Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4334

4334 Cognizability.... must state....

June 14, 1948: Book 51

In order to reach the level of cognitive ability, the being must first have animated all things, which it is then able to observe in the stage of cognition, if they appear before its eye. It must have gone through every work of creation in the state of inability to recognize the work of creation itself as a form that has been brought into existence for itself, which helps it to develop upwards. The being transforms this form completely unaware of its situation because a recognition of it would cause it dreadful agonies and even increase its resistance against God. Only in the last stage as a human being can it become aware of its situation, but only if it has the will to do so and develops the ability to recognize by fulfilling the conditions God has attached to it. The state of realization can be blissful but it can also lie on a person like a burden and endanger his free upward development, the latter if the human being would be forced to believe, if he would not be free to accept or reject the knowledge about the human being's course of development or his soul, for this realization only triggers a state of faith when the human being consciously desires the truth, which is also only the result of a right way of life before God. Then he can believe, and he also wants to believe, and knowledge makes him happy, for it signifies light for the soul, which was the soul's original state. Knowledge is already the proof of a certain degree of maturity, therefore man only has the ability to know if he shapes himself in such a way that his being adapts to the original being. Knowledge cannot be transmitted in a scholastic way, even if it is passed on in the form of instruction; yet as long as the human being does not live in God's will he will not be able to acknowledge the knowledge of truth either, because he lacks the ability to judge, which only arises from the connection with God through the fulfilment of His will. The being is dark as long as it is imperfect, therefore the state of the being before its embodiment as a human being is also dark, and the ascent development is the effect of the law of compulsion under which the being stands. Only in the stage as a human being is the ascent development voluntary, but also connected with the condition to become capable of cognition. But the ability to recognize can be increased to infinity and is already a state of bliss, only minimally, as long as the being lives on earth.

The ability to recognize is proof that the being, the soul in the human being, strives for perfection and union with God. The prerequisite for knowledge is love, and anyone who lives in love has already found union with God in the working of love. God lets His strength of love flow to him, and this expresses itself in the fact that the human being is able to think correctly and thus now knows about the creature's relationship to the creator, about his earthly task, about the purpose and aim of his life on earth.... that he recognizes God and His reign and activity in the spiritual kingdom and in the entire universe. The fact that he receives information about this from God Himself through His greater than great love is already a sign of ascent development and, to a certain extent, a reaching of the state which corresponds to his original state. Then a great gulf has been bridged, for which the infinitely long time in the state of compulsion was necessary, the being has ascended from the abyss to the height again, it is aware of its exit and never falls back into the abyss once it has found unity with God through love. For once it recognizes God it also remains faithful to Him and does not rest until it has completely merged with Him....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers