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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Franchezzo
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Those who lived their Earth-lives immersing themselves in violence, deception, manipulation, and cruelty, sink to such low estate that they appear as wild beasts with claws, bodies bent like apes, snarling like wolves (candidates, in our world, for such devolvement would be the “worst who get on top”, the totalitarians posing as benefactors as they pillage the nation). Is there hope for those who suffer such degradation?
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like wild beasts, tearing at each other's throats
Presently another party of dark spirits approached, carrying what looked like bags with some sort of treasure. Immediately they were attacked by the first-comers. They had no weapons in their hands but they fought like wild beasts with teeth and claws, their finger nails being like the claws of a wild animal or a vulture. They fastened upon each other's throats and tore them.
fighting over what they believed to be gold but in fact were lumps of rock
They scratched and bit like tigers or wolves, till one half at least were left lying helpless upon the ground, while the rest rushed off with the treasure (which to me seemed only lumps of hard stone)...
They were more like savage beasts than men, even their bodies were bent like a beast's, the arms long like an ape's, the hands hard, and the fingers and nails like claws, and they half walked and half crawled on all-fours.
The faces could scarcely be called human, the very features had become bestial, while they lay snarling and showing their long teeth like wolves. I thought of the strange wild tales I had read of men changing into animals, and felt I could almost have believed these were such creatures. In their horrible glaring eyes there was an expression of calculation and cunning which was certainly human, and the motions of their hands were not like those of an animal; moreover they had speech and were mingling their howls and groans with oaths and curses and foul language unknown to animals.
do these perverted ones still have souls
"Are there souls even here ?" I asked.
Again came the answer, "Yes, even here. Lost, degraded, dragged down and smothered, till almost all trace is lost, yet even here there are the germs of souls … They have so brutalised themselves that almost all trace of the human is merged in the wild animal. Their instincts were those of savage beasts, now they live like beasts and fight like them."
does hope remain for them
"And for them is there still hope? can anyone help them? " I asked.
"Even for these there is hope, though many will not avail themselves of it for ages yet to come…"
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