Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 24 -
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF LOVE
19 March 1873
I HAVE been giving you several words on this topic and you were shown from various aspects what life is, what it means, and vet there are many more aspects from which life deserves to be carefully considered, One can then finally progress and take a step forward in the cognition of the meaning of life, and how this very life visibly and in visibly only represents My own spiritual self and how the same, though with various means and on various paths, must lead ever\thing back to Me!
Under "Life of Spirits and Cosmic Life" I showed you how, gradually, every bound Life, freeing itself, always pressed upward to higher levels, thereby proving and making conceivable to you the origin and beginning of the spiritual and cosmic realm, as well as the inevitable end of the latter.
In that word I afforded you a profound insight into My secrets of creation. However, one more factor is missing, which perhaps, regarding the various contradictions in My creation, can be reconciled with My words given and again being given to you today. It is the statement as to how the phrase "God is Love" can be reconciled with the various contradictions in visible nature which testify against it!
The purpose of this word shall be to better elucidate and explain this to you, so that you may even more clearly recognize that My words are really the words of a God, a supreme Creator and an ever-loving Father.
You see, I have told you in the previous word that everywhere in matter it is only imprisoned spirits, offshoots of My own divine self, that constitute the entire visible creation and the essential part in that which exists. I told you that the material is of secondary importance or the necessary envelopment, so that individual spirit-parts in the entire universe can be made into as it were independent, separate beings.
This was the first reason why everything was created. The second reason was to subordinate the created to a universal purpose and establish a spiritual reason as to why everything was thus enveloped in matter. It explains also the eternal urge on the part of everything existing towards change, towards freeing itself from imprisonment and to rise to higher levels where more liberty, more spiritual enjoyment are possible and permitted.
Hence the urge and drive in everything created to break its form and rush instinctively towards a better existence. It is this endeavor and urge which manifests as life and which, where it occurs, for this very reason constitutes the three phases of creation, that means coming into being, existing and passing away.
Through this tri-unity, which also correspondingly expresses My actual personal trinity, as love, wisdom and divinity, and which is likewise inherent in every created being in the form of spirit, soul and body, life manifests as visible activity. This activity, putting the visible seal upon My creation, proves that it must be a Being higher than all those created, which only in this way can manifest itself to its beings. It tries to make understandable and conceivable only through visible life the invisible spiritual to all beings whom it had endowed with reason, intellect and heart. Thereby the beings may understand from where they came, why they are here and what may be the purpose of their existence and the goal of their life, whether material or spiritual.
However, since this life, as I have shown you, originated from Me and is destined to again return to Me, all its visible manifestations must have a proper purpose, a spiritual reason, why thus and not otherwise, which Why can lead, and often has led, the keen observer in My creation to many a wrong conclusion!
The purpose of again entitling this word "Life" is now to solve these misapprehensions and unravel the seemingly inharmonious, because this word has been understood by you neither in its profundity nor according to its extent and significance. This is of concern to Me, for the time is near where I do not want any benighted creatures in My creation but only beings with spiritual vision who understand Me and My creation. Therefore, the veil shall fall from the apparently unfathomable and another cover shall be removed, which has up until now hung over your spiritual eyes.
Look, My children, when I created the world or the whole universe, the purpose of My binding the spirit-particles was not that they, by means of their inherent urge, should merely change matter so as to attain to a better existence. Not at all. While the bound spirits must assist in the spiritualizing of matter, they should prepare themselves for the next level through another spiritual school, should be educated through suffering, deprivations, conflicts of every kind. In this way, they would not only prepare matter for a better level, but for the time being would strengthen themselves spiritually, drawing nearer to Him, who, the symbol of the highest spirit-attributes, such as love, meekness, grace, has shown them the way in everything. Who even, by His descent to this small earth as a tiny earthly Man accepting the lowest social standing, nevertheless in the utmost lowliness and greatest humiliation gave proof of the highest spiritual character of a God, even sealing it with His earthly death and His resurrection!
All I experienced during My earthly life, beginning with My birth and ending with the cross, namely, My teaching, My suffering and conflicts, My love and meekness, My grace and forgiveness and the forgetting of all My might, My immense patience with erring mankind, all this was correspondingly laid into every tiny spirit-particle. And what I, as an example, experienced, suffered and fought for on earth, had long ago been determined in every created being, in all matter, wherever a spark out of Me was hidden, so that even the smallest spirit-atom may consistently absolve, together with its great Creator, the same course which shall ultimately raise the spirit above matter. Thus the triumphant rising from level to level will actually prove that, just as there are laws relating to matter, laws of repulsion and attraction, there exist also moral, sublime, spiritual laws which, grounded in Myself, constitute My own Being and the permanence of all that was created.
Thus you see the spirit bound in rock, the first principle of which would be inertness, driven from its repose through the influence of the elements, of the world of animals and man. If you could understand it, you would also see its suffering, its resistance against all alien influences until, finally, it must follow the urge. While its encasement, which is continually in a vibrating condition, changes the existing through light, warmth and moisture, thus breaking its form, it helps the spirit, albeit often against its will, to that which alone it needs and which it was allotted as a vital principle.
Just as in the rock or in solid matter, so it is in the plant kingdom, where the vegetative life of the spirit indwelling the plant is likewise induced through various circumstances to consolidate its own spiritexistence through suffering and conflicts.
For you do not know when cruelly tearing a plant out of Mother Earth or cuffing down a tree or taking a plant's finest adornment, its bridal life, the flower, if the plant-spirit, disturbed in its sublime blissful life, does not also feel a pain just like you when something disagreeable happens to you.
If you could see the spiritual world with spiritual eyes, you would shrink back in horror before many an action, for you people, who fancy yourselves as rational, commit so many cruelties another, lower being must suffer in silence because it was not endowed with a language to express joy and sorrow through sounds.
Look at the eternal battle of the elements with the hard rock, at the life of the plants and the life of the animals, which also carry spiritual sparks within. They all must battle, must suffer, and superficial man alone has no right to complain that this earthly life is a life of deception and illusion, arid that it is often not worth the effort to live just for the sake of suffering!
The animal world, so trampled upon by you, often suffers far more than you. It often suffers not merely through laws of nature, which, for the sake of the animals' progress, has also woven suffering and conflicts into their short lives, but it suffers mostly innocently through that which man inflicts upon it, and which far surpasses in heartlessness your slavery and other despotism which you are trying to abolish everywhere!
Apart from its own enemies, through which it is elevated unto a higher level, where it serves the latter as food, the animal was also endowed with attributes that are essential for the reproduction and continuance of a species. These are the maternal instinct, the love for their young and the love for their natural and artificial abode, a love which in animals is demanded by nature and which in you human beings should be implied through your ethical status, but has now almost dropped to zero, where many a dumb animal could put man to shame, who is so proud of his intellect.
And look, it is this love, which, as a divine spark originating from Me, appeases the animal towards its immediate environment, sending a light-beam of joy, of well-being into the little animal soul, so that it does not only follow the urge to feed and of self-preservation but knows also a higher spiritual pleasure, which does not bind to matter, but binds spirit to spirit.
Whenever an animal's brood, its habitation is destroyed, watch its fear, its pain, its restless running about; watch it and be ashamed because you yourselves so often mercilessly commit such an act of cruelty, fancying to be "the lords of the worlds".
If I allow such things, not punishing them as they deserve, it is because these sufferings, harsh and bitter as they are for the dumb creature, must nevertheless help in the strengthening of its soul-and spirit-life.
Also the animal does not lie on a bed of roses!
Of course, this does not give you the right to torment the animal, but you, being the stronger, shall protect the weaker and not, exploiting their weakness, waste your time with senseless killing during hunts and with forced feeding, fattening up, etc., for the enjoyment of your palate tormenting an innocent being, whose life, since you did not give it to the animal, you have no right to take.
You human beings should remember that I did not create the world as you have it now before your eyes. By no means. In the early times man lived in harmony with the animal world. The animal did not see its enemy in man, nor did man have to fear the animal. But now that people have corrupted the trust to mistrust also towards the animal, they have to bear the consequences of such conduct.
The once existing Paradise consisted in the unity of the entire created world, as an everlasting prayer of thanks to Me. And it was only man himself, who planted in it the discord of self-seeking, hatred and vengefulness, so that he is no longer the lord of the world, but the world has become his lord!
The dangers threatening it, the task of protecting its own life and that of its family, are sufficient as a school to awaken the animal kingdom from a death-like repose. You human beings need not have added other cruelties to My vital laws to even more hurt and torment the animal, which anyway is obviously far beneath you in its lifesphere.
However, although this mute suffering and torment of the animal world is of advantage to their spiritual progress, on the other hand your very conduct, your cruelty and excessive appetite are the greatest and foremost reason why you human beings, who want to be the lords of the world, are in a thousand cases far below the animal world. Besides, by imbibing a great number of elements unsuitable for your organism, you shorten your life span and invite illnesses and ailments totally unknown to the so despised animal which, as a triumph of your supremacy, leaves them all to you so that you, through errors brought about by your own fault, must again expiate for the cruelties you have so wantonly inflicted on all those beneath you.
Take for example all these animals which are useful to you, which work for you or which, as a necessary food, you deem essential for your own existence, what heartless conduct distinguishes there the lord of the earth!
How he rewards the readiness to serve of those animals with whom he associates only because, without them, he could achieve nothing or very little!
Look at the horse, the ox, the sheep, etc. What a sad fate does the former suffer, how it often suffers silently under the maltreatment inflicted by a brutal hand as a reward for lending all the strength at its disposal!
Where is in this case the morality of man? Where is there a similar cruelty in human life? It does not even exist among animals!
The ox pulling your plough, helping you for bread and food, willingly pulling your loads, what is its reward? Scanty feed, finally to be eaten by you!
You call the eaters of human flesh cannibals. How much better are you, civilized inhabitants of towns and villages?
How do you treat the other animals you have chosen for your food, and at that not for the necessary food, but rather for an artificial tickling of the palate?
How heartlessly you proceed at their feeding, how heartlessly at their sale!
Deaf are your ears to the cry of fear uttered by a tormented animal. Thinking only of your desire for food and gain, you forget that the animal also feels pain, that it was created by Me for a purpose other than that for which you are using it.
So you see, the great school of suffering, which once I Myself endured on your earth in order to set an example, is symbolic, in keeping with the generic level of the created beings, inter-woven in their lives. And when I patiently watch how all this is happening, how thousands of animals long before the time decreed by Me are removed from the earthly life, the reason behind it is that from all the aberrations of the human race I can still make a spiritual gain for the sake of My less gifted beings and the punishment or the reward rebounds only upon you yourselves and also you, as human beings, experience what you have prepared for the innocent animals. Thus you have prepared for yourselves a world full of suffering and conflicts, full of desires and deprivations, and this, of course, is exactly the wrong thing or the opposite of that which you have hoped for and striven to attain.
So the thread is weaving throughout My entire creation, showing to all created beings through suffering, conflicts, deprivations and attainment the spiritual path on which alone spiritual life and spiritual progress can be secured.
The bound spirit seeks repose in the solidified matter, as bliss. The animal kingdom seeks repose and a quiet pursuit of its instinct oi preservation and the lord of the earth, man, seeks repose and quiet comfort in his animal-physical gratification.
But a sublime, great law of the spirit-world, which would compare repose only with death and non-existence, keeps disturbing this repose, continually urging to fight, to oppose alien invaders. This striving is the spiritual life which forces the spirit-particles of Myself, placed by Me throughout the entire creation, toward a change of heart, a betterment of their existence, toward perfection.
As I once said to Adam: "You shall gain your bread by the sweat of your brow", which means to say: "You did not understand the meaning of repose as I wanted to give it to you, and have tried to use it for the death of your spiritual Self, instead of for life. This repose shall now be taken from you lest your spiritual Self wither among the chaos of animal passions, and only by battling and suffering shall you attain that which, freely offered you by My hand, you scorned and misunderstood."
And as the world, as it is now, likewise can only lead to something better way of the school of suffering also for you human beings, the latter thus became a necessity. And so it was and is also with the animal kingdom an individual period of life which, depending on the circumstances, imposed on the other more to endure and to suffer, thus enabling it to reach a higher spiritual level.
As for the excesses and cruelties of the human race against the animal this kept pace with the decline of man's own spiritual dignity, bringing mankind spiritually and physically to a stage that will also soon be approaching its end. Then the human spiritual dignity will soon again occupy its proper position, which man will actively exercise not only towards his fellowman but also towards everything inferior to him. Then the earth will again be peopled with spiritual human beings towards whom the animals will be inclined in a less hostile manner, so that man will recognize the former lost Paradise in the unity of all living beings as the great spiritual school of life. Everything is striving towards it. The regenerating spiritual wind comes from all directions. Mankind, at least the majority of them, cannot interpret it, but some of them, and particularly you, whom I have under My protection, shall learn what spiritual life means. Then you will recognize the signs where everything points to the transformation of human society, including the animal and plant kingdom surrounding it, into what it once was, namely, a garden for My children, a dwelling-place for My created beings. All of them, created according to one love-law, were also brought up and educated according to the same one law to ultimately return to Me with high interest everything I had sent out, so that I, replenishing My spirit-realm out of matter, can receive back even the latter spiritualized. Thus a world of spirits will be surrounding Me, which, worthy of Me and in conformity with its own life-task, strives for the goal by means of which the smallest spirit bound in solid matter, as well as the angel nearest to Me, will grasp their own destiny and learn to recognize and love Me, recognizing in everything, even though material, only a pre-school or probation-school, and how beings, created by One God, can become His children.
Therefore, you too should endeavor to recognize and spiritually grasp the significance of the spiritual life, which was set as a goal to the smallest worm as well as to you, as human and divine images. Learn to recognize your human dignity, how you shall behave towards the seemingly lifeless but also living being beneath you, so that you as spiritual beings, remembering your origin, may always act as such. For the nobility of the soul does not manifest when man acts properly only where political or family laws demand of him to act nobly, but where, even though man is cruel, no existing law punishes him, except for his own conscience. Only where man has no other judge than his free will, with which alone he is standing before his God and Creator, spontaneously, driven by sublime inner love, to enact mercy also towards the least animal or being in which life can be surmised: also there to act generously is edifying and rewarding. Not the fact that you did not trample on a worm, but the awareness that you, obeying higher laws of life, mastered your passions, is what elevates you above the masses, so that through the practicing of love and mercy it will become second nature to you not to deny to your fellowman what you granted to a weak, dependent animal.
What is it that makes Me the great God, the great Creator? Perhaps My might? My omnipotence? No, I am only truly great because I, as a loving Father, lead also the minutest infusorian along its path with the same love and patience with which I set the path for the highest angel spirit, never letting anything created by Me feel My might, but always only My love, My grace and My patience.
This makes Me great before you thinking beings, makes Me the loving Father, whom you can implore ardently; but not My omnipotence, before the stern judge's glance of which you, being sinners, would have to hide!
Become like Me, forgive where you want to pay back, forgive where you want to punish, and forget where, out of love, you do not want to remind of the wrong!
Thus rise as free beings above the bustle of the masses. Regard the world with spiritual eyes and do not add suffering to the necessary conflicts, which I laid into the life span of the innocent animal in order that also the smallest, but bound, spirit may be practiced, strengthened and consolidated in its spiritual strength, so that on a higher level it may find its path easily.
Thus your own life's course shall become a chain of unseen benefactions, which you bestow on animal or man because, remembering My own example, you want first of all to preserve the nobility of your own heart and then, as children of a God, act divinely wherever there is a chance.
In this way, you further spiritual life generally and individually, in another's and in your own heart. The realization of such deeds, which are based on merciful love and patience, imparts this tranquility, which I Myself as a Man had even on the cross, so that I could exclaim: "Forgive them, o Lord, for they know not what they are doing".
The extent of divine self-awareness, which then made Me exclaim thus, may show you in its whole profundity the moral height of a human being who, in the midst of misfortune and suffering, can still implore for forgiveness, instead of wanting revenge.
Do grasp this spiritual life! Practice it on a small scale, and it will exalt you and give you bliss. For the way I, as man, with My divine might treated My fellowmen, you shall treat your environment, even the last living being. In other words, you shall be zealous protectors of the weak and defenders of the suffering!
Understand thus My earthly life, and beams of light will envelop you, which you, following My example, can likewise use towards the highest bliss by doing only good, spreading only benefactions, by lifting up your own Self and drawing nearer to Me. For, treading in My footsteps, you are doing the same thing I did and am always doing. In other words, retaining your human and spiritual dignity, you shall rise to that which I want to make you, namely, children of an eternal God and forever loving Father. Amen