The Great Gospel of John Book 11

some kind of instruction is out of the question. That would also have to be done in a mechanical way from without.

[4] You may tell a tree for a thousand years to stand in such and such a way and produce better fruit, but it will all be of no avail.

You must put knife and saw into action, cut off wild branches, carefully split the stems and insert into them fresh branches of a better kind and then connect these well with the wild split stems. The in this way mechanically grafted tree will then in the course of time produce better fruit.

[5] Yet you can train an animal even through words or through a special way of handling, and it will serve you as and when required and fully comply with your will. This gives you unmistakable proof that animals also have a kind of free will, without which they could no more obey and serve you than a stone or a tree.

[6] If already animals evidently possess an individual soul endowed with some cognition and freedom of will that has to act independently according to its own nature, to what higher degree, and how much more exclusively, this must be the case with a human soul. There can be for the present no question of any external, alien influences, either good or, even less, bad.

[7] Besides, the soul is endowed with everything it needs for its initial progress in life. Once it has, through its own willpower and through the spontaneous love for God, moved into a mightier life-light, it will soon become aware of what it still lacks. It will then endeavor of its own free will to attain to this and, well recognizing the ways and means, strive for and grasp them, enriching itself with the treasures of the higher, more spiritual and more perfected life.

[8] What the soul acquires on this road, which is a true road according to God’s order, is and remains completely its own, and neither time nor eternity can tear it away from the soul.

However, that which the soul could not itself have acquired through its volition and cognition, such as the external, physical body and with it some outer, worldly advantages, cannot remain with it but will be taken away just as it was given.

234