NEUOFFENBARUNG25 March 1842, Good Friday
[Fl.01_012,01] You have heard enough in the course of this account about what is meant by this impairment. Indeed, in this and in several other accounts you have been told repeatedly how you can stand in your own right even when you unite yourself as intimately as possible with your Creator in your heart. Yet your feeling about this remains obscure, your faith has hard ground to work, and your soul finds it difficult to accept that in the spirit a person can have a wholly free and independent life which is nevertheless so bound to the original life of the Creator that together they make up one life.
[Fl.01_012,02] Truly this is extraordinarily hard to grasp within earthly limits. I tell you that whoever does not learn it from the humble little song of the fly, or, more plainly, from true, innermost humility on the way of the cross, or, to speak still more plainly, from Me, the Father, who am the highest and innermost humility itself, will not grasp it and in many cases will never understand it in all eternity. What is at stake is how Father and children can be completely one.
[Fl.01_012,03] To form a better-grounded idea of this, let us look at two great things: a great human being called “the world”, and another great human being called “heaven”.
[Fl.01_012,04] Consider the first of these in its material form. Whole shell globes full of suns and worlds can scarcely be called nerve endings in this being. Yet even at this scale it regards itself as one life, just as you regard yourselves as one life. Does it therefore really consist of one life alone?
[Fl.01_012,05] To see that this great human being of the world lives a manifold life, you need only look at a swarm of flies. By their buzzing they will declare that even they, the first little animals, each have a distinct life of their own. How much more must a human being acknowledge the same for themselves, and still more a whole earth full of peoples and countless kinds of living beings, and far more a sun with its perfected beings, and still more each central sun with its most perfect and powerful spirits. Finally, how much more must a self-contained shell globe do so, when it contains an almost endless number of heavenly bodies, let alone the beings that live on them.
[Fl.01_012,06] And yet all the shell globes, all central suns and secondary central suns, all planetary suns and every other subsidiary sun, with their planets and all the beings upon them, are in the strictest sense simply parts of the body of this great human being of the world. It has as distinct a life of its own as each of you on earth, who with the earth are part of it.
[Fl.01_012,07] That is the view from the material side.
[Fl.01_012,08] Now turn your eyes to the human being of heaven. The great human being of the world just described is to this being as a trillionth part of an atom is to the size of that great human being of the world.
[Fl.01_012,09] Indeed, heaven considered as a human being is so large that the countless billions of shell globes of which that great human being of the world consists could fit very comfortably within the hollow of one little hair on its body. They could perform all their movements without ever touching the walls of that tiny tube.
[Fl.01_012,10] Now imagine how much life this human being of heaven has in a single hollow hair, or at least in an equivalent part of the body. How much more life must it have in a limb, how much in its heart, and how much in its whole bodily being! Yet this whole human being of heaven thinks of itself as a single, independent person, while within it countless billions upon billions of the most perfect angels and spirits all think and live as distinctly in their own right as the great human being of heaven does.
[Fl.01_012,11] Within this human being of heaven there are further relations by which beings who think and love entirely alike form a community. Taken on its own, that community corresponds to an earthly world or at least to a part of one, and represents a human being in full. It too can think and feel entirely for itself, as if it were a single person standing alone.
[Fl.01_012,12] I tell you further that in My infinity there are several such heavens. Each heaven is itself a complete human being, and all the heavens together form a human being so infinite that none but I can conceive or feel it. For it is properly My own body, or God in His infinity, who thinks and feels His own distinct and solitary being with the utmost precision and clarity. And yet what a multiplicity of life is in Him!
[Fl.01_012,13] Compare these two images briefly and go through them in the spirit. You cannot fail to see that in one eternal and infinite life countless lives can move freely and fully enjoy the highest joys of life, while still being parts of the one principal life in God.
[Fl.01_012,14] This is what the fly sings in humility. Humility is the true and principal fly in the human being. Just as the fly in the material world begins to win within itself the victory over life, humility in a person begins in the same way to receive the freest life from God and to enclose it within itself. By perseverance and courage it rears within itself to greatness and strength this eternal sanctuary, the living Christ in every true human being. When His life has passed into every part of the soul and through the soul into the body of flesh, this manifestation, indeed this actual deed in the spirit, is a victory. Truly it is the highest victory a person could ever win. Through it they have captured the highest life of God within themselves, made it their own through love, and become one with the eternal God, the Father of all love.
[Fl.01_012,15] Tell Me, is this not a victory of which the fly sings to you?
[Fl.01_012,16] If you wish to understand the fly that sings to you of this victory, ask the true fly within you, which is perfect humility. It will give you the great answer. Through it you will receive what a true victory is.
[Fl.01_012,17] As love is a fruit of humility, so eternal truth, or the light of all light, is a fruit of love. When love grows out of humility and truth out of love, that is right growth. It is a true tree of life and a true tree of all holy knowledge of life and of everything that belongs to life, in time and in eternity.
[Fl.01_012,18] Whoever seeks to discover the mysteries of life by worldly understanding will never discover them that way. Through that understanding they will lose even the little life they acquired in childhood. Truly I tell you, when the inner word makes itself known, whether in the heart of someone well disposed through the admonition of conscience or as an audible word through the mouth of someone awakened, receive it in simple, childlike piety. Go beyond merely hearing and marvelling at this or that in it, and become a doer of it. Truly, truly, I tell you again: hearing and seeing will bring no one into heaven. Doing alone will.
[Fl.01_012,19] In this account you have heard that life cannot return before it is judged. You must also know from the Gospel where it says: “It is not I, but the word that I have spoken to you, that will judge you.”
[Fl.01_012,20] The word is therefore a judge leading to eternal life for those who do it, and to eternal death for those who do not. No one can reach certainty except by actively following the way of the cross in accordance with the word, which preaches humility and love alone. Whoever merely hears and does not act on the living word that is meant to judge them towards life cannot unite with its positive, living force. They will remain in their negative polarity of death, from which positively polarised life is hardly ever likely to develop again.
[Fl.01_012,21] What are the first signs of such a judgement towards death in someone who does not do the word?
[Fl.01_012,22] The first signs are doubts about the genuineness of one part or another of divine revelation.
[Fl.01_012,23] What is such doubt in itself?
[Fl.01_012,24] Doubt is a failing of inner life through which the spirit sinks back into itself, and nothing but a dim natural twilight shines in the soul. Some of the light still comes from the ever fainter rays of the spirit, but the apparent increase in light is a deception from the world, which deceives all the senses.
[Fl.01_012,25] It needs little explanation where such failures of the spirit will lead if the spirit is not soon awakened again by vigorous action in accordance with the word.
[Fl.01_012,26] Whoever does not pass in the course of this life into the true positive polarity of eternal life will judge themselves into the negative polarity, from which they will never rise again.
[Fl.01_012,27] These two polarities stand in relation to each other as the spiritual and the material, or as the living fruit within and the dead shell outside.
[Fl.01_012,28] Whoever passes into the fruit passes into life. Whoever passes into the shell passes into death.
[Fl.01_012,29] You already know that in every thing, and all the more surely in God, there are two polarities. As divine being is eternal, these two polarities must also be eternal.
[Fl.01_012,30] Whoever is judged by the word, or rather judges themselves according to the word, takes life into themselves and corresponds to the divine positive polarity, which is the freest and most unrestricted being.
[Fl.01_012,31] Whoever does not actually take the word into themselves, but merely lets it run through their negative understanding, will be judged by the word itself towards negative polarity. This is the underlying principle of everything material and so of all death and limitation. It follows that the natural world will no more come to an end than the spiritual world. It will remain the eternal, negatively polarised foundation of all that is spiritual and free. Decide for yourselves which fate is happier: to be incorporated for all eternities into God’s negative or positive polarity, to be an angelic spirit forever blissful and free, or a Satan bound within a dead stone.
[Fl.01_012,32] For the living, truth is everywhere. For the dead there is nowhere a light in all eternity.
[Fl.01_012,33] This is what you are to carry with you, what is always to speak the truth. It is an exceedingly good thing, the eternal ring of life into which you are to enter. It turns in earnest action rather than for the amusement of the intellect. Through action alone truth arises in it as the light of true life and breathes through and through it.
[Fl.01_012,34] Once you grasp this, you will also grasp that the tone is as the pipe, light as life, the reward as the work, and the knowledge or consciousness of eternal life within oneself as the deed according to the word. As the mountain, so its contours. As the character of the life, so its polarity. As the heart, so its voice, and as the humility in the heart, so the living word within it.
[Fl.01_012,35] Now you will scarcely ask, “Who may grasp this inwardly? For whom will this olive branch ripen?” From this account you know what truth and light are. You will therefore know and readily grasp how truth is a light to light, and a light to light for judgement, that is, a judgement that turns life towards life, or the reverse, as you already know.
[Fl.01_012,36] If you consider everything that has been said, can you still fail to understand the question: “Can you now court suns, yet desecrate the earth in their light?” Or, to put it plainly: can you serve two masters?
[Fl.01_012,37] For how can one who courts suns, that is, living perfection, turn with this light to the outward world to gain advantage from it? More plainly, how can someone who draws divine truths from their intellect attain eternal life through them if they will not let the word become action within them?
[Fl.01_012,38] Such a person uses stolen light and by their indolence desecrates the earth on which they should be active for life. Do not even physicists know that like polarities never attract but always repel? If the earth is of itself slothful and inert, can it ever be brought to life by inactivity?
[Fl.01_012,39] It is clear, then, that one cannot serve two masters, the idle intellect and the living deed, at the same time.
[Fl.01_012,40] Whoever can court suns should take care not to desecrate the earth with the light, but bless it through their deeds, so that the earth too may become a sun for them.
[Fl.01_012,41] The call to the dark doubter to flee when I draw suns down is therefore fully justified. But where are they to flee?
[Fl.01_012,42] Let them ask the fly. It will tell them what course life takes and how it is to return, carrying a great increase like interest on a loan. The fly will also tell them where they can, or rather must, still flee if they will not return through acting on the word to the eternal life of all life.
[Fl.01_012,43] Whoever has opened their eyes even a little will not have to look long to see all infinity full of stags racing one another towards the original goal, towards which life has already turned in our fly. “Stags” and “life becoming ever freer” signify one and the same thing.
[Fl.01_012,44] Knowing this, you also know who can lift the endless chain of beings that rises to the original wellspring of all light and all life, and how they can do so.
[Fl.01_012,45] But the question here is addressed to the person of intellect: can they, though they do nothing, also lift this chain? The second and final question is likewise addressed to them: “If you cannot find the trace of truth,” that is, through action, “who will free you from the night of eternal death?”
[Fl.01_012,46] I think this last question needs no further explanation. From the course of this writing you should know well enough that to free yourself from the night of eternal death you must be a living doer of the word. It is not enough merely to hear, still less to become a critic, a despiser or finally a denier of My word.
[Fl.01_012,47] Whoever wishes truly to do the word must take it so wholly in earnest as to be able to say with My dear David: “God is my true earnest concern. I will sing and make verse; that too is my glory. Awake, then, psaltery and harp! I will rise early. I will thank You, Lord, among the nations and sing Your praise among the peoples. For Your grace reaches as far as the heavens, and Your truth as far as the clouds. Exalt Yourself, God, above the heavens, and let Your glory be over all the land. So that Your dear friends may be delivered, help with Your right hand and hear me!” (Psalm 108).
[Fl.01_012,48] Does not David sing here that God is his true earnest concern?
[Fl.01_012,49] How else can God be with human beings except in the word? The word must be an earnest concern for a person. They are to sing it or hear it, and then make verse or act. This is the glory or light of the person themselves.
[Fl.01_012,50] David calls on psaltery and harp and wants to rise early. What does he want to do?
[Fl.01_012,51] Nothing but the word. Whoever receives the word into their heart and acts upon it thanks Me and sings My praise on the finest psalteries and harps. They do so among nations and peoples, that is, they stand between the two polarities you already know and strive straight through between them upwards to God, letting neither the nations nor the peoples, neither their understanding nor their indolence, lead them astray.
[Fl.01_012,52] Truly, whoever does this and takes God as earnestly as David did knows very well how far My grace reaches, or how far life from Me goes out into all the eternal spaces. These are the heavens, about which you have heard enough today. They also know what the “clouds of truth” are: the spirits of eternal life.
[Fl.01_012,53] Whoever takes God in earnest recognises the victory within and calls with David: “Exalt Yourself, God, above the heavens,” or above this former life of mine, “and let Your glory,” or Your living light, “stream over all the lands of my being, so that all dear friends,” or all who have turned towards life at whatever stage they may still be, “may soon be freed from everything that belongs to death!”
[Fl.01_012,54] Yes, whoever takes God as earnestly as David will call out with him at last: “Lord, my God and my Father, see, my heart overflows with love for You! From this depth of my humility I beg and cry to You to help me with Your right hand, or to give me the true light of life, so that I may become one single, perfect life with You. Hear me, then, my God!”
[Fl.01_012,55] This is a right prayer for someone who can say inwardly in spirit and in all truth: “God is my true earnest concern!”
[Fl.01_012,56] Whoever takes God in earnest will turn wholly to God. They will not look back at the world with one eye and look up to God with the other. They will raise not only their eyes but their whole being to God. But believe Me, as things stand now, very few take God in earnest. Humanity as a whole has grown exceedingly lukewarm, and it spends the last drop of living strength it still possesses solely on worldly things.
[Fl.01_012,57] How much life will return to Me from this you will be able to count on your fingers without much trouble. You may be sure that we shall not use the words “countless” or “infinite” here.
[Fl.01_012,58] But should that make us anxious? O My dear little children, by no means! In spite of all this, everything goes the way My judging word prescribes, upwards or downwards. To speak quite freely, although the earth was bought at a costly ransom and placed at the centre between My two infinite polarities, there are in vast infinity many earths on which more faithful children walk than on this most ungrateful one. Yet I have done for none what I have done for this one.
[Fl.01_012,59] But eternity has not ended. Its duration is without end. Woe to this earth if I turn My heart away from it and towards another!
[Fl.01_012,60] Consider well all that you have received in this account of the fly, and act upon it. Keep your intellect at a distance and your heart all the nearer. Then you will recognise within yourselves the true victory of life and be able to rise to the sevenfold light and to the threefold light above the sevenfold light.
[Fl.01_012,61] Finally I add this: if anyone doubts and cannot believe this account fully enough to act on it in their heart, they do better to leave it alone. If they have taken it up, they have strengthened the inward judge that leads to death. If they have left it alone, their judgement will be lighter and their way to the negative pole more bearable, and perhaps after eternities it may be possible to turn back.
[Fl.01_012,62] But whoever reads it, regards it as a strong guide to life and acts accordingly truly has the victory already within. All of this is forever the sole holy will of love of your Father. Amen.
Source: Jakob Lorber, Die Fliege, German text based on the sixth edition (1988). The English translation preserves the source’s paragraph identifiers. It presents the work as a nineteenth-century spiritual text, including its historical accounts of nature.