Beyond the Threshold
Deathbed scenes
Appendix
Reunion in the Great Beyond
31 May 1852
Many people, who otherwise have their head and heart in the right place, are, if they are somewhat weak in faith, bothered by the fateful question as to whether there is another life after this short earthly one, what sort of life and whether man will recognize himself as that which he was here? Furthermore, whether he will be left with earthly consciousness and the full remembrance of all his earthly conditions or whether his awareness as well as his remembrance are not rather like that in a dream, where the dreaming person recognizes himself as exactly the same as he was when living his conscious earthly life, clearly aware of his own subjectivity, only under completely new conditions; where all aspects of his objective earthly life, apart from a few impression which are deeply imprinted onto his consciousness - like the nearest relatives and often-seen, vividly discussed and loved localities, and even those almost always under other conditions and in other forms - lose almost all existence. And is there in the vast beyond among such spiritual conditions of life, which resemble a prophetic dream, a reunion among friends, who recognize each other?
And I, the Lord, say and reply to this comprehensive question: Yes, in such and such a way! Depending on whether man has lived through his earthly probation life more or less perfectly in accordance with My order, revealed to all mankind.
Whosoever has already here attained to the true and full rebirth of his spirit, which everyone can easily achieve, lives as one fully reborn in such a way that the spirit world with all its conditions and also in its effect exerted on the material world is fully visible, like the material world. The shedding of his physical body, which is anyway incapable of a living awareness and memory, cannot possibly effect any change in his thinking, volition, memory and in his living subjective and objective awareness.
Since life and all its mutual effects have already here passed into the spirit, which is forever always in the highest and purest selfawareness and forever superior to all matter, which only manifests as a thought or an idea fixed for a certain time, I say: It should be quite obvious to anyone capable of clear thinking - particularly since he has access to a thousand proofs from the life of the somnambulists and of many seers and prophets - that the purespiritual life in the beyond must be a much clearer life in full awareness of itself and of all subjective and objective events, conditions and arrangements of life, in keeping with the superiority of spirit over all matter -which, as shown, is nothing but a fixed expression of its thoughts and ideas - and stands forever as itself light, life, energy and fullest awareness.
However, since not only one, but all human beings living according to My order pass into the same most perfect life, the question about the ultimate reunion is idle, for, since people have already in this imperfect life as pupa the capability of mutual recognition and natural reunion, which they cannot possibly deny or doubt, they will all the more possess this capability in the most perfect, pure-spiritual life, where their whole nature is the imperishable expression and the basic principle of all life and of all its conditions and events! To be sure, in this world the soul recognizes through the body by way of its spirit the familiar and related people, can befriend others and form intimate bonds and is thus able to recognize them at any time as to form and character. If the soul and the spirit can do this through the thousand prison walls of the as such dead body, how much more will it be able to achieve this in its completely unfettered condition, as has only too often been observed with many somnambulists, who often with firmly closed eyes quickly and precisely recognized not only those surrounding them to the core, but also the people in distant lands about whom they were asked questions, and whom they quickly and reliably recognized! And yet the soul of an ever so advanced somnambulist is by far not in the free state of that of a still more imperfect soul after the shedding of its body!
It is due to their evil volition that unperfected souls after their liberation from the body only too soon become more and more dark. Of course, such souls no longer see anything of the world, which is quite essential, for in a seeing condition they could inflict considerable damage on the world, and particularly on those whom they consider their enemies. Such souls and respective spirits then see only what develops from their fantasy, like a lowest dream world. In such a fantasy world such souls often remain for hundreds of years, oblivious of the continually arriving souls, although they were their relatives who recognize them at once. They see only their long-lasting fantasy world and are therefore only accessible for instruction to angels by way of correspondences, which the angels are capable of introducing into the fantasy world of such blind souls.
If they accept instruction and thereby a betterment of their volition, their fantasy world disappears gradually, and they come more and more to the true light and are then able to see everything around them, as well as their relatives and friends. They soon recognize them as such and are very happy to be with them.
If there is no betterment, they remain in their continually worsening dream world for an immensely long time. There is then no question of a happy reunion and recognition. Just as a physical human being in a very realistic dream is unable to remember his life in every detail, seeing only that which his imagination leads him to believe is true, just as little, and even less so, a dark soul in the beyond can remember or recognize anything within the sphere of its dream. For then it is never in an active, but always only in a passive state, from which it can extricate itself spontaneously only after an almost endless time, speaking in earthly terms.
Unless a person is here at least by half reborn, he reaches in the beyond more or less the above mentioned state, about which he can do nothing by himself, just like an embryo in the womb, whose movements depend on the necessary external condition of the mother. However, it is still a totally different matter with such souls, and unlike the condition of an embryo in the womb. Plainly speaking, it consists in that the embryo in the womb, as a nascent creature, is throughout passive, whereas the dark soul is quite active spontaneously and at the same time suffering, unable to become inactive because it refuses to do so thereby trying to spare itself suffering.
How is that? If a human being in this world has done very little or often nothing towards the reviving and development of that which is hidden in the heart of the soul; if it employs all its faculties for the external intellect, using it to acquire all sorts of worldly treasures and thereby offering the best luxuries and tastiest morsels and the most pleasurable sensations. When such a soul arrives in the beyond, its divine light chamber is tightly closed and inaccessible. But when the person dies the light of reason, which is really only a combination of the earthly material photographs, which are visible to the soul in the many millions of facets of the brain tablets and from which the soul always, in the way of the silly astrologers, makes its calculations and in its superstition feels coerced to act accordingly, stays in the world, like the picture gallery of an art lover. As a consequence, such a soul must arrive as totally dark in the spirit world, only with the awareness or the manifestation of life and only remembering its earthly conditions and circumstances inasmuch as they are recorded in the brain chambers of the soul (which correspond to the physical brain) in corresponding types, which the sensitive soul feels and becomes aware of, although it cannot clearly see them owing to its own darkness.
It is easy to understand and feel that such a condition only too soon becomes unbearable for a soul conditioned to all the pleasurable sensations of life. Soon such a soul is assailed by great fear and anxiety and, finally, by a great anger and rage, whereby a kind of glow develops in it.
For, wherever one sees a great activity in the material world, which is under judgment - such as the heavy gale, a strong ocean surf, a strong friction between two objects of a similar and dissimilar kind, a mighty pressure exerted by two hard objects on each other and so forth, he will, particularly at night, observe also the development of a fire or light, or at least of a glow. This is denoted by the scientists with the general, but not always appropriate, term electricity. It is actually and in full truth nothing but an incitement of the nature spirits more or less firmly imprisoned in all matter. These can be all the more easily incited, the harder their imprisonment. If they are imprisoned less severely, as for instance in the air, in the water, in clay and in other liquid and soft bodies, it requires a relatively more vigorous movement, so that the nature spirits, which cannot dodge it so quickly, can be incited and through their fast movement within their light and very transparent envelopment become visible as a light or a glow.
Any keen observer can easily deduce and recognize from a thousand manifestations in nature that the incitement of the nature spirits consists in vibration. Whenever some human being or an animal is very upset in his nature, a trembling is noticeable in him which stems only from the incitement of the nature spirits imprisoned in the flesh and blood. A chord on a musical instrument vibrates when it is moved or struck because the spirits imprisoned in the matter of the chord are incited by the blow. The flame of every light is nothing but an act of liberation of the nature spirits imprisoned in matter and consists in increasingly more visible vibration, brought about by the activity of the nature spirits liberating themselves. There are thousands and thousands of manifestations where the same process can be observed.
It has been said that the soul by losing its worldly light and all pleasures stemming from it passes first into a great fear and anxiety and, finally, into a great anger and rage, whereby a kind of glow is engendered in it. This glow develops in the nature of the soul in the same manner as in the world of nature.
The first incitement of the innumerable spiritual soul specifics present in every soul is fear. As all specifics pass into an everincreasing vibration, the space allotted to them in their form soon becomes inadequate. Since the outer form within which all the innumerable specifics are united to one life soon becomes too tight, for it cannot and must not be so readily enlarged, the natural consequence is an ever increasing pressure in all directions, engendering in the concrete or rather individual life a feeling of fear.
If the urging and pushing increases and lasts for some time, a spiritual fermentation called anger develops. As already in nature the result of an increasing fermentation is a full inflammation, the end result of the great fermentation of the soul specifics is a full inflammation, and this is called rage. Such rage is then the cause of the glow which, if it increases, finally turns into a full conflagration, which as the worst manifestation of life is called rage and is actually called, and is, hell.
Now if a departed soul thus begins to glow, it begins to dimly recognize the spiritual stigmata (imprints) present in its brain and soon realizes that there is much evil and little that is good in its nature. In this dusk it often confuses the gnat with an elephant and conversely the elephant with a gnat. Such contemplations then give rise to all sorts of airy and transparent, one might say formless, forms, like the castles in the air of a young man in love in the world, which with a vivid imagination not seldom suddenly materialize, only to again disappear into nothing with the next excitement.
Since the soul is unable in this way to achieve anything of a lasting reality, being more incited and angered by the momentary fleeting pictures, which are more caricatures than well-ordered pictures, so that even its innermost begins to be affected, this inner nature develops an activity which is, however, of quite a different nature.
Through this activity (of its primordial spirit out of God) the erratic activity of the soul is calmed down, so that in the end the soul enters as it were into a sleep state, thus reposing, and in this repose, more united with its primordial spirit out of Me, it enters into a dreamlike state where it remains, feeling quite comfortable in it, a condition which the ancient soul-and-life philosophers used to call the soul sleep. The primordial spirit, which is now active contrary to the soul's desires, then creates more and more of such pictures, which on the one hand always contain what the selfish tyrannical and pleasure-seeking soul enjoys. But as soon as it tries to avidly grasp it in its dream, which it takes for reality of course, it either dissolves or flees. On the other hand, the soul is also given what is
good for it, and if it seizes it and uses it for its true best, it lasts, and thus out of the dream a firm and permanent world (for the soul) begins to develop.
The more the soul grasps what it is offered by its primordial spirit, the more it unites with the same and thus passes suddenly into its primordial spirit and together with the same merges with the primordial light and all truth out of it. And it soon fully recognizes itself and all its acquaintances and relatives and is then usually turned by them to Me personally, where then according to the degree of the perfection and unification with its spirit it is given more and more light and wisdom and the full capability to see into the natural worlds and be active beneficially. It requires no further proof that, in this case, a general reunion is quite a natural consequence of its spiritual perfection.
But what happens later to those souls, whose selfish, pleasure-seeking mind cannot be rid of the illusory pictures and manifestations of their dream life in the beyond by the good apparitions? I ask, what happens to such a soul, who flies more and more into a rage, because it cannot reach and hold on to the objects conjured up? Is there in this case also a reunion? No, say I, there is no reunion!
Such a soul's own spirit will then become its most implacable judge. In the end it allows the soul to reach the pretended things and objects and find its own evil pleasure in them, but such pleasure always results in the greater and most burning pain to the soul and again turns it for a long time quite dark.
The spirit then allows a thus darkened soul, who is in the greatest rage which glows through it, giving it an evil light by which to become aware of its own kind, really to meet such souls.
This results at once in unions and banding together of those who talk about their anger to each other. In their dream life, which such souls mistake for reality, they fortify themselves against the enemies, with whom they have been confronted against their will and, glowing with revenge, they vow to kill themselves rather than putting up with the slightest divine order.
In such a fortification, the material for which they take from their imagination - provided they are capable of any imagination in their glowing rage - they often remain for a very long time, thereby becoming again only angrier and more raging, break through their own fortification and begin to search for the enemy in hordes, because none of them tried to penetrate their fortification so that they might quench their revenge on him. But their search is in vain. They only come upon other hordes looking for the enemy and, ganging up with them soon, they go with all haste to look for the enemy without, of course, finding him.
Once there are several thousand such miserable souls together which are seen in the spirit world by the pure spirits similarly to the glow in the air caused by the conflagration of some house burning on the earth - they choose as their leader the one who gives most, considering him to be the most courageous and wisest.
He then leads them over a terrain which usually corresponds to the imagination of such souls - either in the form of a dark sandy grassland or an immense plain where nothing is seen but dry moss. After wandering for a long time on such a terrain, suffering great hunger and thirst, they usually find nothing but another similar horde under a leader glowing with rage. And it then happens that in their great thirst for revenge, they either attack, mutilate or tear each other to pieces, or they unite under two leaders. This leads at once to friction, since each of the two leaders wants to be the first, resulting after a short while in a war between the two hordes.
When in such wars, such most unhappy souls have torn one another almost into small pieces - of course only in their imagination - they again, as it were, calm down; and their spirit shows them, as in a clear dream, the futility of their foolish, blind endeavor and points out to them the better road, namely a change of heart.
Occasionally, some follow this direction and convert. But in most cases they rave even more and fall back into their spiritless pure soul condition, which is then by far worse than the former. And such conditions are then already hell, from which it is difficult to escape. Whosoever does not take the narrow path through his own heart will not ever succeed and may remain for trillions of earth years in such a hell.
Thus it has been shown how the life of the soul in the beyond develops in two main directions diametrically opposed to each other: either upward or downward. All this is not meant to comprise all the manifestations in the spirit world, but, as mentioned, only the two general main trends, thus the crassest for and against.
Hallway between these two main conditions there are still an immense number of manifestations, which do not have to be discussed here, since they have been sufficiently demonstrated in the works "The Spiritual Sun", "Earth and Moon" and in "Scenes of the Spirit World", as well as scattered among other writings and revelations about nature. However, all the manifestations described there have as their basis the main rule shown here, and the main roads either upward or down are as such the same.
The actual true reunion occurs only in the divine realm that is in heaven, which fills the space of the whole of infinity and is thus omnipresent, but which can be reached by every human being only through his heart.
However, since there are many people in the world, who are so materially inclined as to know nothing at all of the spiritual arrangement of things, and who are here reading of "nature spirits" without understanding anything about them, a brief supplementary explanation is given as follows.
The entire material as well as the purely spiritual creation is nothing but an idea fixated by the almighty will of the Deity and, coming from the heart or the life of the Deity Itself and -because out of God - in actual fact spiritual. Now, if the entire so-called material creation were no longer fixated, which would be easily possible to God, it would again take root spiritually in the heart of God, as a great idea only visible to the Deity, and the independence of countless beings would come to an end!
But God wants forever His great thoughts and ideas to be realized in the freest independence everlastingly. And this is why God has taken this alone effective way, thereby ensuring the immutable fixation of all the divine thoughts and ideas.
The countless thoughts and ideas must be rendered successively freer and freer as it were in the minutest spiritual particles, at the same time being attracted and fixated for a long time by some principal idea of God, floating as a visible world globe in the endless space of thoughts and ideas. The homogeneous particles then unite more and more and pass into an ever-greater being up to man.
Such particles more and more released from the total principal idea (the world globe), as well as the not yet released particles, which are still fixated in the principal idea, up to man are called "nature spirits". These freer nature spirits - or natural forces as the worldly scientists call them - are present in an actively independent form either in the air, in the water or in the more pliable soil. There they coax the still firmly imprisoned spirits into freedom, uniting with them. Clothing themselves with the more unfree spirits, they create all sorts of life forms; at first plants, from these animalcules and animals of a larger and largest kind. This continues up to man, where they, as soul and also, according to the more unfree, still coarse part, as his body, sufficiently mature for a fully free independence, are then seized by God's primordial Being itself and are literally - initially still as from without - educated and trained for the subsequent pure-spiritual, everlasting condition.
Those who submit to such an education and voluntarily accept the order in which alone their forever independent, freest life is possible, achieve the great reunion with Him, from Whom they have gone forth. They will realize how and from where and through Whose might and wisdom and immutable determination they have passed from actual non-existence to the fullest, freest and independent existence and cognition.
At the same time, being of one and the same nature as their first Cause, they will spontaneously, out of their now inherent wisdom, which is equal to the divine wisdom, effect new creations and thus, fully within My order, be the creators of their own heavens, whereby they will achieve the actual reunion with all their thoughts and ideas.
All this will then be a great, everlasting, actual reunion in the endless fullness of all that a divine spirit contains in its eternal abundance. And only this is then the perfect, great reunion!
I reckon, whosoever has eyes to see and ears to hear, will derive indescribably much from it to his own eternal advantage for the full recognition of the spiritual life.
But he who will only read it out of a kind of curiosity, applying the file of his worldly intellect to it, will fare as it can be read in this description. For My mercy can and must never reach beyond the boundaries of My immutable order shown from its foundation. And this order as such is already My eternal mercy.
Whosoever transgresses the boundaries of this order will only have himself to blame for an extremely long, distressful condition in the beyond. For every one must do his part, if he wants to be what he is meant to be. Whosoever does not want to go to this trouble, must remain in the eternally necessary judgment until such time when he will begin to change himself, and this will be a hard battle for the soul!
Therefore, let every one of you beware of (selfish striving for) worldly possessions, wealth, splendor and status, but be with all his might charitable towards his poorer brothers and sisters, and his battle with the darkness will be an easy one. Amen.
This, the Lord of all life is telling you. Amen. Amen. Amen.