Gifts of Heaven · Volume 2 · Chapter 306

Wise contradictions

25th August 1843, evening

[1] What you have, you do not have. But what you don't have, you have.

[2] Remember the time, it is yours and not yours. Yours, if it is not yours; and not yours, if it is yours.

[3] Life is your highest good. For without it you are nothing and everything is nothing for you. But if life is yours, then you do not have it; but if it is not yours, then you have it.

[4] If you pray to God, you testify of yourself that you are of God. But if you pray, you do not pray; but if you do not pray, you pray.

[5] Truth is the only essential reality. But who can express it for himself? For everything is true and everything is false. A thing as it is, it is not; but as it is not, therefore it is. Where then is the truth, since it is where it is not, and again is not where you thought it was!

[6] Searching is the main sense of man. But what he seeks, he will not find, and he will find what he does not seek.

[7] Love is the only law of all life, through it every being is conditioned. But he who loves does not love. But it is he who does not love who loves there. For every man has a life and has no life, and has a love and has no love. Therefore he lives only when he does not live, and loves only when he does not love.

[8] Who can say: I know God, if God is not for him, because he is not for God. But who is not for God? He who is for himself! But God is only for him who is not for himself, and is not for him who is for himself.

[9] So also the woman is not a woman, if she is a woman. If she is not a woman, then it is a woman. For a true woman is in herself also a man and a true man is in himself also a woman. Therefore neither the one nor the other is in themselves what they are, but only what they are not.

[10] So the father is not a father and the mother is not a mother either. But if the father is no father and the mother no mother, then the father is a father and the mother a mother.

[11] Whoever wants to grasp the truth in it's depth, understand these sayings! But he who will understand them only with the intellect, will not understand them; but he who will not understand them only with the intellect, will understand them! That is something for the spirit!