6 QUESTION: A scientist friend told me that humankind has already once before reached a very high state of development, perhaps higher than what we have today. I mean this in the material and not the spiritual sense. He says that atomic energy was definitely known at that time, hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the world was destroyed in a catastrophe. Is this true?
ANSWER: Yes, it is true. You are right in saying that humankind’s level of spiritual development did not correspond to the technical progress and the destruction of the world, as you said, was precisely due to this factor. When there is too much discrepancy between the material and the spiritual development, then certain events will take place in order to avoid some greater danger.
These events are a natural consequence of the situation and God allows them to take place; otherwise the spiritual danger would be much greater than any earthly catastrophe can ever be. Compared to the loss of spiritual life, the loss of earthly life means nothing. Cause and effect must work out according to law, and God’s acts in human history never endanger the spiritual life of man.
Sometimes it is impossible to avoid spiritual destruction except by material catastrophe. History often demonstrates this. Only when spiritual development – that is, re-connection with God – is commensurate with material progress, will history move in a living and positive cycle instead of a negative one, which always extinguishes itself.
8 QUESTION: I struggle with this problem again and again. If God has a Plan of Salvation for us, and if we have fallen away from God because we entered the wrong path, not the divine, why did God make his Plan of Salvation so complicated and so terribly difficult for us? I know that it is necessary for our development, but it still seems too hard.
ANSWER: It only seems so to you. The difficulties that come up are there because the individual beings could not have brought it about differently. My dear friend, before the Earth plane was created in its present form, other ways were tried, but they were not successful. And therefore God created the present conditions. Unfortunately, the development can happen only through the path of suffering. Unfortunately, indeed. There was an attempt to arrange it differently.
QA137 QUESTION: I wanted to ask what the significance was of the recent blackout.
ANSWER: You know very well, my friends, that anything man experiences, individually or collectively, can be significant. It depends entirely on the attitude he takes.
I would put it this way: anything is significant. But whether it is significant in a constructive or destructive way depends on the attitude. So such an event from our vantage point is not necessarily the big event. It can be just as – or a lot more – significant than something in an individual’s life. I cannot give you causes.
I can only speak about the possible good that is created by such an incident: collaboration, helpfulness, a spirit of cooperation. Or it can create fear and dissension. I believe it’s very obvious to everyone that primarily positive results have come, or positive expressions have predominated, in this instance. So in that sense, it is positively significant.
QA166 QUESTION: In the last decade [1960s] and even before that, we are observing a condition which leads to a breaking down of the values of our life in different areas, such as science. The scientific objectivism has dissociated feelings from any observations which are purely objective, and then they observe nature in a way which distorts the reality. Therefore, we produce an atomic bomb and we are at the cusp of destruction. In the arts, we see a picture of dissociating feelings from the intellectual concept, then producing an abstract work of art which is given to the public to understand and create feeling by looking at it. The public doesn’t know what it is, and it has to be explained by mental concepts.
In the federal government, we see a situation in which what is good for an individual is not good for national government or for local government – half truths, a falseness. One nation against the other doesn’t apply the same rules that one individual expects from the other individual. The educational system in the United States at the present time is in danger of dissolving and being destroyed. What is the meaning of this? Where are we going? What does it mean?
ANSWER: Yes. Now, as you all know – and this is a spiritual fact – that a new spiritual era is about to come. In all such times of transition, upheaval is inevitable. In every individual it can be recognized that growth and transition brings more inner tension and strife than at the time when the entity was stagnant in its negativity and in its destructive deadness, and not being connected with life. Therefore, each growth process is temporarily an upheaval. This is generally a truth that you all know.
Specifically, at this time, from a cosmic point of view, I would say this. Many, many, many souls are being born into this sphere of consciousness at this time. Many of them are very evolved souls, many more than in former times.
In former times, the evolved souls were very few and far between. Now, many more are coming who have attained a much higher average of spiritual development. At the same time, many more others are coming who are very low in spiritual development. And the two clash. This is the picture from the cosmic point of view.
Now, this is absolutely necessary – it’s inevitable – because this development could not come if not more undeveloped souls would be exposed to more developed souls, and if the conflict does not come into being. In a way, it is exactly the same for mankind, which as a whole is only the sum total of all the individuals.
The same inner psychic laws apply that you heard me say several times before. The development in an individual is going by exactly the same processes. For example, a person who is very successfully advancing on this Path – and many of my friends actually find themselves in such a situation – expects, in fact, a very gradual diminution of their problems and pain, and improvement of positive conditions.
While this may be true to some extent and in certain areas, it certainly is not true where the deep-rooted problem is concerned. There the same conflict exists. The negative aspects are coming fully to the fore, coming out into the open – and they must in order to be eliminated – and at the same time the positive forces – the divine forces, the creative forces in the soul – are being fully mobilized, and the two clash.
They temporarily create dissension, especially as long as this phenomenon is not recognized by the consciousness. Then the person finds himself in the throes of forces he does not quite understand and in fact may even ask himself, “Why is this? Why do I feel this feeling of not being at ease with myself or unfulfillment right now, when I already know I’ve grown and improved.”
That may even lead him to be discouraged with himself, doubt his progress and doubt any kind of meaning to such progress unless he understands this – that two forces, both fully mobilized, must clash, must be understood in their significance and in what the ramifications are, before the unification can come about.
This is in the individual’s development, as any one of you can notice it – that you feel yourself actually at times living on two planes, as it were, simultaneously. There’s one area where you feel completely new, renewed and free. Yet, at the same time, like two superimposed negatives of pictures, the old neurotic way of reaction is still there. But it has lost some of its force once you recognize that.
It is the same with mankind as a whole. This is what is happening now. There’s a tremendous development going on. Tremendous new forces are coming into this earth, forces that have never existed before – positive ones. And they are obstructed by – and feared by even – the negative forces that become doubly strong.
The more human beings recognize the conflict in these terms, the more this knowing-the-truth will spread and will bring something new in the atmosphere. Is this clear?
QUESTION: Yes. What is that new?
ANSWER: That new is that atmosphere that emanates from a person who knows the truth. When you see a patient and you know the truth, you emanate something differently than when you do not know the truth. Knowing the truth has a special feeling. It has a special atmosphere. It has a special climate that is very healing.
QUESTION: Maybe I asked for something that is not in the nature of your answers, but is this clash that’s going on now between the developed souls of human beings and the ones who are not, is it leading to a new epoch? Can you comment upon this?
ANSWER: That’s what I said, yes. That is exactly it. It is a breakthrough into a new era, where more spiritual values will be recognized and lived by and not denied. And the mechanistic, scientific, coldly objective, intellectual approach to life you have just mentioned is about to die out.
But unfortunately, like all new states, it cannot be attained unless such upheavals are comprehended and successfully lived through.
QUESTION: How long will this process take? Decades? A hundred years?
ANSWER: Well, it is very hard to pinpoint this, because actually the process to a minor degree has already been going on for decades. You know, you cannot ever say in any state of growth, “This is it,” because it is a continuum.
But then there come times and periods where the entity finds himself more on a plateau, and where he perhaps reaps the fruit of the victory of successfully overcoming the upheavals, until the next mountain must be climbed. That goes on until total self-realization is attained.
QUESTION: Is this upheaval related to great cosmic events in terms of the planets or the universe?
ANSWER: Yes, of course. Everything that happens here happens everywhere. As long as any darkness in the soul blurs the connectedness with the divine nucleus which transcends all and is everywhere, everything that concerns one concerns all.
The way you put the question is precisely a reflection of the human state of consciousness, which, in the three-dimensional state, makes a distinction between you and me and God and world and this and that and here and there and up and down. All these are illusions.
What is you in you is everywhere else and vice versa. It is very hard to put into words, but it is impossible to say that anything that happens anywhere is only taking place there. That is why I always say to all my friends, each tiny step of truth that you gain – of unfoldment, of liberation – where you come into your own, where you connect with your true nature, which is God – each tiny step is extremely significant for everything that ever was and ever is.
QA166 QUESTION: Regarding the question about external war going on among people, I know there are also wars among the unseen forces – those who want to help us, those who want to impede us. This past weekend I attended a parapsychology convention, and it was noted that the earth is kind of the kindergarten of the universe, and that there are other galaxies and universes that are peopled with much more intelligent people than we, who are trying to help us now in this catastrophic time. I wondered if you could comment on that.
ANSWER: Yes, that is quite true. But you know, it must always be understood that help by others or destruction by others is only possible to the degree man makes it possible. It is, therefore, in my opinion, a more effective approach to point out man’s own inner predilection to either the helpful forces or the negative destructive forces that come and are mobilized, first of all, within himself.
It is exactly the same with the unseen beings who can help or destroy, as it is with human beings who attract one another. You attract the kind of human beings in your circumference that are compatible with your inner being. Criminals will most certainly also associate with other criminals.
It is then not the other criminals who have influenced him in his criminality – although that on a very superficial level may be true – but the very fact that he attracts these criminals is a reflection of his own criminal forces within him that he has not come to terms with.
By the same token, the person who is very much evolved cannot possibly be intimately connected with others who are not. If he is, he will live in a very great disharmony that will harm his spiritual development. So then he blocks where he belongs.
It is then not because he is surrounded by people of a similar helpfully constructive and wise kind – it is not those other people that are responsible for the influence he’s exposed to – but his own inner state that he avails himself of by his own attitude.
It is exactly the same with the unseen entities that are attracted and can be effective only to the precise degree the person makes possible. Therefore my concern is always with your own inner forces. Which forces do you mobilize?
Do you mobilize the constructive forces by the courage and honesty it takes to go deep into yourself and see yourself in truth, or do you mobilize the destructive forces within yourself and therefore also become compatible to other influences by choosing the line of least resistance and not looking at yourself in truth? This is the all-important question. But it is true, the statement you made, as far as it goes.
QUESTION: Is it true that we are the kindergarten of the planets, and that they’re all highly evolved?
ANSWER: Yes and no. There are many, many, many that are more, but there are also a few, perhaps less, that are less developed. I would say that is true too.
QUESTION: Is this to be taken literally?
ANSWER: Why yes.
QUESTION: Yes. Really?
ANSWER: Yes. Because as you live here, so live many others elsewhere in different states of consciousness, and therefore the matter has different states of density. If the state of consciousness is very much higher – or a little higher even, or lower – it cannot be perceived by the senses that are compatible or that are a product of this state of matter and consciousness.
Matter is always determined by the state of consciousness – the degree of density of matter. The spiritual matter in its very fast and fine vibration condenses as consciousness becomes less evolved, and that is the scale, the spectrum. Is that clear?
QUESTION: Well. [Much laughter]
ANSWER: Well, what is it you do not understand?
QUESTION: I think it started after I finished the question.
ANSWER: Can you verbalize your question or your confusion?
QUESTION: Yes. I see any kind of conception of this world, which I would take to be a kind of limiting thing – I feel it wouldn’t be helpful. You know there are people who consider this existence, as somebody said, to be a rest home for the morally imperfect on their way somewhere else. So I’ve been wondering if these things were actually literally meant or were meant in a symbolic way.
ANSWER: Well, no, actually it is not symbolic, but at the same time I do agree with you when you say that too much dwelling on these questions of the other beings is not helpful. Because it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to convey it correctly to the human perception. Language is, of course, a reflection of the state of perception of the present human being, and therefore, when it is put into words, it is immediately falsified.
It sounds then very primitive and very childish, and it is falsified by the very way it can come out when it is put into words. But there is no other way of putting it into words. Therefore, I do agree and you will notice that it is not too important or helpful to go into these things, because it can be at best an intellectual relief for people, which is never sufficient.
But it may, at some times, be an incentive to search within. Then the inner experience comes and then the experience of the forces within oneself make all this true, and yet it seems then different. Then it is a completely different experience. And that is what I emphasize.
So to a degree you are quite right that this dwelling on it is not helpful. But sometimes, for some people, it may at the moment give a certain incentive to see life a little bit differently.