[9] Therefore every one of you should seek to save his soul through its own power; for if it comes into judgment, will it be able to save itself then without the right means, if it cannot save itself here with so many means which are at its disposal, not thinking that it is an invaluable possession itself which, if it gets lost, cannot be bought or acquired again by any means?! [10] Therefore each one of you should seek to save his soul above all else! For I say to you all that on the other side it will be thus: Whoever has love, truth and thus the correct ordinance of God in himself, to him will immediately be given very much more; but whoever does not have that or has too little, from him even that little that he has will also be taken, so that he then will have nothing and will stand there naked, destitute and thus without help. Who will then take pity on him and pay the ransom for him?! Truly I say to you all: An hour here is worth more than a thousand years there! Write these words deep into your heart; but for the time being everyone should keep it for himself!” (GGJ Book 13, chap. 84) About the transition from the material to spiritual Brother A. wants to know how the transition from the material to the spiritual life or the so-called life in the beyond takes place, particularly with the worldly great. This transition can be quite easily and naturally described. You see, what difference does it make to the water, as to whether an important man or a poor, insignificant one falls into it? Listen, both will drown in the same manner! Or what distinction does the fire make? Listen, it will consume the emperor as well as the beggar! If a beggar and a minister or emperor were to fall from a tower at the same time, both the one and the other will come to his death through his sudden fall.
What distinction does the grave make between great and little, between rich and poor, beautiful and ugly or young and old? You see, none at all! Everything decays and becomes the filth of worms and, finally, insignificant dust. As the body fares in the realm of the so-called natural forces, the soul fares in the realm of the spirit. Whether it was a beggar or an emperor on earth, in the realm of spirits this is completely irrelevant. No one is given special treatment. In this way no one’s pride is nourished and the great man is no longer blinded by his greatness and the poor man – having suffered much hardship in the world – no longer by his claim on the Kingdom of Heaven, nor the pious by his expected reward of the Kingdom of Heaven. As often mentioned, in the beyond – mind you – in the beyond nothing but the purest love is of value. Everything else is like rocks thrown into the ocean, where the diamond sinks down into the eternal, stinking slime, just like the most common sandstone. In themselves they remain what they are and what they were outside of the ocean, but their fate is the same, only with the difference that the sandstone is dissolved sooner than the diamond. This applies in the beyond also to the worldly nobility or to the worldly lowliness. In the ocean slime of the inexorable eternity they will continue for a long time, fancying to be what they once were in the world. There the emperor will fancy to be emperor and the beggar, with the claim for compensation, a beggar. In spite of that, in the great Reality both will share the same fate in the ocean slime of eternity. Only the poor man should go through fermentation sooner, where his nature will be filled sooner with the true, innermost little bubbles of humility, which will then pull him out of the mire, carving him up to eternal light and life, than the emperor or some other great man of the world. You can precisely judge the transition of every human being according to this pattern or this cardinal rule. Therefore, adhere to love, lest you share the common fate one day. Amen, Amen, Amen. (Introduction to ‘Deathbead Scenes/ Beyond the threshold - Introduction) Appendix Reunion in the Great Beyond(31 May 1852) Many people, who otherwise have their head and heart in the right place, are, if they are somewhat weak in faith, bothered by the fateful question as to whether there is another life after this short earthly one, what sort of life and whether man will recognize himself as that which he was here? Furthermore, whether he will be left with earthly consciousness and the full remembrance of all his earthly conditions or whether his awareness as well as his remembrance are not rather like that in a dream, where the dreaming person recognizes himself as exactly the same as he was when living his conscious earthly life, clearly aware of his own subjectivity, only under completely new conditions; where all aspects of his objective earthly life, apart from a few impression which are deeply imprinted onto his consciousness – like the nearest relatives and often-seen, vividly discussed and loved localities, and even those almost always under other conditions and in other forms – lose almost all existence. And is there in the vast beyond among such spiritual conditions of life, which resemble a prophetic dream, a reunion among friends, who recognize each other? And I, the Lord, say and reply to this comprehensive question: Yes, in such and such a way! Depending on whether man has lived through his earthly probation life more or less perfectly in accordance with My order, revealed to all mankind. Whosoever has already here attained to the true and full rebirth of his spirit, which everyone can easily achieve, lives as one fully reborn in such a way that the spirit world with all its conditions and also in its effect exerted on the material world is fully visible, like the material world. The shedding of his physical body, which is anyway incapable of a living awareness and memory, cannot possibly effect any change in his thinking, volition, memory and in his living subjective and objective awareness. Since life and all its mutual effects have already here passed into the spirit, which is forever always in the highest and purest selfawareness and forever superior to all matter, which only manifests as a thought or an idea fixed for a certain time, I say: It should be quite obvious to anyone capable of clear thinking – particularly since he has access to a thousand proofs from the life of the somnambulists and of many seers and prophets – that the pure spirituallife in the beyond must be a much clearer life in ful awareness of itself and of all subjective and objective events, conditions and arrangements of life, in keeping with the superiority of spirit over all matter - which, as shown, is nothing but a fixed expression of its thoughts and ideas – and stands forever as itself light, life, energy and fullest awareness. However, since not only one, but all human beings living according to My order pass into the same most perfect life, the question about the ultimate reunion is idle, for, since people have already in this imperfect life as pupa the capability of mutual recognition and natural reunion, which they cannot possibly deny or doubt, they will all the more possess this capability in the most perfect, pure-spiritual life, where their whole nature is the imperishable expression and the basic principle of all life and of all its conditions and events! To be sure, in this world the soul recognizes through the body by way of its spirit the familiar and related people, can befriend others and form intimate bonds and is thus able to recognize them at any time as to form and character. If the soul and the spirit can do this through the thousand prison walls of the as such dead body, how much more will it be able to achieve this in its completely unfettered condition, as has only too often been observed with many somnambulists, who often with firmly closed eyes quickly and precisely recognized not only those surrounding them to the core, but also the people in distant lands about whom they were asked questions, and whom they quickly and reliably recognized! And yet the soul of an ever so advanced somnambulist is by far not in the free state of that of a still more imperfect soul after the shedding of its body! It is due to their evil volition that unperfected souls after their liberation from the body only too soon become more and more dark. Of course, such souls no longer see anything of the world, which is quite essential, for in a seeing condition they could inflict considerable damage on the world, and particularly on those whom they consider their enemies. Such souls and respective spirits then see only what develops from their fantasy, like a lowest dream world. In such a fantasy world such souls often remain for hundreds of years, oblivious of the continually arriving souls, although they were their relatives who recognize them at once. They see only their long-lasting fantasy world and are therefore only accessible for instruction to angels by way of correspondences, which the angels are capable of introducing into the fantasy world of such blind souls. If they accept instruction and thereby a betterment of their volition, their fantasy world disappears gradually, and they come more and more to the true light and are then able to see everything around them, as well as their relatives and friends. They soon recognize them as such and are very happy to be with them. If there is no betterment, they remain in their continually worsening dream world for an immensely long time. There is then no question of a happy reunion and recognition. Just as a physical human being in a very realistic dream is unable to remember his life in every detail, seeing only that which his imagination leads him to believe is true, just as little, and even less so, a dark soul in the beyond can remember or recognize anything within the sphere of its dream. For then it is never in an active, but always only in a passive state, from which it can extricate itself spontaneously only after an almost endless time, speaking in earthly terms. Unless a person is here at least by half reborn, he reaches in the beyond more or less the above mentioned state, about which he can do nothing by himself, just like an embryo in the womb, whose movements depend on the necessary external condition of the mother. However, it is still a totally different matter with such souls, and unlike the condition of an embryo in the womb. Plainly speaking, it consists in that the embryo in the womb, as a nascent creature, is throughout passive, whereas the dark soul is quite active spontaneously and at the same time suffering, unable to become inactive because it refuses to do so thereby trying to spare itself suffering. How is that? If a human being in this world has done very little or often nothing towards the reviving and development of that which is hidden in the heart of the soul; if it employs all its faculties for the external intellect, using it to acquire all sorts of worldly treasures and thereby offering the best luxuries and tastiest morsels and the most pleasurable sensations. When such a soul arrives in the beyond, its divine light chamber is tightly closed and inaccessible. But when the person dies the light of reason, which is really only a combination of the earthly material photographs, which are visible to the soul in the many millions of facets of the brain tablets and from which the soul always, in the way of the silly astrologers, makes its calculations and in its superstition feels coerced to act accordingly, stays in the world, like the picture gallery of an art lover. As a consequence, such a soul must arrive as totally dark in the spirit world, only with the awareness or the manifestation of life and only remembering its earthly conditions and circumstances inasmuch as they are recorded in the brain chambers of the soul (which correspond to the physical brain) in corresponding types, which the sensitive soul feels and becomes aware of, although it cannot clearly see them owing to its own darkness. It is easy to understand and feel that such a condition only too soon becomes unbearable for a soul conditioned to all the pleasurable sensations of life. Soon such a soul is assailed by great fear and anxiety and, finally, by a great anger and rage, whereby a kind of glow develops in it. For, wherever one sees a great activity in the material world, which is under judgment – such as the heavy gale, a strong ocean surf, a strong friction between two objects of a similar and dissimilar kind, a mighty pressure exerted by two hard objects on each other and so forth, he will, particularly at night, observe also the development of a fire or light, or at least of a glow. This is denoted by the scientists with the general, but not always appropriate, term electricity. It is actually and in full truth nothing but an incitement of the nature spirits more or less firmly imprisoned in all matter. These can be all the more easily incited, the harder their imprisonment. If they are imprisoned less severely, as for instance in the air, in the water, in clay and in other liquid and soft bodies, it requires a relatively more vigorous movement, so that the nature spirits, which cannot dodge it so quickly, can be incited and through their fast movement within their light and very transparent envelopment become visible as a light or a glow. Any keen observer can easily deduce and recognize from a thousand manifestations in nature that the incitement of the nature spirits consists in vibration. Whenever some human being or an animal is very upset in his nature, a trembling is noticeable in him which stems only from the incitement of the nature spirits imprisoned in the flesh and blood. A chord on a musical instrument vibrates when it is moved or struck because the spirits imprisoned in the matter of the chord are incited by the blow. The flame of every light is nothing but an act of liberation of the nature spirits imprisoned in matter and consists in increasingly more visible vibration, brought about by the activity of the nature spirits liberating themselves. There are thousands and thousands of manifestations where the same process can be observed. It has been said that the soul by losing its worldly light and all pleasures stemming from it passes first into a great fear and anxiety and, finally, into a great anger and rage, whereby a kind of glow is engendered in it. This glow develops in the nature of the soul in the same manner as in the world of nature. The first incitement of the innumerable spiritual soul specifics present in every soul is fear. As all specifics pass into an ever-increasing vibration, the space allotted to them in their form soon becomes inadequate. Since the outer form within which all the innumerable specifics are united to one life soon becomes too tight, for it cannot and must not be so readily enlarged, the natural consequence is an ever increasing pressure in all directions, engendering in the concrete or rather individual life a feeling of fear. If the urging and pushing increases and lasts for some time, a spiritual fermentation called anger develops. As already in nature the result of an increasing fermentation is a full inflammation, the end result of the great fermentation of the soul specifics is a full inflammation, and this is called rage. Such rage is then the cause of the glow which, if it increases, finally turns into a full conflagration, which as the worst manifestation of life is called rage and is actually called, and is, hell. Now if a departed soul thus begins to glow, it begins to dimly recognize the spiritual stigmata (imprints) present in its brain and soon realizes that there is much evil and little that is good in its nature. In this dusk it often confuses the gnat with an elephant and conversely the elephant with a gnat. Such contemplations then give rise to all sorts of airy and transparent, one might say formless, forms, like the castles in the air of a young man in love in the world, which with a vivid imagination not seldom suddenly materialize, only to again disappear into nothing with the next excitement. Since the soul is unable in this way to achieve anything of a lasting reality, being more incited and angered by the momentary fleeting pictures, which are more caricatures than well-ordered pictures, so that even its innermost begins to be affected, this inner nature develops an activity which is, however, of quite a different nature. Through this activity (of its primordial spirit out of God) the erratic activity of the soul is calmed down, so that in the end the soul enters as it were into a sleep state, thus reposing, and in this repose, more united with its primordial spirit out of Me, it enters into a dreamlike state where it remains, feeling quite comfortable in it, a condition which the ancient soul-and-life philosophers used to call the soul sleep. The primordial spirit, which is now active contrary to the soul’s desires, then creates more and more of such pictures, which on the one hand always contain what the selfish tyrannical and pleasure-seeking soul enjoys. But as soon as it tries to avidly grasp it in its dream, which it takes for reality of course, it either dissolves or flees. On the other hand, the soul is also given what is good for it, and if it seizes it and uses it for its true best, it lasts, and thus out of the dream a firm and permanent world (for the soul) begins to develop. The more the soul grasps what it is offered by its primordial spirit, the more it unites with the same and thus passes suddenly into its primordial spirit and together with the same merges with the primordial light and all truth out of it. And it soon fully recognizes itself and all its acquaintances and relatives and is then usually turned by them to Me personally, where then according to the degree of the perfection and unification with its spirit it is given more and more light and wisdom and the full capability to see into the natural worlds and be active beneficially. It requires no further proof that, in this case, a general reunion is quite a natural consequence of its spiritual perfection. But what happens later to those souls, whose selfish, pleasure-seeking mind cannot be rid of the illusory pictures and manifestations of their dream life in the beyond by the good apparitions? I ask, what happens to such a soul, who flies more and more into a rage, because it cannot reach and hold on to the objects conjured up? Is there in this case also a reunion? No, say I, there is no reunion! Such a soul’s own spirit will then become its most implacable judge. In the end it allows the soul to reach the pretended things and objects and find its own evil pleasure in them, but such pleasure always results in the greater and most burning pain to the soul and again turns it for a long time quite dark. The spirit then allows a thus darkened soul, who is in the greatest rage which glows through it, giving it an evil light by which to become aware of its own kind, really to meet such souls. This results at once in unions and banding together of those who talk about their anger to each other. In their dream life, which such souls mistake for reality, they fortify themselves against the enemies, with whom they have been confronted against their will and, glowing with revenge, they vow to kill themselves rather than putting up with the slightest divine order. In such a fortification, the material for which they take from their imagination – provided they are capable of any imagination in their glowing rage – they often remain for a very long time, thereby becoming again only angrier and more raging, break through their own fortification and begin to search for the enemy in hordes, because none of them tried to penetrate their fortification so that they might quench their revenge on him. But their search is in vain. They only come upon other hordes looking for the enemy and, ganging up with them soon, they go with all haste to look for the enemy without, of course, finding him. Once there are several thousand such miserable souls together which are seen in the spirit world by the pure spirits similarly to the glow in the air caused by the conflagration of some house burning on the earth – they choose as their leader the one who gives most, considering him to be the most courageous and wisest. 82 He then leads them over a terrain which usually corresponds to the imagination of such souls – either in the form of a dark sandy grassland or an immense plain where nothing is seen but dry moss. After wandering for a long time on such a terrain, suffering great hunger and thirst, they usually find nothing but another similar horde under a leader glowing with rage. And it then happens that in their great thirst for revenge, they either attack, mutilate or tear each other to pieces, or they unite under two leaders. This leads at once to friction, since each of the two leaders wants to be the first, resulting after a short while in a war between the two hordes. When in such wars, such most unhappy souls have torn one another almost into small pieces – of course only in their imagination – they again, as it were, calm down; and their spirit shows them, as in a clear dream, the futility of their foolish, blind endeavor and points out to them the better road, namely a change of heart. Occasionally, some follow this direction and convert. But in most cases they rave even more and fall back into their spiritless pure soul condition, which is then by far worse than the former. And such conditions are then already hell, from which it is difficult to escape. Whosoever does not take the narrow path through his own heart will not ever succeed and may remain for trillions of earth years in such a hell. Thus it has been shown how the life of the soul in the beyond develops in two main directions diametrically opposed to each other: either upward or downward. All this is not meant to comprise all the manifestations in the spirit world, but, as mentioned, only the two general main trends, thus the crassest for and against. Hallway between these two main conditions there are still an immense number of manifestations, which do not have to be discussed here, since they have been sufficiently demonstrated in the works “The Spiritual Sun”, “Earth and Moon” and in “Scenes of the Spirit World”, as well as scattered among other writings and revelations about nature. However, all the manifestations described there have as their basis the main rule shown here, and the main roads either upward or down are as such the same. The actual true reunion occurs only in the divine realm that is in heaven, which fills the space of the whole of infinity and is thus omnipresent, but which can be reached by every human being only through his heart. However, since there are many people in the world, who are so materially inclined as to know nothing at all of the spiritual arrangement of things, and who are here reading of “nature spirits” without understanding anything about them, a brief supplementary explanation is given as follows. The entire material as well as the purely spiritual creation is nothing but an idea fixated by the almighty will of the Deity and, coming from the heart or the life of the Deity Itself and – because out of God – in actual fact spiritual. Now, if the entire so-called material creation were no longer fixated, which would be easily possible to God, it would again take root spiritually in the heart of God, as a great idea only visible to the Deity, and the independence of countless beings would come to an end! But God wants forever His great thoughts and ideas to be realized in the freest independence everlastingly. And this is why God has taken thisalone effective way, thereby ensuring the immutable fixation of all the divine thoughts and ideas. The countless thoughts and ideas must be rendered successively freer and freer as it were in the minutest spiritual particles, at the same time being attracted and fixated for a long time by some principal idea of God, floating as a visible world globe in the endless space of thoughts and ideas. The homogeneous particles then unite more and more and pass into an ever-greater being up to man. Such particles more and more released from the total principal idea (the world globe), as well as the not yet released particles, which are still fixated in the principal idea, up to man are called “nature spirits”. These freer nature spirits – or natural forces as the worldly scientists call them – are present in an actively independent form either in the air, in the water or in the more pliable soil. There they coax the still firmly imprisoned spirits into freedom, uniting with them. Clothing themselves with the more unfree spirits, they create all sorts of life forms; at first plants, from these animalcules and animals of a larger and largest kind. This continues up to man, where they, as soul and also, according to the more unfree, still coarse part, as his body, sufficiently mature for a fully free independence, are then seized by God’s primordial Being itself and are literally – initially still as from without – educated and trained for the subsequent pure-spiritual, everlasting condition. Those who submit to such an education and voluntarily accept the order in which alone their forever independent, freest life is possible, achieve the great reunion with Him, from Whom they have gone forth. They will realize how and from where and through Whose might and wisdom and immutable determination they have passed from actual non-existence to the fullest, freest and independent existence and cognition. At the same time, being of one and the same nature as their first Cause, they will spontaneously, out of their now inherent wisdom, which is equal to the divine wisdom, effect new creations and thus, fully within My order, be the creators of their own heavens, whereby they will achieve the actual reunion with all their thoughts and ideas. All this will then be a great, everlasting, actual reunion in the endless fullness of all that a divine spirit contains in its eternal abundance. And only this is then the perfect, great reunion! I reckon, whosoever has eyes to see and ears to hear, will derive indescribably much from it to his own eternal advantage for the full recognition of the spiritual life. But he who will only read it out of a kind of curiosity, applying the file of his worldly intellect to it, will fare as it can be read in this description. For My mercy can and must never reach beyond the boundaries of My immutable order shown from its foundation. And this order as such is already My eternal mercy. Whosoever transgresses the boundaries of this order will only have himself to blame for an extremely long, distressful condition in the beyond. For every one must do his part, if he wants to be what he is meant to be. Whosoever does not want to go to this trouble, must remain in the eternally necessary judgment until such time when he will begin to change himself, and this will be a hard battle for the soul! Therefore, let every one of you beware of (selfish striving for) worldly possessions, wealth, splendor and status, but be with all his might charitable towards his poorer brothers and sisters, and his battle with the darkness will be an easy one. Amen. This, the Lord of all life is telling you. Amen. Amen. Amen. (Deathbed Scenes/ Beyond the threshold)) A message from the Beyond (18 February 1861) A man in the beyond, who during his lifetime knew Lorber, was allowed to turn directly to Jakob Lorber and report to him of his transition to the world beyond and his first sojourn in the sphere of the spiritual earth, which surrounds our natural earth, for the first time on February 18, 1861. B: “Greetings, dear friend! In my somewhat unpleasant loneliness have been thinking of you and of all the other friends and often remembered those hours when we discussed spiritual matters forour consolation. However, the Lord’s almighty will called me away from the world – and I arrived here under rather unpleasant circumstances, which were only due to my own fault. I wanted to make amends for all the errors committed in my earthly life and tried hard – but in vain. And this is why – to speak in an earthly way – I could not take the time to appear to one of you, although I knew that I could have appeared to you or to someone else, had I wanted to do so. But now I am freer, thanks to the Lord, and finally I have begun to realize that all my efforts and work attempted according to the earthly rule was nothing else but a veritable effort and work in a dream, and so I desisted from it. You see, for me, the dying of the body was only a sweet going to sleep of a laborer tired from work, and I found myself at once as in a lucid dream in a pleasant region and at once met several good old friends, mostly from Trieste, who met me in a very friendly and decent manner and talked to me, but mostly on unimportant topics. I had no idea that this was a dream; during my time on earth I often perceived it in a dream as a kind of foreknowledge. My attention was attracted only by one of my friends from Trieste; I realized at once that he had died on the same day as my wife of the cholera. I had often discussed spiritual matters with him while we drank a glass of Triestine on his lovely country property, and I asked him how he had come here? I said: “Friend, I know only too well that you died on the same day of the evil epidemic as my D. and were buried watched by my weeping eyes – and now you are alive just as I am – and I hope it is not a dream?” And the good old friend gave me a very serious but friendly look and said: “Friend – let us be glad from the bottom of the heart that we have overcome and left the world with all its evils behind. You see, you have departed this miserable life for all eternities and your decrepit mortal shell will return to the soil tomorrow, for which I am truly not sorry.” When I heard this, I became a little scared and I said: “Well then, in the name of God, if it should really be so! But my children, and my possessions – I have still not arranged all my matters satisfactorily!” Said the friend: “ever mind about that, those left behind for a short while will attend to it.” To this I agreed at once, and as by some magic I suddenly found myself in my friend’s inn looking in delight at the sea with all its wonders, so that I said: “Friend, surely all this is pure nature, and we are supposed to be mere spirits?” And then he said to me “Friend, when we still dwelt in our bad flesh, we also perceived as living souls the actual nature, not our dead body. If that was the case when the body’s burden and dark denseness was a great obstacle, why not now, in the most unfettered state of life?” I agreed to this and began to feel that I had shed my body, however, not how and in what manner. But I began to worry about how to find my wife and reestablish my bookshop – and this caused me much pain and sorrow. But thank God also this is now behind me and I have begun to occupy myself exclusively with higher things; I will now visit you a few more times and will tell you many a thing of my present adventures and experiences for the benefit of the faithful on your earth. For the moment, farewell in the Lord God.” (25 February 1861) B: “Good morning, good morning – dear friends! My most sincere greetings also to all the other friends! There is no need for me to ask how they are, for here one knows quite well how one or the other of our dear friends is faring on the old earth since we can perceive this in every detail from the outer life-sphere of the person concerned, if we want to. Still, it gives me great pleasure to become aware on the spiritual and thus better earth that every one – with the exception of a few – makes progress in the light of the Lord from the heavens. For those whom the Lord loves, He always visits with all sorts of little crosses. With the aid of these crosses the Spirit of the Lord unites with the, as such, always miserable soul. For without a prop it is a very miserable being. And this is why most souls rely on their decayed and decrepit flesh, having to accept all the sufferings, because they have no inkling of nor do they recognize the most firm and eternal prop of the Spirit out of God! And for this very reason these particular little medal crosses from the Lord’s hand are so good and beneficial for the true and eternal welfare of the soul, for thereby it is coerced to let go of its fleshly desires and with its faith turn to the spirit. Once a soul has begun to turn around, it is provided with all sorts of little crosses by the Lord until such time when it has begun to completely unite with its spirit. When this is the case and there is no longer any danger of a soul’s returning comfortably to its flesh, there is an end to all the little crosses and the whole human being can pass into a true bliss already on this earth. I myself did not realize it by far in my earthly life, as I now realize it in my totally pain free and really true life. And this is the reason why I was always wavering between the brittle and transient prop of the soul-life and that of the eternally permanent, true and immensely strong one of the spirit, where I was constantly given some suffering to bear. However, the Lord decreed it so in His love, and only now do I more and more feel the great benefit of all the tribulations borne by me, which often tasted rather bitter. For, where and what were I now without them? Oh, dear friend, I, who now have the opportunity to observe and recognize the misery and great distress of certain worldly souls, cannot ever thank the Lord enough for sending me always such guardians and watchdogs, who prevented me from turning into a complete worldly person. Therefore, bear everything in gratitude and patience out of love for the Lord, for the true California of life you will only find here forever. For every faithful laborer in the Lord’s great vineyard of life will here find his most splendid reward for eternity! We know from the Lord’s own mouth that His true followers on earth are crucified in Him, i.e., as it were together with Him, thus to be resurrected with Him to eternal life. My very dear friend, I well know that you are aware of this, but I mention it to you and the other dear friends for the simple reason that the word of one who speaks from experience surely carries more weight than the word of a prophet, who is still a dweller in the flesh. You probably want to learn from me many a thing concerning the conditions of life in the spirit world, and I am glad to tell you as far as it is possible for me in my present state. You see, I am still on this earth, i.e., mostly in the coastal area around Trieste. I have also been several times here in Graz and I can see the earth much better than a human being who still walks in his flesh. I also see the people still living here and am able to make contact with them. For my words become in them like unexpected and suddenly arising thoughts; and their own thoughts arising are my concrete answer. However, the earth, which I here see clearly, is not the material earth proper, but only as it were the spiritual one, without which the material one cannot exist. For everything material is actually nothing but the Spiritual under judgment or imprisoned. But it is rather strange that in our case the “spiritual earth” as it were arises out of the soul through the all-enlivening and allcreating might of its spirit out of God, like a completely mature tree which arises from the spirit of the seed and vessel in the unpretentious grain of seed, only it is more ready-made than with the development of the tree out of the grain of seed. Of course, you would now think and say: Well, if so, there are in the spirit realm as many spiritual earths as there are spirits. But this is by no means the case; miraculously, every spirit brings “his” spiritual earth along into the beyond. However, as soon as it arises out of him, it unites with the spiritual earth of all spirits, and so there is only one spiritual earth, in everything completely identical to the material one; but it is far more sublime, distinct and perfect for the physical eye, which is unable to perceive the great wonders in the structure of the atoms. For this reason the “spiritual earth” presents to us a totally different aspect than the material world does to you. Our roaming about is, of course, also different from yours, for we have nothing to do with the material time and its dimensions. How it is achieved with us, I shall show you in detail in an easily comprehensible manner next time. And so farewell in the lord.” (4 March 1861) B: “Good morning, and greetings in the name of the Lord! Spring is beginning again on this earth and it will be a rather good one. We can notice it from the special activity of the nature spirits, who are beginning to wheel about in colorful profusion. It is truly strange in how many forms of the greatest diversity they suddenly develop, as if by magic, in the air of our ether, organize themselves and at once become active. The mixed forms and groupings in their greatest diversity present a new form, as a new whole. One can now see the new form, but at the same time also its structure with its wondrous connections, which by far surpasses anything that can be seen and discovered on earth, even through the most perfect microscopes. For, what can be seen with the physical eyes are already well-defined forms, at least in the tenth potency on the gamut of the progressive combining of forms and beings. It is already as it were an enveloped Spiritual, a pupa which then manifests correspondingly in the material world. But what an immense number of the strangest preliminary forms and groupings precede such a pupation in the spiritual-natural world! This activity on the part of the special nature spirits prior to their pupation is actually the most extraordinary thing we spirits can observe here, provided we have our hearts in the matter. But things happen here mostly as among the people on the material earth: unless the one passing over brings along aspirations for higher things, he still has the same inclinations as he used to have on earth. The man of gold and money remains also here an agent and speculator, and so the merchant, the tradesman, the farmer and so forth – every one in his own peculiar way, and the saying holds good: Many are called, but few are chosen. As for me, I remember how in the first time after my arrival here I began to be again concerned with worldly things. It is only due to the influence of good friends, who have much experience here, that I abandoned these ideas and early enough recognized the actual, true purpose of my being here and that I now find myself on a higher level of purer cognition and vision. Oh, here it is even more difficult to extricate oneself from the spurious matter than on the real material world, and atheism is here a thousand times more prevalent than in the material world – and according to my experience so far, he who is stuck in it, can, in my opinion, be hardly or not at all freed. Having tried to discuss, as one would say, transcendental matters, the immediate answer was: “Shall we also perhaps here make the fools for the priests and rulers? Let us be glad that we are at last in a world where every one is a free master of his space!” Only recently I asked one of them whether the thought did not sometimes cross his mind that the great teacher of Nazareth might after all be the Lord and Creator of the entire visible and invisible world. Well, I was soon quiet; he started to become coarse and violent and passed remarks concerning the Lord which I dare not repeat here. Nothing can be done with such spirits, and the best thing is to go out of their way as far as possible. I have seen the Lord several times, but only from a certain distance, and felt a great longing to speak to Him, but it did not come to pass as yet. My friend told me that soon He will come again; perhaps it will happen then?!” (The Deathbed Scenes/ Beyond the Threshold) ’’Eternal punishment’’ and ‘‘Eternal damnation’’ Do they exist? In ‘Heaven and Hell’, the departed spirit of a king asks the Lord to clarify the notion of ‘everlasting punishment and gets the following answer: 6. I lack only one more thing- enlightenment on the almost universal Christian Sects’ concept of so-called everlasting punishment, is there such? If one receives an eternal reward for an honest and righteous life-style upon Earth, then one can conceive of an eternal punishment. I find it logical that here in the kingdom of spirits there is an everlasting condition of judgment for a brief evil deed - if there is also an eternal reward for a similarly brief noble deed. 7. Say I: “You think so but not I, because I could have kept only one purpose in mind for everything created, and not possibly anything else. Being life eternal Myself, how could I have created beings for eternal death! Hence a so-called punishment can only be a means for attaining to the major purpose and never for a hostile, as it were counter-purpose; whence there can be no talk of an everlasting punishment.” 8. Says Joseph: “Lord, eternal thanks, love and honour to You; now I fully grasp this! Yet there is, in Holy Scripture, clearly written about a fire that never goes out, and of a worm that never dies! It is also written: ‘Depart from Me, ye accursed, to the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his servants!’ Indeed, Lord, I am aware of many passages where hell is most vividly mentioned. If however there is no eternal punishment and it is even up to the prisoner himself how long he stays there- then I altogether fail to see how there can be talk of eternal fire in Scripture!” 9. Say I: “Dearest friend, there is indeed mention of an eternal death, which is an everlastingly solid judgment that proceeds from My eternal order. This however is the so-called wrath or rather zeal-fire of My will which has of course to remain unalterable for eternity, or there would be a full end to all creation. 10. Whoever allows himself to be enraptured by the world and its matter (which, surely, has to remain under judgement, or it would not be ‘world’) is of course lost and is to be regarded as dead for as long as he can’t separate himself from it. . 11. Are not prison and imprisonment two separate things? The prison certainly stays forever, and the fire of My zeal must never go out; but the prisoners remain in prison only until they have reformed and bettered themselves. 12. There is, by the way, in Scripture nowhere the slightest mention of complete rejection of a spirit, but only eternal damnation of non-order – in view of My eternal order, which is essential, or nothing could endure. Vice, as counter-order, is indeed everlastingly condemned, but the sinner only for as long as he remains within sin! Just so there is of a truth also an eternal hell, but no spirit who would be everlastingly condemned to hell but only until his betterment! – I did indeed say to the Pharisees: ‘For that you shall receive that much longer damnation! ’, but never ‘for that you shall be condemned everlastingly! ’ Do you now understand your seemingly threatening Scriptural passages?” (From Hell to Heaven vol. 2, chap. 226) Further on, in the same book, the Lord explains how the unbridgeable abyss between heaven and hell (apparent in the story of poor Lazarus and the rich man) should be understood relative to the divine order, and how escaping hell, although difficult, is still possible: 1. Says Joseph: “Oh Lord, this I have once again understood completely, but there is another small item in Scripture I don’t fully understand, and that is the unbridgeable abyss in the parable of the rich glutton, whom You have placed in hell before the eyes of the world. If there is an unbridgeable gap between those who find themselves in Abraham’s lap in heaven and those of a terrible fate in hell, then how shall redemption from hell be possible? And other Scriptural passages also testify that salvation from hell shall hardly ever be possible for sinners against the Holy Spirit, with either very little or no forgiveness, and that out of Your very own mouth, oh Lord! What therefore is to be made of all this?” 2. Say I: “That which worldly lawyers say: ‘he who desires something can suffer no injustice! ‘ The unbridgeable abyss however consists in the unbridgeable difference between My freest order in the heavens and the infernal disorder opposing same in every aspect. Hence this text denotes only its irreconcilability and not the door-lock on someone found within same. 3. But it stands to reason that he who himself becomes fully hell through his voluntary abandonment of My freest order for the necessarily judged anti-order will not get out of hell too soon. It is known only too well how hard it is for a wickedly proud and all-domineering arrogance to attain to the gentleness and humility of heaven. It is not an impossibility, but a great difficulty. You shall in future have many an occasion of finding out how hard it is to completely lift someone out of hell. The proud always relapses to arrogance, the unchaste to unchastity, the lazy to lethargy, the jealous to jealousy and envy, the miser to meanness, the liar to the lie, the robber to robbery, the murderer to murder, the callous to recklessness. Even where their natures are rebuked a thousand times they keep reverting back to the same vices as soon as given the full freedom necessary for eternally free life. And the more they suffer a relapse the feebler they become and the harder it is for them to rise above their wicked sins in order to go over to My divine freedom as purified spirits. 4. But keep in mind that much of what is impossible to human spirits is still quite possible to Me, because all things are possible to Me!” (From Hell to Heaven vol. 2, chap. 227) – see also above quoted Mat 19:26 and Lamentations 3:22 (see more about that in the brochure – A STUDY CONCERNING UNIVERSAL SALVATION IN THE BIBLE AND IN THE NEW REVELATION )
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