Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/5784

5784 Spiritual knowledge depending on maturity level....

October 9, 1953: Book 63

Complete ignorance is a sign of spiritual lowness, for knowledge of divine-spiritual matters does not depend on a person's intellectual activity or on the amount of knowledge he receives from other people but solely on his soul's maturity, on the degree of his spiritual development, so that the most simple person whose soul already has a degree of maturity as a result of a life of love will form his own truthful picture of God, of his purpose of earthly life, of his relationship with God, his father of eternity.... Emotionally he will only accept the teachings which correspond to truth, earthly he will perhaps not be very appreciated because of his intellectual knowledge, he will be simple-minded and yet think more correctly in the spiritual sphere.... And the little knowledge is enough to cause him to live a way of life which corresponds to God's will, but which then, after his death, will earn him brightest light in the spiritual kingdom in a flash.... Not complete knowledge on earth is proof of the soul's high degree of maturity, for the human being can also acquire spiritual knowledge intellectually, only then it is also more intellectual knowledge than spiritual knowledge if the human being's way of life corresponds to it, and knowledge which therefore cannot yet be considered spiritual treasure can also be lost to the human being again at the moment of death if it was not accepted by the heart but only by the intellect. For even spiritual knowledge can become pure intellectual knowledge through eager study if the soul's ascent development is disregarded, if the soul's degree of maturity is therefore still very low but the intellect, being highly developed, deals with problems which touch spiritual areas. In that case it is not possible to speak of ignorance.... but the 'knower' lacks one thing.... the light.... For no matter how much knowledge he acquires on this path, it still does not give him light so that he can now brightly and clearly recognize all correlations, so that he would be happy about his knowledge. Light can only come to him from within as a result of a life of love.... For only the spirit from God radiates light, which first gives the right life to intellectual knowledge.... And only then is it knowledge which can be valued as spiritual treasure, which is everlasting and is taken over into the spiritual kingdom.... And therefore even the pure truth can only be understood when the spirit from God gives enlightenment to the human being, which always presupposes a degree of maturity of soul which can only be achieved through a way of life according to God's will.... The state of light, the realization, after the human being's death is then also corresponding, and a good but simple-minded person who had little knowledge on earth can be surrounded by more radiant light upon his entry into the kingdom of the beyond than a person with spiritual knowledge who lacked love on earth and to whom the spirit from God had not yet found access....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers