Secrets of Creation · Chapter 08 · The Essence of Air, Water, Earth and Fire (June 25, 1871)

Chapter 08

The Essence of Air, Water, Earth and Fire (June 25, 1871)

01] These were for some time the four elements from which, as mankind once believed, the whole universe or at least the earth and all the cosmic bodies existed.

02] For a long time this belief remained firm until the art of separation, called "chemistry" by you, found out several more elements that resisted any further decomposition and whose number has now (1871) grown to about 70.

03] What the men of science regard as primitive elements and present them as original principles, however, are by no means the last substances from which My Creation is composed, but the researchers in this field lack firstly the means for the further division of the substances and secondly the senses to be able to perceive the divided substances.

04] The fact that these contemplators did not get any further in My works than they have until now, when their whole science at the end goes to use all their discoveries in practical life only for worldly purposes, it is because it has not yet occurred to any chemist to acknowledge Me as the first sculpture artist, to comprehend and to learn to love me!

05] For this very reason I also leave them all where they have now come, where they have drawn enough experiences from My nature, which certainly helped to promote the self-interest of men but not their charity.

06] It is not the purpose here either to entertain you with chemical analyses or to uncover new things; it is enough of the old!

07] But what the masters of Science do not want to recognize is that, although they encounter the strictest laws in chemistry, they do not want to recognize any legislator, even though they find his trace at every step; if they were free of prejudice, they would certainly not be able to deny the same.

08] But now we want to return to our first mentioned "four elements" and see what spiritual relationship exists there with My creation and with myself, which may be more instructive to you than all the rules of the art of separation together with their thousands of names from all the languages that have long since been out of use.

09] See, My children, if you look closely and attentively at these four elements, as air, water, earth and fire, you should notice first that the air is the most delicate, slightly mobile element, the water is already denser - your eyes already as a body, albeit still noticeable in the liquid state, the earth is a conglomerate of solid objects such as stones, sand and decayed and decomposed remnants of the animal and plant world existing on it, and finally fire is the element that destroys everything and organizes it into other forms.

10] Now behold, the air is spiritually synonymous with My Creator's thought, where everything still rests together without having gained independence, only waiting for the first hint of further development; the water, as compressed air, is spiritual: condensed thoughts into ideas, which then, when carried out, form continuous spiritual entities, like the earth; and where finally as a disintegrating principle driving them to eternal renewal, love appears like fire, which, always creating anew, reconstructs the worn out into new forms.

11] Well, just as these four elements represent your entire globe, the existing in it as well as the surrounding, so do these qualities as: Thought, idea, deed and love that preserves and transforms, myself as the creating God.

12] For I also create My thoughts for the time being, then form them into ideas, give these ideas the impulse to step into reality, to shape themselves, and when the things presented in this way have gone through their course of life, the spiritual in them has led them to higher levels, then My love is added as a consuming, decomposing element, as fire, it enables by combustion the remaining coarser elements to engage in new activities in other forms, so that what was once created can never cease to exist.

13] In the air surrounding your globe, all substances are in a dissolved state, which belong to the existence of the earth, its atmosphere, its prosperity, both the coarse material parts and the plants and animals living on it.

14] They lie there locked up as embryos like the first primordial germs for further training.

15] The Influence of Ether on the atmosphere (See in "Earth and Moon", Part 1 A "The Natural Earth", Chap. 20ff.), the influence of sunlight and its heat rays and the influence of all the larger, distant and near-by world bodies and suns contribute to awakening the elements still resting in child's slumber, to develop and to prepare them for their further purpose, where, beginning with the transient movement of water, they are then transformed back into the living spiritual by consuming them with the increased heat of their energy, emerging as primitive elements in order to start from there a new cycle of creations.

16] Thus water has actually been the mother or parent of all continents of the world. So everything was and is still present in the sea, as a large container of everything to be produced, everything is present in dissolved states, which is then returned to the atmosphere by evaporation, precipitation, underground combustion etc. to re-establish new connections, after the spiritual has risen to higher levels from all these elements and only the coarser, hardly soluble, has remained as material components.

17] From the hardest stone of the earth's foundations to the softest clay, you see a series of gradual developments of the primordial elements situated in the air, like thoughts, in the water as compressed air, like the condensed thoughts to ideas; formed in the earth as material components of them, like the deed; and finally in the constant change, disintegration, and burning of the existing, the eternal effect of the ever-recreating love, where something new is built out of the old and driven to the great process of development, and that continues as long as it takes until the last material becomes spiritual.

18] So what you see figuratively before your eyes in the four elements, that is the spiritual course of all My thoughts of creation, it is the way of all created things, it is also your way!

19] For also in yourselves, namely in the spiritual soul-man, thoughts develop for the time being; without certain or definite tendencies they float in the brain, in the heart, and wait for the impulse to unite to something solid; they are like the air, easily moving and quickly changing their form.

20] As soon as you indulge more in a thought, its necessary collaborators gather around it, generate and excrete what is equal to the process of water - so the connection of ideas in the human soul: the ideas come to fruition as deeds, as firmly developed deeds, like the mainland that emerged from the water, which totality of deeds actually stamps the spiritual man with what he will once be in My Kingdom.

21] But since the deed as a product of thoughts and ideas also affects others, it too is made by the spiritual decomposition of love into its first elemental instincts either to the divine, sublime or to the wicked, where its consequences must then fall back on their own originator; for in the spiritual it is not the fulfilment of an act that counts, but this: under what motives it was thought and put into practice.

22] Therefore, every human being should consider well beforehand before he decides to act, that it is built and born on the purest moral ground, so that it can never have evil consequences on his consciousness, so that at the end of his pure willingness to do the best, the evil consequences caused by misuse or misunderstanding, may fall not on him as the originator, but on the person who exploits this action for his own advantage.

23] You see here the spiritual path of an act, they go the same way as air, water, earth and fire, the same way as My thoughts of creation, which matter and finally also My spirits as well as you as spiritual men have to go through.

24] For the spiritual garment in the hereafter is the expression of the totality of thoughts, formed into ideas, developed for action and spiritualized by love.

25] So, My children, just as the air is the carrier of all future bodily things, water is the birthplace of the firmer, more solid whole, so also your thoughts, ideas and deeds should flow only from the purest divine source, in order to one day be purified, spiritualized by love, to serve you as a crown, which you take over as the product of earthly life. Just as the air, as it is easily movable, also brings storms and devastation, so does the flood of thoughts, if they are not carefully considered beforehand, wants to overwhelm one another; And just as the strong movements of the air also cause great waves on the sea, this pictorial sequence in nature shows that also stormy thoughts only evoke excited ideas, which rarely result in something good.

26] And how, at last, the earth often trembles in its bowels through violent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that lead to partial destruction and devastation, as well as the ill-considered act, as the product of a swarm of confused thoughts and stormy ideas, which as an immature act will never spread blessings and leaves only remorse to its originator.

27] therefore, you too, like the four elements, seek that you also fulfil your purpose as much as air, water, earth and fire, which means that only pure thoughts are tolerated in you, which are always worthy of a man as My image, that your ideas are always humane, like water, gladly give to others what can be best for them, and then they have as deeds the same product as the solid earth crust, which is born out of the water and this from its producing sister, the air, then standing there adorned with all the beauties that a loving hand of a creator could put into it; so that your deeds may not shy away from love, but as the earth when trembling through volcanic eruptions only increases its own activity as an end result, and that goodness falls to you as a worthy consciousness and evil to the false interpreters.

28] So follow Me, follow your four elements in their principles and your spirit man will one day be able to be in all measure what I have created him for when he, like the earth, has happily survived his storms and revolutions, which were just as necessary for his spiritual survival as those great upheavals which your globe had to undergo before it became what it is now, that is: a paradise garden, for My children! Amen. (you can see the seven seasons of earth building in the Great Gospel) 156-163 (ev01.156 et seq.); Volume 2, Chapter 215 (ev02.215); Volume 5, Chapter 197 (ev05.197); Volume 7, Chapter 70 et seq. (Jl. ev07.070))