The Great Gospel of John
Volume 7
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord on the Mount of Olives. (cont.) Gospel of John, Chapter 8
- Chapter 73 -
The purely spiritual in matter.
1
(Raphael:) "So that you, Agrikola, can understand this even more easily, I will show you some other examples, which I as well as the Lord have already shown to friend and brother Lazarus, but since you did not understand too well what the Lord has shown you, I must according to the will of the Lord make this matter more clear to you. So pay very close attention to everything I'm going to tell you!
2
See, you are also a gardener, you have in Rome large gardens in which you find great joy! Thousands of plants, flowers and fruit are grown there. There is also no shortage of all sorts of grapes, figs, apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapefruits, lemons, oranges, chestnuts and all kinds of melons. So that your garden, which is truly very large, can continuously be replanted with new plants, you must always collect a significant stock of all kinds of seeds, which you can place at the right time into the good soil of your garden.
3
Now, the seed is in the earth and, to your joy, starts to grow strongly and healthily. Yes, this is all quite nice, good and joyful to look at; but do you also have for each species of the thousands of different seeds you put into the soil of the garden, just as many different types of soil, such as for each seed its own soil? You say: 'The very large garden not far from the mouth of the Tiber flowing into the large Mediterranean Sea, has only one and the same good and fertile type of soil, and each fruit prospers in it excellently.'
4
Good, I say to you, if it doesn't rain in the summer - as it is most of the time the case in Rome -, your servants have to moisten the garden with a watering can. Do you also have for each plant species a different type of water? You say once more: 'No, certainly not; I let all plants, shrubs and trees be watered with the same type of water that I brought into the garden through water pipes!' Again good, I say! Thus also only the one and same type of fresh water, since seawater is in general not suitable for reviving plants in dry soil.
5
We now know, that your large garden consists only of one type of soil and is watered with one and the same water. The air in your garden is and stays also the same, and the light and the warmth of the sun also stay, without change, one and the same and can, at least over the total surface of your garden, not differ with regard to the lower or greater strength and force of it, except for the difference which the seasons - but always in equal distribution - distribute over the whole garden.
6
Now, if all preconditions to grow the many different plants, shrubs and trees are exactly the same, the same causes were supposed to bring about exactly the same effects with all plants, shrubs and trees with regard to form as well as shape and taste and smell. And yet, what tremendous differences!
7
If you chew the pip of a lemon, it tastes bitter. Where does the fruit get the pleasant acid? And so the story continues along the row for all species. Everything is in its own way greatly different from the other. Yes, how does this corresponds with one and the same nourishment? The grapevine looks different from a fig tree, and which difference exists in every respect between the fruit of a vine and the fruit of a fig tree! Again you place the seed of an ordinary pumpkin and this of a melon into the soil. The first brought you the fruit of a normally scent- and tasteless pumpkin, while the melon seed paid your noble trouble with a fruit sweeter than honey, despite being everywhere the same earth, the same water, the same air and the same light and very much the same warmth from the sun.
8
If you think about it a little further, obviously you have to ask yourself and say: 'Yes, how can the same forces bring about so many different effects?' I say to you, that all the endless many soul substances are first present in the ether, then in the air and in the water; but the sharpest human eye and the very most sensitive sense of taste and smell will not find in one nor the other primeval general element anything of a taste or smell of any plant and its sweet, sour or bitter fruit, - not mentioning a single word regarding form and color. Now, how does it thus happens, that each different seed attracts from the same earth, from the same water, from the same air, from the same light and from the same warmth, only those primeval substances and embodies them in itself to its own way, which the same and unchanged seed has attracted and embodied already several thousands times thousand years ago?
9
See, even in organic matter pure spiritual starts to appear and shows to the awake and keen observer, it can only be a true something if pure spiritual, and that this what the senses of the outer-person sees and observes as something, is actually nothing, but only this, was is hidden inside a seed kernel, is truly something, because it is pure spiritual. This rests in a for your eye nearly not visible very small shell, embedded in the bud, which is surrounded by the outer seed-kernel. This pure spiritual enclosed in the indicated small shell is a with love, light and willpower filled thought or an idea in its full isolation from the countless many other in themselves and for themselves differentiated and separate concluded thoughts and ideas.