The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and the Priests of the Temple (John 5)
- Chapter 30 -
The power of light.
Says Philopold: "Lord, it so to speak begins to dawn on me, but my mind boggles when I realize Your immense wisdom! Nevertheless I ask You to continue."
2
Say I: "This I shall do; but take care to comprehend it and imprint it on your soul.
3
Let us now speak of the light. Look at the light of this brightly glowing, pure naphtha lamp. It lights up this large room to such an extend that we are all able to see and recognize each other well. What do you think: Would not a hundred such brightly burning lamps spread a hundred times stronger light in the room? You say: 'Certainly, for one can convince oneself of it more than enough at festive illuminations.' Correct, say I. However, imagine now a million such lights somewhere on a mountain. Would they not, collectively, quite brightly illumine a fairly large area? Most certainly! Yet, although they would illumine an area at quite a distance, they could not in the least be compared with the light of the full moon which, although it does not appear exactly too large to the eye, still at once illuminates quite well half the earth. What, then, is the light of the moon compared with the light of the sun?
4
Now visualize the whole firmament bathed in sunlight. Could any mortal bear such a tremendous light even for a moment without being instantly destroyed and vaporized, like a drop of water on glowing metal? I tell you: The effect of the light and its indescribable heat would already be so great that even this whole earth would not fare better within a few moments, nor would hundreds of thousands more of such earths.
5
Can you see the vast difference between the light of this lamp and a so widely expanded sunlight?
6
Yet there are in the vast space of creation primordial central suns which are myriads of times greater than this sun of our day, although our sun is a million times greater than the whole earth. Such primordial central suns have a proportionately greater and stronger light, in whose closer proximity suns like ours would also evaporate instantly, just like the drop of water on glowing metal.
7
Now potentize this material light force as much as you like, almost infinitely, and you will find the same proportion between all this potentized light of the space-and-time suns and the divine light as the one you found to apply to motion and force.
8
Since the divine light cannot ever be equaled in space and time, it clearly follows that the pure spiritual light of God, as well as the immeasurable living warmth of the love issuing from the light, cannot be contained within time and space but only outside of these two.
9
That there is, however, nevertheless a true and ever effective correspondence between the primordial light of God and the merely partially created light of the sun you can easily see from the fact that also the light of the sun possesses the power to enliven the created beings on the worlds and earths, of which you can amply convince yourself every spring. - Do you now understand better how and in what way everything purely spiritual must necessarily be contained outside of time and space?"