Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 4 -
HEALTH, SICKNESS AND DEATH
13 July 1870
HERE you have again three words which, taken in the natural sense, are easy to decipher in their true meaning. Health signifies the normal state of your vegetative life when all organs fulfill their functions as they should, thereby not preventing you from following your calling or hindering your spiritual development and material occupation.
Health, true health, is only found in a body when man is unaware of the movements and functions of his organs. Where a disturbance sets in these movements, one or more organs involved act in a contrary sense. It causes you discomfort or pain, the soul becomes sad since it feels handicapped in its activity by the body, and out of this discomfort and suffering develops that which you call sickness.
If this condition gains the upper hand, still more organs refuse to function or are disturbed in their functions by the suffering organs, this discomfort spreads, the whole life process is thereby interrupted and with the ceasing of the regular intake of new vital energy and the elimination of waste - finally in the whole machinery the unavoidable stand-still occurs which you call death.
Thereby occurs the breaking up of the as an individual cohering body into its former primitive elements. But the soul, divested of its envelopment, must look around for another garment, another body, since the former has become completely useless.
The seemingly physical life has ceased; a spiritual one begins which with its levels and gradations follows the pull upward or down in accordance with the soul's desire. It is a new spiritual life where the functions of the body are replaced by functions of the spiritual life and, developing themselves spontaneously, gain perfection.
This is the course of life in the beyond. However, in order for this course to be rendered easier and smoother, one must strive after maintaining the health of the soul as far as possible in step with the health of the body on the material earth.
For just as the health of the body implies and furthers the wellbeing of the same, on the other hand the health of the soul implies that of the body, where the spiritual functions of the soul are undisturbed by the clouds and turbidity of the passions.
Wherever man's spirit can exert its influence on the soul regularly, the body is healthy. Indeed, on the whole as well as in its individual parts the moral beauty of the soul will find corresponding expression in its forms, as is usually the case in man's face, where all his propensities, aberrations and passions are involuntarily reflected. Only you cannot read this language of undulating and angular lines revealing in everyone's face the state of his soul, or you would behold in this true mirror of the soul many a thing which, instead of attracting you to many people, you would find repellent.
In My wisdom I did not allow this secret of physiognomy to be revealed to all, as My dear Lavater imagined. For through this clear reading of every human being's character in his own countenance, for many people the progress to spiritual betterment would be made difficult, indeed in many a case impossible.
And so I allow it that under the disguise of a flattering speech or studied polite manners also a devil can join the company of the good without the others having the slightest inkling of it. Thus the word does not bar the road in society to the most depraved being to gradually become something better, which would be impossible if every one could immediately size up his fellowman from his countenance. For then every one would surely shun the wicked, and the wicked one himself would be restricted to consorting with his like or be isolated without the possibility of communication; and this would make him only worse than before.
To be sure, in the beyond it is different; there, every spirit knows another at first sight and can thus avoid what is bad, and join the one who is equal to him or better; hence the great difficulty for one to better himself there, because there, recognizing comes first, whereas here on earth, pretending does.
Therefore, My children, strive to have sound souls, do not resist the influence of the spirit; resist everything which might soil your soul and perhaps leave unpleasant imprints on your face.
Rest assured that these imprints of passions on your face, in your form, such as in the hand and the movements of the whole body, or even in the sinister light emitted by the eye, which for you is inexplicable, are not under your control. There, no concealment of the thoughts, kept ever so secret, in other words, veiled, is of any avail. You cannot hide the impression of an evil or uncanny look meeting the clear eye of innocence, touching it unpleasantly and admonishing its soul to retreat, when behind florid words and polished manners the serpent of betrayal is lying in wait.
Therefore, cultivate the health of your soul so that your eyes can meet everybody else's freely and without guilt.
Be assured - nothing that is spiritually great in man shows its sublime descent and its nobility inherited from Me more than a soulful eye, a look full of mildness, gentleness and love!
In the eye the entire material nature is mirrored externally; out of the eye shines the whole spirit-world, from the highest heavens to the lowest hell.
As long as you carry My Word in the heart, as long as you adhere to Me and not to the world, your soul will become healthy, indeed it will keep growing healthier. This state of health will grow to such an extent that the body which was healthy for its former condition is now only a hindrance for your soul's progress and the soul, spiritualized through My teaching, My Word and My grace, requires as an organ a spiritual and no longer a material envelopment.
Once this state has been reached I shall take from you this burden which you have dragged around during your earthly life and shall exchange it for an ætheric body which will make your nature even more transparent and will totally assume the corresponding form of your inner personality.
Therefore, become beautiful spiritually and you will in the beyond have the same spiritual garment which will correspond to the youthful and incorruptible beauty of your spirit and keep growing forever in beauty, exaltedness and transparency.
Just as the sickness of the body is a disturbance in the functioning of its organs, the failure to live according to My love and My teaching is a disturbance of the functioning of the soul. The same is diverted from its real path by worldly desires or passions of the soul, such as hatred, anger, lust for power and so forth and lives a sham life, not a true life in the spirit. It lives for the sake of the inordinate longings of its material part for the body, thereby finally becoming material itself, loses sight of its own destiny and thus fails to fulfill all its duty and mission on this earth globe, which meant to be a probation school where it learns first to subdue its passions and later to eradicate them completely in order to arrive in My spiritual spheres as a spiritually pure tone.
Instead of striving after spiritual health, the worldly soul has the preferred spiritual ill-health. Although it should have endeavored to always eliminate the bad and absorb new goodness, new life, it did exactly the opposite. Instead of passing over into life, it passed through the sickness into death! Already during its lifetime, instead of using the body for its own purpose by spiritualizing the same, it lost everything noble I had given it as an investment, its Self, embodying it within itself, forfeiting what belongs to the soul and the spirit, and has become a mere body or, in other words, has committed spiritual suicide!
When all the means have failed to extricate such a soul from its physical bonds, I am forced to dissolve this covering in which such a soul has buried itself.
The sort of covering it will have in the other world and how it will look, you can easily imagine. Certainly not a garment of light since the soul was already on this earth no friend of the light, but a friend of the opposite, of the material, a friend of darkness.
Here you have the three words as an instruction and warning for yourselves and for all who will ever read them.
May all well consider what they do and on what roads they walk! My laws of the material and spiritual world are immutable, and the spiritual weight corresponds to the material weight, and what My Paul said holds true: "As the tree falls, it lies!" Do beware of falling as useless, half-rotten wood, but as sprouting branches and twigs for a better and more beautiful life!
The dry tree trunk when it falls remains lying without life and movement. It has no young shoots, contains no living element that could urge it on to further life. It decomposes and decays and passes into other forms and elements that within the shortest time have lost all trace of their former form as components of a tree.
Not so with the green branches and twigs. When they fall onto moist soil containing the least nutritious elements, they easily take root in the fertile soil, begin to rise, feel comfortable in their new existence, put forth leaves, blossoms and fruits and, as the soil, so the produce.
The precious parts of the branch in combination with precious elements of the earth transform the fallen twigs into a more beautiful and finer species, leading them a step closer to their destiny.
So you too, My dear children, strive to become quite healthy spiritually, eradicate all the rust of spiritual sickness and when finally you too need a better envelopment than your material body was until now, fall as vital and fresh twigs onto My viable spiritual soil where love is the fertilizer, humility and love for the fellowman being the earth. There, stretch out your arms like roots into the earth for the fertilizer. There, let yourselves be improved by grafting so that from the seed sown here the result will be a noble branch there, with still more sublime and spiritual fruits thanks to the new soil. In this way you will, through your actions and your love for Me, with your fruits more and more ennobled, and supplying increasingly more noble fruits and more sublime, more spiritual products, keep drawing closer to Him, who so often has fed you with spiritual fruits of the other world and given you for your thirsty soul the draught of the water of eternal life.
Remember well that whatever the form under which I hand you the spiritual food, My concern is always only that you may be educated as healthy souls to life eternal and not, encumbered with sickness, to death.
This with My fatherly blessing for you, My children (for this morning) -from your good Father! Amen.