SUBSTANTIALITY

IN MY MESSAGE I have often spoken of Animistic Substantiality in Creation.

I spoke of its nature and its working, also of its significance for the human spirit, whose paths in Creation it smooths as he develops towards perfection.

All this you already know!

In spite of this I now consider it necessary to speak once more in greater detail of all Substantiality, so that man is given the opportunity to absorb within himself the entire picture of this activity. —

“Substantiality” is an expression which I myself gave to you, because it best expresses that which can provide you with a definite form for your conceptions about the working and also the nature of this component part of Creation, which is so important for every activity that is brought into existence.

“Substantiality”!

Let us also call it for once that which is “essential” for Creation or, better still, that which “visibly manifests” in Creation; then perhaps what I actually want to say by the expression “Substantiality” will become even more comprehensible to you.

We can also use other conceptions from the vocabulary of your language (German) in order to fashion it even better.

The expression appertaining here is “that which unites and combines” or, in short, “that which binds” and is thereby itself “bound”.

After all these transitory expressions I can now also safely say “that which shapes forms”, without you thereby thinking that Substantiality would create forms out of its own volition; for this would be wrong, because Substantiality is only able to create forms when behind it stands the Will of God, the living Primordial Law of Creation, setting it in motion.

We may just as well call Substantiality the executive and preservative motivating power in the creating of forms!

Perhaps this is the easiest way to provide your mental capacity with the approximately correct conception.

That which is substantiate, i.e., that which manifests visibly in a form and which can therefore also be reproduced in a picture, comprises everything but God.

God alone is Un-substantiate, so called in order to differentiate from the conception of substantiate.

Therefore everything existing outside the Unsubstantiality of God is substantiate and formed!

Take this as a basic conception for your understanding!

Thus everything is substantiate but God.

And since nothing but the radiation of God exists outside God it follows that Substantiality is the natural and inevitable radiation of God.

Thus Substantiality is much more comprehensive and higher than you thought it to be.

It comprises everything outside of God, but it is divided into many gradations depending on the degree of cooling off and the consequent distance from God.

If you understand the Message aright you will know that I have already spoken of Divine Substantiality, which exists in the Divine Sphere, also of Spiritual Substantiality, which in turn is divided into Primordial Spiritual Substantiality and Spiritual Substantiality.

Thereafter I mentioned the gradation of that Substantiality which is only Animistic, which is followed further downwards by the World of Ethereal Matter and finally by the World of Gross Matter, with all their various transitional planes.

Since everything is substantiate, however, outside of God Himself, I simply called the various species Divine, Primordial Spiritual, Spiritual and Animistic, as well as Ethereal Matter and Gross Matter, these being the various gradations downwards.

In the great basic structure, however, there are only two – that which is Un-substantiate and that which is substantiate.

God is Un-substantiate, while His Radiation must be called substantiate.

There is nothing else; for everything which is outside of God issues and develops solely from the Radiation of God.

Although if you study it aright this follows quite clearly from the Message already, yet many hearers and readers at present still think of the substantiate as being only the sphere of Creation between the Spiritual Sphere and the Ethereal World, the region from which the elementals originate, such as the elves, nixies, gnomes and salamanders; and also the soul of animals, which do not bear anything spiritual within them.*

Actually the thought was not wrong up till now, because this region between the Spiritual Sphere and the Ethereal World is the simple Substantiality which is only Animistic, from which the Divine, the Primordial Spiritual and the Spiritual have already separated.

It is the heaviest of the layers still mobile within itself, from which in the process of further cooling off the World of Matter detaches itself and sinks.

In the first stage of this cooling off process there remains the ponderous World of Ethereal Matter, from which in addition the mass of the Gross Material World severs itself, which is without inherent mobility.

But even within these two planes of matter, the species of which are alien to each other, there are still many special gradations.

Thus the earth, for instance, is not the most ponderous of them.

There are within the World of Gross Matter further gradations which are far heavier and denser, and where consequently the conceptions of space and time become much narrower still, quite different from what they are here on earth; and where the resultant mobility is even slower and the possibility of development consequently also more cumbersome.

The conceptions of space and time in each gradation are formed according to the capacity for movement, for not only do the stars journey more slowly in the greater density and heaviness, but the bodies of flesh are also plumper and firmer, and the brains therefore less mobile too.

* This translation has hitherto referred to this sphere as “the Realm of Animistic
Substantiality”, the Animistic Sphere”, or “the World of Animism”.

In short, everything is different due to the resulting entirely different character and effect of the mutual radiations, which are the impulse towards movement and also at the same time, after having been transformed, the consequences of this movement.

It is just because everything is subject to one Law in Creation that the forms and conceptions must always manifest differently in the various gradations, depending on the nature of the mobility.

This in turn is related to the particular cooling off and the resultant density.

But I am again straying too far from the subject with this, for today I want first of all to enlarge the conception about Substantiality a little more.

In doing so I refer to an illustration which I gave once before, and say briefly: That which is Un-substantiate is God.

That which is substantiate is the mantle of God.

There is nothing else whatever!

And this mantle of God must be kept pure by those who weave it or who may shelter in its folds, which also include the human spirits.

Since everything outside of God is substantiate, Substantiality therefore extends right into the Divine Sphere; indeed this Sphere itself must be called substantiate.

In order to prevent any errors from creeping in we must now make a finer distinction.

It is best if we separate the conception “the substantiate” and the conception “the animistic (elemental) beings”.*

“The substantiate” comprises everything outside of God because it is the opposite of the Un-substantiate.

But the substantiate also bears within itself the Divine, the Primordial Spiritual, and the Spiritual with all its special gradations, which I have not yet explained because at present this would be beyond your capacity to understand.

* The author called these terms in the German language “Das Wesenhafte” and “Die Wesenhaften”; hence his emphasis on the need to distinguish carefully between these closely similar expressions.

It is necessary that the exact foundations should first be unshakably established in the consciousness of the human spirit, from which we can always and only gradually undertake the extensions by small steps, until the comprehension possible to the human spirit has become sufficiently embracing.

Thus in future when we speak of Substantiality as such this means the Substantiality which comprises everything but God.

Only in the course of further lectures will you recognize how great this is; for there are not only the already known gradations leading downwards but also various important related species side by side, through the activity of which Creation develops.

If, however, we speak (in German) of the elemental beings in the plural, then this refers to those elementals which you have hitherto thought about as comprising the Substantiality which is only Animistic.

This includes all those beings which deal with that which men in a very superficial way call Nature, which include the seas, the mountains, the rivers, the forests, the meadows and the countryside, as well as the soil, the rocks and the plants, while the soul of the animal is again something different, although it also comes from this Sphere of Substantiality which is only Animistic.

All this is quite correctly designated by the expression: “Beings”.

Elves, nixies, gnomes and salamanders are thus beings, whose activities lie solely in the World of Matter.

It is therein that we now find the real possibility to classify them.

But there are also beings active in the Spiritual Sphere, others working in the Primordial Spiritual Sphere, and still others busy even in the Divine Sphere.

This recognition must completely undermine the conception you have hitherto held, based on your assumption that the spiritual stands above the elemental beings.

But this is true only for a very definite species of elementals, for those which are active solely in the World of Matter, such as the already mentioned elves, nixies, gnomes and salamanders, and also for the souls of animals.

But not for others!

You surely cannot imagine that a being active in the Primordial Spiritual Sphere and even in the Divine Sphere should stand under you human spirits!

To further an understanding of this matter I must first give a more precise explanation as to the difference between spirit and being; for only thus can I give you a key to the right conception.

In Creation there is actually no difference in value between the creature
“spirit” and the creature “being”.

The only difference lies in the difference of species and the consequent necessity for a difference in their activities.

The spirit, which also belongs to the great Substantiality, is permitted to follow roads of its own choosing and work correspondingly in Creation.

The being, however, stands directly in the pressure of the Will of God, and therefore it has no possibility to make personal decisions or, as man expresses it, it does not possess its own free will.

The elemental beings are the builders and administrators of the House of God, i.e., of Creation.

The spirits are the guests therein.

At present, however, all the beings stand higher in Subsequent Creation than the human spirits, because the human spirits did not place themselves voluntarily under the Will of God, which the normal course of development would have automatically assured.

Instead they turned their will in a different direction, pushing it in between and thus disturbing all harmony and upbuilding, and going other ways than those willed by God.

Thus the only standard of value for a creature in Creation is the quality of the activity in which it is engaged.

The smaller beings working in the World of Matter, however, suffered greatly through this disturbing work of the human spirits with their wrong volition.

But now they eagerly draw from the Living Source of Power which came to earth with the Will of God, and all the harm caused by the human spirits now rolls back upon its originators.

But more of this later!

Today it is a question of forming the conception as a basis for a further understanding.

The Archangels in the Divine Sphere are beings, because under the immeasurably great pressure of the proximity of God no other volition but that which swings pure and undistorted in the Will of God would be at all possible.

Only at a distance so vast that it is beyond your power to grasp, at the extreme boundary of the Divine Sphere, there where the Grail Castle is anchored in the Divine as a counter-pole, only there for the first time can an ego-consciousness manifest itself in the Eternal Ones or, as they are also sometimes called, the Elders, who at the same time are the Divine Guardians of the Holy Grail.

It is only their remoteness from the proximity of God which made this possible.

And only further downwards therefrom, at an ever greater distance from the proximity of God, could there also develop the smaller ego conscious ones.

Unfortunately, however, they also lost their real support thereby and finally strayed away from the swinging of the pure Will of God.

Likewise it was only due to the ever-increasing distance that Lucifer was able long ago to change, and through his willfulness to cut himself off from the connection, thereby automatically opening up chasms which in time became unbridgeable, so that he himself became darker and heavier and sank ever deeper.

Thus in the process of densification and cooling off he became a spirit possessing free volition, and with the great capacities bestowed upon him by his origin he finally stood under the World of Matter as the strongest spirit.

His wrong volition then brought the evil upon everything spiritual in the World of Matter, which at first felt attracted by him and then voluntarily succumbed to his enticements.

Of their own free will because, in accordance with the Law in Creation, the human spirits themselves had to make the decision leading to their fall!

Without their own decision to do so it would have become impossible for them to sink and now consequently to fall.

However, this also is but the logical fulfilment of the Perfect Law! —

Thus spirits with a volition of their own cannot possibly exist in the immediate proximity of God.

This is a lawful condition of the Almighty Power of the Living Light! —

Where there are archangels there must also be other angels, as the word implies.

There are very many of them in the Divine Sphere, also in the Primordial Spiritual and Spiritual Spheres, but they are all beings.

The beings which are called angels swing in the Will of God and are His messengers.

They carry out the Will of God and spread it abroad.

Besides the angels, however, there are also innumerable beings, all linked together like small wheels in a great machine, and yet apparently working independently and faithfully in the building up and maintenance of the entire Creation, because they are firmly anchored in the Law.

And above all these stand individual leaders equipped with a power incomprehensible to man; and again above these there are still higher and more powerful leaders, always of a species alien to the one below.

And so it goes on and on right up into the Divine Sphere.

It is like a great chain, the links of which penetrate the whole of Creation without a break, their joyful activity like the verses of a hymn of praise resounding to the honor and glory of their Lord.

Remember that what you see around you here is but a coarse image of everything which lies higher, which takes on ever more glorious, more noble and lighter forms the nearer it is permitted to be to the Circle of the Divine.

In all these circles, however, the beings always work exactly in accordance with the Will of God that rests in the Laws!

All beings stand in the service of God, which spirits themselves must first acknowledge voluntarily if they wish to work beneficially in Creation.

If spirits follow the path which is exactly designed for them, and which they can easily recognize if they only wish to do so, then a way of happiness and joy is assured for them; for they will then swing together with the beings which help to smooth their paths.

But the spirits must compel themselves to take any wrong path by a very special decision.

They only bring about failure, however, and create suffering for themselves therewith, and ultimately their fall and the necessity to expel them from Creation into the funnel of disintegration, as being useless for the God-willed and lawfully conditioned development of everything that has so far come into existence.

The developed spiritual alone has evolved in the wrong direction and to the disturbance of harmony.

After the Judgment it is now once more granted a period in which to change through the God-willed Millennium.

If it does not by then become absolutely firm in its striving for the good, the developed human-spiritual must again be drawn back to that border where it cannot develop itself to become self-conscious, so that at last peace and joy will prevail for all creatures in the Realms of God.

Thus you, man, are the only one who has a disturbing effect in the desired beauty of this Creation when it is now to be uplifted for its necessary change to the state of a gross material Paradise.

Make haste!

For only in the knowledge can you still swing yourselves up, you men!

You will receive the strength to do so as soon as you open your souls for it!

* * *