The Ten Commandments of God

THOU SHALT NOT KILL!

Yes, beat your chest, oh man, and proclaim loudly that you are no murderer! For, surely, to kill is to murder, and according to your conviction you have never transgressed this Commandment of the Lord. Proudly you can step before Him, and without fear and anxiety look forward, filled with hope, to the opening of this particular page in the Book of your Life.

But have you ever considered, in this regard, that there is for you also a deadening, and that to deaden means the same as to kill?

There is no difference between them. You alone made this difference up, in your form of expression, in your language; for the Commandment does not say one-sidedly: Thou shalt kill no gross material earth-life! But in a broad, comprehensive way, it says succinctly: Thou shalt not kill!

For example, a father had a son. Petty ambition drove the father to insist that his son should go to college, at all costs. But this son possessed gifts that urged him to do something else, for which college would be of no use to him at all. So it was quite natural that the son felt no inclination toward such forced studies, nor was he able joyfully to summon up the energy. The son was obedient. At the expense of his health he exerted himself to comply with his father’s will. However, since it was against the son’s nature, against the gifts he bore within him, it was quite natural that his body also suffered under it. I will not pursue the case here any further; it is repeated in earthly life so often that the cases would run into the hundreds of thousands, and even more. But it is an irrefutable fact that through his ambition or obduracy the father here sought to deaden something in this son which was given to the son to be developed on earth! In many cases he is successful in actually deadening it, since its development in later life is hardly possible anymore, because the healthy main strength for it has been broken in its best time, wantonly wasted on things alien to the boy’s nature.

The father thereby committed a severe trespass against the Commandment: Thou shalt not kill! This is quite apart from the fact that by his action he deprived mankind of something which might have been of great benefit to them through the boy! However, he must consider that although the boy is or can be spiritually related to him or to the mother, nevertheless before the Creator he remains a personality of his own, whose duty it is to develop for his own benefit the gifts he received on coming to earth. Perhaps the Grace of God had thereby granted the boy redemption of a heavy karma, in that he was meant to invent something, which in some way would bring great benefit to mankind! The guilt of this prevention weighs all the more heavily upon the father or the mother, who set their petty earthly views above the great threads of fate, and thereby abused their parental power.

It is no different when parents are capable of allowing the petty earthly calculations of their intellect to prevail in connection with their children’s marriages. How often is a most noble intuitive perception of their child therewith ruthlessly stifled, through which action the child may indeed be given freedom from earthly cares, but at the expense of his soul’s happiness, which remains more incisive for the child’s existence than all money and earthly possessions.

Naturally the parents should not indulge every dream or wish of a child. That would not be fulfilling their parental duty. But serious examination is demanded, which must never be one-sided in the earthly sense! However, it is just this examination in a selfless way which is seldom or never employed by parents. Such cases exist in a thousand forms. It is not necessary for me to say any more about it. Reflect on it yourselves, so that you do not transgress this most weighty Word of God in the Commandment! In so doing unimagined paths will open up to you!

However, it is also possible for the child to stifle the justified hopes of its parents! If it does not develop its inherent gifts as is necessary in order to achieve great things, once the parents have accommodated the child by letting it choose the path it asked for. This, too, leads to the killing of noble intuitive perceptions in his parents, and the child has transgressed the Commandment in a ruthless way!

This also applies when a man in some way deceives true friendship or the confidence someone gives to him. He therewith kills and injures in the other person something which bears real life! It is transgression of God’s Word: Thou shalt not kill! It brings him bad karma for which he must atone.

You see that all the Commandments are but the best friends for mankind, in order to protect them faithfully from evil and from suffering! Therefore love them and respect them as a treasure, the guarding of which brings you only joy! —