Resonances to the Grail Message 1
by Abdrushin
1stBOOK ◄ ► 2ndBOOK
30. Duty and loyalty
The fulfillment of duty has always been considered man’s greatest virtue. Among all peoples it ranked higher than everything else, higher even than life itself. It was held in such esteem that it retained first place even among the intellectuals who ultimately regarded nothing as sacred any more but their own intellect, to which they submitted like slaves. The consciousness of the need to fulfill one’s duty remained; not even the domination of the intellect was able to upset this. However, the Darkness found a point of attack after all, and gnawed at its root. As everywhere so also here it distorted the conception. The idea of the fulfillment of duty remained, but the duties themselves were set up by the intellect and thus became earthbound, piecework and imperfect.
It is therefore only natural that a person of intuitive perception is often unable to acknowledge that the duties assigned to him are right. He comes into conflict with himself. He, too, considers the fulfillment of duty to be one of the supreme laws which a person must observe, and yet at the same time he is bound to admit to himself that in fulfilling the duties laid upon him he acts against his own convictions. As a result of this condition forms arise not only in the inner man, who thus torments himself, but also in the Ethereal World, forms which also cause discontent and discord in others. Thus a craving for fault-finding and grumbling spreads over the widest circles without anybody being able to discover its actual cause. It cannot be recognized because the effect comes from the Ethereal World. Through the living forms created by a person of intuitive perception, arising out of the conflict between his urge to fulfill his duty and his intuitive perception which wills otherwise.
There must now be a change in this matter in order to redress the evil. Duty and inner conviction must always harmonize with each other. It is wrong for a person to risk his life in the fulfillment of a duty which he cannot acknowledge within himself as being right!
Each sacrifice becomes of genuine value only when conviction harmonizes with duty. But if a man only risks his life in the fulfillment of duty without conviction he thereby degrades himself to the position of a mercenary who, in the service of another, fights for the sake of money, similar to the lansquenets. Fighting of that kind thus becomes murder!
If, however, someone risks his life out of conviction, he also bears within himself love for the cause for which he voluntarily resolved to fight.
And this alone has high value for him! He must do it for the sake of love. Out of love for the cause! Thereby the duty he thus fulfills comes to life and is so uplifted that he places its fulfillment before everything else.
Thus the dead, rigid performance of duty automatically separates itself from the living. And only the living has spiritual value and effect. Everything else can only serve and benefit earthly and intellectual purposes; and that not in the long run, but only temporarily, because only which is living becomes of lasting duration.
Thus the fulfillment of duty arising out of conviction becomes genuine, self-willed loyalty, and natural to the one carrying it out. He is neither desirous nor capable of acting otherwise, cannot stumble and fall for in him loyalty is genuine, is closely connected with him, indeed it is a part of him which he is unable to lay aside.
Blind obedience and blind fulfillment of duty are therefore of as little worth as is blind belief! Both are lacking life because they lack love!
From this alone man immediately recognizes the difference between a genuine sense of duty and a feeling of duty which has only been imparted to him. The one bursts forth from out of the intuitive perception, and the other is grasped by the intellect only. Therefore love and duty can never oppose each other but are one where the perception is genuine, and from this blossoms forth loyalty in the sense of the Holy Grail!
Where love is missing there is also no life, there all is dead. Christ has often pointed this out. It is inherent in the Primordial Laws of Creation, and is therefore universal without exception.
The performance of duty which voluntarily breaks forth radiantly from a human soul can never be confused with a duty carried out for the sake of earthly reward, but each can quite easily be recognized. Therefore let genuine loyalty arise within you, or hold aloof where you cannot be loyal.
Loyalty! So often praised, yet never understood! As with everything else, earth-man has also deeply debased the conception of loyalty, narrowing and compressing it into rigid forms. Its greatness, freedom and beauty became cold and devoid of all expression. Its naturalness became forced!
According to present conceptions loyalty ceased to be part of the soul’s nobility and was made a quality of the character. A difference like day and night. Thus loyalty became soulless. Where it is required it has devolved into a duty. Man has thus declared it to be independent, it stands upon its own feet, all by itself, and therefore... wrong! Loyalty, too, was twisted and distorted by the human mind.
Loyalty is not something which is independent, but only a quality of love! Of the right love, which embraces everything. To embrace everything, however, does not hold the meaning of embracing everything at once in accordance with human understanding, which is expressed in the well-known words: “embracing the whole world”! To embrace everything means: To have the capacity of being directed upon everything! Upon personal as well as upon impersonal matters! It is not merely bound to something specific, nor is it meant to be one-sided. Right love does not exclude anything that is pure or kept pure, no matter whether this concerns persons or one’s native land, also such things as work or Nature. That is what is meant by embracing. And the quality of this right love is loyalty, which must no more be considered of small, earthly narrowness than is the conception of chastity.
There is no real loyalty without love, just as there is no true love without loyalty either. But the earth-man of today regards fulfillment of duty as loyalty! A rigid form with which the soul does not need to vibrate. This is wrong. Loyalty is nothing but a quality of true love, which is merged with justice, but has nothing to do with being in love.
Loyalty rests in the vibrations of the intuitive perception of the spirit, and thus becomes a quality of the soul.
In performing his duty today a person often gives reliable service to someone whom he must inwardly despise. This, of course, cannot be described as loyalty, but remains merely the fulfillment of earthly duties which he has undertaken. It is purely an external affair, which in the reciprocal action can also bring nothing but outward benefit to the person concerned, be it improvement in his earthly means or earthly reputation.
In such cases true loyalty cannot manifest because it wants to be offered freely with love, from which it cannot be separated. Therefore loyalty cannot exert an influence of itself either!
However, if men would live on a basis of true love, as is willed by God, this condition alone would provide the impetus to alter many things among them, in fact everything! No man who is inwardly base would then be able to exist any longer, much less gain any success here upon earth. A great purification would set in immediately.
Men who are inwardly base would not enjoy earthly honors, nor would they hold office, for intellectual knowledge of itself shall not suffice to place them in authoritative positions!
Thus the fulfillment of duty would then always become an absolute pleasure, all work would become enjoyment, because all thinking and all working would be completely penetrated by true, God-willed love, and bring in its train not only an unshakeable intuitive perception of justice but also loyalty. Loyalty which as a matter of course remains unchangeable in its essence, and does not consider this as a merit that must be rewarded.
This is the nature of all activity in the future God-willed Kingdom of Peace on earth, however only after the Darkness has been eradicated. —
