We are all familiar with the account of how Jesus, after having spent the evening before Easter with his disciples, left Jerusalem and went down to Gethsemane, a little grove on the Mount of Olives. In the account we learn that Jesus had a premonition of the suffering that he was about to undergo and his crucifixion and death. He was therefore anxious and disturbed. We also learn from the account how little the disciples were affected by the agonies he was going through; they quite simply fell asleep, without understanding the gravity of the situation. One of his disciples had even sided with Jesus' enemies, showing them how Jesus could be captured. And we watch as a mighty drama unfolds in all its gory details. This drama that began here in Gethsemane is not merely a historical event that took place in Palestine, in the Garden of Gethsemane. It is a common occurrence that all human beings will experience to some extent thousands of times over. We have been given the opportunity of seeing how a perfected human being behaves in such a Gethsemane event. And even though there are people who totally deny the existence of Jesus, the fact that they do so actually has absolutely no effect on advanced, thinking human beings, because the very account itself is a symbol that offers an insight into a real situation that is common to all mankind and that shows how it can be overcome. There is therefore no denying that Gethsemane is a situation common to all mankind. Which human beings have never found themselves in a situation in which they have been deeply distressed or have experienced extreme resistance, a situation in which they have been unable to be helped by friends or acquaintances? And which ordinary human beings can guarantee that they will not find themselves in some kind of unpleasant situation in the future? The account of Gethsemane therefore most definitely has a message for all unfinished human beings and not least for those who deny the existence of Jesus and thereby his life and way of being as a world saviour.

The Gethsemane event tells us about a human being who was in a situation in which his enemies were out to take his life. There is in fact absolutely no situation that can be worse than this. But this is also the peak or highest point of the experience of Gethsemane. Gethsemane is experienced every day in a great many less life-threatening situations, in which the enemies are not actually out to take your life but can nevertheless to some extent destroy your general health or zest for life. Gethsemane is an important link in the living being's evolutionary process from animal to human being. Gethsemane is therefore really a term that describes a whole range of difficult and unpleasant situations that human beings can find themselves in. It ranges from something as insignificant as a tiny pinprick in the form of a nasty look or an unfriendly comment from someone that you know to downright life-threatening and hostile persecution by your enemies who will flinch at nothing in their determination to destroy everything for you, as was the case with Christ. But Gethsemane is not necessarily always a persecution by other beings. It can also be triggered off by an illness. A person may be about to lose, or has already lost, their sight, or they may have been struck by polio or learnt that they are suffering from cancer or diabetes or the initial stages of some other physical or mental defect that renders them unable to look after themselves, and consequently they have to undergo a crucifixion. It can also be economic ruin or the prospect of losing one's livelihood and property so that one ends up poverty-stricken and destitute. Gethsemane is therefore a universal principle applying to the whole of terrestrial mankind. There is no unfinished human being that can claim with certainty to be exempt from a Gethsemane. It can come like a thief in the night. But common to all these Gethsemane situations there is a law governing how they should be taken. We can break the law also in our attitude to these situations. If we break this law and consequently have the wrong attitude towards these situations, the situations increase in number and our fate becomes darker and darker. But if we adopt the correct attitude towards these difficult situations, we conquer and end up as master of them, which means that we become master of life itself. But we cannot become master of life as long as life is master of us. We would then be the slave of life. But that is not what life intends us to experience. Our destiny is nothing more or less than this: to reach the point of being able, like Christ, to say "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live".

But in order to arrive at this final result or conclusion we have to fulfil the Gethsemane law. And we can learn about this law by reading the account in the Bible. In it we learn about a human being that in all respects fulfils the Gethsemane law. In this human being we come across an absolutely firm attitude towards wanting to do God's will, an attitude that God's will should first and foremost take place, no matter what it may cost in the first instance, no matter whether it is one's physical life that is at stake, as was the case with Christ. Gethsemane is a situation in which a person is placed in great need, sometimes let down and betrayed by his best friends, and in which all sources of help have apparently dried up. If in such a situation one becomes bitter and angry on the grounds that a certain person is the cause of one's misfortune and to a greater or lesser extent one wishes death and destruction on this person, one is breaking the Gethsemane law and causing the Gethsemane situation to proliferate and multiply and become even worse, quite irrespective of the form the situation takes on the physical plane. All Gethsemane situations are without exception effects of decisions that we have in certain situations released in our behaviour. It is the purpose of life that we get to know these effects. Otherwise we would not be able to evolve. If we are freed from the effects of causes that we with our thoughts and behaviour have set off, we would gain neither knowledge nor reason. The evolution that we have undergone, and that to date has brought us from the plant to the animal kingdom and that is now transforming animals into human beings, would be impossible. And if our experience of the effects of our present way of thinking and being came to a halt, we would stay put at the stage that we are at today. Terrestrial human beings would have to remain animal human beings. They would never ever gain cosmic consciousness and consequently never experience their own immortality or the secret or solution to the mystery of life, they would never become one with God, or become the resurrection and the life.