NEUOFFENBARUNG[Gr.01_013,01] What else do the mountains teach and preach?
[Gr.01_013,02] The mountains have more to say to those who pay attention. From their words anyone who is spiritually awake to any degree can easily learn the state of their own heart.
[Gr.01_013,03] The mountains are therefore a true spiritual mirror to those who wish to see themselves in it.
[Gr.01_013,04] How is that so?
[Gr.01_013,05] You have learnt on many occasions that every appearance in nature has some meaning for the person who is more spiritually awake. You heard this especially on those occasions when certain mountains were also explained to you.
[Gr.01_013,06] A person who is more spiritually awake need only glance at a neighbouring mountain and see how it is lit. Is it perfectly clear or wrapped in a bluish haze? Which parts are more or less hazy? Is there mist around its foot, halfway up or on its summit? Are there clouds above the summit, and what kind are they?
[Gr.01_013,07] Such an observer should also notice what feelings take hold on seeing the mountain. Does it put them in a pleasant or a rather melancholy mood? Do they feel a strong desire to climb it as soon as possible, or just the opposite, a sense that doing so would be impossible? A more awakened feeling may also notice whether the sight of a mountain brings a bright morning feeling, a still cheerful but more tiring midday feeling, a sleepy evening feeling or a desolate, dull midnight feeling, and how long it holds sway over the whole heart.
[Gr.01_013,08] Attend carefully to all these points. The appearances and feelings always correspond exactly to the inward state of a person. The feelings and the appearances must agree, however, for appearances alone do not provide conclusive testimony. When the feeling harmonises with the appearance, the mountain tells the person exactly how matters stand with them.
[Gr.01_013,09] Suppose someone goes out in the morning and sees a mountain that is perfectly clear. Far from lifting their spirits, the mountain fills them with a hidden anxiety. In this case the appearance and the feeling are out of harmony, yet the mountain remains a faithful mirror to the beholder. How so?
[Gr.01_013,10] When the spiritual purity of the mountain repels the beholder’s heart, the mountain says, ‘With what an impure heart you look upon me. Cleanse yourself, so that you may rise inwardly above your worldly, sensual inclinations, as I tower above the mud of the depths, where nothing dwells but wretched creeping things, frogs, toads and snakes.’
[Gr.01_013,11] The observer sees in the mirror of the mountain what they ought to be, but are not.
[Gr.01_013,12] Another case of disharmony would be someone going out in the morning or at another time, seeing a mountain entirely darkened by cloud and yet feeling perfectly cheerful and bright as on a fine morning. What should they learn from the darkened mountain on that occasion?
[Gr.01_013,13] Let the mountain speak for itself. ‘Look at me, cheerful traveller, in the bright morning of your feeling. Once you were as you see me now, dark and sad. A suffocating night threatened to swallow you. Oppressive, heavy clouds surrounded you as they surround my whole being now. You did not know what they would hatch against you. Mighty storms soon came upon you, and many a flash of lightning struck you from your clouds. You did not lose heart. You held me as an example in your soul and stood as I do, a high rock, unafraid and defying the temptation. The storms that threatened to destroy you soon became saving angels and freed you from the great burden of your night. So, little friend in the valley below, as you look cheerfully on me buried in the night of cloud, with storms blowing about my brow as if they would destroy me, attend well to the image before you. You will remain in the unbroken morning of your feeling only if you often call to mind what things were once like for you, when you resembled me in this state.
[Gr.01_013,14] ‘See, this storm will not destroy me, and soon you will see me like yourself again. Blessed are you if you can still look upon me in my purity with the same feeling with which you look upon me now, when I show you how you once were.’
[Gr.01_013,15] See what a good and useful lesson a clouded mountain gives a pure heart by leading it to true humility. The observer can then say, ‘O mountain, how often you have been clouded like this and how often clear again. Let me always remember that a purified heart, as long as it remains free, can become clouded again like you. To help prevent that as far as possible, let your clouded state always remind me and cry out to me in words of thunder: “See how sad it is to sink back into the former night, and how hard it is to bear clouds full of countless flashes of lightning. They do not ask where they should strike. They strike whatever they reach, shattering and destroying whatever they hit.”’
[Gr.01_013,16] These are the two extreme points of disharmony between appearances and feelings.
[Gr.01_013,17] Between these extremes there can be many greater or lesser kinds of discordant appearances. They can all be easily recognised in the light of these two, since they concern only particular parts and no longer the whole.
[Gr.01_013,18] The hardest thing is to judge the appearance as a whole, and that has already been explained. Each individual case is then easy to recognise, just as a person who knows a general mathematical formula can readily work out any particular case from it.
[Gr.01_013,19] Harmonious appearances need no further explanation. When a cheerful heart sees a clear, cheerful mountain, it becomes more cheerful still and longs to go up to the pure height. When a darkened heart sees a fearfully darkened mountain, it becomes darker still and cries secretly in spirit, ‘Mountain, fall upon me and cover my terrible night completely!’ Such a person certainly does not long for the mountain’s height.
[Gr.01_013,20] If someone goes out with a cheerful heart and a darkened mountain spoils their mood, that change is simply an awakening of the heart’s true condition, still hidden within. The mountain shows the person what still lies within them.
[Gr.01_013,21] These are the general features of harmonious relations by which even the slightest particular case can be recognised and determined.
[Gr.01_013,22] Higher mountains, particularly glaciers like our Grossglockner, show this far more distinctly than lower ones. That is self-evident to anyone who considers that a mountain’s purpose extends farther the higher it lifts its summit above the ordinary lowlands of greed on earth.
[Gr.01_013,23] Anyone can also gather from the whole that the mountains become more significant on their purer pastures. The purer they become, the more spiritual it becomes upon them. For that reason they make a greater impression on every heart than lesser heights do.
[Gr.01_013,24] If you wish to see more precisely at what level the mountains act most strongly, and sometimes which mountains have the greatest effect, look carefully at my servant’s fairly well-executed drawings. At the bottom of the drawing you will soon see the points at which the mountains begin to take effect, and which have the most effect.
[Gr.01_013,25] To recognise this, look attentively at each picture and then ask how it has stirred your feelings. You will soon recognise where the greater effect appears. The picture too is a correspondence of the object it depicts and can come to life in the spirit almost to the point of full reality. Naturally an image must be looked at all the more attentively if it is to become real in the feelings. Whoever attends to it in this way may draw many a useful lesson from contemplating it.
[Gr.01_013,26] A mountain in its own natural setting is of course much more effective, and at the very first sight. This needs no further discussion, for each person’s own experience teaches them the same. We have thus described the Grossglockner in all its parts and effects. In due order what has been given is to be understood of all mountains, and consequently by everyone.
[Gr.01_013,27] Above all, understand by them the corresponding mountains in the human heart. Set those alongside the actual mountains so that a similarly beneficial influence at a distance may arise in the heart, as arises and continually endures upon the mountain now made known to you.
[Gr.01_013,28] Attend well to this, examine yourselves by it and act upon it. Then the true inward blessing of the mountains will be poured out upon you as the mountains pour out their blessing upon all the land. This is true, right and faithful. Just as I loved especially to be in the mountains, fed so many hungry people there with a few loaves, showed myself transfigured upon a mountain and ascended from a mountain into my kingdom, so I tell you these things about the mountains and thereby open to you a great gate into the kingdom of eternal life.
[Gr.01_013,29] Consider that I, the author and Creator of the mountains, did not gladly spend time there for nothing, and that there was great living significance in my praying for the last time upon a mountain. Follow me therefore in everything, and you will scarcely ever miss the goal, which is I myself.
[Gr.01_013,30] I say this, who once bestowed heaven from the mountain. This too is a part of heaven. Receive it as a great blessing from me and become alive in spirit for ever. Amen.