NEUOFFENBARUNGThe eye of the Earth (5 February 1847)
1. The third air region rests on the second one as if someone would pour a very pure ethereal oil over pure water, where this oil then does not mix with the water, although lying just on the water surface, not impairing the purity of the water surface, but on the contrary, gives this mirror a doubly beautiful shine. This third region of air is also like an ethereal oil; it is, in a sense, the lard with which the two lower layers of air are larded, and at the same time it is the ethereal salt which salts the lower layers of air, thus making them palatable to animals and plants.
2. All fragrances come down from this third region of air, where they are brought down by the light and salt (i.e. an ethereal salt) to be conducted into the plants themselves by the electricity accumulated near the plants, giving them the ethereal oil, and with it, the most manifold fragrances. In some plants, this oil can be detected in very small, highly transparent resin globules with the naked eye, but very well with a microscope.
3. In a nutshell: the smell, the taste, and the manifold beautiful coloration, especially of flowers and fruits, are mainly due to this third region of the air; for the taste, the smell, as well as for the most part the beautiful coloration, are purely ethereal substances, and can therefore only have their origin from where they are closest to the ether, from which all these countless ethereal propertya-substances originate.
4. These property etheric substances take hold of each other in this third region of the air, and in a certain way form a fluid, which, however, finds it's chemical relationship in a certain way in the continuous various rays from the innumerable stars, unites with them, and comes down to the earth, and substantially fills those plants or animals which have a corresponding relationship with the various basic light-propertya- substances.
5. This third region of air also corresponds to every plant, namely to the outer part of it; this outer part of the plants is always the bud, the flower, and also the fruit, as well as the leaves and the electricity- sucking tips on them. All these parts of the plants have an ethereally pure appearance. This is equal to the third region of air. For usually it is extremely delicate, subtle and tasty, in some plants, of course, it also smells disgustingly; this disgusting smell alone is only a consequence of the predominance of the inner earthly juices, which in a certain way cannot be surpassed by these pure heavenly substances.
6. In animals, the substances of this third region of the air are still more conspicuously united; but of course they are here in a certain way already second hand, therefore not so purely ethereal as in some plants, but the marrow in the head, which is usually absorbed from the air by the hair, and especially the most pure liquids in the eye, especially those under the first cornea, as well as the cornea itself, are absorbed from the air by the eyebrows and eyelids, and then conducted into the eye; and therefore this third region of air is similar to the eye in a certain way, and similar for the reason that it has this purpose for the whole earth in addition to the purposes already indicated above, which purpose the eye has with the human beings and with the animals.
7. This third region of air is therefore also so quite actually the eye of the earth; because if the earth would not have such a general seeing faculty, also no being on it would have one; because the thing is quite natural: what somebody does not have, he cannot give; but if one has it, one can give it, just as: where there is nothing, emperor and death have lost it's right.
8. But not only the earth has it's eye in this third air region, which is spread around the whole earth, but also every plant has in it's parts corresponding to this third air region, a visual faculty or in a certain way
an eye, through which it receives the light into itself. The fact that the plant certainly and definitely has an eye, or rather a peculiar visual faculty, is quite understandable from the fact that most, indeed almost all plants, turn their calyxes towards the sun in order to suck in the light from it; This truth can also be recognized from the fact that a plant which sprouts in a dark cellar, drives it's germ exactly to where there is an opening for light, and when it has found this, then it no longer bends it's head back, but continually pushes it more and more towards the brighter light.
9. Some might ask, why does the earth need a big general eye after all this? What does it see with it, and can it get an idea of what it sees?
10. Then I say: Everything according to it's kind; the earth continuously sees the whole infinite space around itself, and this general view produces in the earth itself with all spirits dwelling in it, a general corresponding conception, from which every single spiritual being draws it's intelligence, namely that for the outer world. But this would be impossible without the general great vision of the earth. The earth as a body, of course, knows nothing of what it sees in it's general being; and it would also not be necessary to give the earth it's own self-aware knowledge, because it is, as we will hear in the later spiritual part, not an individually independent being, but it is an endlessly multiple being, and consists of countless individual intelligences. But it is these intelligences which need the earth's great general eye, just as every man and every animal would see nothing with his own eye without this general earth's eye; for it is through this very eye that man sees the sun, the moon and the stars, and it will be clear that man could not possibly overlook the great sun with his small eye, if the great earth's eye did not first take a small picture of the sun, and only then feed this to the human eye. And so nobody sees the sun, or the moon and the stars, as they are there in their peculiarity, and in their far distance, but only their images from the surface of the great general earth's eye, whose surface, as already noted once, is even more shining than the purest water surface, and therefore very suitable for the reception of the images of the great surrounding world-bodies.
11. According to this property of the earth, there have really been foolish astronomers, who assumed the sun to be at most ten miles away, and considered the sun to be a meteor, which easily circles around the earth within 24 hours; But they were led to this foolish opinion only by the appearance, according to which the image of the sun seen by you really does not stand out much further from the earth. But this picture is not the reality, but is only a small picture of that great sun, which are situated more than 20 million miles from the earth. At the same time, however, this eye also takes up images from the surface of the earth-body and leads them further to the other world-bodies, just as the other world-bodies also lead their surfaces through their general eye to the general eye of this earth. From this property, especially in the tropical countries, the so-called mirage appearances are to be explained, and in the tropical countries, because there this third air region sometimes even lowers itself to under some not even very great mountain heights. Also, the balsamic scents, which are not rare in tropical countries, especially on the mountains, are because of this third region of air which sometimes descends so low; for there you would not be able to exist because of the fragrance.
12. What other properties this third region of air has, what phenomena are still evident in it, and how it is sometimes seen from the earth, we will soon make some observations about.