The most important decision in this life.

On serving two masters at the same time, in a life between two worlds

An examination of the connections between the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:24) and the promise of the Spirit of Truth or Holy Spirit in John 14:15-27 as guidance for our obedience and love.

Introduction.

01. Dear reader, if you have landed on this page, perhaps a higher power that loves you very much has led you here. In fact, that same power has led me to write what you are about to read, as far as you are willing to read. You should know that I am writing to communicate something that sounds obvious but is not as simple as it seems, because it is not what is said that matters, but the intention with which something is said. And now you may be wondering what my intention is in communicating this. My intention is to break down walls so that the light that these walls, which are mental walls, have obscured can reach you. This light, which has been put into words on this page, could create a new inner landscape for you and thus change the outer landscape, the landscape of your life, which you would then see with new eyes. 

02. You see, it was not so easy, because I have taken on no small task, but I hope that it is not too much. That, dear reader and friend, is my intention, and my basic criterion is usefulness: to use words, both spoken and written, in such a way that they are useful to the reader, useful for creating new connections in his soul, because if I do not succeed in this, I know that he will soon discard what he has read from his heart and the walls will remain.

03. For my part, I have thought long and hard about the usefulness of this reflection; about how I can explain and break it down in a text that takes no more than 20 minutes to read, because we don't have much free time, do we? However, writing it will take me several hours, spread over several days, because anything that is to be done well must be done with calm and patience. Reading it will take you much less time, and perhaps what you glean from these words will germinate in your soul like a seed of light and life that will one day grow into a large, beautiful tree and bear much fruit. But that, my friend, fortunately depends much more on you than on me. It depends above all on where you are on your spiritual journey to yourself.

04. In this reflection, inspired by the Sermon on the Mount, we talk about love, conscience, and the fact that we are probably all here on Earth at a time marked by a spiritual change of course, indeed a 180-degree turn, after a phase in which we humans tried to navigate the river of life without God's help. We will reflect on the double game of obedience that all religions and their sects have been playing for centuries, a game that Jesus exposes in the Sermon on the Mount. The clergy of churches around the world have staged a shadow play to draw attention to themselves and divert it from the true God, allowing themselves and those who obey them to continue to serve two masters: the world and a God shaped according to their desires. In the face of this game of lies and abuse, many have turned away from religion and continue to do so, often rejecting God within themselves, where in reality He was never awakened, for there was never a genuine connection to His Spirit. Liberation from the oppression of religion led to a change of power that caused God to disappear from our lives. The true believers could be counted on one hand. The rest, the vast majority, either rejected God completely, while others simply followed the empty rituals of the churches and continue to follow them blindly. The latter, who belong to a denomination out of habit or convenience, are those who serve two masters at the same time, which according to Jesus is not possible because we cannot love and be faithful to two masters at the same time. But we address this consideration not only to those who go to mass without loving God, but also to our own conscience. To do this, however, we must understand how important this issue is for our soul. So let us make this reflection a personal exercise in sincerity. Let us begin this exercise with our ability to be faithful. Being faithful and remaining faithful in love to something or someone is a crucial ability for the salvation of the soul from the judgment of matter; an ability that the Lord takes as a measure for the admission of the soul into the spiritual world. That is why marital fidelity is so important, for it is the touchstone of love for the Lord, since the marriage between man and woman corresponds to the marriage in God between love and wisdom, which must never be separated, which of course is not the case in God, for His love always contains the highest wisdom, which leads to the divine order in all of creation. However, love and wisdom are not necessarily connected within us, which is why we sin and therefore lead a life full of fear and pain, out of pure unfaithfulness, because our love, without the right wisdom, without the light of the Spirit, tries to love and obey two or more things at the same time. When Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters at the same time, He draws our attention to our unfaithfulness, which arises from the separation of love and wisdom in the soul that has not yet been absorbed into the divine Spirit. I know you already have a lot to digest, dear reader, but be patient and don't lose interest.

05. Look again at the title above: “The most important decision of our lives.” I am not a fan of sensational headlines, but I assure you that this is no exaggeration. The fact is that at some point in our lives, consciously or unconsciously, we all make this important decision, which I will try to explain in this reflection. As the subtitle says, this decision influences who we love in this life, because in truth we all serve someone, because we all follow certain rules that are imposed on us or that we believe we have freely chosen. We often make this decision about our obedience simply because of our environment and the opinions of those around us, sometimes because of a great disappointment or loss, and sometimes out of pure ignorance. Over all these shadows, the shadows of our environment, the shadows of the disappointments of this life, and the shadows of simple ignorance, I would like to shine a ray of light and pass on a biblical warning that I give myself almost every day because I live in a very noisy world that demands my constant attention. The pressure that the world exerts on all of us, a psychological pressure that some consciously exert on others, is an important, if not indispensable, part of our spiritual transformation. It leads to the fact that all of us, without exception, and that is why we came here, must make this critical decision about our obedience. If you are not yet aware of this, because the soul likes to indulge its desires without submitting to judgment, then now may be a good time to lay your cards on the table.

06. To do this, we first turn to the passage in the Holy Scriptures, the Gospels, to which the subtitle refers, in order to sketch the outlines of the house we want to build, or the garden in which we want to sow this seed of the tree of life. 

The Holy Scriptures.

07. In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, verse 24, Jesus says in his famous Sermon on the Mount that you cannot serve two masters at the same time, because in the end you would hate one of them. He concludes by saying that you cannot serve both God and the world at the same time. With this, Jesus brings us to a matter that is important for our lives. He tells us that we must make a decision because what we do is not steadfast; it is hypocrisy. The Sermon on the Mount is not just any passage in the Bible; it lays down rules of conduct and draws clear moral boundaries. In this sermon, Jesus improves on rules based on the Mosaic laws, which we humans have changed at will. He also tells us that we cannot deceive God. With the famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes it clear what is important. But in verse 24, Jesus does not tell us that we must love God, but rather describes a situation that is quite common in the hearts of people, namely, wanting to have everything and loving more than one thing at a time. The Lord tells us quite clearly that this is not possible and cannot work, but he does not force us to obey or love; instead, he leaves the decision to us, and not just any decision, but the decision to love God or the world. This decision is ours to make and must not arise from coercion, but from our complete freedom, so that it has value. Jesus is therefore only warning us against self-deception in our love, against a game that God clearly sees through. Basically, Jesus comes to our aid here because we have put ourselves in a dangerous situation. Jesus points his finger like a wiser brother at our hearts; he points to two masters in our lives: the world on the one hand and God on the other. There is no way to reconcile them, to love and serve them both at the same time, because our love must choose one of them. That is how love works, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. This is because, in their foolishness, they believe that love is just a feeling. But Jesus tells us that love is life, something we should not play with. Well, let's take it seriously then. We all intuitively feel that we should love God and not the world. Jesus does not stand for the material and transitory, but for the spiritual and eternal. What is not clear to us is what it means to love God and why we should choose Him and reject the world. I will try to provide, if not an answer, then at least a little guidance on these questions. As we will see later, every person carries the answer in their heart.

08. We have said that God should be our choice; anything else would not make sense in a Bible text, as everyone can imagine. So the question is not whom we should choose as our Lord, which is what obedience means, but why and how. If we are to choose, we need to know why and for what purpose. The answers to these questions are deeply rooted in our life on earth, but not in golden letters, rather like a photographic negative that we must develop and turn into a positive, that is, into our truth. In this life, everything is, let's say, upside down; what appears to be real is not, and what is real is almost impossible to see and understand because it is spiritual in nature. Reality first has to be revealed here; it does not show itself to us in tangible form and contour, but as a force, a power that we have to discover. I will try to contribute a drop of developer for this spiritual laboratory process in which we want to “develop” our soul for immortality through enlightened love. It should be understood that this development of the soul is a decisive step away from the matter to which it is bound by its love, toward the spirit, that is, toward everything that has spiritual value and meaning, always related to God as the first spirit, the primal spirit, or the First.

09. It must also be made clear that verse 24 in chapter 6 of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew is by no means an invitation to live in a monastery; it is an instruction for our soul and the main love it feels. To serve means, in the words of the Lord, to love. This is clearly explained to us by the Lord in the Gospel of John, in John 14, in the promise of the Holy Spirit. Obedience and love. Obedience and love are placed on the same level by the Lord. There Jesus says the following: 14:15. If you love me, keep my commandments! and 14:21.Whoever keeps my commandments and obeys them is the one who loves me. There is a clear connection between the Sermon on the Mount and the promise of the Holy Spirit, a correspondence that should give us pause for thought. However, out of pure convenience and in order to continue loving themselves in their worldly existence, people have taken purely external measures that serve only to create an appearance. Here, however, the thoughts should only touch our hearts and search them. When the heart has become pure and sincere in its love and obedience, then external rites and habits that served only to deceive will fall away of their own accord. So we do not need to retreat to a cell or cave and remove ourselves from the world, for that would be of no benefit to anyone and would do very little for our own spiritual development, as it would be based on escape. What we must control, as Jesus tells us, is our love, for this love will lead us to devote ourselves to what we love, and no one can truly love two opposing things forever without eventually rejecting one of them. And here we must understand that the world and God are two opposites, whereby the world, as a tangible reality, strongly attracts us through desire and fear, while God is silent and does not reveal himself. Yes, it even seems as if he has abandoned us when life falls apart and misfortune befalls us, so that it is easy to conclude that God simply does not exist. It therefore seems most likely that we give our love to the world, a world that also bears our mark; that is, it should increasingly be our image. Love of the world is therefore, in essence, self-love, because we tend to gather and entrench ourselves in cities we have built, far away from dangerous nature. To love this world, with all it offers us, is to elevate ourselves as lords and rulers, which a group of people we call the elite have, of course, always done for their own benefit. In this love, no one, not even God, stands higher than man himself. However, self-love is the cause of all conflicts in our lives, of separations, entire divisions of peoples, and bloody wars that still plague humanity. All this has happened because no one can serve God and the world, that is, themselves, at the same time. This is exactly what Jesus wants to warn us about when he says that we cannot serve two masters at the same time, that in the end, because it is easier, we will make this world, this material reality, our lord and master, and ourselves in it, because we will consider only this life to be real and true. And we do this in two ways: 1. by completely rejecting God, or 2. by pretending to be religious because we live in a family or social environment that brings us more advantages if we outwardly show that we follow the rites and customs of our religion. Millions of people find themselves in this situation, seduced by the world and its possibilities of wealth, while at the same time trapped in religious habits that are purely formal and have no true content because they are not based on love for God.

10. But our reflections are not yet complete, because loving God and serving Him is not a must, but a free choice. For this choice to be truly free, we must be well informed about its meaning and consequences, which leads us to ask ourselves who we are and where we are going. We must know that love is a driving force that shapes and defines us. The decision for the world, this life and all that it can give us, good and bad, defines us in a certain sense, the material sense, and the decision for God as our origin and our goal on a circular journey defines us spiritually. Both definitions of our being are diametrically opposed because love, directed toward the world and ourselves or toward God, leads us to different states, as different as life and death! Love has consequences; to love is to bind oneself to the beloved; love is an act of union that changes the state of the united parts, like atoms that combine to form molecules, with new and different properties that are better and more useful. This act of union through love must not be done rashly or uninformed, as I have already said, because in love we live or we die if that love is not reciprocated. There are loves that give us heaven, and others that are a dark, cold, and bottomless abyss. I believe we can already see the meaning of the title of this reflection. What emerges from Jesus' admonition in the Sermon on the Mount is that many feel obliged to obey God, but are much more inclined to worship the world in their love and desires because of what it can offer them. This situation of serving two masters at the same time, the world and God, is, as we know, clearly untenable for Jesus and leaves no room for compromise. That is why it is interesting for us to explore his speech, which invites us to make a decision regarding our obedience and our love. It is also becoming increasingly clear that this decision is transformative for our soul, for better or for worse!

God or the world.

11. Let us consider how much each of the masters that this life has in store for us makes the decision easy for us, bearing in mind that the choice that most tempts us at first glance is not necessarily the best one. And in this sense, God is a clear loser for several reasons, for example because of the mystery that surrounds everything divine, because of the distortion of his image and nature by religions, and because God does not advertise himself. We can say without a doubt that the human soul here on earth has few reliable elements to tip the balance of its love and obedience to God in its favor. On top of that, life here is full of pain and ends in death for everyone. One wonders how a God can allow this, or whether he even exists. God, if real, seems to offer neither clear comfort nor legal or illegal drugs to make us feel better in this turbulent earthly existence. In short, God does not make himself visible to us; rather, it seems as if he wants us to seek him, to be guided by a spark of hope, or, broken with grief, to remember him and try to find the truth in ancient texts of our own culture or in distant religions that we do not understand well, but which simply seem more attractive to us because they do not bear the seal of our church. God hides, as an unsolvable mystery, behind all these religions, and it is up to us to search for him, to ask him through rites and prayers, to implore him to protect and accept us, to give us peace, health, and prosperity. We do all this while watching the other Lord, the world, out of the corner of our eyes to see what escape route or shortcut it offers us to happiness and peace. 

12. Living on earth means that we stand between matter and spirit. Starting with our inevitable physical needs, which we must take care of if we do not want to die in a few days (of thirst) or weeks (of hunger), matter seems to be the reality that must satisfy us in everything. That would be the case if we were only physical, biological beings. Now I wonder if such beings without spirit can be made aware of their preferences in love. Such beings would obtain their satisfaction on an exclusively material basis, with no desires other than food, sleep, and a roof over their heads. There would be no question of spiritual longings. No one doubts that we must try to stay alive, breathe fresh air, and feed ourselves. But it is one thing to eat in order to live, and quite another to live in order to eat. The former does not imply obedience to the world (matter) in the sense of Jesus' words in his warning. But the transition from the first, i.e., the satisfaction of our natural needs, to the second, i.e., the complete surrender of the soul to the senses in search of pleasure, makes us slaves to the world and makes us understand that there are natural and unnatural duties. When the latter, which we impose on ourselves, determine our lives, the world becomes our lord and master. This world, for its part, sets its own conditions, which are announced as dreams to be pursued, but which are basically paths of obedience to accept our self in the places and areas where the benefits offered by matter transformed by our ingenuity outweigh the losses, if that is even possible in the end. From time to time, the world also promises us immortality, or at least a longer life for those who fear death. If we have no clear certainty from God about the transcendence of our soul, which is our spiritual self, beyond the death of the body, then the world has also fallen far short of delivering on its promises; it has not even been able to solve the health problems that science unsuccessfully seeks to turn into a distant memory of a past in which we were expelled from paradise on earth. Various fantasies, such as transhumanism or even the colonization of other planets, are part of the marketing that humans do for themselves, at least in their imagination, by expanding the limits set by the matter on which they rely so much, and we do this by implicitly saying that there is no life beyond this material existence and that God does not exist. Nevertheless, millions of people live, if not with God, then connected to their religions and beliefs, which are tailored to people who do not want to give up anything and serve two masters at the same time, that is, basically, only themselves. Here we take up the Sermon on the Mount and the words of the Lord and try to uncover our ambiguous game. The question is: Which of the two masters will we ultimately choose?

Rien ne vas plus.

13. Our love is on the table. The world urges us to bet on it, on the philosophy of a short-lived hedonistic existentialism or a stoicism without feelings and hope.The world tells us that the best love is self-love and that this life must satisfy it to the maximum by living in the present. It claims to eliminate our worries, but with no support other than a vain attempt to reprogram our thoughts. We don't need anyone, no God or higher power, if we have money and the techniques or technologies that countless happiness gurus sell us. We are urged to bet on a world in which this technology is God and scientists are its priests. We want to be entertained, immersed in our self-created reality, which inevitably makes it good. Entertained and increasingly entangled in this reality, our obedience to the world is blind, unto death! But who bets everything on black and doesn't keep a few chips for red, just in case? Most players at the roulette table of this life do not plunge into the abyss of this world, but fall because they are indecisive and lukewarm, rejecting God and not recognizing when they must leave this harsh reality because they have said neither yes nor no. They are the ones who hypocritically cried out “Lord, Lord!” in memorized prayers; words that were spoken only with their lips, but not from their hearts, because their love for God was never expressed in good deeds toward their fellow human beings, for their souls were bound in worldly selfishness and the greed that springs from it, voluntarily! Those who have read the Sermon on the Mount can also read this in Matthew 7:19-21, where it is written very clearly: Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, you will know them by their fruits. Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my Father in heaven. Here we reflect on this evil in order to remedy it; to learn to say yes to a single Lord in our lives. The question is, which one? 

14. Yes, we have already said it: God makes it more difficult for us in the competition for dominion over us; it almost seems as if he does not want to win this battle for our souls. But for those of us who have sought and found him, or are in the process of finding him, the fact that he does not pressure us, but is reserved, is what makes him so attractive. We love God because of his silence and his quiet whisper, as Elijah heard on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:12). It can be said that it is the hellish noise of this world that has literally driven us to seek God in a quieter and brighter place; a place without the fear of having to achieve this or that. God does not point outward, but inward, inviting us to discover that there is more to our being than science can prove and turn into a market for goods and services. In my case, God waited quietly until I demanded more from life a few years ago. I did not demand it out of lack or because of my poor health, but out of happiness and contentment to live a life without pain and problems. But this happiness was based almost exclusively on “things” that would sooner or later disappear or die. For many years, the world had already been a place of constant change and transformation for me, where nothing is permanent in its form. It was a world that never particularly attracted me. And I received an answer, a perfectly measured and masterfully structured answer, the content of which is still revealing itself to me and which does not seem to end, but rather confirms and clarifies itself more and more for my own good. I am not writing this reflection from a speculative distance or for rhetorical reasons, but from personal experience that is still in the midst of development. And my spirit, that something more in my being that God has shown me within myself, continues to try to illuminate my love with a light that is like the most beautiful music.

15. God wants only one thing from us: that we be 100% sure. Faithfulness cannot be built on doubt. That is why Jesus says in his Sermon on the Mount that we should be aware that we cannot serve two masters at the same time. Love cannot survive under tension, let alone flourish! To understand this, we must remember that we actually stand between two masters, two worlds, and actually two lives, right on the threshold between matter and spirit. This position on the border between two realities is our starting point for directing our love to the right level. We will see what this means in a moment. But it is enough to think that we are spirits, spiritual beings, created by God as the original spirit and first cause of all that exists. Here we spend a life on the material plane, enclosed in a physical body. At the same time, we are the final stage of a creative evolutionary process for the salvation of life in the universe by God as the source of life. And final stage does not mean end, but threshold. Understanding this is really important because it puts us on a path that leads to a completely different level from here, where the ground becomes transparent when we open our eyes to the spirit. Now our goal will be a different light, that of a sun that casts no shadows on our path. But not everyone will follow this path, at least not at the same pace, which is not a problem as long as everyone progresses with the powers available to them. These powers must free us from the slavery of a master who still wants to hold us back because he is afraid of being alone. The devil is ourselves, no one else! But against his power, the Lord has given us an invincible power from His Spirit. This power is love, and this other master we carry within us knows this, which is why his main concern is to control our love, which he does with cunning and great cleverness. The only safe refuge we have from this is not in a bunker, but in our own hearts. There dwells a light that will show us how to use our love wisely. As Jesus tells us in John 14:26: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” We discover ourselves as beings made of love, a love with infinite potential, and we must now decide what we want to do with this love; we must learn the consequences of our free choices; that where we give our love, we also give our lives. To understand the significance of this, we must try to recognize what life is, where it comes from, and what it holds for us in terms of love.

16. Life is, or should be, constant growth; a flow of enrichment that must not cease, for when it ceases, life itself ceases. But this growth must correspond to our nature; to what we really are, for it is what we are that must be enriched, not what we believe ourselves to be. Therefore, we must get to know ourselves from the ground up. The force that makes life grow, that constantly adds something new, is love. Understanding this helps us to choose our lord and master in life. This master demands loyalty, love, and obedience from us. In return, he promises us protection and happiness; yes, that is what life is all about, peace and happiness. The question now is, what exactly do the world and God give us in return for our love? To answer this question, we must try to define what each of them is. We have already understood that they are opposites, paths that diverge. God is spirit and the world is matter. God promises us eternal life and boundless bliss, but he does not show us brochures or a map of the eternal and painless hereafter. The glory of heaven remains a mystery. There are certainly thousands of testimonies from people who were dead for a few minutes and then regained consciousness and reported on life on the spiritual plane. The studies of Swiss physician Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who documented twenty thousand cases of near-death experiences, remain famous. But despite everything, those who have not had these extraordinary experiences must be content to believe and can interpret what is told about brief excursions into the afterlife in many ways, so that in the end, without further evidence, they shrug their shoulders and turn around to dive back into this life that demands so much of us, so much attention, energy, and love. So it seems that the promise of eternal life for the soul is based on faith, on trust. But this faith is not given to us; it is not an easy treasure to find. That which is easy and given has no value and is not lasting. We value what has cost us a great deal of effort to achieve. The same is true of faith in God and his promise of eternal life. Everything here is designed in such a way that it requires enormous effort on our part to love God in the midst of the pain and losses of this life. God seems to be an insensitive and cruel Lord. And in the midst of this scenario, the world calls out to us to save us from our suffering. It tells us: Yes, life is hard, but we have ourselves; we have science and technology; we will conquer pain. In reality, the meaning of this life is that we are subject to the whole burden of material existence with its needs, illnesses, and death, which awaits us all equally. This can only be understood and accepted when one realizes that this life is like a prison or an escape room, one of the soul, which must somehow free itself from its cell. But the big question is how and where to?! The path on the other side of this door, leading to this eternal and glorious life that is supposed to free us from pain and death, does not show us its light, at least not in the way we would expect. The truth is that God requires us to change our perspective or our focus on this life; that we look further before we put all our eggs in the wrong basket. But how can we “see” the spirit, that spiritual light that is supposed to guide us?

17. But the world keeps offering us more and more to come to its promised paradises, its fancy neighborhoods, its vacation resorts, or at least to dream about them, because unlike God, the world shows us its whole catalog of rewards for our love on social media, with a tireless army working hard to promote it; soldiers we call influencers and whom I call the new false prophets. Here, Jesus, nailed to the cross, would cry out: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Some, I think, know very well what they are doing: accumulating riches and power, and all their love is devoted to this pursuit. They have already made their choice, favored by the strategic positions they occupy in the world. From these positions, where everything seems to offer only advantages, they try to seduce others, even to force them to bow down before the altars of materialism. This well-situated minority is the originator of worldly temptations, the advocates of hedonism, and the judges on the playing field. For this world offers us a pleasant life for the senses and material security if we can pay all our bills and if we put our talents at its service, which means nothing other than that we work for an increasingly wealthy and powerful elite. But let us not dwell on discussions that aim to tip the balance with the various offers and their attractiveness to us; we want to understand why and how we should give our love to God, from the perspective of our being and our existence in this earthly life. To do this, as I said, we must try to get to know ourselves; think about what we really are and why we are here. So let's forget for a moment what God or the world can give us and think about what we are; or rather, let's feel what we are. To this end, a promise: what we really are will set us free, as truth always does. 

We are love.

18. When I know who I am, I also know what I need, and when I know my needs well, I can look for ways to fulfill them. So everything depends on how well I know myself. The small differences that make us unique lead to different needs. But there are a few general parameters that define us as human beings, parameters that relate to the fact that we all think and feel. I will try to express it as best I can: We are consciousness, intelligence, and love, above all love, because it is in the love we feel that we are alive. If this reflection is about love and what we should do with this power, to whom we should give our love, it is because we are love. Love is more than a feeling, it is a force—but where does this love come from and what is it in essence? Is the love I feel as a driving force that animates me my own? Did I create it myself, or could this love even be a product of matter, of my body? Wouldn't that mean reducing love to an arbitrary, even impossible phenomenon? How can something so powerful, universal, and beautiful be a product of the chemistry of the brain? It is true that the religion of science and many of its priests, bishops, and cardinals still proclaim: Your ego is created by your brain, and by this ego we mean everything that you are, feel, and think. So when you die, your self disappears, you disappear, completely. Some think that when the matter of the body decomposes and dissolves, the self also disappears and merges with a quantum matrix or an abstract cosmic consciousness, a sea of consciousness without form or name, in which personality with all its characteristics is lost. This thought gives them a strange comfort. But the reports of those who have been outside their bodies, close to death, tell us something else, namely the opposite: that the self lives on, even improved, more sensitive and free from pain. This self is intelligent, feels, and has all the senses that the body had, only intensified. This remarkable experience of themselves, in brief moments outside their physical shell, profoundly changes the lives of those who return from “death.” For them, death is simply no longer a reality. Their consciousness, their self that thinks, feels, and loves, transcends the transience of matter. Love is therefore not something that depends on matter, but is part of the self, its consciousness and intelligence. If this love is independent of matter, then logically it also existed before and will probably continue to exist after the existence of the self in the body, as we express it here. And if love existed before the body, since it is not a product of the brain, then so does the self that is love. When this self recognizes itself as something independent of matter, it is suddenly no longer a prisoner of matter, no longer condemned to this life, but merely a visitor on the material plane. And if we are only temporary visitors here, two questions arise: 1. Should we bind ourselves to this reality, submit to it, obey it? and 2. Where is our true home? At this point in our reflections, we ask ourselves again what we want to do with our love if we can accept, albeit with reservations, that we are immortal spirits from another world, from a reality that we cannot see, but can deduce from what we are spiritually, because we reject the idea that our spirituality is generated by hormones or written in our genes. In any case, we could ask: Who wrote the genes? Can intelligence and order come from matter, or is it not more logical to think that an intelligence created everything that consists of matter? Does a house build the architect, or does the architect build the house? Should we not seek out this architect of our genetics and make him our Lord, precisely because he has given us love as an essential part of our lives? Should we not return this love?

Invest wisely. 

19. About two thousand years ago, Jesus, the savior of humanity for the Christian world, climbed a hill and gave us a set of rules for living that undoubtedly form a central core of the morality that God intended for our actions and thoughts. From these guidelines, we have selected for our consideration the one that tells us that it is not possible to serve two masters, because we would inevitably reject and despise one of them. We have chosen it because 1. it defines our weaknesses and excuses for not loving, and 2. we believe that humanity is at a critical moment with regard to this warning concerning our obedience, for we have seen that it is easier to despise God, since the world attracts us so strongly that it seems we must retreat to a monastery in order not to succumb to its temptations if it is our intention that God alone be our master. But escape has never solved conflicts, so it is a matter of remaining steadfast amid the flood of materialistic propaganda; it is a matter of training our will to preserve our love for God despite everything, while we are in this world without being of it. Let us imagine for a moment that our love, which we have already recognized as our most intimate and precious human asset, were a bag full of gold coins. Before us stand two applicants, two contenders for these coins, who ask us to give them to them as an investment in their respective businesses. Each tries in his own way to convince us to invest most of these coins in his project, promising to bring us profits that will more than compensate for our efforts. It turns out that one of the two applicants is lying, and from what we say here, we suspect that it is the one who insists most that we give him the gold we hold in our hands, ready to hand over the bag and with it our lives. The fact is that we have to choose between the two candidates, the one who is quiet and the other who is loud, seductive, and blackmailing, because it is not possible to invest in both companies at the same time. That is the rule of the game: we have to decide, and quickly. The financial rule of portfolio diversification to minimize the risk of ruin does not apply here; we must choose red or black and put all our eggs in one basket. You can speculate with money, but you cannot do so with love. That is why God tells us through Jesus: I'm sorry, that's not possible; you cannot obey me and the world at the same time.

20. We must treat our love with the same consideration and prudence with which we would treat the only purse that is our entire possession. If we invest it in a bad business, we lose everything, but if we give it to the one who is able to increase our wealth because his enterprise is a source of unlimited profitability, we have made the best deal of our lives. This is how love works, a love that is our greatest treasure and with which we should not speculate lightly or allow ourselves to be seduced by those who know our desires and fears, not to protect us, but to exploit them. All advertising in the world is based on techniques for exploiting psychological weaknesses in order to achieve the goals of those who produce it, which are basically to accumulate power and wealth in order to use them as instruments of control. But this consideration should not open our eyes to how vulnerable we are, but rather lead us to act with wisdom in relation to our love, a wisdom based on a true image of our spiritual being. Ultimately, if we are investors in love, we must give this love, which is our life, to the one who is most like us, namely because he created us and is a father to us, and we are his children. And now we can understand why God does not try to convince us to love him with big advertising campaigns. For would a father who loves his children want to rob them of their possessions and their lives, or would he rather wait patiently for them to come to him for protection and advice? Above all, a father gives and takes nothing away from his children, but wants them to grow and become strong. The happiness of his children is his happiness. 

And He came to us. 

21. Perhaps we have now not only understood that God is the best choice to end our untenable hypocrisy of trying to have it both ways, but we have also already made our decision to love God, even if we don't yet know exactly how. God is an infinite and perfect being, and we are us... Now comes the good news: God, who knows how difficult it is to believe in him here on earth, where the blows of fate strike us incessantly, has done the unimaginable; something that only a father would do for his beloved children: He came to earth in person! God became man in Jesus Christ. In doing so, he broke down all the barriers that had existed between us and him since the beginning of humanity. He came to us as the Son of God to show us God as our Father, as he says in John 14:20: “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” -These words completely changed people's relationship with God, who until then had been an unattainable being to be feared. One could only serve God out of a terrible fear of punishment for breaking the law, never out of true love. The churches have played this terrible game to this day. But when we can recognize God as a loving Father, we are able to serve Him in love, which means nothing less than treating each other in harmony and mutual support here on earth, as children of one and the same God. Our decision to love God is therefore based on the oldest and most solid type of relationship possible between two people, namely the family. God took this concept to the extreme by being our father, brother, and friend, living in our world for 33 years and suffering pain, torment, and death. With this act, He laid the foundation for a new covenant between His divine nature and humanity, a covenant based on the love of a large family. To do this, however, we must see ourselves as siblings and God as our Creator and loving Father. And seeing Him this way comes from seeing ourselves as beings who are searching for answers to who they are. Who does a person turn to first for help and advice if not their father or mother? God is both father and mother in the divine marriage between love and wisdom in His Spirit. And if we are children of a God, what are we then, if not gods? Let us not recognize ourselves as advanced primates, which is an insult to our emotional intelligence, but as children of a supreme, eternal being created out of pure love; as spiritual beings created by a Spirit and destined to recognize in ourselves the same perfection, or at least a state very close to it. But all this is spiritual, i.e., transcendent, something that is not bound to matter. The matter we can touch today and the forms we know will be gone tomorrow. The spirit, this force of love, is the indestructible seed of a self that has much more to offer than a temporary role in a short existence, in a body that is destined to turn to dust.

22. So when we get to know ourselves better through meditation and self-observation, we are in a better position to know what we should love and what we should not, because we see ourselves as beings who live primarily on love, a love that has a first cause, an inexhaustible, non-material source that comes from the inevitable primordial being that expresses itself in creation as love. If we are spiritual beings destined to transcend the limits of this earthly life, we must connect in love with the source of our spirituality, which, as we have said, is not generated by our brain or the entire matter of the world, but by a spirit, a consciousness from which all that exists emerges and which we call God. 

23. Now some will say: That all sounds great, but what is this earthly life; what purpose does it serve us? If we are spiritual beings, thoughts of love from an infinite Spirit, what are we doing here, where we rejoice and suffer in a reality that denies with all its might that there is anything beyond it? The answer to this question lies again in love. Love is a connecting force that nourishes the soul. This short life is a final test of love for the soul, which must decide between the matter with which it is connected through the physical senses and which projects its love onto the world and the outside, including its body, and God, whom it must seek within itself as light and love that bring lasting peace and happiness independent of the circumstances and events that affect matter. In love, the soul must recognize its connection with God, or rather, its belonging to him. God can be explored with the mind; we can try to prove his existence scientifically and logically, but in love we accept him so that we are united with God in obedience, as Jesus says in John 14:15-27: If you love me, keep my commandments... On that day you will realize that I am one with my Father and that I am in you and you are in me. - In this wonderful passage from the Bible, we find all the answers to the question of two masters and the impossibility of serving both. In response to these beautiful words of Jesus, Judas, not Iscariot, but another Judas, asks: Master, why do you reveal yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answers with the key to everything, namely love: If anyone loves me, he will obey my word (be obedient), and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Jesus concludes with the words: “I leave you peace and give you my peace; not as the world gives it, I give it to you; your hearts shall not fear nor be dismayed.” If we read this insightful passage from the Gospel of John carefully, God makes a clear distinction between the way the world treats us by making us afraid and the way He treats us by giving us peace. The only thing Jesus asks of us is that if we love him, we obey his commandments. He asks us to make God our only Lord. He also tells us that he will send us the Spirit of Truth, which is our own conscience. This Spirit within us will tell us at every moment what we should do in this life. In two thousand years, few have trusted this spirit that God has given to the soul as an inner guide, because no one understood what Jesus meant, and those who did understand did not tell others, because a humanity with inner light is of no interest to anyone. Thus, the world, which is a system of powers that changes hands in every era, continues to mistreat and subjugate humanity. But Jesus assures us that God will never treat us this way. In other words, He will be a good Lord, more than a Lord, a loving and patient Father. 

Our Dependence

24. We should be aware that our ego, which, as we have seen, is spiritual, is under a lot of pressure on this material plane from a time-bound life that brings illness and death. This constant pressure on the soul pulls us in two directions at once, the spiritual and the material, which we try to reconcile, making us lukewarm hypocrites, for this is exactly what Jesus means when he says that we cannot serve two masters at the same time. God knows that this is precisely the challenge here, because he has placed us between two worlds, the spiritual one, which is shaped by our thoughts and feelings, and the material one, which is determined by our physical needs. We are citizens of two worlds that exist side by side, one outside of us and the other, much less visible, within us. God offers us this life in matter as a final test of freedom, in which our decisions have automatic consequences, also known as karma, not through divine intervention, not as punishment, but as a law of action and reaction. Every step toward the world, as well as every step toward God, will have an effect, sometimes not immediately, but it will have it, just as the attempt to serve both masters at the same time will have it. Moreover, no one can escape the decision to choose one of the two masters; it is not possible to escape it, because our life is dependent. One of the dependencies has fatal consequences, the other frees us from nothing less than death! The soul must learn freely which is which and serve the right master with its love. 

25. The significance of this matter lies in the fact that love creates connection, creates bonds. These bonds are like channels for energy, for life. I can try to maintain a loving relationship with two partners, but Jesus warns us that this does not work, as anyone who has ever led a double life in love knows only too well. And we all have something called a conscience, the spirit of truth, as Jesus proclaims to us in John 14. This conscience will eventually tell me that I am trying to have it both ways and, out of fear of losing, am betting on both players. This conscience, which is a spark of divine light that God has placed in my soul, does not impose itself, for the soul must be absolutely free in its decisions. But the soul has a certain sense of what is right and the ability to understand. The Creator of all life, that incessant force that holds the entire universe together, has given us two things to connect us to him: reason and love. And it is enough to have read the Sermon on the Mount just once for the soul to have no excuse when it makes a mistake in love and tries to serve two masters at the same time: the world, which seduces and pressures it, and God, whom it cannot see and about whom it knows nothing more than what is told to it by those who claim to be mediators of faith and whom it does not really need in order to love God.

26. God also knows our weaknesses quite well. Where Jesus delivers the Sermon on the Mount, God is like our inner voice that urges us to follow the right path for the salvation of our souls (from matter). When we hear or read Christ's warning, it should appeal to our own conscience, which should lead us to correct the course of our love. But the truth is that most of us serve two masters at the same time, ultimately serving the one who seems to make things easier for us. The soul is love, it consists of love and lives on love, whereby love is an attraction that makes it susceptible to seduction due to its need for satisfaction, tranquility, and peace in a relationship. In a world that fuels the fear of separation and loneliness, which affects millions of people, the soul desperately seeks something it can love, something it feels connected to. But after disappointment after disappointment caused by the false promises of the world, which fails to eradicate the evils that torment us, we should remember the words God tells us when he warns us that we cannot serve two masters, because in the end we will hate or reject one of them. If many have rejected God for a short time when the world seemed to fulfill its promises, the time has now inevitably come to turn our love and obedience to this forgotten Lord, who is God, to give him a new chance in the face of the failure of the world's elites and the scientists and academics who work for them thanks to generous subsidies. Jesus' words in John 14 take on their full meaning here: “I do not give to you as the world gives; your hearts shall not fear or be dismayed.” Accustomed to mistreatment and mistrust among ourselves, God shows us a form of mutual relationship, with him and with each other, based on the gracious guidance of his Spirit in our souls.

27. I hope it has become clear to us that what Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount about not being able to serve two masters at the same time because love cannot be divided is true and indisputable. Also, that God is our natural Lord, through the spiritual connection with his being, as it says in the Bible in Genesis 1:26:  Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness! They shall rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the reptiles that crawl on the earth.” But what does God require of us as Lord? God does not want slaves, but to be the loving head of a harmonious cosmic family, a countless multitude of brothers and sisters who treat each other with brotherly love. While the world demands that we fight and separate ourselves from one another, God demands unity and harmony. Serving God means putting ourselves at the service of our fellow human beings, while serving the world means, at best, making our actions appear beneficial to others, a benefit that is often short-lived and tied to contributions and subscriptions, if not financial debt or at the expense of our health. The commandments of the Bible and the new divine revelations (see Emanuel Swedenborg or Jakob Lorber) tell us what God requires of us: God only requires that we love one another, that we treat our brothers and sisters on earth with kindness and compassion, while the world urges us to pursue only our own happiness, to think mainly of ourselves, to enjoy ourselves and gather experiences, even though the best experience we can have happiness is to have been useful and to have helped a brother or sister in need, of whom there are many in this life. The world also advises us to argue and fight to defend our personal rights, while God repeatedly calls for reconciliation, as expressed in the phrases “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek.” So that we can recognize in their commandments the spirit of each Lord, which should make our choice easier, which, as we have already said, does not consist in fleeing from the world and retreating to a monastery, but in being in this world, knowing that we are not of this world; in the certainty, or at least the inkling, that we belong to a better world that corresponds to our true spiritual and loving nature and simply makes us happy by doing good. 

Amen. René Bijloo January 17, 2026.     renebijloo@fastmail.fm