Secrets of Life
Disclosures about important questions of life
- Chapter 5 -
BODY, SPIRIT AND SOUL
18 July 1870
THESE three words have often been mentioned in My messages and you have already a general notion of the meaning of "body", "spirit" and "soul", as well as what they mean in a special, spiritual sense.
Since in all My words there lies something infinite, and always something new and spiritual can be drawn from them, we will try to extract from these same words another meaning, which may perhaps be just as important as the former, or even higher and more sublime.
Since My instructions are always given step by step, the explanation of body or matter as imprisoned spirits in the same, or as My thoughts and ideas fixed in matter, is in keeping with your former power of comprehension. Now that you have become more mature and have cast deeper glances into the secrets of My creation, I will illumine for you this word body" from a different aspect, thus informing you of a new field for the enlightenment of your soul and the preservation of your spirit. From this you can see that, although I repeat words previously used and explained, I can always find other aspects of it apart from the earlier given explanations so that you can discover in the subject new wonders and new proofs of My love and wisdom. Indeed, if I wanted to try, turning around this word a thousand more times, I would keep showing new aspects to your surprised eyes. But to the point.
As I have explained to you in earlier messages, "body" was always identical with "matter", and I showed you that also in matter there is really nothing material, but only bound Spiritual. Or I told you that matter constitutes My fixed thoughts and ideas which remain matter or body as long as I do not withdraw My thoughts and ideas enclosed and embodied in the same.
All these explanations are correct, firstly, because they designate what is true and, secondly, because it was I who gave them to you.
However, if we want to understand this concept of "matter" or "body" from a different aspect, I first ask you: What does the word "body" actually signify?
Look, in order to be thorough and then move upward step by step on the great gamut of My creations and of My Being itself, we must first establish the concept of a word and not thoughtlessly stop with the utterance of the word "body" without a closer description of its nature. Well then, let us begin like the pupils as they learn how to read, with the alphabet.
The word "body" actually denotes a separate thing with dimensions according to width, length and depth, which is a complete and separate, self-contained thing amidst the limitless infinity.
Thus the body is a something that occupies a space and has an envelopment whereby its individual being is separated from the entire universal All-Being.
Notwithstanding all this, a body can experience all degrees of density and weight, it can be infinitesimally fine, imponderable for you, but on the other hand be found compressed to the most solid rock like granite, called original substance of the terrestrial body'. It always remains a body, a separate something, which can assume dimensions which in the volatile state are immensely great but in the solidified state extraordinarily small; they can then through the urge of attraction and annexation of similar bodies form rocks, earths, worlds, solar regions etc.
Therefore, body as a word is the expression for something that physically exists on its own and has become, separated from the All- Being, an entity existing independently.
The body is divisible ad infinitum, where your eyes and instruments fail to serve you. However, it still exists with its dimensions on all three sides, albeit no longer comprehensible for you, just like the borderline where its divisibility ceases and the Spiritual imprisoned in it has its beginning.
Without bodies there would not exist a visible creation!
There are bodies or substances that are transparent and imponderable, such as light and electricity; however, they are so only for your eyes, but not for the eyes of the spirits.
For your eyes everything that transmits the light-ray, not reflecting the same from its surface, is invisible. But consider, you do not see the objects or the light falling on them, but you see them only through the light-ray reflected from them.
You cannot see a light-ray fleeing out into infinity.
Therefore, when something has a body of very little density, it is nonexistent for your eye. And if it were not for chemistry, which shows you several "elements", you would believe to be dealing only with one, as for instance with the air in which you live, which you breathe, chemically breaking it up in the lungs and extracting the vital substance contained there, then exhaling what is used up or carbonized.
All these components are non-existent for your eyes whereas for your body they are perceptible. For, if "the salt of the air" or, as you say, oxygen is lacking and only carbon is present, life ceases for you and every living being that only inhales the latter falls prey to death. The same applies to the third main element of air, nitrogen.
But in the air are contained still a great many other substances all of which have bodies but are imperceptible to your senses.
That which in the air is already denser, is found in the ether in a more refined form and the closer the air to the earths surrounded by it, the coarser and denser the particles it contains. In the water it solidifies to liquid and even to ice, since thus condensed air without warmth has become a dense, compact body.
Beginning with water, the stages of solidification progress to the most solid and heavy metals and rocks contained in the earth.
These things, extracted and separated from the All-Being and called "bodies", represent on an orderly scale the entire creation of My fixed thoughts, where, beginning with the first imponderable yet physical atom, I constructed the whole gamut of things, one more perfect then another, up to Myself, throughout all the solar regions and shell globes up to My highest heaven, where even the finest envelopments of My creational thoughts have still some corporeality which, however, measured with your senses, would be something utterly spiritual!
The existence of this entire physical world is affected in the following way:
As like spirits prefer to associate, so all the elemental substances or bodies of like nature cannot resist the great urge of the force of attraction and in accordance with My indwelling creational thought join together in a certain measure, sometimes assuming definite forms thought by Me, and again sometimes showing themselves to the physical eye in irregular shapes.
Thus this whole world of bodies is united through the same bond of love though each one is separate from the other, and is the visible and invisible carrier of My thoughts, or, the spark of My Spirit laid into them is more or less bound within them.
That which impels these bodies to attract or repel each other in accordance with certain laws, to assume this or that form is the indwelling urge received from Me, and is actually the spirit imprisoned in matter. For "spirit" (here nature spirit) or "natural force", as you call it, are the same thing.
Spirit is the essential urge inherent in every body to preserve its form, which it has shaped according to its intelligence, for as long as the existence of the physical envelopment corresponds to the indwelling spirit.
It is the encased spirit that, beyond all transience such as your natural force, makes the body what it really is.
If the body suffers a change, the nature spirit indwelling it escapes, breaking up into spirit particles or uniting with other like (nature) spirits to form a higher spirit on the gamut of My creation, and in keeping with its intelligence clothes itself with a different body.
The Spiritual in the body incites it to change and the spirit, following its urge, again complies with another creational thought by leading back the matter purified to substance (soul substance) to its origin, or, uniting it with other bodies which are on a higher level, as the abode of intelligent spirits brings it closer to perfection in My great Universe.
Apart from the above-mentioned, by this word one really understands something incorporeal.
Also certain liquids when highly refined and broken up develop an ætheric fluid, either in a natural or chemical way, which can no longer be perceived by way of the coarser senses, only sometimes through the olfactory nerves.
But it is not this kind of "spirit" which I want to explain to you, for this is still a body, although of a refined kind.
What I mean by spirit is an efflux out of Me, an offshoot of My divine strength which, however limited in its sphere of action, is nevertheless something indestructible, never-to-be annihilated.
It is these "nature spirits" that hold together the entire creation, securing its actual existence and eternal permanency, for, being emanations from Me, they must be immortal as I Myself am.
Spirits bound in matter or in bodies are the bottom layer of creation, its foundation-pillars, without them there would not exist a body and the light of the sun would lose itself in infinity. For only by preserving the bodies" existence and enabling them to present compact surfaces to the light in every possible form, do they effect by means of the partly absorbed and partly reflected light the thousands upon thousands of splendors of so-called mute nature, in contrast to the enlivened, great spiritual one.
The body exists through its indwelling spirit; the spirit, as a spark of Myself, then manifests on the higher levels of the living organism as a higher potency of more or less self-awareness, namely, as a "soul".
The spirit animates the body, imparting to it the great life principle, from the lowest imprisoned spirit gradually to rise higher and with the help of an animating soul, in more highly evolved bodies to become more and more aware of its existence and able to share the joy of life also with other beings.
This is the third step in the gamut of creation, the rank of the soulendowed beings where the spirit, already more liberated, has built for itself another intelligent abode in the matter serving as body with the help of which it can express itself better, as well as use its material abode more to its own liking.
This soul life begins with the most primitive animals, most of which, apart from the ingeniously arranged body, in accordance with their individuality have also the advantage of enjoying the freedom of movement.
Here the body appears already as servant, and not as lord, as in the mineral kingdom.
The soul uses the same for its preservation and its vital needs, of course still guided by the spirit as "instinct" or leading-string of nature whereby the spirit urges the soul now to do this and now that.
Free movement always implies a higher degree of intelligence; for, if I allow a soul to move its body more freely, I must certainly endow it with the impulse as to how, when and for what purpose it is meant to move the same.
In this gamut of freely moving corporeal beings it is now an upward movement, an attempt to reach that level where the spirit offers to the machine or the body the most sublime gift the Creator could make, namely, the greatest possible spiritual intelligence. And, finally, the soul, aware of its place in creation, recognizes its origin and, having elevated the tiny spiritual, divine spark encased in the last atom to a power in full self-awareness, now gazes upward and only then begins to understand its origin and descent from the Most High.
This keystone of the entire world of bodies, spirits and souls is man, whom I created in My image and placed as a compendium of everything else between two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, with the urge by means of his soul to spiritualize his physical world, to open to his spirit endowed with all divine attributes the door to the Most High. And so, through the influence of the spirit, the soul may one day become a spirit and the body, instead of being its material envelopment, its spiritual one which then would represent all that the body possessed physically, thus spiritualized becoming a physical vehicle of the most sublime substance and the most glorious garment for the most noble human spirit!
Here, My dear children, you have the great gamut of My creation, beginning with the first nascent atom and the most minute monad and ending with My last work, man, where the same process begins spiritually, up to My highest heavens, where the purest spirits with the finest light-bodies use what they can of your physical substance from the space of creation, purified to the highest possible degree, as an outer envelopment of their God-souls, in the same way as you use your body which is composed of coarse substances.
The road there is a long but not impossible one.
Endeavor, My children, to become that for which I destined you on this gamut, that means to rise to the limit of the physical-material, to the first beginning of the spirit-world where the door to light and cognition will open spontaneously and where you will behold before you the limitless spiritual world and behind you the never-ending physical world, or "world of senses" and in the midst of all this - Him, who created everything and whose only joy is when His created beings have learnt to call Him, whom they call "Lord" and "God" - "Father".
Once you will be able to take in all this at a glance, He is no longer far from you, He who will prove to you despite your past sufferings and battles that without all those earthly tribulations you would not be where you really enjoy the quintessence of the world of body, spirit and soul; a fatherly love which only He can let you feel who again here with these three words wants to give you a small proof of how much He wishes, that you, following His precepts, may let go of everything worldly-physical and only strive after His heavenly bliss! Amen.