NEUOFFENBARUNGNature spirits and human souls (18 February 1847)
1. Rain falls to the earth in drops, sometimes smaller, sometimes larger, as does snow; the same is found with hail, where sometimes only tiny grains fall down, but sometimes they are as heavy as a pound, and on high mountains sometimes even as heavy as a centner, and usually in an exceedingly large number, which may sometimes be so large that it would hardly be pronounceable. Then we can ask: how, if every drop of rain, every snowflake, or every hailstone draws a spirit with it, where does such an immense number of spirits come from? And when it rained and snowed and hailed in Adam's time, from where did the spirits come then, if no-one died on earth from the number of people? But who would look at the matter from this point of view, he would have to fall into a far greater error, than about the size of the whole earth.
2. As far as the spirits of the deceased from the earth are concerned, they can participate in such results, which have to be exercised on those spiritual beings, which first start the migration through the flesh. Therefore, when it snows, there are always spiritual potencies in the snowflakes, i.e. newly arriving spirits, which associate with the souls liberated from the earth and begin to join them in the journey through the realm of natural phenomena.
3. These are therefore not spirits of deceased people, but they are in a certain way new arrivals, or if one would like to say still more characteristically, they are new emergences from the long sleep of the earthly matter.
4. But also spirits of deceased people, which do not want to put up with the progressive order, can be pushed back in the same way, which the new emergences have to go. The new ones, however, remain in the earth and have to go their certain way there; the spirits of the deceased, on the other hand, return after a short period of humbling, which can already be seen in the natural world. For when it rains, the rain penetrates into the earth and is eaten there by plants and animals, as well as by minerals; but here and there, either during the rain or after it, one can see whitish mists rising and moving upward, especially in higher regions. This is of course the smallest part of such a rainfall, which rises again in these mists back to the heights. But this is also that smallest part of the spirits, which come from deceased people, compared to the large part of those spirits, which arrive newly.
5. In appearance, there is no difference at all; but in the manner in which the appearance is effected, and how the spiritual being binds itself to the appearance, there is an exceedingly great difference. In the case of the newly arriving spirits and new spiritual emergences, the spiritual as well as the psychic is still completely enclosed in matter; Matter is not an inner center of gravity that comes to appearance and pulls down the spirit, like the water blob in our balloon-man; but the spiritual as well as the soul is still very fragmented, so that hardly in a million raindrops, snowflakes or hailstones the essence of a single spirit and it's soul is completely sown into the earth; Whereas with an already complete spirit, it is a completely different case – since with him, only his material desires and inclinations are pressed together in such a material form into one, and then for a short time share the very bitter lot with those spiritual potencies which under the above appearances, begin the great circle to their becoming free.
6. It would be very difficult to determine in which raindrop or in which snowflake a natural or an already all-natural spirit fell down, because the outer appearance is the same; but that approximately can be considered as something, if either the raindrops, snowflakes or even hailstones are bigger and weightier. In such a large hailstorm there is not seldom a humiliated spirit, which has already gone through it's earthly course; but what the smaller phenomena are, these are all so-called nature spirits, of which there must of course be an unspeakably large number, because they are not as a whole, but come to earth divided into an infinite number of spiritual-property particles, the same as never a whole soul with
all it's spiritual propertys emerges from earth, but always divided in the highest degree, and why then actually so divided?
7. This division has a doubly important reason: The first lies in the original spiritual being itself, where every spirit has divided and torn itself to infinity by it's desire to become great; And the second reason lies in this, because by this very division, such a primordial spirit has quite naturally weakened itself to the last drop of it's strength, due to which weakening it could then also never carry out it's arrogant plans.
8. Such a scattering of the spirit is similar to the Babylonian confusion of languages; as the peoples had to scatter there, so a spirit had to scatter it's concepts, so that it could never grasp a full thought, still less any plan.
9. For this reason Satan is still today most eagerly endeavoring to recapture in the individual human beings and spirits his own archetype in one, in order to thereby attain that power which was his own in the beginning.
10. But so that he can never reach this power, he is divided and scattered through the whole creation, and his spiritual was turned into material, from which now the soul of every man emerges, into which soul a new spiritual is breathed, so that from every such part, a whole being emerges. This being is like the original being, which wanted to rise above God through it's hope or expansion of ideas, but thereby in a certain way broke itself apart and split into infinite parts, so that nothing remained of it but it's ego, and with it, it's fundamentally evil will; But all his abilities, all his ideas and innumerable conceptual perfections, have been taken from him – and these are just now, which continually reach the world bodies, and for the most part are already present banished in the world bodies themselves, and thereby divide into soul and spiritual, since in the soul, the given I and the self-awareness emerge again from matter, and in the spiritual, the knowledge of God is implanted again into the soul, without which the soul, like the plant without rain and sunshine, would soon wither and die.
11. In the plant, as you know, the spiritual life emerges first; this cannot progress if it does not receive spiritual nourishment from the air.
12. From this it is obvious how and why so many spiritual things come down to earth in the phenomena described above; and it can also be easily understood that it is not necessary for the multiplicity of these phenomena that so many people must have already lived on earth, but it is evident that very many will still live on it. But when once all spiritual and soul-things of this earth will be exhausted, then in the place of the natural, a perfect spiritual earth will be established, which will no longer consist of banished, but of free spirits and souls.
13. That the earth now consists of only banished souls and spirits, is not only shown by the daily recurring meteoric phenomena, but it is also shown especially for those simple people who have the ability to see spiritual and psychic things, those often countless armies of water-, earth-, mountain- and air-spirits, which have still been seen at all times by one or the other.
14. The learned world, of course, does not see such things; but it also does not see many other things that would be even closer and more necessary to it than to see such spirits banished in the earth's matter. But whether belief or non-belief among the worldly scholars, the primeval things still remain as they are, and the bird can master the air today as it did ages ago, although it never took the strict examinations in aerostatics at a Parisian university.
15. Thus, even today, there are still a lot of very simple people who, in their simplicity, see more and often know more than a whole learned faculty. There sure are also better scholars, who at least do not doubt this; but still only a few can see it.
16. To this we can add many useful observations, from which it will be very easy for us to have an overview of the whole of the rest of the spiritual world at a glance. Following, a few more observations of this kind, and some interesting things to think about.