Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 26 -
COSMIC LIFE
14 July 1876
I HAVE been telling you many a thing concerning life, have shown it to you in various phases, how it manifests and what it actually is. However, there is always something left to be said about it, namely, that this life, as a seeming efflux of a spiritual potency, is actually nothing else but the power of My will, which manifests in millions of different ways.
In order to introduce you to this spiritual life and point out to you even more clearly the difference between spirit and matter, this word entitled "Cosmic Life" shall elucidate for you more fully the spiritual life generally and also individually. In other words, that it is always the same principle, the same motive, which, beginning with the smallest ether atom and ending with the highest angel spirit, is only My divine Being. Manifesting on various levels and in various forms, struggling for development and perfection, it inspires and implies the spiritual progress and visibly manifests in everything as life.
When I say "cosmic life", I take the concept in the way this word, derived from classical Greek, denotes it, namely, as a "universal life" comprising the whole universe. For all that exists must be based on an idea, why it was created, what its purpose was and what its ultimate destiny will be.
If you view the entire universe with a spiritual eye, crossing the realm of the infinite ether-space with the power of thought, all you will be able to (discover in it will be "ether atoms", or the most subtle constituents of material substances. However, your instruments, such as microscopes, electrometers, etc., would never be capable of rendering them visible to your physical eyes.
All of these finest ether particles have in their center an offshoot of spiritual content of Me, of My Being, which thereby imprints on them the eternal permanence and the everlasting urge for development, preservation and progress.
In every atom there is a spiritual particle of Myself. In other words, there exists something within your organism that, interiorly and exteriorly, reaches to the last and finest ramifications of your nervous system as a sensation in the skin. Being a psychic principle, it has no other purpose than to build, sustain and spiritualize the body.
Just as your soul within the sphere of your body is omniscient on account of the fine nerve fluid permeating your body, even surrounding you as vaporous envelopment atmosphere, outer-life ether, there is also in every ether atom something of Me. Thus, as I have stated in another word, there is no point in the visible arid invisible realm of My spiritual and physical creation where I would not be omnipresent, seeing and feeling everything that occurs.
On this are based the so-called omniscience and omnipresence that you also possess in your body. The only difference lies in that the spiritual life in you, the soul and the spirit, build the physical and the psychic, whereas with Me the former is inapplicable since I do not see matter, but only Spiritual, even when you think you discover elemental substances.
Well, to return to the ether atoms, I must first explain to you the nature of this atom, its mission and the purpose of its existence. And so listen:
According to your concepts, an ether atom is an incorporeal or, using a learned expression, an imponderable thing. However, it is something separate, limited, since in the unlimited state it would again have to dissolve into something else.
Thus, despite its minuteness, such an atom has dimensions like any other body, which means width, depth and length.
In this atom a spark from Me is enclosed; for, since I have created it, it must contain something of Me and for this reason must possess only My attributes. The urge for further development is inherent in it and every atom must be different from other atoms, both quantitatively and qualitatively, so as to represent all the elementary substances essential for the creation of the universe. And so there developed between the atoms, by means of their surrounding vaporous envelopments, assimilation and association, where then (as with many insects the feelers do) the respective vaporous envelopments attract the homogeneous while repelling the heterogeneous.
In this manner, out of atoms formed molecules and out of these, cells and crystals. There developed warmth, light and life, speeding up the formation of larger bodies.
After the formation of the cosmic bodies began the organic life, out of the same the spiritual life and out of the spiritual life the striving to emulate the divine, whereby finally the divine spark inherent in the smallest atoms must return step by step to that place from where it had proceeded.
It goes without saying that, where I want to create living beings, I first had to give them a place where to live and an urge enabling them, as individual beings, in the midst of the entire infinity to walk their designated spiritual course through life.
However, as you know from many of My words, apart from My attribute as the Creator I am also love personified, and love consists only in making others happy and again finding one's own happiness and bliss in that of others. Therefore, I as God of love had to create for you abodes of bliss, had to endow these beings, as images of Myself, with forms which should express this love as their inherent divine. And so, out of the small ether particles the worlds came into being, and only after their material formation the living beings, all of which represented certain attributes of Myself. Then man on earth, as the keystone of the material creation, in his mission as earthly man, must prepare the next spiritual step as the future inhabitant of a spirit-realm, where there is no sudden leap, but only a gentle transition from one level to the next; and this implies the gradual progress in My Kingdom.
Thus the worlds formed from the immense supply present in the ether space, and that is why their orbiting which, through the friction with which they move, develops warmth and light. This rouses the smallest atoms out of their inertness and, forcing them to amalgamate, leads them on their immense orbits during long periods of time through regions where the spent mostly by one substance is always replenished by a new one, mostly by one not present in earlier constellations.
The orbiting of one world around another, the rotation around its own axis serves the sole purpose of awakening and spreading life by means of these two movements.
You see, everywhere this urge to leave nothing alone stirs. For everything possessing a weight seeks its point of rest, where it would remain if it were not always threatened either by the inner urge to disintegrate or by influences of the outer world.
Movement is life, and this movement, be it the great circular one of the world or the vibration of light and warmth, must contribute to arousing the object or the being out of its lethargy, forcing it to further development, to modification, for nothing created is permanent, but must progress while constantly changing.
Thus the millions upon millions of suns and worlds in the great and vast ether snare formed. Thus at present the comets, as the first beginnings of whole cosmic systems, form and orbit in long elliptical tracks around their great central sun from which they have gone forth. And so the seemingly material realm carries the germ for further development within it, until also the worlds, however immense they may be, having completed their cycle and spiritualized and refined everything in them, enter into other unions. Thereby they naturally form, as world globes of a higher order, dwelling places also for higher spiritual beings.
From level to level matter develops the life indwelling it, until it too can make the transition from the coarse visible to the more subtle ætheric. So also the beings of every kind develop, which have to perfect themselves gradually, because their dwelling places have to conform to their spiritual condition.
As I once said: "In My Father's house there are many mansions."
I now repeat it: yes, there are very many dwellings or spiritual abodes, where the analogous spiritual beings will enjoy those beatitudes that conform to their own spiritual constitution. These beatitudes are of such a nature and arrangement that, apart from the permanent enjoyment, the beings can also have the foreknowledge of greater bliss and of purer spiritual abodes. For where I am concerned, no standstill is possible because an ever-greater drawing near to Me opens more and more vistas, since I am infinite and My world has to bear the same character.
So you see the cosmic life, beginning in the smallest ether atom, struggling upward from the insensitive matter to the angel spirit possessing spiritual self-awareness, who, with one glance overlooking the material world, is able to grasp My ideas and possesses the might to carry them out.
Thus these cosmic islands exist as "shell globes", of which there is an uncountable number and all of which, as a separate whole, again and again have to go through their process of development in the great whole.
Thus these great worlds exist with their analogous created beings. Your fantasy is inadequate to realize the distance and magnitude of these worlds. All of them, though separated from each other by great distances, move independently in the great ether space, so as to develop and perfect the beings and denizens living on them for future purposes. Arid so, once the material realm draws to a close, only a spiritual one of greater grandeur can emerge from the existing.
Therefore, Scripture says: "A thousand years in My sight are but as yesterday!" But I tell you: Millions of years in My sight are only a moment, for innumerable material worlds are orbiting in the vastness of creation. The millions of years cannot be counted which passed until they shaped into worlds, formed their planets and comets, and had sufficiently perfected themselves to become abodes for beings endowed with senses.
The years of your lives, the revolution of your earth around the sun, the whole turning time of your solar system around its central point, all this is less than a second on the great cosmic clock on which the duration or existence of My cosmic creation is registered.
Hence your amazement and admiration when you look at My creation, because you apply too small a scale to judge or to measure the creation of a God, an infinite Being.
There are solar systems and entire shell globes, the light of which takes millions of years to reach you. What do you know of these worlds, how great they must be to be just visible to you as the tiniest of stars. Where is your arithmetic which can grasp or spell out this distance in figures, where your fantasy, which would dare to think and elaborate on the magnitude of such worlds!
And yet, My children, also these worlds are not the last border stones of My creation. Far beyond these distant worlds there are still other cosmic systems, the beam of which is far from reaching you, and your earth and your sun no longer exist before a light-ray from there will cross the space where once your solar system orbited.
Rise and grasp this magnitude, if only of the material world. Become engrossed in the concept of the omnipotence that created this with few means, namely attraction and repulsion, light and warmth. Do understand this Lord and Creator, in whose eyes your sun with all its planets and comets appears only as a dot. Who, were He not what He really is, namely a Father to His children, would long ago let a generation like yours have come to ruin, which, after all He has done for it, behaves in such an unruly and rebellious manner towards Him. Do understand this Love, which, as He once said, "lets the sun rise every day over the good and the bad," and which, despite all aberrations and the denying of the divine, every second showers mankind with millions of graces!
Do understand this God, who once in human form descended from heaven to you weak created beings, who left to you precepts of love, of tolerance, of forgiveness. Become engrossed in the thought about His greatness, His might, His infinite creation. At the same time realize what it means that He, this infinite Creator and Lord, wants to let you feel nothing of these attributes overwhelming you, but wants only to be your Father, your loving guide, and who even now for quite a while has been in direct contact with you, trying to draw you to Him, explaining and revealing to you all the secrets of His self, His creation. And this only so that you may learn to love Him and to find your spiritual path more easily, which is mapped out for all who were created by Him and through Him.
All this consider, and when in quiet hours you want to lift up your hearts to Him, in doing so strive to be worthy of Him and of yourselves. Only in this way can you expect Him to grant your wishes. For "He is a Spirit, and whosoever wants to worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth."
I spoke these words more than a thousand years ago and still you do not understand them, become embroiled in worldly worries, and ask Me for meaningless things. And you totally forget that you, as My offspring and future participants in spiritual beatitudes, have other, higher missions and ultimate goals than to adhere in this earthly life to transient things and to seek your whole salvation in them.
That is why the disappointments, the unfulfilled aspirations, for you have never understood Me or My world, have never understood that I have different intentions concerning you, which are often bound to be contrary to your desires, since you often regard unimportant matters as essentials.
Despite all the words so far given you by Me, you do not know as yet what it means "to live spiritually", what "cosmic life" means.
This universal life, which is the fundamental law of the entire creation, wherein every "why" finds its solution, you do not know!
If you could completely understand these great laws, you would far more easily understand that no being can escape them, and every time they are ignored, punishment is bound to follow. As long as you are unable to concern yourselves with great, profound ideas, you will stick to the soil of this little earth, having only a small horizon to look over, which does not reach beyond your domestic sphere.
That is why My words, My admonitions, My explanations. That is why My manifold revelations as to how great things can only be achieved through small ones, so that, following Me, you may also become small in your earthly life in order to grow tall spiritually and to rise. Then you will soar up to that height of the concept "human", where in all clarity and tranquility you understand in the cosmic laws the developmental processes of the material world. You will also learn to clearly recognize that even these laws, spiritual and infinite for the material beginning, find their culmination point only in spiritual perfection. And you will only then, progressing step by step, always drawing closer to Me, recognize who I am as the Creator!
Thus, love implies itself if, based on respect, it is the natural consequence of the latter. For once one has learnt to recognize the Master by His works, one can understand what attributes must adorn Him and why, with such might, so much goodness and love are still prevalent!
So take this word again from My hand. It is the Father's hand, which wants to pull you up to Me. Do not despise it, for if you do, it will only be you who will come to grief. Amen.