God’s children who sprang from His Paternal bosom—the Eldest, the Youngest, and the human spirits—have all been gifted with life eternal; but since God compels no one ever to accept His gifts He has also endowed every spirit with a free will, with the right of self-determination, and thereby has limited His own Will and His own knowledge. On reaching a certain degree of maturity, all God’s children can, by the right of self-determination, choose to receive the gift of eternal life or to revert again to the Paternal bosom.

A distorted version of this fact is taught in Buddhism in which, according to some interpretations, the human spirit upon reaching the highest perfection sinks back into “Nirvana”— reverts, that is, into the Divinity. The Buddha himself taught originally that when the human spirit had attained to perfect freedom from all earthly influence and all earthly desire through numerous rebirths, it then returned to the source—to the Divinity—from which it sprang. This absorption or reversion was not considered by the Buddha as the annihilation of the individuality but as an indissoluble bond with the divine, whereby the reverted self could follow the earthly drama in serene contemplation. This absorption into the Divinity could sometimes be fleetingly discerned by certain highly advanced spirits in their human existence, indicating then that the spirit was living through its final incarnation.

All creation, the primary (the transcendental) as well as the secondary (the galaxies) and all that has been called forth from Darkness through the fall of the Eldest, can, should God so choose, be dissolved once more by His omnipotent Will into the elements from which it was created or evolved.

All being and all life exists only by virtue of the cosmic basis, primal Thought and primal Will—the source of all creation, the first cause and first beginning of all that is—God. And since God emanated Himself and thereby became capable of creation, He can, at any time should He choose, dissolve His own Being as well as all creation; in other words: revert Himself together with all that He created to that which He was, without beginning and without end—Thought and Will. Cosmos will endure only as long as God maintains in His all-embracing Thought the laws of creation (gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, centrifugal and centripetal force, and so on).

When God emanated Himself, He simultaneously drew Darkness under the Light in a mighty circulation through His flaming Being so that the Light should thus absorb and purge the Darkness.

When God resolved to create the galaxies, Darkness was far from being absorbed and eliminated but could be found with latent poles as a faint under-current in the circulatory waves of the Light.

As even the highest¹ frequencies of vibration of the Darkness that is enclosed by the Light are much slower than the lowest frequencies of the Light, Darkness will always tend to “precipitate” in the sea of the Light. For this reason God had to form the innermost core of the four mother suns from the less rapid vibrations of the Light—imperceptible to the human eye—which in turn enclosed the Darkness, with its still lower frequency of vibration. From the innermost cores of the globes to their outer limits, the vibrations increase in speed. As its frequency increases, the Light proportionately increases in concentration of strength and in ethereal radiance, so that the outer layer becomes like a radiant corona—not perceptible to the human eye—though without attaining to the degree of concentration and ethereal radiance emitted by those vibrations of the Light that, through the power of God’s Will, brought forth His own Kingdom (the central globe).

Since all the globes in the galaxies have their source, directly or indirectly, in the four original mother suns, they are of identical structure. But because the ether (the Light, and the Darkness precipitated in it) flows through and pervades all space, and thereby all the globes, the darker cores of the globes will gradually diminish as the circulating waves of the Light draw more and more Darkness away to be purged through God’s flaming Being.

When God had chosen the Earth as the dwelling place for the beings He had thought to create, He formed from the high—the ethereal—vibrations of the Light, a world of perfect beauty that surrounded the Earth as a sphere, a spherical stratum. It was God’s intent that those of His first-created children, who would be chosen to lead the inhabitants of the Earth, should remain here while carrying out their task. The ethereal radiations from this transcendental world should, by God’s plan and together with the ethereal-astral radiations of the corona of Light of the Earth’s sun, have regulated climatic conditions on the Earth itself.

But when the Eldest began their attempts at creation, large quantities of Darkness were separated from the ether, and these wrought destruction in the world of Light that God had formed round the Earth.² This disengagement activated the poles of Darkness, and as a portion of the disengaged Darkness slowly approached the Earth, the hitherto latent poles in the Globe’s core of Darkness were gradually activated under the influence of the approaching, polarized Darkness. As the Darkness drew closer to the core, it intermingled increasingly with the Globe’s ethereal corona of Light, causing a significant reduction in the corona’s frequency of vibration. When Darkness reached the core of the Earth, the entire Globe² was darkened and it appeared to be without any luminous corona (visible only from the transcendental world). But because the Light, through God’s victory over Darkness, can never be extinguished or conquered, Darkness could not eliminate or destroy the Globe’s ethereal radiation of Light, only contaminate and obscure it.

Although the frequency of vibration of the corona of Light was reduced and moderated by the influx of Darkness, the corona still radiated sufficient Light to contain or fixate the Darkness that had fused with the Earth’s core of Darkness. By this fixation, the life-principle of the polarized Darkness became merged with the seeds of Life—given by God—that were in the Globe’s corona of Light, and the cell in its various forms then appeared. Some of these cells were dual-sexed, others of single sex. The reproduction, or generation, of new dual cells took place, and does so still, by the simple processes of division, ligation, and the like; while on the other hand the generation of new single cells took place, and does so still, by a preceding union of two cells of opposite sex.

Some microbes can reproduce in two ways, as for instance when certain disease-producing bacteria enter the body as parasites and reproduce by a simple division that gradually reduces their vitality. The disease is neutralized as the bacteria expire or as their vitality is reduced to the point that they no longer interfere with the body’s normal functions. But should additional bacteria of the same strain enter the infected body before the previous bacteria have expired, the old and new merge and bring about new subdivisions. If the new bacteria are sufficiently vital, the older ones are revitalized and the illness flares anew until the vitality of the bacteria is weakened once more through numerous divisions. The disease can of course be alleviated or checked in other ways, by the body’s own antidoting ability for example, or by added antidotes, and so forth. The foregoing refers only to the normal life cycle of the bacteria.

Bacteria of related strains can likewise merge or be absorbed by one another with subsequent division as a result. New strains then appear that produce new diseases.

Each single seed of life that God by His Thought and Will had implanted in the Earth’s ethereal corona of Light, carried within itself the pattern, the prototype of the animal or the plant; that is, the form into which these seeds—by the Will of God and when determined by Him—should have been called forth in the world of Light that He would create on Earth. Since these seeds were instead brought forth to earthly life through a union with the life-principle of Darkness, they became subject to the distorting, malforming and degrading influence of Darkness. But because the corona of Light had fixated the Darkness that transformed the Globe, the Light retained an orderly, uplifting, selective and harmonizing influence on the single- and dual-sexed cells and their formations, which had been produced through the merger of the seeds with the life-principle of Darkness.

The dual-sexed cells represented the lowest reproductive life form of Darkness, which could not lead to higher or more complex forms, and were therefore not able to produce even the faintest reflection of the prototypes that rested in the God-given seeds of life. The union of the single-sexed cells (male and female), controlled and guided by the regulating and harmonizing influence of the corona of Light,³ is therefore a blind, mechanical simulation by Darkness of the consciously-willed union of primal Thought and primal Will that resulted in the emergence of God as a personal Being.

Under the influence of the corona of Light through millions of years, with the continuous cell division and cell formation resulting from the merging of male and female cells, ever more complex forms of life evolved. The various intricate tissues were organized into bone, muscle, nerves and the like, and into the various modes of digestion, reproduction, etc., both in the animal and in the plant kingdoms. All these forms continuously strive toward the patterns given by God in the original seeds of life. This striving was, and is still, constantly restrained and disturbed by the degenerative tendencies of Darkness, and during this time when the power of Darkness over the Earth was so much greater than that of the Light, the formation of cells led to the most grotesque forms, for example through mating by the animals at random, so that in many ways they were departing from rather than advancing toward the prototypes⁴ embedded in the seeds.⁴ As the Light gains in power over the “disengaged Darkness”, these mutations will disappear and the many hideous and harmful animal species will gradually die out over the coming thousands or millions of years. (True also for the plant kingdom.)

When human intelligence began experimenting with the creation of new forms within the prevailing animal and plant species, human beings in many ways forestalled the influence of the Light. If these hybrids are to achieve a natural, independent and continued propagation within their new forms, they must for hundreds, or thousands, perhaps millions of years be exposed to the same care and treatment they now get. Otherwise, when again left to themselves they will sooner or later revert to those forms they had reached under the slow but progressive ordering, elimination, adaptation and harmonization process of the corona of Light.

The earthly forms will, however, never reach the fullness of the prototypes given by God in the primary seeds, partly because these (for instance in the animal kingdom) had been destined to lead a life without propagation or death, and partly because Darkness cannot be completely eliminated until the Earth itself comes to its end.

When the Eldest created the human beings, they intended that the species should be maintained through reproduction. For this reason they endowed the male and female life-seeds of the human sexual cells with a characteristic, with a form that corresponded to the human type represented by the given seeds. These primordial seed prototypes (invisible to all human observation) were thus to be the principal foundation for the creatures of the Eldest and, through reproduction, were to be reborn and maintained in the future generations as long as the Earth was in the power of the Eldest. But when God adopted humanity and endowed the physical body with a divine element, the body was brought under the harmonizing influence of the Light; and as the Youngest let themselves in ever greater numbers be incarnated among humans, the fullness of beauty they all carried in their thought also began, through procreation, to exert a strong influence on the Eldest’s primary prototypes in the human life-seeds. This influence tended especially to produce a trend toward the beautification and ennoblement of the physical body. Through the millions of years that the human body has been subject to the progressive, elevating influence of the Youngest and of the Light, the primordial prototypes of the Eldest have gradually departed somewhat from the original degrading stamp of Darkness. This ennoblement is especially noticeable in those peoples among whom the Youngest have been regularly incarnated.

The human male and female life-seeds also accurately reflect at any time the personal characteristics of each individual. Thus, all outer and inner family traits and talents ancestrally inherited by each individual, as well as all experience personally acquired in life on Earth, lie dormant both in the physical and astral life-seeds of the individual and can be transmitted to the offspring through procreation.⁵ Through the coincidence of various internal and external circumstances, these latent characteristics and talents can be caused to reappear in the new individuals; however, outward characteristics as well as inner qualities can also, through various coinciding causes, be repressed through several generations only to reappear later in new combinations in some members of the family.

Therefore: in the animal and plant kingdoms a slow approach to the primary prototypes is taking place under the upgrading and ordering influence of the Light, an approach to those prototypes that God, at the creation of the Earth, gave for the animal and plant life He intended to call forth. However, in humanity a slow departure from the primary prototype is taking place under the ordering and beautifying influence of the Light and of the Youngest, a departure from the primary prototypes given by the Eldest at the creation of mankind.

Under the influence of Darkness, a combination of circumstances during the development of new individuals can cause throwbacks (both astral and physical) to the original prototypes. Incursions of Darkness can likewise be so powerful as to cause deviations from these prototypes and thus produce malformed offspring. If the incursions go so deep as to impair the basis of the prototype, both astral and physical deviations, malformations and deficiencies can be inherited by the offspring. But should the human body for some reason become deformed or deficient during life on Earth, for example through amputations, surgical removal of organs, deformities caused by burns and the like, then the prototype is not altered. Only when Darkness intervenes directly and transmutes the prototype does the changed characteristic become heritable.

Because of the fixation by the corona of Light of the astral and molecular Darkness, all earthly life, all organic and inorganic substances arose as dualities, so that the forms that owed their existence only to the molecular vibrations of the fixated material Darkness—vibrations of larger particles—assumed an apparently solid consistency in the earthly world, but appeared misty and unreal when seen from the transcendental side; whereas the counterparts formed from the fixated astral Darkness—faster vibrations of smaller particles—in combination with the reduced and muted vibrations of the polluted corona of Light assumed solid⁶  and visible forms⁶ and figures⁶  when seen from the transcendental side, but remained invisible to the human eye when they subsequently entered the earthly world.

Thus: the Earth’s ethereal corona of Light fixated the Darkness that had merged with the core of the Earth; the faster and the slower vibrations of Darkness were thereby linked, so that the molecular products of Darkness were strengthened through the somewhat higher vibrations, smaller particles and greater cohesive and adhesive properties of the astral Darkness. The possibility was thereby created for the Light to gradually acquire a more regulating and balancing influence on the molecular products of Darkness on Earth, since the capacity of the molecules for stabilizing one another under their rotary wave-motions, as well as their capacity for mutual adhesion—as for example, in the structuring of cells—was significantly strengthened through the fixation and reinforcement by the corona of Light of the stabilizing, cohesive and adhesive properties of the particles of astral Darkness. Where a pathological state—infection by micro-organisms, or other abnormal conditions—might threaten to dissolve the bond between the molecular products of Darkness and their astral counterparts, the possibility was also created for the Light, through its strong vital force and stabilizing, cohesive and adhesive power, to counteract or arrest the incipient dissolution. And in cases where the cause of such a beginning separation could be removed or eliminated, the greater stabilizing, cohesive and adhesive capacity of the Light would be able once more to bind the loosened connection between the molecular products of Darkness and their astral counterparts, whereby the complete separation that would otherwise result in death and disintegration would be prevented, so that, for example, the life span of earthly forms of animals and plants could be prolonged through the re-establishment by the Light of the bond with their astral counterparts.

In His omniscience, God had foreseen this and so had laid a world of Light around the Earth—the realm later ravaged by Darkness—formed from the rapid, ethereal vibrations of the Light, and has endowed the ethereal-astral corona of the globe with a strength of Light far greater than possessed by the other suns and the stars and planets. The Earth’s corona of Light thereby became so concentrated that it was transformed from the ethereal-astral into the ethereal, and thus became capable of fixating the in-flowing Darkness. Should any of God’s children succumb to Darkness, the possibility was thus created of restoring all things to their proper order over time through a steadily increasing influence by God and by the Light, even though this re-conquest from Darkness might take many eons to achieve, for there could, of course, be no question of exerting any force against the free will of the fallen children. 

The remaining astral Darkness that surrounded the globe and which had neither merged with the core nor been fixated by the corona of Light, partly absorbed the rays from the earthly sun’s ethereal-astral corona of Light so that the astral counterpart of the Earth, together with all counterparts of earthly life existing there, was left without illumination, without any appreciable difference between day and night. But the rays of the sun’s less luminous core, consisting of precipitated Darkness enclosed by the Light’s lower vibrations, were able to pass through astral Darkness almost without resistance and to illuminate the earthly world, though not able to illuminate the astral counterpart of the globe. (The slowest vibrations of the Light that enclose the sun’s core will in time become visible to the human eye.)

To help render the primordial state of the Earth’s astral counterpart more understandable to human thought, a comparison between astral conditions and an earthly scene might be useful. During a storm—a thunderstorm, say, which to humans is a visible manifestation of the powers of Darkness—the dark clouds will, depending on the severity of the storm, to a greater or a lesser extent block the rays of the sun normally visible to the human eye. Even though the sunlight has apparently vanished, the sun and its rays are still present behind the dense clouds. Similarly, the astral Darkness that enveloped the Earth held back the sun’s ethereal-astral radiations of Light, so that they reached neither the Earth nor its astral counterpart.

According to God’s plan, it was the ethereal-astral radiations of the earthly sun that should have illuminated and irradiated the Earth.

Neither the faintest luminous rays from the sun’s core of Darkness, nor the most luminous rays from the sun’s corona of Light will ever become visible to the eyes either of humans or of animals.

Since the Eldest had decided to create beings who could make themselves masters of the Earth, they had to attempt to produce a creature that without being an animal would nevertheless be modeled on both the astral and physical animal structure. To separate the molecular vibrations of the fixated Darkness and to create from these alone was impossible from the outset, because of the poor capacity for adhesion and cohesion of these molecules. Besides, the life-principle of molecular Darkness possessed not enough enduring vitality to form the sole basis for a regular and continued reproduction. Thus, it became necessary for the Eldest to utilize the life-principle of both the astral and the molecular Darkness which had been fixated by the corona of Light and which, by merging with the life-principle given by God in the corona of Light, had produced cells in all their various forms.

The difficulty in working with this “double material” delayed and greatly complicated the Eldest’s purpose, and since in the pursuit of their goal they constantly “overlooked” various minor details essential to the whole, they were forced to experiment at length with the design and assembly of cells into bone and organic tissue before they achieved a result satisfactory to them; a result that in a number of important and fundamental respects nonetheless turned out to be most unfortunate for human beings.

One of these many imperfections should be mentioned here, since it is especially important to humans, namely: the inability of the earthly physical body to regenerate and reconstruct adequately its inner organs, bones, and so forth.

The possibility that God would take upon himself any responsibility for so incomplete a creation as the human body—in every respect a poor imitation of God’s own creations is out of the question.

Even had God intended to improve upon the creatures of the Eldest by establishing laws for the regeneration of lost organs and missing limbs, this would still have fallen short, for the human body as it now appears from the hand of its creators lacks also in a number of other ways of especial importance for human beings.

Had God sought, however, to relieve these deficiencies and to establish laws for the perfection and reconstruction of the physical body, He would thereby also have accepted responsibility for His fallen children’s work of creation. But God would no more do this than an artist on Earth would accept responsibility for the botchery and bungling of a pupil or an imitator. God will therefore never change that which was once given by the Eldest. Instead, He tries, through the intelligence with which He has enriched humans, to mitigate some of the many shortcomings—for example, through medicine or surgery, or, where the medical arts do not suffice, humans have learned to resort to artificial aids.

Through the many incarnations, the human spirit builds its individual personality. Just as mature or aging individuals can remember and look back upon their thoughts and feelings and recall incidents and actions from early childhood, and yet as adults in every way be able to identify with the child maturing slowly over the days and years, so can the released spirit remember as far back in time⁷ as thought can reach and still identify completely with all the figures to whom it gave spiritual life. The gradual development of the “self” unfolds before the spirit as a stream of images, from the first feeble personal beings to whom it has been bound, to those who have developed, slowly, into higher, more conscious personalities.

However, the incarnations of the Youngest⁸ present a different picture. When the Youngest promised God to lead and teach the human beings, they were already highly developed personalities. When they look back upon their lifetimes as humans, it is more like actors and actresses in an earthly sense recalling the stage figures to whom they have given life over the years by their art and talent. Actors always prefer the roles that were closest to their own true personalities and were brought to life in the portrayal because of the distinctive character of the actors. Similarly, the Youngest, as they recollect previous lives, will also feel most attracted to and most closely identify with those human beings on whom they have left the purest and most noble spiritual imprint of their exalted individuality. And like the performers who on leaving the stage will cast off their masks and reveal their true selves, so will also the Youngest, when at death they leave the earthly scene and once more awaken to full consciousness, cast off the human mask and appear as the highly developed individualities they were before entering the earthly stage to take part in the great drama of the world.

Those Eldest who through their willful embodiment as human beings brought themselves under the Law of Retribution must all, through incarnation after incarnation, restore their personalities that were debased and distorted by Darkness. But in His compassion God extends the greatest possible help to these unfortunate beings by removing, as far as this is possible, the memory of all that they had experienced before the Earth came into being, so that to all appearances they are like human spirits.

Just as all released human spirits can look back upon their struggle out of Darkness and forward toward the Light, so can God follow His own struggle out of Darkness from eternity until the final victory was reached except it is for God not retrospection but experience in the present, for as He carries all time, finite as well as infinite, in His all-embracing Thought, the concept of time exists not for Him.

God gives the concepts of time and space for the use of all created beings. All are, to a lesser or greater degree, dependent upon these concepts. The higher the spirit rises, the more is it freed from these limiting concepts, without, however, ever attaining to full mastery over time and space. Even God’s Servants, since they have been emanated by God’s Will, are not entirely free of the concepts of time and space. Where God wishes to be, there He is, the instant the thought arises; but for God’s Servants some time must pass from the conception of the thought until it is carried out. It takes, for example, three seconds for God’s Servants to traverse the distance between God’s Kingdom and the Earth.

In all that has been created or brought to life on the Earth, there is found a faint reflection of God's own struggle forward. Each seed that has been put into the earth lies enclosed in the darkness of the soil until it inevitably sprouts forth into the light. The young of humans and mammals lie enclosed in the darkness of the maternal womb until the moment that they inevitably strive out into the light. The young of birds are enclosed in the darkness of the egg until they also inevitably struggle forth from the shell, and so forth. But the struggles of the seed, the child, the animal young and the young of birds from darkness into light, from becoming into being, these are unconscious, for it is the victorious power of the Light that calls them into existence. These unconscious struggles are thus no more than involuntary imitations of God’s conscious struggle.

In the struggle of humanity away from a primitive state, from the animal-like caricatures of their creators, to the state of development which has now been reached by average man, can also be seen a faint reflection and a likeness of God’s own struggle out of Darkness.

There is also found in the struggles of human beings away from a state of primitive, animal-like creatures—caricatures of their creators—to the state of development which has now been reached by average man, a reflection of and a similarity to God's own struggle out of the Darkness.

The unceasing struggle of earthly life away from Darkness and toward the Light is, first, due to the Earth’s ethereal corona of Light which, by its fixation of the Darkness separated at the fall of the Eldest, became able to influence the earthly-material products of Darkness, and which, by the strength that God had concentrated in its radiations, became able to draw the chaotic life and distorted life-forms of Darkness into a more orderly state. Life on Earth as humans experience it therefore became a ceaseless struggle from the possibility to the reality of life, an existence that because of the brief duration of the material products of Darkness is constantly subject to decline, withering, death and destruction; a struggle and a cycle that will continue as long as the conditions for life are found on the Earth.

Even though the sun’s role as the Earth’s physical source of light and heat should not be disregarded but always considered in connection with life on Earth, the solar rays could never have called forth the profusion of forms of life that exist on the Earth had the ethereal corona of Light, the Earth’s soul, or psyche that is, not existed. Nor would the solar rays have exercised any significant regulating influence on existing conditions, apart from the greater or lesser influence that is dependent on and arises from the various positions of the globe in relation to the sun, and from the distance of the various regions of the Earth from its equator.

Since the sun has been greatly affected by the many collisions with accumulations of Darkness that drifted and still drift about in space, the radiations from it that reach the Earth through the atmospheric layers are not of a uniform intensity, because the rays from the damaged areas of the sun are considerably weaker than the others. These differences influence the meteorological and climatic conditions on Earth.

The glacial or Ice Ages of the Earth were caused by the reduced strength of the sun’s radiance after collisions with drifting accumulations of Darkness; but because the radiance from the sun’s corona of Light and the surrounding Light-ether have eliminated large portions of the accumulations of Darkness that were depolarized by the collisions, more normal climatic conditions prevail once more on Earth now, many thousands of years later.

The corona of Light also acts as a condensing medium for the solar rays that reach the Earth. If the corona did not exist, the rays would be refracted during their passage through the Earth’s atmospheric layers and would seem to earthly eyes to be broken and scattered. As the corona now not only encloses the entire globe, but has in addition fixated the Darkness to whose astral and molecular vibrations the earthly bodies and the earthly forms owe their existence, all luminous bodies and sources of light each separately appear, like sunlight, with a unified monochromatic radiation of light. Gradually, as the exceedingly slow process of purging the corona of its Darkness takes place, the corona will increasingly be able to overcome the capacity for refraction and color-separation⁹ of the atmosphere, of water, glass and other materials. This slowly increasing resistance of the corona to all¹⁰ forms of refraction and scattering will in the future be of advantage to optical instruments in astronomy. Lenses will then be able to be significantly enlarged without color interference.

The Earth’s ethereal corona of Light is the vital energy of planetary life, a stabilizing, sustaining, regulating, unifying, stimulating and renewing energy that constantly radiates strength to the smallest things as well as to the largest—a power the Darkness can never destroy and which never diminishes, regardless of how much energy it emits.

Thus: Life on Earth is primarily dependent on the ethereal corona of Light that God in His providence created about the Earth so that, should any of His children succumb to Darkness, He would be able to redeem them and their possible creations from the power of Darkness.