Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 23 -
LIFE OF SPIRITS AND COSMIC LIFE
24 February 1873
EARLIER, in the chapters on "The World of Thought" and on "Life", I have shown you in a few words the many-sidedness of spiritual life, and how it must be understood, so as to have a dim concept of My world and of My might.
In "Words for Short-Sighted People" I have admonished you to study My nature in its vastness. For a great, almighty Creator you can more easily grasp and understand in His great works, although to a thorough investigator on his round in My insignificant works I must also appear great, unrivalled in the tiniest infusorian.
I have said all this in advance so that you may always keep your spiritual eyes and ears open in order to perceive the stream of spiritual light and the tone or the voice of My spiritual cosmic language as it proclaims to you in, and out of, all that is created, the great hymn of eternal love and of never ceasing Mercy, which at every step and with every pulse-beat preaches to you of the Father's love and His grace.
In the word on "Time" I informed you as to what time is and how you shall use it, and under "Human Dignity" I told you what you should do and should not do in order to become My children in My image, and how you should act in worthiness of this image. Under "The World of Thought" I explained to you how everything materially created, every deed will once be weighed and judged only according to its origin, the idea behind it. Now I am sending you another word, full of sublime creational spirit, so as to more clearly present to you a new view of My creation and My aim with it. This will make you learn to see and, in the midst of the worldly chaos and the bustle of worldlyhuman passions, recognize that far beyond all the physical-material it is the Spirit, My will, the great supporter of all that is created, which makes the same come into being, sustains it for a while and then by changing its form leads it towards a higher goal.
In "The World of Thought" I told you that the thought, the guiding principle, is superior to anything material, that it is indeed the basis for all that exists. And now I will prove to you that the bustle of the world of thought, when the latter is considered as a spirit-realm, is also the actual factor in all-manifesting life, in all that exists and perishes. For in order to understand and grasp My creation, which is only a spiritual product, you must think as spirits, must contemplate My work as spitits, and must regard the course of the entire spiritual-material life as spirits, if you wish to form a proper idea of Me, of My creation, its duration and of yourselves. Otherwise you are blind in the midst of the shining light of My wonders, in the midst of the great harmony-concert of My music of the spheres and My cosmic music, to be likened to the deaf.
And so I will now take you with Me on a spiritual flight through the spirit world divested of all matter, so that you may recognize and grasp who He is who created the world surrounding you, why He created it and why He endowed you, as well as all the intelligent beings living as spirits, according to their capacity, with means enabling you to understand and grasp Him, the almighty Lord and Creator, as well as Him, the Father who loves you everlastingly.
You see, the world, both the great spirit-world and the material world, which is merely an envelope of the former, was created so as to visibly express what, invisible for material beings, for a long time had been and forever will be existing in the spirit-realm, as the primordial carrier of all that is beautiful, true and good, as an expression of Myself and My attributes.
This visible material world, which, merely enveloping what is spiritual, must serve as a guide and a means to perfect this great material world, beginning with the central suns to the tiniest infusorian, has thus the sole purpose of leading the spiritual laid into it to a higher level through matter. However, only the Spiritual imprisoned in matter is destined to always stimulate matter to this perfecting process, so that it alone can remain at the end of all purified and spiritualized matter as a permanent, never-to-be-destroyed eternal, thus bearing witness to Him who created it and who, as an eternal God, could only create what is eternal, but not ever what is transient.
Now look, My children! Rise above matter and regard everything created as a spiritual product and it will become clear to your spiritual eye what spiritual life and what material life is. For spiritual life is the eternal urge of the spirit bound in matter, and material life is the changes manifesting through this urge in the visible material world, such as coming into being, existing and passing away.
Well, the whole of infinity is full of spiritual beings, because infinity constitutes Myself, just as your body constitutes visibly the core of your soul.
All the Spiritual in infinity has its expedient progress, everything has its purpose, its Why, where it must be bound, where loosed and when, if bound in matter, it can again, freed of the same, exist as an independent Spiritual!
Thus the present world came into being, thus ever new worlds will emerge from the ones which dissolved and passed away, and thus infinity establishes itself as a concept comprehensible also to finite beings.
Just as the smallest spiritual particle, imprisoned in hard rock and manifesting its life through matter, always urges the rock towards a transformation, a dissolution to become on higher levels something different, so also whole cosmic systems, whole spaces and even, finally, the entire visible world. It is this spiritual-material urge, called "life" because it manifests as motion, as action, which, everywhere the same, according to the same principle urges on the smallest worm as well as the greatest solar body, or the angel-spirit still clothed in material envelopment, to higher levels, higher beatitudes and greater delights.
Your own body should only serve toward the soul's spiritualization, by a proper conduct and as a right tool letting itself be used only for actions worthy of a human being and thereby effecting and speeding up the spiritualization process of your soul. Likewise, the greatest central sun and the entire great universal man who has a task which cannot be calculated in terms of time, so that the Spiritual, more and more liberated, free, led towards higher levels, can fulfill its purpose.
Just as in "The World of Thought" I have elucidated for you the entire spiritual sphere, which is actually the carrier of all that is visible, I now want to make you understand and grasp the idea of a spiritual life, which urges matter to spiritualize itself, whereby it becomes visible to your eyes as material life.
This urging and driving goes on incessantly, like the flow of time, the life of the world of thought. Coming into being, temporary existence and again passing away, these are the visible proofs of the never-resting spirit-world: forever the urge to move forward and upward! From the smallest ether-atom upwards everything drives towards a beginning, an existing and passing away or a passing into a higher order.
Look at your own world with spiritual eyes, how varied are the changes there, how much Spiritual is freed at any moment, voluntarily or involuntarily, to enter into other combinations.
Watch the living beings and animals of every kind, what a consuming, what murder!
Even you people, how many spiritual lives even you destroy daily, so as to provide food or exquisite dainty morsels for your stomach!
How many animals you dispatch to the other world because you have nothing spiritual to occupy your mind and, as with needless hunts, only the pleasure in murder is your pastime!
Millions upon millions of released souls of the animal world fail through this not always justifiable behavior their real destiny of reaching their goal on a slow road. Most of their spiritual particles must first pass through the consumer and in and through him continue their further progress.
But, although this happens, where many a thing is contrary to My will and to My laws, it does not in the least delay the universal developmental progress to which I have subjected the world, but this developmental progress is only speeded up by such an albeit unlawful conduct. And if trespasses against My laws result in dire consequences, only the perpetrators and plotters of such calamities themselves are punished, namely, through their own behavior. But nothing prevents Me, in accordance with My intended plans, from leading My worlds to maturity, from receiving back My Spiritual, which I had laid into them, spiritualized!
Thus the entire visible world and its visible life are only the apparent, which has as its basis the more profound Spiritual. And so, not only with the smallest animalcule or the solid rock, but also with great worlds, the duration of everything depends on the liberation of its Spiritual bound in its covering.
As with you human beings after the natural course of your life, death should only occur when your soul has matured for the transition to the beyond, so it is with worlds and central suns. Once everything in them is spiritualized, they pass away or dissolve gradually, become more and more spiritualized and their matter becomes lighter and lighter until it is like air or gas, when they (the worlds) will only be destined for beings clad in the lightest material envelopments.
Just as your own body will ultimately on the highest spiritual level no longer be clothed in this heavy matter with which you are encumbered today; also your earth will be spiritualized in the distant future, carrying instead of solid, heavy matter only ethereal substances, ethereal dwellers, who, spiritualizing themselves more and more in step with their earth globe, also pass over, not through great cataclysmic events, but together with their abode, to other circumstances which will be suitable to their spiritual level of understanding.
So you see how the spiritual life develops gradually from the material, how the one is merely the expression of the other. And you understand more easily how I created the worlds and have an idea as to how great must be the periods of time necessary to effect such processes of spiritualization. However, you still have no spiritual vision to see the velocity of thought with which this developmental process occurs. You still have no idea as to what a time-second achieves million-fold relative to this process of purification and ennoblement. You even fail to recognize in the worldly political bustle of your small earth globe the spiritual wind that makes the great strings of the spiritual world-instrument vibrate. The harmonies are sounding throughout infinity; but you behave like people who are deaf and dumb, fail to recognize, see and hear how everything rushes with the speed of a tempest, with the velocity of the world of thought, to prepare the way for the process of liberation from the imprisoned matter.
You read newspaper articles, but you fail to read between the lines, to conjecture behind the words, as material earners of a spiritual world of thought, the great spirit-life behind them, which, far above all petty calculations and human sophistry, pursues its course of development unhampered. For this very reason I will again give you a hint so that you may wake up from your worldly dreams and clearly realize that far beyond all earthly mountains and thrones, up there in yonder spiritworld other laws are valid than those written in the human codex. These laws give life to both a central sun and to the tiniest atom so that they will be able to fulfill their purpose through it, that means to spiritualize themselves and thus again draw near the source of all light from where they were once sent forth so as to pass through their process of life and development individually, be it as a great world globe or as a worm.
You are driven more by a thirst for knowledge to read My words. So far you have not grasped one word, as a spiritual man, as My offspring could grasp it. Your life is still too materially orientated, you still belong always more to the world and not to yourselves, let alone to Me. For this very reason I must send you from time to time words of admonition so that you may awaken, so that you may, at least in the time of spiritual concentration, be able to soar above the ordinary life. That you may open your eves and ears to that which always and incessantly radiates and sounds towards you from all corners of creation, namely, that you are spirits, who, only for a short time clothed in matter, soon will enter again into other circumstances, where only your spiritual but not your material life will be weighed and valued.
Therefore, do not let Me admonish you in vain. John's vials of wrath will be emptied, and already some of them are. The seals of the great book of creation will be broken and times will be coming when you will need all your spiritual resources to resist the worldliness and retain strength and courage.
So endeavor to understand My words, grasping them as I am giving them to you so that you will not be taken unawares if, for instance, the spiritual life urges the material to the destruction of oldestablished ways of life and there will be knocks at your heart in rapid succession, just as I once did with My disciples prior to My being taken prisoner, when I called out to them several times: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation!"
This I am calling out also to you: Recognize the spirit-life! Wake up from your worldly sleep! Recognize the time as it presses on towards the solution, realize from the ruin of everything noble in the world that the time is not far when the people will harvest what they have sown. Recognize the stream of light that begins to pour over your world. Listen to the voices of the spirit-world that in great sound waves hit your ears. They are the admonishing words of a loving Father, who, in the rush of events, does not want to lose and forfeit His children, but who wants to uphold them and even, if possible, to increase their number, so that the spirit-life may be properly and truly valued by them and they may all understand, even if worlds go to pieces, namely: The love of a heavenly Father cannot waver, cannot punish, but can only, faithful to His laws of love, lead everything to perfection within the appointed time. Then everything can return to the place from where it has gone forth, so that, finally, the Father and the child learn to understand each other and the child understands what it means to be led, guided by Him, the One who makes worlds orbit around worlds and who, despite all the wonders and splendor of an infinite creation, does not forget even the smallest worm!
This is how you shall understand My creation and grasp the spiritual and the material life. Only in this way will tranquility enter your hearts, only in this way do you learn to understand and understand My words, and how and why I give them to you.
As long as you have not reached this stage you are still apprentices, but no children of Mine!
My children must be able to view My nature with a spiritual, open eye, must there, divesting the Spiritual of the material, learn to recognize what is true. They must understand the voice of My spirit world, must lend their spiritual ears to the soothing melodies of My heavenly music. They will then grasp and understand that, although matter is the means of encasing the whole, it was only in this way possible to unravel the Spiritual hidden in matter to a living being, thereby bringing nearer to him the Creator of everything spiritual and material.
When, ultimately, your eyes and ears, spiritually educated, will grasp the whole perfecting process of all that lives and exists, you yourselves have reached the level spiritually due to you and which every human being should strive for. Then he no longer measures time and the duration of matter. Then he clearly recognizes that high above all that exists and lives the spirit-world is reigning and that matter and the material life, called transience, are only mediating factors, which, although they must be there as a means to an end, are not the quintessence of life.
This is the veil of Isis, whom the ancient Egyptians venerated as the goddess of truth and of whom they said that no mortal could lift her veil.
They were right; for whosoever, lifting this veil, can and may look into the face of divine truth, knows for certain that, firstly, he has looked at something immortal and that, secondly, being immortal himself, only he can grasp and understand the same. For him, physical matter has ceased to be a burden. It is merely an envelopment which, in step with the recognition of truth, becomes lighter and lighter and more ethereal. And even if matter is separated from the Spiritual through physical death, it is not a forcible separation but only a light, gentle passing from one state to another, which must be painless since the bonds of spirit and body, spiritualized, do not have to be torn apart, but only gently loosened so as to release the last obstacles for the inner psychic man whose spirit already here in the earthy body has become purer, enabling him to confidently soar up to a higher, spiritual life.
To facilitate this to you, My children, is the purpose of all My words. For in the beyond a spirit-world with different conditions and different circumstances awaits you. In qualifying you for this new calling awaiting you in the future I do not shun the effort of making you understand that there is only one God, who is nothing but love, and who likewise wants to educate you only for love. For love is the ultimate purpose of all that is and comes into being. My creation can be grasped only with and through love, and love is the only thing that impresses on My beings the spiritual nobility whereby they may be called "My children"!
A loving heart understands the language of My nature, the language of My spirit-world, and knows how to explain matter, its life and its form in accordance with the law of love!
Therefore, above all, learn to love!
Cast out all other attributes from your hearts, and your spiritual eyes and ears will be open to receive My spiritual life of love. Learn to first grasp the content of My words spiritually, and you will then understand why I had so much patience with you to make you loving children of a forever loving Father!
In this way you spiritualize your Self, bringing it close to Mine, and a achieve the maturity to pass on in tranquility and peace also to others what is living in all fullness within you.
Do remember this well and accept this word as a new proof of My grace and My never-wavering patience in leading back the lost children to the hearth of light after they have been walking in darkness long enough.
Thus, this word on Spirit and Cosmic Life shall serve you as further proof that you have by far not the proper comprehension as yet for My words and I still find it necessary to add to all that has been said, so that all the secrets of My creation may be clearly revealed to your eyes and you may precisely through them recognize Me, their Creator, as such and as your Father. For the more you grasp Me and My words spiritually, the more you spiritualize your own Self, preparing yourselves in this manner for the transition to higher levels, which without this cognition could not possibly be attained, for life is short and eternity is long. That is why My concern for the sojourn in the latter, for the trial-life in the former has to be regarded merely as a probation school or trial-period.
So use the earthly probation school to equip yourselves with that which you will once need there as a basis. Use the short span of time and My words, which I always give you in abundance, so that the harvest will be a credit to the sowing and you, prior to entering the spirit-life, know what actually constitutes life, what spirit-life, cosmic and what material life.
Only thus armed with spiritual knowledge your progress will be easy, and you will grow in cognition and wisdom, depending on how you will fulfill these conditions.
A spirit must know the extent of the difference between a shamlife and a life that is true and real in order to be able to judge in what way the obstacles impeding him are apt to further his progress instead of holding him back.
Only endowed with this clear insight can a spiritualized person calmly face the future, for he does not expect heaven to come from without, but carries it within himself. This is why worldly disturbances are for him no disturbances, but only stimuli that will solidify and strengthen his faith on his course.
Thus you must be steeled through what you gain inwardly by battling so that you will be able to fulfill your mission towards yourselves and others.
As long as you yourselves have only a half-faith, a half-trust and little patience, you are still far from recognizing the great driving wheel of the spirit-life, which, while moving everything, tries to gather also you into this movement towards ire universal goal.
So follow My advice, ponder My words well, consider from whom they are and to whom they are directed!
I, as the Father of all My created beings, leave no stone unturned to help everyone and to lighten his path. However, if he does not want to be helped, the adverse circumstances accruing from that will not be charged to Me, but only to him
"Ponder everything, and retain what is good!"
This is what I once said, and this is what I am calling out to you lest you should fall if the time of temptation should come when, left to your own devices, you will have to blame yourselves for the consequences.
As matters stand, the spirit-life is the fundamental basis of all there is, the material life being merely its visible factor. Whosoever confuses both or even denies the former, will finally become aware that through his denial the matter is not closed, but that through it, the spiritual eye will only become totally blind and the soul deaf to all the voices of the surrounding nature.
If the process of the spirit-life were not so awfully fast, one could say as you often do in the proverb: "Comes time, comes counsel" However, this calculation is misplaced here. For the time lost brings back nothing and the new time always brings something new, unlike that which is past, and so it is the foremost law to use the time, lest the result of future realization be remorse over the squandered time. Therefore, My children, do take everything more seriously, take My words more seriously, take things concerning your time more seriously lest My words will be preached to deaf ears!
Your Father intends this to be for your instruction and for your spiritual progress! Amen.