Chapter 9

THE CAUSE AND NATURE OF LIGHT. (March 22, 1842)

1. In the foregoing communication we have heard our fly, as the first animal, buzz around behind a newly developed planet!

2. It will hardly be necessary to explain this figure of speech, yet it can be included for the sake of many weaker ones, that this is only in time and not also in space, as if someone should imagine a giant swarm of flies, like a comet’s tail, chasing after such a planet. Also this is to be understood in a timely sense, how out of one preparatory period, a more developed and a more complete period follows.

3. This we already know, but you will now think, “What higher and more valuable victory can we get out of our poor fly? For we have seen its origin, following this revelation, and we have found that regardless of all the wonderful and extraordinary happenings, at the end there is still nothing more and nothing less than the ‘usual’ fly corresponding to God’s order, the likes of which we see plenty of during the summertime.

4. See, that is a well-advised remark and will be useful as a basis in erecting a strong, new building.

5. But before we begin this structure we have to proceed with a strong wall which will protect us well from an attack, for otherwise our poor fly may not come out of it so well, especially in these days in which there are so many educated and deeply scientific fly catchers.

6. But where shall we raise our fortifications? Well, that will not be hard to figure out!

7. Since most misconceptions and hypotheses are, where the shortsighted human understanding is least allowed to look, that is into the light-sphere of reality, there most of the theories will be constructed and, like the French fashion industry, the most recent always prevails.

8. But what is this about which, in this scholarly age, there are almost as many theories as there are scholars?

9. Behold, (the answer) is and remains in the light!

10. Therefore, we will take a look first at the light itself, then this will be our fortification, and only then go on to our fly.

11. We want to put forth the main question: What is light itself and how does it propagate?

12. To demonstrate this, it will not be necessary to name any of the existing erroneous theories. We will set up our explanation, and this will serve everyone as a touchstone to test all the alleged theories concerning how much noble or ignoble metal they contain.

13. So then, what is light?

14. To understand light, as it appears in time and space, thoroughly you must view it as neither completely material nor completely spiritual, but as a material-spiritual unit, and see it as a set polarity in which the spiritual part constitutes the ‘positive’ pole and the material part is the ‘negative’ pole.

15. But this polarity is so positioned that it does not act as front and back, but as the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ with the inner being the positive and the outer – the negative pole.

16. But how do these polarities appear as light?

17. See, this difficulty shall soon be removed! When you take a so-called flint stone and strike it with hardened iron, you will see a number of sparks flying at the spot where the iron hits the flint. These sparks are light; where did they get their luminescence? – from the stone, the iron, or from both?

18. Here it is not necessary to further mention that by this act, the sparks originate solely from the iron, from which the outermost little pieces were torn off by the hard stone and kindled. The little particles of air enclosed in the pores of the iron could not evade the pressure caused by the striking action. They kindled, and in turn set detached iron particles into a hot, glowing white state.

19. This we knew; but how is this compressed air ignited, and what is the illumination within the act of ignition?

20. Here the matter can no longer be explained differently except to repeat again that half of the air is nothing but the material body for the intellectual spirits contained therein. The physicists would rather hear Me say “free, unbound force” instead of spirits, but since we want to be thorough, instead of taking the attribute of iron, we will take the thing affected with the attribute, which is the spirit itself or, since we are dealing with many spirits instead of just one, the spirits themselves.

21. Having that firmly in our mind, we can follow unerringly the trail to this very thing, and then so perceive it. Since spirit is a positive polarity power, it strives continually for unbounded freedom, and is quiet in its bound state only as long as it doesn’t experience any unusual impairment from its negative polarity, or – still more understandable – from its encasement or hull. But if it suffers any kind of pressure from without, the spirit is immediately awakened from its sphere of confinement and makes its existence known by expanding. This phenomenon is then known to you as light.

22. We have come this far, but nevertheless everyone will still say, “That may be right, but we still don’t know what the actual light in and by itself is.”

23. But I say: “Just a little more patience, for as you all know, a mature oak tree does not fall with one blow!”

24. We will come to grips with the actual illumination.

25. What then is this illumination?

26. An example will make it clearer to you. What do you see when an arrogant person receives a humiliating blow to his ego? He becomes enraged, and in his rage his whole body will begin to shake, his eyes begin to glow as though an iron forge were behind them, and his hair bristles on all sides. If he is in the company of like-minded individuals, they, too, become enraged, not in the same intensity, but according to the degree of friendship.