Gifts of Heaven · Volume 2 · Chapter 309

Words of wisdom

27th September 1843

[1] If you want, you can write some aphorisms. But no different than how I give it to you! For I do not want to show off like a worldly nature-scientist, but want to be like a minstrel whom the nobility always throws out! Understand that this is how I want it in the world – because the world will not acknowledge Me! And so write then!

[2] Entertainment is mortal man's pleasure, by which he temporalily sweetens eternal death. Yes, such a pleasure is therefore a true entertainment, because the spirit is suppressed – and the dead mainly lust after death!

[3] Conversation, as it is common in the world, is a sheer "shackle" for the spirit! For the soldier, the drumming are followed by an early wake-up call, because the natural world is subject to the constant change between day and night. But for the spirit there is only constant day or constant night. But once the curfew has been drummed for the night of the spirit, it will be difficult to have a daytime wake-up call to follow an endless night. Do you now understand the "conversation of the world"?

[4] The reunions, as they are now done with ball music, gluttony and fornication of all kinds, albeit with triple wax lighting and free admissions, are in earnest truth people's reunions unto eternal death. Because humans here grab with united forces the rudder of their life-ship, in order to faster and safer, and in the most pleasant way, cross over from the world into eternal death! That they do not easily miss this goal, is already ensured by the prince of night and death! This then is the "reunion of the world".

[5] Visits are mutual inquiries as to whether someone is still dead in spirit – and then there again are mutual compliments on the quiet well-being in death. For if a visitor finds someone of living spirit, he will not pay him many more visits. For he is in fear that the living one would tell him that he, the visiting one, is a dead man! But with the dead, he has no fear for this. Do you understand this?

[6] The craving for pleasure is a sleep-drunkenness of the spirit. As the insomniac desires nothing more than a bed of sleep, so the craving seeks nothing more eagerly than the deadly world-incense to fall asleep in the spirit forever. Do you understand this?