The food for the soul and spirit - inner word versus spoken word - road to paganism

10] After these words of Henoch the guest at the other table (n.b.: the Lord) rose again and began to speak and his words sounded as follows:
11] "Friends, brothers and sisters! W e all have strengthened ourselves with this good meal. Our
body parts wince thereat with joyful feelings and our soul has now an easy task to give the body a supple activity. For this, to the most sublime, sacred Giver of all good gifts, all thanks and all our love always and forever!
12] But the body is not the main cause of man, but only a working means to attain the eternal, holy purpose, which is based in the eternal, divine order.
13] But if this is necessarily the case with our body and impossibly otherwise, it is as clear as daylight that in man something quite different, thus a completely different, higher man must dwell, for whose sake the very body, which we all now have so proficiently lined, actually exist, and to whom’s most advantageous feeding we should be always mightily be concerned about.
14] You now say among yourselves in your hearts: 'This would indeed be very good and useful; but then one would also need to know with what the inner man must be fed!
15] We see all kinds of fruit on earth grow and mature to nourish the body; but a tree on which fruits grow and mature to serve the nourishment of the inner man, we are unable to find!'
16] That's right, my beloved friends, brothers and sisters; but here I want to say to you something
else and so hear Me out:
17] Behold, the Lord has arranged everything in such a way, that matter feeds from matter, the soul from the soul, love from love and the spirit from the spirit!
18] But love is the cause of the spirit and most actual being of the inner man and we therefore can give our inner man no better food than as to saturate it with the love for God. Through this love he becomes strong and powerful and becomes a master in this his house which is the immortal soul and the mortal body.
19] However, the foods for the body must be prepared either by nature or by the culinary art of the people, so that it is fit for human consumption; in even a higher degree the food for the spirit must be well prepared!
20] The word in us is this preparation of the food of the spirit; therefore we also want to prepare the food with the word and only then strengthen our spirit with it!" […]
(HHG vol.3, chap. 43)
 
 
Chapter 44
01] And the speaker at the other table continued: "The word, coming alive from our hearts, however, is what I want to have designated as the preparations for the love to God, which there is the true food for the spirit.
02] I say to you: The word, yes, the living true, right word from the bottom of our hearts, is all in all; it penetrates matter, dissolves it into the spiritual and then nourishes with the resolution of matter the spirit.
03] This is then - as I have mentioned before already -, namely, that only the spirit nourishes the spirit, the soul nourishes the soul and matter nourishes matter.
04] For the word in us, as the itself clear enunciated thought in the heart, seizes matter, divides it and contemplates its wondrous structure. In this contemplation the soul saturates itself already; because the delightful feeling of the soul during the contemplation of marvellous beautiful forms is its saturation!
05] However, man has been arranged by the Creator in such a way, that the saturation of one part, always causes a certain hunger of another.
06] But to understand this quite in depth, an example will assist us, and thus pay close attention good heartedly!
07] If your body is hungry, you always pant after a good meal, and if you sit at a fully laid table you are also joyful; for now you can satisfy the torturing hunger.
08] But if it meant: You now must sit for a full eight days at the table or for a month or even a year - say, would you not be consumed by the most terrible boredom?!
09] Yes, I tell you, My beloved friends, brothers and sisters, you surely would in such a case begin to despair!
10] However, if this is undeniable the case, I can ask: Why the boredom and despair because the body is then saturated?
11] Because the saturation of the body ensures the certain getting-hunger of the soul which always expresses itself in the bitterly felt desperate boredom!
12] But what is it one needs to do, to after the saturation of the body also saturate the soul?
13] One gets up from the table and go outside, for example on a small hill, or in a beautiful garden, where the soul then can saturate itself with the beautiful forms, like the song of birds, or with the ethereal, spiritual scents of flowers, and with other similar types of amenities for the soul.
14] But if someone has considered things like this for long enough and thus has sufficiently saturated his formerly hungry soul, also these delightful dishes will soon begin to bore him, and he will soon begin to long either for home to saturate his body again, which became hungry again by the saturation of the soul, with a good bite, or in better circumstances the spirit will begin to stir and will tell the body through the soul: ‘I’m terribly hungry!'
15] But how will this hunger express itself? - Through an ever more and more burning curiosity.
16] He will want to understand matter and its beautiful forms; because as they are, they are not fit for him to enjoy, - they must be resolved through fire, light and sufficient truth.
17] But what is the fire? It is the desirely love. What is the light? It is the in the heart clear enunciated thought. What is the truth? It is the emerging and pronounced word resulting from the fire and the light!
18] Through this word we then take the solid matter and its lovely shape, resolve the matter, and find in the resolved matter the explanation and spiritual meaning of the form.
19] Thereby our spirit becomes delighted and this satisfied, blissful ecstasy is then already the
strengthening saturation for the spirit; because he finds in it his home, his rest, his material; his origin and in it his true love for God and God's almighty love for him!
20] And the spirit then falls in all love and humility down before the infinite love of God, gives thanks
to God and truly prays to God, and God is then his main saturation for eternal life.
21] Thus we want to look at the works of God and seek His great love and mercy in it. And if someone has found something, he makes it audibly known to all his brothers through good, true words and he and they will then be uplifted in the spirit and in truth, and this upliftment is then the true, living food for the spirit by which he vigorously begins to act in the love for God, which work is then also the true, eternal life!"
(HHG vol. 3, chap. 44)
[…] 10] You remain silent and seek for an answer; but I maintain that this time you can not find one that will satisfy Me! Have I then spoken about a physical or mechanical dissolvement of matter? […]
12] Did I not spoke of an inner living word of love from the heart, which first expresses itself in clear thoughts or mental forms and then transforms into the language of visions and only then, if necessary, because of the weakness of people with merely coarse senses, it spills over into the oral language, so that the coarse senses of such weak people through the frequent saturation of the spirit in them become refined, and they then with refined, thus with more alive senses contemplate the things in its truth and thereby continuously more and more saturate their spirit, so that he, as the actual life in man, can arise and become the perfect master in his house, - while, as it is now the case with you, he is nothing more than a sheerest, meaningless servant of matter, the judgement and thus also death?! (HHG vol. 3, chap. 45)
 
 
09] And when the main speaker noticed such He immediately directed the following words to the
critic and said:
10] "Listen, I want to give you a good answer to your intended question with which you meant to
catch Me, because you now allowed a different spirit to rise in your heart; but this is My answer: 11] You thought that man without a word could not comprehensively express himself in front of his fellow human beings, and that the oral word was the completion of the mute thoughts in the heart, because man thereby distinguishes himself as a human being from all other creatures of earth; and as such one would have to worship the Lord only with consummate words, but not worshipping and thanking and glorifying and praising Him with the inner only spirit saturating thoughts or feelings.
12] See, this is precisely the very wrong way! The very fact that man has become a sense- and world server and has turned himself to the outside, did he also came to use the outer mouth language and now can not understand his brother otherwise than through the word of mouth, which in itself is nothing more than merely the most outer bark of a tree.
13] However, he thereby lost incalculable much by this apparent advantage; because if man had stayed with his inner spirit language, the whole of creation would present itself as speech-enabled for him, and he could understand things in its very essence. But now he has become a silent observer and has in himself tainted all his senses through his turning-to-the-outside, so that he became deaf, blind and insensitive similar to the bark of the tree and understands nothing in its essence; yes, he doesn’t even knows himself anymore and he does not know the wailing heart of his brother!
14] Do you also want now to turn the recognition and worshiping of God, who Himself is the most inner life in man, to the outside, so that you thereby also could lose even God and become a heathen or even a complete atheist?!«
(HHG vol. 3, chap. 46)
 
 
01] After a brief pause the main speaker began to continue speaking again: "You look at Me now
completely puzzled because I have kindled a little light for you, and you do not know what you should make of Me and My words.
02] Inside you ask yourself: 'How could I become a heathen or an atheist, if I pray with words of the mouth to God?! Can I then recognize God with the mouth without previously recognizing Him in my heart, thus in the thoughts of my heart?'
03] Yes, My friend and brother, you now recognize God and your mouth word is an expression of what you feel in your heart; but why?
04] Because you saw the Lord, your God, and are thus compelled to believe it that there exist a God, and how He looks like and you have heard from Him what He wants to achieve with man!
05] But this belief is not a freedom of the spirit, but a killing bondage thereof, since you now must believe that it is Him, God the Lord, because you have seen Him and could convince yourself through the power of His speech and His actions.
06] But this belief will only hold you but can not pass over in this your persuasive power to your
offspring; because what you now convincingly recognize, that your descendants will only halfway hardly believe as true, since it is only a verbal heritage, thus far weaker than there was your visual perception.
07] But in ten generations forward, this your disfigured traditional belief will barely be worthy of any consideration and paganism will become the fruit of your mouth faith and this fruit will follow the utter denial of God and upon this the surest judgement because man without his association with God is already condemned in his own death-night.
08] But if you acknowledges God in your heart, that is through your living love for Him and thus prays in spirit and in truth to Him, you are going to shake off your present compelled faith-judgement, from which you never will harvest any salvation, but instead you will go over into a living faith, that means in a living vision of your spirit in you, wherein finally all your life forces must unite, if you should live forever.
09] And only in this living vision you will truly recognize God and acknowledge Him alive in the spirit and in truth; and you will also seek to preserve this acknowledgement in your descendants, and they will follow your example, and paganism, the denial of God, the judgement and death shall remain far from all your descendants.
10] Because this is indeed sure and highly duly certain that the spirit of man is the most innermost, just as the living germ-spark is the innermost of every fruit.
11] If you thus believe and pray outwardly, sensual materially, you lure your spirit also to the outwardly materially, what there is your judgement and therefore death.
12] But if you do this, you are doing spiritually the same as if you would take a torch, and while it burns, stuck it in a mud puddle! I ask you: Will it continue to burn and will it enlighten your dark path?
13] Your spirit is your light and your life; but if you extinguish it, what is then left to you whereby you can grow a life for you?
14] You now live of course because you've seen God and you now must believe that He exist; but I tell you, with this life you will not go beyond the grave, if you will not forget in your matter, what you saw, and the forgotten not will find anew in your spirit through the powerful love for God!
15] But what I now have told you, hold it as high as what you saw, and you will have eternal life,
otherwise only to the grave. 16] Understand such and speak, if something is a little dark to you, so that I can enlighten you! Amen. " (HHG vol. 3, chap. 47)
 
 

4. HEAVEN AND HELL
[1] Says hereupon Philopold: “Lord, I and certainly we all thank You from the bottom of our hearts for this fantastic and most superb clarification about the teaching of the old sages. Yes, now the matter it is evident and clear after sounding like total nonsense before. Sure enough I shall understand and perceive all this only fully when I shall be free of all elements of matter.
[2] But for now it is enough to see how one can be according to the fullest truth totally outside the notions of time and space while at the same time being within time and space. There is only one more thing I would like to learn from You, namely, the whereabouts of both heaven and the loathsome hell, of which I have also heard and read much. It says: These will ascend to heaven, and those will be cast down into hell. Where and what is the ‘above’, and where and what the extremely deplorable ‘below’?”
[3] Says the Lord: “Look, on this chair on which you are sitting, heaven and hell can be firmly side by side here on earth. Yet in the realm of spirit they are separated by an immense chasm. –
And furthermore:
[4] Here, where I am now with you, is the uppermost heaven, meaning ‘above’, and here also the deepest and worst hell, meaning ‘below’.
[5] The material whereabouts do not matter, but only the spiritual which, as you have seen, have nothing at all in common with the material whereabouts, for in the realm of spirit only the inner state of life determines the true and genuine distance. There the material-spatial cannot ever be of any significance. To make this even more comprehensible for you, I will give you a few examples.
[6] Imagine two people sitting here on one and the same chair. One is a pious sage whose bright spirit, full of light, is initiated into very many secrets about the effects of the divine forces in nature. The other is a hardened criminal who rests his limbs on the same chair or on the same bench and let’s himself be served, like an honest man, with wine and bread to restore his strength, so that he can all the more easily perpetrate some evil deed once he is again outdoors. How closely together the two men are in a material-spatial sense and how infinitely far apart in spirit!
[7] On the other hand, assuming that our sage were sitting with us here on this bench and at the same time, somewhere a thousand leagues from here, another, these two like sages would be very far apart materially-spatially, yet in the realm of spirit they would nevertheless be very close together, as is literally the case in My Kingdom.