Deference (Honour, Respect, Veneration) and Venerability...

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Ehrfurcht (Ehrung, Ehrerbietung, Ehrwürdigung) und Ehrwürdigkeit sind die Urkräfte aller Erkenntnis
Deference (Honour, Respect, Veneration) and Venerability are the Primal Powers of all Cognition

By Vibka Wallder, 8^th December 2012

This is the first ‘rule of order’ (Ordnungsregel) listed in the book Genesis^[1] which is then followed by 143 interpreting explanations. The rules were transmitted to Billy in 1975 from the pure spirit level Petale.

Here are the first three explanations, which I would like to investigate further:

“1. Ehrfurcht (Ehrung, Ehrerbietung, Ehrwürdigung) und Ehrwürdigkeit (Heiligung) sind die grundlegenden Voraussetzungen, die urtümlichen Kräfte aller Erkenntnisse.“ (Genesis p. 79)

“1. Deference (honour, respect, veneration) and venerability (honouring) are the fundamental pre-conditions, the primeval powers of all cognition.”

Symbol for Deference

Symbol for Ehrfurcht - Deference^[2]

“ 2. Das bedeutet, dass im Menschen ehrwürdige Ehrfurcht (Ehrung, Ehrerbietung, Ehrwürdigung, Ehrwürdigkeit) vor und in allen Dingen herrschen muss, wenn er Erkenntnisse erlangen will.“ (Genesis p. 79)

“2. That means that in the human being, venerable deference (honour, respect, veneration, and venerability) for and in all things must prevail if he/she wants to obtain cognition.”

“3. Ehrwürdig (heilig) sind alle Dinge, sowohl die positiven wie auch die negativen, die in gleichem Masse geachtet werden sollen in Ehrfurcht (Ehrung, Ehrerbietung), insofern sie keiner Ausartung anheimfallen.“ (Genesis p. 79)

“3. Venerable (honourable) are all things, the positive ones as well as the negative ones, which must be respected in deference (honour, respect) in equal measure, as long as they do not fall prey to any Ausartung.

I’d like to give two examples of how I witnessed the rules being violated. Both examples come from my work in an Australian country hospital, and the fact that they are still so fresh in my mind, shows what impact it can have on other human beings if we do not follow these principles.

First example: An older doctor calls me over to the front of the nurses’ station, from where we can look into the room opposite. He points to a bed on the right with the words, “Do you see that man over there? I want you to treat him with respect, because he is an OBE (Order of the British Empire)”.

Now what was the doctor really saying? He certainly wanted me to treat this patient with respect, but to me it also sounded like, “When he says ‘jump’ I want you to ask ‘how high?’”. He clearly wanted me to treat this gentleman preferentially, which is not in accordance with the first rule of order, which states that we treat everyone and everything with deference in equal measure.

The irony with this doctor is that he would always refer to me as the ‘Hun’ or ‘Wog’, until - after ignoring it for a while - I stood up to him and told him that I did not like to be treated like that. From then on he treated me like every other nurse.

I responded to the doctor by putting my hands on my hips and saying, “I treat all my patients with respect, thank you very much”, turned on my heels and went back to work.

The second example: One day during handover the nurses were talking about a young female indigenous person. She was about 16 years old and had her tonsils removed two days earlier. The nurse handing over finished her report with a snide tone of voice, “…and she hasn’t had a shower yet!” As it happened, I was assigned to the room, so I went into the room, greeted my patients, checked all their charts in order to prioritise my workload, and then I asked the young girl, who was still on intravenous fluids, “Would you like me to assist you with a shower?” With big round eyes and a surprised look on her face she asked, “Can I have a shower?” So it appeared to me that this poor girl did not know that she could have a shower whilst on a drip, and it seemed that my colleagues had not bothered offering her the appropriate assistance. Could it be that they had some prejudice towards indigenous people and that they had neglected her and failed in their duty of care?
So let’s go back to the first two explanations:

Deference (honour, respect, veneration) and venerability (honouring) are the fundamental pre-conditions, the primeval powers of all cognition, and that means that it must prevail in us if we want to obtain cognition.
So how do we develop ‘…deference for and in all things’ and make it prevail?

By treating all human beings with the same respect, regardless of their social status, achievements in life, skin colour, age, and so forth. In other words, we do not grovel, but we do not neglect them either, rather we give each one of them the same attention, respect, assistance and so forth that we would expect for ourselves.

By caring for and respecting every living creature on this planet and not harming them unnecessarily. So when we kill animals for our consumption, we do it in the most humane manner; but ultimately we strive for growing the meat in factories. And when we need to kill vermin to protect our health or food, we should also do it with minimal suffering for the creature.

By protecting the environment: If we treat our environment carelessly by wasting precious resources, then we do not show the appropriate venerable deference to a planet, which was created over a period of millions of years for the benefit of evolution. And we do not show respect to the next generations, who may struggle to live with dignity, because of the wastefulness of preceding generations. We need to learn to appreciate nature as much as man-made things, and we must do everything in our power to protect it all and try not to contribute to this ‘throw-away’ society.

By being punctual for meetings and appointments. If we are not punctual, we are not showing deference/respect towards the other person/s, who has/have been made to wait.

By expressing our deference/respect for human beings in our speech.
In contact report 169^[3] Billy and Quetzal discuss that talking is supposed to be a means for communication and should really only be used for that purpose, and that all communication should be of a harmonious nature. In this context Billy and Quetzal refer to slander and back biting in particular, which many human beings engage in, and which hinders them in their own evolution, because of the negative effects on their consciousness. But using strong language like swear words or calling other persons names could not be considered harmonious either, because they always hurt someone, and I think that using them shows a lack of deference, honour, respect and veneration. Just think about how easily and readily people use the f-word these days. It has become very common, and many of my fellow human beings seem to think that it is cool to use it, and that I am old-fashioned because I don’t. But to me using the f-word or other strong language is a sign of the decline of our society, how our communication and respect for each other is diminishing, and how little control we have over our emotions when we use swear words like that.

Freedom and peace on this planet can only be obtained with deference, honour, respect and veneration. Many of us may think that we are already doing our bit towards freedom and peace on this planet and that we are not the ones causing all the trouble, because we are not fighting with our neighbours and we are peace loving in general. It’s usually the others that are upsetting the apple cart. However, if every night we honestly reflect back on our day and think about our thoughts, words and actions, we will probably find that we have strayed off the path somewhere along the line and that there is room for improvement, because every thought of envy, jealousy, dislike, hatred and so forth can subconsciously lead to a negative word or action, which in turn then breaches this first rule of order.

Contributing to freedom and peace means that we consider and respect others’ right to decide, their wishes, their needs and personalities and that we do not try to curtail their way of life; that we do not try to push our opinion on them in the slightest manner. It means that we accept others as they are, with their peculiarities, ideas, wishes, needs and so forth, and that we do not try to change them, or judge them in any way.

The only person one can change for the better is oneself, and if we develop more deference, honour, respect and veneration within us we will gain cognition and contribute to peace in this world.

Symbol for Cognition

Symbol for Erkenntnis - Cognition

“Nur durch das Erschaffen von Erkenntnissen vermag sich der Mensch Wissen und Weisheit sowie wahre Liebe aufzubauen”. ^[4]

“Only through the creation of cognition is the human being able to build up knowledge and wisdom as well as true love”, which are fundamental to our evolution.

The abilities and powers for it rest idle in our consciousness and we can experience everything and obtain cognition, knowledge, wisdom and love if we develop certain powers within us through studying the spiritual teaching, thinking about it, working through it, applying it to our daily life and thus developing the powers of understanding and ability.

Petale further states in the ‘interpreting explanations’ that the door to cognition opens according to a distinct ‘rule of order’ (Ordnungs-Regel); and below I have summarised a few points from the explanations:

It begins with developing a favourable fundamental mood of our consciousness and psyche, and the basic factor for it is deference and control. Deference here is not meant in the sense of putting someone or something on a pedestal and which leads to submissiveness, but rather seeing others as equals with equal values.

By the same token, criticism must only be applied in equalisedness so that it does not turn into judging others and thus to a damaging factor.

Therefore we need to continuously work hard and energetically on ourselves, study the spiritual teaching and experience it through our own thinking and action.

We may seek a teacher, who can explain the teaching to us, but the real work happens within ourselves. Through self-education we must tune ourselves into deference and so forth and must search for it in our environment, in other human beings, in animals and plants and approach each and everyone in equalisedness.

We must not see only the good or only the bad, but rather see both equally for what they are, namely factors of life that are necessary for evolution.

Therefore, we must never be judgemental, rather be discerning and respecting and make this our internal and external rule of life.

This rule of order must be a part of our consciousness, as well as our thoughts and feeling and our psyche and we should endeavour to keep it in our fine-spiritual perception, feelings and thoughts, whether we are awake or asleep, whether we are alone or in company.

This is our starting point if we want to enter the mysteries of the spiritual teaching and gain higher knowledge and useful cognitive skills and powers.

We must constantly endeavour to find and create deference (honour, respect, veneration) and venerability (honouring), so that they become a constant feature in our consciousness and replace thoughts and feelings of non-deference, disrespect, and so on, as well as snide criticism and erroneous appraising of others.

Completely silent and unnoticeable to the outside world, a change will occur within us when we walk the path of cognition and develop deference. Only the knowing ones, who ‘speak’ the language of the spiritual teaching, will notice the change in us.

We will continue with our work and obligations as usual, because the change happens internally, invisible and unrecognisable to the uninitiated ones.

But in us the sprouting deference (honour, respect, veneration) and venerability (honouring) illuminates the life of the consciousness and the psyche.

And in the sprouting general mood, our entire consciousness-life and psyche-life suddenly finds a beaming and warming epicentre, which rises like the sun, which by means of its rays, frees everything that lies dormant in the darkness and awakens it to life by means of its warmth.

It won’t be easy in the beginning to realise that deference (honour, respect, veneration) and venerability (honouring) are the basic factors of all cognition, because we are still caught up in some belief, and through our belief assume that cognition is merely a skill in itself and a pure thought process. But it’s not; cognition is achieved through deference, honour, respect…

However, all cognition has its origin in our consciousness and thoughts as well as our feelings.

Therefore we need to learn to control our feelings, thoughts and fine-spiritual perception and steer them with the appropriate strength according to need.

We must also learn to create them consciously and to work with them.

References:

Meier, BEA 1975/2011, GENESIS (Schöpfungs-Genesis), 2. Auflage, Wassermannzeit-Verlag, CH-8495 Schmidrüti, Schweiz [available in German only] (page 79).

Meier, BEA 2004, Symbole der Geisteslehre, Wassermannzeit-Verlag, CH-8495 Schmidrüti, Schweiz [available in German only].

Meier, BEA 2004, Plejadisch-plejarische Kontaktberichte Block 4, Wassermannzeit-Verlag, CH-8495 Schmidrüti, Schweiz [available in German only] (page 415)

Meier, BEA 2012, Lehrschrift für die Lehre der Wahrheit, Lehre des Geistes, Lehre des Lebens, Wassermannzeit-Verlag, CH-8495 Schmidrüti, Schweiz [available in German only] (page 11)