Some words about the prodigal son

Kurt Eggenstein
'The Prodigal Son'. Preexistential Origin of Man from the Fallen First-Created Spirits


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"Probably no other verse, no other chapter, in the Holy Scriptures is of greater import than the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Equally, there probably is no other passage that is harder to understand than this one." (Hi I p. 306)
"The name Lucifer encompasses the whole, unending compendium of the Prodigal Son, a compendium you will never be able to comprehend. Consider that almost the whole of present-day mankind are nothing but members of the body of this one 'lost' or 'prodigal son' and this refers particularly to the members of the human race who are descended from Adam's unhallowed line. This 'Prodigal Son' has taken away all the wealth that was his part, and squandered it through aeons that for your concepts extend for ever and ever." (Hi I p. 307)
"The 'Prodigal Son', however, is taken to represent every single human being as such." (Hi I p. 315)
In the final instance, he also represents the whole cosmos with millions upon millions of galaxies, each of them with something like fifty or one hundred thousand million suns. According to New Revelation, the universe, seen from "outside", is "a perfect and complete human form" and "can be seen in its kind by none except Me in this reality." (Hi I p. 312)
"The deity took hold of Lucifer's essential nature in all parts, took all specific nature, formed out of it cosmic bodies throughout the whole of infinite space, enwrapped the spirit of this infinite soul entity in the most powerful of bonds and bound him in the depth of matter." (EM p. 159)
"This cosmic man you behold there is no more and no less than the Prodigal Son who has found himself again, found himself again in every single person who is reborn." "Yet you should not think that this fallen Lucifer would return again as a complete whole. If this had been possible, then truly, the creation of the physical world could never have happened; instead, in every single individual who lives according to My Word and is born again through the Word and through redemption, this Lost Son (i.e., a part of his essential nature) is found again and returns to the great house of the father." (Hi I p. 314)
"Of course, all physical matter that makes up the universe is also only the work of God, and a divine element lies hidden within it, but there also lie within it deceit, lies and seduction, and from these arise envy, avarice, hatred, pride, persecution, and arising from these all kinds of vices, beyond measure and count.* And this very falseness, this lying and deceit, is in spiritual terms 'Satan', and all the different vices of necessity arising from this are indeed what is called 'devils'." (Gr V 94, 2-3)
God's plan to bring all the spirits that have fallen away from him back again to the house of their father, on a path that goes through matter, requires Iengths of time that are inconceivably great. Yet the time will come "when no physical sun and no physical earth continue to move in their orbits in infinite space, and a supersplendid, new spiritual creation will fill limitless space everywhere with exultant, free beings, and I shall forever thenceforth be God and Father of all beings, world without end. And thenceforth there will be no end to this most blessed of states. There shall be one herd, one fold, and one shepherd."
"As to when all this shall be, in the number of earth years, this can never be determined. And even if I were to make known this number, you could not possibly grasp it." (Gr II 63, 3-4)
The creation of the physical world is thus clearly interpreted in New Revelation as the field for redemption through divine love and compassion. The universe has been created to redeem the fallen spirits. The life sparks gradually loosened from Lucifer are according to God's wise plan taken step by step, i.e., through evolution, through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms to the final goal which is man. "The enormous numbers of fallen spirits, who fell with Lucifer and then were placed in the bonds of matter, as its carriers, all these classify the whole of creation in this universe according to spiritual content." (Pr 317) "Spirit you have been, and spirit you shall become again." (Pr 121)
The great purpose of God is to lead all of mankind - whichever body in the universe they inhabit - along the path of salvation to spiritual rebirth and hence to God. The earth and its inhabitants have a very special and preferential role to play in this according to New Revelation. The road is inconceivably long, however, and can be full of torment for some.
"Man is the most highly perfected of the countless different creatures, the culmination of divine love and wisdom, destined to become a god himself." (Gr VII 141, 6) This is why Jesus said to the Jews: "Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are (potential, author) gods?" "Now", New Revelation says, "you are merely like embryos in the womb." (Gr III 180, When God's final goal will have been achieves, the 8th Psalm will shine forth in its true radiance which now is still hidden: "Yet thou hast made him little less than God, and dost crown him with glory and honor."
Having realized the full import of the highly spiritual message given in New Revelation, we shall also be able to understand the following words of Johannes Eckehart, the 14th century German mystic: "The very life and nature of all creatures is nothing but their calling and hastening to God, from Whom they took their origin." 3
A vision of life unfolding as a whole, and a gradual, step by step, ascent, as described in great detail in New Revelation, may also be found in the work of the mystic Jakob Boehme (1575-1624) who, like Jakob Lorber, could not have known anything of evolution theories at that time.
During the third century, the greatest biblical scholar, Origen, also accepted the dogma of apocatastasis, the return of all things to their previous state. According to this, the soul leaves the place of purification, again and punishment does not go on forever. "Perfection will have been achieved," Origen wrote, "when all souls have found salvation in becoming angels. All creation returns to God." "The universal resolve to achieve salvation is a revelation of the all-compassionate God." 4 In his Contra Celsus 92-97, Origen equated Adam with the primal unit of human nature, that fell from heaven in the beginning of time as a whole. Origen refers to the words of the prophet Joshua: "Far indeed my soul has been wandering", continuing: "Comprehend, therefore, if you are able, what are these wanderings of the soul, to continue on which she laments with sighs and sorrows. For, of course, for as long as she is wanderings insight into these things is halted and is veiled, only when she has reached her homeland, her peace, paradise, shall she be enlightened more truly on this, and see more clearly which has been the way and meaning of her wanderings." 5
"Suddenly", the Catholic theologian and renowned author Hans Urs von Balthasar writes in his Origen - Geist und Feuer, (Spirit and Fire), "insights come through like flashes of lightning, and these are among the most endurable yet also most forgotten in the history of Christian thought." 6 "But when the vessel shattered into a thousand fragments and the name of the Mater (Origen) was stoned and buried, the scent of the unguent escaped, filling the whole house." 7
Apocatastasis again may be perceived in Scivias, the work of Hildegard of Bingen entitled Know the Ways. "Then I heard a voice saying to me: Paeons of praise shall be sung to the sublime Creator with untiring voice of heart and tongue, for through his grace he leads to the throne of heaven not only those upright and standing, but also those who have fallen and are bowed down" (Book 3, 13th vision).
The concept of men as fallen spirits whom the love of God for his creatures finally leads back, like the Prodigal Son, to the House of the Father, in a sheer unending, far journey through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, exists not only in Christian antiquity and in Christian mysticism, but also in the mysticism of other religions, a.o. in Parseeism, which also does not speak of hell eternal, and also in Islamic mysticism, in Sufism. It finds its most beautiful expression in the following verses by the famous Persian mystic Jelal ed Din Rumi (1207-1273):

"I died a stone and sprouted into plant,
I died a plant and animal became,
I died an animal and then was born a man,
Why fear then? Have through death I ever lost?
A man he gathers hence me from this earth,
That angels' wings I thereupon shall bear.
Yet angel, too, l'II not forever be,
God's face alone goes through eternity.
Far beyond angels' spheres my wings away
Will carry me to heights beyond mind's reach.
Then call me not to anything!
For like a harp's sweet strains
The knowledge sounds within me that we shall to Him return.

Major figures like the scientist Edgar Dacque, Leopold Ziegler and others, have given a scientific interpretation of Jakob Lorber's revelations, though doubtless they did not know them. Dacque, for instance, wrote: "The original form of man was metaphysically present, i.e., 'willed' by God, in early times when the first of the lower animals made their appearance. Although man only emerged as a full human being during the late ice age, he was yet present countless millions of years before that, in all living creatures." 8
Leopold Ziegler also sees the mystery of man in its deeper aspects: "History and historicity are indeed the true sphere of man, but this history proceeds from a nature-given basis of many other stages of life, all of them interrelated."
The evolution of life described in New Revelation is an inconceivably long path of cosmogony and anthropogony, to bring to realization God's plan for the salvation of the spirits that have fallen away. The immeasurable depths of this act of salvation, connected also with the words we read in St. John's Gospel: "And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself", are such that they can hardly ever be fully fathomed in this earthly life.
If we contemplate God's plan, to bring back, by that long route, all the spirits that have fallen away, bring them home to unimaginable bliss in the House of the Father, a prospect opens up of a grandiose vision, the one and only one to befit the true nature of God, that is, of life. The story of creation as shown in New Revelation conveys a vision of the world that is of the spirit, revealing deep meaning, and letting the love and compassion of God shine forth brightly in the story of salvation.