NEUOFFENBARUNGThe first, lowest region of the air
1. The first region, which is naturally the lowest, occupies the very place where the natural atmospheric air, in which plants, animals and humans live, rests above the surface of the earth; the spiritual is so closely interwoven with the natural, that a wise man would obviously have to say:
2. In this whole lowest region of the air, I find nothing but spiritual; only what is fixed by the spiritual action either momentarily or successively, that alone has the appearance of the natural under the formal appearance; at the very foundation, however, everything is nevertheless completely spiritual.
3. Why do we say spiritual here, and not complete spirit? Because in this region the spiritual – thus also soul- – individual property intelligences must only gradually take hold of each other, unite and find themselves again conscious of themselves as a complete and singular being in a whole, perfectly spiritual form.
4. How is this actually to be understood? I tell you, it is easier than you think.
5. Everywhere a certain center is given for the complete unification of all the spiritual propertys. This center is the actually most closely bound original Spirit, or the Love-spark out of Me; this powerfully draws to itself all that which is of it's nature, and no matter how scattered this may be, it will attach itself precisely to that spiritual center to which it belongs, and becomes, even if of the same quality, different in every center.
6. One example will make the matter perfectly clear to you.
7. Consider, for example, the education of one or several men in a school. A hundred pupils have one and the same master; they learn from the same books, they all learn to write according to one rule, and, being considered afterwards as people who were educated in this school, there will not be two who have the completely same way of thinking, not two who have the same writing and such differences more, and yet the spiritual educational propertyal food was the same; but each spirit of these pupils drew exactly from this general instructional food, his own propertyum pleasing to it, without the teacher having contributed anything in the least for this purpose.
8. From this example it can be seen quite clearly how each spiritual center finds it's own characteristic exactly from the infinite multiplicity of intelligence-propertys, just as the central soul-property given in each seed, finds and draws to itself from the same water, the same air, the same earth, as also from the same light, exactly that which belongs to it's essence.
9. Thus the spiritual intelligences concentrate around the spiritual center peculiar to them, or they flow to where their spiritual center is, gather at an intelligent form, and adapt themselves according to the basic nature of their spiritual center, which usually takes place in man, because the actual spiritual center is given again only in the form of the human.
10. The word is also an excellent example to illuminate this matter.
11. A word is given, and this word, as it is given, draws to itself at that moment all that is necessary for the fulfillment of it's concept.
12. Let us take the word 'commandment'; this word is a center, but it momentarily draws to itself everything that it needs to be a commandment, and it also unites it immediately in itself.
13. But that – in order to complete the concept of commandment itno one from the multiple concepts – it is something extraordinary, and by no means such an easy task as one would think, is self-evident; for what belongs to a commandment? First of all, a wise commanding being who has a great insight into all things, why he gives a commandment and to whom. Secondly, there must be a free being, gifted with much insight and with it, bound willpower, so that it can accept, understand and keep the commandment. What does it take to create such a being, and what qualities must the Creator have to be able to create such a being? Thirdly, the commandment must also be sanctioned; what does it take to be able to sanction a commandment wisely, justly and efficiently?
14. Behold, what an infinite number of concepts and basic ideas and forces is connected with the single concept commandment, so that someone could say: Yes, if this word commandment includes all this as peculiar to itself, what then remains for another no less meaningful word?
15. The main explanation is that each word forms a certain spiritual center, and draws to itself from one and the same number of concepts, and unites them for itself in it's own special way, so that the same concepts must qualify in this word for something quite different from what they qualified for in another earlier word.
16. It is not necessary to add a lot of words or concepts to make this matter even clearer than it already is, for you can do that for yourselves. To the concept of love, virtue, humility, God and the like, belong just as much as to commandment, and what becomes a commandment in the commandment, becomes love in love, virtue becomes virtue in virtue, humility becomes humility, and God becomes God in God; just as the same elementary plants become clover in the clover, turnips become turnips, grapevines become grapevines, and so on.
17. If you have only somewhat grasped what has now been said, you will easily understand, even grasp with your hands, that this lower region is actually and in a certain way the reproduction and reunification workshop of the isolated spiritual and psychic into one complete spirit, and has the highest similarity with all that which appears here before everyone's eyes in the vegetative and productive appearance, where everywhere – as everyone can convince himself of – a singular whole is represented by an endless number of particles; In short, here is the place for sowing, it is the field where in each spiritual seed, a very peculiar association of ideas is gathered into a form; or it is the gathering place of a fully scattered soul around a given spiritual center.
18. Since you have now understood this safely and easily, it will be easy for the next communication to move further in this sphere.