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[Home]>[The Man-Made Church]>[24. Mind and Spirit]

This is the 24. Chapter of "The Man-Made Church."

24. Mind and Spirit

by Frank L. Preuss

In the previous chapter, Mind and Soul, we have dealt more with the soul as the second of the three main parts of man and in the chapter before that, Mind and Body, with the body, the first main part. Now here in this chapter now, Mind and Spirit, we want to have more a look at the spirit, the third main part of man.

Now we have a lower self and we have a higher self. And it is here where the spirit comes into the whole thing. It is the influence of the spirit that decides who is running our lives, the lower self or the higher self.

The more the spirit has a say the more we will live a life of being led by the spirit, a life that is successful and fulfilled.

To be really in control of our life we have to come to a stage where we have learned to get rid of every thought and of every desire that is not really acceptable when we would examine it. This must happen automatically. We must reject immediately such a thought right at the beginning.

The higher mind is where the Holy Spirit is situated. There God, the higher self, works with our higher mind. The lower mind is the dwelling of the lower self or the ego or the evil principle or the devil or Satan or the deceiver, whatever you want to call it. There the lower self works with your lower mind.

There is a more meaningful definition of the lower mind or of the devil. The "devil" is the belief in separation; this belief if the root of all evil. When you believe this - that there is separation - then you are "fallen" and you should get up and not stay in the fallen position. Leave the "fall" behind. You are not separated from God and you are not separated from anything else. Your purpose is to create as God creates. We are co-creators. The only difference between us and God is that God created us. We did not create ourselves. So our existence does not depend on us. We can relax; we didn't create ourselves, we didn't usurp the power of God. We can relax because our worth was not established by us, but by God. So we don't have to worry about anything simply because we didn't make ourselves. We do not need to be troubled about anything.

Separation does not really exist. But you can believe that it exists. You can believe in separation. You can believe in the devil. But your belief doesn't cause them to exist.

Separation does not exist and death does not exist either. But you are free to believe that both exist. You can believe this and suffer.

The way you feel is a guide to know which of the two minds, the higher or the lower, is running your life. Your feelings and your attitudes and your behaviour show you who is in control. It is that easy. It is always your choice to which part of the mind you are listening. You can at any time change your mind. You can observe your frame of mind and you will know who is in charge. So when you are not at peace and joy is absent then you know that it is the lower mind who has taken over. So just change channels. There is no need to carry on running in the wrong direction. Just change your mind and think with the mind of God. When you do this then your mind is whole - is holy; when you don't do this, then you have a split mind - a broken mind. So whenever you are depressed or sad or you feel down then change your mind. Your choice was a wrong one and now you make a new one, a better one. Watch your moods.

When your mind is split then it is broken - kaput; it is not whole, not holy. When your mind is whole then it is worked by the Holy Spirit and it is whole - holy. Your mind and God's mind are then one, there is then Oneness. Your mind is then at a stage of oneness. The adjective "one" becomes a noun when the ending -ment is added and we then have "one-ment" and when we then add the word "at" to this in order to describe where we are then we get the word "at-one-ment" and this word means that we are in oneness with God - it is the word "atonement". It is a stage where God's mind and your mind are united. It is a very powerful state of mind. At this stage nothing is impossible. Never believe that you are not worth the effort to reach this stage of united mind. Making this effort is what it is all about. Atonement is the end of separation. When you are not separated from God then you are okay. Then you can't sin - you are then sinless. So don't try to lead a sinless life, leave that to God, just practise oneness, practise atonement.

Those who are led by the spirit of God are the sons of God.

Just keep an eye on your mind. Mind your mind. Practise unity.

So to atone for, to repent of, is to end the separateness, is to make an end to disunity.

Now in order to understand these three subparts of the soul better and to understand better the influence of the spirit on them, we will look at a person which is not influenced by the spirit - where the mind does not lead every thought into the obedience of Christ.

Such a person might also be quite powerful. If a person is in control of his thoughts but leads every thought not in the direction of the teachings of Christ but in the direction of what suits his worldly ambitions and his wish to become powerful and controlling, then such a person goes in the direction of black magic and not in the direction of white magic. He becomes a sorcerer, a person that does evil; a person who is governed by greed and lust for power.

And when one has to deal with this type of people it is good to know something about the details of their operations and how to counteract them.

And it is exactly this point - the understanding of these important details - that makes it necessary to learn about the different parts of a human being.

So let us get to the last, the third main part of us. It is the spirit, 3.

Also this part has three subparts. The first is the mind, 31; the second is the intellect, 32; and the third is the spirit man, 33.

We now have all nine subparts. Together with their main parts they are:

1 body

11 physical body

12 life body

13 soul body

2 soul

21 sense soul

22 mind soul

23 awareness soul

3 spirit

31 mind

32 intellect

33 spirit man

The study of these things is it what it is really all about in the science of nature and in the human sciences. Only when these things are understood can one really understand natural science and spiritual science. Here we again have something that science and religion have in common. They both care little about these things. Especially the theologians should try to advance as much as possible in these things to give the people as much help as possible, but also in order to give the natural scientists directions in which they should go and do research work.

To call teachings like these occultism, or esoteric, or new age stuff is just not helpful and puts people off. It is 'old age' teaching and it comes from all corners of the world and it is not kept secret at all and is not mystical either. It is not even supernatural. It is plain natural and everybody can experience it.

All subjective experiences are real experiences and will stand before a court of law. Law courts accept the reports of witnesses and when scientists and religionists don't accept the testimony of a witness and the evidence brought by people then there is something wrong with them. So the religionists and the scientist have a problem. And when people are influenced by these so called natural scientists and so called spiritual scientists then they have a problem and not the people that simply study the evidence available in plenty of sources and records - and also not the people that experience these things.

One result of this contemplation should be that we forget trying to prove to so-called scientist the things we know and experience. It is just a waste of time. Most of the real scientists seem to get the ideas for their results anyway from these age old teachings and from their personal experiences and they just don't talk much about it, they just keep it for themselves. And so they avoid much trouble from the scientists that are just ignorant. Einstein said that he kept out of much trouble by often saying nothing.

So don't waste energy by getting involved with so-called scientists. Stay away from them and stay away from religionists. Jesus left them, and departed.

A real scientist will use the age old teachings to give him direction; the so-called scientist will make fun of it. The same applies to the real spiritual scientist. He will be after wisdom. But the so-called spiritual scientist will just start his persecution machinery and will become a heresiologist.

These fools show their annoyance at once, but a wise man keeps quiet, he says nothing.

So when the gifts of the spirit are in operation and miracles take place and people get healed, don't try to get so-called scientist involve and don't try to proof to them that these things are real. You will just destroy the faith that is in existence and you cast the pearls before the swine. And these so-called scientists will make a fool out of you.

How will they make a fool of you? Things will be working when people of faith are around. When unbelieving people will be around as well then they might get touched by what is happening but these unbelieving people will just be a part of all the people that are present. But when these unbelieving people become the initiators, the ones that now want to direct what is happening, the ones that now request to see a miracle, the ones that want to obtain proofs, the ones that want to start a scientific investigation, then the spirit will leave and no proof will be obtained and you will be told that all is just not true, that you are a person full of illusions.

There is one method to convince such people of the existence of spiritual things and that is to challenge them. Give them the task to meet all the conditions that are required to awaken the divine spirit in them and then let the awakened spirit take over the soul. If they comply with these conditions then they themselves will experience in their own life the credibility of all this.

Let us come back to the three subparts of the spirit. The first one is the mind. Now the mind, 31, gives spiritual information to the self, the I, the awareness soul, 23. So the I receives input from the physical realm via the senses, the physical body, 11, from the five sense organs, and the I receives input from the spiritual realm via the mind, 31.

The I lives in the soul and the spirit is in the I. The I gives the spirit a home. The spirit brings light into the I.

The I gives the spirit the individuality. The spirit becomes somehow an individual thing. And the I becomes an eternal being through this input of the spirit.

So the I, the self, receives spiritual revelations from the spirit self, from "above," and it receives physical revelations from the world of the senses, from "below." The awareness soul, 23, the self, the I, perceives through the soul body, 13, what the sense become aware of and through the mind, 31, what comes from the spirit.

The intellect, 32, is that subpart that should absorb spiritual food from the spiritual realm and grow through this activity. This soaking up of spiritual things has everlasting value.

The spirit man, 33, is the spiritual part of the human being and is part of the spirit, of God, is in unity with God, is part of God.

This spirit man can exist on all planes and all the other parts of man are just aspects of it.

The interesting thing is now the way the self, the I, the awareness soul, 23, is influenced. From below it is influenced by desires, lust, passions and emotions. From above it is influenced by spiritual effects.

When the spiritual effects penetrate the desires, lust, passions and emotions, then the I has been permeated by the spirit self. The I has then become the ruler over the world of the senses. The more the I is influenced by the spirit the more it will be able to have dominion and rule.

So the I can be ruled from below, from the senses, or it can be ruled from above, from the spirit. If it is totally ruled from below then such a person is controlled by its feelings, appetites, emotions, passions, desires, habits. Under these fall things like hunger and thirst, lust for power, money or sex, hatred, jealousy and envy, the desire for entertainment, sightseeing, material things. The more such a person develops into a spiritual person the more he escapes from the dominion of these sensations and passions.

The more a person has learnt to bridle and conquer his carnal desires the more he will advance to a higher level when he ends his visit on earth and goes to a spiritual plane.

So let us look again at all the parts together:

The interaction between the soul and the spirit is what lets us grow or what lets us stagnate. All thoughts that are positive and constructive encourage the spirit and quicken it and help to widen the channel between the soul and the spirit and help let spiritual things flow into the soul. The contact between God and us is improving.

This contact is deteriorating when negative, destructive thoughts happen. They cause a barrier to get erected. They cause such a barrier to grow higher and to let less of the spirit come through. The higher this barrier becomes the less light from the spirit comes through and enlightens us. Especially the repetition of limiting and unhelpful thoughts is strengthening this barrier. Light and life wants to radiate and shine into us but this barrier keeps the smooth flow of imaginations and of intuition and ideas from occurring. The yearnings from the spirit are hindered. Hunches and prompting are impeded. Spiritual beings that want to help us are not really coming through. We can't hear them. These things don't arrive in our conscious mind; they don't reach it.

So our life will become successful when this flow from above takes place because above us is the spiritual realm and the highest part of us, the spirit man, 33, is part of this realm, is part of God, and only when this connection works we will be really part of this Oneness and we will be healthy. When this connection is not working then we are like cancerous cells that lost contact with the essence of a person and form something that is not really part of the body, is alien inside the physical body and is harmful.

To make this business of oneness more understandable imagine you being a cell in your body. Now you are a cell in one of the organs of your body and you are alive as all the other cells around you as well. You are happy and you are pulling together with your neighbours in one direction - the wellbeing of the whole, of the whole body and of every part and organ of it.

But now for some reason a change of mind occurs and you become depressed and negative and adopt a worldly attitude. You start to see your neighbours as individuals that are quite separate from you. When they have something you do not have then you become jealous and when you have something they do not have then you become proud. A competitive thinking starts to emerge in your mind. You want that others become responsible for the things in your life, your neighbours or the government or whoever. On the other hand you begin to think that other people must do what you think is the right thing to do. You want to manipulate them. A slave mentality develops. You want to be a slave master and you also sometimes behave like a slave who thinks others must run your life. You become a burden to society - a member of society that causes harm to the whole and increases the sickness thinking and sickness habits of the whole. You become a sick part of that organ of your body and you become a part of that organ that is diseased. You become a disease. You have lost sight of you being part of the whole and this thinking of separateness causes disorder, affliction and infirmity. You have become a cancer in your own body. You have become a cancer to yourself.

When I watch the tides of the sea then I see the sandbanks appearing when the tide is low. After a while I notice that sometimes at low tide much of the mud flat area can be seen and that at other times when it is low tide only a small area of the mud flats are seen and I wonder why this is so. Then I start to observe the sun and the moon and see a connection here with the tide. I notice that when the sun and the moon are both more or less in the same position, let us say they are both near the horizon, then the spring tides occur and the sea is very low at low tide and very high at high tide. And when the sun and the moon are not together, when the sun for example is alone at the horizon and the moon is standing high in the sky, then neap tides take place: the water is moving only a little between high and low levels. When the two heavenly bodies pull together in one direction then the effect on the water of the earth is much bigger than when they more or less cancel out their forces and the gravitational pull of the moon is much diminished by the pull of the sun in a direction that actually contradicts the pull of the moon. I can observe the effects of gravitation. Now gravitation is an invisible force. By not only using the observations of the senses but by also drawing on the knowledge received earlier about physical laws, I can see these connections. I can see the influence of these invisible forces. If I now go a step further then I can also see the influences of the Holy Spirit, which is also an invisible force. In addition to my observations of the senses and the knowledge received during my education, I can draw on my knowledge of spiritual laws and work in these spiritual principles in my contemplation. My understanding of the spiritual side of life makes me go much further than when I just use the observations of my body and the knowledge received in my past. Only when I draw on all three, on sense knowledge, on my mind, and on the influence from my spirit, will I be a fully operational human being. Only then will my life start to run smoothly. Only then will I be able to start and understand the ups and downs, the tides, in the life of people around me and the life that I live myself. The tides of life will become obvious to me when this spiritual side of life is not missing - only then. I might observe the material development, the financial side of a certain person in my personal circle of friends, and see that this person is struggling. But I will only then really be able to understand his situation when I don't exclude the spiritual side of his life. Only when I am able to see spiritual things, when I start paying attention to the words he is speaking and therefore gain an understanding of his thought processes, and again therefore gain insight into his belief system, will I start to understand his lack of achieving financial wellbeing. If these spiritual insights are missing I basically don't understand anything. But when they are present then my understanding is also there, and then, and only then, can I be of help to him. When I am able to measure his faith, recognize his belief system, can understanding occur and can change take place.

I must learn to see this influence of the spiritual force of the Holy Spirit which is as invisible as the physical force of gravity is. The development of this getting to know the workings of spiritual forces might take time but I must busy myself with such observations all the time. My physical sense input must constantly be illuminated by the spirit and my spirit must constantly penetrate the sense input.

The more you see the effects of spiritual influences the more you will be convinced that these spiritual influences are real and exist.

The more you grow in this development the more you will walk by faith and not by sight and the more this faith will change into knowledge.

You will start to know that spiritual laws are real and work and have the effect they describe.

A faith in a life after death will become more and more knowledge. It will become knowledge and certainty that your life will not end with "death" but will really take off when this transition takes place. Only then life will really begin. Only after we have left the flesh behind us will we really be free and complete.

Eternal life becomes a certainty when the effective workings of spiritual laws have been observed over long periods of time. It becomes truth and reality and fact.

When all the time in your life you see what these invisible things do, you recognize their existence. Invisible things like gravity and spirit must exist because you see all the time what they do.

It is your strength. This strength of yours lies in the fact of your experience and your knowledge. You cannot see your strength but you have confidence in it and know that it exists because this strength of yours makes it possible all the time to act and achieve what you want to achieve. And at the end of this chain comes the event that you can see. The end result is something that you senses can perceive. It is something that you have created.

All physical things, all things that your sense soul, 21, can observe, are the result of a chain of events that started in the spiritual realm.

The spiritual side of your life is the side that is the really important one, the eternal one.

So the existence of the Holy Spirit is manifested by the results. The results of the presence of God are there and they show and proof that the Holy Spirit exists and is present.

And the workings of the Holy Spirit are not of this world. They are supernatural. The seal of the Holy Spirit is the supernatural. Miracles are where the Holy Spirit is; they are his signature. The miraculous is the normal occurrence where the spirit is active. And that is the reason why limits are not necessary. We don't have to limit ourselves. Everything is possible. There is always an escape. There is no such thing as a hopeless situation. We are spirit. We are spiritual beings. Nothing is impossible for us. Only when we forget this fact we become limited.

The spiritual side of our life is the real thing. The other aspects are just there to allow us to gain experience in creating, allow us to experiment with how it is when we are separated from God. But this separation is just imagined, in reality we never can be separated from God, we only can think we are.

Miracles are violations of the laws of the physical world and they are therefore proof that the physical world is the product of the spiritual world. The spiritual world is of much higher order than the physical one. It can overrule it anytime. When we are operating there then we can direct the affairs of the physical realm.

Growth and reproduction are qualities that belong to the body of a human being. But these qualities also belong to plants and to animals. So what other qualities are there that animals and plants have in common with us? What about a soul? Have animals and plants a soul? Are they conscious?

The most elementary building block is consciousness. So animals and plants are made out of consciousness. But this also applies to minerals. Also a mineral is made out of consciousness. So the basic stuff everything is made of is consciousness and this is an indicator that it is really the spiritual that is basic. The material is just a manifestation of the spiritual. Take the material away and nothing much is taken away, the spiritual still remains. And the spiritual can't be taken away. It is eternal. We again and again should make ourselves aware of this fact. The spiritual is the real thing. We live by faith, not by sight.

And consciousness and thinking are closely related to each other. So thinking is the real basic element and this is what it is all about when we consider a subject that deals with the mind.

When we look at a mineral, let us say at a rock, we might have problems accepting that such a rock has consciousness. For all the people who lived before the twentieth century such a claim would be difficult to accept. But for us today living in the twentieth and in the twenty-first century it is much easier to accept this. We know that micro particles are really just consisting of energy whirling around and giving us the idea to be solid things. Everything is just energy. Matter in its basic form is just energy. Matter is perceived by us to be solid, but when we look closely, through our modern extensions of our senses, arm our eyes with scientific instruments, then we find out that this is not so, that most of the space what we thing is occupied by solid matter is in reality empty space in which some tiny things spin around each other and they themselves are also not solid but mere energy. So there seems to be just empty space and this empty space is also just something we perceive but which does not really exist. Space and time exist only because of our limited way to be conscious. Time is just perceived as such because we can't be conscious of past and present and future at the same time, but in reality there is just an eternal Now. The secret is to live in this eternal Now. There it is where everything happens and where everything can be changed. Even the past can be changed in this eternal Now. Our will, our capacity to make decision, our volition, only operates in this Now. If we imagine we could step outside our galaxies we might think we see one galaxy as a solid block of matter, but we know that it is just empty space with energy in motion.

To make a difference between inorganic and organic matter is sometimes helpful to consider certain aspects of our material world, but basically everything is life and is full of life; there is no such thing as dead material. And this fact makes it much easier for us to understand and accept that the spiritual side of life is the thing that really matters, that is creating and sustaining the seemingly solid world of matter, and that it is this spirit realm that makes miracles possible and that the miraculous is our daily bread and that this miraculous way of life is what lets us change every situation here and now in this eternal Now. It is just a matter of decision; of our power to use our will and our intention; of being aware that this is so; of being aware that there is only One; of being aware that our separation between us and God is not reality, but just a belief, an idea that we maintain in our thinking and that we can drop it whenever we want.

How does this miraculous life look like? Every moment I live in the Now and use my willpower to decide to live a positive life; I make a declaration of intention silently in my mind to always turn my thoughts around towards Christ and his teaching and thereby create life situations that are just helpful and are helpful for me and for the people around me.

We started our reflections with saying that we live in a body, we have a soul and we are a spirit. We are spiritual beings.

The main parts of us are:

1 body

2 soul

3 spirit.

The important thing is that we realize that we are spirit. It is the spirit with whom we identify ourselves. If we identify ourselves with the body then we will have serious problems. It is a delusion to think that one is a body. How do I know if I identify with the body? I know when I am busy with material, worldly things, when I am building a house, when I am gathering wealth, when I am acquiring property and assets, when I see to that I have descendants, when I am after titles, when I interested in climbing up the social ladder. Why do people identify with the body? They do that out of ignorance. And what is the result of all this ignorance? It is sorrow, it is misery, it is grief.

So the source of suffering and sickness and misery is ignorance. And the source of ignorance is the identification with the body.

So we have to realize that we are spirit. If I realize that I am spirit then I am on the right track. And I get onto this right track by acquiring knowledge - the right kind of knowledge. The light must come. Darkness is conquered by light.

How do I know that I am on the right track? How do I know that I am identifying with the spirit? I know when I am in a state of peace - the right kind of peace, the peace that transcends all understanding. And when this kind peace is a permanent feature then I have joy and happiness. And also this is then a permanent feature. I am then free from grief and from lack of peace and from agitation and stress.

So it is the recognition of immortality. It is obtaining liberation. It is becoming lord over one's senses, over one's body.

When you identify with the body then you will fear death. If you identify with the spirit then there is no need to fear death. So you actually cannot die simply because you are not the body. My and your spirit has nothing to do with death and nothing to do with birth either. Spirit is eternal.

The mind is a beautiful tool - when it is used the right way. This is one of the key points in life, that we realize that we can use the mind. Just this realization alone - that the mind can be used - can bring plenty of liberation; that we can influence what we are thinking, that we are not at the mercy of the mind. When the mind is racing, for example, then we can do something about it. We can speak peace into it. We can control it.

It is good to study and observe the mind, find out how it works. It seems difficult to get control over it.

So the first thing is to become aware of the fact that one can do something about all this. And then the next step is to start and observe the mind. One stands back and simply observes all the funny things the mind is doing. That also means that one realizes that one is not the mind.

The self is something else. The self can separate itself from the mind and observe it. Then we have the observer and the observed: two different things. This is an important step one can take, a step in the direction of becoming powerful. It is detachment. Detachment is the way to start ruling the mind.

When I become aware that I am not the mind but that I can be separate from it, then I start to become independent of it and I can get some hold over it. I then can simply observe the mind wandering knowing that I can stop it and that I can bring the mind back to where I want it to be. I simply don't worry about this wandering because I know that I can do something about it. It is a matter of practice - of experience - of being led by the spirit, of letting the spirit remind me of getting the mind back to where I want it to be. It is the way of self-control.

All this requires that I take time for this and spend some time doing this. I have to spend time alone with my mind, with my self. It is difficult, even impossible, to do this while I am busy with other things, busy with other people. I will have to spend some time alone. I have to become still and know that there is God. I have to find myself. There is the need to meditate upon the things of God but there is also the need to be still and to know that God is God. This being still and being detached from the body and from the mind is required and is a time that will become very precious and valuable. It will not be something that we have to do but don't really want to do. It is something that will become the cornerstone of one's life. It will become the source of all energy and of all activity and of all ideas and impulses. It becomes a spiritual discipline and exercise and the source of peace and joy and happiness.

The really important thing is the spirit. What then is the soul and what is matter? When everything is actually spirit, is consciousness, is love, is God, what then is a soul and what is matter?

The soul is a sort of special kind of spirit. The soul is that what makes matter possible. Without spirit a soul could not be. And without a soul a material thing could not exist. So the inner spiritual thing of a material thing is its soul. And this soul causes the material thing to exist. It creates it and it sustains it.

So a soul is something like the substance of spirit. And matter is something like the substance of the soul.

Everything therefore depends on spirit. Everything comes from spirit. And everything also returns to spirit. Spirit becomes soul and soul then becomes matter. That is the way down. And the way up is that matter becomes soul and soul becomes spirit. The biblical term for this is Jacob’s ladder.

Genesis 28:12:

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.

The angels represent spirit or spirits. The angels descend from heaven - from spirit - to soul and finally to matter – earth. And then the angels ascend from matter to soul and then back to spirit. What is this movement all about? It is a teaching machine.

If one wants to teach many people some details of a technology then one could make a movie about this and show this movie to these people wherever they are, at different places and at different occasions. The movie would be made by specialists who really know their stuff and then shown to the learners and they then would get some really good teaching. The learners would come together in a room where the movie is shown and then have this learning experience. The room where the movie is shown and the movie itself and also the learners would comprise something like a learning machine.

After the learners have come out of the room they will have learned something.

We should look at life on earth as being such a teaching machine. Such an attitude would also help us to practise detachment.

After we come out of this earthly life we will have learned something. We have – or should have – progressed.

We should spend much time practising contemplation and thinking and use for this purpose the manifoldness of God’s creation because it is an excellent opportunity to spend one’s life thinking about it and to reflect on it and to draw comparisons and parallels. The richness of nature exists exactly for this purpose. It is a school for us and a learning device where we can make choices and choose that what we like and reject what does not appeal to us. And this will lead to a situation where we will get acquainted with the full freedom of our will.

So this physical life is a school and a learning device. It is like a movie. A movie is just a play with light effects and the German word for movie is Lichtspiele: light plays. In a movie we just see the playing of lights. There are no real people and things and events. It is just an illusion. And so it is actually with our physical life. There is no real reality. We just create our body in our mind and all the other things around us as well and this body and its senses then seem to be aware of the world around us and perceive this world and we then believe that all this is reality. But before we perceive it all we actually had created it. The only thing we really can prove to ourselves is that we are aware of something. And that happens inside of us, in our soul, not in our body. And that the person next to us perceives the same things that we perceive does not make illusion a reality but only proves the existence of telepathy. There is only one mind. So the whole thing is just a teaching machine. Physical reality is not what it seems to be. It is a necessary delusion of the senses that exist to give us the opportunity to grow spiritually. Now as long as a man lives in order to gain physical things - to be active to serve his body and to gather the things of the world - he will be deluded. He will then not realize that his body and all the worldly things are an illusion, and because of this illusion of the body also his soul will be deceived. Anybody who considers the life of the body as his life and thinks that it is reality will have a dead soul and his soul will remain dead as long as the soul does not become aware of the fact that the life of the material flesh body is actually death.

Now all material stuff is soul substance. All rocks and earth – minerals – and all plants and all animals and all men are soul substance. It is soul substance in a more solid state – more solid then the soul. The destiny of all this material stuff – of all matter – is to return to spirit. It is a way for spirit to gain independence. This isolation into matter makes it possible to become independent – independent from God or rather like God.

For spirit to go down to matter means to loose freedom; for matter to go up to spirit means to regain freedom. But during this process the isolation from God has taken place. And this allows for the independence of life.

This life independence is attained by a self-activity which is raised all the time to a higher level.

This raising to a higher level takes place when a thing "dies." When a thing dies then the soul of this thing separates from the thing and is raised to a life stage that is higher than that of the previous stage.

So when a plant dies for example then the soul of the plant separates from the plant. This soul then might – together with the souls of other stuff, of other plants or whatever – then form the soul of perhaps an animal and will get reborn as an animal. The dead matter of the plant, which is energy, decays and is used for a new life as something else or is eaten by an animal and lands in its stomach.

An animal has more independence than a plant and therefore progress is achieved for this soul. The animal can be more self-active than a plant.

So a soul becomes free of matter and then changes again into another chrysalis. So a soul moves out of a thing and then moves into another one. And every one of these moves is a new step in life.

So when the soul now occupies a new thing then it has to draw out of this new life stage new life substances and activity substances and make these substances its own.

The spirit of this soul observes what is going on and monitors the progress. Has the soul matured so far that its goal has been achieved then a higher stage can be envisaged. Then the spirit of the soul will cause the body of the soul to be taken off the soul. The body of the soul has now fulfilled its purpose and is not needed anymore and can get discarded. The soul has now reached a higher level of intelligence and can form itself into another body. And in this new body the soul can grow and reach an even higher level of life intelligence and of activity intelligence. And this process continues until finally the human being is reached. And in this last body the soul reaches final liberation and full self-assertion and full consciousness. The knowledge of God becomes part of this soul and love becomes its motive for all activities and this happening is then called the new birth – to be born again.

When the soul has reached this stage then it is complete. It is now perfect and independent. It is now a god. It is now a child of God. And a child’s destiny is to become like its father. So a child of God is to become like God.

When an animal eats another animal or an animal eats a plant, let us say a donkey eats a carrot then the soul of this plant, the soul of the carrot gets set free and can move on. The soul of the carrot can now ascend to a higher stage of life. But also the donkey has a soul and also this soul is to ascend. The body of the carrot however also contains soul substances. These are getting combined with the soul substances of the donkey’s soul. And they improve the soul substances of the soul of the donkey and the donkey becomes more intelligent and his soul might become - after it is freed from the donkey’s body – part of the soul of a human being. So this earth is a teaching machine. And when a soul gets separated from its body then this soul does not really loose anything but rather gains something because it now can reach its destination faster.

So this whole fight for survival is not really as cruel as it looks like. The enemies in life are not really enemies of life but rather enemies of the material life only. And this material life is not the real life but rather a tool of the real spiritual life. The true inner spiritual life uses the material life to work its way up to real freedom and liberty.

Let me now give you a very nice description of what the soul is and where it is located in the physical body of a human being. I am now going to quote from Jakob Lorber’s Das große Evangelium Johannes (The Great Gospel of John). It is a quote taken out of Volume 6 Chapter 218:

The soul as a spiritual substance is really perfect man, both according to form and also according to all limbs and components of the body! And if it were not so it could not make full perfect use of its body. The hands of the soul are located in the hands of the body, its feet in the body’s feet, and so on all parts of the soul are in the corresponding parts of the body. Whenever the body gets sick then the soul is also present in the sick body parts and tries very hard to heal them. If it does not succeed it becomes inactive and the result is that such a part of the body becomes paralyzed, almost numb and appears to be inactive. This is a good and true teaching of all old and also new psychologists. But the question here is how did such wise men find out about this. This question can easily be answered.

To begin with reason will lead a sober thinker to this; since the soul is entirely the actual life principle of the human being in all its parts it also must be present inside all parts of the body because otherwise certain parts of the body would obviously not have life and would just be as dead as the whole body is dead when the soul leaves it. But as the whole body is active so has the soul to be extended over the whole body as cause of the life activity. And so the soul is – already according to sure reason of a pure and healthy human being alone - undoubtedly completely man in spiritual substance and has its location – nota bene – in the whole body.

But somebody might say to this: ‘Yes, the thing sounds reasonable; but where is the palpable evidence for this, which alone could serve as tenable witnesses for the full truth of the rational arguments?’

O, even such palpable evidence we have from the many cases of experience of all times, countries and people! At first of course count those made by oneself as a healthy and truth-loving human being and then the experiences of many other people can support one’s own experiences and confirm their truth.

So this was a quote from Jakob Lorber’s Das große Evangelium Johannes (The Great Gospel of John) taken out of Volume 6 Chapter 218.

And as this was quite revealing I will add another quote from Lorber that tells us something about the soul’s condition on the other side (same book as above, Volume 7 Chapter 058):

The body, as it is, being dead matter on its own, could not see nor hear, feel, smell and taste without a living soul in it. So it is just only a meagre tool of the soul, built and well equipped so that the soul can make use of it in the outer world. It can therefore with the help of the body look outside, hear and perceive adversity and pleasantness. It can move from one location to another and can do various works with its hands.

The mind of the heart and its will is the ruler of the limbs; because the body on its own had neither a mind nor a will, except that the soul turns itself into fleshliness by its worldly and sensual lust and so loses itself very much in its flesh so that the consciousness of its spiritual I gets lost therein. Then of course also its whole mind including the will has become a completely carnal one. But in this case the soul is then as good as completely dead, and it seems to it to be insanity when it hears about pure spiritual independence and a spiritual life after death of the body.

But even such a fleshly soul does not really die after a painful dropping of the body, but lives on in the spirit world; but its survival is then as meagre as is its recognition and self-consciousness in a pure spiritual sphere. Now of course such a soul then lives on, on the other side, just like in a somewhat brighter dream and often does not know that it ever once has lived in another world but lives and acts according to its familiar sensuality. And should it be urged and taught by brighter spirits, which reveal themselves to it, that it now exists in another and spiritual world then it will not believe this and mocks and scoffs at those that bring the truth to it.

It will take a very long time until such a worldly and fleshly soul comes to a brighter recognition on the other side. But when it becomes brighter and brighter then recollection will return according to the extent of it getting brighter and it will then also be able to see, hear and feel everything that happens on and above and inside of the earth.

But if a soul has become completely perfect already here in this world because of the spiritual rebirth and because it has gained already here a view and a clear perception of purely spiritual and heavenly things then it will also gain in itself the correct and fully true view of the complete material creation and knows about everything, even of what happens in the moon, on and in the sun, what the stars are and for what they were created and what there exists on and in them.

But only when such a perfect soul has been released from its heavy body will its observation then be a fully godlike one and it will then – if it wants – be all seeing, all hearing, all knowing and all feeling. But when this is so why should it then be able to lose all its remembrance because itself can and also will be creator of its habitat in a godlike manner?

But so that you will see and recognize even deeper that it is full reality what I have now said to you, I will now set free your soul as well as the souls of some of those present for a few moments and you then can tell in such a state what you saw and what you heard and perceived, - And so be it!"

Several were now put into a bright magnetic state and they found themselves first in surroundings unknown to them, which all of them liked very much, so that they asked me, that I would now just leave them permanently in this heavenly beautiful surrounding; because they had no more desire to return to this earthly world.

But I asked them if they could not also see this world.

Then all answered: "Yes, Lord; but we see it like being behind us and we also see it like through and through!"

I asked them if they saw the big city of Rome.

All confirmed this and described everything they saw therein.

When the Romans that were present heard this they could not be more astonished how true and exact the enraptured described the form of Rome, although none of them had ever been to Rome nor had they ever seen a picture of this city.

And I asked them if they also saw the Far East of Asia.

And they all replied: "Yes, Lord, we also see the real end of this great part of the world; because further to the east we see nothing but pure water and water except some islands! But that is a big empire and we also see an exceptional great city which is surrounded by a wall that is as long as one day’s journey and a countless number of people inside!"

I said: "How are they dressed?"

Now they quickly and exactly described the dress of this people and one of the old Pharisees, later a Jew-Greek, was highly surprised by this because he had had the opportunity to see several Chinese in the furthest East of High India.

Then I let them have a look in the moon and they shortly described this sad looking bare world in which they could not see anything besides a few groups of sad looking and grey coloured goblins. There was no tree and no grass and therefore also no animal to be seen.

I then woke them up again back and left them with the full remembrance of what they had seen.

When they were again back in their natural state, Nicodemus said: "O Lord, that is surely wonderful above wonderful! We were here, saw exactly you and all the others, but still we saw also everything most accurately and clearly what we described and I myself have now experienced in a most real manner how indescribably brighter the seeing of the free soul is than it is in connection with the body. Not only did we see everything brighter that was nearby as well as in the greatest distance, but also heard everything. And when we saw a tree or a house or a ship on the sea or also a man or an animal, we saw it completely according to the natural outer form; but we also saw everything through and through, though the object was not transparent.

Yes, with men we even saw their thoughts which were initially apparent as small little pictures in their heart. When these rose to the head like a swarm of gnats they got brighter and more distinct, rose again back to the heart, there they became bigger and more determined and soon stepped outside the sphere of man, became bigger and bigger and formed a real world around man. But with the animals nothing like that was detected.

And so we have come to the end of this quote from Jakob Lorber’s Das große Evangelium Johannes (The Great Gospel of John) taken out of Volume 7 Chapter 058.

This quote gave us some information about the soul’s condition on the other side and there are so many details contained in this quotation that we could just marvel at it and they will give rise to much thought.

Since we are here dealing with the mind we will just look at what we were told by Nicodemus about the thoughts. He said that thoughts first appear as small little pictures in the heart of man. From there they rise to the head and become more distinct and they then return to the heart where they become even bigger and more determined and then they step outside, still growing, and form a real world around man.

Love resides in the heart. And love also means desire. A desire comes from our heart. It rises to the head and there it is where our mind gets involved. The mind examines the thought, the desire, and it compares this thought with some principles that the mind has established. Let us say these principles are the word of God, the teachings of Christ. And when this is so then we, in the mind, bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. We take a thought and compare it with our principles. We put such a thought into a form that agrees with our principles. And then we send it back to our heart and there the heart creates out of the thought our reality. We are creators then and have created out of our thought life the physical conditions of our environment. And all these should be circumstances that are highly desirable. And if they are not desirable then something went wrong in this process. The most likely cause of such wrong process is that we have not demolished arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. And this means that our mind has not really detected a wrong thought and dealt with it and has not cast it down. It has not demolished arguments. It has not demolished pretensions. The mind then has not compared such a wrong thought with the knowledge of God. Or even worse, the mind never has found out what the knowledge of God is.

And here you have the secret of the ages, the philosopher’s stone. Here you have the formula how to transmute base metals into gold.

Now if all this is so simple why is it then that most people don’t know about it and only very few know and also practise it? It is because they don’t keep the commandments. The commandments are simple and straight forward. We have twelve commandments, ten from the Old Testament and two from the New Testament. The eleventh commandment is to love God and the twelfth is, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. And this means: What you reasonably want that your neighbour should do to you, you should also do to him.

I am now going to just take one of these commandments, the one that says, "Thou shalt not covet." This commandment covers the whole desire to material things – to the world. A person who still loves the world and the things and activities of the world will have problems to become really a spiritual person. And that alone will hinder him to be victorious. And not only that - it will also cause him plenty of problems. To covet means to be after the things of the world. And some characteristic signs of a worldly behaviour are anger, hostility and aggression. Scientists have made plenty of studies of personalities and how they are relevant to coronary heart disease. And they thought that a typical manager would fit such a personality, but the data were not too clear and when they investigated further they found that it was not such activities like being almost totally work-orientated or having a sense of urgency in everything or having explosive speech patterns or being highly competitive or impatient. All these qualities were not relevant. The qualities that were relevant were aggression, hostility and anger. And these three qualities are the exact opposite to love. So science today has proved that it is love that is needed. Love is the only cure.

So the real keys to all success are the last two commandments, the new ones. The real secret is love, the thing that is in the heart. That will really cause creative power because love is all that is, it is the basic element. You can also call it consciousness, or light or energy or wisdom.

This love is the spirit of God in us because God is love. The spirit of God is penetrating everything and works everything. It rests in the centre of the soul. God himself put it there. But with most people it is there quite isolated. It is very tiny. It is starving. It is lacking nutrition. It is longing for food. And this food that is missing is love. As the soul is not living in accordance with the commandments, especially when it does not obey the eleventh and the twelfth commandments, to love God and to love the neighbour, then this spirit in us does not get properly fed and cannot grow. The spirit cannot expand and cannot occupy larger areas of the soul. It cannot start to pervade the soul. It cannot pervade the whole being. But all this is not a matter of spatial extension. We are not talking here of a space that extents three-dimensionally. We are talking here of something that is not physical, but of something that is the sphere of the ability of the will. This sphere has to get permeated. And this ability of the will is like the ability of the will of God because the tiny spirit in us is part of and comes from God and he put it there. This spreading of the spirit inside the sphere of the will means that the soul submits to the will of God because the spirit inside the soul is the spirit of God. The will of the soul submits then to the will of God. And it does this completely out of its own free will. It has recognized the will of God and what this will of God is and its intellect has recognized that this will of God is the only will that makes sense and that is worth doing. And due to this recognition it decides - voluntarily – to make the will of God its own.

When this now has taken place – that a soul has recognized what the will of God is and that the soul has decided to make this will of God its own and that the soul allows itself to be completely penetrated by this will of God – then this recognition and this obedience will causes the will to awaken the tiny and resting and sleeping spirit of God. This now awakened spirit of God unites then with the willing spirit of the soul and is one with it.

And this causes the spirit to take over completely the whole soul. And when this has taken place then the soul is one with the spirit of God and therefore with a spirit that fills everything, that penetrates everything and that acts everywhere.

But before this awakening of the spirit something has happened. A choice was made. The soul came to a decision. And this decision was based on the recognition of the present situation. An intellectual evaluation had taken place and the present situation was found to be wanting and a much better situation was desired and aimed for. The soul had made use of the intellect, 32. The soul had made use of something that was given to man only. Animals do not have this something, the intellect, 32.

"Yes, with men we even saw their thoughts which were initially apparent as small little pictures in their heart. When these rose to the head like a swarm of gnats they got brighter and more distinct, rose again back to the heart, there they became bigger and more determined and soon stepped outside the sphere of man, became bigger and bigger and formed a real world around man. But with the animals nothing like that was detected."

It is this movement between the heart and the head that makes us different from the animals. It is our thoughts. It is the intervening of the intellect. We can and should use our intellect. We not only have a mind but we also have an intellect. Also an animal’s mind can perceive data via its senses from the physical world. And the animal’s mind then might make a decision based on such data. But we have in addition to the mind also an intellect. And with this intellect we have additional power to that of an animal. The animal just has instinct. We can reflect on things, events and happenings and let these influence us intellectually. And we have free will. We can decide not to make use of the intellect.

We achieve freedom from ignorance by the keen edge of the intellect. The mind grasps an object, but the intellect examines it and looks at arguments for and against it. The mind is more concerned with external objects and the intellect more with internal subjects. An animal derives knowledge from the senses. A man derives knowledge from the senses and also from the process of discrimination and evaluation. And when man becomes a completed soul he also derives God-induced knowledge, and this is knowledge obtained by the inner senses or intuition. It is all a matter of growth. We all have the capacity in us. We all can develop it and cultivate it. We all have the capacity of discrimination, of judgement, of analysis and synthesis. We are the only animals who have this. If we don’t use them then we are worse than animals. If we use them then we can become divine. Animals cannot transform themselves. We can. And when we are not using this ability to transform ourselves then we are worse than animals. And when we use it then we can become a god.

When we want to find out about God and inquire into the nature of him then we will not progress much by reading books about him but rather by the analysis of the nature of the ‘I’. And the I we will discover when we really go into the details of the human being, as we are doing so here in this study of the mind or the study of the different parts of a human being. And when we do this we have to direct our attention inwards and through concentrated discrimination we have to make use of our intellect and renew our mind and dig for details and absorb them by meditating about them. So the study of the external world or of the outer objective world will not help and also not the study of scientific texts or academic scholarship that tries to interpret texts coming from ancient sources.

It is the analytical penetration of the secret of the spirit. It is looking at these different parts or layers of man and doing so with the help of the intellect.

By the exercise of the intellect, it is possible to reach down to the divine truth.

Now all this might sound as if only highly intelligent people can achieve knowledge of the God inside. But this is not so. Everyone can do so. Everyone can and is able to obey the twelve commandments. Obeying them is a purification that allows the soul to be completely taken over by the spirit.

Obeying and loving God means to have Jesus Christ as Lord and this again brings the filling of the spirit and its gifts. All this together makes a complete human being, a being that is like God.

Let us look at an example of such a completed soul: Elisha. In 2 Kings 6:12 we find some information about him in a statement that is made about him by a servant of the king of Syria who is telling the king of Syria, who had asked his servants who of them is spying for the king of Israel, the following:

None, my lord, O king; but Elisha, the prophet that is in Israel, telleth the king of Israel the words that thou speakest in thy bedchamber.

So Elisha had the ability to hear the words that the king of Syria spoke in his bedchamber. The king of Syria was in Syria, in his bedchamber, and Elisha was in Israel – far away. But he could hear the words spoken there.

And in verse 17 we read that Elisha had the ability to open the inner sight of his servant and his servant saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

And in verse 18 we read that Elisha had the ability to smite the great host of the king of Syria with blindness.

And in verse 20 we read that Elisha reversed the situation and made all these men see again.

So Elisha had supernatural powers. He had them because he was a perfect – a completed - soul. A normal man would be able to send his thoughts into the bedchamber of the king of Syria and speculate what it looks like and what is happening there. A normal man would imagine he is in the bedchamber of the king but his thought would be an empty and ineffective thought; but not so with a completed soul. The soul of a completed man would send his thought to a distant location and that would have the effect that his whole being would spiritually be there. And his whole being also means that he can do there everything that he can do where his body is. He can make us of his physical senses as well as of his spiritual senses. He can see, he can hear and he can learn of everything. His will penetrates and controls everything and not only that but he also can bring about whatever he wants. He just has to think what he wants to happen and it happens.

A normal man has to achieve everything he wants to achieve by using his body. All he thinks, all his thoughts and ideas, he has to transform into reality by using the limbs of his body. His thought has in itself no power. But one thing can his thought achieve. His thought can instantly locate his being to a location that is very remote. The distance might be very great but the travelling time remains nil. He can do there nothing, but this ability alone should give him an idea what he could achieve when he would become a perfect human being. As long as we do not have these abilities we are more dead than alive. When we become one with the will of God then we have really become alive.

When a man who has a completed soul dies, when he lays his body aside, when he gets liberated from this heavy body, at that moment, he gets resurrected and will live and act in eternity. His soul will then be able to see with one look not only the earth but the whole physical universe. And he will see everything through and through and he will also be able to judge everything he sees. And he will also be able to see all other realms, all other physical realms as well as all spiritual realms. Such a completed soul can do everything, but the uncompleted soul is spiritually blind. The only things such an uncompleted soul will be able to see are the monstrosities of its imagination. And they will be empty and vain. The only way out of this will be the way of reflection – of soul-searching, mending its ways. This will cause the sight to become clearer. And this will take time, more time than it would take on this side. And when a soul dies that was an enemy of God’s laws then such a soul will experience a long night between physical death and resurrection. But during this long night the soul will not be unconscious. This long night will be experienced in a conscious state. It will be a time spent with unclean spirits. It will be a time of pain and anguish.

So a completed soul will be resurrected at the day of death. It will receive a resurrection body that will be similar to that of Jesus'. Jesus could materialize his body whenever he wanted and he could do it to degrees he wanted. First he could appear to his disciples by just coming through the wall of the room where the doors were shut and he then could materialize his body to a greater extent and ask, "Have ye here any meat?" And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them. And then Jesus said to Thomas, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side."

That is a resurrection body. The soul can decide what kind of form it should take at certain situations. The body can be materialized to such an extent that it can be touched by a physical human being and will feel as any other physical body. And then this materialisation can be reduced so that the body can be seen but not touched. If people would try to throw stones and to stone and kill that body the stones would just go right through that body and do no harm at all. Now such a resurrection body a completed soul receives the moment it leaves the physical body. A soul that is not completed must first come to this completed stage and has to do something about the shortcomings and get rid of them and only then will it receive the resurrection body. And a soul that has failed has a long road to travel to come to that state. But a completed soul will receive this resurrection body the moment it leaves the physical body and this transition will be without pain and suffering and therefore there will be no death felt. The last enemy will be conquered.

Let us see how Jesus makes it quite clear what will happen to a completed soul, a soul that God the Father has given Jesus:

And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. John 6:39.

This last day is the last day that a disciple spends in his physical body.

Now this statement of Jesus is important, it is so important that it is recorded by John four times. Let us read the second:

And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6:40.

And now the third:

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6:44.

And finally the fourth:

Whose eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6:54.

The word "last" is the word 2078, eschatos, in Strong’s Concordance and means farthest or final (of place or time) or last or utmost or extreme.

This word 2078 could also mean youngest instead of last. And the youngest day would be the youngest or first day in the world of the spirits. It then would be the first day in the hereafter - in the kingdom of God. And that is at the same time the last day on earth.

And we don’t even have to wait for the day we discard the physical body. We can get resurrected before that. Already while we are still living here on earth, long before we die, we can experience the youngest day – the first day in the spirit world. So while we are still in the flesh we can reach this state of the soul – the state of resurrection. And then we will definitely not see death, not feel death and also not taste death and the soul will experience no fear of death.

Now we want to see what Jesus has to say about a soul that is not completed.

He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. John 12:48.

So a soul that is not completed will not receive a resurrection body at the last day but has to wait until such a time when it stops rejecting Jesus’ words and receives them.

And to call it the youngest day is a rather more appropriate way than to call it the last day because the youngest day will then apply to everybody: also to those who will have a long way to go. And when it finally arrives it will be the first day of real life, the first day in the spiritual heavenly realm.

So the last day is a special day for every individual and it is not a general day that will occur sometime some day in the future. There will not be a general resurrection day or day of judgement but every man will have his own special youngest day and that will be the moment when a soul gets liberated from the physical body. And that day can lead to eternal life but also to death. It will depend on the individual and its fruit.

So the resurrection of the dead – the day it will happen – will depend on the state of the individual soul. A soul that is ready will receive it the day it dies; others will have to wait and do some work.

Jesus is not going to do anything. It will completely depend on the state of our soul. What happens to us at the last day will fully be hour doing. The responsibility is ours. It is all in our hands.

Now the misunderstanding of all this is nicely expressed by Martha when she says to Jesus, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." John 11:24.

And in his answer Jesus quite clearly explains how it really is:

I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. John 11:25-26.

When a completed soul arrives at the last day of its earthly life, it will not experience death. The body might die, but not the soul. The soul will not even taste death. There will not be any suffering. Though he were dead, yet shall he live. He shall never die.

The basic building block of the universe is consciousness, or love, or life, or light. It does not really matter what we call it. We also could think of it to be anything but death. So everything is alive and even what we might call empty space is full of life. And this might help to explain things like thought transfer or the Book of Life. It also explains God’s ability to know everything and to know about everything. Empty space for example looks to us exactly what we call it – empty. But there is no empty space. There is only life around us. Now we don’t experience all this life around us. For us it all looks rather dead and completely void of intelligence. We seem to be separated from all this. We don’t seem to be conscious of all this. And this separation is not only real but also intended to be so and part of the whole design. Our consciousness seems to be isolated from this consciousness all around us and it really is and the reason is to give man an opportunity to obtain independence, to become independent from it all like God is independent from it all. We are to become like God, we are to win this independence, we are to find ourselves. With all this we are to develop and to strengthen our own eternal continued existence. And during this period of gaining independence man is hardly aware that he is surrounded and interpenetrated by life and intelligence and that without all this he would not exist. But when he accepts God’s will for him and uses it and completes himself by letting his inner spirit completely penetrate him then he will be united with all the life around him and with all the intelligence that is there and still will retain his self-consciousness and his personality. And then he will not anymore see dead space around him and he will not see anymore dead stones on the ground but everything will become for him life and intelligence.

But before man comes to this independence he is separated from all this and it is like a thin wall or barrier or veil that exists between the life of his space and that of the general space. And this veil causes the soul not to be aware of what happens all around it. So this veil does it and separates the life of the private space from the life of the general endless space. Now the highly interesting thing about this veil is that this veil is not present in animals. The souls of animals and of plants are not separated by such a veil from the life of the general space. Animals and plants have therefore direct access to the space around them that is filled with all life and intelligence. And they don’t need all that teaching that we need. They are fully aware of the life and intelligence that fills all space and when they arrive on this earth they can start operating fully and don’t need any instruction or teaching in order to manage life on earth. And we poor men need nearly 20 years to get taught and find our way around and learn how to make a living. Animals and plants know their makeup and set-up and what they are meant for. Every animal knows which kind of food agrees with it and we men might never fully learn what we should eat and what we should not eat. And every animal also knows exactly how to find this food. Every bull knows how to use his horns. He does not have to learn this. He does not even have to train himself. A foal knows how to walk and does so right after being born. A bird knows exactly how to fly from the northern hemisphere to the southern and back again. A cat knows very well how to find the right way to get to that home and to that people that it likes and has no problems travelling to it even when the distance is vast. A plant knows exactly the ingredients in the water and in the air and in the soil and in the light that it needs for its particular individuality. A radish will draw different nutrition than a carrot growing right next to it. And both draw their food from the same soil and from the same water and from the same air and from the same sunlight but they do it differently. And how do the animals and the plants know all this? They obtain all this knowledge from the intelligence that all space pervades. From it every animal and every plant draws the intelligence that is especially needed for its purpose and acts accordingly and as directed. So eternal space and everything in that space is life and is intelligence. And man is not aware of it. Everything else is aware of it but not man. And man is not aware of it so that he learns to make use of his own intelligence. And this intelligence is of highest quantity. And out of it he can create his own independence but an animal or a plant can’t do it. And an animal or a plant can’t create independence and they also do not have a separate soul. Animals and plants have souls that can get mixed and their existence is subject to modifications and gets changed after every existence. After every mix and after every change of being the souls pass over to a different sphere of intelligence and they retain no memory of all this. And the end result is a human soul. And also this human soul retains no memory of its pre-existences that developed from the mineral, the plant and the animal world. Man therefore has a highly developed and separate intelligence and all the previous souls of minerals and plants and animals have rather borrowed intelligence, borrowed from the intelligence contained in space. Endless many special souls became a human soul. And when this human being then gets interpenetrated completely by the spirit of all life and light then he will also recognize this order in himself.

And we are destined for a life that lasts for eternities and to live it with the highest possible independence. And we have to do it out of ourselves. We ourselves have to gain and win this free life. And in order to achieve this we have the teachings of Christ and we have his permanent assistance.

The development of all beings, with the exception of the human beings, is according to the will of God. They develop themselves after God’s will. But we are the exception. We don’t develop ourselves after the will of God, but after our own will. We also can develop ourselves after God’s will. But we also can develop ourselves against his will. We have free choice.

And when the spirit within us - within our soul - has filled our soul completely, then we will have access to all truth and will be able to see physically and also spiritually. We are then born anew and have our normal sight and also the higher sight. We then can see the physical world through and through and know all its secrets and we can see the world beyond – the world of the spirits. This clearer sight of ours will also allow us to understand the things we will see. We will then see with our outer senses and also with our inner senses. The reason why we now only have this limited sight is that this cloudy and imperfect sight causes us to seek the light. It urges us all the time to activate our thinking and our searching. Our soul comes from God and is not satisfied with what our senses tell it and strives for real information. The sense input is for our soul too insufficient and too nebulous and is therefore not really satisfying but rather annoying. And this causes the soul to long for the truth. The soul seeks and thinks and asks all the time for the full truth and it is this activity that prevents the soul from becoming lazy and inactive. It prevents the soul from death. Only when the soul is busy is it also happy. A life filled with activity will bring happiness to a soul. And this seeking leads to clarity of the inner perception. To have the clearest sight and to have real knowledge is highly important but this alone will not bring true and perfect happiness. What will ultimately lead to this all fulfilling bliss is a life filled with the activity of love. This acting out of love is it what will make the difference. And this activity will be something that is increasing all the time. And it is not only increasing all the time it also has to be there at the beginning. Only when it is there already when we start to seek and think and search will this being active make sense.

The main rule is to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself. This rule is already present in the Ten Commandments. When Jesus discussed this subject with a teacher of the law then both agreed that of all the commandments this one was the most important one. So right from the beginning the rule of love is the core of all rules.

In the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament this rule is given us and this is therefore the rule mankind always had and always had as guidepost:

Deuteronomy 6:5

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all they soul, and with all thy might.

Leviticus 19:18

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.

All seeking will only then start to bring real benefits when it is done parallel to a life lived in accordance with this basic rule. All searching without love will just remain vain. A man spending all his live searching for the truth will just waste his time when he is not walking this walk of love. He will never find the truth and will never gain the inner clearness of sight.

This constantly growing activity of love must come awake in the soul and finally become the soul itself. Love and spirit are the same and when we talk of the spirit taking over the soul then we also mean that love is taking over the soul. And when love has taken over the soul then this new birth has taken place and the soul has been born again. The whole man is born again of the spirit. He has gained all inner clarity. And when this stage is reached then a man will also remain active because love is only meaningful in action. The achievement of clarity will not cause him to relax now and to become slothful and lazy. The cause of all this clearness and of all this bliss is the love activity. It is not knowledge and clarity that brings all this about but to be an actively loving man that will cause all this. A man could not even start to gain clarity when he would not walk the walk of love. In order to reach the light the activity of love has to be practised. It has always been this way and will also always be so.

The increase of bliss and clarity will completely depend on the extent of love activity. It is action that will bring the light and it is the right kind of action. To bring the soul into a stage of aliveness some activity has to take place first. We have to do something. Some kind of action has to precede the coming of the light into the soul. And this light is the wisdom that recognizes itself and recognizes all things and assesses and judges and puts them in order.

This is the way to inner recognition clarity of the soul.

And this is the only way. There seem to be other ways but they will just not lead to the real purpose of life here on earth. When we really want to become godlike then there is no other way. There are movements and organisations that offer other ways and some of them are Theosophy or Anthroposophy or the Rosicrucian Order. They might offer ways and initiations that promise results. A man like Rudolf Steiner came quite close to the truth when he said that man, as he descended, so he must again ascend into spirituality and as the descent was accompanied by an uncontrollable increase in egotism so is the ascent dependent on the increase of selflessness – the sense of sympathy of men among each other. He also said that the passing through humble devoted stages presents the essence of Christian initiation and who goes through them earnestly will experience his resurrection into the worlds of the spirit.

Rudolf Steiner was a man who had the ability to see into the spiritual realm. He was a seer. He could see the different parts of a human body. He reports that the life body, 12, can get partially separated from the physical body, 11, and that such a partial separation takes place when one gets pins and needles in a limb. When for example someone gets pins and needles in his hand then a seer can observe how that part of the live body that corresponds with that hand hangs out like a glove. Also parts of the live body that correspond with the brain hang out when a person is in a hypnotized state. The life body, 12, is wrapped up in the physical body, 11, like in very small dot like structures, and the result of it is the well-known peculiar tingling feeling when one gets pins and needles in a limb.

Such organisations we have been talking about believe in the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world and they also believe that one can gain access to this spiritual world by direct experience through inner development.

But one of the problems of such organisations is that they are organisations. The fact that they are organisations already shows that their spiritual understanding is limited. A man who is a member in such an organisation, or becomes one, shows already that his spiritual understanding is restricted because if he were a spiritual man then he would stay away from any kind of organisation. A man who is not anymore carnal would understand Oneness and would not touch a group of people that have the need to form a formal group. The same applies to the need to have a guru. There is no need to have a guru. When I am led by the spirit of almighty God then I do not have any need of a guru. The all-pervading spirit of God is much more than any kind of guru would be able to give me. Wherever I am I have direct access to this all-knowing spirit and do not have to wait for the guru or turn to him or seek to find one somewhere. There is only one person that is really desirable and that is God, is Jesus Christ, and if somebody has a guru which is not the Lord, then he simply has not yet found the right one and has not arrived. A typical thing with organisations and gurus is to go through steps of initiations. And every one of them has a different number of steps and they also differ among each other. But in reality the real initiation is very simple and straight forward. It is the basic rule. And that is to love God and to love the neighbour as yourself. And that is a rule that everybody is able to understand and to learn and especially to practise. To live a life of humbleness and mercy does not require long outdrawn initiation procedures and does not require a guru and also no organisation.

What now follows is an excellent description of people who have the need for an organisation and for someone who heads such an organisation. It is from Chapter 134, of Volume 10, of Jakob Lorber’s The Great Gospel of John:

When the disciples heard this, Simon Juda said to me: "Lord and master, as we now divide ourselves into two groups, shouldn’t each group then have a chief?"

I said: "When was there a need for a chief for the purest love and the fullest and clearest truth from the heavens?

Love, like the truth in its highest purity and perfection, is in itself very much the highest in itself so that nothing could be thought or recognized that would be above it!

But if such love and truth from me exists in each of you which I now send out in my name - then who of you wants to make a chief for his brother? How do you want to take a chieftainship upon yourself when you say and vividly believe that only I am the Lord – and all the others but say and believe the same? Who of you wants to be the first with such an assumption and with such a belief?

When a man who is good at figures says and proves that three totally identical things and again three also such totally identical things come to six such totally identical things and a second man and a third, fourth and hundredth man who are also good at figures say and prove exactly the same, - question: who of them should possibly be the more excellent of them and who of them should the hundred equally good calculators elect as a vain chief above themselves and why?

See, I alone am the Lord! But all you among yourselves are totally equal brothers and nobody should be more important nor less important; because every chieftainship, no matter how small it is, awakens in the mind of the chief the satanic lust for power and will then also soon become the corrupter of the pure love and of the truth that comes out of it, as it was very much the case right at the beginning of the monarchy and is now so even clearer in the temple at Jerusalem.

But who of you absolutely insists to be the first of my disciples should be a last one and a least one of them and should be a slave and servant of them all! Because that is the order in my heavens among my angels!

Truly I say to you: All of them who will let themselves be appointed on this earth to chiefs in a different spirit will be in a difficult position on the other side! Because the most difficult purpose in life for an arrogant person – what almost every chief will finally become – is the humiliation of the mind.

Therefore you all should remain completely equal brothers and nobody should want to have the slightest priority before the others; and all men will see and recognize, because you will love and respect each other as true brothers who have complete equal rights, that you are truly my disciples, and so now move and do my will!"

And this is the end of the quotation.

It is a nice description of the difference between the true church and the man-made one.

In the true church all are totally equal brothers and nobody is more important nor less important; and in a man-made church every chieftainship, no matter how small it is, awakens in the mind of the chief the satanic lust for power and it will then also soon become the corrupter of the pure love and of the truth.

The question is who of them should possibly be the more excellent of them and who of them they elect as a chief above themselves and why?

It is an excellent question. Especially the last part of the question: Why?

The only thing that is really needed is this walk of love. And such a walk will produce fruit. Our good works will be the fruit. Our physical body is given to us to use it for the production of this fruit. What really counts when we look at a plant is the fruit and so it is with the body: what really counts is the final result of the physical body – the fruit it bears. And this kind of fruit is a spiritual fruit. The real body of the soul is not the physical body but the body that we create out of the good works of the soul. These good works are the real body of the soul. And this is important to understand when we talk of the resurrection of the flesh. The resurrection of the flesh is not the resurrection of the physical flesh but the resurrection of the spiritual flesh – the good works. So works that the soul carries out with the physical body are the flesh that gets resurrected. That is what the flesh is for. That is the fruit we are supposed to produce. A body is given to us so that we use the body and use it the right way. And when we then make the right use of this body then we will reap the benefits. When our soul makes the right decisions and produces the right kind of works then there will be a good harvest – we will have gathered fruit for the hereafter. And the better the harvest the more light we will have when we arrive on the other side. And the amount of light will determine our ability to see and to see our new surroundings and our scope of operation. The aim is to see as much as is possible to see and to be able to operate in kingdoms that stretch far. And when we are able to be busy in many worlds and universes then we will be able to live there and then these realms will be our home and will be our mansion. These are the mansions that Jesus mentioned in John 14:2 when he told us: "In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."

So it is not the physical flesh that is getting resurrected. The physical flesh is going the way all other material matter is going and that is a permanent recurring return to its basic form of energy and then to form a new and purer being.

What is getting resurrected is something spiritual. It is the end result of our life. And such a resurrected soul then lives in the spiritual realm and has access to this realm but also has access to the lower realms where the less developed spirits are and has even access to the physical realm and can see what is going on there. But it also can be active there and can even appear in physical form there and operate there in a manner that we know from Jesus when he came to see his disciples after his resurrection and before his ascension.

And to study all the actions that Jesus performed in his glorified body in the time between Easter Sunday and the Day of Ascension is important when we want to understand what is going to happen when Jesus comes again because that will be the way he is going to operate then. And this is explained in Acts 1:11 where the two men in white apparel said to the apostles: "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."

Jesus will come in like manner. And that means that he will be seen coming back by his disciples – but not by everyone. And he will not appear in a normal physical body but in a glorified physical body and that means that he can materialize his body anytime he wants to and that he can also dematerialize his body any time he so decides to do. And he will mainly appear to his disciples. The normal people will not see him. And that is why it will be of no use to go and try to see him when somebody says that he is there or that he is somewhere else. Jesus will also be able to appear in locked rooms and to also disappear from rooms that have closed and locked doors. And he will be able to let people see him and hear him, and somebody else who is standing nearby might not have such experience. He will be able to switch on or switch off the inner sight of people. Jesus will not have his normal physical body that he had before his death and resurrection. That body limited him to be at one place only. His mind was not limited. His consciousness was able to run the whole universe but the fact that he had appeared as a normal man with a normal physical body restricted him. But that was a restriction that only lasted until Easter Sunday.

The second coming of Jesus will not be like his first coming. He will not be born from a woman as a child. He will come in his glorified body, in the same body that he used during that forty days before the day he ascended into heaven. Already these expressions "he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight" and "taken up from you into heaven" describe his dematerialisation. On that day he was only seen by the wisest people on earth – the apostles. And so it will be when he comes again. And when he comes to such most wise people like seers and prophets and sages and apostles it will not even be necessary to appear in visible form. But he will also appear in visible form and he will be present in his glorified body and people will be able to see him and hear and touch him. But as he did during the forty days he will come and go and will appear in situations that are like the Day of Ascension or like the way he appeared to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus. So Jesus will mainly come to those who love him and long for him. And that will give tremendous impulses and help to set up the kingdom and to strengthen the true church and his kingdom of peace and unity and love and faith and he himself will call the believers together and will build assemblies.

So Jesus will come back and act as he acted during the last 40 days of his first coming. He will come and he will go how he wants to and he will come to the assembly of his disciples, and not to the world. The kingdom will not be a kingdom of this world, but a spiritual one. He will bring about spiritual influence and he will come to people he can build up spiritually and who will then become people who will exert spiritual influence. That will be normal simple people, but it will also be people who are occupying influential positions, and so a network of influences will come about, that will quickly achieve an enormous change in the whole thinking of mankind and that will lead mankind to a spiritual direction that will cause strong improvements in our lives. The greatest good will gain the upper hand. Spiritual things will become the focus of attention and people will drop much of their worldliness and many of the present evils will become a matter of the past.

Just imagine a meeting of believers. And these people might even be used to have the gifts of the spirit operating in their midst. They are used to hear directly from God. But now, at the present meeting not only messages are heard from God, but God himself, as a physical person, appears in their meeting room and can be seen and heard and touched and seen eating. Now such an event, and especially the message heard, will be a tremendous boost to all of them and give them a dynamic and a thrust for action that will be out of this world. The result will be like a trumpet from heaven which is heard all over the world.

It is highly probable that there will be such people present who will have the presence of mind to get out their electronic gadget and film scenes. And not much later these videos will be on the Internet, with sound and everything.

The times we live in now are the times where the barriers to the flow of information have disappeared to a great extent. The suppression of information was one of the means of powerful people to keep control over their brothers and to manipulate them. But this tool of control got weaker with the invention of the printing of books and an even mightier blow to all of this was the start of the Internet. It now has become difficult to keep control over information and to keep information away from people. If today Jesus appears to a disciple and speaks to him and encourages him and gives a message to him then all of this can be made available to everybody when this disciple puts it on the Internet. A message from Jesus could become known to many in a very short time. It could be the words that Jesus spoke to this disciple but it also could be more than just words, it could be a complete video report about the event. There could be websites that just monitor the appearance of such messages and appearances from Jesus and everybody interested could find out what the latest and newest news from Jesus are. With one message at one particular location on earth Jesus could reach disciples all over the world in a very short time. With the Internet we have a means that allows us to imagine how the power and influence and its results of the second coming of the Lord could be achieved. And these disciples that spread the news about Jesus would be the trumpets that will be heard by many.

Let us look at such an example of a trumpet. In Luke 24:13-15 we find how it started:

And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

Jesus drew near. Their eyes were holden. Here we have two examples of how a spiritual being controls matter. He materialized himself and he caused his two disciples not to be able to recognize him – limited their natural sight, influenced their state of consciousness.

And then Jesus communed with them. And at the end of this communing we again find two examples of Jesus’ power over the world of matter; Luke 24:30-31:

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

Jesus changed again the way the two were able to perceive, he opened their eyes. And then he vanished, he dematerialized himself.

And now comes the result of all this; Luke 24:32-34:

And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

They rose up the same hour and returned to Jerusalem. The family of God is the New Jerusalem. They turned to the New Jerusalem. They came out of this situation and turned to their computer and put the experience on the Internet and made it available to the disciples all over the world and the next moment everybody could know about it. They acted like a big trumpet.

Just imagine how everything will change once the first of such a report is put into the Internet and becomes known, how fast there will be a community established that will monitor such events.

When you think of the second coming of Christ then remember on word and that is Emmaus. Emmaus is an excellent example of how Jesus acted after he received his glorified body and how he will act when he comes back and does so also in this body that has all these incredible abilities. Every appearance of his will have the most powerful effect. It will be known immediately all over. Every such appearance will be one step to change the world completely.

The substance which exists in infinity is the will of God. All material matter and things that our senses perceive are thoughts of God. When he wants something then this thing will exist immediately. And as we are created in his image we can do the same thing. We just have to become first a completed soul. So God can create something immediately and this also applies to man’s physical body. He can heal an organ in a man’s body on the spot. All this is based on God’s basic order. And these basic rules of the university apply also to the body of man. But they do not apply to the soul of man. God has given man a free will. And the rules that apply to the handling of the soul are given to man by revelation. And they have been given to man right at the beginning. And this giving of revelations has never ceased. It is continuing all the time. The purpose of all these revelations is that the soul assimilates these rules and orientates its will in accordance with them and complies with these commandments. The soul has to live a life that agrees with these guidelines and causes its body to act in a way that corresponds with them. And when all this is done then the soul will achieve a state that is called the likeness of God, made in his image. It is the soul’s destination. So the life on this earth is a probationary period. Earth is a place that tests a soul for life. It is a place that provides a trial run for the soul to see if it is fit for eternal life. If the soul learns to handle these rather limited guidelines then it will be put in charge of much greater tasks. But all this must come out of its own free will. We have to take the kingdom and we have to do it by force.

Matthew 11:12.

And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.

Forceful men will lay hold of it.

They will be believers and will believe in Jesus Christ and will recognize him to be the one and alone true God and will love him as the best and most perfect eternal being and will love him above everything else and will also love their fellow human beings as they love themselves and they will keep the commandments.

And they will become as powerful as their Lord is. They will take the Lord as their example. He is the Lord over everything in heaven and on earth. Him is given all power, authority and strength and still he is full of love and humility and gentleness and patience and compassion. And that is the secret to become such a powerful person. If we want to really become powerful then we have to follow his way: the walk of love.

Finally we will look at a report that also speaks about faith and explains especially the connection between soul and spirit.

So here follows something from Jakob Lorber’s The Great Gospel of John (Das grosse Evangelium Johannes), Volume 2, Chapter 132:

Jesus about the essence of fear and anxiety

But it began, as the sun had set, a very cool and vehement wind to blow about midnight so that all again started to be afraid and the centurion said: "Well, when this wind is going to increase all the time then it will finally throw us down the abyss; and its considerable coolness is not pleasant."

I say: "Let the wind blow because it is its time! But remember that it is not the master of him who created it by his will and keeps it and lets it blow when he wants!"

The centurion was content with this explanation, but nevertheless laid himself down on the ground as firm as possible and the others followed his example.

Only Jarah remained standing steadfast at my side and said: "But Lord, why is it that these people are so frightened since they surely have been taught by many signs that you are also a Lord of all elements!? I am especially surprised to see this from your own disciples! Yes, when you would not be present then it would be something else; but as you are here it really surprises me! Lord, if it is your will then tell me the reason of this phenomenon!"

I say: "Look, that is caused by the not yet completely taken out old world in their insides! If this were banished in them as it is in you then they would be like you and not be afraid and also could not have any fear because the spirit is strong enough to subject all nature.

Look, we are now standing on the peak of a mountain on which no man has ever set foot on! As you can see all rock faces are so steep on all sides that there is no way that one could get up here by natural means and it is just as impossible to get down; you have seen how, after we had climbed half the mountain with natural strength, any possibility was lost to climb up the steep walls any further. The centurion and all the others asked: ‘Now what?’ – But I climbed up front with you over the walls and all followed us without the slightest sign of getting tired. – How was this then possible?

Look, that is made possible by the spirit in man! I stirred up the spirits in man at this time and these carried their flesh case up here to this height. But because their spirits are still not used to such activity they went back again into their body to rest as soon as I relieved them a little bit and the body’s soul was filled with fear. But if their spirit would have remained fully awake in their hearts they would not have had any fear; because the spirit itself would have filled the soul with the most vivid confidence and would have laid the liveliest conviction into their hearts that all nature has to be subject to it! But because such could not happen in the long run due to parts of the old world still occupying their souls, their souls are still seized by some of the fear of the world which you experience here in them.

The soul of man either settles into its flesh due to a wrong direction or through a right direction in its spirit who is always one with God as the light of the sun is one with it. When now a soul settles into its flesh which is dead in itself and receives a life out of the soul only for a certain time, when no harm is done to the body, then the soul will become all in all one with its flesh.

But when the soul continually settles more and more into its flesh so that it finally becomes itself totally to be flesh, then it will also be overcome by the feeling of annihilation which is a quality of the flesh; and this feeling then is the fear which finally makes the human being completely incapable and weak in all things!

But it is completely different with a person whose soul settled into its spirit due to a right direction it has since its earliest youth! There the soul will eternally never see a possible annihilation in front of itself! Its feeling is equal to the nature of its spirit that eternally never can be destroyed; it cannot see and feel death because it is one with its eternally living spirit, who is a Lord over all the visible world of nature. And the easy to understand result for the man still living in the flesh is that he is devoid of any fear; because where there is no death there is no fear!

That’s why men should always worry as little as possible about the things of the world, but only care that their soul becomes one with the spirit and not with the flesh! Because what good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world for his flesh yet suffers in return the greatest harm for his soul. Because also this whole world, which we now see to quite an extent, with all its water bubbles like passing splendours, shall cease to exist and also this whole heaven with all its stars at its time; but the spirit shall remain for ever, as shall every of my words.

But it is unspeakably difficult to help men who once have really settled firmly into the world; because they see and set their life in the vain things of the world, live in permanent fear and at the end will be completely deaf to the spiritual way! But approached on the natural or worldly way then this also does not only bring no help for them but only promotes their judgement and through it the death of their soul!

Who of the worldly people then wants to save his soul has to do great violence to himself and has to start to do his utmost to disown all worldly things. If he does this with great diligence and eagerness he will save himself and enter into life; but if he does not do this then there is no other way for him to get help, except by much suffering from the world so that he learns to despise the world and its splendour, turns himself to God and so begins to search for His spirit inside himself and to unite more and more with Him. I tell you: The world’s happiness is the death of the soul! – Tell me now, you my lovely Jarah, if you understood all this well!"

This is the end of "Mind and Spirit"

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