12 The intelligence in nature comes from human beings.

Nature needs Light from Intelligences and in the human world of time gets it through human thinking and thoughts, which convey to it Light that reaches the human beings from their noetic atmospheres.

• The Light does not go directly into nature.
• The Light from the noetic atmosphere must first go into the mental atmosphere where it becomes diffused and mixes with desire, which comes into the mental atmosphere from the psychic atmosphere.
• The Light is not in the desire, but is bound to it in a thought.
• The thought is conceived or entertained in the heart and issued from the brain.
• In order that the Light of the Intelligence may go into nature, an act of the body is necessary to exteriorize the thought or part of it.
• Without an act of the body the Light from the mental atmosphere cannot go out into nature.

Nature therefore wants acts by human bodies, to get through them Light from Intelligences.

• To that end, nature with the swing of the breath and by an object of sense reaches through the system of one of the senses into the doer, and pulls on the desire, to get the human to perform a physical act.
• The Light of the Intelligence goes into nature with thinking and with thoughts, through the openings of the body.

Nature seeks Light, life, forms and desire, none of which it has.

• It seeks them as a dry soil seeks water, as fire seeks wood, as negative seeks positive.
• There is an urge of unfolding and growth by combination in all matter.
• Without Light and without desire nature must remain inert;
• with Light and desire nature units combine and advance by life through growth as forms and so become conscious in higher degrees.
• Nature gets the Light from human thoughts and the desire from the embodied portions of doers.
• Therefore nature pulls constantly on the doers in human bodies to get what will maintain it and advance it.
• Desire is the driving power within the form and structure of the animal and plant.
• Desire and the Light are in the organisms of nature as instinct, which guides in selecting food, in self-protection and in procreation.

Because nature depends upon doers in human bodies for all that it is in bodies and in forms, and for the instinct which guides the actions of the animal and vegetable organisms, and because of the elemental, universal urge for compounding, combining, growth and progress, nature pulls on doers in human bodies.

• It pulls on the physical plane, on the form plane, on the life plane and on the light plane.
• Its direct pull is, however, only from the physical plane.
• It pulls through seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling, and through physical contact.
• It does this through the four senses and by contacting the feeling-and-desire of the doer through the fourfold physical breath, the nerves, the three finer bodies and the breath-form.
• Each of the senses works a set of nerves, and all four sets run into and are part of the involuntary nervous system.
• In this system is the breath-form, connected with all parts of the body by means of the three inner bodies.
• The breath-form is to the physical atmosphere somewhat as the doer is to the psychic atmosphere.
• The form of the breath-form is passive; the breath, the active side, is the fourfold physical breath.
• The breath is not breathing; it is that which keeps the physical body going and makes contact between the four senses and the doer.
• Impressions of seeing, hearing, tasting, and contact by smell reach the doer by way of the corresponding physical body, the sense, the branch nerves of its system, the involuntary nervous system, the breath-form and that breath current of the fourfold physical breath which corresponds to the sense and the body.
• When physical contact causes feelings, impressions of contact reach the doer by way of the nerve touched, the sense of smell, the nerves of the digestive system, the solid body, the breath-form and the earth or digestive breath.
• The impressions brought in by seeing, hearing and tasting must go to and through the sense of smell to the breath-form and the earth breath to reach the doer, before they can be noticed as sights, sounds and tastes.
• The three senses and the three currents of the breath other than smell and the earth breath, are taken by the breath-form and the earth breath to the doer.
• These three senses and breaths touch the sense of smell, then the breath-form and the earth breath in the head, and pass by way of the involuntary nervous system to the solar plexus and thence to the end of the spinal cord, where the earth breath transfers the impression and causes the doer to see, hear and taste.
• Thus all sense impressions reach the doer by contact, by way of the sense of smell, the breath-form and the earth breath.
• But in seeing, hearing and tasting the contact is not immediate. In smelling and feeling by touch it is immediate.
• When a thing is seen the sense of sight performs a double function.
• First it goes out towards the particles of radiant matter which are thrown off by every object, and focusses them in the line of vision;
• then it transmits the picture they have made in the eye to the nerves of sight.
• The senses of hearing and tasting work on the same principle. So does the sense of smell. All this is instantaneous.

However, when the sense of smell transmits touch it works on a different principle.

• It does not focus matter into the line of smelling, but it lets an elemental get into the nerves that are touched.
• The elemental, when in the nerves, is a sensation to the doer, such as pleasure or pain.

Nature uses objects on the physical plane to reach the desire of the doer and the Light of the Intelligence.

• Nature can get reactions from the doer and with them what it needs, because a human body is a thing of nature, and is at the same time the instrument of the doer.
• The four senses, breaths and systems in the fourfold body are in contact with the three parts, breaths and atmospheres of the Triune Self, and on the other side with the four worlds of nature.

The seven facial and five other openings belong to nature, but are used by nature and by the doer. Nature uses them for reaching into the body, to connect with the breath-form; the doer uses them to connect with objects on the physical plane.

Nature begins her pull through one of her four senses and its system. So nature is connected with the doer, above and below, in a human body.

There are two nerve tracts or cords or tubes in the body, one for nature and the other for the doer, which in the perfect body were connected, (Fig. VI-D).

• In the human the nature-tract is the alimentary canal, from mouth to anus.
• The sense of smell has charge of this tract directly, but the three other senses are connected with it, act upon it and influence it.
• The other tract, the spinal cord and terminal filament, is at present for the doer of the Triune Self; it reaches from the first cervical vertebra to the tip of the terminal filament at the end of the spine;
• the doer does not use this tract as it might, but uses organs instead; these organs are the heart and the lungs, the kidneys and adrenals, and the male and female organs, which are go-betweens for the nature tract and the doer tract.

The sections of the body are in and connect with the four worlds; the head with the light, the thoracic cavity with the life, the abdominal cavity with the form, and the pelvic cavity with the physical world.

• However, the head is now used for the physical world and the pelvic cavity for the light world.
• That is so because the knower, the thinker, and the doer as a whole, have withdrawn from the body.
• The brain in the head has been usurped by the portion of the doer that is in the body and the pelvic organs are devoted to and controlled by the procreative functions in the body.
• The four systems are related to and run through the four sections.
• In this organization nature pulls on the doer for Light, with and through the fourfold breath.

The generative system is worked by the elemental functioning as the sense of sight.

• Through the generative system the sense of sight can act, indirectly, from the four planes of the physical world on nature, and on the three parts and the three atmospheres of the Triune Self, and so may get Light from the doer for nature.
• Some of the organs of the generative system, which connect with nature through the involuntary system, are: on the light plane the eyes and their nerves;
• on the life plane the heart and lungs and their nerves;
• on the form plane the kidneys and adrenals and their nerves;
• on the physical plane the generative organs and their nerves.

• The Triune Self may contact organs of the generative system through the voluntary nervous system;
• the pituitary body may be contacted by I-ness and the pineal body by selfness;
• the heart and cerebellum by rightness and the lungs and cerebrum by reason;
• the kidneys are used by feeling and the adrenals by desire.
• So the Triune Self may work the generative system through the cerebellum, the heart and the kidneys, and through three brains, the cerebrum, the lungs and the adrenals.

It does not do this at present, but through these organs the sense of sight now gets Light from the doer for nature.