The Earth
THE SPIRITUAL EARTH
- Chapter 41 -
God's work through spirits
There cannot be any matter in the actual sense, because, as an effect of its$ inner energy, it is merely an appearance. This effect takes place in a manner, nature, and form which lets you recognize that energies cannot be effective without intelligence. Wherever a particular form, manner, and attribute may be discovered in an object or a being, no one can deny the intelligence of the energy that works therein.
Human beings can prepare substances and manufacture tools or implements, but the material or matter which they require for it cannot be made by them. However, the spirits and angels can produce this, because they are endowed by Me with that power for that particular purpose.
We shall disclose, in several examples, how some individual intelligences work in one manner, how others work in a different manner, and how all is accomplished under the guidance of higher spirits. Observe a spider. In this animal you will find two intelligences combined. The first intelligence makes possible the recognition of the nourishment the spider requires, and how it uses this nourishment for a twofold purpose, namely as nutrition for its animal nature and for the preparation of the adhesive sap out of which it spins its web. The second intelligence is the peculiar art of the spider, that of weaving a web out of the thread and covering it with the sticky sap in order to catch insects as nourishment. From this behavior anyone can surmise that the spider must obviously possess inherent intelligence, which the scientists falsely label as "instinct," for instinct is something entirely different: it is an inner compulsion to set certain plans in motion in a particular manner.
What the scholars and scientists understand by instinct is, in reality, not the intelligence of the animal but rather that which effects guidance by the higher spirits. It is obviously two different matters: to be in possession of a certain skill and to accomplish a certain task with this skill. Being in possession of such an aptitude has no connection with the ability to carry out its implementation, because that requires additional intelligence. The compulsion to be active in accordance with such internal intelligence is not laid down as an instinct in the being itself.
The necessary guidance ensues on the part of higher spirits, as, for example, those which show the spider where and when it should begin to work with its particular skills. Were that not the case, a spider would either not spin at all, or it would spin continuously.
That is how the silk-worm produces its thread, for it gathers into itself those intelligences from its food and the free specificum in the air with which it attains its particular skill. It is further true that the inherent ability for such work, and the urge to accomplish it at the right place and at the right time, are essentially different.