NEUOFFENBARUNG11 August 1847
[JS.01_007,01] In this example let us begin at once in the world beyond and look at a man who played a very great part in the world. In the end he thought the world existed solely on his account and he could do with it whatever he pleased, for he presumed to be God's actual representative, more even than many others of his kind. Nevertheless he had to ‘bite the dust’. Neither his assumed power nor the world, nor even his position as God's representative, could save him from that.
[JS.01_007,02] Look there, far to the north. A very gaunt figure of a man, of a very dark colour, is walking slowly. He looks searchingly about him, peering now this way and now that.
[JS.01_007,03] In his company you see a little man like a jet-black ape, bustling about our man and acting as if he had business of the utmost importance to settle with him. Let us step closer so that you can hear the strange conversation this man is having with himself. He sees his companion as little as he sees us.
[JS.01_007,04] Here we are quite close now. Listen, he is speaking: ‘All lies, all deceit, and the man most deceived is the happiest. But woe to the deceiver who deceives knowingly! If he is a deceiver unwittingly, if he lies and deceives without knowing that he lies and deceives, he is to be congratulated. One donkey leads the other, and both are content with the poorest fodder. But I, what am I? I was a supreme head. Everyone had to believe and do what I ordered, while I did what I pleased, for I held the keys of power in my hands as one who takes them without asking whether he is entitled to do so. I knew it all. I knew it was all lies and deceit, yet I forced lies and deceit on everyone under threat of severe punishment for any who would not accept and believe that everything issuing from me, written or unwritten, was to be taken as the full truth.
[JS.01_007,05] Yet in the world I believed that the death of the body was the end of all existence. That was my secret, firm conviction, and all the wisdom in the world could not have given me another belief! That alone I held to be true, and look, that too is a lie, for I go on living although I have died in body.
[JS.01_007,06] I had heaven, purgatory and hell preached from many thousands of pulpits. I granted indulgences, canonised a host of dead people and commanded fasting, prayer, confession and communion. And here I stand myself, with no idea which way to turn! If there were a judgement, I should have been judged by now. If there were a heaven, I should have the first claim to it. For first of all, it must have been by God's will that I became the vicar of Christ's Church. And whatever I did in that capacity was surely also the will of the Most High, for according to Scripture not a hair of one's head can be bent, nor a sparrow fly off a roof, without such a will.
[JS.01_007,07] So I confessed and received communion according to the old rules, even though I could easily have exempted myself. I had the power to abolish confession and strict communion for everyone for all time, but for political reasons I could not and would not do it. If there were a hell, there would be reason enough for me to find myself in it, for before God every person is a killer! At the very least I should be in purgatory, for everyone is supposed to have at least three days there. But none of it has fallen to my lot. Therefore God, Christ, Mary, heaven, purgatory and hell are nothing but lies and deceit! A person lives only by the forces of nature and thinks and feels only according to the particular concentration of the various natural forces within him, which presumably unite and bind together into an eternally indestructible whole. My task now will be to examine these forces more closely and, once I know them thoroughly, to establish a heaven for myself by means of them.
[JS.01_007,08] But I keep feeling something tugging at my toga pontificalis! What can it be? Is there perhaps some invisible spirit near me after all, or could it be a wind? It really is strange in this endless desert. One can go wherever one likes and still be utterly alone for ever. One can call, scream, insult, rail and swear, or pray to whomever one pleases, and yet nothing stirs and one is as utterly alone afterwards as before. It must be some years now since I died on earth, and in a very painful and most wretched way. And I am still alone, with nothing but the bare desert beneath my feet! I certainly have room enough, that is one more truth. But where am I, and what is to become of me? Shall I go on living like this for ever, or will I one day perish altogether? That is an insoluble riddle.
[JS.01_007,09] So let me set briskly to work studying the forces of nature within me. Once I know them better, it should soon become clear what is to become of me!’
[JS.01_007,10] Have you heard him reasoning now, he who was God's representative on earth? Oh, he will reason away on his own for a long time yet, as his invisible companion prompts him. For the lot of those who held the very highest positions on earth is always the same: solitude, since on earth they likewise isolated themselves beyond all measure.
[JS.01_007,11] Yet this isolation is a great grace for them, for only through it is it possible to bring them back to the right path. It takes a very long time. They must pass within themselves through every degree of night and darkness, of want and also of pain, such as is at home in hell.
[JS.01_007,12] Only once such a zealot has completed this journey alone, in perhaps five hundred or a thousand or even ten thousand years, does he come into the company of stern spirits. If he does not follow them, he is left again, completely alone. All the atrocities committed either under him or under his predecessors are then brought before him. On that occasion he must also taste all the pains tasted by everyone persecuted under him or under his predecessors. If this cure does not yet bring him to his senses, he is left as he is. Only hunger and thirst are given to him for company. In time these two tutors bring almost everyone to their senses, with the rarest exceptions.
[JS.01_007,13] Here, then, is another picture from which you may come to know the world beyond better, along with the ‘water’ such a chieftain must swim through before he reaches the shore of humility, truth and love. So there is nothing further about this man for now.