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This excerpt
from
The Fundamental Principles of Life
is provided for the benefit of our readers.
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If Adam had obeyed the
positive command, humanity, that is, the complete soul of man, he would not
have received such a hard, heavy, and frail physical body. But the
disobedience to God's law has necessarily led man to a lengthy roundabout
way on which he reaches his destination with much more effort and much
later.
You are now thinking: Why!
How can such a small, merely moral law have such a significant influence
on the entire nature of man? Without this silly enjoyment, Adam would
surely have been the same sensual Adam as he showed himself after
partaking of the apple. And he would surely have had to die in his flesh
just as now all men have to die!
On the one hand you are
right, but on the other you are wrong. The enjoyment of an apple, a
healthy and ripe fruit, certainly does not cause death. Thus the apple is
of little importance, or none at all. However, when the eating of the
apple is prohibited for an indefinite time (and that only for the sake of
strengthening the soul!), but the soul aware of its free will
disregards and transgresses the law, it causes, as it were, a breach in its
divinely pure nature which is like an open wound that can hardly ever be
healed. Even when the wound scars over, through the scarring some vessels
are damaged so that the life juices of the soul cannot properly circulate
through them, and this always causes a disagreeable, painful pressure at
the region of the scar. And behold, this scar is called "the world."
The soul is anxious to get
rid of this scar which hurts it through a feeling of worldly worry. But
the greater the soul's effort, the harder the scar becomes and the more
worry it produces. In the end the healing of this old scar completely
occupies the soul, that is, to get rid of its worries, and it no longer
cares much about its divine spirit. And behold, that is the so-called
"original sin."
"How can such a thing be
hereditary?" one might ask. Easily! What the organic soul structure
has once adopted may remain with the for thousands of years, provided it is
not completely restored through the spirit. Look at the type of people! If
I presented to you today their original progenitor, you would find
that a considerable likeness has been passed on to all his descendants. If
their progenitor was a good and gentle man and his wife too, the entire
people with only few exceptions would be more of a good and gentle
disposition than a people with a choleric, proud, and tyrannical
progenitor.
If such a slight trait of
a progenitor can bodily and morally still be recognized in all his
descendants, how much deeper will a trait of the earth's
first man be noticeable in all his descendants who at the time of
procreation were impregnated with the father's characteristics in the
stream of his vital sperm. |
