The Earth
THE SPIRITUAL EARTH
- Chapter 33 -
Nature spirits and human souls
Rain falls to the Earth in drops, sometimes large and sometimes small; and so does snow. And regarding hail, at times you find very small pellets, and then again stones that weigh a pound or more, usually in large amounts. Then these questions might come to mind:
If every raindrop, every snowflake, and every hailstone carries a spirit, from whence come such an immense number of spirits?
And where did all the spirits come from in Adam's time when it rained and snowed, since no one had yet died on Earth?
And when it snowed in days gone by as when it snows today, there are also spiritual potencies of newly arrived spirits in the snowflakes which join with the liberated souls from the Earth, and with them begin to make their migration through the human kingdom. They are not the spirits of departed human beings, but newcomers, or, if it may be said more specifically, new beings that have risen after a long sleep out of the matter of the Earth. Those spirits of departed human beings who do not wish to take the path of progress may be driven back upon the same road thereby. But after a short period of humiliation they return to their region, and may be observed in the physical world.
When it rains, the rain penetrates into the earth and is absorbed by plants, animals, and even minerals. However, here and there you may observe, either during or after a rain, a whitish mist rising and moving upwards, particularly in the higher regions. It is, of course, the smallest portion of such rainfall which returns in these mists and ascends. It represents those spirits that are departed human beings and who are allowed to return to their region.
There is no difference in the appearance of the mists, but there is a difference in the manner of their formation, and the way in which the spirit being ties itself to the appearance; within this there is a great difference. Regarding the newly-arrived spirits and the new astral emergences, the spiritual as well as the astral are still completely confined in matter. Here the matter is not an internal center of gravity that pulls down the spirit, because the spiritual as well as the astral is still very much dispersed - so much so that the being of a single spirit and his soul are scarcely sown completely into the earth even in a million raindrops, snowflakes, or hailstones. It is, of course, an entirely different matter in the case of a fully developed spirit with his soul; in this instance only his material wishes and inclinations are squeezed together into such a material form to share, for but a short period of time, the harsh fate of those spiritual potencies who are just beginning the great circle of their liberation in the above phenomena.
It would be difficult to determine in which raindrop or snowflake a natural spirit or spirit that has already left Nature has fallen down, because the outer appearance is the same; the size and weight, however, may serve as a clue to the kind of spirit that has been cast down. Particularly in a large hailstone, there is frequently a humiliated spirit which has already passed through his earthly course. The smaller appearances are the so-called nature spirits. Their numbers must be immense, because they do not come to Earth as a whole but are divided into infinitely many specific spiritual particles. That is why a whole soul never ascends from the Earth with all of her spiritual specifica, but is always divided in the highest degree.
There are two reasons for this division: The first lies within the prime spiritual being himself, because each and every spirit has divided himself and torn himself apart to infinity on account of wanting to attain maturity. The second reason lies in the fact that through this division such a primordially created spirit has weakened himself to the last drop of his energy. Therefore, as a result of this weakening, he cannot carry out his haughty plans. This so scatters the thoughts of such a spirit that he is no longer able to grasp a proper notion of anything, much less conceive a plan.
That is the reason why the fallen Satan, even to this day, eagerly makes every effort to rejoin his own original being with the one in the individual human soul and spirit, in order to gain the power that was his at the very beginning. But he has been divided and scattered throughout the whole of creation so that he might never attain this power again. His spiritual being was turned into matter, out of which the astral or soul essence of every human being comes forth. New spiritual essence is breathed into the astral essence, so that out of each and every part comes forth a whole being, just like the being that was originally created, which through its pride or expansion of ideas wanted to rise above God. But he thereby scattered and dispersed himself infinitely, so that nothing was left of him other than his AI" and, with it, his fundamental evil will. All of his abilities and ideas, and the countless perfections of comprehension, were taken away from him. These are the things which continuously reach the celestial bodies, or which are presently held captive for the greater part in the celestial bodies. Therefore, through this, they divide into astral and spiritual, so that in the astral, the given AI" and the self-consciousness of matter surfaces, and so that in the spiritual the cognition of God may be implanted again in the astral; otherwise the soul would soon die. In plants, the astral life surfaces first. It could not exist, if it were not able to receive spiritual nourishment from the air.
This explains why so much of the spiritual comes down to Earth in the described phenomena, and why the multitude of the phenomena does not necessarily depend upon the number of human beings who have lived on Earth. But what emerges is the fact that many human beings will still live on Earth. When all the spiritual and astral beings are at some point liberated from the Earth, then in place of the natural Earth there will come into existence a perfect spiritual Earth which will be inhabited by free spirits and souls. That the Earth consists now of captive souls and spirits is attested to not only by the daily weather phenomena but also through clairvoyant human beings. Ordinary people see the phenomena of the weather, whereas to the clairvoyant this phenomena appears as countless hosts of water, earth, mountain, and air spirits, and this difference in perception has always existed.