NEUOFFENBARUNG[MEr.01_010,001] Now that we have taken a brief look at foreign peoples with regard to their moral observances, let us turn to our home ground. I call it home because you were born there, but chiefly because it is on this ground that I am best known through Christianity, fragmented and wholly degenerate though it is.
[MEr.01_010,002] There are many other lands on the Earth, both on the continents and on the islands. But My purpose here is to awaken your spirit, so that it may more easily see and understand the account of its own inner condition and recognise the corresponding evils in its immediate surroundings. You have heard enough about foreign lands for that purpose.
[MEr.01_010,003] As for other well-known great lands and empires in particular, such as the Chinese Empire and the other islands belonging partly to it and partly to Asia, Australia or Africa, and likewise the great empire of Brazil, the rest of South America and all the islands reckoned part of it or known by another name, you can find out all you need to know of them anyway.
[MEr.01_010,004] For several reasons I cannot bring them onto the screen. Where idolatry has infected peoples to too great a degree, you would gain no benefit from it. Indeed, from the sight of the picture you might take in more poison than blessing.
[MEr.01_010,005] There is another reason I cannot do it. It does not accord with My holiness, nor is it possible under My order, to turn the eye of love towards them at your side. From the moment such a land was discovered by a nation hateful to Me, it has lain under My curse. Or else it has become so depraved and abominable from ancient times that a glance from Me even at the corresponding image would destroy it at once.
[MEr.01_010,006] The abominable conduct in these lands is of such an unheard-of kind that even a moderately detailed description, especially of their inward conditions, would horrify you so much that not one of you would have the strength to go on writing.
[MEr.01_010,007] Let us therefore leave them untouched and, as I said, look inwardly at what is nearer in every respect to you and Me.
[MEr.01_010,008] You will find it hard to believe that among these lands, some named and some deliberately unnamed, there are places for which even My curse is too holy, and which are therefore literally not worthy of it. I need tell you no more.
[MEr.01_010,009] You will now see why I do not enter into a fuller account of such places on the Earth. Truly, where Satan has set up his rule completely in each and every thing, it is not good to look.
[MEr.01_010,010] Even if I let such regions spread out over My screen, truly you would see nothing but a black tract of earth glowing in places. I need tell you no more. Look instead at the screen and try to recognise the land that now appears before your eyes.
[MEr.01_010,011] Look closely. On which side do you see the land? It lies far to the north, does it not? There, you have it already. How could you fail to recognise it at once? Those vast fields of ice and snow proclaim the name of Russia aloud.
[MEr.01_010,012] See how this vast empire extends over nearly three continents. As far as area is concerned, it is probably the greatest land on Earth ruled by a single sovereign.
[MEr.01_010,013] Look how it appears, particularly in the north, as though eternal peace had established its seat there.
[MEr.01_010,014] Yet appearances are not always to be trusted. Here too many storms trouble the minds of the northerners. They lag behind the other peoples of Europe in education and behind the better part of Europe in various other respects. The government has done far too little to make even the Christian light generally proper to this empire shine more brightly.
[MEr.01_010,015] The unrest I have described is therefore more moral than political. Spiritually there can be no more disturbing condition for people than when a few sparks of Christianity are mingled with a whole torrent of the foulest superstition. The most benighted heathens, both here and in the next world, are more easily opened to pure truth than Christians who have fallen into heathen ways.
[MEr.01_010,016] Look at the screen. This condition extends almost without interruption over the whole northern part of the country.
[MEr.01_010,017] For all that, the constitution of this empire is such that truth still has free access, under certain conditions to be sure.
[MEr.01_010,018] For whenever a sovereign rules a land and seeks within that wide sphere of action to bring it as far as possible into unity with itself, that is more, far more, I tell you, than if in another state, however educated, a sovereign bears the title alone and grants his subjects constitution upon constitution merely to avoid being driven from his beloved throne.
[MEr.01_010,019] Truly, such a sovereign is little better off than a criminal in custody. Only his blindness prevents him from seeing the chains of slavery into which his constitution-bearing peoples have thrown him.
[MEr.01_010,020] He does not see from the golden chain that he is bound. Yet the golden chain too is a metal chain, and with links so massive it is often ten times heavier than the iron chain of a criminal.
[MEr.01_010,021] There is therefore little else of note for us to see on these frozen plains, except that far to the north, towards the mountains called the Urals, live a few isolated families gifted with second sight.
[MEr.01_010,022] This second sight is no sign of a more awakened spirit. It is grounded solely in a somewhat heightened life of the soul, and generally belongs to people of finer sensibility who are compelled to live in great need and natural isolation from the world.
[MEr.01_010,023] That this second sight has nothing in common with spiritual awakening is sufficiently shown by the fact that even animals are capable of it. Their individuality carries nothing spiritual in itself, though they have a soul capable of further development.
[MEr.01_010,024] You will now ask what reality there is in what appears to the second sight. It will not be hard to untie this knot for you.
[MEr.01_010,025] When you are still buried in deep winter, and the rigid fields of snow and ice stare grimly at you from all sides, and you are obliged to live in cold rooms besides, will you not begin to long intensely for spring and summer? Will the imagination of your soul not chiefly occupy itself with bringing spring and summer before you in pictures?
[MEr.01_010,026] See, this longing, almost tangible forefeeling is the first degree of second sight. It springs from a faint etheric breath of the relief the soul expects in its oppressed condition.
[MEr.01_010,027] If a person were to immerse themselves ever more deeply in it, they might often, at least at night, see scenes of spring and summer pass before them like faint dream images.
[MEr.01_010,028] If a soul is pressed harder still by distressing circumstances, the pressure brings about what happens when air is compressed to too great a degree. The soul ignites and goes out beyond the bodily sphere.
[MEr.01_010,029] In visible space there are effects and movements of the soul just as there are effects and movements of light in the wide space filled with light. The difference is that the vibrations of light can propagate naturally only in straight lines, whereas those of the soul are more like the vibrations of sound and can travel in every conceivable direction and curve, faster than electricity.
[MEr.01_010,030] Now consider an event of whatever kind. It always has three conditions underlying it, a material one, one belonging to the soul, and a spiritual one.
[MEr.01_010,031] As for the first condition, the bodily eyes can see the event only as it actually takes place, and then only at a distance within the reach of bodily sight.
[MEr.01_010,032] As for the condition belonging to the soul, you will readily see without much thought that an event must first occur in the soul before it passes into the bodily world.
[MEr.01_010,033] If the soul is freed from its covering, it can often see such an event a considerable time before it reaches material reality, owing to the swift propagation in the sphere of the soul. It can also see afterwards an event that has taken place, as you hear a distant echo.
[MEr.01_010,034] For good measure I shall add three small examples of human sight.
[MEr.01_010,035] Someone gifted with second sight sees an unknown corpse pass by, while the person known to them is still quite hale and healthy and dies only some months later. This happens in the following readily understood way.
[MEr.01_010,036] The soul of the person who is to die senses the approaching dissolution of its covering, especially at a time when, by stepping noticeably outside it, it sees its house, ready to collapse, more clearly and correctly.
[MEr.01_010,037] In this state it already arranges all the preparations and ceremonies for its passage. At the same time the soul of another person is in such a heightened state and sees the entire event that the other's soul has already arranged in advance, by the means of communication between souls now known to you.
[MEr.01_010,038] In this way the soul foresees such things, just as the bodily eye sees those that are happening now. As a second example, a soul sees something happening at a great distance.
[MEr.01_010,039] This sight comes about in the same way. Wherever something happens in the presence of people, whether they merely look on or are happily or unhappily involved, nothing is more natural than that the event is immediately taken into the life of their souls. Like a most delicate magnetic fluid it then spreads through the sphere of the soul, often for several thousand hours' journey, according to the magnitude and nature of the event.
[MEr.01_010,040] If a person is then in such a heightened state of soul, they perceive those vibrations at once and see the image through the correspondence of the vibrations. A material image likewise reaches bodily sight through the physical eye by the correspondence of the light vibrations from the object that sends them out.
[MEr.01_010,041] Take as a third example an event that has yet to happen and in which several people will come to grief. This vision is somewhat rarer, but occurs all the same, like the other cases.
[MEr.01_010,042] This vision may be understood as follows. When a soul enters a heightened state under special circumstances, the spirit within is also awakened, if only for short periods. All events, past and future alike, lie imperishably in the spiritual condition that underlies them. The seeing may happen in two ways. First, the person sees it from their own spirit.
[MEr.01_010,043] What is seen naturally passes into the soul. Once there, it spreads according to the laws you already know. A person in a heightened state of soul may then see such an event in anticipation, as it were, along with all the circumstances in which it will take place. This is the second way of seeing an event that is still to come.
[MEr.01_010,044] It hardly needs saying that such a person can also see the souls of the dead when they wish or are permitted to be seen.
[MEr.01_010,045] See, here you have the whole nature of second sight. You can also see from it that no particular spiritual awakening is required, for the sight of the spirit is quite different from that of the soul. The relation of bodily sight to the sight of the soul is the same as that of the soul's sight to the spirit's.
[MEr.01_010,046] Just as the sight of the bodily eye can be sharpened by material means, such as optical instruments of all kinds, the sight of the soul can be heightened by means that naturally correspond to the soul.
[MEr.01_010,047] These means are a strong, sincere faith, a firm will and a spirit thereby at least half awakened. Just as the soul's sight can be heightened in this way, the spirit's sight can be strengthened without limit through the means the great Seer taught you in His teaching. That great Seer is the very one who now reminds you of it.
[MEr.01_010,048] You will wonder what has become, in the course of this explanation, of the account of European affairs that you had expected in advance.
[MEr.01_010,049] I tell you only this. If you have seen enough of the horrors elsewhere, you may be content that, although affairs in your countries are not exactly at their best, conditions are still such that whoever wants to improve meets no obstacle to being better, acting better and doing good.
[MEr.01_010,050] Nowhere on this Earth does a paradise still exist bodily and spiritually at the same time.
[MEr.01_010,051] Yet anyone can attain it in spirit, if only they will. Even if there is still darkness in a country, it does little to hinder this. However heavily the darkness of night has settled over valleys and mountains, it will be powerless once the Sun has begun to rise.
[MEr.01_010,052] It is grievous only in lands where no freedom at all is customary, as in underground vaults, fissures and passages. A thousand suns may rise in place of one, yet their light cannot reach such encrusted depths until the highest burning power of their rays has turned the Earth into ether down to its centre.
[MEr.01_010,053] So in the two hours that remain we shall find quite different things from those you expected beforehand. In the end you yourselves will have to admit that whoever laughs last is best off.
[MEr.01_010,054] When you see all these hours in quite another light, which I shall produce by a small adjustment in My camera, you will first understand that My intention was to make of you someone whose gaze can reach far beyond statistics.
[MEr.01_010,055] You will learn in the next hour what is to come in the next hour. Do not weary yourselves guessing or making comparisons with My statistical particulars. You will then have to acknowledge all that as entirely fruitless.
[MEr.01_010,056] But if you think of anything, remember that Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia and all the islands named, with all their moral and political conditions, matter scarcely at all to Me. Why I used their images as far as needed for you, for you alone, the two hours to come will faithfully make known, as this one has made known second sight, and more faithfully still. Amen.