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[Home]>[The Man-Made Church]>[22. Mind and Body]

This is the 22. Chapter of "The Man-Made Church."

22. Mind and Body

by Frank L. Preuss

We live in a body, we have a soul and we are a spirit.

We are spiritual beings. Our higher Self is spirit. We are not our soul. We have a soul. It is something we own; but we are not this soul. And so it is with the body. We are not this body. We have this body, so that we can live in it. The soul lives in the body und in the soul lives the spirit.

When we want to have a look at the mind then it becomes useful to look closer at what we really are. The mind is part of us and therefore we have to look at our parts.

In reality we are one complete being; but in order to discuss such an abstract thing as the mind we have to consider different aspects of our being.

So the main parts are the body, the soul and the spirit. Then there are subparts - like the mind - and to make it easier to follow the discussion of this we want to give these different parts abbreviations. Let us give the three main parts abbreviations of numerals, of numbers containing only one digit. So we will call the body 1, the soul 2 and the spirit 3. And the subparts we will give numbers containing 2 digits. So when we are dealing with a subpart then we know that it has 2 digits. And these abbreviations of the subparts will always start with the digit of the main part.

So let us first start to list the main parts:

1 body

2 soul

3 spirit.

In the form of a table the main parts could look like this:

We are tripartite beings and these three parts can again get divided in three subparts each.

Let us start in this chapter with the body and its three subparts. The first subpart is the physical body and we give it the abbreviation 11. The first digit 1 stands for the main part, the body, and the second digit, the second 1 stands for the first subpart, the physical body.

Now the second subpart of the body is that part of us who gives life to the physical body and we therefore call it the life body, 12.

And the third part of the body is the soul body, 13, it is that part of our body that contains the soul or that gives the soul a vehicle, a body for the soul to dwell in and also to travel in.

So these are the three subparts of the body and we again want to list them here,

11 physical body

12 life body

13 soul body.

And we also include them into our table and it then looks like this:

Now the life body and the soul body are physical bodies in a sense but they are not visible in the physical plane but they are visible in spiritual realms. They are physical like x-rays or television and radio waves or like sounds that a dog can hear but that are not sensed by men. They are like messages transmitted by a telephone over a wire or by a mobile phone over the air. They exist but we can't see them. They are not perceptible to our five senses. People who operate in the gifts of the spirit might be able to see them, especially when the gift of discerning of spirits is in operation - the seventh gift listed in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10.

When a person wants to perceive something like the radio waves, the television waves or the mobile phone waves he has to use certain gadgets to do so. He then takes a radio, a TV set or a mobile phone and switches it on and then he can, with his physical senses, perceive - hear or see - what these waves contain. So these devices are just extensions of our five senses.

But these waves are also all around us. They are there all the time, also when we don't use the machines that make them "sensible" to us. So we could also here say that these waves exist in the spiritual realm, because we can't see and hear them in a direct way through our senses. We see already that it is not so easy to see the difference between physical things and spiritual things, or that it can simply be a matter of definition.

We might define ghosts as spiritual things, but maybe tomorrow there are devices that make them visible, then we might call them physical, because now we understand how they operate and can make them visible - via a machine - to the senses.

These waves are all around us. They do not disturb each other. They exist quite happily without interfering with other forms of energy. And there are plenty of others. They exist in the same space as other waves, as the air, and also as other dimensions of being, and also as other spiritual realms.

This penetration of different things applies also to the penetration of the different parts of us - of the human being. So the different bodies interpenetrate each other.

To separate between the physical and spiritual is as we have seen arbitrary – left to one’s discretion. Everything is part of the One. Everything is energy. Everything has and is consciousness. A human being is part of God and therefore is God. To sum up we can say that man is spirit - the true self - a spark of God; and we have separated from him to gain this experience of separation in order to grow back to the One. Our longing is for this oneness. And in order to better understand this oneness we separated from it, we chose to have a physical experience. And this is one of the reasons why we decided to appear as physical beings in this physical world. The main reason of course is to create - to create as God creates.

We are here just considering the different parts of man. Some of these parts are eternal, some are temporary.

The life body and the soul body are separable from the physical body and from each other. The life body can't however go far away from the physical body, the soul body can. The silver cord is the connection between the life body and the soul body.

The Physical Body

I am not going to describe the physicality of the physical body here, because that is well known. I here want to have a look at the temple and show how the temple is the symbol of the physical human body. The key scripture here is 1 Corinthians 6:19, "What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which we have of God, and ye are not your own?" So whenever we read about the temple we know that we should read such passages by keeping in mind that it is symbolic of our body. The body is therefore important. We should look after our body and we should, for example, not put poison into it; poison like manufactured foods that contain all sorts of additives or eating food that was cooked in overused and abused oil. These are just examples and there are many ways of mistreating the body. But we must also set priorities. The spirit inside the body is more important than the body. It says, "the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" in 1 Corinthians 3:16. How important the spiritual side of ours is, becomes clearer when we consider that we will only become aware of how to treat our body properly when we become spiritual alive and slowly, but more and more, realize that the ways of the world are all leading to death, to death and suffering of the body as well, and when we start to put these ways of the world aside. So we have to see the body in the right light. When we emphasize the body too much then it may be a sign that there is too little emphasis on the soul, on the spiritual site of ours. When you read the Bible you will see that when the people put too much value on the temple then they might miss why the temple is and what it is for. When for example Jesus' disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple, Jesus said to them, "See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you. There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Matthew 24:1-2. The temple becomes a snare to the people when their inner life is not okay and they start to run in the wrong direction and don't recognize God when he comes, but persecute him and kill him.

In John 2:18-22 we find that Jesus himself compares his body to the temple:

Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said.

For Jesus his body was just a means for communication. With it he could directly communicate with people. He can also directly communicate with people today without having a body, but such people have to be attuned to him and people who are not in accord with him have to be brought into this position by us communicating with them and causing them to change and to become spiritual alive. So also our body’s main function is to communicate. Our body is the most sophisticated machine for the purpose of communication. It is its main function. To be led by the spirit is to be able to use the body in a way that absorbs communications that come to us. That is the purpose of being still, of meditating, and of asking and listening. To listen to spiritual messages but also to listen to our neighbour and hear his words, but also to hear his real spiritual needs.

The thoughts that I have and that I receive while I am keying in these words are independent of my body but I need my body, and especially my arms and my hands and my fingers to do the typing and to operate the keyboard and the computer. It is the same when I listen to my neighbour, then I need my ears, and when I have finished listening, then I need my mouth to speak some words of encouragement.

And after the meeting with my neighbour I might think about this encounter and I might pray for him and speak life into him. And such acts are the really important things we should do and they have little to do with the body. I can do them without my body; I can do them even when I am not alive anymore. So we see that the body is not that important; the soul and the spirit are important. The body is temporary, the soul is eternal.

So to look at the body can be a sign that we are not really looking at a person, just at his physical appearance. To look at a temple can be a sign that we are not really looking at what the temple is for.

Now this can go so far that the looking at the temple even becomes a means of avoiding to look at what the temple is for. And that is what Jesus meant when he brushed aside his disciples wish to look at the buildings of the temple and started to talk about spiritual things, about the destruction of the temple because God's people rejected that what is in the temple, the altar, the mind, and that what is on the altar, the atonement, the redemption, Jesus work for us, his death and resurrection.

It is this atonement that undoes the separation. And people try to defend themselves against this undoing. They do not like that this inner light appears, they prefer the darkness and their worldly life. They use defences against the atonement. They want to maintain the separation. And they do this by speaking about the temple and its buildings and its history and so on. And they also do so by speaking about the body and its different aspects and its past and so on. Being busy with the body is for them a defence mechanism to keep the atonement away, to stay separate - separate from God and separate from his children - their sisters and brothers.

Understanding these things will also bring understanding why man-made churches like to have and to build and to use church buildings. It keeps them busy with worldly things and creates a distance between them and the real important, spiritual things. And church buildings are just one part of this. There are plenty of other such things, physical things, like rituals, clergy, robes, church spires and bells, ceremonies, membership lists, offering plates, organisations like synods and bishop conferences.

When we want to get saved then it is useless to look at the body, we have to look at the mind. Atonement is not done in the physical realm - it is a matter of the spirit. The real thing is the mind around which the body is built. The real thing is the altar around which the temple is built.

So when we pay too much attention to the body, to the temple, than it is a sign that we fear the atonement, that we are afraid of the altar. We don't want to reach the altar.

Now the function of the atonement on the altar is restoration. It is the undoing of the separation. It is the restoration of the wholeness of the mind. Our mind is not whole when it receives only input from the five senses. When our mind receives only input from the physical world then the important input, the input from the spirit, is missing and therefore the mind is completely incomplete. And when we are incomplete then we operate in fear. And when we are complete then there is no need for fear because everything is there. We are complete. And when we are one then there is no other thing. Everything is just one thing. And therefore, because there is no other thing, we cannot be hurt. We are invulnerable.

Fear and vulnerability only exist in our mind. And they exist only in a mind that is not whole. It is the same with separation. Separation exists only in the mind, we can't really get separated from God, but we can believe that we are.

Finally even the last person will realize that there is no real separation. We can wander away from our creator as a toddler can wander away from the mother but that does not undo the fact that his mother stays his mother independently from what might happen to him. We were created by God and we are to create as he does, with the exception that we do not create ourselves. And we are ourselves spirit and this eternal spirit was created by God and will exist forever. The body is passing; it was not really created by God, rather by us. When you study the discussions of the early Christians you will get an idea of what I am talking about and why the anti-Christian world, the so-called "Christendom," which is actually the anti-Christendom, feared like hell these discussions, as they fear like hell the works of the Holy Spirit, and tried, and try, to suppress them and call them heresy. When you keep on reading you will find discussions of the different parts of man and will more and more see what is real and eternal and what is temporary and what will pass away and then you start to think why it is that you have heard and read so little about these things, especially in the teachings of the anti-Christianity and their literature and theology. It is these things that they try to keep away from themselves and from you and me. They want you to focus on the body, on the temple, and they want to maintain this unwillingness to reach the altar itself, to reach the mind and use it.

Just take a normal so-called Christian dictionary, a Bible Dictionary, and look up a couple of items and you will see that they explain many aspects like history, archaeology, language, parallel passages, references, authorship, origin, physical features, but the really spiritual meanings of these things they don't really explain and understand, on the contrary they might even belittle them.

Real creations are creations that exist in the spiritual realm and are eternal. Fear and vulnerability and separation are mis-creations; and the physical world, including our bodies, is rather a thing that we make ourselves. And when we have made them, then we perceive them and we believe that we are not responsible for what we have made.

When you see spiritually then you will notice defilement of the altar and you will want to clean the altar and get out of misery and unpleasantness. You will start to repair the altar and you will do this by using your mind. You will govern the mind from above and will stop to let the mind be misused from the side of the senses. You will re-establish the power of the mind and you will do this quickly because you can do very well without pain and suffering. The more you learn about these things the faster you will act and avoid misery. And we reach a situation where already unimportant feelings of discomfort will bring your mind into action. You will start to live in comfort. You will start to become the master of your life.

When the Bible speaks of the temple then it is a symbol of our physical body, and when it speaks of the altar then it is a symbol of our mind, and the sacrifice on the altar is a symbol of Christ's accomplished work of salvation. When we read about these things then we have to turn to our own self. First we turn to our body, the temple, and then we turn inside, to our mind, and there we see what is on the altar, what is on our mind. And when there is something on the altar that is not clean, that is defiled, then we clean the altar, and this means that when we find and have worldly thoughts on our mind then we remove them and replace them with a thinking that is holy.

The Life Body

This life body gives life to the physical body and the physical body is created and maintained by this life body.

This life body is mainly an energy body. It is an energy counterpart of the physical body. It supplies life, health and vitality to the physical body. It is a life force and an energy system.

This life body gives life to physical bodies. It creates power in a physical body. It brings life into physical things.

During the whole lifetime of a physical thing this life body prevents the physical thing to disintegrate, to fall apart.

To illustrate the function of the life body we can consider the difference between the physical body and the life body. A person that has a missing limb due to an amputation has this limb missing only in the physical body, not in the life body. The life body is still complete, there there is no part missing.

Now if a man can discern spirits, if he has the spiritual gift of discerning of spirits, then he can help a sick person by being able to see this life body, to see this energy body, and see in detail what is wrong with it. So he can diagnose a disease and can therefore do more than a physician who has only his physical senses at his disposal. So a big step in the direction of finding a cure can be achieved.

But if this man has the gifts of healing as well, then he can actually, with the help of God from whom he has received these gifts, heal this person. He might lay on his hands and cause the healing this way.

When hands are laid on somebody then spiritual power is transferred.

The transferring of this life power took place when the woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years touched the edge of Jesus' cloak.

And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me. Luke 8:46.

We can perceive the moving of this virtue in our body. We just have to know that we can perceive it and then we can start to observe it. And we can actually direct it. We can cause it to flow up or down. Just lie down and start may be with your left foot and feel the power there and then extend it to the whole body. And then let it flow through you, first up from the soles of your feet and then down from the top of your head. Lie down and do this at times when you are tired, or under stress, or out of energy, or when you are not well, or when you feel some bodily symptoms are appearing, or just for enjoyment.

Before praying for somebody just become aware of this virtue in you and move it a little bid and then use it. It is the creative power in us.

In Mark 5:30 this power is described this way:

And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?

In addition to laying on of hands a healer might use some sort of spiritual instrument like a concentrated beam of light for areas which do not respond to the laying on of hands and so cause a change in the energy of a very specific point in the life body, 12. Now this beam of light he forms with his mind, and he directs it with his mind towards the troubled area until he sees a result.

He might even form a spiritual sort of scalpel to open up the life body and then pull, mentally, out some energy that has to be eliminated. And then he uses again a light beam to heal the cut. He actually then performs a spiritual operation.

So he works with mental instruments. And he does this with his mind. With his mind he creates the instrument and with his mind he handles it. So with his mind he has a direct influence on this life body and therefore on the physical body.

Now sometimes other people may be around and watch the whole procedure and don't really see what is going on. But God might use this situation to cause some change in the spiritual life of these onlookers and causes them to also see into the spiritual realm and may be to see some sort of combination of the physical body and the life body and see that blood comes out of the wound, something gets removed from this body, and that the wound gets closed and healed. Their belief system might receive a mighty shock. They might never forget such an experience and because of it get turned towards spiritual things.

This cracking open of a person's belief system is one of the most difficult things that exist. The main purpose of a miracle is to achieve this. It is more important than life itself. Life can't get really destroyed, we can only experience a change in consciousness and a putting aside of the physical body. And this fact we should remember when we hear of tragedies and accidents and disasters. The main purpose of these things is to shake people awake and let them become alive spiritually.

This renewing of the mind is so important, because even when we go to the next plane, after our physical death, we will still be in the possession of our mind. We will possess the same mind we had here on earth. Nobody will take it out of us and replace it with some perfect mind. A man will be as intellectual or spiritual after death as he was before death, for death does not bring a sudden development of this kind. To give an example, if we here on earth have limited our thinking to the idea that sickness, depression, suffering and negative things are normal then these thought patterns will be the same on the next plane. And then we call such kind of existence hell. But the hell we have already experienced on earth. So hell does really exist. But we create it. We create it here on earth and we just carry on when we are in the next realm.

Especially the patient's belief system, the faith of the person who was sick, will be affected and he will benefit from this observation of such miraculous healing. If he, the person who receives the healing, sees that something tangible gets removed and gets disposed of, then he can really believe that this problem is gone and it makes it much easier for him to believe that he got delivered from this illness.

The onlookers might go away and tell others that they have witnessed some psychic surgery. They have given the phenomenon a name and therefore put it in a box and labelled it, but it would have been much better if they started to learn more about the different parts of the human being and about the power of the mind.

And that is our subject, the mind. With our mind we have a very powerful instrument. We are not this mind. We have it. We can use it. We are above this mind. We can operate it. We can wake up and realize that the thinking that goes on all the time in our mind does not have to carry on automatically. We can change the direction of this activity of thinking. We can have complete control over it. We can for example suddenly realize that we are thinking depressive thoughts and stop that immediately. Depression can be overcome in a fraction of a second. And to do something like this effectively we have to replace the negative thinking with some thought of a spiritual nature, of a positive spiritual nature, of a godly nature. We can think how blessed we are. We can start thanking God for health and wealth, for guidance and protection, for happiness and joy, for being a blessing to many other people.

If you can tell just one person how to get out of depression, get out of it in a fraction of a second, then you might have achieved a thing that made the trip of yours to this planet worthwhile.

Mind the mind.

Whatever you want to do with your mind you can do. What you think is what you become. You better practise this, because here on earth it works with some delay, but in the hereafter there is no delay, you will have instantly what you want. If you think here that you would like to see a certain person in his office then you will make plans how to go about it and then carry out those plans and finally arrive in that person's office. But if you do this kind of thinking on the higher plane then you will be there immediately and if your plan is to tell that person off, then you might get pretty embarrassed when you are instantly confronted by that person.

Another thing is that your thinking is visible to everyone on higher planes and that might cause you as well to practise healthy thinking already here. And don't forget that some people here on earth are operating in the gifts of the spirit and might be able to "see" what you are thinking. So learn to conquer. Learn to conquer yourself. Conquer your thoughts.

Now this forming of healing beams and healing instruments we can do without being blessed with the gifts of the spirit. We can do this by simply using our mind. With our mind and with our will we can form these instruments and we can use them with the help of our mind and of our will.

We can go even further and with our will and mind we can simply form a healthy body and with our will and mind we can make sure that this physical body stays healthy. It is a matter of - permanently - having healthy thoughts and - permanently - rejecting unhealthy ones. We can start to live in divine health.

When we start to learn about the mind and how to use it, we have the probably most powerful instrument discovered, that we humans have.

And when we are getting used to this instrument then there seems to be no need to go to healers, not to practitioners of spiritual healing and not to practitioners of physical healing. I can do the healing myself - without a physician and without another person doing some spiritual healing.

But I am free. I can go to a physician any time I want to and any time I feel like doing so. There is no reason not to go to a physician when there is for example a problem that he can well handle and for which cures are known and available. So we must not let our liberty get fenced in and we must not allow people to tell us that we have a God and it is him that heals us and not man. Men were created by God and therefore God can use them, use them for healing as well, physical healing and spiritual healing.

Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him: for the Lord hath created him. For of the most High cometh healing, and he shall receive honour of the king. The skill of the physician shall lift up his head: and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them. Was not the water made sweet with wood, that the virtue thereof might be known? And he hath given men skill, that he might be honoured in his marvellous works. With such doth he heal [men,] and taketh away their pains. Of such doth the apothecary make a confection; and of his works there is no end; and from him is peace over all the earth, My son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole. Leave off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour; and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him: let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in their hands there is good success. For they shall also pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper that, which they give for ease and remedy to prolong life. Sirach 38:1-14.

If you go to see a physician then pray for this man, pray that he will be at peace, that he will be calm, cool and collected, that God will be with him and that, if necessary, the gifts of the spirit will be operating in him and he will automatically diagnose the right thing and prescribe the right cure.

These functions of the life body are inconsistent with the teachings of Darwin's theory of evolution. Or to say it the other way around, his theory completely contradicts the teachings of the sages of all ages and of all cultures. And the more modern science advances, the more it will become obvious that all life comes from the spiritual world and from the world of consciousness. And the idea that consciousness is a product of the material world will more and more become a curious teaching from the 19th century. Our soul, or our consciousness, is not the result of biochemical processes.

So consciousness does not develop out of the progressive evolution of material things but is the basic building block of the material world, it creates the physical world.

So our life body, 12, is the energy counterpart of our physical body, 11. And when healing takes place then it is this energy body that gets changed. The cause of a sickness might be a blockage of energy. A congestion of negative energy might have occurred. And this needs release. And positive energy forms have to get revived and body parts, parts of the life body, 12, have to get re-energized and balanced again. And this again stimulates the physical body, 11, and makes it whole.

It is quite impressive to watch such healing taking place. How a physical body is operated on and how the limbs are moved and the body bends and twists and all kinds of things are done to the body in order to get it healed. It is to see, with one's physical eyes, the power of God in operation. It is a thing that one hardly ever forgets.

This life body is not a physical body. We can't see and touch it. But the difference between physical planes and spiritual planes is not really that certain. The materialized world is just more dense then the spiritual. All is energy. With special equipment the life body can be photographed and banned on photographic material and studied or can be observed as it is alive, sends out energy and colours and is in motion all the time. So men can use spiritual gifts to see this life body or they can use modern equipment to make it visible to the natural eye.

The power of this life body or the energy that flows through this life body can be used by us to change or create physical things or events. It also can be used in conjunction with or in co-operation with other beings, with other beings like other people alive on this physical plane or on other planes.

When reading about supernatural events taking place then we should remember this virtue. Let us see how Jesus used this energy together with Peter - Matthew 17:27:

Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

Here the creation or change of location of a physical thing is described. But it is also a good example of how we create by speaking, accompanied by faith, and when this is done in unison by two people then it is even more successful.

The more we move up from the lowest part of the human being to higher parts, the more powerful these different parts become. The more powerful they become the finer and more sensitive the energy becomes. On first sight it might seem to be exactly the opposite. We might consider our physical body to be much more powerful as the life body. The life body we can't even see. And we can only feel it when we pay special attention to it. The mind we might not feel at all, but it is much more powerful than the life body.

On first sight we also think of electric power to be much stronger than low voltage power. With high voltage power we can drive an electric motor in a vacuum cleaner or in a locomotive or in the engine room of a lift in a building. But with a low voltage current a telephonic message can be relayed and the power station generating all this power can be instructed to get switched off. The management of a power generating company sitting in an office in a big city might decide to take a certain power station out somewhere in the country out of action and they do so simply by means of a telephonic instruction.

This lower and weaker current has therefore much more power than the hundreds and thousands of volts of the high voltage current.

It is the spiritual content that makes the difference. The low voltage current is combined with the products of the mind, with spiritual content, with a comprehensive message which carries orders coming from a will making decisions.

A telephonic command transmitted via a phone and coming from a head of government can stop a devastating war. This seemingly week current in combination with its spiritual content of authority is much more powerful than a 380 thousand volt current. The operator in the control room of the power station directs the flow of the high voltage power by giving the appropriate instructions using instruments operated by low voltage currents. We normally don't elect a man into high office because he is physically very powerful but a man who has high mental and spiritual resources.

1 Kings 19:11-12:

And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.

The still small voice is the powerful voice. The strong physical things don’t really matter.

We will get power when we go in this direction, in this spiritual direction.

When the quantity of energy is high then the quality is low, but when we have high quality of energy then we only need very little quantity. We only need the small still voice.

Let us take another example. When I get the idea of going for a walk then I think about this activity of walking. When I then decide to go for a walk and announce it to the people around me, then I speak about it. I might do so to let the others know what I am doing and I also might want to give them the opportunity to join me. And then I might actually get up and take a walk. When I am doing the thinking then I use high quality energy. But this high quality energy might be so little that a scientist might have problems finding it and measuring it. There might be some movement in my brain but how would one try to quantify it? When I then start speaking I use a stronger kind of energy and this stronger energy is more easily detectable. It can be observed by the senses. It could get recorded. The volume of my words could be measured. The moving of certain body parts could be observed, like my lips or my throat. Somebody could put his hand to my throat and feel the movements. And when I am then on my way walking I move my body. My torso is moving, my arms are swinging. There is hardly any part of my body that is not moving. Especially of course it is my legs that are in action. They use up some substantial energy and after a while I get tired and feel like a rest. Now this expense of energy can already get quantified more easily. If I climb a mountain I could estimate the energy used by taking into the calculation the weight of my body and the height of the mountain. This energy I have spent I can really feel. The energy I have spent by speaking, by announcing my walk, is much less and I hardly feel any loss of energy. Only if I would speak a longer time I might feel some energy loss. And even less energy loss I feel when I am thinking. I might feel nothing. But I still lose energy when I think, I know that because when I do a lot of it and over longer periods of time thinking makes one tired. I lose energy. But this thinking is an activity of high quality. When I am thinking of going for a walk all kinds of thoughts and associations might go through my mind. I might think of all the things I might see and experience on my walk, the nature I am going to enjoy, the foliage and the animals that I might see, the route I am going to take. All this is easy. Little energy is needed. But when I then would try to communicate all this with words to my companions it would take me quite some effort to put it into words and I might just say, "I am going for a walk," and hope that these words will cause some associations to arise in their minds and save me the effort of a long speech. To have some ideas and to think about them is relatively easy, but when it comes to putting them into words then a certain effort is already involved. And to carry them out physically much more effort is necessary. So I have thoughts, which is using high quality energy but very little quantity of energy. Then I have speech where the quality of energy is lower but where the quantity is higher. And then I have real physical action where the quality can be neglected but where the quantity is substantial. I also can express all this in terms of information. The amount of information in my thinking about the walk is high; the amount of speaking about it is much lower as I just say the absolute necessary; and the amount of information given by walking is minimal.

We can read about a poltergeist acting somewhere, or somebody materializes something, a so-called apport as a gift for somebody, or during a seance some so-called ectoplasm is produced and forms maybe a human face or causes some furniture to move. All these things can have something to do with the life body.

Let us take the occurrence of a poltergeist as an example. The energy of a youngster around that location where the poltergeist is active in combination with the will and mischievous ideas of a person that is not alive anymore but who is still attracted to the earth and who uses the frustrated surplus energy of the youngster causes all kinds of strange things to happen.

The mischievous youngster attracts equally mischievous spirit beings - like attracts like - and the result is mischievous actions.

Now when we read about such things it is quite notable that hardly ever a solution to the problem of poltergeist is offered. Why is that? Because the writers of such books are interested in such phenomena due to them being writers of books about them or they investigate them for scientific research. And when they have a chance to observe such strange happenings then they are of course not interested that these for them highly interesting things stop. A person who really wants to help people who are afflicted by such events should simply command the spirit to stop these actions and to disappear and teach those people to do it in future themselves - to speak the word, to take command of the situation and speak in authority and tell the spirit to leave. We simply show them the door. We have to start to take control over our lives. We are responsible for what happens.

To have control over one's life is the aim.

These writings about poltergeist are good examples of reading material written by people who make money out of their writings and of material that does not bring the information that is the most important one to have. Such material is written by people who sell their books, they want to earn money. That is their main motive. Their motive of writing is not to make available something they have learned out of life. Their motive is financial gain. Now in times past it was more or less the only way to get information to the people: to publish it in forms of books, or magazine articles or newspaper articles. You needed a publisher and that publisher of course would only publish your material if he could make a profit out of the thing. And because his motive was a financial one he also wanted it to be acceptable; so he changed your writing to a form that would sell. So not only could you not really get your message out to the people for free, you could not really get it out at all. If you got it out it was not complete, it was changed, diluted and corrupted. Publishers of course claimed that they served a wonderful role in society and promoted cultural advance and progress. But in many cases it was exactly the opposite. Today such material can be made available on the internet for free. And people who are really interested to help other people are doing this - they put their output on the internet for everybody to read it. And they don't charge for it. And people who are in possession of publishing rights of books that are really valuable do the same. They put it on the web - they make such material available to all and don't ask for money. Examples are some Bible versions that are older, or the publications of organisations that are not in the profit making business or organisations that put material on the web that is not anymore copyrighted. If they really have something to give then they give these things and they give them as genuine gifts. So today you can judge published material by the way it is provided to the public. If it is made available as merchandise then it is just that - merchandise. Watch authors who start with highly spiritual books and who do not make them available for free but put them on the market for sale, how their writings deteriorate and the more books they put out the more shallow they become and one has the feeling that the main reason for publishing more books is that the author is now well known and the publisher pushes him to write more despite the fact that there is little coming out of this author that is of value to the reader. He has sold his soul.

Now what about books that are self-published, where the author does not use a publisher but where he makes and distributes the book himself? If he really would be interested to get his message to the people then he would put the content also on the internet for free. It would be easy to do so because he wrote it with a word processor and therefore the content is already available in digital form. So you have a nice criterion to judge his motives. May be he lets bookshops have his books so that they can sell them and this is the way he gets them distributed. But will the bookshops carry on selling his books if they realize that the content of them is available for free on the internet? So this might become a nice excuse for the author not to put it on the internet.

Just imagine a famous author sends his newest manuscript to his publisher and on the first page he announces that as from now on all his already published works as well as this book and all work that he will publish in future is now, and will be made in future, available for free on the internet and he gives the internet address as well where everybody can read it. The development of the relationship between him and the publisher would be interesting to monitor.

We carry on discussing the poltergeist situation. Spiritual beings, and these include people living in this dimension of reality, can be unpleasant. They might strive for attention. They might be mischievous. Whatever it is, we simply show them the door. This we do in our daily life and in the spirit world it is the same. You might call it exorcism if you want.

It is the same with a professor of medicine who is rather more interested to demonstrate to his students and to the scientific fraternity an interesting case than to get healing into that person. Specifically psychiatrists seem to prolong treatments where it is only necessary to bring the patient so far to forgive another person, a certain event, or to simply to forgive himself. Or such a professional healer should cast out an evil spirit and tell him to leave. Or tell the sufferer to take control of his life himself and stop speaking darkness into his life and instead start creating abundance.

It is a terrible thing when a therapist wants to get a person's physical and mental health restored by causing his client to go back to a deep-seated negative experience in order to experience this revolting thing again. He tries to change the person's state by putting him into a very painful state where he experiences his helplessness again and not his strength. Instead of getting this person away from a state of defeat he lets him repeat it and therefore makes it easier for him to encounter it again in the future. The more often we have an experience the more it is likely that we will adopt it again.

Instead of empowering the person he gets put into a state where he is weak and where he is the victim.

We are talking here about the mind. All sicknesses are of the mind. The only thing that really needs healing is the mind. All sickness is basically the lack of forgiveness. And to recognize this and accept this is therefore essential for healing. The therapist must be aware of this. He must point out that the patient has the choice not to forgive or to forgive. A change of view is required. It must be realized that a change of mind is required, that healing is of the mind. He simply must teach forgiveness. The patient must learn this. Forgiveness is all that need be taught him. Here is the battle that takes place in the mind - and in the world. The biblical term is: the renewing of the mind. To be unaware that it is forgiveness that is needed is the big obstacle. The world fights this awareness to the full; the world has lined up all its forces against this awareness because this awareness of forgiveness is the remembering of God. So it is a matter of decision, of choice. All sickness is mental sickness. The solution lies in the mental realm. Only a change of mind can effect healing. Therapy is correction - a correction of the activities of the mind. All healing must come from the mind. It is the mind that is the source of illness. The therapist must recognize the mind as the source of disease. So illness is actually insanity, because all illness is mental illness. So the healer must bring the patient to change his mind, get rid of his insanity. There is no need for the psychotherapist to have many appointments with the patient, to have long analyses and tiring and extensive discussion and to chase a historical event. The truth is simple. Change from unforgivingness to forgiveness. He has to forgive - also himself. It is the source of all healing. Forgiveness is the process of psychotherapy. The patient must stop to refuse to forgive and get rid of all feelings of guilt. He has to change his tune. He has to sort out all and recognize all forms that unforgivingness takes. He might not recognize it as such. Unforgiveness takes many forms.

Typically the therapist will try to dig up forgotten material and bring it back to consciousness in the suffering person. He might make use of hypnosis to bring back certain memories because he thinks that the problem is this lack of knowing and remembering. If the patient would remember his painful experiences and not suppress them, if he would accept them, then relief would be the result and the experiences could be integrated by understanding them. But the key problem is unforgivingness and if the healer does not help the patient to become a forgiving person, to forgive in this special case and also generally, then the problem is not solved. The patient will carry on with his life and will also in future situations not know that he has to walk in forgiveness. Only a life were forgiving is a permanent feature can be a successful life and when this forgiving attitude is established then all past experiences are dealt with automatically.

So stop dredging up deep emotional wounds or other problems and concentrate on forgiving. Just start a life, your own or that of others, where forgiveness is permanent.

The past is changeable. If a psychotherapist does not believe this then it is simply a thing of not being aware of scientific progress. Quantum physics shows it and experiments are there to proof it. We can change the past. Not only can present action alter the future, it can also alter the past. Such changes happen on subconscious level all the time. As our beliefs and attitudes and approaches and outlooks change, we recreate the past; as we generally adopt a forgiving attitude, we change our attitude of the past. We are creators and re-creators. So don't worry about the past, do something in the Now. Now is the time. The need for psychiatric treatment exists exactly because the person has not changed his attitude. His past still exists and has not been changed.

When we become spiritually awake, and stop running from God and start running to God, then we are actually freeing ourselves from the past. We become new creatures - new creatures in Christ. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). What counts is a new creation (Galatians 6:15). As we go ahead we free ourselves from the past. Our walking the Way undoes our past errors. We have hit the undo button. We have changed our past.

So when you have got a problem then do not go to a psychotherapist, go to Jesus, and become a new creation and your past will have become as new as you have become.

Our idea of past, present and future mainly exists because of our consciousness. Our consciousness has to be so focussed on the present moment that there is no capacity left to also include the past and the future. If the capacity of our consciousness could be increased we could be able to also become aware of our past and of our future. Space and time are two quantities that we normally think of being independent of each other and separate from each other. But this is not really so. They belong together and can't be separated from each other. They are a phenomenon that belongs to this our universe. Our will does not belong to this material universe - our physical body does, but not our soul, our mind, our will. The actions of our will are not limited by time and space. Our will is above these. Our will can operate in all realms. And therefore it is possible for us to influence the past. We can change past events. Events that have already happened can be altered.

Space and time belong together. And in this space-time situation we act. And therefore acting also can't be really separated from space and time.

When you hit the undo key then you undo errors of the past because you have undone the separation between you and God.

Events that have happened can be altered because they still exist. An event of the past has not disappeared, it is still there. If a hypnotized person is asked about an event of the past then this person does not just remember this past event but he actually experiences it. The incident is not just brought back into consciousness as a memory of something that is now gone and that has now past, but it is recovered as an experience. The experience is as real as it was when it happened originally. When this incident first took place and when it was reality, so is it now when brought back. The person has the same feelings and emotions as it had then. In some cases there have been even physical consequences to the body of that person. So the past still exists and therefore can be altered. So all past experiences are still there, nicely stored in the subconscious, but our conscious is not focused on them. Our whole I operates in the timeless dimension, but our present ego focuses on the worldly dimension of space and time only. All our past experiences still exist, they exist outside of space and time, and when we go to a dimension where space and time is not anymore relevant, then "we take them with us" because they are still there - they can't disappear. And all the material stuff "we don't take with us" because it does not really exist, it is more like an illusion and has no reality in the new, spiritual dimension. And that is why fools are after material things and after power and influence and after money, and why the wise guys are not interested in them, but they are interested in the stuff they can take with them.

The present Now exists eternally and existed before time and will also exist when time is gone.

The essence of the good stuff is relationships - good relationships, relationships that heal. Our relationships with the other people are the important things. And these relationships with other people do not just include the "living" but also the "dead" and especially all the spiritual beings in other realms. And the most important relationship is the one with God. That is the relationship we really have to look after. It is this daily walk with God that really counts. It will sort out all the other relationships with all the other beings. The important thing that we are supposed to do here is to create, and the subjects of our creations are the way we deal with our neighbours and the people we come into contact with and all these dealings will be dealings with God because they are God. They and I am God. So we are here to create and we are here to create relationships and the good kind of relationship is that that heals and the bad kind of relationship is the one that destroys.

When we come here to this earth we robe ourselves into a space suit and call this outfit our physical body and we do this because we want to collect here experiences, experiences of creation. And these experiences we conserve. All these experiences which our senses extract out of life survive and are available for inspection and recovery at certain levels of our consciousness. This is the fruit we are bearing. It can be good fruit and it can be bad fruit. Also the bad stuff survives and therefore we should avoid it. The wise guys will avoid it, the fools will not. The fools will build their house on sand. We build ours on rock. They think that life began with birth and ends with death. We know that we lived before birth and that we will live after "death". We know that the experiences obtained by the senses survive - it is our harvest.

What should our attitude be towards these strange things like apparition, apport, astral body, astral travelling, aura, automatic writing, biofeedback, Buddhism, chakra, clairvoyance, crystal gazing, distant viewing, divining, dowsing, ectoplasm, etheric body, exorcism, extrasensory perception, ghosts, Hinduism, hypnosis, Islam, karma, kundalini, lucid dreaming, magic, mantra, materialization, meditation, medium, metal bending, near-death experiences, ouija board, out-of-body-experience, pendulum, physical phenomena, poltergeist, possession, precognition, psychics, psychokinesis, psychometry, radionics, regression, reincarnation, seance, spiritualism, spoon bending, suggestion, table rapping/tilting, telepathy, trance, visualization, yoga?

We should never be afraid of any such thing and of reading about them. To have knowledge of such things can be helpful. The main thing about them is always in what spirit do we approach them? What is our aim? What do we want? Where do we come from?

Knowledge about such things must be used to develop one's own self. We have to incorporate the knowledge we discover into our personality. We have to live it - otherwise it might do more harm than good. Knowledge means little in itself if it does not become part of living our daily life.

The supernatural is natural and very much part of a believer - of a follower of Christ. We should never forget that. It is there to help us and others.

That is the question: Do we want to help or do we have other objectives? Is it white magic or do we lapse into black magic? Simon the Sorcerer offered money to receive that power, that on whomsoever he lays hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. He thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

The motives are important.

Some denominations have such a broken relationship to the miraculous that they have special organisations that investigate miracles and only accept them when this body of specialists gives its approval and then a person associated with that miracle might become a saint. So a saint in their man-made church is some extraordinary person and all the others there are no saints. In reality every believer is a saint. So this denomination therefore demonstrates that the vast majority of their members are pagans. The whole outfit is pagan.

In six of his letters Paul addresses the receivers of these letters as saints. We are all saints. If so-called Christians are not calling themselves saints then they are none. They are not saints and they are not Christians.

So when there is a denomination that calls only certain people saints, and especially when all the people they call saints are dead people, then this proves that there are no saints, no believers, among them, that they are all heathen.

Why has Christianity such a broken relationship to the miraculous? The answer lies in the fact that such a big part of Christianity adheres to "orthodoxy." Every denomination, as soon as it gets really established, wants to be seen as "orthodox." When they are recognized as such then they have made it. If not, then they are outcasts, cults, or whatever.

They are afraid of the workings of the Holy Spirit. They instinctively perceive that the Holy Spirit and the presence of clergy don't go together. It is like fire and water. It has been ingrained into Christianity for 2000 years that everything related to the miraculous is suspicious.

If a person deviated from this line then he was an outsider, an outcast, was labelled with something like witch and persecuted, tortured or burned alive. Christianity has been for long periods of time a killing machine. Certain denominations have been terror organisations most of their existence.

"How do you know this is not the devil," is a typical reaction of a normal western person if confronted with some unusual event. It is the old story that Jesus experienced. The clergy accused him of this and still does it since then. Christianity is in principle a completely anti-Christian thing, the biggest hindrance for the advance of Christ on this earth.

And such a statement - "How do you know this is not the devil" - is so silly. Such people have no problem deciding in no time at all which are the right children their children should play with and with which children they should not play. They themselves just automatically associate with people all the time with whom they are comfortable and stay away from people they dislike. But when it comes to what they perceive as being religious then the brainwashing their culture has received for 2000 years suddenly kicks in and they don't know what is of the devil and what is not.

In the meetings of the real believers the miraculous is the common and prevailing thing. And when people meet who are not so-called Christians but who are interested to help others and who seek help for themselves, or who want to learn more about what life is all about, and approach this in a positive manner, then the occurrence of the miraculous should also be common and prevailing. The responsibility for what happens lies with the individual. The individual person must decide for himself what he accepts and what he doesn't. He is the judge, nobody else. One prophesies and the others judge (1 Corinthians 14:29). I judge all the time and decide what is good for me and what is not.

Let us take an example. If somebody gets hypnotized in order to get healed then I might accept that for that person and for that situation. But would I hypnotize a person? Why should I? I have no need for that. I can pray for that person so that we receive information regarding the situation or that he gets healed, and before and after the prayer I explain to that person how he must change his speaking habits and start speaking life into himself and stop speaking the problem. I teach him to "hypnotize" himself. I teach him auto-hypnosis. And I advise him to stay away from being hypnotized - by others. And I myself would never allow somebody to hypnotize me. I would strongly object to it. I would strongly oppose such an attempt. And it does not matter if that attempt is done openly or covert. People who allow others to hypnotize them are giving their birthright or self-government away. And they open themselves for all kind of things.

There is a slave mentality involved in hypnotism. The person getting hypnotized has such a slave mentality because he allows himself to be a slave - a slave of the hypnotist - and the hypnotizer has a slave mentality because he likes to have slaves around him, he likes to be or simply is a slave master. Free people don't like to be slaves and they also don't like to be slave masters - to have slaves around them. Let us take an example. A subject wants to stop smoking and turns to another person for help. He could turn to a hypnotist. But it would be better to turn to a spiritual person. A spiritual person would know that the subject needs empowerment. The subject needs to gain greater control over his life. He must learn to take charge and how to get his mind and his body under the control of his will. The subject has due to his wish to stop smoking an excellent opportunity to take this situation as a challenge to improve his life, as an opportunity to give his life a completely new direction. He can learn how to achieve any goal that might be worth pursuing. The subject has simply to set the goal and start thinking and speaking in line with the goal and stop thinking and speaking contrary to the goal. He has to learn to empower himself. This does not only apply to a person who wants to stop smoking but to anybody who wants to get out of a limiting situation, like being sick in body or spirit or anything else. But what happens when he goes to get hypnotized? Exactly the opposite. He gets disempowered. He becomes a slave. Stay away from this. Even a person who allows a stage hypnotist to perform in his theatre has such a slave mentality because he encourages people to take part in such procedures. A person who likes to be free and who likes to have free people around him would not like to attend such a performance, he would not like to witness such enslavement, such serfdom. A person submitting to a stage hypnotist has on top of it the problem that this stage hypnotist disappears after his show and does not care what he leaves behind. A person submitting to a hypnotherapist can at least go back to this man and even if it is just to claim from him. People who are involved in hypnotism like therapists or scientists are making money out of this by their fees or by selling their publications and therefore will suppress any information that indicates that hypnotizing a person is doing damage to that person's mind structure and even to their own. A person who has hypnotized many others for many years as scientific research objects will be very reluctant to admit that his subjects might suffer from his treatments. He will also not be much in favour of doing scientific research how this hypnotizing others affects them and how it affects himself. He also will probably not encourage to investigate why some people are hypnotizable and why they agree to get hypnotized and why some people like to hypnotize others, what their motivations are to exert this kind of influence. There is no need to use hypnotism in order to implant suggestions. Suggestion is completely possible without hypnotism. Suggestion can operate entirely without hypnosis. Scientist should direct their efforts towards implanting suggestions the natural way, not the way that causes disempowerment, but the way that spiritual people have known since ages, that brings liberty. So when you read books about hypnosis written by people who themselves are involved with hypnotizing people than be aware of the fact that they might not bring information about the negative side of their subject. They probably would not like to admit that they have a slave mentality. They might even claim that there are no dangers to hypnotism.

Normally people assume that the state of being hypnotized is something like a trance because of its sleep like character. But the result one can achieve with this sleep like state one can also achieve when a subject is in a state of high activity and alertness. And they call this state also hypnosis, exactly for this reason. A subject can be on his exercising machine and pedal away quite furiously and he still can get hypnotized and caused to increase his effort. And he is wide awake and alert. So hypnotism is really a state of the mind, a mentality, and the better word for it would probably be slave mentality. And this slave mentality has the person who lets himself hypnotize, but also the person who wants to hypnotize someone else. His slave mentality might be even more prominent than that of his subject, because he gets a feeling of gratification, even a feeling of power out of it, when the subject complies with his instructions to fall into a trance and then to see how he does exactly what he is told and directed. He now is the slave master and is omnipotent. And he has all the respect and reputation of an important man in his society; he is a scientist, has one of the highest standing among his people, exactly as has the witch doctor and sorcerer in his. And when a stage hypnotist is active then his subjects and he himself and also all the people interested in it have this morbid mentality. They are in an altered state of consciousness; they have shifted into a gear called slave gear. And they probably spend most of their life in it. So hypnotism is actually what we find in a ritual of a tribal activity or in a ritual of a religious group of people meeting as a man-made church in a man-made church building. It is as old a mankind. We find it in many tribal situations and in many religious situations. It is a unique kind of state. It is a state where the higher self has abdicated its position or has never come to a point where it obtained the position of ruling. The lower self is ruling but the higher is momentary asleep.

Now whenever a person, after he had been hypnotized, tries to comply with a posthypnotic suggestion, let us say to resist the urge to light a cigarette, is he then again in this hypnotic state? Or is he maybe in this hypnotized state all the time while the posthypnotic suggestion is active? Some scientists think that this is the case. They even think that the waking state is a state of trance, as it is also a response to a hypnotic instruction - an instructed response, an instruction to wake up. So may be a person who has once submitted to a hypnotic treatment never really comes out of this state of mind. The supposed waking state is not really a waking state. Such a person might still feel as if he is in a daze and hasn't woken from the trance and tends to do funny things without thinking. He is still in a trance and he just gives a very realistic waking-like performance. He is a zombie, a wide-awake automaton. Scientists know all about this, but they carry on hypnotizing people. For them it is just an interesting aspect of their work and another paper can be written about it, may be about what kind of strange experience it is to move about while in a trance and how one is afflicted by a peculiar stupefaction.

So what then is the alternative? Hypnosis is used to implant a suggestion into the subconscious mind. But only a slave would use hypnosis for such a purpose. A free man would use a much more simple and straightforward way and a way that is worthy of his status as a ruler. He would use his mind in an intelligent manner. He would prepare himself for this task. He would first sort out in his mind what he really wants, define his goal. He then would find a way to achieve his goal. The method must agree with his present day understanding and when that is limited then this present day understanding has do get extended. He might have to do some studying and meditating about it. This new found information has to get synthesized and integrated. He must start to believe that what he wants to achieve is possible, that others have done so and that he can do it. He might be even able to believe that he could be the first person ever to do it. Then he would formulate a sentence or a word that he would use as an anchor and he would start to speak this out and commit it to his thinking and to his memory. And then by keeping on thinking on this and by repeating the word or the words at appropriate moments he would transfer these instructions to his subconscious mind; and there they would become and create his reality. And whenever he comes back to this he knows exactly what he has done and where it came from. He remains all the time the ruler. He operates as a believer. He is strong and very courageous - a Bible term; he renews his mind - another Bible term. He renews his subconscious mind. He acts according to ancient formulas. He is ruling, he is not a slave. He says, "I am strong and of good courage" and "I live in divine health" and "I prosper" and "I know the full will of God in my life" and "I have victory, I am an overcomer" and "No weapon against me shall prosper" and "My pleasant words promote instruction" and "I am increasing in the knowledge of God." And if he has to deal with a specific situation then he speaks in a specific manner and says, "I am in control of my body and also of any bleeds and all blood stops flowing out and remains in its vessels and all openings are now closing and healing," or he says "my blood flows only to healthy parts of my body and this wart is now excluded from the blood supply and these cancer cells are now cut off from any blood flow and therefore from nutrition" or he says "My customers always pay my invoices and they also always pay them in time." He does not approach his subconscious in an insidious way. He does not hand over his subconscious to somebody else. He does not abdicate his throne. He does not act in helpless obedience to another person. He, or she, learns to relax and learns how to handle pain and how to give birth to a child without pain. If a headache starts then it takes only a second to cause his head to relax and the pain to vanish.

The danger that goes with hypnosis is that the hypnotizer tries to shortcut the way to the subconscious mind by side-lining the conscious mind. The conscious mind and its reasoning faculties would probably not accept the suggestion made. And there the conflict is created and the whole balance of the structure of the mind is disturbed. A mental illness has been basically induced. It is vital that the reasoning mind first deals with this change of thinking. A suggestion has do get first sorted out by reason. The conscious mind has to be renewed. When this has taken place, when the new way to see things has been levelled, then the suggestion automatically will be absorbed by the subconscious. And the more this suggestion then is repeated and the more often the logic of it all is recapitulated the better the suggestion will be anchored in the subconscious. This is the natural and the healthy way to do it. Not hypnosis. Hypnosis is sorcery, is black magic, a shortcut to obtain demons. You might not call these things demons, you might want to speak of a case of multiple personalities, but that is just changing labels, the content remains.

The natural and healthy way is the way through the reasoning mind. This is all so obvious and one should not call himself a psychotherapist when this method is not adhered to. Hypnosis is not a therapy and not a means for achieving therapeutic aims, it achieves mental anguish.

There is no need for hypnosis. Everything that is achieved with hypnosis can be achieved by simply renewing the mind, the conscious mind, the reasoning faculties. One can think of situations where hypnosis achieved some quite outstanding results but one cannot see any of these situations that cannot be accomplished the simple way, the way of reasoning it out. The real reason why the shortcut of hypnosis seems to be taken is always unbelief. People don't really believe that they can achieve something extraordinary. That might be understandable and might be an excuse to use hypnotism but the costs are very high - very high indeed.

The changing of the mind must be done by the person himself. The psychotherapist's role can be to help and to show the way and give examples and formulations, but he must never take over the running of the mind of another person.

What about seeking to communicate with somebody deceased? Why should one do this? The Bible says we should not seek to communicate with the dead.

Deuteronomy 18:9-15:

When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect (or, upright, or, sincere) with the Lord thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess (or, inherit), hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do. The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken.

So we are listening to prophets that the Lord our God raises up unto us from the midst of us, in our assembly, unto them we shall hearken. Not to worldly people.

Saul did not listen to the prophet Samuel that the Lord his God raised up unto him from the midst of them, in their assembly, on the contrary he destroyed the church and persecuted it. And he got more and more into trouble until he finally got trapped; and he then turned to those that had familiar spirits, to those he had put away, out of the land (1 Samuel 28:3).

So Saul died for his transgression which he committed (transgressed) against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it; And enquired not of the Lord: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse (Isai). (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).

And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? Isaiah 8:19.

Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

So we turn to God and not to mediums.

"Why consult the dead," indicates that mediums consult the dead, that they are actually not really contacting the spirit of a living person in the spiritual realm, but the dead remains of it, the earthbound body of the soul, the soul body, 13. They are not contacting the real soul, but the body of the soul only. They are contacting some physical remains of that person, remains that are busy disintegrating, and that still contain many parts of consciousness and memory of that person.

Not only does such a soul body still contain consciousness of that person but the actual physical body does this as well. Even articles of his daily use might still contain plenty of it and this explains psychometry, the divination of facts about things, events, people, etc., from inanimate objects associated with them.

To give an example of such objects of personal use and of the forms of consciousness contained in them, I will quote Acts 19:11-12 as it is found in the German translation of Ludwig Albrecht:

God also did through the use of Paul’s hands very unusual miracles: even cloth, with which Paul wiped away his sweat, or the aprons, which he wore at work, were put on the sick which then were healed from their afflictions and delivered from evil spirits.

These fabrics did not only still contain the sweat of Paul but also consciousness of him and therefore spiritual life forces possessing enormous abilities and life that could bring deliverance. Paul had become a highly spiritual being und his personal charisma was accordingly.

Another example is found in Acts 5:14-16:

And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women. Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.

The shadow of Peter overshadowed the sick and they were healed. Even the shadow can still radiate consciousness of such a strong personality and has healing impact. The radiation of the life body of Peter was so strong that everything coming close to him was influenced by it.

All these things have very much to do with the faith of the receivers of such miracles, but the physical side of it plays a significant role: there is really something present that is tangible.

Let us look at 2 Kings 13:20-21:

And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

There was still plenty of life in the body of Elisha. Every smallest particle consists of consciousness and it does not matter if this particle is of a human or an animal or a plant or a mineral or solid or liquid or gas or whatever.

But this dead body of Elisha was probably also still accompanied by its lifebody, 12, and there was therefore so much power around that corpse of Elisha that another dead body was catapulted back to life.

So in addition to all the particles of the physical body, 11 - the corpse - there is this individual consciousness of the lifebody, 12, and especially in such a spiritual person like Elisha there was probably much of it still present and caused a dead body of another man to stand on his feet again and revive.

The soul body can ooze out of a medium and appear to the onlookers as ectoplasm, as materialized spirit, and can form into shapes that are directed by the thought forms of the people present. This seems, when you first look at it, to have been also the case with the witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28). But in 1 Samuel 28:12 it is reported that when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice. This indicated that she was highly surprised.

Ectoplasm is a viscous substance exuding from the body of a medium during a spiritualistic trance. And that is what this medium of Endor probably expected. But it did not happen. What happened is that Samuel himself really appeared.

He probably appeared really himself the same way as Moses and Elijah appeared to Jesus and his three disciples on the mount of transfiguration. Matthew 17:3.

And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth. 1 Samuel 28:13.

And in verse 15 the Bible says, "And Samuel said to Saul." So Samuel was there in person, not just some remnant of his soul body or some ectoplasm.

So this doesn't seem to have been a normal seance. There didn't appear a dead, but a real life person, a person alive in another realm.

There is no indication that Samuel spoke through the woman. Samuel seems to have spoken directly to Saul.

There is a book called the Chronic of Philo which narrates Saul's trip to Endor. There the witch's name is given as Sedecla, the daughter of the Midianite Adod. In that report Samuel is quoted as saying, "Don't pride yourself, King, neither you, woman! Not you two brought me along, but the command, that God gave me, when I was still alive." This statement of Samuel is quite revealing and confirms that the event at Endor was not a normal seance.

So we have to differentiate between a seance where the dead appear and a meeting where real spirits appear and help us and give information, like in a meeting of believers.

If there is for example a prophecy, like there was in Endor, then some action should get taken.

If it is a positive prophecy then we, the believers, should do something about it to bring it to pass. The re-establishment of Israel was prophesied many centuries ago, but it came to pass because there were Israelites who did something about it in the twentieth century. And because they were active, the thing happened - in the year 1948. The return of Christ was prophesied and when we want it to happen then we have to do something about it - build the real church.

And if there is a negative prophecy then also there something should be done about it. When Jonah spoke out a negative prophecy in the city of Nineveh then this did not mean that this negative thing really had to happen. This was the whole reason of bringing a negative prophecy, that the people concerned would do something about it - do something positive about it - so that it did not happen. And they did, and the bad thing did not happen. Nineveh was not destroyed, the prophecy did not become true; what the prophet Jonah prophesied did not happen, and this did not make him a bad prophet, on the contrary, Jesus says, that the people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonas.

Jonah's prophecy was: "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown." That was all, no indication that this occurrence could be avoided. But it was avoided because they repented.

And that is exactly what Saul should have done, repent. But he did not - he did not turn a bad prophecy into a good outcome. He could have repented. He could have saved the church from defeat and he could have avoided his own death.

He could have gone further, he could have turned around, him and his army, and left that place and resigned as king and appointed his son Isbosheth as king, who became his successor anyway, or even appoint his son Jonathan as king, or rather appoint David as his successor.

So we can't say that Jonah, due to the fact that his prophecy did not materialize, was not a real prophet. Here we have a clear exception from the rule.

What is the principle? It is Jonah 3:10:

And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.

It is that simple.

If we repent then God repents.

We have to do something. The future is not fixed. There are likely outcomes, there might be many signs that point in a certain direction, for example that Saul again and again was rebuked but did not repent, or for example the heavenly bodies like sun and moon and planets and stars point out certain trends due to our personality and due to the day of our birth, but these influences are minor in comparison with what our will decides to do, with what our choice will be, with what kind of decision we make. Our intent and our deed determine our future. We are the one who decide what will happen. We are the creators of our life; nobody else.

We can overrule anytime the influence of astrology and of bad habits of the past.

It takes just the fraction of second to do so.

I just have to change my mind.

Saul was the first king of the children of Israel. The last king was Zedekiah, king of Judah. He also received negative prophecies about him. He even got them from two sides. Jeremiah in Jerusalem prophesied against him and another famous prophet, Ezekiel, foretold him bad news and sent them from Babylon to Zedekiah. But Zedekiah did not only take no action in order to avoid the calamities that where announced, he even disbelieved what he was told. Why did he not believe? Because he assumed that details of these two prophecies contradicted each other. The two prophets actually very much agreed with one another in what they foretold, that Jerusalem would be taken, and Zedekiah himself would be taken captive; but there were two details which seemed to Zedekiah as being conflicting. Ezekiel said that Zedekiah would not see Babylon, and Jeremiah said that the king of Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar, would carry Zedekiah away in bonds and take him to Babylon. So Zedekiah looked at these two details and decided that these two prophets did not say the same thing relating to details of these circumstances, that details were in conflict and contradictory: how could it be that he would not see Babylon when he would be taken to Babylon after all? And he disbelieved therefore the whole two predictions of these two prophets: he also did not believe the main parts of the prophecies that agreed with each other. And then Nebuchadrezzar caught him and took him to Babylon. So Jeremiah's word was fulfilled. And how was Ezekiel's word fulfilled - that Zedekiah would not see Babylon? It was fulfilled because before Nebuchadrezzar took him to Babylon he put Zedekiah's eyes out. Zedekiah was taken to Babylon but he could not see it because he had no eyes anymore. So something like this can happen when somebody again and again rejects the ways of God - God might have to use some drastic measures. Zedekiah did not want to repent and probably used the seemingly not agreeing details of the two prophecies as an excuse for it, and instead of condemning his ways he condemned the prophets as not speaking the truth. But it came to path exactly as Jeremiah and Ezekiel had said it would. The details of these prophecies can be read in Jeremiah 32:4-5 and 34:3 and in Ezekiel 12:13. In 2 Kings 24:18-20 and 25:1-7, 2 Chronicles 36:10-14, and in Jeremiah 39:1-7 and 52:1-11 it is reported what actually happened. More details about the whole story are described by Flavius Josephus in his "The Antiquities of the Jews" in Chapters VII and VIII of Book X.

So both kings, the first king of Israel, Saul, and the last king in Jerusalem, Zedekiah king of Judah, took no action to avoid what was prophesied. They both were not in control of their lives. They lost control because they walked the wrong road and because they did not repent of this despite them being rebuked again and again. There was just this small little thing for them to do: repentance - returning back to God, change of mind.

Both these kings lost their ways - sinned. And that is bad. But something like this can get corrected. Much worse than sinning is not returning back to the right way, especially when being rebuked and corrected. The decisive thing is not really sinning, but not returning to the Way of Life - not repenting. And that is what repenting is all about, simply returning to the right way. Repenting is not some unpleasant external show of remorse and making lots of words and apologies and going on one's knees and showing submission to some priest. Repenting is simply acknowledging sin and stopping to do the wrong thing.

Here is an example:

And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. 2 Samuel 12:13.

Saul also sometimes acknowledged his sin when rebuked, for example when he was rebuked by David, but he did not stop doing it.

And there was no need for Saul to appeal to a medium. Why did he go to a medium? 1 Samuel 28:6 tells us that Saul inquired of the Lord and that the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. There was only need for repentance, already at that stage; or rather repentance was necessary since the moment he turned from the ways of God.

And if Saul would have repented then he could also have come back to a way of walking by faith and he could remember that God has the power to save - to save out of any situation - to save him and Israel from death and defeat. But he did not turn and he did not believe and he killed himself. Never give up. It does not matter in what kind of situation you are in - how hopeless it might seem - there is always a way of escape.

If a situation looks as if it is the end of everything it might in reality be the point in your life where the biggest advancement ever will take place - if you simply keep on walking by faith - as the three friends of Daniel did. Don’t then be tempted to suddenly start to walk by sight.

So there is no need to go to mediums. To go to a medium is either because we don't want to repent or we have no faith.

Stay away from mediums which contact the dead, stay with believers, stay with the gifts of the spirit and don't worry if the participants call themselves "Christians" or not.

For he that is not against us is on our part. Mark 9:40.

The important thing is that they are children of God and try to do his will. And simply judge what you hear and don't try to make somebody else responsible for the content of the message. And don't let other people tell you what you should hear. And don't let other people tell you what you should not hear.

And don't forget that God might still use the man-made churches because there are plenty of seekers, but the main body of revelation will not come from them. You have to find that from obscure places and unheard of sources. So just keep seeking. You will find, as you found this place.

Now the important thing what happened at Endor is what Samuel said. The first thing he said was "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?"

This is the main reason why we should not call up the "dead." We disturb them. When we want to do something for a person that has left us then we can send him some verbal or mental prayers and blessings and wish them to move towards the light. But we should not impose our will on them and tell them what to do. If somebody comes to us then that is okay but we don't summon people, not people who are here on earth and especially not beings from other realms. This would be an infringement on their free will; it would be trying to manipulate them.

When a being from another plane comes to us and comes in a positive attitude and brings us blessings then we are thankful for it. This is what happens in the meetings of the believers when the gifts are in operation. We leave these things to God how he answers our prayers or how he acts without us having asked anything.

It is annoying for a spiritual being when other beings who have not developed themselves spiritually try to disturb them with their worldly problems and especially when they have previously rejected God and done exactly the opposite of what they were told to do, like Saul.

Saul had become completely worldly. In 1 Samuel 28:5 it says that he was afraid, his heart greatly trembled, when he saw the host of the Philistines. He sinned, he was afraid. And not only was he operating in fear, he went much further and spoke out this fear. He confessed it. He had completely lost control over himself. In 1 Samuel 28:15 we read, "And Saul answered, I am sore distressed." He created his own problems; he knew nothing anymore of a life in the spirit. How often do we hear people tell others how distressed they are. What a terrible statement.

Now let us go to another situation where beings from other planes have a meeting with people from this plane, the earth. In Matthews 17 we find a report about such a meeting. And, behold, there appeared unto the four people from the earth, Jesus, Peter, James and John, two beings from another plane. Moses and Elias appeared to them talking to Jesus. Two men who had previously lived on earth and who were now "dead" came to join the earthlings.

So meeting otherworldly beings is New Testament occurrence. Meetings in which such things happen are a blessing, but seances for some rather mundane purpose might not be a blessing. It always seems that people who go to such gatherings are lacking in faith, that they are too attached to people who have left them, that they have problems to forgive others and especially to forgive themselves, that they try to communicate with a dead person because they feel guilty, that they are trying to find truth from the other side.

The main argument mediums use to justify their work is that they talk of survival evidence. Because they proof, they say, that people survive death, that their souls are still alive, and that this proofs that there is life after death. Now what does Jesus say to this?

Let us go to Luke 16:

The rich man in hell wanted that Abraham sends somebody from the dead - Lazarus - somebody his five brothers knew when he was alive, to his five brothers on earth, to testify to them so that they are not ending up in hell as the rich man did. What did Abraham reply to this request? Abraham told him that they have Moses and the prophets and that they should hear them. But the rich man did not agree with Abraham and said that when one went unto them from the dead, then they would repent. And Abraham's reply was, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

We not only have Moses and the prophets, the Old Testament, we also have the New Testament. And we also have now printed books and they are widely distributed. So there is no real need for someone from the dead to appear and persuade the living.

People who don't believe what the word of God says will also not believe when somebody rises from the dead and testifies to them.

A real Christian should have no need to call on the dead.

It is another thing when a being from the other side comes to us to help us with something. But we should not seek such things. And people who go to such mediums might say that they just go there in case somebody from the dead wants to communicate with them. But that is not really very different from direct seeking.

People should go to the meetings of real believers and experience the life of the assembly. Then there would be no need for anything else. All their longings would be satisfied.

In this report about Saul going to the witch of Endor we have very nicely described the two ways of how to go about to receive supernatural guidance: The right way and the wrong way.

The right way is described in 1 Samuel 28:6:

And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.

The right way is to turn inside, to listen to what is inside of us, to be still and to listen to God, to listen to dreams and to turn to the assembly of the believers and to listen to a prophecy. That is the right way.

The wrong way is described in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14:

So Saul died for his transgression which he committed (transgressed) against the Lord, even against the word of the Lord, which he kept not, and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, to enquire of it; and enquired not of the Lord: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David the son of Jesse (Isai).

Now a third aspect of this report about Saul going to the witch of Endor is the fact that such a meeting can lead to a situation where some real prophecy comes through. Despite the wish of Saul to speak to a "dead" person he got a genuine prophecy. A similar thing happened when Balaam was asked to curse the children of Israel. Then a sorcerer, Balaam, gave a genuine prophecy.

So out of the wrong motives for attending a meeting, a genuine guidance or information can transpire. A meeting held out of idle curiosity can be turned into a meeting where highly interesting information comes to the fore. We have to judge by the content. And as most of the Christians don't attend the real church, but go to man-made churches, God has to use situations where people come together to seek something they don't really know what it is. But as such people are often genuine - but not religious, they are more often open to receive than the churchy people.

So if something comes from a "medium" then we should not immediately condemn it. We should judge the content.

We have mentioned psychic surgery. Psychic surgery takes place when a human being is willing to be guided by a spiritual being, a spirit doctor, to cause the healing of a suffering person. Such a healer is directed by a being that operates in the spiritual realm and guides the human being in operating on the life body of the person to get healed. Such a spirit doctor however can also cause himself to materialize and then to do the surgery completely independent of the physical people being present. He might use their energy to do this materializing; he might use their life bodies to draw energy from them. And then a completely materialized new person is present and acts as the surgeon. He uses the life body of another person and when he is finished with the operation he dematerializes and disappears and he is gone, until another patient is on the table. Then he again materializes and does the next operation. He dematerializes after the first operation, and before the second operation, in order to draw as little energy from the other person as possible. He gives the other person a rest. To read about such occurrences is quite astonishing, but when we become familiar with the different parts of a human being, with spiritual things and with spiritual beings and with spiritual spheres then it becomes less mystic and more understandable.

Let us come back to the three subparts of our body.

The life body, 12, is actually the vehicle for the life force. So we have the "physical" life body, 12, and we have the life vitality that uses it and is transferred through it. When such phenomena as psychokinesis or ectoplasm occur then vitality is needed and is partly drawn from the physical body, 11, to support the life body, 12, and this causes weakness in the physical body, 11. The body temperature might drop. And when the phenomenon disappears the physical body regains strength.

The ectoplasm that seeps out of the life body of the medium takes on a form that is determined by the onlookers, and every person present might see a different shape, a shape that agrees with his conscious or subconscious thinking. Their expectations create the form they see and somebody with the gift of discerning of spirits may simply see that it is just the life body, 12, of the medium. But each of the participants saw something different, each saw something to his expectation, one saw the face of a near relative that recently died and another saw the head of a deceased friend.

There could be a person present at such a seance that knows what is going on and who has quite some creative abilities and will power and uses them and he might mould this materialized spirit into the shape of a person he knows and he does it consciously and therefore with much more energy than the others and therefore everybody present sees this shape as well.

So such phenomena can get produced unconsciously, but they can also occur because somebody wills them into existence. And there we have an explanation for some magical happenings. They can be produced at will. Objects can get moved. Raps can be heard. The knowledge about such things takes out the miraculous.

If one is used to think in material ways only then he will try to explain such happenings with some physical causes and think of hidden wires and fancy gadgets. But when he acquires knowledge of the spiritual side of the human being then the explanations become quite natural.

If they are produced unconsciously then the person to which they happen might get highly alarmed, call it poltergeist and get scared. But it just might be his own creation. He gets scared by his own makings. It is actually a lack of self-control, especially concerning their life body, 12. It is a lack of control over their mind.

So the life body, 12, can cause objects to be moved. The onlooker does not see that part of the life body that does these moves, he just sees the object as moving on its own, without visible contact - and is impressed. The onlooker might not realize that it is his own life body, 12, that does it, that he himself unconsciously produces such phenomena as making noises, overturning objects, letting pictures fall from the wall, and so on.

When a person dies then this life body, 12, slowly disintegrates. This life body does not move far away from the physical body, it stays close to it, and that is the reason why it can be seen, seen by physical people in the physical realm - when they are in a certain sensitive condition. Because the life body stays close to the decaying physical body, it can sometimes be seen in graveyards. So this is an explanation of ghost being seen in churchyards.

But this life body may only partly separate from the physical body. It then weakens the physical body. This may happen when there are conditions of weak health or mental distress. Then the life body protrudes from the physical body and the physical body starts to look lifeless. But such a thing also happens when supernatural materializations occur. So to know something about this life body can explain supernatural experiences and make them appear quite natural.

The Soul Body

To give another idea what it is all about with these three bodies we want to go to Ecclesiastes 12:6 where we find "Or ever the silver cord be loosed." Now this silver cord is a connection between the 12, the life body, and 13, the soul body. When we sleep we dream and in our dream state we move around and move away from the body. Our mind separates itself from the body. Our mind is not our brain. Our mind is connected to every cell of our body, not just to the cells of our brain.

The brain and the mind is not the same thing. The brain is something physical, the mind is not. The brain can be destroyed, the mind not. The mind can attach itself to the body, to every single cell of the body, and it can detach itself from it.

And the part of the body that moves around when we sleep is the soul body, 13. And the two parts that stay behind are the physical body, 11, and the life body, 12.

Now the connection between 13 on one side and 12 on the other side is this silver cord. The silver cord therefore connects the life body with the travelling soul body. This connection allows for communication between the two. The mind, or consciousness, is within the soul body and this connecting band is there to form a link.

If somebody comes and wakes us up then through this cord the mind is informed about the event and returns to the physical body in order to be able to operate it again and to be able to again use the five senses. We can also say that it was the conscious mind that went away in the soul body and that the subconscious kept being busy with the running of the body - through the silver cord.

The conscious mind and the subconscious were away. But the subconscious maintained contact – via this cord – with the body and managed the involuntary body functions. The sleeping body perceives the act of being awakened and reports this – via the cord – to the subconscious, which is travelling together with the conscious mind in the soul body, and the conscious mind decides to return, so that it can again run the body. During the absence the subconscious controlled the involuntary body functions only, now however all the voluntary body functions can also again be controlled: the eyes can get opened, the head can be turned towards the person doing the waking up, and the ears can hear what this person has to say.

Now when this silver cord is cut then physical death occurs. But this cord is not really a physical thing and can't really be cut. It is rather as described in Ecclesiastes 12:6, the cord is loosed, is severed. The connection is severed because the physical body has become lifeless.

The thickness of this silver cord is determined by the sense of worldliness of the soul. The more the soul of a person desires worldly things the thicker the cord between such a soul and its body grows. And the thicker this connecting band becomes the more difficult it becomes to disconnect it and when it has to be disconnected at death then it will cause much pain when it is rather thick. If it is thin then the separation will be very easy and cause no pain.

The physical body has become lifeless at death, consciousness has left it, and also the subconscious is not anymore running all the different functions of the physical body. The physical body is dead and starts to disintegrate. This happens because the life body is not there anymore and does not co-ordinate anymore the consciousness of the individual cells and of the individual atoms. The body falls to pieces, breaks up and disintegrates. The controlling life energy has left and the different particles separate from each other and scatter. The withdrawal of the spirit caused death.

The basic building block of everything is consciousness. And all these different parts of the now dead body are still made out of consciousness. But these different parts are not anymore co-ordinated. The co-ordinating agent, the life body is gone. Therefore the different parts become independent from each other and are transformed into other forms of matter and energy.

For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. James 2:26.

The physical body is dead; as it is with the body of Christ, the real church, when the spirit withdraws. Then death occurs, and the man-made church remains - a dead corpse. A withdrawal of the controlling life body as occurred. The many particles - no longer co-ordinated - separate from each other and decay sets in.

The disintegration process is a transforming of energy into other forms of energy. All these physical parts are conscious in themselves and they are just getting transformed into other physical substances, other physical substances that are also conscious. So there is some separation of consciousness taking place at death. As there is nothing that does not consists of consciousness, as consciousness is the basic building block of everything, of everything in the physical realm as well as in all other realms, this separation has to take place. So we see how complicated the human being actually is and how important it is to have knowledge about this in order to understand it and to understand spiritual things. But it is also very important that scientists like doctors understand this when they really want to help people and advance in knowledge of healthcare.

So at death the soul body, 13, separates from the physical body, 11. And the life body, 12, does the same, it also disconnects from the physical body. And now both the soul body and the life body are disconnected from the physical body. They were both connected to each other by the silver cord and this silver cord connecting 12 with 13 gets disconnected from the soul body, 13. And both - 12 and the silver cord - disintegrate. And the soul body, 13, is now separated from 11 and from 12, and is delivered from the heaviness of the physical body, is delivered from the bondage to earth. Gravity has no influence on it. It can now move freely, especially it can now move towards the light and enjoy spiritual life. But it does not have to; it can stay earthbound and can continue to suffer. The soul does not become suddenly, at death, full of knowledge and wisdom. If the soul was stupid and ignorant before death it will be so after death.

When a man dies he only separates himself from the physical body, he himself does not change; he remains as he is. His thinking - his mental nature - and his attitudes - his moral nature - stay as they are; they do not change. If a man is afraid of the light of God here on earth, he will be so on the other side as well; he will try to stay away from it and prefer darkness.

That is why it is advisable to progress here in this realm and to strive for more light here so that when we get to the other side we just carry on running towards the light.

When we are still alive and dream then consciousness has also left the body, and that is why sleep may be called the small death. But the subconscious carries on with the maintaining of the vital functions of the body, like breathing, circulation, digestion, and keeps the physical body alive. But our emotions are with the mind and therefore not in the physical body but in the soul body. Our emotions experience the dream happenings and that is why our real self is in this soul body and is therefore separated from our physical self. Our I is away from the physical body.

One morning this week I woke up and wrote down what I had dreamed. As it was some sort of a typical dream that I had had often before I asked the Holy Spirit to show me the meaning of it. Shortly after the writing down of the dream and of the fact that I had requested an explanation, the explanations came one after the other.

A typical thing occurring in such dreams was that I was moving in a vehicle and when I approached a difficult situation, like taking the corner too fast or going through a narrow part of the road or through a gate, I would apply the brakes and I slowed down somewhat but I could never slow down to such an extend as I thought I should and I could never bring the vehicle to a complete stop. I still know that while I was dreaming I decided to take my car to the workshop as soon as possible to get the brakes fixed. When I tried to explain this "failure of the brakes" myself then I was thinking of some shortcoming that might be in my make-up. But the Holy Spirit showed me that the vehicle I was travelling in was simply my soul body. I - my soul - was travelling in the body of the soul, the soul body. I simply had to realize this. The working on this material of the different parts of the human make-up caused me to have such a typical dream now again in order for me to see this. Simply the knowing of what it is, is the beginning of the solution. Now that I know that it is the soul body I am travelling in, I also know that travelling in my soul body is different from travelling in a motor car. I, for example, don't have to apply the brakes in order to stop or to slow down. When I go somewhere then I just have to think of where I want to go and the rest happens automatically. I might even just, suddenly, be at my chosen destination without experiencing how I got there. But also when I experience the different situations on my way to the destination, or when I just travel without having a particular destination, I don't have to worry about going too fast, about not quite making it, about damaging the vehicle by going through a gate too small for it. I am not travelling in a physical vehicle, I am travelling in a spiritual vehicle, my soul body, and even if the world I am travelling through is the physical world, I can't be hurt by it because my soul body will just go through the material objects. The physical things like the earth, the road, the buildings and structures, are no hindrance for my soul body, it will pass through them as if they didn't exist. After this was shown to me I realized that in my dreams I never suffered any disadvantages when my "brakes failed". I never got hurt; I never caused any damage, not to the road, or to a structure, and also not to my vehicle. My fears of something like this to occur were unnecessary. That means that in future, when I have such dream again, my mind is sorted out in this respect and I will see the whole situation as it really is and make the best out of it. This might even cause me to become aware, while dreaming, that I am dreaming; have a lucid dream.

What is a lucid dream? It is a dream in which I am aware that I am dreaming and in which I can also take actions, conscious actions.

What is lucid living? It is the same. It is living by being aware of that I am living and being aware that I can take action, any action I like. It is being aware that I am the one who decides about everything that happens. That everything that happens is happening because I have decided that it should happen.

So let us become lucid dreamers and lucid livers.

In our dreams we have no limits. So let us come to a stage where we also have no limits in our lives. We just have to change our minds accordingly.

The dream stage is just a stage of consciousness and so is the life stage. There is no great difference. In both stages we can adopt a limitless mind and use it.

If a soldier gets killed in battle he might not realize that he got killed, that he is now dead, and, now in his soul body, carries on fighting as if nothing has happened. He might, in his soul body and in his soul armour outfit and with his soul sword, thrust his sword through an enemy - thrust his soul sword through the physical body of a physical enemy. And he might not realize what is going on. He might not realize that his soul sword has no effect on the physical body of his enemy - that his enemy just keeps walking as if nothing has happened. He might even turn around and see his dead physical body lying there on the ground bleeding. And he might still not realize what is going on. He might do so for a long time. He might not come to his "senses" for a long time. His "ghost" might "haunt" this place for "ever." Why is this? Because he does not see what he doesn't want to see. His mind filters out everything that he doesn't believe exists. His believe system doesn't contain such an experience. That is why I write this and you read this so that we know about this and recognize it when it occurs and draw the right conclusions and the right actions: go to the light.

There might be some astronauts who get killed while landing on earth and they have a very materialistic kind of mind set given to them by a very materialistic culture and now they are dead and don't know what has happened. They also might see their own dead bodies lying there on the floor of their space ship and this does not ring any bell in them. The rescuers might be seen by them carrying away the bodies and also this does not wake them up. They might even stop these men and not realize that their arms and hands do not cause any action in the physical world. They might sit down and apply their mathematics in order to calculate what kind of condition they are in, to sort out scientifically what is going on. They are dead and there was no change in the framework of their minds. Their lack of knowledge causes them to not advance, advance spiritually.

So the mind can cause a person to completely ignore and deny changes that have taken place. The mind can cause a person to ignore happenings like freedom from gravity, like passing through solid matter, like having no influence on living people. Such a person might carry on "killing" others without noticing that nothing really happens, he might talk to others and get furious that he is not noticed, he might just float through a solid wall and not notice that this contradicts the laws of the physical world.

When a man with a very materialistic outlook dies he will have tremendous difficulties to feel and understand that he is now dead. Even if an advanced soul would come to him and tried to help him, such a helper would have to advise him to turn towards a suitable direction and only later show him that he now is in the spirit world and hope that he accepts this fact. And then he has to be brought to a point where he starts to take the initiative and determines his own fate and it has to be shown to him that he has to walk the way of love towards Jesus and towards his neighbour.

Now flying saucers, unidentified flying objects, UFOs, are things that come generally from other dimensions, from other planes, others then our physical plane. This is the reason why they are seen, and photographed, so seldom. Only people who are momentarily given the gift of discerning of spirits see them or they are seen by normal people because the UFO lets itself be seen in our sphere. There are also UFOs that are of our own plane, from another planet, and could be seen by everybody, but they are rare. Also UFOs from our own planet earth exist, but they are not from this plane, but from a higher plane than the physical. So when a person, having higher sight, sees such an UFO, such a thing from a higher plane, a soul plane, then this thing might just travel towards the earth and travel right through the earth. The earth does not stop the thing and doesn't damage it. And the earth is not damaged by it; there remains no surface sign that the UFO has penetrated the skin of the earth.

Why am I mentioning UFOs? Because when I am travelling in my soul body I do something similar. When I am flying - in my dream - then I am floating over the surface of the earth and I keep myself close to the earth, because when this flying stops then I am close to earth and I start to touch the earth with my feet and my body is supported by my legs and nothing bad happens.

Since I can remember I had dreams where I was walking or running and then I stopped touching the ground with my feet. It was not necessary anymore to support myself with my feet or being supported by the ground underneath me. I was floating. I was flying. But I did not seem to gain height. It was not really necessary to gain height. But it also could be that the fear of falling prevented me to gain height.

I didn't fly higher because I believed that when I fly higher I might fall down and hurt myself. But when I know that I am travelling in my soul body and that that soul body can't get hurt when it falls to the earth, that that hard earth will not have any effect on my soul body, that my soul body will just go right through it, then nothing really prevents me from flying higher. I also will know then that I will not fall. Gravity has no effect on my soul body. So this knowledge will liberate me and now I can look forward to have nice dream experiences and have experiences of lucid dreams and may be even have direct out-of-body-experiences, OOBs, get out of my physical body, without sleeping and without dreaming, and to fly around, because now I know that it is my soul body that does the travelling.

So this contemplating on these ideas and writing them down here will help me to renew my mind and help me to have better experiences in future.

I will have better experiences here while in my physical body and better enjoy my life here on this planet earth and I will also have gained experiences of the soul plane and because of this I will also be looking forward, after leaving my physical body, to this life in the hereafter and to enjoying it.

I have expanded my mind and I reap the benefit of this. I have collected some nice "survival evidence."

So I will get used to the fact that life on the next plane is different. On this plane I know that a solid thing stops me from further movement and that it might hurt me if I approach it too fast, I know that fire might burn me if I don't keep the right distance, I know that a body of water might drown me, I know air supports me only when I have the necessary means for this. So when I operate in the next realm then I have to learn to overcome the instinctive reactions that follow when I find myself in such situations. I have to learn to overcome these reactions. I have to put some effort into this. I must renew my mind and know that solid objects are no obstacle to my soul body; that fire will not burn it; that I do not need any support when I am in the air; and that I will not drown when I land in a body of water.

What we just discussed about UFOs applies also to bodies carried around by UFOs and to bodies generally. We have physical bodies here on earth. We have men, animals, plants and minerals. And we have soul bodies, like soul bodies of men, of men alive and of men "dead." There are souls that are earthbound, that are still attached to earth, like the soldier we spoke of or the astronauts. They stick to earth. We, who know something about these thinks, would probably very soon strive to reach higher planes, go towards the light. Others, who prefer darkness, will also prefer it then. Other such soul bodies might be angels, elves, gnomes, goblins, fairies, mermaids, ghosts, apparitions. They might be visible because they cause this to happen or because a person has for a moment the ability to see them - see them with the natural or the spiritual eyes. Then there are beings from other planets who are here and who are from this physical plane and who can be seen, but may be not recognized as such. And then we have all kinds of beings who are of other planes and who are from other planets or from completely different realms, from other dimensions. And they are all here because they are exploring, studying, sightseeing. They are here for the same reasons we would go to them. So we should not be afraid of them. Knowing about these things makes it much easier to experience them. And if they are nasty, or seem to be so, we always have our power of thought or of the spoken word, the sword of the spirit, which works in all dimensions. And we do not have to be aggressive when we use our power - we simply let the other being know what our wish is and do this in faith and therefore with authority. And when we can give help to such beings then we do it and advise them to strive towards the higher and lighter dimensions.

There are people or groups here on earth who do this helping in a quite direct way. They have learnt to get their soul body out of their physical body and travel, travel in the soul realms, and seek souls that have died and who don't know what to do next and help them. And these people need not be especially spiritual people, they simply know about these things and are willing to spend their time and energy to do such good deeds.

So the more we learn about these things the more natural they become to us.

To further illustrate these beings operating in different dimensions we can take men's visit to the moon. Beings from the moon, from different dimensions than ours, might be able to see this spacecraft from earth and these men from earth, from the physical dimension. They might be able to switch consciousness and see something in another realm.

So there are plenty of possibilities where other beings can come from. There is plenty to explore. They higher we climb the more interesting it becomes. And this growing has no end. A person that stops learning already here on earth, is simply a sad case. There are plenty of higher beings here on this planet earth around us trying to help us. So just let them. Those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God.

The more advanced a being is the less the need of some technical outfit. We don't really need a spacecraft. We can go anywhere with our soul body. So technical advance is not really the answer, spiritual advance however is.

We can observe this tendency when we have a look at the industrial side of life. The tendency is away from the manufacturing of things and is towards the use of information - to information science. Not long ago it was considered not advisable to buy shares of companies that did not have property and buildings and manufacturing plants that had some tangible values – tangible assets. Then this changed and people bought shares of companies that did not have much of these things, but provided services or sold software.

The trend is towards the spiritual side of life. Travelling will slowly change from moving bodies to just moving consciousness like in a telephone conversation or in a conference that is arranged via the internet and everybody remains in his office. There might come a time where we just use out-of-body experiences to meet somebody or to explore a distant planet and gather information about it.

So the soul body, 13, is not the soul itself, it is just a body for the soul – a means of transport. When we are dreaming we often see these spiritual bodies of other people and they see ours. But these spiritual bodies are just points of contact that help recognizing beings on these spiritual planes, in reality we are pure spirit and just energy and recognized by what we are and not by what kind of body we have.

When we get to know a person, in physical life, for the first time, in this first moment, we recognize the person's body. Then from this acknowledging of the body we start to gather information of the spiritual man. The face and its expressions give us some clues; the way the person moves his body, his posture, the way he dresses, the way he styles his hair, all these things give us indications about his spiritual situation. And the longer we know this person the more impressions we get and the more complete our idea of his personality becomes and the longer we know this person the more we know his inner workings. And these are the things that are really important and his name and his physical appearance are just secondary. And so it is in the spiritual realm, there we recognize a being by these qualities. And these qualities don't require a body, not even a spiritual body. They also don't require a name. So our real essence is pure spirit.

Now when I as a spiritual person pray for somebody to get healed then the following might happen. My higher self might decide to pay a visit to this person I have prayed for and to do this without my normal consciousness being aware of it. My higher self uses the soul body, 13, and lets it be seen by the ailing person. My higher self might also decide to be appearing in an outfit that it finds suitable for that situation and for the conditions of that person's mind and that outfit might not exist in the physical realm. And my soul body, 13, is getting used for this purpose. And the person visited gets enabled to see me, including my adornment, and this "miracle" has the effect that this person's mind gets really shaken and healed - a by-product of this might be a physical healing - and that this person tells others about this visit at night and becomes a believer. This person might be able to see a soul body, including its soul dress, because it is not in its waking consciousness, but is half asleep and therefore able to see into another realm, but aware that it was not a dream but a "real" occurrence. Now this person might report this happening the next morning to somebody and I might get to hear about it, but it might also be that I never get to hear about it, not even that that person got healed. We must learn to live by faith, not by sight.

So what happened? All the time I was in my bed and not aware of anything, just sleeping. But my mind decided to use my soul body, 13, and left my physical body, 11, and showed itself as a spirit to this person. And this person saw it because he was also partly out of his body and therefore able to see in the spirit realm.

Why did my mind do this? Why was that person not simply healed? Why this dramatic appearance? Because healing is actually a quite simple thing. It is our natural condition to get healed and to be healthy. The difficult thing is to get a person's mind changed. And there something dramatic is often required. A person must come from the other side of the world, or as in this case, from a completely different world, the spirit world. That will shake people up and allow them to adopt a new belief system.

The higher we go, the more a change takes place, the more energy becomes information. We find the same in electricity. On our physical plane we have electricity and in the form of high voltage power we use it to help us with physical tasks. When we want to use electricity for the purpose of information transfer then we use low voltage current. The higher the spiritual value of information becomes, the lower is the way we can physically detect this information flow.

When we study the various portions of the body then we see that there are different flows of information. On the lowest level the brain is involved. On a higher level the soul body, 13, is involved. It is this intangibility - this soul body - that is behind all physical and behind all organisms like the physical body. All cells of the physical body are communicating by means of the soul body. The physical parts of the body that carry information like nerves are completely dependent on this soul body. The soul body is the actual frame that allows the physical body to exist. The physical body actually gets constructed by the mind using the soul body for this purpose. The construction occurs by means of information. Information is used to organize energy and create physical things, like parts of our body and the whole body.

The main subject we are studying here is the mind. A purpose of the mind here in this physical universe is the creating of the physical body. We must never lose track of this fact. God created in the beginning heaven and earth. We are created in his image. We carry on creating the physical universe - including our bodies and including all circumstances of this life. If we get this fact properly established in our thinking then it will be fairly easy to understand a lot of things. It will then become easy to understand how faith works, how we create with our believing and with our speaking, and how we get to a point in life where we always will have a healthy body and prosper in all ways. We simply have this because we consciously create it all the time. We sing the song of thanksgiving all the time and with it we create all these nice things. Always keep this first sentence of the Bible in your mind, it will be very helpful; and don't forget that you and God are one, there is no separation. We are all the time forming our own physical body and world around us - the good and strong and healthy ones as well as the bad and weak and sick ones. So let's concentrate on doing it sensibly and create what is good for us and stop to create illness and physical problems.

The soul body is not a physical body, but it still has form. This form does not take up space. Our physical body takes up space, but not the soul body. The soul body takes form as a dream image takes form. This takes place in another dimension. The physical laws are not applying to this dimension. Time is required for our mind to construct the physical world around us, but in this other dimension the mind can construct things immediately, like he does when he constructs a dream image. We are here in a dimension that is somehow between the physical universe we know and the spiritual realm. We are creating our dream images all the time, even when we are awake, but we do not focus on them all the time. This realm in which the soul body exist is a permanent realm, it exists all the time. When I dream then my consciousness is directed into this realm and turned away from the physical realm. But the physical realm does not stop to exist. My physical senses still exist, but my consciousness is not focused on them. This semiphysical soul body and these semiphysical dream images are part of this semiphysical dimension. It is a dimension where space and time are already not functioning the same way they function in the physical world. Space and time are not part of the spiritual world, but in this world of the soul they still have some influence. In this semiphysical world matter still exists in a way but the compactness is less than it is in the physical world. Our consciousness can move back and forth between these two realities. They are different states of consciousness. This change in consciousness takes place every day and is most natural. We awake and we fall asleep every day, it is the most natural thing that can happen. We live in both of these two realities. The realm of the soul is to us as natural as the material realm. We move in and out of them all the time. This change of consciousness is as easy as is the change of consciousness when we die. When we fall asleep we turn our consciousness away from the body, we are temporally separated from the body, and when we die then we do so permanently. Our consciousness then remains in the soul body and does not return to the physical body. The physical body consist of matter organized by electromagnetic parts. The soul body, our unseen self, is this organizing agent of our physical body consisting of electromagnetic parts. When it is seen then such an event is considered to be something unusual, supernatural. Experiences and thoughts and memories are not things that are physical, they are kept inside this soul body. When we die then all this remains. It is the stuff we take with us. It is nonmaterial stuff. The material stuff we leave behind. So it is important to collect the stuff we can take with us. To collect material stuff is a waste of time. To collect the stuff we can take with us is important and there we should collect stuff that is good and beneficial. If we collect bad stuff then we have to suffer here and now and we have to suffer afterwards as well.

We change daily our states of consciousness and we can learn to become more aware of this and to change more consciously our conscious states. We could for example learn, while we are in our normal wakeful conscious state, to become conscious of the dreaming that takes place all the time, but of that we are normally aware only when we are sleeping and then also only partly. So what about being aware of our dreams while we are awake? An interesting idea.

So this soul body is an intermediary form between spirit and matter. It is difficult for us to think of ourselves as a spirit only, as something that does not have any form and does not have any material attached to it. So we have this soul body as a makeshift. When we dream then the soul body is somehow our dream body.

The next thing we should now discuss is the soul. We will do this in another chapter of this series.

This is the end of "Mind and Body"

Next chapter: [23]

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