NEUOFFENBARUNG18 March 1842
[Fl.01_006,01] You will surely have noticed that flies particularly like to settle wherever there is a little something to eat. That is why they come in large numbers as uninvited guests at meals and eagerly fall upon the food and whatever is left of it. You will also have noticed that these guests appear even more frequently on sultry days and in low-ceilinged rooms that smell musty.
[Fl.01_006,02] But now another question arises. Many will say: “Should we praise these parasites even when they foul our meals and so often pester us unbearably over every mouthful we take?”
[Fl.01_006,03] I tell you that only a very shortsighted person asks, judges and grows angry in this way. If they could see and fully understand the great benefit a fly confers by settling even for two moments on the mouthful or spoon they are raising to their lips, truly it would not be too much to have the fly gilded, as you say!
[Fl.01_006,04] With very few exceptions, foods have the property, by virtue of the sugar they contain, of drawing all the nitrogen out of the spoiled air, especially on a very sultry day. Leave food standing only a short while and this bad air soon makes itself known in it. The food may turn sour easily, mould may soon appear on it, it may change colour, or it may take on a dull bluish tint at the edges where it is least dense. These are all effects of the spoiled air.
[Fl.01_006,05] What, then, do flies do in this situation? As we already know, the fly is by its constitution a little flying electrical jar, and so it eagerly seeks everything that falls within its natural sphere.
[Fl.01_006,06] This spoiled air is negatively electric and drives away positive electricity to such a degree that often not a spark of it remains in such a room, still less in food eaten there.
[Fl.01_006,07] Anyone can now imagine what would soon become of bodily health if these lively carriers of electricity did not frequent such a room. Yet that would be the least of it. As long as the spoiled air fills the room, it still has enough expansive force for the lungs at least to expand when it is inhaled. Once it loses all this force, it falls as a dirty, misty dew, especially upon things akin to it, such as food. When a mouthful someone is about to eat has been repeatedly covered by this dew, one or more flies like to settle upon it and release some of their surplus positive electricity over the object they crawl across.
[Fl.01_006,08] What follows from this? Nothing more and nothing less than that the bad air that settled there is in a sense immediately revived and becomes volatile. It then rises away from the morsel to be eaten or from the food still in the dish. This process of decomposition renders the food harmless to eat again. In the absence of these bothersome little chemists, on a sultry day in a room such as I described, scarcely anyone might survive the meal.
[Fl.01_006,09] How do you like this secondary service? Is it not another wonder, an enduring one that works just as it did in the most ancient times in which human beings lived?
[Fl.01_006,10] But you may think, and then say: “No, this goes too far into the extraordinary! Can a fly really have such a sphere of activity?”
[Fl.01_006,11] I tell you that this inconspicuous little creature has a sphere of activity of which you know as yet only a very insignificant part. Its extent is virtually infinite by your reckoning. If I were to tell you everything that concerns this little creature, a hundred thousand scribes writing day and night without pause would not finish in a million years.
[Fl.01_006,12] Do not marvel too greatly, then, at the few points I have made known to you. Whoever wishes to take the right path should remember that from My point of view every thing, however inconspicuous, has infinite value.
[Fl.01_006,13] Such thoughts will serve everyone well. They will keep a person continually humble and show clearly where a righteous person stands, in whom surely far more is at stake than in a whole trillion flies.
[Fl.01_006,14] But since we are now in the realm of flies, let us attend a little longer to this secondary purpose of the fly we have been discussing. Here we are concerned with the fly rather than with measuring the worth of a human being.
[Fl.01_006,15] You will also have noticed that flies which have fed their fill like to fly to shiny objects and often leave a great many spots on them. My dear little ones, you will probably ask one another: “Can even that be of any use?”
[Fl.01_006,16] Oh yes, I tell you, it is very useful. The chemical work of these little creatures that we have just discussed would be only half as useful if this second small act did not promptly follow.
[Fl.01_006,17] We already know that the fly takes in predominantly negatively electric food. It thus truly draws poison out of the air, off people and animals, and from all the foods people eat.
[Fl.01_006,18] Therefore its waste may remain electrically negative even when it is no longer actually poisonous. We also know that positive electricity is attracted chiefly to polished objects. Now we shall soon have the answer. In a room poor in positive electricity, these chemists carefully smear polished objects so that the little positive electricity concentrated there will be properly distributed. The objects gradually lose their capacity to attract the positive electricity the air in the room needs and cannot do without. If you find this hard to believe, put gilded objects into such a room. You may be sure that these chemists will soon coat them so thoroughly that very little gold will show through.
[Fl.01_006,19] But why do these little creatures have such a passion for gold in particular?
[Fl.01_006,20] My only answer is this: Why do you gild your lightning conductors?
[Fl.01_006,21] You must answer: “Because gold attracts positive electricity in particular with extraordinary force.” But you will say: “Flies also soil windowpanes, and glass is known not to attract electricity!”
[Fl.01_006,22] That is true, but I ask in return: Why are glass discs or cylinders used to make the free electricity in the air visible by a little friction?
[Fl.01_006,23] See, I have caught you again! Here is the answer: electricity is especially apt to collect on glass, and when the glass is rubbed even a little, it becomes visible at once.
[Fl.01_006,24] Now that we know this, we can quite properly let our little chemists leave their spots there. The surfaces that hold the electricity become rougher and less able to retain it, so the electricity is forced to mix more evenly with the rest of the air in the room.
[Fl.01_006,25] What do you say now, if you consider carefully what has been said? Not even the least speck left by a fly is where it is without My wisdom and providence, though it is nothing but the waste of such an insignificant little creature.
[Fl.01_006,26] What answer, then, should be given to someone who with their lofty reason dismisses the very purpose of human life? Oh, what appalling folly!
[Fl.01_006,27] If I take care that the most inconspicuous thing has a highly useful purpose, and prescribe even the least noticeable activities of an insignificant fly so that they serve so well, how much more shall I care for a human being, who is a creature and truly a child of My love, or at least is meant to become one? That is, each person is meant to recognise that I am their Father and more than a Creator, as I am to stones and clods of earth.
[Fl.01_006,28] Anyone with even a little childlike piety in their heart must say that I care as a father even for the silent grass in the field. That is true, altogether true. For the Father alone gives food and drink to all things capable of receiving them in any way. If I care as a father even for things that are silent, how much more surely shall I care as a Father for those whom I have brought forth from My love as children truly in My likeness!
[Fl.01_006,29] Take good heed of this. It is surely worth attending to My fatherly care in the little things, so that at last the doubter may see clearly that I am no all-devouring and incomprehensible god of might. I am truly a Father to all My dear children, and a most thrifty one, who knows how to use even a fly’s waste for their benefit.
[Fl.01_006,30] Yes, I tell you, there are countless things far more insignificant, and yet I let not even the least of them perish. Since I am a Father who preserves the very least and provides so faithfully for My children, how great must be the blindness of a person who would deny Me My unceasing, most tender fatherly care for them!
[Fl.01_006,31] My dear little children, believe Me. Day and night I take care even for the growth of every little hair on your body, though it will soon decay with the body itself. How much more, then, shall I surely care for your immortal soul and your eternal spirit from Me!
[Fl.01_006,32] Yes, My dear ones, consider this little fly. It truly sings to you of victory, which you will recognise more and more clearly and fully in the account of the positive polarity that follows.
[Fl.01_006,33] Let that be enough for today.
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.