a law of man in order to fulfill a law of God. But these instances are rare and only expected of strong and highly developed beings sent to earth with a special mission. But in general, this does not hold true. But capital punishment is not a necessity. War often is in your present state of development. You have not found the way yet to eliminate war. The only way to do so is when resentment, hate, and fear do not live in the individuals's soul anymore. This is the only basis for peace. But capital punishment is not necessary."
 
QUESTION: "A question in connection with war and killing, how are we to regard a conscientious objector who sincerely follows the admonition not to kill and considers the whole of the universe as his fellow men rather than the part he is called upon to so-called 'defend.'"
ANSWER: "In the first place, man is not defending a part of geography but his immediate fellow creatures. By refusing to go to war, he may in the long run cause more harm than good. With this, I certainly do not wish to give the impression that I advocate war -- by no means. But war cannot be eliminated by refusing it. This cancer has to be treated in another way and slowly has to grow out of all individuals. An individual conscientious objector, provided his motives are pure, will be judged accordingly. Then this will certainly not be held against him the same as a killing in a war by a soldier will not be held against him, if his heart is pure, his conviction sincere. But that does not alter the fact that his judgment is wrong. More precisely, his goal or endeavor is a good one just as the goal of a sincere soldier may be a good one, but he selects the wrong means to oust an evil. Refusing to go to war could not be the right curative against war. For as long as there is hatred within the individual soul and as long as there is blindness caused through lack of self-knowledge and as long as people do not purify themselves and strive upwards to God -- and the only striving that counts is this purification process -- and as long as people cannot refine their feelings, then there cannot be peace. It is impossible.

"War is an outpicturing of what goes on in so many individual personalities. It cannot be eliminated by collective means alone unless these are supported by the right spiritual attitudes, as well meant as they may be. It has to start from within by each individual. Otherwise you will only succeed to eliminate one effect, and another symptom will come. It is just the same with disease, my friends. War is nothing else but a disease. Your human history, your human science shows you how much medicine has found in eliminating diseases. Many diseases are not possible anymore today that existed a relatively very short time ago. But other diseases have sprung up that you cannot cure, and will continue to do so until a greater degree of purification exists on this earth no matter what wonderful progress science and medicine make. As long as the disease is not cured from within, war or any other disease will exist. If it is not war, it will be something else, equally terrible. In the case of an individual, it is possible to make a mistake in judgment, and this in itself is not held against you. You all make mistakes in judgment. "As long as you are sincere and do not delude yourself for other reasons and color your motives, it is something that is not held against you. But the coloring of one's own motives so often exists. When man has an opinion, a very firm opinion about anything -- religion, politics, any subject -- the moment this opinion is very firm, fanatical, and inflexible, he should test his real inner motives, and he may find out that this opinion is not as general and objective as he may have thought at first. If you really dig deep and honestly, you will be surprised how often you will find a personal, emotional, and subjective reason connected with your convictions. " (PL #29)

"Will power can only be developed when you fully understand the importance of it and what is at stake. A person will not use his dormant will power when he does not know how important it is to have it. Everybody can observe the following: when a person is in a grave danger, all of a sudden he will display a tremendous will power and strength way beyond him ordinarily because he then realizes his life is at stake. He has to have it, otherwise he is lost. Yet in things which do not seem important or actually are not important, this very same person will not have any will power whatever. So it is first a question of understanding and of discrimination. To discriminate clearly and concisely, to formulate the ideas precisely, is the first step to take. When you will know what stands on one side and what on the other, what is the issue, you will be able to make a wholehearted decision through and through, and this is the next step to develop your will power. Everyone has will power. Will power is nothing else than a force, a strength that is used by many in the wrong direction. When the strength evaporates in wrong channels, not enough remains that will power may be generated for what really counts. How much strength is lost by fears, by resentment, by hatred! For each personal fault takes up a certain amount of strength. Each fault is a chain that binds you and against which you subconsciously strain. Consciously you may also strain against other things, which also takes strength from you, for strain is a negative force. But subconsciously every individual strains against his or her own faults and imperfections. This is the wrong way to get rid of one's faults. So, to come back, the first step always is to ask yourself, "What do I want to have will power for?

" When you ask yourself this question clearly, you can give yourself an equally clear answer. When the answer is that you somehow wanted will power for something that is not worthwhile without consciously having realized this before, then it is only advisable that you do not use your strength and will power in that direction. So many people, firmly convinced that they have no will power, use valuable strength unconsciously all the time for the most destructive uses, and then they lack the necessary strength for the one and all important reason: namely, their self-development and purification, the going on the path of perfection! Whoever does that, will sooner or later solve all his problems and conflicts, which have arisen only out of the inner conflicts. In that path lies the key to everything else a person needs and wants to accomplish that is good to be accomplished. Once you have understood what the reason of this life is, you will be able to make the best of this present incarnation. Only when he understands the issues at stake will a person pull himself together, so to speak, and get organized inside. Will power is also a question of inner organization, planning wisely, planning in a way that you do not take upon yourself more than you can follow through, and yet planning enough that is necessary for your development. Will power is also a question of making the right inner decisions and sticking to them; living, at least in this respect to begin with, in some sort of inner order; discriminating and weighing. Once a person understands that everything else in life, the inner as well as the outer problems, is only the result of this spiritual neglect, the right decision will be taken whereby the necessary strength will be released. This may entail the relinquishing of other efforts, also inner effort, which are much more important than outer ones, which will enable you to put your whole concentration and efforts into these channels. So I would say, basically it is a question of understanding. Now, it is very often that a person's lower self does not want you to understand what it is all about. It constantly furnishes excuses, "reasons," pretexts, why one cannot do what is so important. These are rationalizations, and the surface mind accepts them because it is the line of least resistance. So you have, first of all, to go to battle against your own lower self; and this lower self, this foreign substance, this undivine substance is always at war with your divine substance. And only your surface mind with your free directive will can determine which self you want to follow; only by becoming aware of these inner selves can you settle this fight. So it is also a question of knowing what is really going on within you. And once this is understood, the courage can be summoned to face your own lower self and to go to battle against it instead of always giving in to it. " (PL #20)

"There are many more possibilities how the infinite variety of divine attributes can change into its opposite nature and create the corresponding worlds in the world of darkness, just as there are infinite possibilities in the divine worlds. These spheres of fire or of icy coldness -- in the spiritual sense, of course -- are just two examples. There are the spheres of slime and dirt. There are the spheres of intense suffering through overcrowding, or through isolation, and many, many other varieties.
 
"Since one of the most important divine aspects is free will and liberty of choice, this had to turn into the opposite too! The spirit who was the first to succumb to the temptation of abusing this power, who is sometimes referred to as Lucifer or Satan or the Devil, who influenced and affected others to follow him, would naturally be the first one in this new world that came into existence. And he would have complete power over all those who followed him, and, contrary to God, he would use this power. God gives the freedom of choice, and this has deeper significance than most of you realize. With that freedom, the possibility to abuse the power given, to use it contrary to divine laws, must perforce exist. If no choice were available, there would be no freedom and no power. There can be no divine happiness, in fact no divinity at all, if it cannot be attained or maintained by free choice. By the same token, the opposite of God and His laws must of course be the prohibiting of such free choice and the domination of the stronger over the weaker ones." (PL #21)

"Long before the existence of the material world, a part of the created beings who have been endowed, not only with free will, but also with a certain power, have abused this power. I have explained how this came about in a very slow process. This fall of the angels, as it is called, has happened very slowly -- a slow process of degeneration it might be called, whereby everything divine very slowly and gradually turned into its opposite aspect. And, with this, a separation occurred between those who abused their power and those who did not. I have often said -- and this applies to all beings, spirit or man -- that your attitudes, your opinions, your feelings, your thoughts create the spiritual worlds even though you may still live on earth. Thus you each create the world which will be yours. In the same way, the spirits participating in the fall created new worlds according to their changing attitudes -- dark worlds, worlds that are often referred to as hell."(PL #21)

"The disharmonious worlds coming into existence through this division from God, through the so-called fall, are also called hell. These worlds simply reflect the state of mind of the creatures living there; that is, these spheres came into existence as a direct result of the state of mind of these beings. But hell is not just one sphere, but there are many spheres there just as there are many spheres in the divine world, or so-called heaven. When the fall took place, not all who participated came into an equal state of disharmony and evil. The degree was very individual and different. Thus, again as an automatic result, different spheres came into being within the world of darkness, always corresponding to the individual's state of mind. But on the whole, one can say that every divine aspect turned -- here more, there less -- into the opposite." (PL #20)''

"This earth is a product, a picture so to speak, of the longing of the spirits who have fallen off and who have lived in darkness for a long time. And I have also said that this earth is equally a product of the longing of the spirits who remained in the world of God, for the fallen brothers and sisters to come back into divine light. And thus you can find here on earth beauty, love, and harmony; and you can also find the opposite, again with all the shades in between. This is the proof that this earth sphere is a product of God's world and the longing of the fallen spirits to reunite with God. And on this earth sphere, man has the possibility with his free will to develop and to decide what side to follow. In his own nature, there are of course both currents: the good current that once came from God in its own perfection, and the evil current that was accumulated, so to speak, during and after the fall. And between these two currents, the conscious self stands and has the possibility to decide to either take the line of least resistance, which is always man's lower nature, or to follow his higher self, which must be the difficult and narrow path." (PL #22)

"This world you are now living in is the product of this desire to strive higher, where certain conditions exist in which development can proceed and in which a free choice for God can be made which is impossible in the worlds of darkness. In other words, this earth sphere is a product of the longing of the fallen spirits. But it is equally a product of the longing of all those beings who remained with God, whose deepest desire it always was and is to bring their brothers and sisters back to God. Therefore both the divine worlds and the worlds of darkness helped in the creation of this earth sphere; and thus the influence of both worlds exists and will manifest according to the individual attitude of a being, which again has on this plane the power of free choice. Conditions and circumstances on this earth sphere are different, of course, due to this new form of matter; but, then, circumstances vary in all spheres." (PL #21)

"Self-knowledge is the only thing that really counts, the only thing, my friends! Nothing else is any good, nothing else will ever bring your development about, enable you to have real faith and real love for God above everything and for your fellow creatures as for yourself. You have to begin with yourself before you can attain all this, attain the freedom and harmony you all long for in your innermost beings. No matter what path you choose, if this complete self-knowledge is not contained in it or if it is not the major requirement in it, you will accomplish nothing! No matter how much you learn and read and do this or do that, all this counts for nothing unless you use the knowledge you do acquire to follow this path of self-knowledge.
 
"If you want to gain self-knowledge, you have to reconcile yourself first to the idea 'I have to do that which is most difficult for me!' For there lies the key. If it is most difficult for you to show yourself with a weakness, then it is just that which your soul needs to struggle free of its chains. Or if it is difficult for you to give up your vanity in any other way, or your selfishness, then it is just this in which you should jump in -- freely because you chose it." (PL #21)

"Spirit is the ultimate being, the indestructible being that lives eternally.. The soul is one of the subtle bodies that will eventually disintegrate. Is that clear, do you understand that? I think what you want to know is how the two manifest with man so that he may know which is which. Is that what you mean? To have the spirit consciously manifest is, of course, not easy. This can only happen when spiritual development has reached a certain point, when a breakthrough has been accomplished in man's higher self. Then, and only then, you will feel that something thinks within you, directs you, sends you messages, gives you deep and unquestionable knowledge. And all this does not come from your brain region where your normal thinking takes place, but it comes from the region of your solar plexus. The manifestation of your soul, however, you can determine by your emotional life, by your feelings, and by your subconscious. Even for this, a great deal of self-knowledge is necessary because most people are unaware of the majority of their real feelings and emotional reactions and are thus slave to them. They are mastered by them instead of controlling and mastering them. In order to achieve the latter, self-observation, objectivity, and self-criticism are essential.. The result must be, first, awareness of the soul, then, awareness of the spirit." (PL #21)