with religious principles that forbade idols pictured the sun and moon,
the stars, and various things on earth as images of God. Those who
believed themselves to be wiser than most but who remained earthly were
led by the immensity and omnipresence God displayed in creating the
world to acknowledge nature as God, in some cases in its innermost, in
others in its outermost aspects. And some who wished to see God as sep-
arate from nature thought up some thing that was as all-encompassing as
possible and that they called the Entity of All; but because they know
nothing more of God than this, this “Entity of All” turns out to be an
entity of their minds alone, utterly without any real meaning.
[ 3 ] As anyone can see, concepts of God are mirrors of God, and peo-
ple who know nothing about God do not see God in a mirror facing
their eyes, but in a mirror that is facing the wrong way, the back of which
is covered with quicksilver or some black, sticky substance that absorbs
rather than reflects the light.
Faith in God enters us on a pathway that comes down from above,
from the soul into the higher reaches of the intellect. Concepts of God
enter us on a pathway that comes up from below, because the intellect
takes them in from the revealed Word through our bodily senses. In mid-
intellect the different inflows come together. There an earthly faith,
which is mere belief, becomes a spiritual faith, which is actual acknowl-
edgment. The human intellect, then, is a kind of trading floor on which
exchanges occur.
5. On the basis of many phenomena in the world the human reason is 12
capable of perceiving and concluding, if it wants to, that God exists and that
there is one God.This truth can be corroborated by countless phenomena
in the visible world [around us], for the universe is like a stage on which
proofs are constantly being demonstrated that God exists and that there
is one God.
By way of illustration I will cite a memorable occurrencethat I experi-
enced in the spiritual world: Once when I was having a conversation
with angels, there were several people present who had recently arrived
from the physical world. When I saw them I wished them a happy arrival
and told them a number of things they would not otherwise have known
about the spiritual world. After that I asked them what considered opin-
ions about God and nature they were bringing with them from the
world.
Their answer was this: “Nature produces everything that occurs in the
created universe. After creation, God endowed nature with this productive
§12 god the creator & creation 13