In several books the 19th century mystic Jakob Lorber (1800-1864) describes the universe, especially in his writings "The natural sun", "Saturn" and the chapters about the 'natural earth' of his book "Earth and Moon". He declares that these writings give an overall picture of the natural, physical world. Because I wondered if his statements about the cosmos were in line with the insights and discoveries of modern astronomers, I carefully examined his books about this subject and compared them with the theories and knowledge of 21st century scientists. Here's a summary of the results.
The moon
G.H. Darwin, the son of Charles Darwin, was the first scientist who developed the theory that the moon separated from the earth by tidal waves, caused by the gravity of the sun and the spin of the primordial earth. The ejection of material that became the moon was due to an extremely fast spin of the earth. In that theory no collision of the earth with a Mars-sized planet took place, as is widely believed nowadays. G.H. Darwin published his theory in 1897.
Although I must admit that Lorber wrote about the separation of the moon from the earth's mantle at an earlier date than Darwin did, the theory of G.H.Darwin was not completely new for his time, as astronomers have long held that earth and moon were formed together.
Many astronomers thought of earth and moon as a kind of double planet. Others have stated that our moon was just an asteroid passing by that was caught by earth's gravity. However, most astronomers believed earth and moon had a common origin. The similarity of the material from earth's South Pole and the material found on the moon confirm that they were either created together, or that the moon was ejected from the earth in a period in which the earth mantle was more fluid than nowadays and was rotating very fast.
There are also statements of Lorber about the moon that can be falsified by science. How about the 'snow' on the backside of the moon, as is written by Lorber? If there’s really snow on our moon, there must be an atmosphere. However, from a scientific point of view there can be no atmosphere on our satellite. The reason is that the moon has too little mass to keep it, even if it's theoretically possible that it had one billions of years ago. The moon's mass is about 0.012 times that of the Earth (7.35 × 1022 kg). And when there's no atmosphere, there can be no considerable amount of water too. Under such conditions there can be no physical life. Furthermore it's impossible that a celestial body would have an atmosphere on one side and no atmosphere on the other, as is stated by Jakob Lorber in his book “Earth and Moon”. That would be against all laws of physics.
It's true that a limited amount of water ice on the south pole of the moon has been found. To be precise: this has not been found at the so-called ‘backside’ of the moon, but in craters that can be seen from earth. I've read in an astronomical magazine that these amounts of water ice are much smaller than astronomers first assumed.
Moreover, this water ice is not pure, but mixed with dust and all kinds of small particles. No living creature could use it in that form.This ice occurs in parts of south pole craters where the sun never shines. Astronomers believe that it originates from comets that made an impact on the moon.
That theory is not so strange. Impacts of comets regularly occur in the solar system. The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 came down on Jupiter between 16 and 22 July, 1994, after it had broken apart in 21 fragments. It is estimated that impacts of small comets on Jupiter occur once in about 500 years. Other planets and moons are hit as well, not only by comets but also by small asteroids that roam the inner and outer regions of our solar system. E.g.: the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, was caused by a giant impact of a comet or an asteroid near the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. About 250 million years ago 95% of all life forms on Earth were destroyed by an impact that was much stronger than the Yucatan disaster that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
Many astronomers thought of earth and moon as a kind of double planet. Others have stated that our moon was just an asteroid passing by that was caught by earth's gravity. However, most astronomers believed earth and moon had a common origin. The similarity of the material from earth's South Pole and the material found on the moon confirm that they were either created together, or that the moon was ejected from the earth in a period in which the earth mantle was more fluid than nowadays and was rotating very fast.
There are also statements of Lorber about the moon that can be falsified by science. How about the 'snow' on the backside of the moon, as is written by Lorber? If there’s really snow on our moon, there must be an atmosphere. However, from a scientific point of view there can be no atmosphere on our satellite. The reason is that the moon has too little mass to keep it, even if it's theoretically possible that it had one billions of years ago. The moon's mass is about 0.012 times that of the Earth (7.35 × 1022 kg). And when there's no atmosphere, there can be no considerable amount of water too. Under such conditions there can be no physical life. Furthermore it's impossible that a celestial body would have an atmosphere on one side and no atmosphere on the other, as is stated by Jakob Lorber in his book “Earth and Moon”. That would be against all laws of physics.
It's true that a limited amount of water ice on the south pole of the moon has been found. To be precise: this has not been found at the so-called ‘backside’ of the moon, but in craters that can be seen from earth. I've read in an astronomical magazine that these amounts of water ice are much smaller than astronomers first assumed.
Moreover, this water ice is not pure, but mixed with dust and all kinds of small particles. No living creature could use it in that form.This ice occurs in parts of south pole craters where the sun never shines. Astronomers believe that it originates from comets that made an impact on the moon.
That theory is not so strange. Impacts of comets regularly occur in the solar system. The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 came down on Jupiter between 16 and 22 July, 1994, after it had broken apart in 21 fragments. It is estimated that impacts of small comets on Jupiter occur once in about 500 years. Other planets and moons are hit as well, not only by comets but also by small asteroids that roam the inner and outer regions of our solar system. E.g.: the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago, was caused by a giant impact of a comet or an asteroid near the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. About 250 million years ago 95% of all life forms on Earth were destroyed by an impact that was much stronger than the Yucatan disaster that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
The surface of the moon is cratered because of all the impacts that took place in the last billions of years. Since comets contain lots of water ice, it's very plausible that the water that was detected on the lunar South Pole originally was part of one or more comets that went on a collision course with our moon. It's very unlikely that it was left behind from the period in which Earth and Moon were a kind of double planet or one celestial body.
In his book "Earth and Moon" there's a passage in which Lorber refers to observations of astronomers from Earth, who saw water vapour that came out of craters. Because there have been many amateur astronomers in the past who reported such events, some professional astronomers have investigated that matter. Their conclusion is, that 99% of all observations were wrong. There was only one observation that could not be explained, but there was too little evidence that it was caused by water vapour steaming out of a crater in daylight.
Let's assume – like many readers of the books of Jakob Lorber do - that the backside of the moon has an atmosphere. Do you know what would be the visible effects of that? In that case the shadows, that can be seen in daylight, are diffuse and a little bit hazy. But I've seen pictures of the backside with high-resolution cameras: all shadows are very, very sharp. There's no difference between the shadows on the backside of the moon and the shadows in an environment without any atmosphere, e.g. in space.
This is a satellite picture of the backside of the moon. If this side of the moon had an atmosphere, the shadows on this part would be hazy. As you can see the shadows there are sharp and cristal clear.
That brings me to the conclusion that there's no physical life on the moon, although Jakob Lorber (and Emanuel Swedenborg too) described the several life forms that would exist at the backside of the moon, beneath the surface. This is one of the statements in the Lorber books that may have a spiritual meaning. Nevertheless it doesn't reflect the physical reality.
The stars: Sirius and Regulus
There are other differences between the cosmology of Lorber and the insights and discoveries of modern Astronomy. How about the distance of the star Sirius? Its distance from the Earth was precisely measured by trigonometry and amounts 8.6 lightyears. According to Lorber its distance would be thousands of lightyears. Yet its distance can be measured very precisely by satellites like Hipparcos. The parallax method to measure the distance of nearby stars (up till 1000 light years or so) is very reliable and trustworthy. It was used by the ESA satellite Hipparcos. You can check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax. The scientific results of the Hipparcos mission can be found at this URL.
According to Jakob Lorber the star Regulus lies at the center of our whole universe and is an enormous star, billions of light years away. However, the Hipparcos satellite could precisely measure its distance from Earth: it’s 77,5 light years away from us. To make matters worse: Regulus is not a single star, but a multiple star system, consisting of four stars. The brightest of them has a mass of only 3,5 times that of our Sun; that’s much smaller than the tremendous mass and size this star would have according to Jakob Lorber.
Double stars and colliding galaxies
There are more strange passages in the Lorber works about the cosmos. In "the natural Sun" it is stated that only 1 out of 250 stars are ‘double’, i.e. that it has a companion (a smaller star that encircles the main star of the system). Yet it has been found out that more than 1 out of 2 stars are part of a double star. I could give a vast amount of other examples, that can point out that the image of the universe, that has been depicted in the Lorber books, is quite different from the image that contemporary astronomers have of the cosmos. E.g. there are many collisions between whole extragalactic systems - although they can not occur according to Lorber, because the universe would have been made so perfect and well, that all stars and planets have their own orbit and can not collide with other celestial bodies.
There are more strange passages in the Lorber works about the cosmos. In "the natural Sun" it is stated that only 1 out of 250 stars are ‘double’, i.e. that it has a companion (a smaller star that encircles the main star of the system). Yet it has been found out that more than 1 out of 2 stars are part of a double star. I could give a vast amount of other examples, that can point out that the image of the universe, that has been depicted in the Lorber books, is quite different from the image that contemporary astronomers have of the cosmos. E.g. there are many collisions between whole extragalactic systems - although they can not occur according to Lorber, because the universe would have been made so perfect and well, that all stars and planets have their own orbit and can not collide with other celestial bodies.
Colliding galaxies, as shown in this picture, are quite common. The universe is far more chaotic than Lorber thought.
Why does Lorber describe a universe that differs from the one we see?
I don’t know why a mystic like Jakob Lorber describes a universe that differs enormously from the shape and structure of the universe that is seen by modern astronomers. I guess he was a child of his own time and could not comprehend the complexity and variety in the cosmological structures we can observe with modern instruments. Moreover I have the impression that Lorber described an ideal typical form of the universe, i.e. a universe like it should be when all chaotical elements and forces are neglected. In such a universe collisions of whole star systems are unimaginable.
I don’t know why a mystic like Jakob Lorber describes a universe that differs enormously from the shape and structure of the universe that is seen by modern astronomers. I guess he was a child of his own time and could not comprehend the complexity and variety in the cosmological structures we can observe with modern instruments. Moreover I have the impression that Lorber described an ideal typical form of the universe, i.e. a universe like it should be when all chaotical elements and forces are neglected. In such a universe collisions of whole star systems are unimaginable.
Maybe his attempt to describe outer space failed in several aspects because he didn’t realise that it was not his task to give an overall picture of the whole cosmos, but only to reveal the life and words of Jesus, not altered and falsified by ecclesiastical writers and editors.
Jakob Lorber's explanation of the origins of the physical cosmos, however, is a valuable alternative for the illogical theory of the ‘Big Bang’. He states that the whole physical universe was formed after the fall of Lucifer and his angels; they rejected God and fell from heaven - the primordial spiritual world. The frequency of their spirits was lowered, untill they became part of the material world. Regulus – by Lorber called ‘Urka’ – is in that cosmology a tremendous star and the central point, from which all matter fled away in all directions.
Although the size and importance of Regulus seem to be extremely overestimated and his image of the universe contains many errors, his perception of the material universe as a school for the fallen angels that enables them to find their way home back to God, is still brilliant. Therefore it’s a pity that the trustworthiness of the core of the Lorber books – the Great Gospel of John – could in the long run be undermined by critics who reject Lorber’s revelations by pointing at the many faults and errors in his books about the cosmos. All Lorber readers should therefore realise that the true meaning of the Lorber writings consists of his works about the life and deeds of Jesus, and not of his books about the cosmos. Otherwise such a fundamentalist approach of his revelations could have a devastating effect on the reputation and proliferation of his books.
Hendrik 2012.
You deliver something to think about. What is it what you realy want say, what is it that you like to be understood? What else then living our believes and our misunderstandings of the things we read, could express better the essence of what is of undescrible value?
BeantwoordenVerwijderenHello Noorddromer, What I want to make clear is the fact that you can't believe the writings of mystics etc. at face value, even if they pretend they spread the message of God. Every written message is liable to errors, misinterpretations etc. I agree that it's much more important to live a believe than reading whole libraries with mystical and theological scriptures.
BeantwoordenVerwijderenBeste, ik stootte toevalig op deze post. Wat onbreekt in het hele verhaal is dat het bij clairvoyants en zeker mystics niet enkel om de fysische realiteit gaat. Als je bvb Rudolf Steiner's Outline of Esoteric Science, of Cosmic Memory, of enige van z'n lectures leest zal je beter begrijpen. De fysische werkelijkheid is slechts een deel van wat er is. Het is een beperkt venster van zichtbaarheid en ervaring beperkt tot de bandbreedte van onze gewone zintuigen. Dat wil niet zeggen dat dit alles is wat er is.
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