Hortus Conclusus

The book on the Beyond:

Hopefully you will now have begun to get an inkling of the mystery of the world of causes, which eternally begets and gives birth, revealing itself in all realms of perception as the endlessly varying abundance of phenomena…

Or is your inner feeling still too dull, because you have never been accustomed to sharpen it?

Then perhaps you still scarcely feel the mystery which is being revealed to you in my words; or you interpret my words in a way they are not intended to be interpreted? –

I intend you to become capable of ‘seeing’ however, so that you will not enter the realm of the spirit as ‘one blinded’, when that day comes when you must enter it. –

‘Avidyâ’, i.e. ignorance, is called by Eastern wisdom with justification ‘guilt’; for only your own will can block for you the gate to knowledge. – –

You have already heard on several occasions that between your world of physical-sensory perception and the world of the spirit there is  only a barrier separating the two different forms of perception from one another.

I have often deliberately repeated myself  and will have to continue repeating myself  so that that this basic truth enters your consciousness as deeply as possible.

Therefore I need to remind you here that reality remains forever the same oneness and causality, even though it enters the perceptions of the worlds of physical or spiritual phenomena in the most diverse ways.

Philosophical thought has sensed from afar this one ‘reality’, calling it ‘the thing in itself’.

Yet it is absolutely impossible for even the most sophisticated and acute philosophical speculations to reach this reality.

It can only be comprehended in practical experience, and only tried and tested masters of ancient, hidden ways of knowledge are really capable of this practical experience.

They too are the only ones capable of guiding their successors, who were born and chosen for the task, to this practical experience.

 In this way I once attained what could be attained here.

Who then, other than ourselves, could show you,  by allusions as permitted by the words of  a human language here on earth, the only reality which is the original cause of each and every phenomenon?!

I will try to achieve this; – yet I must plead for the assistance of your innermost feelings at the beginning of this attempt, for only when the spiritual within you is capable of unifying with my teaching, can you become aware of the truth.

Your eyes are still now blinded by the dazzle of a transient light that can truly blind the eyes!

You must first learn to ‘see’! –

Your eyes must become free to see what they want to see; no longer must they be forced into having to see only those things most people can   see. – –

Your eyes must learn to look inwardly in the same way as hitherto they have only looked outwardly!

Yet we speak here not merely of a different way of ‘seeing’; rather, all your feelings must experience a renewal.

Your own ‘sensation of existence’ must be freed from the shackles which have bound it until now if you would feel with unerring certainty the only ‘reality’ which is the cause of all appearance.

Magic threads permeate this external physical world of the senses. If you strive with endurance to learn to look inwards, you will soon know how to separate the phenomenal form of this outer world from the causality which reveals itself in it.

You will make the surprising discovery that the only reality in the whole phenomenal world can also be apprehended in the physical-sensory form of phenomena in the shape of hidden, spiritual primeval powers which in fact have often been experienced by men, yet also denied by many because they had not experienced them…

Those who were permitted to experience those things to which we here refer can no longer be led astray by the doubts of others. His own experience will protect him from equating these powers with powers emanating from the invisible realm of physical nature  although in both cases they are commonly referred to as ‘mystical’, ‘supernatural’ or even ‘occult’ powers.

The whole physical world of phenomena surrounding you – including your own body –, is constructed on the influence of spiritual powers from the original being hidden to physical senses and all spiritual worlds are in the same way phenomenal forms of these causal powers.

It is the different form of perception which determines experiencing the influence of these powers as ‘physical’ or ‘spiritual’ world.

You will now understand that the ‘world beyond’ is not a different world of causality; rather, it is the result of a, to you unfamiliar, new and different way of perceiving the influence of the same hidden powers of original being whose influence here on earth you learnt to see as ‘this world’. –

It is true that your consciousness is not the creator of reality, for it is itself part of this reality, – it is itself one of the hidden spiritual powers of original being. – However, it is within both ‘this life’ and the ‘life beyond’: the creator of the phenomenal form which builds itself, both here and there, on the influence of the same powers.

As part of the way you perceive ‘this life’ there is one outcome of these powers which is very familiar to you as the functions of your physical senses.

All your perception and recognition of reality on earth is precisely determined by the senses given to you here; and you do not perceive anything other than what they make you perceive.

But since you are a ‘part’ of eternal reality, just as a drop of water in the ocean is a part of the ocean, you therefore potentially carry within you all the possibilities existing within eternal reality, just as the drop in the ocean has all the qualities of the ocean’s water.

Thus you are not only capable of perceiving through the sensory organs of your physical organism, for you are yourself of spiritual nature and the eternal owner of your spiritual organism.

You possess within your spiritual organism other sensory organs which still remain unknown to you. 

On the spiritual side they correspond completely to your physical and sensory organs here in your earthly body.

Through your spiritual senses you become in the ‘life beyond’ just as much a creator of your spiritual world of phenomena as here on earth you are the creator of the physical world of the phenomena you can perceive without you knowing it…

To help your understanding, consider, for example, someone under hypnosis!

He sees, hears and feels everything that you want to make him see, hear or feel through the power of your suggestion; for him everything is real.

You are utterly convinced that he is being subjected to a deception you have willed upon him, – yet you are the one who is deceived in this supposition!

You have merely freed the person hypnotised for a short time from the compulsion of having to believe his physical senses alone. Now he sees, hears and feels temporarily, and in those areas where you command him, with his spiritual senses too, and through them he becomes the creator of those things he is instructed to perceive.

It is not you who shows him what he sees; and certainly he does not see any of those things commonly visible in spiritual worlds of phenomena by all those who perceive there.

You are simply guiding his vivid imagination. Since, with the function of his physical senses inhibited, he can simultaneously perceive with his spiritual senses, his will temporarily forms in spiritual matter the equivalents of the imaginary pictures you have caused him to create.

It is not the wooden staff with which you touch his hand – whilst suggesting it is a red hot iron rod – which produces the blister which immediately appears on his hand. – Rather, it is the spiritual-sensory phenomenal form of a red hot iron bar which has produced the blister. Such things can only be brought about because they are based upon the influence of hidden powers which are the only reality within all phenomena. –

The person under hypnosis will not doubt for an instance the objectivity of what he has created himself. If you ordered him to recall his experiences after coming out of the hypnotic trance, he will scarcely be able to understand, when awake, that his perceptions did not occur in the world of physical senses.

He was only able to experience so intensively because his experience was based on the influence of the same reality as the physical world of phenomena familiar to him. – –

Even if we have only mentioned hypnosis in this context to aid understanding, and even if the insights it allows us into spheres of the spiritual senses are very limited and superficial, this example can still show you that your current way of perceiving  through the physical senses, is not the only one which exists.

Here on earth we are all, as it were, in a collective hypnotic trance so that we are incapable of perceiving in any other way than our ‘hypnotist’, who is here our own ‘in-born’ will, makes us perceive. That will would not be in the earthly realm if it were not striving for self-experience in phenomena of the physical senses.

As soon as we understand how to redirect our eternal will, now temporarily directed at the physical dimension, we shall know other forms of perception and their laws. –

In truth, this is possible only for very few people during their days on earth;  – but it will be a necessity for all once death of the physical body deprives conscious will of the hitherto available sensory organs.

All ‘fear of death’ arises from the resistance of the will directed at the physical world, to a reversal of the direction it took when ‘falling’ from the First Light. – –

Now you will be able to understand that all those who have not yet arrived at their spiritual ‘awakening’ on earth will in ‘the beyond’ initially feel only a ‘frontier world’ which corresponds to their own imaginings and to those who share their outlook, – that they must first become complete masters of themselves within their own will, before they can be led upwards to the eternal spiritual light-world of absolute fulfilment.

We have no need of anyone who has not renounced all his selfish desires for his mere existence in the spiritual region which encloses us would be identical to sinking into anarchy and chaos, – assuming it were possible for such a person to rise into the most sublime light-world.

Perhaps you understand now why I have emphasised the fact that here we are all one in the will of which the direction can not be changed…

In the spiritual realm we have become sovereign rulers of the one and only reality – through the fusion with it of the unity of our will within which every individual will finds itself back as just universal will…

Thus we became knowing creators of the highest and purest phenomenal world within the spirit.

Inasmuch as within a state which knows neither beginning nor end, being always both in itself, can nevertheless be spoken of  ‘perfection’, we know that our perfection is conditioned by ever conscious creation and preservation of the highest and most radiant phenomenal world in the spirit which became for us workshop, as well as temple of devotion…

We ‘are’ nothing other than what our united, eternal will wills!

What is termed here on earth and in everyday speech ‘will’ is but a desire, a longing, or expression of some inclination determined by some function of the brain.

If the real, eternal will of man on earth were to pursue desires, every wish and desire would have to be fulfilled.

But that is not the case, as every one knows. In truth, we can thank heaven that ‘will’ does not stand behind every wish here on earth…

Our eternal will ‘wills’ something here on earth only within the limitations imposed on it by the willed physical way of perception, even though wishes would only be too pleased to cross these limitations as often as they could.

Only within the spiritual realm – in the other form of perception – can our will will differently.

There the hypnotic spell of ‘this life’ is broken, and the other possibilities to perceive within us can reveal themselves.

Here again you will be able to see why it is nonsensical to believe that those who have died unto this world could ‘materialise’ themselves so as to communicate with the living on earth.

This would mean that those who have finally been freed from hypnotic enslavement to their physical perception could once more become its prey. –

Even if the ‘laws of nature’ permitted, they would not be capable of willing this return, since the will freed itself already from its hypnotic spell, completely regardless of the fact that physical and sensory way of perception depends on the function of physical sensory organs.

As I stated previously, everything in spiritualist séances that has been taken to be the ‘materialisation’ of a dead person, or indeed any physical apparition perceived during such events, is merely the work of beings which, although normally remaining imperceptible to human physical senses, still belong to physical nature.

Their invisible organism is in no way ‘spiritual’ in nature, and they can perceive nothing that is spiritual.

On the other hand, they possess highly developed sensory organs in their physical bodies  normally invisible to earthly men, sensory organs which, although physical in kind and capable of effecting only ‘physical’ perception, surpass to an extraordinary degree all the functions of man’s physical senses.

Moreover, these beings are endowed with senses which physical man does not possess, but tries to compensate for – as well as he can –  through the functions of mechanical devices. –

Although those beings of whom we speak here are invisible to human eyes, – but perceived with  great precision by many animals on earth, – are capable  for brief periods, and by using human powers, of taking on forms which must be perceptible to human physical senses.

The temporary creation and use of these forms is effected by a kind of amalgamation with the will of certain people (so-called ‘mediums’) while using their ‘animal soul’ at the same time.

The inhabitants of this part of the physical world of phenomena, not consciously perceived by human senses, are in a certain sense very ‘similar’ to human beings; however, they have never been human beings in the past, nor could these beings ever become human.

 We are rather discussing creatures which are as close to man’s invisible physical organism as the animal world is to his outer physical organism.

The sphere of influence assigned by nature to these beings lies in the inner regions of the organic structure of the physical world.

The ‘gnomes’, ‘goblins’, spirits of earth, air and water found in the ancient fairy-tales and legends are – leaving aside obvious additions made by popular imagination – mostly presented in such a way that allows one to suppose that we have here not mere fables but accounts of real human experience.

The description of them as ‘natural spirits’ must, however, not allow us to forget that we are dealing with beings with physical senses, for whom the spiritual dimension of the causal world is not only inaccessible, but not even a part of their consciousness…

Only ignorance about these connections rooted in nature appears to excuse people supposing or even believing that they are communicating with entities from the spiritual world when they attend spiritualist séances.

It is certainly possible for purely spiritual entities, and therefore also the dead, to make themselves visible and perceptible under certain circumstances, – only you see and hear them in these instances through your spiritual senses, even if you think you see them with physical eyes and hear them with physical ears.

But real spiritual entities will never produce any physical sign of power! –

For you to be able to perceive a genuine spiritual entity by means of your spiritual senses, it is necessary that you are being freed temporarily by the spiritual dimension from the ‘hypnosis’ of your way of perception through the physical senses.

Those around you uninfluenced by this liberation will neither see the shape you see, nor hear any of the words you hear; yet there is no need to see your experience in any way as a ‘hallucination’ which would simply be a product of your vivid imagination…

If you receive a genuine spiritual experience without having sought it, accept it in awe and preserve in your heart those things you were permitted to experience!

However, it would be foolish to wish upon you such experiences, for it is part of a very highly developed critical ability to differentiate genuine perceptions of the spiritual senses from vivid hallucinations; and you will hardly set out to see a ‘ghost’, if you cannot know whether or not it is a masked projection of your own making.

Cases of genuine spiritual perception are so rare that it is better not to believe in real influence from spiritual regions until severest criticism has excluded beyond any doubt the possibility of a hallucination.

Only a wealth of experience can teach judgement in these matters, and a secure judgement is only made by those whose spiritual senses are permanently open.

So-called ‘clairvoyance’ is, however, not the ability to perceive spiritual forms.

The ‘clairvoyant’ is only capable of perceiving things found in the physical world which are distant from him in space and time, – on occasions this includes its invisible sphere and the lemuroid beings inhabiting it, which he then takes to be ‘spirits’.

If a ‘clairvoyant’ produces the most astonishing proofs for his ability to perceive events far away, in the past or in the future, he only ever sees things within the recognisable phenomenal world of the physical senses.

Wherever he thinks he sees spiritual things, he is either giving an account of the invisible part of the physical world, or of things his own vivid imagination parades in front of him; although he regards everything he sees, in good faith, as objective testimony to the spiritual world.

His visions will then always clearly display the colour of his own prejudices and opinions governing his daily life on earth.

If he is a Christian, he will give an account of the holy figures in the Gospels or of canonised ‘saints’; – if he grew up within the ideas of Indian religious systems he will believe he sees the divinities of Brahmanism, and in Tibet: those of the Mayâhâna school.

Innumerable illusions about the ‘beyond’ have been spread among willing believers by ‘clairvoyants’. They continue to find adherents because people naively conclude, from the confirmation of some reference to the past or future, that the ‘clairvoyant’ also has access to spiritual realms.

The ‘clairvoyant’s’ organ, however, is nothing other than a rudimentary physical sensory organ from the first days of mankind on this earth.

 As an example of ‘atavism’, this sensory organ which is functioning to a limited degree can occasionally be found in people of today’s generation.

All ‘clair-voyance’, ‘clair-feeling’ and ‘clair-hearing’ rest on the possibility of being able to use this sensory organ.

Included here are also so-called ‘psychometry’, that is, seeing visions of the past fate of an object merely by touching it, as well as some versions of the ability to ‘soothsay’, even if here a method is used which, intentionally or unwittingly, conceals the actual procedure.

You will have to differentiate between three realms in the cosmos, if you are to learn how to understand the ‘world beyond’.

Firstly, the realm of the physical-sensory way of perception, or the physical world.

Secondly, the realm of spiritual-sensory perception, or the world of the spirit.

Thirdly, however, there is the realm of hidden, cause-creating powers of original being: – the only reality, on whose influence rest all the forms of perception and their phenomenal worlds, both in the spiritual and physical dimensions of the cosmos.

These hidden, causal powers of being work in earthly man as his ‘powers of the soul’.

Once crystallised into a temporal form of collectivity form in a human life, they adopt, as it were, the human’s individual ‘coloration’ and become, through the eternal will which manifests itself in him, determined for all future time, so that they must henceforth follow the impulse they now received until it finds fulfilment.

If this fulfilment does not take place in the earthly life of the human who gave the impulse, the ‘powers

of the soul’ striving in a particular direction will repeatedly express themselves in new human lives, until they finally achieve fulfilment by merging themselves with the will manifested in a human being and so becoming one with him.

An incorrect interpretation of what they saw of these events seduced peoples of the east into believing in a frequent ‘re-embodiment’ through birth on earth.

The truth is, however, that this re-embodiment, – that is, a regression into the self-hypnosis of a physical-sensory way of perception – is only possible by humans who consciously and deliberately destroy their own bodies (which in no case is a work of eternal will, but always an attempt of the desire to escape! – –); furthermore: it is possible with children   who died before the eternal will was able to fulfil its urge to physical-sensory experience; and thirdly: in humans in whom the urge to this experience degenerated, as it were, into hypertrophy, so that even the death of the earthly body could only temporarily interrupt the state of self-hypnosis.

Thus the doctrine of reincarnation can be seen as having as little application to normal events, as suicide or death in infancy can be seen as the normal conclusion of life of man on earth…

If ‘memories’ or faint feelings arise within you which steer you towards the thought that you might once before have lived life on earth, it is possible that you are not deceived in thinking this, and that you are an example of one of the three exceptions which alone would allow reincarnation, – however, you would do better to let the question rest until the day you receive a certain answer in the spiritual realm, after departing from this life on earth.

The feeling that you lived on earth as an individuality different from yourself is always  and with all certainty  a delusion. For in the three exceptions listed above which allow repeated re-embodiment on earth, the same individuality remains in the new re-embodiment, prepared to experience itself in existence on earth.

On the other hand, one may assume with certainty that everyone whose inner sensitivities are not completely dulled, feels sometimes  ‘powers of the soul’ at work within him, which received their impulse from men of an earlier age and now seek to bring it to fulfilment.

It may be the case that the person experiencing these things within himself will see very vivid memories which originate in the lives of those who once gave their impulse to those ‘powers of the soul’ now working in a new human life.

The error in believing that you were once the person yourself who experienced the memories can very easily be explained, but only, if need be, by far too superficial experiences.

Every individual human being is a single and unique emanation from the First Will, – proceeded from the eternal ‘unformed sea of the Godhead’ to attain its individual perfected form which differs from all other co-emanations.

Those born on this earth who now must bear the trials, tribulations and pains inseparably bound to

existence in the animal body, have created this destiny themselves. For the sake of living in the world of physical-sensory phenomena they interrupted the path to perfection of their form in the spirit.

Of necessity he must return sooner or later, so that he then may again strive for the perfection of his spiritual form.

The sooner he recognises, while still alive on earth, the only way in which he can ‘turn around’ his ‘need’, the more assistance he can draw from his earthly life for the further course of his path to perfection, – and the easier it will be, while still here on earth, to remove obstacles which otherwise can become severe restrictions on this spiritual path. –

Yet even if man in this existence on earth does not yet attain his own conscious experience with his   own spiritual senses, a significant achievement is made if he is orientated towards the true form of the ‘world beyond’ awaiting him after his death by those of his fellow men who already have this experience.

As in the physically-sensory perceptible world the same way of perception is at work creating phenomena, yet the world of the ant, or of the bird, is essentially different from your own, there are manifold differences in the worlds of beings capable of spiritual-sensory perception.

There are countless spiritual worlds, just as there are countless worlds of physical-sensory phenomena!

Individual eternal will finds the highest form of its perfection only when it unites its individual will, without a trace of separate striving,  with the will of the universe, within the innermost realm of the spirit: – that realm of the cause-initiating, eternal effectual powers of being: – in the light-world of the only reality…

Beyond this there is nothing for the human spirit; for this most sublime of all worlds is unending in time, space and possibilities of fulfilment.

Insofar as ‘unlimited’ being, that ‘boundless,  unfathomable ocean of the Godhead’ determined and thus  bounded, – though ‘unending’ – is accessible to consciousness by the influence of the will, it only becomes conscious of itself in this supreme light-world in each eternal will which is united   here. – – –

Those things I have sought to explain to you here in these three treatises include everything man on earth can comprehend during his life on earth regarding the innermost mystery of his existence, here and in the other world awaiting him after death.

Everything else you may be told about the ‘life beyond’ – whether fantasies dreamt up by feverish faith or speculative thought, – consists of: theories and empty notions!

You should not believe in some ‘theory of the world’ just because it has found other believers; for your soul will not be at peace until it has recognised itself again: – as a testimony by itself of the only reality.