Lecture V

Wherever you go in the world, when speaking from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness, you can never say of beings that one is temporal and another eternal. To say that here is a temporal being or there an eternal being has no meaning for spiritual consciousness. Real meaning lies in something quite different. What underlies existence—the passing moment and eternity—is everywhere and forever, and the only way to put the question is, “How comes it that eternity sometimes appears as the passing moment, that the eternal sometimes appears temporal, and that a being in the world assumes a form that is temporal?” It simply comes from this, that sensory existence, wherever it occurs, is interspersed with Luciferic beings, and to the extent that these beings play into sensory existence, eternity is rendered temporal. It must therefore be said, “A being appearing anywhere in time is eternal insofar as it has power to liberate itself from the Luciferic existence, but insofar as it is subject to it, it remains temporal.”