Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 12 -
LANGUAGE
30 January 1871
LAST night two of your brothers discussed the style, or the kind of syntax, often prevailing in My dictates to you which is not always in accordance with their concepts of German grammar.
The first critical remark by your brother M. was that sometimes in his attempts to change it he still had to return to the sequence of words as set by Me, whereupon your brother L. gave him the good answer, saying that one shall not read My words with the head, but with the heart, and their meaning will always be clear.
Since the latter hit the nail on the head through his remark, I will elucidate for you the manner in which one should express oneself, the right syntax and, finally, a fundamental truth which applies to My entire creation, beginning with the just suggested doubt of your brother
M. and ending with the great spiritual man. Before entering fully into a more detailed explanation of your question, namely, why My style often differs from yours, we must as always begin with the basics and ask:
"What is language? How did it come into being? And who was the actual head who set down the sequence of words in the way you now read, write and think?"
Always proceeding from the most simple, one arrives most easily at the right and truly valuable conclusion which, built on solid, simple and firm ground, is like a house firmly built on rock, which cannot ever be destroyed.
To start with the very first question: "What is language?", we have to answer:
Language is a combination of different sounds produced by parts of the mouth, which in their diversity, often singly, often in association, express a word, and the word, a concept.
The lower the spiritual level of a people, the fewer requirements it has and therefore requires fewer words to express its needs and to mark various objects.
Thus, language came into being when through articulating sounds and uttered tones one either wanted to imitate the notes of certain sounding objects or invented actual sounds meant to express one or the other need, be it of the body or of the soul; such as you still find in baby language, where in every family from a child's first babble to a better communication every child has its own peculiar way of expressing its need.
What you observe daily with children was also once the case with the original people, who had to invent many words themselves, but many others they learned from My spirit-world through their intimate contact with the same, words which always in correspondence denote the object in question spiritually.
When mankind increased in numbers, indeed already after the fall of the first man, whereby communication with the spirits was severed until your time, language and minor dialects have formed by the thousands. People no longer understand each other and the languages of the nations one wants to contact have to be learned, otherwise a mutual understanding is impossible.
Of course, these several thousands of languages now existing underwent many changes from the time of their origin to the present. Some have progressed, some regressed, in keeping with the cultural level and the spiritual development of the peoples as such.
But wherever a language exists, or existed, one of its characteristics, apart from the names of objects and concepts peculiar to the language, was also the way of combining the words into a sentence and, finally, also the way of recording them either in script or pictorially.
As for syntax, where your two brothers have just exchanged their thoughts on the method used by Me, the first question is: "How actually is the same to be handled properly?"
Look, here we have arrived at that point where, in contrast to the way you are accustomed to write, I often express Myself differently.
In order to explain this to you, let us enter into a discussion and first ask:
"What is a sentence?" A sentence is the expression of a thought at the bottom of which is the explanation of either a concept or an action.
Therefore, if I want to explain an action, the sentence should first contain the acting verb, as the expression of the will to act, and should only then be followed by the word describing the action.
At least in the language of every spirit the first fundamental thought is: I want to do something, followed by what I want to do.
Thus it says in the Bible: "And He created the light", but not: "He has the light created" (this is typically German syntax), as you are used to write; the word "create" precedes the word "light".
Well, in My dictates this same syntax is often found and L. was quite right. Reading it with the heart, namely spiritually, it is right as I dictated it and as it is customary in almost all the old languages of the Orient and Asia, and also in some newer ones. However, in yours (the German language) it is avoided by inserting the noun between the auxiliary and the main verb, even whole sentences in such a way as to make the actual verb stating what is really going to happen, appear at the end.
Since at the basis of everything there is a spiritual "Why", also here it is again the Spiritual which justifies My syntax and replacing "Spiritual" with "heart", it means as much as: If you leave aside your intellect and, like My spirits, think only with the heart, you will readily accept My syntax, as soon as you abandon the inner language of the soul and go over to an intellectually orientated, or outer life, you lose also this order, as happened with the recording of the languages.
All the ancient languages of Asia and Africa are like the universal spirit-language. It should be written down to be read only from right to left, whereas with the languages of your present mankind which lives only outwardly, or according to the intellect, the exact opposite is practiced, that means from left to right.
This inversion, too, points to the said difference, namely, material versus Spiritual.
In the material sphere, as for instance in the human body, the left side is the side of the heart from where the blood flows into the whole body; it is the positive or spiritual side, while the right side from where the blood is transported to the lungs and later back to the heart, is the negative, material side.
What is conveyed through the ear to the soul's organ of feeling and emotion, or to the spiritual man, from the outer world, is the negative aspect, and what the soul tells the outer world through its motive tools, the positive aspect.
Every thing has also two sides, a right and a left, a negative and a positive, an inner and an outer aspect.
The human skin is inside, on the left side, positive, on the outside or right side, negative. In its positive aspect it eliminates, whereupon it changes its poles and absorbs, being negative. This happens countless times at every moment. For repulsion and attraction, friction and generated warmth, destruction and newly creating are the first principle of life.
The eye, as the receptive organ for the outside impressions, is negative, but as mirror of within, positive.
What here is designated as "positive" and "negative" is, expressed in different terms, in the spirit-life a drawing to, or a distancing from, Me and My laws.
In the early times, when the people and the nations were still closer to the spirit-life, they invented their languages according to their spiritual state; accordingly their syntax and script. However, when gradually they turned away from the great natural law, taking the wrong path, also their ways of expression and writing became perverted, so that the majority of newer languages have a wrong style and a wrong manner of writing.
People have exchanged the spirit-language of the heart for the brain-language of the intellect and have turned away from Me and from their own mission. For this reason, many a thing in nature appears to them quite wrong which once appeared just right to primitive people living a simple life.
Thus you see that there is from heart to heart, or through the heart or through the intellect a to and fro, a drawing near and distancing, a betterment and a worsening.
What I told you earlier about the skin, applies to every fruit, every tree and to every object; everywhere there are two aspects by which the intelligence of the within manifests to the outer world, or receives impressions from the outer world, and they are everywhere positive - negative, right - wrong, everywhere a drawing near and a distancing, eliminating and absorbing, straightforward or reversed.
Thus it continues in the entire creation - up to the great cosmic man, whose viscera consist in nothing else but suns, comets and planets, and up to the still endlessly greater spiritual cosmic man, whose inner arrangements are all heavens of the most diverse kinds and beatitudes.
These too absorb for their sustenance from without what they then change within into Spiritual, ejecting or expelling what the cosmic man requires in spiritual substance.
There, the right order prevails, there, My heaven is the heart in the center and the great positive pole which lets all the goodness emanate; and the spirits in the material world are the negative pole which returns to Me all the Spiritual purified, having first to change from the negative into the positive pole, whereby the change is initiated anew.
This is the great fundamental law of creation: I, Love, am the positive pole and you and My spirits and angels, as absorbing components, are the negative pole until, after much absorbing and repelling, which is equivalent to movement, or life, finally My positive pole, as Spiritual forever and immutably existing, will alone remain and all that was absorbed, spiritualized like Me, will enjoy eternal peace and bliss and only gentle attraction, but no repulsion can occur any longer.
Of course, eons upon eons of time will pass until then, but it will happen that spirit and matter, thus purified and spiritualized, will renounce their principles given them as first impulse and what once could only secure its permanence through conflict and dissolution, will be living peacefully side by side and within each other, so that there will be unity among all.
Now you see, My dear children, beginning with the minor question and L.'s answer and ending with the spirit-man, the same bond linking them with all the creations; there as a minor question as to the syntax in your language, and here in immense, for you unthinkable distances as power of attraction and repulsion.
From this you may learn how little is required to discover and elucidate a whole great truth, a great fundamental law of My divine Household. Of course, it requires also Him who can explain it to you; who has ordained the same way to all these great and small worlds, to all these objects, be they spiritual or material. It requires your Father, who wants to explain to you such great miracles in minor questions, thereby showing you how much and how little is needed to understand, firstly, My magnitude and, secondly, My love, and learn to value the same! Amen.