IN THE LAST two lectures I explained the happenings in the planes of medium gross matter (formerly called the astral plane by those who knew about it), which are directly connected with men’s existence upon earth.
There are many other happenings besides those mentioned therein which also belong to the fields of activity of the elemental beings.
But since these types of work only touch men’s souls indirectly, we do not yet want to speak about them but first to consider what lies nearest at hand: the human soul itself in connection with what has already been explained.
Therefore follow me for a short distance along the path upon which a soul must wander after departure from its physical body.
Let us, then, observe its first steps!
We are standing in medium gross matter.
Before us we see threads of fate of various colors and strengths, of which we talked in the last lectures when considering the activities of the little elemental beings.
Let us eliminate everything else this time; for in reality there exists in this region much more, flowing closely together and through each other, than just these threads.
Everything swings in the strictest order in accordance with the Laws in Creation.
We look neither right nor left, but stay only by these threads.
These threads appear to trail along with only slight movement, showing no particular activity; for they are such as were already spun a long time ago.
Suddenly one of them begins to quiver.
It vibrates and increases its movement more and more, swells out, deepens its color, and starts to become more active in every respect …
A soul which is connected with this thread has released itself from a physical body.
It approaches the place where we are waiting.
This bears a resemblance to a fire hose into which water is suddenly driven.
One can accurately observe the path of the oncoming water as it forces its way forward in the hose.
It is the same process with the threads of fate, which become released when the soul is forced to wander along the path thus marked out for it.
The radiation of the spirit within the soul streams ahead of it and animates the thread of its path, even if this thread was only in weak activity up till then.
Through this stimulation the tension becomes stronger and pulls the soul more vigorously to the nearest anchorage of this thread.
This place of anchorage abounds with homogeneous species of such threads, which in turn are connected with souls still dwelling upon earth in gross material earth bodies.
Yet other souls which have previously left the earth are already at the anchorage, and must now at this place partake of the fruit which ripened through the activity and care of the little elemental beings according to the species of the threads, which work like seed stalks.
The forms of the fruit are of a very definite and uniform nature at this particular place.
Let us assume it is a place of envy, which is very widespread upon earth and finds excellent soil among earthmen!
That is why the anchorage for these threads is such an immensely large and many-sided place.
Landscape upon landscape, towns and villages, with corresponding activities of every kind!
But envy lies in wait everywhere, arousing repugnance.
Everything is permeated by it.
Envy has taken on grotesque forms which move about and work in these regions.
They work on all the souls drawn to this place in the most decisive and increased way, so that these souls may themselves experience with greater intensity that which they so obtrusively favored their fellow-men with here on earth.
Let us not occupy ourselves with individual descriptions of this place; for it is of such a thousand-fold variety that no firmly given picture would suffice to provide even the shadow of a conception.
But the expression “nauseating” is a mild and exceedingly glossed-over description of it!
It is to this place that the thread which we observed leads; the thread which we suddenly saw becoming more active, richer in color, and fresher through the approach of the soul which had left the earth.
As the soul now moves towards the place itself, there also at a very definite spot where the thread is firmly anchored everything gradually becomes more mobile and colorful – let us call it more animated.
Everything flares up!
This revival, however, issues quite unconsciously from the spirit of the soul; it comes about through the radiation of the spirit, even though this soul, as occurs in most cases, journeys along the path with eyes still closed.
It then awakens at its destination, at this very place, where everything had just become more lively at its approach through the radiation.
For here are the fruits of that thread, or perhaps also of various threads connected with this very soul, because they were produced by it.
Through this coming to life under the personal radiation of the soul concerned, the spirit living in this soul impresses a certain personal note of its own upon its new environment, which was already awaiting it – a note which always differs from that of the other souls.
This always makes it, so to speak, a quite distinctive world in itself for each soul, despite the fact that everything is closely interwoven, that the souls molest each other to excess, and that the whole place can be considered as one single, great, uniform plane.
Thus it happens that in spite of the experience which so many souls simultaneously share in this place, and also basically in the same form, each individual soul always experiences and lives through it only according to its very own nature, i.e., each soul receives an entirely different impression of it from the other souls which have to live through the same with it.
What is more, this soul will also see things differently from a second or third soul which has the same picture before it.
Picture this to yourself!
A soul awakens at such a place.
This place or plane possesses a very definite picture as regards its formation and everything that moves therein.
Even the happenings there may be called uniform, because they also remain subject to one single great law through which they take effect.
This soul which we are considering now sees the other souls already there or those arriving later experience the same which this soul is also forced to experience.
However, the soul sees this of itself and of the others in a very definite way which is entirely its own, and it also lives through these things correspondingly.
One must not come to the conclusion from this that the other souls too see and experience everything in exactly the same way as does this one soul which we named; for this is not the case, but each of these souls sees and experiences things in accordance with its own personal nature and quite differently from the others!
They see the happenings differently, likewise the colors and the landscapes!
This is because the radiation of the inherent spirit also lends to the environment there the personal expression which belongs only to this particular spirit, and the expression is animated according to its nature.
In the first moment this may seem very strange to you!
But perhaps I can furnish you with a few similar although much more clumsy illustrations from the heavy terrestrial World of Matter, which will give you an idea towards a better understanding.
Let us take two persons who are visiting a beautiful park!
Without a special understanding between them it is seldom that both will designate the same point as being the most beautiful therein, even if they walk through the park side by side.
Each will find something different as beautiful for himself.
One of them perhaps nothing whatever, but he only says otherwise out of politeness, though he prefers the wild forest to the cultivated park!
This is then simply done away with by saying that the one has no “sense” for what the other declares to be beautiful.
This, however, does contain a certain truth.
The “sensing” of the one simply goes in another direction!
Therefore the scene looks different to him from that viewed by his companion!
In the recognition of a picture, in the way as to how one sees it, it is the purely personal sensing or the direction of the sensing of him who looks at it which is decisive, not the picture or the landscape which is being observed.
One person experiences it differently from another.
That which becomes evident here in such a clumsy way is more lively and impressive in the more easily mobile layers of matter.
This is why it happens that the same place with the same events calls forth different experiences in the individual souls, depending on their own particular natures.
We can delve more deeply into this matter, however!
Let us again take two persons to serve as an example!
While they are young a color is shown to them and they are told it is blue.
Thereafter each of them always considers this particular color he saw as being blue.
But this does not prove that both of them also see this particular color in the same way.
The opposite is the case.
In reality each one sees the color which he calls blue differently from the other.
Even here already in the physical body!
Even if you closely examine the physical eyes and find them of an exactly similar quality, this condition is not decisive to define how the colors are seen.
The brain also has a say in this, and in addition, as the main thing, the personal nature of the human spirit itself!
Let me try to take the explanation further!
Let us stick to blue!
You yourselves have thereby quite a definite color before you which, with all its shades, was once pointed out to you as being blue.
And if your fellow-man who was taught likewise will also pick out from all the colors when questioned the same color which you yourself call blue, it does not prove that he sees the color which he also calls blue in the same way as you do!
As for him, it is just this very particular kind which is blue.
You do not know how it looks to him in reality.
Naturally he will and is bound to regard everything of this color which he sees, and which is thus designated, as being blue, just as he would also call the white color black if he had been told it was so from the very beginning.
He will always say blue to this one definite color which you also call blue.
In spite of this, however, he does not see it in the same way as you do!
It is the same with the tone.
A certain tone you hear is, for example, an “E” to you.
To every person!
Because he learned to hear and call it as such.
He will also form it in this way with his mouth, but always in accordance with his own sensing, which will naturally always bring forth the same tone for what is also considered “E” by you.
However, this does not at all mean that he actually hears it in the same way as you hear it.
But in reality he always hears it only in accordance with the nature of his spirit, differently from his fellow-man.
Now I come to what I wish to explain with this.
In Creation the color in itself is constant and each one for itself remains unchanged.
The same applies to the tone.
But the experiencing of this color and of the tone differs with every person in accordance with his personal nature.
That is not uniform!
Part of the experiencing is also the seeing, no matter whether gross material with its different species, or ethereal, animistic or spiritual.
As it is with the color and the tone, so is it also with the form.
Each one of you experiences his surroundings in a different way, sees and hears it differently from his neighbor.
You have merely become accustomed to finding uniform designations for things, but these lack vitality.
Thus you have pressed that which is mobile into fixed forms, and you think that with these fixed forms of your language all movement in Creation must also become rigid for you!
This is not so!
Each person lives and experiences absolutely according to his own nature!
Therefore he will some day also see and recognize Paradise in a different way from his fellow-man!
And yet if one of them would design a picture of it as he sees it, the others would also immediately recognize and see as being right in the picture that which they themselves experienced by Paradise; for they again see the picture according to their own nature, and not as the one who reproduced Paradise in the picture sees it.
The thing in itself is always the same, it is only the way in which the human spirits see it which varies.
Color is color, but it is absorbed in different ways by the human spirits.
Tone is tone, and form is form, of a very definite kind in the entire Creation.
The various human spirits, however, experience them differently, always according to their maturity and their nature.
That is how a person can suddenly experience Spring and all the awakening in Nature in an entirely different way to that in which he experienced it in past decades, just as if he had never really observed or “enjoyed” it.
This occurs in particular when a man has had to pass through some critical period in his life which enabled him to mature inwardly.
Nature and Spring have always been like this; but it is he who has changed, and according to his maturity he experiences them differently!
Everything depends on him alone.
And thus it is with the entire Creation.
You human beings change and not Creation!
Therefore you could already have Paradise here on earth if you were mature for it.
Creation can remain the same but you, you and always again only you, must change in order to see it differently and therewith to experience it differently.
For seeing, hearing and feeling belong to experiencing, are part of it.
That is why the World is seen and experienced in millions of different ways by human spirits.
These differences, however, are put into it by men alone; for Creation itself actually has quite simple basic forms, which always repeat themselves.
They are formed, ripen and decay in accordance with one uniform law in order to arise anew in these same forms.
Everything which is real is simple, but this simplicity is experienced by men in a thousand-fold ways.
With this knowledge you now already come nearer to the process of what happens to the soul once it is released from heavy matter on earth.
It experiences the so-called beyond in accordance with its inner nature; for it animates the forms which had to be connected with it through its personal radiation, it vitalizes them in accordance with its own character, which must spend itself out therein.
The fact that the soul may thereby come to the recognition of whether that which it created for itself was right or wrong, i.e., to the recognition of which paths it took, remains a special act of grace in itself.
One of those which the Creator wove into everything, so that the struggling soul will always have lifebelts in every place and at all times in order to rise above the entanglements, and so that with a really good volition and recognition at the right time it need not become lost!
The many-sided indispensable value of everything that exists in Creation always proffers the possibility of ascent again in some way or other, even amid the greatest confusion caused by men.
Whether or not the soul recognizes and uses these possibilities is its affair alone.
The lifebelts are there!
The soul only needs to reach out for them with a good volition in order to swing itself up on them. —
Having changed inwardly man also sees everything differently, as the popular saying goes!
However, this is not a mere saying, but in reality man does then see everything differently.
With his inner change his seeing and his hearing change to a certain degree; for it is the spirit which sees, hears and feels through the corresponding tools in the various different planes, and not the physical or ethereal eye itself.
If the spirit changes then the way of seeing changes with it, and consequently also the way of experiencing.
The tools play no part in this whatever; they are merely mediators.
The radiation of the spirit absorbs the resistances which it meets and leads them back to the spirit in a sort of reciprocal action.
In this World of heavy Gross Matter the leading back goes through the gross material organs provided for the purpose, such as the eyes, ears and brain.
Thereby the brain is the meeting place for the mediations of all the lower organs.
Only later shall we speak about this in more detail!
Today I am only trying in this way to make it clear to you that the nature of the impression of the outer world, i.e., of the surroundings, is dependent upon the particular spirit itself!
For this reason one and the same form always affects the various spectators differently, even when they have become equally clear as to its beauty.
And if one person sees a certain form differently from his fellow-man, then a sketch of the form seen by the one must yield for the other a picture identical with the form itself.
At this point everything must indeed come together again in one; for only the seeing is different, and not the actual form.
Men have created a common name for every form.
Only the name for it is common, but not the way in which it is recognized or seen.
In this you have also so far gone wrong in your opinions.
But if you now seek to approach the experiencing in the so-called beyond more closely from the viewpoints newly shown to you, much will become clearer to you.
You will be able to understand many things more easily when I now continue with my explanations, and so much that is puzzling will become clear.
What has been shown to you also explains why two or more persons with mediumistic abilities see, hear and interpret one and the same thing quite differently, without there being any justification for reproaching them; for they see it according to their nature, and therefore always in a different way from the other.
The subject being dealt with, however, is only of a very definite type.
And only he who has learned to reckon with these happenings through the knowledge of the Laws of the Divine Will in Creation also knows exactly how to find the connection in the various reports and thus to recognize what is right therein, how it really is!
But you have sought to press Creation and yourselves into rigid and stationary forms by means of the language with which you make yourselves understood.
You will never succeed in this; for Creation is mobile, as is your inner life also.
When you seek to reflect about this, however, you think in the firmly-molded words of your language!
Just think how foolish this is!
The firmly-molded language never suffices to reproduce correctly anything that is mobile!
Here again the impediment is your intellect, which can only work with very definite words, and which is also capable of absorbing only very definite words.
You can realize from this how you have firmly chained and enslaved yourselves by considering the intellect to be the highest for man, whereas it is only useful for and applicable to the heavy gross matter of this earth.
And even then only to a limited extent and not for everything!
Little by little you recognize how really paltry the intellectuals are!
For this reason I have already called out to you often that you must try to absorb my Word in such a manner that as you read it you see pictures of it before you!
For you can understand it only in pictures, not with the paltry words of these earthmen which I am compelled to use in order to tell you about it.
You will never learn to understand Creation in words, nor that which is within you, because all of that is and must remain mobile, whereas words press everything into firm and rigid forms only.
And that is impossible, an entirely vain effort with and for everything that is mobile!
Understanding will not come to you with words!
However, as soon as the soul lays aside the terrestrial heaviness of the physical body it enters the mobility of Creation.
It is drawn into the constant surging and seething, and will then experience its surroundings in a much more mobile way.
The surroundings often change in the redemptions awaiting every soul, to which the soul is drawn by the animating of all the threads clinging to it.
And all this is again reciprocal in its effects.
When the soul withdraws from the physical body, when it strives away from it and lets it fall back, i.e., when it no longer radiates through it, then its radiations, which manifest even more strongly through becoming freer, go in one direction only with their full strength – towards medium gross matter, the nearest anchorage of the threads of fate.
The threads receive a much greater animation thereby, called forth by the soul’s radiation, which is now guided in this one direction.
Through this animation their capacity to attract is also intensified, which retroactively strikes the connected soul and attracts it more keenly.
All these are automatic, absolutely lawful and thus completely natural happenings, which you can also easily understand if you try to go deeply into it.
Thus the soul is drawn along on its path by threads which it animates through its radiations, which it cannot hold back or avoid.
And in this way it goes either towards its purification or towards its destruction.
All this happens ever again through the soul itself.
The elemental beings only form and build in accordance with the Law.
The animation of the forms and the releasing are brought about by the souls themselves through their radiations.
And according to the nature of the radiations, the forms which are animated in such a variety of ways then exercise a more or less strong retroactive effect on the soul.
Here, too, the saying becomes valid: As you call it into the wood so it echoes!
In this case it means: As it radiates into the forms so are they animated and work accordingly.
A great lawful simplicity and unswerving justice is inherent in all this! —
What I have described to you herein solely concerns the human spirits alone, for it is also inherent in the activity of the free will.
With the elemental beings it is again different! —
Let these happenings come to life before your eyes for once!
Exert yourselves to achieve it, for the effort is worthwhile and the reciprocal action will bring you rich reward.
You will thereby again become knowing as regards a part of this Creation. —
I have described to you how it has been so far.
But now it comes like a lightning flash out of the Light!
Divine Power suddenly strikes unexpectedly into the threads of fate of all earthmen, as well as of all the souls which dwell on the planes of Subsequent Creation.
Thus everything now comes to its final release, immediately and unexpectedly!
The elemental beings are newly strengthened to unprecedented power.
In their activity they turn against all those human beings who through their doings and dealings have compelled them in the past to create ugly forms in obedience to the Law of Creation.
Now, however, the Power of God is above all human volition in the entire Creation; the Will of God which permits only the pure, the good and the beautiful to be formed, and destroys all else!
The Power of God has already penetrated into Subsequent Creation also in order to work here Itself, and all the elemental beings, supported by this Highest Power, quickly, joyfully and proudly seize the countless meshes of the weaving of all the threads of fate for men in order to guide them jubilantly to their end.
In obedience to the Command of the Light they tear the threads which are only weakly anchored in the spiritual, so that the souls will remain completely severed from the Light when the dark cords, with everything clinging to them, rebound sharply upon their originators.
But the tearing of these threads also proceeds in an absolutely lawful manner, whereby the nature of men themselves is decisive; for the elemental beings do nothing arbitrarily.
The Divine Power of the Light now strikes like lightning into all threads!
Those threads which bear corresponding similarities to the species striving for the Light, and which through the really strong volition of those attached to them also became strong enough to bear the sudden penetration of this unaccustomed Light-Power, will gain firmness and freshness thereby, so that the human souls attached to them will by the strong attraction be wrenched upwards from out of the dangers of Darkness, and thus from out of the danger of being dragged along into disintegration also.
However, the weak threads of light produced only by a weak volition cannot stand the sudden and tremendous pressure of Divine Power, but they become singed and are thereby severed by the elemental helpers; thus those who were tied to these threads remain a prey to Darkness.
The cause of this natural happening is their own Luke-warmness, which was incapable of producing threads of sufficient strength and firmness.
Thus you find nothing but justice in every happening!
Therefore it is promised that the lukewarm will be spewed out, as it literally happens therewith from the Light.
All the elemental helpers, great and small, now become free from having to form what is dark under the compulsion of the evil or false volition of men and in fulfilment of the Law.
And simultaneously everything that is animistic (all the elemental beings) is drawn back from this severed Darkness by the Power of the Light, to which they closely attach themselves in jubilant joy so that they may now form and maintain what is willed by the Light.
Thereby they become strengthened in new power in order to swing in exultant accord with the entire Creation amid the surging Light of God!
Honor be to God Who sows but Love!
Love also in the Law of the annihilation of the Darkness!
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