NEUOFFENBARUNG[Gr.01_005,01] From the earlier communications you will already have gained enough light to see that all matter in itself is simply a thought from me made firm by my will.
[Gr.01_005,02] On that principle our Grossglockner is neither more nor less than any other matter.
[Gr.01_005,03] What difference is there, then, between the spiritual proper and its opposite, the material, since each is a product of my will?
[Gr.01_005,04] There is no difference in how they are produced, but all the greater a difference in their essential nature.
[Gr.01_005,05] This may seem strange to you. Consider an artist among you.
[Gr.01_005,06] What is the ground of everything the artist produces? You can find no other than the artist’s will. In other words, whatever the artist produces must first be willed, for without this ground scarcely anything will be produced.
[Gr.01_005,07] Does it necessarily follow that one and the same will must always produce the same thing?
[Gr.01_005,08] No. Love designs the variations in what is produced. The will merely adds the simple words ‘Let it be’, and what love first designed comes to be.
[Gr.01_005,09] It is the same with me. My infinite love shapes the forms, and the power of love called the will brings them forth. At love’s desire, the will holds some forms firm. At love’s desire, that same will grants others an ever more living freedom.
[Gr.01_005,10] By my will, then, matter corresponds to love in being a fixed foundation, the ultimate basis of all that is spiritual. In relation to love it is what is called my mercy.
[Gr.01_005,11] The spiritual corresponds to the living freedom of my love itself. It is what is called grace, or the actual self-awareness of every free being that springs from the free life of my love and is spiritually in its perfect likeness.
[Gr.01_005,12] From this brief introduction you can easily gather that wherever matter is found, whatever its form, there must also be something spiritual. If matter is an act of mercy, this mercy as a means of deliverance cannot exist for itself. It must exist for the higher power towards which that mercy is directed. Have you ever had mercy on mercy itself?
[Gr.01_005,13] If you have mercy on someone else, surely my mercy likewise exists for another and not for its own sake.
[Gr.01_005,14] We have thus shown the necessity of matter for a higher power. But where must that higher power dwell? This is a very important question.
[Gr.01_005,15] Suppose a needy person were somewhere in the west. If you took pity on that person and meant to help them out of their distress, would you take your mercy eastwards? Would you not turn with your mercy towards the place where the person in need was, and, on finding them, remain with them in your mercy?
[Gr.01_005,16] Consider these questions with a little attention and it will be immediately apparent that a hospital for the poor and the poor themselves are always found together. So it is with matter and spiritual powers: they take hold of one another and each contains the other.
[Gr.01_005,17] If you come across an almshouse on earth that is finer and larger, you will quite naturally conclude that it can hold more poor people than a smaller, less distinguished one.
[Gr.01_005,18] The same applies to the scale and distinction of matter. The grander and more remarkable you find it in a place, the more spiritual powers it is there to accommodate.
[Gr.01_005,19] Let us turn our eyes once more to the Grossglockner.
[Gr.01_005,20] See how splendid and distinguished it stands, like a king among mountains. Where the peaks of other mountains peter out in bare rock, our Grossglockner only begins to tower mightily over all its bare neighbours. See how it extends several hours’ journey in every direction, how it is covered in perpetual snow and ice, how many streams come tumbling down from its pinnacles, and how its steep summits are almost continually surrounded by whitish clouds. You will recognise it from afar and say with certainty, ‘That is surely our Grossglockner. The gleam of its snow, its height and the clouds that constantly surround it are a sure guarantee.’
[Gr.01_005,21] You will find it remarkable indeed. Being so remarkable, it must also be a remarkable institution, or, as it were, a great mass of my mercy.
[Gr.01_005,22] From the natural account of the mountain we have already heard how far-reaching and splendid its benefits are. Ask yourselves, though, whether such functions could even be conceived if spiritual powers endowed with intelligence did not dwell there to direct them. Could there be an effect without the corresponding force or forces?
[Gr.01_005,23] The forces at work here are precisely the spiritual powers by which all this is accomplished.
[Gr.01_005,24] The only question now is whether these naturally beneficial effects of the mountain are the main purpose of the spiritual powers surrounding and inhabiting it, or a secondary purpose through which these powers are to ripen for something else.
[Gr.01_005,25] A short example, in the form of another question, will answer this. When grains of seed are put in the earth, what is the purpose of the work? Is it the sowing itself, or does the sowing have a higher purpose in view?
[Gr.01_005,26] As the seeds decay, they enrich the earth and gradually make it more fertile. Surely you would not regard this effect as the chief purpose of sowing. You would say, ‘We put grain into the earth so that a new fruit-bearing stalk will grow from it and give us back many times over what we originally laid in the ground.’
[Gr.01_005,27] The mountain’s natural benefit, just mentioned, stands in exactly the same relation to the higher purpose of its existence as the fertilisation of the soil by a decaying grain stands to the abundant living fruit it produces.
[Gr.01_005,28] From this you can begin to see why, at the end of the account of the mountain’s natural benefits, I said that a single spiritual speck or atom stands high above all the natural benefits described so far.
[Gr.01_005,29] Regard what has been said so far merely as a necessary preface and introduction, without which you would scarcely understand what follows.
[Gr.01_005,30] We shall reserve the particulars of what follows for another communication. Let that be enough again for today.