Chapter 12
O man, remember your Creator and praise Him. In this, you are graded by your God.
Those who do not see Him, are weak in spirit; those who see Him in all things, and hear His voice in the leaves, and in every herb, are strong in spirit.
These are the grades of the resurrection of the souls of men.
For what is the earth other than a foaling nest, and the possessions of the earth other than chains of bondage?
My heavens rest upon the earth; the place of the es’yan is in my keeping. And I have adjusted the places of the grades of my heavens, according to their inhabitants.
I people the heavens of the earth with the spirits of the dead; according to their grade in their corporeal lives, so do I arrange them.
To provide for their everlasting resurrection, and make them rejoice in their being. These are the labors of your God.
For the beasts of the field, and the birds and fowls of the air, and for many animals that are companions to man, I made a place in heaven where their spirits could survive for a season.
And this animal heaven I graded, one, in the order of my heavens.
For I saw that man on the earth had delight in them; and I provided for him in his es’yan period, so that he might rejoice in remembrance of finding his loves.
And I made the animal heaven rest on the face of the lands of the earth, the same as the place of the es’yan in grade one.
Remember, O man, your Creator gave to every animal a season on the earth; but He limited them to a time to become extinct. Even so, and of like duration I made a heavenly period for the spirits of animals companionable to man.
But for man I provided heavens above, where he shall rise as to place, even as he rises in goodness and knowledge.
Magnify your perception, O man, so you may comprehend the kingdoms of your God. Consider the example your Creator set before you in the design of the earth.
In large bodies, He placed the lands; in large bodies, He placed the oceans. Not in little hillocks of land and little puddles of water.
Even larger than these are the plateaus of the heavens of your God; these plateaus are divided into separate heavens by atmospherean oceans.
I do not fill the air of the firmament with angels scattered about; but I give them regions habitable and home-like. And I grade the regions as to how suitable they are to the resurrection of the spirits of the dead.
Consider the work of your Creator, and the knowledge and symbols He places before you. You hold up a lump of salt, and it is solid and has dimensions; but cast it into water and it is not seen, but dissolved and lost to your perception.
And you see the earth, which has dimensions also; but the ethe, you do not see. As water is the solvent to salt, so is ethe the solvent to corporeal things. The solid earth holds its form by slow velocity; yet, in ethe, external to the body of the earth, the swift velocity of corpor is magnified into dissolution. These things are accomplished by vortices in ethe.
In the atmosphere of the earth, behold, there is sufficient corpor to make many worlds like this habitable earth. And this corpor, which is in solution (and so, unseen by corporeal eyes), floats in the firmament of the earth, forming strata (plateaus) in continents wide as the earth, and deep as the earth; and there are thousands of them.
And yet, O man, these are only the atmospherean heavens. These are the dominions given into the keeping of your God. These are my kingdoms and my heavens for a season.
As you, O man of the earth, sail your ships abroad over the ocean, and coming to a new land, go ashore and settle your people on it, and it becomes a new kingdom, so likewise does your God accomplish in the heavens of the earth, in the plateaus of this vortex.
Remember the magnitude of your Creator’s works and the symbols He set before you: Where the clouds float high, it does not rain; where they drag on the face of the earth, it rains daily.
Consider the habitations of the resurrections of the dead, which are in the keeping of your God.
Even as to the square of the distance away from the earth, so are the grades of my resurrections.
According to the exaltation of man’s soul, so shall he inhabit the places I have made.
According to his own soul’s growth and development, so shall he ascend in my kingdoms, outward away from the earth; from grade to grade I adapted them.