NEUOFFENBARUNG← Gifts of Heaven · Volume 1 · Contents
Breathing in the natural world
22nd November 1840, from 8:45 morning, until 12:45 afternoon
Writers: K.G.L. – S. – Andr. And Ans. H. – the Lord reveals about the question: “Does plants also breathe, and how?” – through the servant J.L., the following:
[1] Not only the plants, even the stones breathe – each after it's own kind!
[2] If you go through the animals in order, you will find that every animal breathes. But breathing is peculiar to each animal in a special way, as the species and kind determine it. A horse breathes differently, a bull differently, a dog differently, a cat differently, and so every quadruped animal in it's own way. For although breathing consists of nothing other than the drawing in and expelling of air (whereby the substance necessary for the life of an animal is always taken in and the unsuitable is immediately expelled), the manner in which the air is drawn in, chemically decomposed there and the unusable expelled again, is different.
[3] And so amphibians, worms and insects also breathe; but how completely different is the breathing of these cold-blooded and even bloodless animal genera! For the insects have no blood, but only a sap corresponding to their nature, which is constantly in a rolling back and forth movement, by which rolling back and forth the electricity necessary for the life of such animals is developed in the vessels. And how completely different is the breathing of those animals which live under the water. And since there are many animals under the water with regard to species and kind, you should know that the breathing is as diverse as the diversity of the animals themselves.
[4] Behold, these questions, which are asked there, are worthy of an answer – however, a basic question has been left out, without the answer of which these two questions can never be answered completely to the thorough insight of the people. And this basic question is the following:
[5] Why do the animals, plants, stones and all world-bodies breathe? Behold, if one does not understand that and why breathing is necessary for the existence of things, then it is of no use to know whether and how things breathe, since this act is not perceptible to the eye. But if one knows why breathing is necessary, then the whether and how is already as much as answered. For it is more difficult to see the necessity than the whether and how.
[6] But in order to see this, let us first not think about the animals and plants, but about a stone and see whether it needs to breathe. And if we find that it needs to breathe, we will certainly find that it breathes. And how it breathes, will then certainly also be shown in the necessity of breathing itself.
[7] Now see, you say: Matter is nothing but the expression of two opposing forces, namely the centripetal (*1) and centrifugal (*2) force.
[8] The existence of matter therefore has it's reason in the fact that the centrifugal force counteracts the centripetal force to the same degree in the constant endeavor to want to expand endlessly in all conceivable directions, in which relationship the centripetal force again expresses the completely opposite endeavor and wants to contract constantly in one point.
[9] Now, if the centripetal force would not be nourished or supported by the constant acceptance of the similar auxiliary forces surrounding it, it would immediately be overcome by the centrifugal force, whereby it would then also become nullified and matter would thereby step out of the sphere of existence. Therefore, the stone, depending on what kind it is, has to constantly suck up the similar parts surrounding it in the air, to keep what is completely similar to it and thereby to replace the parts consumed by the mutual struggle, but to get the dissimilar parts out again by means of the centrifugal force always acting outward – so that it remains in it's kind what it was formed to be. Now and then it happens, however, that even a stone becomes ill in a certain way, if foreign parts
were sucked in too often with those peculiar to it and these could not easily be taken out again by the counteracting centrifugal force and the stone then gets foreign formations in itself. For example, one finds in one or the other stone other minerals, or in a base stone more precious stones; or, what each of you will have often observed, that otherwise transparent crystals, or even diamonds, contain certain opaque, moss- and feather-like particles, which are certainly not of the nature of the stones containing them.
[10] Now, how does the act of breathing actually happen with stones? This question is already half answered in the necessity of breathing. At first a stone breathes like the animals, namely through "inhalation" and "respiration" (*3) that is, by virtue of it's coarse organic formation and it's properties associated with it, it continuously draws similar parts out of the surrounding air into itself. And as with the animals the chemical decomposition takes place only in the body itself, so with the stone this decomposition takes place already on it's surface; why with the time also the surface of the stone becomes covered by a thin crust foreign to it, differently colored, which often becomes so strong with larger stone masses that it forms after it's kind either a separate rock, or depending upon the excreted parts, often also all different kinds of plant-like growth.
[11] Behold, this could certainly not happen if the stone did not inhale and respire (i.e. breathe in and out(*4)). But exactly this appearance must be noticeable also to every still biased researcher. For it tells him clearly: the hard stone, which contains neither humidity nor anything for vegetative growth in itself, like e.g. the rough mountain gravel, how can it be surrounded around it's whole circumference often an inch thick with completely strange formations, which are not to be met on any other bodies in the kind as around it, if it would not leave behind in the air region by the inhalation of the parts agreeing with it exactly that, which is suitable afterwards by another process for the formation of the strange forms surrounding the stone?
[12] For the same happens as when you would put any body into mineral water for a while. This body would also immediately absorb what it likes, and what it doesn't like, but while still surrounding it, it would then form some kind of salty crust around the body.
[13] For this, the strange phenomenon can provide you with a visible specimen, if you would take a small zinc stick and hang it into a glass, which would be filled with dissolved lead. What will happen here? The zinc stick will now eagerly begin to inhale and suck in what it likes from the liquid. The lead, however, which was dissolved by this liquid, becomes again compactly visible around the zinc stalk, after it has put on itself immediately under all kinds of – one could say – random formations around it. See, what visibly happens by this experiment shown to you, is also the case with all minerals!
[14] Now we would have also seen how this breathing happens. But besides this inhaling and exhaling, there is a second and a third breathing.
[15] Look, this is something new again! Since you are eager snatchers of novelties, I must serve you something new again. For I think it will no longer be necessary to discuss with regard to the first breathing, whether the stones breathe, after you have seen that they firstly must breathe and secondly, also how they breathe. If one knows these two basic conditions, then you will probably notice yourselves that the "if" has it's own ways. And therefore we go on to our "news"!
[16] The next kind of breathing is an electric breathing. This electric breathing is nothing else than the absorption of the magnetic fluid by which the two opposing forces are strengthened in their persistence. This persistence is again nothing else than the visible expression of the mutual polarity – and that visibly because, as you will hopefully already know a little, matter in it's appearance is nothing else than the polarization of the opposing forces.
[17] This polarization is then in a way the life of matter, which continues as long as the polarization expresses itself as "persistence of the opposing forces" in matter.
[18] If one or the other polarity is disturbed in it's persistence by whatever certain circumstance, then the matter weathers and finally decays into dust, which dust itself only exists in this form for as long as there is still some "polarity" in it's particles, but finally passes from this last existence into another one as soon as it is forced by some circumstance to take a completely different direction.
[19] However, concerning the third kind of breathing, a more detailed report shall be given at a next opportunity. And about this I say here only this much: Since you already know well (from another point of view than that of the worldly scholars) what and for what purpose matter actually is, then you must think well anyway that if matter, of which the house is built, must necessarily breathe in order to exist, and in itself, through the second breathing, the persistence of polarity necessary for the existence of matter can express itself, then surely the inhabitants in this house will not be breathless.
[20] You will understand, which inhabitants are understood here? But now that we have heard even the stones "snoring", it will certainly be much easier to listen to the much more organic plant world in it's necessary inhalation and exhalation.
Footnotes (*1) Attractive (striving towards the center) (d.Hsg.) (*2) centrifugal (striving away from the center) (d.Hsg.) (*3) Inhalation and exhalation (d.Hsg.) (*4) The marked word(s) was/are added by the ed.