The Earth
THE SPIRITUAL EARTH
- Chapter 27 -
The formation and purpose of matter
In studying the spiritual part of the Earth, we shall not ascend from bottom to top but descend from top to bottom, for we must turn from the outside to the inside in order to reach the spiritual, which is the deepest and the innermost in everything. It has been pointed out to you on several occasions that, internally, matter always conceals something spiritual. Therefore visible matter is essentially nothing but bound and fixed spirituality.
All matter is divisible because it consists of parts, and between these are even smaller spaces, called pores. No one can really say how far the smallest part of matter is finally divisible. For example: Take a small grain of musk and place it in a large room, and within a short time the whole room will be filled with the fragrance of musk. You may let this grain of musk lie there for many years and it will not noticeably diminish in volume or in weight. And yet every second, millions of parts must depart from this grain in order to fill that entire room with its fragrance. If all matter is divisible down to an almost infinite minimum, this makes it abundantly clear that it is of necessity composed of all these parts.
What is it that draws all these parts together and joins them so firmly to one another that they appear as solid matter? It is the first level, at which the spiritual has its origin.
These infinite small parts are originally nothing more than the mere power of ideas flowing from Me, the Creator of all things. Such an idea acquires form, and the form receives life out of the life of the Creator. He gives the newly enlivened form its freedom from Him, and gives it its own light from His primordial light, and, with this living light, its own intelligence, through which this newly vivified form recognizes itself and becomes conscious of itself as an independent being.
When the form has recognized itself as such, then order, the law of all existence, is given to ii. And with this order, the innermost fire of the divinity is bestowed, the spark of eternal love, and out of this comes forth the will. Now that the newly revived form has light, self-recognition, self-consciousness, order, and will, it may act with its will in accordance with the lawful order, or it may decide to act against it.
When a new creature behaves in accordance with the order, then it will appear as a perfect, free being in the great realm of creation for its eternal existence, because its whole being is created out of Me, the One Who is eternal and will be. That is why a human being is a "creature," because his being is created out of Me, and his fate cannot be other than My Own. When one scoops water out of a well, the water in the bucket is of the same kind and has the same purpose as the water in the well out of which it was scooped.
When, however, a new being does not follow the given order because of its free will, it will meet with its own demise and dissolution. If we take, for example, a plant which had its own free consciousness, and if it were able to decide whether to take water, light, and warmth - what would happen to the plant if ii decided not to do so? It would dry up and perish.
As the Creator, I am not indifferent as to whether a being that has been created out of the fullness of My divine being exists only for a period of time or eternally. Were its existence only temporary, it would be obvious that a part of Me would have to be destroyed, and that is impossible. Therefore, once a being exists, it exists for eternity.
But such a creature may remove itself voluntarily from My order, and that means as much to Me as if it were no longer to exist. In this manner, and in addition to Me, an opposite force would form in time, which could disrupt My free activities. I, the Highest Perfection, would have to be imperfect in order to permit such imperfection next to Me. Since this is impossible, such a creature must be imprisoned immediately and kept in one place. Behold, it is immobilization that you see and perceive as matter!
In the infinitely many parts of matter rests the intelligence of the now-captured being. Its intelligence can never perish. But it remains imprisoned until it reaches spiritual maturity, and when such a being begins to accept the divinity in all her parts. Only then is it mature enough to return from whence it came.
For this reason, all matter must be dissolved to the smallest part, so that not one particle exists that does not have the ability to secure the picture of the eternal sun. And in the reception of the eternal original picture lies the new creation, in which the intelligences that have become free turn into a being, return to their original form, and become again what they should have been from the very beginning.