When, accordingly, a person’s knowledge surrounds love on every side and is illuminated ever more brightly and warmed by the flame of love’s fire, to which it gives ever more nourishment, the person also becomes in equal measure more active and more capable of action in all things.
In such a state God then comes to the person again—naturally, as goes without saying, in spirit—and as eternal Love speaks to the person’s love in the heart: ‘Let the earth now sprout in all kinds of grass and herbs, that they seed themselves, and fruitful trees and shrubs of every kind, each bearing fruit according to its kind and having its own seed with it upon the earth.’
After such a commandment from God in the heart, the person then receives a firm will, strength and courage, and now puts his hand to the work.
And look! His proper knowledge rises like rain-pregnant clouds over the ordered sea, to pass over the dry earth, moistens and fertilizes it, and the earth then begins to grow green, bringing forth all kinds of grass and herbs with seed, and all kinds of fruit trees and shrubs with seed. That is, what the proper understanding, illuminated by heavenly wisdom, now recognizes as fully good and true, the love in the person’s heart then immediately wills and desires as well.
For just as the seed, when placed in the earth, soon sprouts and bears manifold fruit, so proper knowledge works when placed in the heart’s soil that rejoices in life.
But the seed works by awakening the life-force that otherwise slumbers in the earth, and this then at once gathers more and more around the seed grain and causes it to unfold and become a fruitful plant. In brief, proper knowledge becomes action only in the heart, and from action all kinds of works then arise; and these are what Moses in deep wisdom speaks of in his Genesis, namely in chapter 1, verses 11 and 12, already discussed word for word above.
The person’s earlier original evening, raised by light from the heavens to proper knowledge, thus becomes action, which works must follow; and this is the third day in the formation of the heart and of the whole person within the person, who is the spiritual person, the sole concern of everything, for whose sake Moses and all the other prophets have come from God into this world, as now I Myself have! I think this matter should now surely be clear enough to you!’
One of the Pharisees says: ‘Exalted, wisest Friend and Master! For my own part I subscribe to every word you have given us all, since they are entirely true and must be true; but go to Jerusalem and explain Genesis thus in the temple, and you will be stoned together with your entire following, unless you protect yourself through your most evident divine power. But if you confront the temple men with this power, then they too are under judgment, and there would probably be little difference if you at once had them most completely destroyed by lightning and fire from heaven!
‘As I said, this is in any case a most daring undertaking! Besides, such a truly wisest and most penetrating explanation of yours of the first three creation days described in Genesis works quite well, and one can find not a single word to contradict. But now comes the fourth day, on which, according to the description, God most evidently created the sun, moon and all the stars; how can you explain that differently?! Sun, moon and stars are there, after all, and no one knows any other origin of how all these great and small lights in the firmament came into being than what one reads in Genesis.
‘The question now is: where is the key, where the correspondence through which the fourth day could relate solely to the human being?!’
I say: ‘My friend, you have often heard and even experienced yourself that in fleshly sight there are farsighted and shortsighted people, and finally the half-blind, entirely blind and stone-blind. The farsighted see everything well at a distance, but poorly nearby. The shortsighted, conversely, see well nearby, but poorly at a distance. For the half-blind it is half night and half day, that is, they do still see objects quite well with one eye, but since the one eye is blind, it goes without saying that such seers can see everything only in half light. The entirely blind no longer see any object by day, and just as little by night; only by day do they still have a faint glimmer, so that they can distinguish day from night. But the stone-blind have no glimmer and can no longer distinguish day from night.
‘And look, as people differ so greatly in their fleshly sight, just so—and often far more—do they differ in their spiritual sight. You too have a severe defect of sight, and indeed one far stronger in your soul than in your fleshly sight. I tell you: you are extraordinarily shortsighted in your soul!’