Hortus Conclusus

The book on the Beyond:

Doubtlessly you will believe there is no ‘skill’ of dying, – rather it is a necessary evil, learnt as a   matter of course. – –

Countless are those who think like you, and   every day countless abandon their physical bodies in death, without ever having learnt the skill of dying.

For some, death comes unexpectedly, like “a thief in the night”, – for others, he comes like a ghost they fear, – some experience him as a long-awaited redeemer of their suffering, – and still others summon him themselves, for they expect him to liberate them from the cares and woes of body and soul.

Death rarely encounters someone who   understands the art of dying. – –

In order to understand this skill, you must have learnt the meaning of ‘death’ and ‘dying’ in the fullness of life!

You must, as it were, ‘rehearse’ dying whilst at the height of your powers, so that you   understand how to die when death surprises   you. – –

Dying is not as easy as many think; yet it is also not all that difficult, if you have already learnt it in the fullness of life…

All skills must be practised; without practice you will not learn how to die.

In any event, you have to undergo it, whether you understand it or not. –

Most men fear death because they do not really know what happens when it comes.

Yet those who say they have no fear are like children who set out on the high seas in a boat without knowing the dangers the sea holds for them. – –

But you shall be like a helmsman who knows the winds and tides; he knows the lands awaiting him on the distant shoreline.

You shall learn to chart the course of your well equipped vessel. – –

 ‘Dying’ is the term used for the state of having to relinquish the physical body and its sensory organs, when this relinquishment must follow for good and irrevocably, because the body is no longer physically capable of sustaining itself.

A very similar process occurs every time you lie down to rest and relinquish yourself to sleep, – only in this case you only partially lose control of your body and senses, whereas in death they are completely and irretrievably lost to you.

You see how nature itself teaches you as it were how to die!

Similarly, you can gain a presentiment of death when you faint, or when your body is artificially deprived of consciousness.

But in all these cases you only ever experience the very beginning of the process, – unless your inner spiritual ‘senses’ were already so awakened in you that you can become conscious ‘on the other side’ of existence and discover yourself, to your astonishment, alive without the body of the earth…

If you have not yet had this experience, the dreams you have during your nocturnal sleep can help   convey to you at least an understanding of conscious life without a physical body; although  life ‘beyond’ is certainly different from mere ‘dreams’. –

I am only obliged here to remind you of life in dreams to help you understand.

Just as you find yourself in your dreams   conscious, capable of feeling, thinking and acting, – just as in a dream you live in a ‘body’ and use it freely, though your physical body lies peacefully on its bed in a deep sleep, – so too you will find yourself in a physical form, conscious, feeling, thinking and acting, if you can use your spiritual ‘sense’ in the beyond and thereby become conscious, whether   temporarily or – in the case of the death of the physical body – permanently.

One essential difference consists in the fact that in your dreams you merely see the continually dissolving patterns produced by your vivid imagination; they seem to take on a life of their own through thousands of mental and physical stimuli. In contrast, you have to leave the realm of dreams if you are to awaken in the real spiritual world – regardless of which of its spheres this may occur –, in the same way as you have to leave it to awaken in the world of physical and sensory phenomena. –

Only when you have ‘transcended’ the realm of dreams can you enter the realm of the spirit. It will not be difficult to differentiate it from your most vivid and ‘natural’ dreams, for there you will be, thanks to your spiritual senses, in such a state of   consciousness that even the most vivid moments of your daily life on this earth will seem to you like you were sleepwalking. –

You see, hear and feel the same causal ‘world’ that you perceive as the physical world of   phenomena in the wakeful consciousness of your physical existence – only you experience it ‘from the other side.’– –

You have suddenly become aware of that form of the causal essential world which was imperceptible to you in your physical earthly body. Those things which were only perceived through the body and its senses – which hitherto you have called the ‘real’ world, will become as: – ‘thin air’ to you. –

Although there have been relatively few people alive in a physical body who have experienced these things in the past, or experience them in the   present, there are nevertheless more than one   suspects. For most of those with such experiences instinctively conceal them from others, whether fearful of the incredulity of others and the ‘curse of ridicule’ they will encounter, or else from a concern that the spiritual experience, which they feel to have received as a special gift of grace, might be withdrawn if they failed to observe silence.

The realms which may be entered initially by those having inner conscious experience are far from elevated spiritual spheres, and yet, ‘the other shoreline’ has been reached, even if those awakened to consciousness there are still far from capable of penetrating into the ‘interior’ of the discovered ‘territory’, or of climbing its mighty ‘peaks’. –

During life on earth these places are reached only by the very few to whom has been entrusted, here in the physical side of the causal world, the ancient ‘patrimony’ of hidden spiritual experience: – the  born ‘high priests’, – the ‘masters’ of the hidden spiritual influence and their legitimate successors, also born to this calling.

Those things which have become our certain knowledge through conscious experience of the ‘beyond’ we now pass on to you here!

Every day, every hour, we see thousands reaching ‘the other shoreline’ for ever without being able to help them; for during their lives on this earth they failed to understand the skill of dying and thus they arrive unprepared on that ‘other shoreline’, like   survivors of a shipwreck hurled onto land by the sea…

At a loss they wander around in their unfamiliar form of existence; they are incapable of grasping the helping hands reaching out towards them.

They lack every judgement as to whether what encounters them brings danger or assistance, and fearfully they shy away if someone approaches who could give them guidance…

And so they continue roaming on their own, remaining close to the ‘shoreline’ of the sea which – at least to their perception – continues to attach them to the physical side of existence they have left behind. Then, one day they discover, as though attracted ‘magnetically’, one of those small ‘shoreline realms’ – those lower realms belonging to the spiritual side of the cosmos imperceptible to earthly senses, which reflects their ideas, and corresponds to the longings and hopes they cherished during their lives on earth.

They imagine they have now found their ‘heaven’, all the more so since this is what all those they meet here also believe…

Those who have reached this place are bound to their fates for an endless age.

Only extremely rarely, and with the greatest difficulty, do we succeed in raising one of those who has lost his way, out of his self-imposed illusory ‘bliss’. –

But since we would teach you here how to avoid such diversions, and since eternal love bids us act in this way, we shall teach you the skill of dying correctly.

Essential to this skill is that one is always prepared – in the midst of making plans for the future and at times of frenetic activity; in blooming health and at the height of one’s powers – to step in joyful happiness and certain confidence upon the ‘other shoreline’ forever, – without the possibility of returning.

A state of mind is required here.

Even if it does not seem in easy reach of   everyman, no one must forget that this state alone is conditional to the ability to die correctly. –

Those bound so tightly to things belonging to physical life on earth that they consider   themselves incapable of renouncing them, – those who can imagine no circumstance in which all the goals of earthly striving become meaningless, – they will find it hard to learn the skill of dying correctly. –

Only that man understands how to live properly and joyfully on earth who can bring about every day and every hour, at random, within himself  that state of preparedness to die, – which is free of all fear and sadness. – –

He knows that nothing that he would be required to abandon – even those dearest to him, or those most in need of his care – can ever be separated from him, unless he seeks the actual separation   himself and brings it about through an act of will. –

He knows that he remains ‘here’, at the same   ‘place’ in the cosmos, – even nearer to those he loves than he could ever be in his physical body. –

He knows that he will upon death surely not be transformed as though into a god; that he will  certainly not become ‘omnipotent’ in a physical sense; yet that he will be far more capable of helping those who need his help than ever could have been possible during his physical life on earth. – –

Those who practise the skill of dying in this way will henceforth know that it will be easy for them to die properly and irrevocably, even if death were to come completely unexpectedly…

Examination and observation by medical researchers have long ago established that, although the physical act of dying is on certain occasions painful for the observer, the person dying does not suffer from the act itself but from the pains caused by his suffering until the point of death.

But our concern is only to show how the dying man’s consciousness survives the act of dying.

Even if the dying man is still fully conscious up to the last moment, a form of ‘slumber’ will overcome him at the moment the spiritual organism begins to release itself from the physical creature body to  which it has been hitherto attached. Consciousness will only reawaken to itself from this slumber when the ‘act of dying’ has been completed.

At the moment of awakening, which occurs a few seconds or minutes after his externally established ‘death’, man already finds himself in his spiritual organism, which is now the sole source of his experience, on the ‘other side’ of the causal world only perceptible spiritually: – the eternal ‘reality’ from which emanates every spiritual and physical form of existence, according to the type of perception which arouses it.

The dead man’s faculty of perception, hitherto conditioned by his physical senses, is exchanged for a new way of perception, normally not previously known to him, whereas his form-giving way of looking at things remains unchanged for the time being.

He is far from seeing himself as dead, for he is conscious of himself, of his will and capable of perception, even though he does not yet recognise that only spiritual organs now render him service.

He does not experience himself at all as being ‘amorphous’, for his previous physical body was more or less a complete reproduction of his spiritual organism, formed through his own eternal will, – although his brain ‘knew it not’. His consciousness has now become capable of perceiving this   organism, although it does not yet recognise in it anything different from his physical body.

So as physical pain ceases at the moment a painful member of the earthly body has been rendered insensitive to feeling by the appropriate means, so all physical pains experienced by a dying man  shortly before his death will have completely vanished when he wakes on the ‘other side’. For the physical body which was the cause of his pain is now permanently separated from the spiritual organism which can only experience itself. –

But a certain ‘fluid’ connection remains through invisible, subtle and tenuous material emanations from the once used physical body, which can be felt by the spiritual organism. This connection causes the one awakened in the beyond to perceive in a spiritual way various events taking place near his corpse, even though they occur in the physical world.

Thus ‘the one now in the beyond’ feels the ‘fluid’ influences reflected by those around his abandoned physical body; he feels the ‘emotional value’ of their   touches and words, and, like a blind man, still has a fairly precise picture in his mind of the physical space he has left behind – even though he maybe deceived into thinking that he still perceives the space with his physical senses.

These final connections with the physical and sensory side of the causal world survive for some time, even if all warmth has left the corpse a long time ago. But whatever can be felt diminishes in strength with every passing hour, and the ability to perceive it ceases completely as soon as the first signs of decomposition set in.

To those who object to the act of cremation, or who believe that it could ‘harm’ the dead in the life beyond, let it here be stated that after the period of time observed in civilised countries before the remains are laid to rest, all perceptive connections between the spiritual organism of the departed and his former physical body have come to an end. But where fire was the cause of death, as with every other cause of death, pain is only felt until the physically bound consciousness is lost, whilst upon ‘awakening’ in the beyond every connection with the previous physical body has been extinguished by the destruction caused by the fire.

Consciousness of one’s own presence, now felt by the spiritual organism, is not extinguished, nor is the clear ability to see and recognise all people who are physically present in their spiritual forms as these completely reflect – apart from physical limitations of their earthly manifestation, – their earthly forms.

The dead whose consciousness during their life on earth only slightly extended beyond the sphere of physical-animal existence are often so deceived by this condition that they do not realise for some time after their physical death that they are no longer are in a physical body.

They think they have ‘recovered’, since the earlier cause of their sufferings has vanished.

For the time being they are enchanted by a dreamlike picture of earthly life. Their perception of the spiritual form of their nearest and dearest is confused with self-created figures from their dream world; the dead cannot understand why they are grieving for them.

They then make every possible attempt to convince those who grieve in physical existence that there is no reason to mourn, – only these efforts are not registered by those in the throes of grief left behind in the physical world.

Only when he sees his own powerlessness in the face of what he perceives to be the folly of his nearest and dearest does he then discover that he has been unburdened of his physical body, and awakes from the dream of his own making.

Only then does he really begin to ‘learn to see’; his spiritual eyes are opened to the new spiritual side of the causal  world, whose domain of the physical and sensory approach he has abandoned without changing his ‘place’ in the cosmos.

At this point spiritual wandering begins for those who did not practise the ‘skill of dying’ during their days on earth. For the spiritual organism of a man will not in any way be clarified by death beyond the certainty of recognition he has already attained.

 Certainly there are immediately helpers at hand, but they are not recognised as such.

Instead of this they are rejected decisively and consciously by the dead who are still stuck in their physical and earthly opinions, with the consequence that all attempts to help are obstructed.

The certain knowledge to have indeed reached the life ‘beyond’ does not uncommonly awaken boundless arrogance, which only confirms the susceptible in their follies.

Those completely shackled to the earth, or too attached in their cares to things and people to whom they can no longer physically return, are seized, on realising the impossibility of such a return, by a tormenting despair. This despair must be overcome before they can recognise their new possibilities of influence, now purely spiritual in kind, in the physical world. –

Those, on the other hand, who were completely committed during their physical lives to striving for the earthly realisation of an ‘idea’ and to the concepts generated by this striving, will quite quickly lose almost all interest in the physical world they have left behind.

They seek only the opportunity to be able to realise their ‘idea’ within their new sphere of life, and are blind to all new possibilities of experience.

Others again seek the promised ‘bliss’ which they await in faith. They are astounded not to have found it immediately in the ‘beyond’, and well in those beautiful forms they had dreamt up while on earth.

All those who are preoccupied with themselves and the imaginings the have taken with them will in the end attain a sort of fulfilment of their wishes when they reach one of those lower spiritual realms which unconsciously they helped create while on earth…

This transition also does not entail a ‘change of place’; for all spiritual worlds – of which there are countless, ascending to the highest and purest world of God-bearing spirit – permeate each other and exist at the same cosmic ‘place’. –

Conscious experience of spiritual worlds, and the transition from one to another, always depends on a certain transformation in perception which renders spiritual consciousness as it were ‘blind’ to certain phenomena, whilst allowing it to ‘see’ others.

However, this transformation in perception cannot arbitrarily be summoned, except by the masters of the eternal manifestation of man in the supreme spiritual realm, or those who have been appointed by them: their chosen pupils, if their psychological and physical disposition is suitable appropriate.

All men, however, even if they do not belong to the aforementioned few, can at least strive to familiarise themselves in imagination with the feelings, perceptions and states of consciousness awaiting them after the death of the physical body, once they have read the revelations given here.

With an easy mind I concede to the objection that by such deliberate  stimulation of the imagination mere ‘pictures’ might be produced, which cannot in any sense lead to an experience of the real existence of the hereafter.

For that very reason I require everybody to adhere most strictly to the descriptions given in this book when fashioning the necessary images. For only very few can consciously become aware of the sphere of existence in the hereafter during their lives on earth; while all men can in advance as it were, go through all feelings, experiences and states of consciousness awaiting them after their earthly death by arousing imaginary pictures which reflect reality.

This regular anticipatory experience is necessary if one is to be certain, after consciousness abandons the physical nature of experiencing, of knowing immediately how to cope and, above all, to recognise what must be sought and what is to be avoided!

Only he who has attained this certainty during his existence on earth will immediately find, on crossing into the new, purely spiritual form of perception, those helping hands reaching out towards him, and will be able to seize them in confidence…

Him we can help!

He was able to ‘learn’ the skill of dying while still alive on earth; his confidence in our teaching has helped ripen the capacity to recognise within him what he is now in need of.

He will now be safe from all deception and disappointment!

We shall guide him – past those various ‘shoreline realms’ which earthly dreams and imaginings constructed through the powers of misguided will – straightaway into the ‘interior’ of the ‘land’ he now enters where loving guidance will take him ever nearer to his perfection.

In no sense has he become ‘someone else’ by discarding his physical body!

He cannot suddenly be granted what he still   lacks. –

As possessions he can only bring with him those things he was able to attain on earth.

The things he was able to bind on earth will remain ‘bound’ in the life of the spiritual senses; those things he dissolved during his life on earth will remain for him ‘dissolved’…

Only gradually can he be led upwards, until one day he is capable of entering the most sublime of all spiritual realms: – the pure light-world of most blessed and absolute fulfilment. – –

The ‘times’ needed for this ascent will be determined by the degree of relative spiritual perfection already achieved on earth; and by the serenity of the eternal will resulting from such perfection within the experience of his consciousness.

The process of ‘dying’ from the physical way of experience into the way of perception of the spiritual senses will in truth occur without your intention; and whatever awaits you on the ‘other side’ will be there, even if you do not believe in the ‘life beyond’.

But your eternal will has been granted a mighty power which enables you, through preparation here in the physical perceivable side of the world, to largely determine your further destiny.

Naturally, a prerequisite for this is a responsible way of life, so that it is continually directed to the high spiritual goal which can only be attained through a selfless love for all living things.

On the ‘other side’ of the world, – where you can only perceive with spiritual senses, – there will not only be ‘delight for the blessed’. –

Truly, there will also be realms of torment and despair, of consuming regret and the desire for self-annihilation, though this desire can never be granted…

Without exception all those must pass through these realms who have not fulfilled on earth the law that demands from each man on earth love of oneself and all fellow creatures.

This ‘love’ is very far removed from any kind of sentimental enthusiasm or emotional exuberance!

The love required by spiritual law meant here is rather the highest and most powerful affirmation of the self and the universe; so that he who is thoroughly imbued with it feels only the positive, that which is willed by the spirit, both in himself and in everything in existence; even if he feels obliged to vehemently defend himself against negative powers working simultaneously within the same manifestation. – –

All those who for whatever reason take their own lives in order to flee cowardly this existence on earth and its demands, commit the gravest violation of the spiritual law we are discussing here.

In any case, such a deed is pointless and counter-productive. For instead of finding the freedom he seeks, he, who lost his earthly body through his own hand, will be shackled a thousand times more painfully in states of consciousness he would not have wished for, and from which he will not be able to escape for aeons to come.

There is a measure of consolation for those left behind in the fact that most suicides are committed by people whose consciousness is in a state of pathological confusion at the decisive moment. The dreadful act of negation takes place in a state which may be described as a spontaneous intrusion of madness, even though this state has taken a long time to prepare through irresponsible ‘playing’ with the idea of possible physical destruction.

Although the murderer and the victim of murder are one person ‘in appearance’ the murder is the work of an overpowering thought which the victim has fed for so long with his own vitality, until it eventually consumes him.

In such an event someone who has destroyed his physical body does not bear responsibility for the act of murder. However, spiritual law requires from him compensation for every misguided thought and action from which the deed eventually sprang forth in madness. –

This compensation can generally only be attained by taking on the body of the human creature for a second time on this earth.

We are dealing here with one of those exceptions where so-called ‘reincarnation’ can be considered as a possibility; whereas at the regular end of earthly life, precisely because of this completed end, this becomes totally impossible.

Although the use made of this life on earth is of greatest significance in preparing for states of consciousness in the afterlife, you should not think that you have to lead the life of one of those anxious saints with little faith – those who are continually concerned with securing ‘salvation for their souls’; those who are selfish in their hearts, fearful of every ‘sin’ but inwardly rejoicing in their certain belief in the ‘damnation of the wicked world’.

Such an attitude to life would, with all certainty, only land you one day in one of those deceptive ‘shoreline realms’ of the spirit which human delusion has constructed without realising it was the architect.

A life of loyal fulfilment of duties, imbued with love for all living things, full of striving for goodness and truth, seeking order in the household of your will and refinement in your joys, – a life full of

cheerful faith in the ultimate fulfilment of your supreme and purest yearning, – this will always be the best life on earth for you, especially if you endeavour at the same time to learn those things I call the ‘skill of dying’ in this treatise.

Granted, there is also another special spiritual way on high of which I have spoken elsewhere. But until you have given your life the form my counsel teaches you to give it, you will scarcely be able to proceed on such a path…

He who would walk on this path must be free of everything which could hinder the sureness of his steps.

‘Sulking’ hanging of heads is as reproachable as the hollow gesture of ‘renouncing the world’!

The path leading man to the place where his ‘God’ can be born within him may not seem accessible to all yet; but all should at least know of this path, – everyone should prepare himself to walk upon it, whenever possible, here on earth.

Many may still lack the strength and endurance needed; but all spiritual powers grow through use, and endurance is given only to those who dedicate all their love to a deed. – –

Every thought, experience and deed in this physical dimension of the world exerts a continual influence in the world ‘beyond’.

The fruits of all deeds carried out by man in the physical realm will remain with him far beyond death, even if his deeds on earth were directed only towards physical purposes.

Assuming the possibility of moral responsibility, in all your deeds here on earth it is not a question of what you do, but how you do it. – –

The humblest form of work here on earth can cause a stream of unimagined strength to flow to you for your later life within the spiritual dimension of the world, if only you carry out your duties loyally, joyfully and to the best of your abilities as though the state of the whole universe depended on the quality of your work alone…

You alone, and only you, are responsible for yourself!

In everything you think or do – in everything you carry out in this dimension of the world which can be experienced by the physical senses – you are always the unconscious creator of your later destiny in the world perceived by the spiritual senses. –

What you here on earth call your ‘destiny’ is but a ridiculously small segment of an immeasurable totality. If you ever curse your destiny here, your sullenness may be understandable, even forgivable, from a human perspective, but nonetheless you are like the child who foolishly demands things which he can not be given yet because they would harm him, while later on he will have at his disposal whatever he desires in great abundance…

Once you have attained a high level in the spiritual world, you will be able to understand your destiny. Then you will smile when you recall the thoughts you once had. – –

Then you will see that your mind’s best reasons which lurked you into forming your judgement were just as many stupidities, because you sought to open up the beauty of blossom and the sweet deliciousness of fruit from the tangle of roots your hands dug up from the dark earth.

Only those capable of releasing themselves from constricting images grown perforce from a form of perception reliant on the physical senses, will gradually be able to suspect a little of the great totality in which they are rooted, and which they can never approach with means gained through knowledge of the physical senses…

It was no empty saying that was used by a wise man long ago when, almost overpowered by the majesty of what he beheld, he found the words:

“Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard what God has prepared for those that love him!”

But to ‘love God’ means: – to ‘love’ all the toils and troubles of the earth, to accept them so willingly, as though we had willed and sought all things in exactly the way they came into our lives! –

To ‘love God’ means: – to love the earth and all things living on it, – exactly as they are, – even though they may be contrary to our wishes! –

To ‘love God’ means: – to love oneself, and for one’s own sake to accept joyfully all the burdens given us to bear on the long and difficult path which leads us out of error and confusion finally to ourselves, so as we are eternally in God! – –

From all this you will now also know the best way to honour those departed ones: –  those to whom you were close during their lives on earth, and who are still today, as before, alive, though now removed from the ability of perception of your physical senses…

You will now know how you can continue to help them, and how you, if needing help yourself, can obtain it from them.

Truly, it is a misdirected start to set up ‘spiritualist circles’ in order to get into contact with those who have departed this earth!

Even assuming the honesty of all the participants, and the guaranty that there will be no fraud, even unintentional, you will surely be too ignorant about the powers manifesting themselves in such ‘séances’ and you are not capable of identifying the real creators of the phenomena.

It matters not if you are rejecting all preconceived beliefs in order to examine what might be true about the whole business!

The forces active in genuine spiritist manifestations are full of lies, caprice and deceit, – ever ready to make themselves known with the help of your own power, – yet far from willing to submit to being objects for experimentation… (of course I will leave aside the manifold possibilities for deception carried out by ‘mediums’ and their collaborators at séances.) 

The demonstrations in which you think you are seeing powers of the ‘beyond’ at work are, if we exclude earthly deception, nothing other than a game played by invisible beings from an almost unknown region of the physical world. –

It is possible in isolated cases for those who have really ‘awoken’ in the spirit – those who, as conscious in the beyond can already be numbered among ‘those in the beyond’ despite still inhabiting an earthly body in the physically perceptible part of the world – to make use of these beings we have mentioned in the same way as you would deploy any other available source of help. However, it would never occur to any of those who have ‘awoken’ in the spirit to contribute to the entertainment of participants in a séance, or to want to make  the attempted experiments interesting…

Even where one has the impression that one is ‘without doubt’ dealing with the entelechy of a deceased person, the danger of deception by lemuroid beings so greatly exceeds any probability of genuine communication that one cannot warn forcefully enough of going along any path leading to ‘spiritualist’ phenomena.

He who speaks words of warning here is acquainted with all possible manifestations in the area of ‘spiritism’ from his own, certain and abundant experiences.

But he is just as well acquainted with that invisible physical intermediate world which constitutes the proper element where those supposed ‘spiritist’ spectres feel at home. If called upon to do so, he can use these beings and forces in the same way as one uses a horse for riding or a hound for tracking prey.

Those who are spiritually empowered use these beings with their powers when they so require it, without first needing the services of a ‘medium’ or ‘spiritist séances’.

He enters the realms of these twilight beings with the same certainty as when he moves within purely spiritual worlds.

Admittedly, approaching these beings is far from pleasant. No one capable of deploying them according to his will ever does so unless it is necessary; he will always have to overcome a feeling of disgust.

You will mainly come into contact with these creatures, comparable in earthly terms perhaps to the jellyfish of the southern seas yet normally, unlike them, imperceptible physically and their yet purely physical powers, when you imagine that you are communicating with your ‘departed loved ones’; – unless your own unknown powers, coming from the same region to which these invisible physical creatures belong, are causing demonstrations on their own and you are in this way staging a spectral drama yourself without knowing it…

For your spiritual and physical well-being, however, this unwitting self-deception is far less fateful than real contact with the lemuroid beings described here as they will suck out your strength like leeches, and can only produce the supposed ‘miracles’ of your ‘spiritualist séances’ with the help of the energy they have drained from you.

Even the most unbiased of researchers who encounters these phenomena merely as an observer is far from immune to the power of the tentacles invisibly wrapping themselves around him.

However much he thinks he stands ‘above the situation’, he cannot help but let his most secret powers be drawn from him without even suspecting the injury being perpetrated on him by the invisible parasites of his ‘medium’ whilst capturing his   interest. – –

True ‘communication’ – that is, the only sure form of communication with those who have preceded us into the ‘beyond’ – can only take place internally, within the ‘soul’; it is purely spiritual in kind.

Your own spiritual ‘body’ is the organ through which you can perceive ‘the departed’! –

Every thought profoundly felt, every feeling which utterly penetrates you, is perceived ‘on the other side’ just as the spoken word is perceived here in the physical-sensory world.

In the same way you can also perceive – when you are ‘at peace’ and sufficiently sensible – the utterances of those already experiencing themselves in the spiritual dimension of the world in the form of quiet thoughts and feelings penetrating you, as though from without. With some practice in differentiation, they can be separated with a high degree of certainty from your ‘own’ thoughts and feelings. –

Yet even leaving aside those things you may become conscious of, there is a continual, subconscious influence at work. You are in this way often the ‘medium’ of one who has died in a much more accurate way than ever a ‘spiritualist medium’ could be, even if ‘those in the beyond’ might want to make use of him…

If you were accustomed to observing the daily events of your life with a sober disposition, whilst nevertheless attentive to the mysterious, you would often see yourself acting in the spirit of a loved ‘lost one’, even if you never had the slightest intention to act in the way the departed one would have wished, were he still alive in his physical form. –

On the other hand, it is certainly cause for thought how very often a complete stranger will do something which can be seen as the ultimate fulfilment of a wish fervently held by a departed one during his life on earth, which remained   unfulfilled. – –

Of course, all this is far less impressive than a dancing or swaying table whose legs tap out ‘messages’, or even the ‘materialised’ shape in which you, in a hypnotic trance without realising it, recognise ‘in all certainty’ a dearly departed one and hear him speak. What you have in front of you, however, is nothing other than a sort of ‘astral’ waxwork figure.

 The external features are indeed borrowed from the former physical manifestation of the departed; even dresses and suits celebrate his or her apparent resurrection, – but through this puppet speaks a being which would fill you with horror, were you to suddenly see it standing next to you in its true, completely unmasked appearance. – –

People who have never experienced any genuine and really noteworthy spiritualist phenomena will scarcely be able to comprehend that such things ought to be taken seriously, – but that does not stop so-called ‘spiritism’ from having millions of secret and open adherents, and from bringing more and more ‘converts’ under its spell.

The literature on spiritist theory and practice, part fantasy, part pseudo-scientific in nature, continues to attract a frenzied readership. And as far as the faithful are concerned, no level of academic importance acquired in other fields can protect from the grossest deceptions – particularly when death awakens the burning desire to get into contact in some way or other with the dearly departed…

A doctorate offers insufficient insulation from hypnotic influences from the realm of the invisible. Professorial gowns are as thin as gossamer for the suckers of invisible physical molluscs.

Given all these reasons, my words of warning would hardly be superfluous.

The whole physical and spiritual cosmos is a homogenous entirety, even if this entirety offers very differing aspects of itself.

The actual reality behind these aspects was, and is, always open to only very few men on earth.

It withdraws from both experimentation and speculative thinking.

There are the most varied modifications in forms of perception in both the dimension of the physical senses and  the spiritual dimension of the universe; and all these forms entering consciousness lay the same claim to – ‘reality’…

Almost all beings which experience themselves within the universe see only parts of reality, and these parts only in an unconscious refashioning of their own creation.

So too, life after the ‘death’ of the physical body is determined by a change in the form of perception.

The same reality is felt and experienced, – only through a spiritual form of perception – since physical senses cease existing as useful organs for conveying experience when the body’s integrated functions are extinguished.

Yet life can be perceived through the senses in all its regions, even though the nature of the sensory organs differs entirely. –

‘Dying’ for earthly man is merely an event which compels him to learn to use consciously senses which have hitherto been hidden in the subconscious.

These spiritual senses have already existed during his life on earth, – indeed, they alone cause man to be capable of receiving from the sensory perception belonging to his animal body, impressions which animals are incapable of experiencing, even at the highest level, however much the acuteness of their physical senses may exceed that of man. – –

Only in relatively rare exceptions is it possible for the senses belonging to the spiritual ‘body’ in man to be disclosed during his life on earth. This never  takes place as a sudden emerging ability of making use of spiritual sensory organs, but always takes the form of successive stages of ‘awakening’, which may be gently promoted, but in no way forced by arbitrary means.

Those who awaken in this life of the physical senses to the use of their spiritual senses will see the various lower ‘worlds’ already open to his experience, belonging to the one and only causal world of reality, as though they are ‘interlaced’, so that he may often find it difficult to differentiate immediately between what belongs to the physical regions, and what to the spiritual realms of the world of senses.

Only those very few to whom the world of the original cause: – the ‘thing in itself’, has revealed itself from within, experience at the same time the one, ultimate reality through which every spiritual as well as physically perceptible world is ‘effected’.

This original reality is the original ground of all life, whether it comes to experiencing by the senses or to awareness of the self in a spiritual or in a physical way! –

‘Man’, however, – whether he experiences himself in his spiritual manifestation or in the body of the animal on earth, is, seen from the perspective of eternal reality:

Eternal life in the form of individual, conscious ability to experience.

Admittedly, determined by the physical-sensory form of perception here on earth it is very difficult for eternal life depending solely on the animal form, to feel individually formed and as such the focal point of an immeasurable totality: – a totality which knows in itself no gaps or divisions, although it comprehends itself in an endless   variety. –

All too often conceptual thought rooted in the earth, relies on the appearance of things which only knows the individual as something separated from something else.

However, from the spiritual point of view individuality is the function of eternal manifestation within the inseparable totality: – not division in itself, but manifestation of its own unity in plurality.

It is always the whole, indivisible life which experiences itself as a particular, unique aspect in each of its innumerable individual   self-manifestations…