The path through matter is an endlessly long captivity for the beingness, and therefore liberation must mean redemption for the being. The more oppressive the constraint was, the more blissful is the liberation from the form, and therefore it is of greatest value when man can completely separate himself from material things, for the sooner the soul can get rid of its burden and soar upwards. To become free from form means to become free from desire, that earthly things no longer seem desirable to him and he has therefore overcome all matter. And then it is easy for the spirit to unfold. Matter is the obstacle to spiritual endeavour. It is there, actually for man, but is nevertheless to be overcome, i.e., the inclination for it must be torn out of the heart, because if man desires something earthly, then he again so to speak establishes the connection with this earthly through his wrong love and therefore forms himself regressively. His desire is for an outer form which he has already overcome, and the immature spiritual hidden in it now seeks to increase by drawing the already advanced spiritual into its sphere and this again means increased desire for matter.... (1.3.1941) The stay in the form should be a compulsion for the spiritual, so that it seeks to become free of it. But once it is free of this outer form and has also gone through further forms in the further phases of development, it is no longer allowed to carry a desire for those outer forms which it has already overcome. Rather, it must learn to despise them, i.e. they must no longer mean so much to the human being that he desires them. But where the desire for matter is still very strong, one can speak of an overpowering of the immature spiritual, to which the human being falls victim. The human being's will is weak and allows himself to be dominated by the spiritual in matter, thus he again falls prey to the activity of satanic forces which hold matter up to the human being as a deception in order to prevent the endeavour towards God, the conscious prayer, and this force also succeeds.... Then matter absorbs the already more mature spiritual substance again, so that the immature spiritual substance increases within itself, which detracts from the spiritual substance which is in the process of higher development, thus signifying spiritual decline for the human being. Such a person will constantly be under the spell of what he desires. It will become increasingly more difficult for him to free himself from it and he will gradually become a slave to that which he should dominate, i.e. overcome; then the power which should be defeated will begin to rule and the result will be that the human being will rarely be able to free himself from this power, that he will still pay homage to it in the beyond by striving for earthly possessions and thinking little or not at all of his soul. In the most favourable case he can therefore remain on the same level. However, the danger is very obvious that the desire for earthly goods is so great that God corresponds to this desire and the spiritual is once again incorporated into this form which fulfils its sensing and thinking.... that the being has to travel the same path and once again feels the external form as an oppressive burden until it has finally freed itself from the desire for it.... until it has finally overcome matter and desires only spiritual good....

Amen

This proclamation is not used in any themebook.