The Eternal World Picture, vol. 2
Explanation 2 of symbol no. 22
22.12  Through the experience of materialism and atheism or the initiation into darkness, the faculty of humaneness or neighbourly love arises, whose way of being in turn gives rise to the faculty of intuition, which is the sense through which one experiences cosmically. Beings who are undergoing this development of humaneness are symbolised by the half orange and half yellow ray on the right of the symbol. Among these beings belong all those who have grown away from the religions based on belief, while having a well-developed faculty of humaneness that shows that they have already gone through the most important aspects of the culmination of darkness. They are opponents of war. Their faculty for being unable to have the heart to harm living beings is quite outstanding. They have long since left the area of meat-eating and the slaughter of animals. They are thus, among other things, natural vegetarians – not only for the sake of their own health but on the contrary to the highest degree because they cannot find it in their hearts to have the animals killed. For this reason they avoid leather clothing too. They dress as a rule in artificial fabrics instead of animal ones. They prefer to avoid all conflict and gladly forgive their enemies. They begin to understand that the solution of the mystery of life does not exist on the physical plane. Their cosmic, organic connection with God begins once more to stir. They begin to feel that there must be a divine plan, a loving purpose in life, even if it does not seem so on the physical plane. These beings are therefore increasingly receptive to the great analyses of life. And they will, through the acceptance of these as a guide for their way of thinking and behaving, be predestined to a receptiveness to cosmic glimpses, in proportion to the growth and development of their faculty of humaneness or love and their faculty of intuition. They begin praying to God again and discover the power of prayer. The existence of both God and of the spiritual world begins thus to seem probable to them. Christ termed these beings that are thus on their way away from darkness the sheep, which were to be separated from the goats. We have just seen in the above how the goats, which are the same as the unfinished, materialistic and atheistic human beings with a neighbourly love that is as yet very little evolved, wander in the area where darkness and suffering culminate. And there, through the effects of the sufferings that they have inflicted on other beings (animals as well as human beings), they become transformed from inhumaneness to humaneness, from animal to human being. To the degree that this transformation takes place the beings wander out of darkness towards the light, out of war towards peace, out of death towards life. We thus witness here the principle that separates the sheep from the goats. The separation is thus going on before our very eyes. We are witnessing both the sheep and the goats. We see here that the world redeemer's prediction about this separation is an eternal all-outshining cosmic truth too. But Christ had to clothe this great cosmic truth in symbolic words adapted to his disciples and their contemporaries, which we will quote here from the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25, verses 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 and 41: "When the son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the king say unto them on his right hand, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and ye gave me food, I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink...'" and so on. "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and ye gave me no food, I was thirsty and ye gave me no drink...'" and so on. The son of God is Christ. But now what is the glory of Christ? Christ is, of course, one with the Father. The glory of Christ is therefore the same as the glory of the Father or God. And the glory of God can be only the same as the highest power, wisdom and love, which in turn is the same as that which we also know by the term the holy spirit. The prediction of the world redeemer or Christ about the fate of mankind, freed from its original symbolic form, can therefore be expressed as follows: When the glory of God, the very highest power, all-outshining wisdom and love, reveals itself once more through the next manifestation of world redemption to terrestrial mankind, then it will, as a science, specify intellectually which people are on their way into darkness or are in darkness, those likened by Christ to the goats, and which beings are on their way out of darkness, that is those that are moving towards light, towards the ultimate result of their own transformation from animal to human being in God's image after his likeness. The fact that it is precisely the holy spirit of God that is the foundation for the final epoch in God's creation of the human being is confirmed by Christ himself in his pronouncement about the Comforter the holy spirit. Christ said here: But the Comforter, the holy spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14:26) Christ emphasised again here that the new object of worship of the world redemption will not be a person but, on the contrary, the absolute, very highest knowledge of God, of the living being, of the universe, of the beings' immortality and identity with God, or in short the solution of the mystery of life itself. And is it not precisely this knowledge that is God's knowledge, God's consciousness and spirit? Is spirit not precisely the same as thoughts and knowledge? So the holy spirit means holy thoughts and holy knowledge. But holy thoughts and holy knowledge can be only the absolute truth. If the opposite were the case they would not, of course, be holy. Absolutely true thoughts and absolute knowledge about the Godhead, the living being and the universe are therefore the object of twentieth century world redemption and its furtherance of Christ consciousness as the model for the creation of the ultimate terrestrial human being – the finished human being in God's image.
Symbol by Martinus
Symbol no. 22
The Eternal, Cosmic and Organic Connection between God and the Son of God – 2
Symbol by Martinus
Symbol no. 22A
The Materialistic or Unfinished World Picture