Spiritual Wisdom:

QUESTION: "Does God have the power of foreknowledge, and if so, to what extent does He use this power?"
 
ANSWER: "God has certainly foreknowledge but not to the extent where the free will of the individual is concerned -- because He gave free will. If He knew beforehand what you may decide tomorrow, there would be no free will. Complete foreknowledge and free will of the individual cancel each other out. Certainly, God has foreknowledge to a very great degree, knowing His creation, His laws, their workings, the infinite possibilities of the free decisions of His children, and also knowing better than anyone the character and personality of all His children. His infinite wisdom coupled with all this knowledge enable Him to foresee to quite an extent and thus make His plans. Even a created being, even a human being, knowing someone else very well can assume, according to the given circumstances and his characteristics, he may act in a certain way in a certain situation. But it cannot be foretold with accuracy. God knows certainly that all His creatures must come back to Him at one time because of the perfection of His laws, but He does not know whether a person may, for instance, change his attitude today or tomorrow. By the same token, as I have explained in this lecture, God could not have known with absolute certainty whether some of His children would misuse the power He has given them or how many would do so. The possibility was there, yes, but He did not know with certainty that this abuse would occur. God will use His knowledge and power only insofar as it does not break His own laws. This is very important to realize, and it is understood by too few human beings. Often man says, 'Why does not God do such and such? All this misery would not be necessary,' and so on. Then God would go against His own laws, and since his laws are perfection, that would not be a perfect action. Whether or not a blind human being can comprehend that God's ways are the best does not matter. At some time, this blindness will disappear, and then the recognition will come that God and His laws are perfect and one's own perfection can only be reached by going through the self-inflicted misery. Is that clear?" (PL #20)

"Man often advances the idea that God should not have endowed His creatures with free will, for then the fall could never have happened. Or, at least, God should have interfered when it all started. But this is so shortsighted, so blind. Happiness can only exist for any created being to be in union with God. And to be in union with God, you must be of the same substance, endowed with the same aspects and qualities. Otherwise a union is impossible --even chemically this is so! Since God is freedom and freedom is one of the most important divine aspects, God's creatures must have this same freedom, otherwise they would be unlike God and thus incapable of being in union with Him. And this freedom, or free will and free choice, entails perforce the possibility to direct that free will contrary to divine law. In the right free choice and the abstaining from abuse of power lies divinity, lies love and wisdom and a number of further divine attributes. It is of utmost importance for all of you to grasp this idea, for then you will be able to answer many questions that you may not have understood so far." (PL #20)

"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)

"It is according to universal law that man himself has to make the first step in order to receive help from the world of God." (PL #21)

"Anyone who is going on the spiritual path I am always advocating -- eventually the time must come for him when he will find his own spirit, or his real identity, which I often also call the higher self or the divine spark. As long as man is still groping in darkness and takes as the whole personality just the outside being and perhaps some of his subconscious, which for the most part belongs to the lower self, then he is not sufficiently developed. When development proceeds as it should, the time must come when you first discover, so to speak, like a different person, the subconscious. This is the first step. And this of course is not always pleasant. Because the subconscious has a life of its own, it even thinks to a degree in its own limited and blind way -- and this quite differently from the conscious mind. This often comes at first as a shock unless one is prepared to expect just this, prepared also by strengthening and by gathering of spiritual truth and knowledge, for instance the knowledge that this is still not the ultimate self. And only after this lower self, the subconscious, is met and faced thoroughly, understood, and rearranged where there is need for it -- and this is a long process -- then you will very slowly, very seldom at first, but later more and more, penetrate into your own higher self, your true and permanent identity. And if development progresses further, this higher self, your own holy spirit, will be more and more on the surface and will manifest in conjunction with your conscious being, with your brain or intellect in which your outer will power reigns. Whether the outer and active personality is in contact with the higher self or not is only a question of development and of personal striving. The difference is this: if you have identified yourself with your higher self, then you hold the reigns; you are indeed master over yourself, over life as a whole. But if you are, subconsciously and unbeknown to your intellect, driven by your emotions, by your subconscious, by your lower self; if you act without understanding why you act in this way or why you think that way and so on; then you are not the driver of your life, but you are being driven. You are not the master, but a slave. So, of course it is possible to have the true identity of the spirit manifest. I will say it is not only possible, but this is the goal of the spiritual path." (PL #22)

"The greatest hatred, the most spiteful vindictiveness, the worst impulses of cruelty, if honestly and squarely admitted, if neither acted out irresponsibly nor repressed and denied, if fully accepted for what they are, will never become harmful. It will diminish in intensity to the degree it is thus accepted, seen, faced, admitted, and must sooner or later convert into flowing, life-giving energy. Hate will turn into love, cruelty into healthy aggression and self-assertion, stagnation into joy and pleasure. It is inevitably so... This realization must be groped for again and again until it becomes second nature, until it is no longer forgotten. When you blindly and self-righteously act out destructiveness, you express evil into your world. By denying its existence, you stagnate vital creative energy, which putrefies in you. By squarely recognizing it, you neither act out nor deny. Thus creative energy flow is released." (PL #184)

"The essential key to a total integration of the evil, to its transformation, is the understanding of its original nature and of the ingrained possibility for it to manifest again in its original form. This must be the aim." (PL 184)

"This happens with each one of you, with every human being: Wherever there are faults, weaknesses, blindness, according spheres come into existence. Wherever you are pure and purified, beautiful spheres are being created by you. And you will not only own the best, but also the worst you have built... The so-called hells are constituted not only of one sphere of only dire darkness and misery, but, as there are many gradations in the divine spheres, the same holds true for the luciferic ones." (PL #22)

"You will need will power and self-discipline in order to battle all your faults, which can never happen by pushing them into the subconscious, by merely covering them up so that they do not show on the surface. For do not believe that something you are unaware of does not exist. The process of eliminating your faults, which is the next step after self-knowledge is a very different one. Briefly speaking, the process is to watch yourself first as you really are, without vanity, without wanting to be better or more than you are at this point. Simply take stock of yourself and get, for the time being, accustomed to see yourself where you really are and not where you want to be. Accept this temporary reality for two reasons: (1) you have to be unemotional and undisturbed about what you are before you can change yourself; and this needs the new habit of seeing yourself clearly for a while without any false motives and excuses and blindness; (2) this will also teach you the necessary humiliation that is a major requirement of spiritual development and true detachment. This acceptance does not mean that you should remain that way. The goal must be to ultimately change these trends, but this cannot be done before you have learned this stage entirely. Thus observe yourself daily when and how your faults manifest, not only outside, but in your feelings. Observe your reactions. By this reaction, you will learn to judge how far you have come in accepting yourself without embellishment. When this is mastered, then the next stage will begin by meditating on what the opposite of this particular fault really is, how you might react and feel if you had already acquired this. If you do this with the help of God, asking for inspiration, for help and strength, you will, after doing this faithfully for some time, begin to feel differently, to have new inner reactions that will leave you so free, so wonderful! You may also meditate how each of your particular faults is a direct hindrance of the unfoldment of love. For each fault is just that. It blurs the love force in the soul. If you proceed in this way, God will inspire you and guide you, you can be quite sure of that. But, as I said, it is a difficult path. But blessed are those who take it; who have the courage and the wisdom to do so." (PL #21)

 "Make a list of your faults. And if you can think of only two or three, then you have proof that you do not know yourself. Then you can avail yourself of the opportunity of self-purification and self-knowledge by doing what seems at first so difficult. Ask the people around you to tell you what your faults are. This will give you knowledge about yourself, and this will teach you the humility you need. For as long as it is difficult for you, it is a telling sign that you need just that very badly. If it is easy for you, if you do not feel resentment, resistance, or any kind of heaviness within, then it is not important anymore. But it does not matter what you try to tell others, it matters how you feel when someone tells you your shortcomings. If you observe clinically what you feel when that happens, if you do not want to fool yourself about it, you will know where you stand spiritually, because this is the only way you can really be detached, my friends. When your own shortcomings in the eyes of others do not matter anymore, when your humiliation does not matter anymore, then you are detached! -- not when you avoid the things that bother you." (PL #21)