LOVE OF THE WORLD

To pay tribute to the world is to forfeit the kingdom of heaven, because they cannot both be gained simultaneously. He who pays homage to the world does not strive for the kingdom of heaven, because for him there is only the terrestrial world with its attractions, since he does not believe in a kingdom outside this.  - Yet the way to the kingdom of heaven nevertheless has to go through this terrestrial world, it cannot be set aside, - man lives in the world and had to go through the last stage of his development on this earth, in midst of that kingdom belonging to God's adversary.   But he can overcome this kingdom - he can pass through this terrestrial world without coveting it with his senses, he can experience it and yet be its master - and this is your task: to overcome the world, because it was assigned to you for that purpose, so that your soul may mature therein, so that out of free will she would sever itself from everything pertaining to the world; because this severance also on the one hand is severance from him who is the prince of this world, and on the other a turning to the spiritual kingdom and its Lord.

And hence it is self-evident that he who enslaves himself to the world never can take possession of the spiritual kingdom neither in earth-life nor after man's death, - it is understandable that the prince of the world holds him in chains because man himself gives him the right thereto, since the loosening from the material world, - the severing from his power, man has to accomplish himself.   He has to wage battle against himself, he has to be capable of renouncing, in order to win something precious, he has to in this short earth-life resist all temptations in order to then be capable of gaining the spiritual kingdom with all its glories, which shall then recompense him a thousandfold for his renunciations on earth.

And he shall only be able to do so when he has recognised the worthlessness and transitoriness of what seemed to him worth coveting on earth.

Only this recognition gives him the power to align his will correctly, and this recognition he can gain if he himself ponders the material world, since he cannot be coerced into changing his will; he can only be roused to inner contemplation through experiences, whereupon the result is up to him.

And God can help him only by way of time and again showing him the transitoriness; that He time and again causes to pass away what is the subject of a man's passion - that He intervenes by seizing man in his painful side, taking away from him what his heart clings to, always to just prove to him the unsubstantiality of his aims.   But they who learn from these experiences can regard themselves as fortunate, because they gradually change their motivations, giving up the world in order to once gain the spiritual kingdom.  - But none should believe in being able to compromise; none should believe themselves capable of paying tribute to the world unpunished.   Every type of striving shows up after death, and if it was after the world then it also brings him spiritual death; he has then given up the spiritual kingdom for worldly gain, and the world has brought him death; then he has repeated his surrender to the power of the one in the depths, and the ascent then is once again interminable.

AMEN

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