163: O YE TWO SEEKERS AFTER TRUTH! YOUR LETTER WAS ...

O ye two seekers after truth! Your letter was received and its contents
noted. As for the letters ye had previously sent, not all were received,
while some reached here at a time when the cruelty of the oppressors had
so intensified that it was not possible to send a reply. Now this present
letter is here, and we are able to answer it, and I have therefore set
about writing, in spite of much pressing business, so that ye will know
that ye are loved amongst us, and also accepted in the Kingdom of God.

Your questions, however, can be answered only briefly, since there is no
time for a detailed reply. The answer to the first question: the souls of
the children of the Kingdom, after their separation from the body, ascend
unto the realm of everlasting life. But if ye ask as to the place, know ye
that the world of existence is a single world, although its stations are
various and distinct. For example, the mineral life occupieth its own
plane, but a mineral entity is without any awareness at all of the
vegetable kingdom, and indeed, with its inner tongue denieth that there is
any such kingdom. In the same way, a vegetable entity knoweth nothing of
the animal world, remaining completely heedless and ignorant thereof, for
the stage of the animal is higher than that of the vegetable, and the
vegetable is veiled from the animal world and inwardly denieth the
existence of that world--all this while animal, vegetable and mineral dwell
together in the one world. In the same way the animal remaineth totally
unaware of that power of the human mind which graspeth universal ideas and
layeth bare the secrets of creation--so that a man who liveth in the east
can make plans and arrangements for the west; can unravel mysteries;
although located on the continent of Europe can discover America; although
sited on the earth can lay hold of the inner realities of the stars of
heaven. Of this power of discovery which belongeth to the human mind, this
power which can grasp abstract and universal ideas, the animal remaineth
totally ignorant, and indeed denieth its existence.

In the same way, the denizens of this earth are completely unaware of the
world of the Kingdom and deny the existence thereof. They ask, for
example: 'Where is the Kingdom? Where is the Lord of the Kingdom?' These
people are even as the mineral and the vegetable, who know nothing
whatever of the animal and the