THE INTIMATE HOME

A THOUSANDFOLD ARE THE entanglements in which men squirm with apparent ease.

Only those who feel God’s law of spiritual movement within themselves, and who long for the awakening, experience these fetters in an extremely painful manner, because they only hurt when the one caught in the web tries to free himself from it.

And yet this struggle to free himself is the only thing that can save man from sinking into a spiritual death-sleep!

Today you will hardly grasp aright the full incisive truth of these my words, because mankind laced themselves in too tightly in these matters, leaving themselves hardly any possibility for a free outlook from this state, or a full understanding of it.

For this reason the bonds are now cut by the Justice of God, smashed to pieces, although this is bound to be very painful for men, excruciatingly so when there is no alternative.

Only after the bonds and lacings have been cut and fallen away will you then be able to grasp my words aright, looking back horrified at your past wrong thinking!

Nevertheless, from among the many examples I want to pick out a few small ones which may perhaps after all give you some idea!

Let us cast a glance into human life as it is today!

It is right to see children through their childhood faithfully, guarding and watching them, and to give adolescent youth the tools for their path through life on earth by means of adequate education!

But then each individual must be left with the possibility – indeed, it must be given to him – to work his own way up from the smallest beginning.

Not everything must be made easy for him from the very outset.

To make it comfortable or easy for the other person harbors the greatest danger – that of fostering spiritual indolence!

And this has always been the case in the past by the well-meant family bond!

It is already poison for a human spirit when as a child he is brought up in the belief that he has a legal right to the earthly possessions acquired by his parents.

I am now talking of the harm in a purely spiritual aspect, which is the essential thing in all a man’s activities.

He must also remain aware of this in the future if he and his surrounding circumstances are really to become healthy.

However, a change in these matters would immediately transform much in an earthly respect as well, and do away with many an evil!

For example, supposing a child was also legally entitled only to enjoy the protection and care of its parents, together with a corresponding education, up to a certain age, after which it remains purely the free will of the parents how they wish to dispose of their personal property!

How different would so many children become by this mere fact alone!

How much more personal effort would then have to arise, how much more seriousness towards life on earth, how much increased diligence!

And not as the last thing also more love towards the parents, which would remain far from so one-sided as is often exhibited today!

Sacrifices on the part of loving parents would even be given much greater value, because they would then really issue only from a freely bestowed love, whereas nowadays such sacrifices are often not at all valued by children, but only expected and demanded as a matter of course, without giving rise to any real joy.

A change in these matters would contribute right away to the bringing up of human beings of greater worth and greater self-consciousness, having a stronger spirit and increased energy.

Crimes would often be avoided, too, if property rights in the personal possessions of others did not exist!

Children will be more concerned with acquiring their parents’ love instead of standing on their childhood status and its rights, which in any case has an entirely different meaning from what is assumed today.

For children must be thankful to their parents for having given them the opportunity to incarnate on earth, even if the redemption and advancement thereby is mutual, as is the case with everything connected with the working out of the Laws of God.

In reality these children are all alien spirits to their parents, each with its own individual personality, which could only be attracted for incarnation through being of homogeneous species or through some former connection.

The parents on earth offer protection and help for the time which the spirit needs in order to direct its new physical body in a worthy and fully responsible manner.

Thereafter, however, man on earth must remain completely free and dependent on himself, otherwise he can never become as strong as is useful for him in the great swinging of the Laws of God.

He must do battle and have opposition so that in gaining the victory he can ascend spiritually and come towards the Heights.

A change in the idea held up till now about children being entitled to their parents’ possessions, however, would have far greater effects than those already mentioned, provided that the government ministers concerned with the development would adjust themselves accordingly in their efforts for the people, and pioneer the way to help parents and children alike.

Thus the acquisitive sense of each individual must develop on a different basis.

Today many people seek to increase their property more and more, merely to make life easy for their children later on, i.e., in order to bequeath it to their children.

Their every thought and every wish is exclusively directed to this aim, which becomes the basis for an egoistic accumulation of earthly possessions.

Although this will not cease entirely because one or other person will still base his whole life’s activity on this idea, yet numerous people would prescribe a higher and more general goal to their earthly activity for the benefit of many!

Thus the immoral “calculated” marriages would cease to exist, along with the fraudulent and deplorable practice of dowry hunting!

Much evil would therewith be automatically eliminated, giving way to healthier conditions in which honesty of the intuitive perception could prevail and marriages become genuine.

From the very beginning there would be a much more serious approach to any marriage.

Opportunities should be offered to adolescent youth which would compel them to unfold their spiritual powers in order to acquire the necessities of life, not only to make them able to do it!

This alone would be the right thing, for then, and only then, will they advance spiritually, because they will have to bestir themselves spiritually.

But instead of this parents or other members of the family make just this path, which is necessary for the children’s spiritual health, too easy for so many of them – it is made as completely comfortable as possible for those concerned.

That is then called the family bond and love, or also family duty!

I do not wish to outline the harm arising from this, even through the best volition.

For every good person needs an impetus here and there, and a force from outside, in order to be strengthened.

Only seldom would he place himself voluntarily in a position where he is forced to exert himself, to employ all his spiritual powers, in order to master the situation and to solve it well.

In most cases, provided he can choose, he would select the most comfortable way in order to take it easy, but this does not bring him any spiritual benefit!

However, his self-respect and self-confidence is increased when with exertion and diligence he struggles upwards himself on earth and when all this is a result of his work.

He then values his possessions much more in the right sense, he values the work and even every small joy; he also values each kindness done to him by others correspondingly, and he can enjoy everything with much greater vitality than a person to whom luck comes overnight without trouble, and who only needs to fill in his time by amusing himself.

One must seek to assist a person to attain to the possibility of striving aright, if one really wishes to help.

Those fruits which someone has acquired through his own efforts must never be thrown into anybody’s lap without that person having to fulfil certain duties.

Of course parents can still give everything to their children if they wish to do so, or out of false love they may sacrifice the meaning and time of their entire life on earth to them – they can make themselves slaves of their children, for they retain free will in these matters!

But since no earthly law will force them to do anything in this, in the reciprocal effect of the Will of God they bear the full responsibility entirely alone for their own neglect in Creation, and in part also for the spiritual harm that consequently befalls their children.

Men are not here on earth for their children in the first place, but for themselves, so that they can become spiritually mature and strong.

But due to a false idea of love this was no longer observed.

Only animals still live in the law in this matter!

Just take a close look at family customs!

Two persons want to contract a marriage, they want to set up a household of their own in order to journey through life on earth together, and for this purpose they become engaged.

The engagement is therefore the first step towards marriage.

It is the mutual promise and obligation, so that on the strength of the promise the serious preparation for setting up the household can begin.

An engagement is nothing more than the earthly basis for the establishment of the new home, and the first step towards procuring everything necessary for this on earth.

With this, however, wrong customs immediately set in again!

In reality this engagement concerns those two persons alone who wish to set up a household together.

The fact that the families or the parents take part in procuring all that is necessary for this on earth is a matter entirely for itself, which should remain a purely external affair in order to be correct.

If they wish they may give something or help in some other way.

All this remains an outward matter, and it does not connect them, does not tie any threads of fate.

But the engagement should also be absolutely the last and outermost boundary for any family ties.

Just as a ripe fruit falls from the tree, if tree and fruit wish to fulfil the purpose of their existence without harming one another, so after his maturity must a person separate from his family, from his parents, for like himself they also still have tasks of their own!

However, families look at it in a different light, even at the last time limit for it, which comes when two persons find each other and become engaged.

In these matters they very often arrogate to themselves rights which they do not at all possess.

Only through the Power of God is each child they wished for given to them, otherwise they would have been unable to receive it.

It is purely the fulfilling of a desire which shows itself through the intimate relationship between two persons!

They have no right to the child, which is only lent to them but which never belongs to them!

It is also indeed taken away without their being able to retain it, or without their being first asked about it!

From this they can quite clearly see that they are not given any rights over it from the Light, from the Origin of all Life!

The fact that they also take over duties up to the time of maturity is only natural and a balance for the fulfilment of their wish, for they would not have received a child if they had not brought about the opportunity for this, which in the Primordial Laws of this Creation is equivalent to a petition.

And as compensation for the duties they have joys, provided they fulfil these duties aright!

On reaching the period of maturity, however, they must leave each person to journey along his paths, which are not theirs!

In any case through engagement and marriage the two persons step out of their families in order to form a union together for their own household.

Instead of this, however, the two families imagine they were likewise connected through this engagement and marriage and belong to it, although when considered objectively this is not at all the case, and the mere thought of it seems very strange!

An engagement of two people does not extend the family circles by bringing a daughter to one and a son to the other, but the two individual human beings unite together entirely alone, having no intention whatever of dragging their former families along!

If men had but a faint idea of the harm these peculiar opinions and customs are bound to do, they would perhaps leave it alone of their own accord, but they do not realize how much damage is caused thereby.

The wrong customs do not occur without creating ties in the World of Fine Gross Matter.

Threads thereby wind themselves around the couple preparing to set up a home of their own, and these threads gradually impede, entangle and become ever more knotted, often leading to unpleasant things, the origin of which men cannot explain, although they themselves laid the foundation for this with their ludicrous and annoying customs, in which real deep earnestness is always lacking.

It may be said without exaggeration that it is always lacking, for he who really grasps the seriousness of the union between two people, the seriousness that is attached to engagement and marriage, will greatly reject the customary family habits and prefer to hold quiet hours of self-communion which will lead with far greater confidence to a happy life together than all outward bad customs – for they cannot be called good customs! —

After the engagement of the couple, if circumstances permit a home is set up in the best way possible, but from the very start it leaves little to be desired.

This is therefore bound to eliminate a joyful ascent from the very outset, or at least over a long period, because everything was thought of and nothing more is lacking.

All possibility is taken from the couple to participate in adorning their home through personal acquisition by diligence and industry, to take pleasure in the fact that they jointly strive towards the gradual completion of their own home as an earthly goal, so that with pride and love they can then value each individual, self-earned piece, connected as it is with memories of many a dear word, of many a necessary struggle which they have fought through joyfully and courageously side by side, and also of many a peaceful happiness!

This joy is already taken from many right in the beginning, and it is seen to that things are made as comfortable as possible.

However, the two persons will always be strangers therein as long as among the other things they do not have objects which they were able to acquire for themselves.

I do not need to say much more to you about this, for you yourselves will gradually recognize what is false in these matters and, above all, what is spiritually as well as terrestrially harmful, no matter whether you wish to do so or not.

For here, too, everything must at last become new and right, just as lies clearly enough in the Laws of God.

Give people and young couples the possibility for personal upward striving; only that will give them lasting pleasure because it increases their self-respect and also their self-confidence, thus awakening the intuitive perception of personal responsibility; and with this you will do the right thing!

You will give more in this way than if you want to take all the cares of life from them or at least if you seek to relieve them as much as possible, whereby you can only weaken them, and you retard them from the necessary strengthening.

This makes you their enemies and not the true friends that you want to be.

By spoiling them and making things easy for them you deprive them of more than you perhaps think after my words today.

Many a person will also be painfully hit thereby, but I am pulling him back from a mass grave by freeing him from the wrong and corrupting family bond, which paralyses the spirit and which was gradually formed on entirely wrong assumptions.

In this also everything must finally become new, for after the purification that kind of disturbance-Centre will no longer be possible in this Creation.

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