„Ah, linger on, thou art so fair!“ – I would like to cry out every day, every hour in spring time – when I see how breathtakingly fast everything changes and how during the span of a day bare winter branches turn into a firework of blossoms … and how like fireworks they are gone in a wink.
But these are lovely fireworks: at first the subtle white of the wild gages, than the foam of the apricot blossoms, followed by the starbursts of the pear tree, the hot pink of the peaches, again white, this time the cherry trees and shortly after them the piano of the small plum blossoms. But now the apple trees and lilac bushes get ready to start…
If only I could hold my breath and stop the hands of the clock to adore and enjoy all these miracles quietly and thoroughly … but nature moves inexorably onward, one festival of blossoms after the other.
If you could sit very still and watch how the bleeding heart pushes stems, leaves and blossoms within hours, how the stems and leaves of the peonies spiral out of the earth and how the beech leaves unfold like delicate origami fans … it feels like one of these old children’s games: the moment you cover your eyes everything starts to move, you hear your playmates running, shoving, giggling and grunting, but as soon as you open your eyes to catch them moving, they are frozen, they look as if they not even knew how to move.
That’s how I feel in spring: everything is movement, everything is active, everywhere invisible forces are creating, nature changes hourly – but if you look up, suddenly everything is motionless and silent.
But nature’s every movement and every change is suffused by a kind of beauty which drives Alvin to kneel in adoration. I would like to fall down before some innocent, humble flower, only to WATCH, to drink in the translucent colours and the smells in awe of a clarity and purity not of this world. The clear light, the fresh colours, the constant development – a faint hint of “eternity”-, yes, even the absence of itchy-scratchy critters (which will of course hatch as soon as the first heat of summer sets in) — to summarize this experience, there is only one word, one image that comes to my mind: Paradise.
Dora van Gelder writes in her book “The Real World of Fairies” about fairies:
„There is (…) only a great love of beauty and perfection. This is what every single one of them tries for: an ideal beauty in all its glory and perfection, which they strive for in everything they undertake to do. But this striving after beauty is not an effort or struggle for them but rather a constant stimulus and a tremendous joy. I think it is partly this constant inner longing for beauty which gives these creatures their sense of radiant joy.“
(Dora van Gelder, The Real World of Fairies. Second Edition 1999, Quest Books. Chapter 4: Fairy Life, p. 53.)
We have already considered the beauty of nature in the blog post “Fairies and Giants” (September 2013) und I say once again: nature’s beauty which is evident wherever it is undisturbed is the best and clearest proof that benign, enlightened beings act in and behind nature, building its forms and caring for them. Or shall we say: longing for paradise they have transported the spiritual world’s beautiful archetypes and brought forth these forms on our plain world in continuous development during millions of years? Why beauty, what’s the sense of it? Is beauty not totally unnecessary in a world that just “happened” and is governed by the “survival of the fittest” and the “selfish genes”, as some scientist claim?
Aren’t these “reasonable” scientists who think that the existence of our world can be explained materialistically in fact blind?
“And God said: Let there be light.” (Gen. 1, 3) – During millennia this bible quotation was explanation enough for the existence of the universe.
God cannot be understood by reason. As reason played an ever larger role in human life fewer and fewer people accepted this explanation.
Today human intelligence can calculate the mass of protons and neutrons as well as the forces between galaxies and has to take into account that radiance has weight and vice versa mass is energy. This knowledge is an incontrovertible fact in space research as well as in nanotechnology and has to be taken into account in all kinds of calculations to achieve correct results. Very simplified you could say:
The universe is made of “light”!
Based on this knowledge, will mankind now begin to integrate the existence of God and of spiritual worlds into the concepts and plans of their life? We can only hope, but viewed realistically: it doesn’t look like that. Instead of seeking to gain spiritual advancement and to look for answers to the eternal questions in the light of the new scientific findings, we limit ourselves to the practical use that the revolutionary new knowledge in physics make possible. Of course this is just the strong point of the human brain: it’s the body’s tool for matter of fact, down to earth technical and practical work whereas naturally it can’t answer the eternal questions.
Unfortunately, it can be observed that everything which can be done will be done, as soon as money can be made by it, without thinking of the risks (e.g. of nuclear energy). And while it should be our goal to improve the world we have received from nature, to make it more beautiful and harmonious, it is on the contrary quite often the case that the “waste products” of our economy destroy harmony and beauty. It’s not something we really aim for but we accept them as necessary.
Is this maybe the reason for God’s warning against eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge in the biblical myth of creation: “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.“ (Gen 3,3)? If mankind stands apart from the living forces acting in and behind nature while at the same time being convinced that it “will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3,5), self-destruction becomes a very likely possibility, as many warning voices have not without reason predicted. Take for example Chernobyl: 29 years ago, on 26 April 1986, a terrible explosion happened at this Russian (now Ukrainian) nuclear power plant with consequences that will last longer than our lifetime. Or think of what happened at Fukushima. And these accidents are only the tip of the iceberg as nuclear power plants produce huge and ever growing amounts of waste that are dangerous for human life and environment and will stay so for millennia, with not a single safe final storage place worldwide. And apart from the “peaceful” use of nuclear technology the whole horrible range of nuclear weapons still – in the 21st century! – exists and threatens to be used.
The genius who, with his “theory of relativity”, paved the way to quantum physics and the knowledge of the interchangeability of matter and energy was Albert Einstein (1979 – 1955). He died, 60 years ago, on 18 April 1955.
In memory of his ground-breaking efforts in physics the United Nations have declared the year of 2015 to be the “Year of Light”.
May the spotlight of media awareness that showcases temporarily the great physic’s scientific breakthroughs further also a breakthrough in general knowledge: The world consists of light! Materialism is (theoretically) defeated! Matter in the sense our senses and our limited reason/brain experience it – does not exist, is deception! In reality only spirit exists! May in this sense – let this be my post-Easter wish for April 2015 – the “Year of light” ring in the resurrection of the spirit!
The German publishing house “Arche” (Ark), well known for its literary calendars, also publishes a children’s calendar with poems and drawings from poets round the world (“Arche Kinderkalender 2015”). The third week of April brought a touching poem from the New Zealand writer Margaret Mahy (1936 – 2012) which has also inspired this blog post:
Magic
Is there no magic in the world?
Is sun just sunshine, raindrops rain?
Are they not fairy gold and pearls?
Is not the wind a fairy train?Is the world of magic gone?
Are there no roadways through the grass,
Which mice draw matchbox coaches on,
Along with fairy workmen pass?Is all the world of magic gone?
Are not the roses fairy homes?
Is not the earth beneath our feet
Alive with goblins, elves and gnomes?If all the world of magic’s gone,
And witches do not sail the sea
In egg-shells halved, with broom-stick oars –
This world is not the place for me.
This poem expresses an emotion that possibly many visitors of our site experience likewise: world and reality are much more than what we humans can perceive with our limited senses. There is a spiritual spark in every human being which survives the death of the body; beings act in nature forming and preserving it; heavenly forces – be they called angels or devas – exist, supporting us when we open ourselves to their activity. Maybe our weblog would have appealed to the “Grande Dame of New Zealand children’s literature”, as Margaret Mahy was sometimes called.
But where is this spiritual world which we can’t find with our material intelligence und whose existence therefore materialistic minded people deny? The answer to this question can be given only semi-metaphorically: in the light! As our world is made of energy – in a more general sense of light – so light forms higher levels and worlds that exist beside, in and above all gross matter.
If you are looking for more detailed explanations of these questions, you will find them in the book “In the Light of Truth” by Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, 1975 – 1941). This book also offers an explanation of the spiritual principles according to which higher worlds as well as our world develop and are formed. If you follow our weblog you will know that I quote this book rather often. The reason is that Abd-ru-shin, even if he is nowadays not really well-known, has in fact done more than anyone other to make the knowledge of nature beings known in the western culture.
The “Light of Truth” the title of the book refers to is the light of God which became form, of which everything is created and which streams through and supports creation. “Which became form” – you can imagine myriads of living, creating and working beings that form and support life on all levels:
„ 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 (…) which is (…) 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.
(…)
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 (…) 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.“
(Abd-ru-shin, In the Light of Truth. The Grail Message. Lecture: Substantiality. Verlag der Stiftung Gralsbotschaft, Stuttgart)
These few sentences give you an impression how Abd-ru-shin succeeds in showing the relation between (nature) beings and (human) spirits and at the same time showing the fundamental differences between them. As far as I know this depiction is singular in literature. If you want to know more, read our articles “Beings and Humans” (September 2014) und “Beings and Spirit” (July 2014).
The author’s pseudonym means by the way “Son of Light” or “Servant of Light”.
140 years ago Abd-ru-shin was born – very fittingly – on 18 April.
The UN’s dedication of 2015 as “Year of Light” is consequentially not only for physical reasons but also for spiritual reasons justified!
Apropos our current issue “Beauty and Light” Abd-ru-shin writes:
„To guide you in leading a God-willed life here on earth, you have been endowed with the sense of beauty, which comes from the purest intuition. This intuition holds within it the memory of the Luminous Heights, where beauty is the natural thing! For Light and beauty simply cannot be separated. They are one! If you now wish to carry Light onto this earth, then you must also bring beauty. Beauty in all that you do!“
(Abd-ru-shin, Lecture: Let Easter arise within you, man! Verlag der Stiftung Gralsbotschaft, Stuttgart)
The diverse nature beings fulfil their task according to this law – as we tried to show you at the beginning of this article – but mankind is very far from it. Let us take nature and its beings as a shining example and let us seek to integrate beauty also into our lives and works – to let the light of the spiritual world shine through to our world of gross matter!
Alvin – The Elfenfriend April 2015
(Translated by Rowena in June 2015)