The Earth
THE SPIRITUAL EARTH
- Chapter 40 -
Substance and matter, energy and material
If, after death, the body were to dissolve into dust, little would have been accomplished as far as the body and its soul are concerned. In the world of Nature, even the finest dust is still matter, and it cannot unite with the soul and the spirit as long as it remains matter. "Specific soul atom" would be a better word than "dust" because, since there is a vast difference between matter and astral or psychical substance, a soul atom is no longer material but substantial.
For example, take a magnet: that which is visible is matter. But that which causes the attraction and repulsion cannot be seen by the physical eye. A human being has other senses that are closer in proximity to the soul than is the sense of sight, which is the outermost of a person's senses. The sense of hearing is closer, the senses of smell and taste closer still, but it is the senses of feeling and touch that are completely united with the soul.
When someone takes two magnets and moves them closer together, he will notice a reciprocal pull. That suffices for the conclusion to be drawn that a particular, although invisible, energy must be present.
This also applies to an electric spark; even though it is visible in the material world, it is no longer matter but a soul-like substance or energy that rests in matter. If, however, it is stimulated, it expresses itself momentarily as penetrating energy.
Examine gunpowder. A grain is quiet and falls like any other matter down into the depths. But within this grain is bound a great amount of energy. If this energy is stimulated by something which is similar, it tears its prison into the smallest of parts as fast as lightning and becomes free.
Fire is related to the substance of this, and is therefore an excitant. Water also contains energy which may be stimulated by a high degree of warmth. Should someone attempt to harness this energy, it will burst even the strongest container and expand itself freely. In almost all matter, there is an energy present. You have only to know by what means it may be stimulated in order to make itself effectively known.
Naturalists have discovered certain fundamental energies in every form of matter. If, however, these scholars, being themselves living beings, had gone but a single step farther and acknowledged the all-sovereign and all-fulfilling vital energy as their own original source, they would have made a giant step forward in increasing their knowledge. It would not then be necessary for them to weigh and dissect dead shells, but they might immediately begin with the fundamental state of all existence.
Now they grope about in "dead shells" and, in the end, try to prove that vital energy is a mixture and a composition of these dead shells. By what kind of logic may effective energy be looked upon as dead? Can there be anything more nonsensical than to dispute the fact that visible effects have a live cause? Because dead is, in a certain respect, much less than nothing.
A thing may be considered "dead" only as long as it is banished from a sphere of activity. The soul and spirit of a human being may be "dead" when, through a bad employment of their probation of freedom, they are again held captive in the same prison in which they have been cut off from any possibility of activity.
If, however, energies are detected working in and on matter, they are not dead but alive and intelligent. Because no effect is possible without intelligence of a particular kind, and such is also the case when it is without energy. Since energy is recognizable from an effect, the intelligence of the energy is therefore recognizable from orderly planning. Does not the growth of every plant take place in accordance with an internal principle which is easily recognizable? This applies also to decomposition and all phenomena: their cause must be energies, by which anyone may draw the following conclusion.
Wherever several effects are detected, there must be as many forces as there are causes. And since these effects are orderly and planned, herein lies the reason why there must be just as many intelligences as there are energies in existence.
These conclusions should make it understandable that matter consists of souls, and therefore of intelligences, which are being held captive intermittently by higher energies and intelligences in accordance with order and necessity. When, however, the term of captivity has expired, the individual intelligences reawaken as the prime substance in the being that was created from out of Me, the Creator, in the beginning. This reunification is partially the work of the intelligence itself, and partially the work of the higher spirits that are now familiar to you.