Pages from the Book of Nature

Where did this spiritual ground come from?

From the earth you have just left. Examine it more closely, Herfronzo, and you will discover that it is attenuated or spiritualised matter. Being a spirit yourself, it is to you now as substantial as your earth was when you were in an earthly body. It is spiritualised earth to spiritualised man.

How can I account for water being here?

How do you account for its being on the earth? It came directly from your earth. It is attenuated and spiritualised to fit the spiritual man and the spiritual earth. 

Now, Voncelora, the grass, the flowers, the trees, the shrubbery, the mountains? 

They also came directly from your earth. Nothing propagates itself here in this spiritual world; there is growth and progression but no propagation. The material earths are the only places where propagation takes place. But all spiritual things have their root in the material. The grass, the flowers, the trees and the shrubbery come from earth. The spirits of all things that die on earth pass directly to that earth's spiritual spheres and take their places according to natural law. That is the true meaning of all death. Nothing decays, nothing dies here, nothing can be injured; all things grow more and more beautiful as the ages roll on.

How is it that I find animals here?

Were you not an animal when you were in the material body? Do not other animals have just as good a right to exist as you? Are my sheep not just as beautiful in their way as you are or as I am? Not so intelligent, perhaps, but just as necessary in the chain of existent things as either you or I.

How did this bread and fruit come into existence?

The spiritual fruit exists on spiritual vines and trees and can be plucked to feed the spiritual man the same as he can quaff the water but they are not diminished when you eat and drink.

How is it that the grapes are not diminished by plucking them and they bear no seed within them?

Spiritual fruit of any kind does not produce seed. Seed germs are left entirely in the earth-life. Your fruit on the earth is not diminished by its gathering. This spiritual fruit grows new each time you pluck it but as we have no years here and Eternity is all the time we have and there are no seasons, neither day nor night, our fruit forms necessarily immediately after the plucking.

The Discovered Country