Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 31 -
THE DARK SIDE OF NATURE
5 February 1877
IN many teachings I have already shown you My nature in its most beautiful spiritual and material aspect, have pointed out to you that everything was created only out of love, only for the enjoyment of the living beings. And yet there is, in visible nature, in the life of the animals and even of man, many a thing, which in the face of all that has been said before appears as an incongruity, where many a man may perhaps say: "If I closely scrutinize the world and life on this earth, not everything is as rosy as it should be according to the above-mentioned words. I see here elemental events, which destroy people's lives and their property acquired with great effort. I see in almost all the animal kingdom only robbery and murder, poisons of every kind and vermin that plague people and animals. I see how even people and animals become the abode of abominable worms, which latter cannot wait until the body is dead. And people and animals are forced to carry these uninvited guests with them while alive and feed them. I see apart from fragrant flowers, oils and spices, a mass of things which spread pestilential stench, and beside a luxuriant life the all-devastating decay, which with its evil smell repels human beings and animals."
"All this is surely not created for enjoyment, for a pleasant sojourn on this earth. It is not there to sweeten our life, let alone to be proof of the universally praised great fatherly love of our Creator" and so forth.
Of course, these and other objections can be raised against Me only by people who consider the apparent to be reality and who, having no notion of My wisdom, are unable to adopt My viewpoint about My creation and life as such.
Thus, as I have once told you in another word, one of your earthly scholars exclaimed in his disgust: "If there is a God and I had to deputize for Him, I would be ashamed to have arranged a world as poorly as it really exists."
So as to eliminate all these reproaches, one or the other of you having been assailed by similar doubts as to the wisdom of My decrees, I now want to elucidate to you Myself, My creation and the seeming contradictions as far as possible. Thereby I will also transform the socalled dark side of My nature into one full of light.
However, first I have to precede this information by an explanation of My great Household and a clear description of My viewpoint of life.
All this is done so that we may understand each other, otherwise all the words are only a waste of labor. For without doing so it is impossible to look at the world from My standpoint since I created it and, therefore, only I can know why I created and arranged it thus and not otherwise.
Therefore, My children, if you want to understand Me, you must ascend to Me, for with Me there is eternal light, and with you and with many others there is eternal darkness, or at best slight dusk. Thus, in order to appreciate the dark side of My nature, you must first realize this: I, as the Creator of the whole universe, as the eternal Lord of the everywhere manifesting life, have a totally different idea of it from you weak earthly children, who are confronted by death in a thousand different forms. For Me, and in My sight, there is no death, but at most a transformation or a gradual change.
Therefore, the horror which on your earth you designate as death, is only your opinion on which you base most of your proof, but not Mine.
Besides, you must realize that your earth is not the principal object in the whole of creation, but that many hundreds of planets like yours and millions of suns constitute My material cosmic realm. For this reason, My concern is the preservation of the whole, whereas you are merely interested in the permanence of your small earth, which in My sight disappears like a dewdrop in the great ocean.
You must understand My world in such a way that My entire creation could easily exist without your earth, even without your entire solar system. But your earth could not exist without its sun, without the connection to the other worlds, for everything is connected like a chain and works together like complicated clockwork.
You criticize Me on account of the natural catastrophes, which often deprive man of all his property, even killing him. To this I reply that in the entire cosmic realm there exists an eternal activity, an eternal transformation and a using up and renewing on the largest scale.
Ether, this infinite space, is never still. Its minutest atoms continually undergo processes where everything vibrates, everything moves. Your air, a very motile element, like ether, only somewhat denser, cannot escape this movement and is also moved, incited to take part in the great process of preservation. For the sun, through the influence of its warm rays, affects the expansion and contraction of the layers of air, which in turn cause continual disturbance in the atmosphere, so that the cold air will, and must, always adjust to the warmer air.
These adjustments cause, and are responsible for, the moisture or dryness of the layers of air and these in turn for the cloud formations, the phenomena and elemental events often so harmful to individual people but which, seen on the whole, only spread blessing.
Here the fact must also be considered that in some regions the people, through their greed and avarice, often contribute most to the greater frequency with which these events occur by actually inviting them. For instance, through the destruction of the forests they afford easy access to gales and thunderstorms, whereby the climatic conditions of whole regions are totally changed.
In My great Household everything is well calculated and interference on the part of man can only bring its own punishment with it, because he rates his own calculations higher than Mine.
I have to take care of the necessary equilibrium on a large scale. I have arranged My laws in such a way that whenever they are disturbed they spontaneously repair themselves, regardless of whether individual beings suffer damage for the sake of the whole.
You too often start wars, mercilessly destroying the property of innocent country people, devastating their fields, their seeds, their herds and spreading disaster and misery everywhere, and what are the excuses your rulers give you? They say: "Higher objectives demand battle for the fatherland, for the great whole where the fortune or misfortune of the individual cannot be considered!"
You in your small country consider this explanation to be quite justified. Yet when I in My great Household, for the sake of general principles of preservation deem many an elemental event necessary, I have, according to your limited judgment, committed an injustice and have sinned against My attributes as Father and disseminator of love!
You see, how quickly you are ready to judge Me, whereas you yourselves often unnecessarily spread a far greater misery, the extent of which you do not know and the evil consequences of which you cannot repair!
As for the robbery and murder in the whole animal kingdom, where people themselves are the greatest robbers and murderers, mostly for the sake of their belly or as mischievous pastime of unruly men, I have to direct your attention to the aforesaid. There I told you that for Me there is no death, but only a gradual progress.
Well, how can this progress take place unless partly material, partly spiritual particles of the surrounding animals are incorporated in the higher ones that require all these elements and substances for their existence. What do you yourselves do? Do you not also consume foods from all realms of nature, which always contain spiritual or material particles, which you believe you partly require for the building of your body?
What is the difference between your hunts and the behavior of the animals? The great difference lies only in that you hunt down the animals as a pastime and not out of necessity, like the lion or the tiger, which must look for their prey. For while the animal acts by instinct, in you so-called rational beings your soul takes pleasure in seeing an animal suffer, something unknown in the animal kingdom.
You try to accuse Me of cruelties, you who commit far more of them than I do!
Look at your hunts and be ashamed of yourselves, for in this respect you are far below the lowest animal!
Look, your natural scientists and scholars have proved to you from the formations of the earth's crust that the smaller the animals, the greater their productive strength. Since this is truly the case and a great part of the earth's crust and mountains consist of the shells and skeletons of such animals, you can deduce from this that when I created such arrangements I had other aims in mind than only to spread life.
You see, from its first beginnings up to the last cataclysm, the earth was so richly blessed with these animals that some of them, which have long since died out, would by far surpass those presently living in size. And so you find, apart from the many producers, also the consumers, which after every new cataclysm had to serve as matter for a new layer of the earth's crust.
There life in general was considered, without regard for individuals, but everything had to share in speedily arranging the earth as a permanent abode for the last created -man. Then these changes on a great scale ceased, the now occasionally happening phenomena and natural events being only a faint echo of those great creational processes.
In that time, when your earth, having progressed from the vaporous form to a solid mass, continued its developmental process throughout millions of years, it was not the only globe that had to undergo all these transformations. For all the planets of your solar system found themselves in the same developmental process. Everywhere there was activity. The ether supplied the elements for the atmosphere, and the precipitation of the latter formed the first beginnings of the earth's crust.
Also you have your years of adolescence, where everything in you is in fermentation, where the blood pulses through the body faster and the developmental process presses forward to the age of youth and, later, to the age of man.
Your earth, indeed the whole planetary system, is going through such a phase.
Moses in his Genesis told you when it became light on earth, when the dry land was separated from the water.
When does it become light in your life, when does your spirituality gain more solidity? Is it not also only at an advanced age?
So it was with the huge plants and the huge animals.
The evenly distributed warmth of the earth's crust, its enormous productivity in animals of every kind, which with every cataclysm had to make way for other creations, all these were the earth's years of adolescence, its time of blossoming. They were of significance only for Me and My great creational thoughts. Now the scholars and the natural scientists can read in the layers of the earth what I once arranged with a wise hand; also that I only allowed man to be a witness to My creation once the fermentation process on a great scale was completed and the earth entered into a quieter phase, so as to serve man as a permanent abode.
As for the poisons, the pestilential smells, which on your earth you find apart from aromatic scents, this is a relative matter. Poison is not poison for all beings, and an evil smell is not the same for all living beings.
What actually is poison? You see, the entire world is talking about this word and no one wants to trace it back to its origin. And so I will do it so that we may understand each other better.
Poison is only the opposite of that which agrees with one or the other's nature. For instance, almost every medicine you take is poison. This can be seen from the haste with which the soul tries to again remove this ingested remedy from the body. Therefore, many a thing is poison for man that does no harm to animals but, on the contrary, often even serves them as medicine.
If snakes have poisonous fangs it means that they are, firstly, for them a weapon and, secondly, a means of easing the last moments of dying to the animal that is about to be consumed.
However, poisons in plants, in minerals, extracted by means of chemical processes, are substances that have a paralyzing effect on man's nervous system or are destructive to other organs, and can result in his death. This is where man's intelligence enters into it, whereby he should be able to protect himself against such poisons.
It will be a little difficult to explain to you why these poisons exist in My Household. For you do not know the gamut on which everything presses onward and are unable to ever understand that, beginning with the first ether-atom, an orderly gamut had to gently lead from one to the other, onto a higher level.
Here should also be mentioned the criticism concerning the existence of vermin, many of which plague both animal and man, and where man, who always consider himself first, can find no reason and no Why.
Also this vermin has a certain role to play in its place, where there is no link from one animal to the other and where, apart from the material and spiritual formation of these creatures, a higher factor was added. And this was not to allow man to sink below the animal. As for man himself, the principle of cleanliness should force him to preserve in his own body the spiritual nobility for the sake of which he is on the earth. This spiritual rank he should always maintain against the animal world.
Those nations that neglect this principle are far below the animal, which is told by instinct to keep its body clean. There are, however, some exceptions to this rule.
As for decay and the smell mostly connected with it, even in creation care is taken that harmful exhalations and their bad consequences are prevented through animals such as flies, worms and other insects. The latter need these, for you, harmful substances as food and transform them into their own Self, thus in turn preparing their bodies as nourishment for higher animals.
The smell again is a sign that the principle of cleanliness was given to you human beings so that you, as spirits, might only tolerate decent things around you, while everything else belonging to the coarser material realm should be far from you. I endowed your senses with the impulse to always remain human beings, My offspring, who would never sink below the animal.
Any bad smell, any repellent form, any trivial word should admonish you to become citizens of a spiritual world, instead of gradually descending to the material, where only some brutish men satisfy their inordinate desires and find their joy in the mire, like pigs.
You blame Me for the fact that even your body is already during your lifetime an abode of a mass of infusorian. This is primarily your own fault, as most of your foodstuffs consist of such substances in which, through the natural body warmth, the eggs of such animalcules are hatched in your body. These animalcules are only at home where decay and decomposition supply them with nutriment.
The more easily perishable (and semi-decayed) things you take into your stomach, the more similar elements you create in your blood and the more you favor the formation and procreation of such animalcules, which invade even the finest capillary vessels of your circulatory system.
If you banned such detrimental substances from your food, your health would improve and your life be prolonged.
However, you are used to these wrong ways, and so I must allow them until some sickness forces you to pick and choose your food more carefully.
From all the above mentioned you see that not everything is so cruel and terrible as many a would-be apostle of enlightenment would like to make you believe, and that always a higher intent motivated Me!
Since in everything created I have established as foremost principle that of self-preservation, you shall consider that apart from the absorbed there must also be spent substance. If the former contains living substance, the latter must be useless, seemingly dead. While that which is vitalizing has a pleasant scent, the spent substance must have the opposite. Thus, if a new vitalizing substance in its form is destined as food for plants, animals and man, the spent substance cannot have the same form, but must have a different one. And if the original substances are for this former purpose clothed in beautiful forms, they have to be in the latter cast, serving other purposes, in everything the opposite of what they formerly were.
For this reason the decay or decomposition as such is a combustion process, so that the necessary transition from one combination to the next may be speeded up.
Most of you who accused Me on account of the dark side of nature had only the apparent picture before their eyes, would not forgive Me, as "aesthetic God", that I had created something which offended their eyes and noses.
I gave man his organs of touch and vision so that he, as man, may never divest himself of his spiritual dignity.
For this reason these organs are always on the watch as reminders preventing man from becoming an animal.
My viewpoint and My creational thoughts are too great and profound for a human being to judge or grasp them.
Of course, it would be sufficient to draw conclusions from many a thing scientifically found about the inexplicable, where the result could only be favorable for Me. For nowhere have the diligent seekers ever discovered an error or found evidence that I had treated one or the other unkindly. Everywhere they will have found that everything was well considered, indeed, planned for eternity. And since in thousands of cases they must acknowledge this order, I reckon that they could have enough trust in Me that also in the inexplicable, not easy-tofathom things, there is a spiritual superior reason exactly why I did not let the scholars elucidate these apparent contradictions, or this dark side.
I should be able to presume this tolerance in man. However, his pride in his little bit of intellect does not allow it. Considering himself a rational human being, he believes himself infringed upon when he does not know everything right away. And yet, considered in the light, there is so little that is positive in his knowledge that it is not worth the effort to boast about it.
Thousands upon thousands of wonders are still hidden before the eyes of man. Many, indeed most, of them he will never behold while in his physical body. And no matter how much he discovers, he will always be forced to stop with the Alpha.
This is the clearest proof that I take no pride in mankind's praise. For then I would display everything clearly before them, showing them the entire micro-and macro-cosmos and compelling them to veneration, so as to force them into the dust before My omnipotence.
You see, this I could do; yet I do not do it, and why?
Firstly, because you people cannot grasp and understand everything. And, secondly, because it is not the mass of wondrous arrangements of this world that shall convince you of My existence, but that you, being spirits, shall spiritually recognize Me and according to this cognition worship (that means love) Me in spirit and in truth!
Thus the relationship is established, which is meant to exist between Me and every created being.
First of all, man shall recognize My omnipotence, My omniscience, and then learn to understand that with all these creations, love was the main factor.
As little as I want to entertain you with My words, just as little I want to satisfy your curiosity with the well-planned arrangements of My universe.
What benefit is it for you to know the borderline from where the last sun is sending its light-ray? How does it benefit you to know the arrangements of all these millions of worlds? What to know where the first infinitesimal beginnings of life are, unless you recognize already with the first step into this labyrinth of wonders the loving Father, the benevolent Creator. He created nothing for Himself, but everything for His spiritual beings, who shall feel His goodness, His omnipotence already in the minutest sun-mote whirring merrily in the ether! Knowledge, being the result of reason, is not sufficient. The heart must be involved, which, far beyond the limits of comprehension has a foreknowledge that there is far more that is magnificent in the world of spirits than matter can offer you.
Much that is incomprehensible you find already on your earth. Even more awaits you in the beyond, where the borderline between feeling and understanding is clearly defined.
You want to see Me and speak to Me in the beyond, yet I tell you: It is not ever possible to behold Me, as Lord of infinity, in My whole omnipotence, face to face. For the one created cannot ever understand the One uncreated, cannot ever completely unite with Him! An eternal drawing nearer, but no reaching, is thinkable.
You shudder at the thought of "infinity", although you can imagine an infinite continuation. However, to be without a beginning is for you a phrase for which there is no feeling ever.
So be satisfied with that which from time to time I give you. Be satisfied with the little discoveries and inventions that I allow out of love for you to make your material life even more pleasant, even freer, so that you may be more able to investigate the spiritual, more profound life.
Do not seek to unveil secrets that do not further you much spiritually. Remember your astronomers, whom you also believe when they calculate their solar and lunar eclipses hundreds of years ahead, which eclipses are really accurate by minutes and seconds.
Also with them you do not doubt when they tell you of other worlds fabulous distances away, of the formation of planets and comets requiring calculations that you, not being of the profession, can neither grasp nor understand.
The astronomers tell you what your intellect can grasp and bear, and this is what I am doing. I give you what is of benefit to you and pull the veil over hieroglyphics (riddles) that, even if you could read them, would not make you more knowledgeable.
Be assured, the world was created perfect and without faults. Everything is in its right place and connected with one another, so that none can exist without the other.
The How and Why are things which require more than human reason, which is already dumbfounded at the sight of an infusorian. For despite all its searching it still sees no end, nor is it able to surmise one! The world and I too are thus, as I have often been telling you. In other words, the world is infinite, has no limits, and there is no number to define its duration, just as I, as Creator, ant infinite.
All resistance is of no avail. So it is, so it was and so it will be!
Do seek to understand these thoughts and soon, with the firm trust in Me, it will also become light on the dark side of nature. Then everything will prove to you that an all-wise Creator, just like a father before his children, has secrets which he cannot unveil to them, not because He does not want to, but because they cannot grasp them.
So, trust in Me! Since I created the great worlds by the millions, believe that I also know on a small scale why I arranged one or the other thing in a certain way.
Believe and trust in My love and do not criticize what you will not understand and what could at most tell you, as the logical conclusion of a foreknowledge:
"He, who arranged the visible world in all things as we see it, will surely have His reason in creating the Invisible with the same perfection expedient for the universal purpose." And with this belief the dark side of nature will have ceased to be dark. It can trouble doubters, but not believing hearts, who will know a Creator, as Father, as Love, can arrange everything out of love only in a way conducive to the benefit of all living beings! Amen.