World of harmony

Image via Wikipedia

All of us people of the world have lost the balance and harmony between different elements of our lives. In my life i have made it a goal to try to discover how to live in an original, that is harmonious way.

Some examples are needed to make clear what i mean. When people produce goods in a minimum of time and the manufacturers have no feeling anymore for what they make, then such products can be sold cheap but the whole process is not one of harmony between different aspects of life. There is little or no love in the things that are made. The products therefore don’t have much original value and can hardly contribute to a meaningful life.

Some people in this world get very rich. Many others are dying from hunger each day. How can rich people be happy with their money, knowing about the unequal distribution of food and property all over the world? God created all people together as one large family under God. How can some people think to become happy if other people are suffering? It doesn’t help if such rich people are spending much money for charities. That may temporarily ease their conscience, but it doesn't help to find a real solution.

Some people have much power, while others have nothing to say. Those with much power often do not excel in wisdom and love. There is a imbalance of power in the world. There is imbalance everywhere, in every aspect of life.

Farmers drive over their land with huge machines. In countries like America, farmers cannot anymore make ends meet if they have fewer than 250 acres of land. Those 250 acres are usually not at all taken well care of. Many farmers are daily destroying the nature from which they also want to get profit. Those farmers who can still financially make it must work many boring hours each day, driving in big machines over their land without having much relation to the world of nature around them.

It is my conviction that all problems of human society can only be solved if we are able to find out how to live in good harmony. First of all, we must learn to live in harmony with God Who created us. We also must learn to live in good harmony with the world of creation, the animals, the plants and the earth. We also must learn to live in good harmony with the world of angels and with our many ancestors who are living in spirit world. We have to learn to live in good harmony with the members of our own family, and we must learn to have good relations to all people whom we meet. We must learn to understand that the value of physical things is very much determined by the good love that was put into those things.

*****

Sometimes people ask me why i spend so much time with working on the land, growing vegetables, milking the goats, etc. In financial terms this hardly brings good profit.

Let me try to give you an example from my own recent life to explain you what i mean. I have been cultivating land my whole life. Usually i worked in smaller gardens. Since some years i have been growing crops on almost 15 acres of land. Ask yourself some simple questions.

If a farmer wants to make enough money for his living, how little time can he spend for really taking care of his land? How quick should his machines do the work for him? How much love could a farmer put into a field of many acres of grain? How much good energy? If the farmer did not put enough love and energy into a field of cabbage, is he not failing in relation to the people who eat his food? Is the farmer not harming his customers by selling products with residues of herbicides and sinning toward his own descendants if he destroys the land by putting poison into it?

There are so many questions to be answered and i feel that my own life is just one big experiment, but an experiment as serious as life and death, to find out how to do it right.

Can we be happy if we are not growing our own food for our own children? Would you allow your children to grow up in the love of anything less than your own good parental love? Our food that we have grown ourselves is full with good love and good energy. Our children develop from this. It is and should be a big question to all parents how they can give enough good love and good energy to their own children. Growing your own food is just one terrific way of investing your own parental love in your own children.

In my experimenting with all this and trying to find a better way, i have put away the bigger machines and began using smaller ones. Sometimes i also put away the smaller machines to employ hand tools to cultivate the land. And often i am inclined to take a smaller hand tool instead of a bigger one. All this comes from my desire to put as much as possible good love and energy into the work that i am doing. When i race over the land with a big tractor, it is rather difficult to put my mind on bringing good love and energy into the earth. I am not saying that it is impossible, but it is much more difficult. I like it very much to have my hands move through the soil. It is the best and most direct way to put love and energy into the soil. But i think it is not wrong to use machines as well. It is a matter of what the earth needs.

If money dictates that you use big machines, then that surely cannot be right. Money means creation. In our world, does money still really have any meaningful relation to the original world of creation made by God? I believe that there is not much relation left.

In the original world, God created love. Out of God’s love, there came energy in a certain form. There came about certain creations made by God. Beautiful creations, full with God’s love and full of life. Even the so-called dead creation, stones and sand and water, were all filled with God’s love and God’s life. A stone or a piece of land or a certain plant derived its value from the love and energy that God had put into it. There was no contradiction, no discrepancy between God’s love and efforts and the singular creation.

But how is it in today’s world? Worldly money has little anymore to do with love put into it. Things of creation get less and less value. And if we are living surrounded by such things, by a world void of love and life, then we can only feel that our life has no meaning anymore.

*****

In these days i have been working to make a connection between the energy of our house and of wild nature to the gardens. God’s love and energy that is present in nature, and that is flowing from our own house into the land, must come into the plants. Instead of destroying God’s love and energy in nature, we are trying to make it flow and thrive.

We are experiencing many smaller and bigger miracles. Some days ago, God sent big lightning over our land. Three times massive lightning exploded above us and loads of cleansing energy were put into our land. Our beds in the greenhouse were shaking for several minutes while God cleansed the land from the bad energies of past mistreatment. That is how it felt to me.

When i plant a tree or a seed, i put it in a flow of already existing energy. It is necessary to know and feel where those energy channels are running in the earth. And it is necessary to consciously connect the tree or the seed with that flow of energy. Otherwise it doesn’t work. You have to make a conscious action if you want such things to work. One cannot just plant trees or sow seeds. Each plant and seed must be put into the soil with awareness. Then there are made new creations, new creations of seeds and plants but actually love and energy growing in our beautiful earth.

There are so many great things to discover in God’s world. A few days ago i had the inspiration to make an extract of the leaves of three different plants, plants that grow in my garden, nothing so special i thought. I took three drops from this extract and a shock went through my body. For several hours, my ability to see the auras of energy radiated by all beings and things was enhanced extremely. Without making any effort i could see the auras of each plant and each person.

We are not at all finished in finding out how God wants our world to be. It may be that not even God knows exactly how the ideal world will be. There is such a great world lying ahead of us. If only we can have faith in God. If only we can give up that foolish greed for money, for sex and for power.

May 5, 2001

How does the spirit world look like?

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Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean

Note that this article was written in 1999 and is about the spiritual world of that time. Since then many changes have taken place in the spirit world.

Practically each religion tells you about how life after death will be. Many of these reports or views are very different and yet, most of them will be true more or less.

An essential characteristic of spirit world is that it is mostly made by angels and man and that to a large degree it is made in the way that man believes that it is made. When people in a certain religion believe in something like purgatory or Valhalla or Heaven or Paradise then such realms are actually created by them in some way or another.

Many religious adherents however believe that only their view on spirit world is right. For instance, Christians believe that they go to their heaven and that Muslims will probably go to the Christian hell. But the truth is that Christians likely go to one of the realms in that Christians believe and that Muslims go to one of the realms in that Muslims believe.

Yet at the same time, most religions have a very limited and often even false view on how spirit world looks like. Most religions know little or nothing about how spirit world actually works. They usually speak of heaven and hell and something in-between. But there are many, many more possibilities in spirit world, also for adherents of one particular religion.

Usually heaven is seen as the place where the founder of the religion is living. For Christians it were heaven when they met Jesus in spirit world. In reality, many of such Christians were sometimes allowed to attend a meeting in which Jesus gave a speech. For the rest of the time these spirits were somewhere stuck with people living on earth, because they had a restoration course to go with their descendants.

Roman Catholic believers think that sinners temporarily go to purgatory in spirit world, to suffer for their sins. Also this view is based on reality. A problem is that spirits may have to be in purgatories for thousands of years before there is chance for them to come out.

Spirits will be stuck to certain places in spirit world as a result of the life that he or she lived. Purgatory therefore must not be seen as one particular place in spirit world, but each person comes in his or her own purgatory. The same is true for realms of heaven or hell. There is not one particular heaven or one particular hell, but there are as many heavens and hells as there are groups of people.

Each person determines his or her own spiritual situation. This is true in life on earth and it is true in life after death. Yet besides that, there are realms in spirit world made by angels, or by certain central figures of religions, and also by many kinds of evil central figures.

I give you some examples of situations in spirit world. These examples are given without names but are descriptions of what really was built in spirit world. The examples are from historical situations in spirit world and do not necessarily still exist today.

A priest who had some thousand followers while he lived on earth built an altar in spirit world. This altar looked like the one that the priest had built on earth. The priest lived in a tribe and when people of that tribe died, the spirits were received by those who had passed away earlier. Those spirits were led to the priest and the altar and were told that they had come to heaven. In that way the priest built his tribe in spirit world. That tribe always worked to control the situation of the tribe on earth. The members of the tribe on earth could not escape the spiritual power of the priest and his followers in spirit world. If a tribe member on earth tried to change the traditions as installed by the priests, the spirits would chastise and punish him or her.

Such kind of situation existed or exists for thousands of tribes all around the earth.

A political and ideological leader built a school for spirits. Spirits were brought to that school to be trained there. Then the trained spirits could become teachers themselves and they again trained many new spirits. The trained spirits were sent to people on earth to give many revelations based on the teaching of the leader. People on earth were also inspired to write books and to buy books with this ideology.

Much of communism was spread all around the earth in this way. Such a school existed until worldwide communism broke down.

One more example. A evil angel built a throne for himself and made other angels and spirits to work for him. The evil angel controlled the ones under him by installing fear in them. The spirits were punished if they did not obey the leader. There was an extensive system of spiritual cells and doors. No one could come to the leader who had not passed many doors and cells that were guarded by servants of the leader. People in the physical world were controlled in the same way. They were put in spiritual prisons and if they tried to do something that the leader didn’t like those people on earth were severely punished. There also was built a system of repression on earth. A leader was chosen who was a real and evil dictator over his people.

Countless of similar examples could be given because spirit world has more diversity than the earth. For nations it is is true that connected to foundations on earth there always were spiritual organizations that controlled what was visible on earth.

When there is an organization on earth, there also is some corresponding and often controlling organization in spirit world. When there is a family on earth, there is a typical family-spiritual situation.

God intended spirit world to be one united Kingdom of Heaven but man made of spirit world a place totally split into millions of bigger and smaller units that each have the character of a restricted space or cell.

Important to understand is that spirit world was originally inhabited by angels only. Angels had the first birthright in spirit world. Man who entered spirit world was dependent from angels. Everything that was built in spirit world was more or less initiated or controlled by angels.

Angels had made all roads in spirit world. Angels taught man how to live in spirit world. Angels had made themselves to the masters of spirit world.

But the angels were not united. There were black evil angels, and occult gray angels, and white angels who still sometimes prayed to God. Yet also the black angels and the gray angels and the white angels were not united among themselves. There have been countless divisions among the angels of all these groups. Many of them tried and actually managed to put themselves as a leading angel in some culture. Sometimes such an angel became known as a certain so-called god in that culture. Such a pagan god could really have been a black angel who kept power for thousands of years.

The situation for white angels was not very different. Also white angels built all kind of religions or cults centered upon themselves. In the religions that were inspired by God, white angels still played a role to lead and guide individuals. Human founders of those religions could not always escape the dominion of angels over them.

What is important for your life of faith to find out about spirit world for yourself? What kind of experiences should you make in relation to spirit world?

1. Become aware of your individual spiritual situation. That means, you should know by what kind of spirits you are influenced.

2. Have some understanding of the spiritual situation of the places where you live and work.

3. Get some experiences with the cosmic spiritual situation as God has begun to build an entirely new spirit world.

EXERCISE In order to become aware of the spirits influencing you directly you need to pray much. Make yourself aware of feelings and thoughts coming to you from spirit world. Learn to distinguish feelings of spirits from feelings of yourself. If you find out that a spirit has bad influence on you then try to get rid of that spirit. Don’t honor things in the physical world that are connected to that spirit. Keep your body and clothing clean and pure. Don’t do evil things because that attracts evil spirits.

You must do the same for spirits that connect to your house and your working environment. Many evil spirits can less easily come in a place that is clean and orderly. Make your environment into a heavenly one and you will attract spirits of higher levels.

To find out about what God is doing in spirit world now, pray to God and ask God to give you experiences with it. There is no other way to find out about this. Build up your faith by going your individual course under God.

Nothing in spiritual life should be disconnected from God. Only by living a life truly centered on God you can elevate your spirit.

July 1999

Meetings of minds

Image by qthomasbower via Flickr

Floral auras

We can take different views on the mind. The materialist notion is that what takes place in the mind is caused by chemical and electrical reactions in the brain. The word ‘mind’ is then just an abstraction, not something that really exists as you cannot see the mind or dissect it or take it out from a person.

This viewpoint, which usually is taken by materialistically thinking scientists, explains what I would call the hardware of the mind, the mind being the software. It is like you try to understand a computer by looking at its hardware but you have no idea of the software running on it.

Another, also scientific view, is that taken in psychology. Now the mind is more accepted as a reality, but still it is a concept that only explains something hidden in a black box. For psychologists it is in principle possible that one day someone invents a better concept than the mind and this will explain more eloquently the functions of the mind.

I want to elaborate here a on a third approach, that which is based on energy and energy fields. This third set of ideas does by no means deny the validity of the first two viewpoints, it adds another way of understanding.

The mind can then be seen as a construction of energies inside a person. The mind energies are stored in chakras and are connected to one another through energy channels. Just like energy in the physical world also does, the energies of the mind beam out fields of energy. The fields of energy radiated out from the mind of a person can be seen by some as the aura of a person.

Let’s take this third viewpoint of the mind to understand more about how the minds of people could influence each other. When we speak with another person, when we read a book, or even when we only think of another person, there is an exchange of mind energies. More and other energies than those of the mind could be interchanged but here I want to speak about the mind.

Imagine energies in channels and fields to flow like water. When two water flows meet, they will mingle. Suppose one water flow is colored red and the other blue. There are several possibilities of how the waters merge. One possibility is that one flow is extremely strong and washes away all the water in the other flow. At the end all water in both water streams will be colored red or blue. Another possibility is that they mix entirely and at the end they both will be colored purple. Still another outcome could be that they don’t mix well and the result is that the colors red and blue can be seen distinctly in both waters.

I imagine the minds of people to behave like this when two people speak to each other or relate in another way.

Sometimes we think that we have a clear set of ideas but after speaking to a person, our ideas may have changed and sometimes we don’t even notice it.

How does love relate to this?

I imagine love to work like doors in the energy channels of the mind. When we love someone we open those doors. When there is no love the doors stay closed. When there is hatred, also a form of love but distorted, also the doors open widely. Once the doors are opened, a process similar as described for the converging red and blue water streams occurs.

Love does not only work as doors, it also is a propelling force behind the energies of the mind. When you have much love for someone, you desire to share more of your thoughts and feelings with that person.

February 25, 2008

Memory on five levels

Image via WikipediaA scientific model for memory in humans

First i want to give a definition of memory. I define memory as “the maintenance of information.” This is a rather broad definition. It includes the maintenance of information in people and in things such as books and computers. There are also memories in things that we normally don’t see as vessels for information. For example, people cherish relics for the memories that are stored in it. To fetishes are attributed magic powers because of information stored in such things. In all things, not only in fetishes and relics, information is stored. Some people are very sensitive to this. They don't want to touch spiritually polluted things because they feel that their bodies get dirty.

What is the goal or function of memory? It is to keep for the future the useful information that was acquired in the past. For example, you remember your own experiences to use them in your later life.

Before we come to a deeper insight in what is memory, i want to give some examples connected to the topic of memory.

It is known that when people get older, their ability to memorize weakens. Though often this loss of memory capacity could be a result of diseases or of having lived a life of sin and confusion, it is also very normal and desirable that older people lose some abilities of memory.

For example, i myself often put my keys somewhere and later i forgot where. Why does such a thing happen? It is because i am so busy thinking about certain things that i don’t have concentration on where i put my keys. There is a trick that you can learn to prevent it. The trick is that when you put down your keys, you make a photo in your mind of the place where the keys were laid down. Later you can then remember that picture in your mind.

You can remember where the keys are because you concentrated on this with a special department of your memory, the kind of memory that is connected to your senses.

Children are very much centered on the experiences they get through their senses. When you get older, you don’t need anymore all the experiences that you had in your youth. Older people turn their attention more inwardly. When you forgot where you put your keys, you can probably still remember what you were thinking about when you put your keys away.

Children can play for hours with a few wooden blocks. For them, this playing makes many new experiences. They try to put a big block on a smaller one and find out that this doesn’t go well. From their experiences children deduct certain kind of ideas or thoughts, for example that you can’t easily put larger things on smaller things.

Smaller children can very easily learn a new language. When you get older, it gets more difficult to learn new words. But why should you? Normally, once you learned to speak, you don’t need to learn a language anymore. It is logical that the ability to memorize a language decreases when one gets older.

Is the ability to memorize of a child better than that of an older person? I would say that children can better remember the experiences they are having, but older people have a better memory that is connected to logical thoughts.

You can train your ability to memorize. For example, you can train to retain the images of what you saw. I already spoke about how you can make a picture in your mind of a certain situation. You can train this ability. You have to learn to not think when you make such a picture. As soon as you begin to have thoughts about what you see, you will remember your thoughts but not the picture.

You also should not look at details in the picture, because then you will be tempted to think about that detail and you cannot remember the rest.

Concentration is the most important asset for memorizing well. Your concentration should be deep and on the right topic. You could concentrate on what you think, but to remember the picture you must concentrate on that picture.

While you concentrate, you should be also relaxed. To feel relaxed means that all your energy can go to that one topic, that picture that you are taking.

The ability to memorize what we see and hear or what we felt is a memory that is connected to our senses. Animals also have such a kind or level of memory. With the same kind of memory you also can remember movements that you learned. It is a special kind of memory to remember how you learned skills with your body. When you learned swimming, but didn’t do it for 30 years, your body will still remember how to do it even after such a long time.

Interesting is that when you haven’t swum for so long and you do it again, also the memories of the situation in that you learned to swim might come back to you. All the experiences connected to learning to swim were apparently stored in your body and those memories come back as a whole when you repeat the movements.

The ability to memorize what you sensed and the ability to memorize what you once did or learned with your body are both connected to the level of memory of your body.

God created the cosmos on five different levels: God, Heart, Mind, Body, Creation. These five levels on that we and the whole cosmos do exist are actually five different levels on which God has created everything. God created the whole cosmos with love and energy and from internal to external, the whole cosmos was created on the five distinct levels that i just mentioned.

For example, bodies of living beings are constitutions of energy on a very specific level. Bodies move by themselves, have life in them. Dead things cannot move by themselves. The energy that made them has been expressed in an entirely different way than God expressed energy on the level of bodies. The mind is again very different from a body. A body you can see, but a mind is invisible. The Heart is the carrier of love. In each human being and in each animal and in all what God created, there also should be God present. God is an expression of energy as well, on a most internal level and of a most particular energy. When you live a good life, you can feel God in yourself. Then God does exist in you.

*****

What is a memory? A memory, when we look at it in a more technical way, is nothing else than a certain constellation of energy. For example, memory in a computer is stored in simple constellations of “energy-yes” and “energy-no”. When energy-yes is depicted as 1 and energy-no is depicted as 0, than we could draw up a combination of 1’s and 0’s and with this we can symbolize meaningful letters. With these letters we make words and with words we can write a meaningful content. The deepest thoughts can be expressed in words, and these words can be stored in the memory of a computer as a constellation of energy-yes’s and energy-no’s.

Likewise, all our genetic information is stored in DNA. DNA is nothing else than molecules that, again, are put in a certain order. The information is not in these molecules, but in the order that these molecules make when they were stored in a long chain.

From these examples we can understand that all memories are nothing else than constellations of energy. Because energy was expressed on five distinct levels of creation, also memories are stored in these same five levels.

Like you can store computer memory on a disk, so memories of the body are stored in the body and memories of the mind are stored in the mind.

Where exactly are the memories of your body stored? Many people think that memories are only stored in the brain, but in reality memories of the body are stored everywhere in the body. When you give a person a massage it could be that you loosen up certain muscle tensions that have been there for very long. At the moment that these muscles relax, the energy that was stuck in it comes free and with it the memories. Such a person could suddenly begin to cry because he or she remembers something emotional that had been forgotten. The memory was stored as energy in those muscles. Releasing that energy, the whole body responds and memories connected to that muscle tension also come free. These other memories were stored in other parts of the body.

*****

Let us try to understand more about the five levels of memory.

Memory that is stored in things has a more impersonal level. When information is written in a book, it is accessible to many people.

Memories stored in a body have the function that a person, or also an animal, is able to act right. You learned to walk and this enables you to walk whenever you need it. The memories of your own experiences also help you to get ideas about the world in that you live. When you once burned yourself when you touched a hot furnace, your memory of it helps you to not touch that hot furnace again.

The lower and more external levels of memory serve the higher ones. When you have collected many memories in your mind, you have gotten many ideas and you will organize these ideas to come to understand principles. This is not only based on your own experiences, but also on those of others, for example by your reading books. Principles of order are understood and organized and kept in the memory of the level of your heart.

Finally, you also have a memory on the level of you having God in you. On this level, you can feel God’s love in yourself and you instinctively know what is good and what is wrong.

There are five levels of memory. The memory on the level of God is a kind of religious or moral memory. When you don’t have a relation to God, you don’t really have access to this moral memory.

The memory on the level of Heart is for making order and to apply principles.

The memory on the level of Mind is one of thoughts, feelings and plans.

The memory on the level of Body is one of sensory and motor experiences.

The memory on the level of Things is in the things and when we use or connect to those things, those things will tell us what they experienced. For example, when i come here in this place, i usually can feel a lot about what you did and thought and felt during the time i was absent. The energies of what you did went into this room and the things here and other people can pick it up.

*****

Let us think of a human being who is growing up. A little child is very much still functioning on the level of body. The child experiences everything through its body and plays, plays, plays with things. This is very necessary, because the child must build up a memory of experiences on the level of the body that plays with things. Children should have enough time in their life to play with things so that the child naturally learns about the properties of the world in that it lives.

Bit by bit, the memory of experiences builds up and the child begins to get ideas, develops a memory on the level of the mind. It is good when you don’t teach too many principles directly to children. Tell children all kind of stories and through this, children get an idea of higher principles. From ideas contained in stories, children make up their own memory on the level of principles. That is the level of memory of the heart. When people get older, they come to understand more of God, at least in the original world. They get an understanding of God and in that way a memory is built on the highest level, that of God living in you.

When people get older and ripen in an original way, they get more and more access to a memory built up on the level of God and Heart. Such a person can get the task to prepare the foundations for a good future. Because such a person has a memory on the level of God, that person will be directed by his or her sense of morality and love. Then, with the help of the memory on the level of the Heart, the person develops strategies for the future. Based on such strategies, that person can make concrete plans, because the person has a memory, a build-up of information on the level of the mind. From plans, good actions come that make the person act and work upon the things. The actions can be made because the person has a memory of actions and experiences on the level of the body. Finally, there also is made use of a memory in the things. Books and computer files, and things that were made in a holy way serve the good life of generations of the future.

We should pay attention that we save for the future all the good that we built up. We should work on a memory on all levels that can be useful for our children, grandchildren and all coming generations.

Stradivarius was able to make excellent violins. His craftsmanship was based on many abilities and very much knowledge. If Stradivarius had thought of passing on his abilities and knowledge to future generations, violin builders would today still be able to make such good violins.

*****

I want to come to a summary of this teaching.

Memory serves the good development of the future.

Memories are stored on five different levels. These levels go from very external to very internal.

We can train our ability to memorize on each of these levels. The key word for this is concentration. You should be concentrated on a particular level of information if you want to train the memory on that level. You can’t be concentrated on both your sensory experiences of your body and the thoughts in your mind you are having about it. You must learn to make a choice to concentrate on either one of them.

The development of the memory goes parallel and serves the good education of a child and the development of a person.

Here i still propose names for the memories of the five different levels:

1. Memory on the level of God: DIRECTIONAL MEMORY

2. Memory on the level of Heart: MEMORY OF ORDER

3. Memory on the level of Mind: MEMORY OF IDEAS

4. Memory on the level of Body: MEMORY OF EXPERIENCE

5. Memory on the level of Things: EXTERNAL MEMORY.

May 20, 2003; transcript from a speech

What is a border in the spirit world?

Image via Wikipedia

Many different realms exist in the spirit world. Some of these grew naturally, other ones were made artificially.

A realm in the spirit world is a confined space that is only accessible to certain groups of human spirits and/or angels. Many people tend to think of realms of only being hierarchical in nature, but there also exist realms that are not really higher or lower than other realms, they are just different.

Natural realms in the spirit world grow very similar to how people on earth form communities. Families and clans live together and build a village. Sometimes an outsider is invited to live in such a village. Sometimes people born in such a village leave to explore life in the big world. Similar situations exist in the spirit world. These spiritual realms cannot always easily be defined in terms of 'higher' or 'lower' or 'good' or 'evil.' People live together because of many reasons. They may live together because of blood relationships, or because they have found a way to make their living there, or because of ancestral reasons. In such a community some people may be giving to others while also some criminals may be living among them.

Other communities are formed based on religious alliances. This, on earth, may be more the case in urban than in rural regions. People living in cities often have less relationship to their neighbors than is the case in rural areas. In cities, communities are frequently formed because people share the same beliefs, religious or political or otherwise. When these people come in spirit world they will often join such groups in the spirit world and they will not be connected anymore to the people of the neighborhood in which they lived on earth.

The spirit world is as big as the cosmos and the cosmos is big, very big.

It is also old, very old.

We can find many realms there that were built long ago and that, for example, are under angels' control. In many cases such realms are separated from other spaces by strong borders. Such borders can have very different characteristics. Some of these borders look like stone walls, other borders are more like water canals. There also exist borders that give a feeling that there is no border. This is done to protect the area enclosed by the border. When a spirit would approach such a realm, he or she would get the feeling that there is nothing behind.

Sometimes borders are made as strips of delusion. When you enter such a space you may get the feeling that you are crazy, or that you don't exist anymore, or you may fall unconscious as soon as you enter such a region. If you wish to penetrate such a realm, you must be victorious over such feelings or experiences. Many spirits who tried to enter such realms did for a long time not come out of a state of being that was induced by that border.

Towards a culture of originally developing people

Image by -RejiK via Flickr

Almost all of the existing societies and cultures were initiated by angels in spirit world. Let us compare a society founded by angels with a society as i believe God would like it.

In societies under angels, on top are one or more angels. These angels choose certain people to become their main instruments on earth. These angels also revealed all kind of knowledge to people. Most people were not aware of having gotten such a revelation. Because most people did not have a conscious relation to spirit world, they didn’t realize that their insights were actually angels’ revelations. People got ideas about how to build a political system, how to set up an economy and so forth. Angels gave revelations to some central people who lived in the society that was controlled by those angels.

Angels related more directly to leading figures of their culture. Those leading figures could be kings, or high priests, or generals in the army, or influential scientists. Those leading figures were instrumental to set up a hierarchical society that needed people to fulfill all kind of functions. Each society needs experts to do all kind of things. There are needed people who make bread, farmers, workers in all kind of fields.

The people belonging to a culture, a society or a nation had to perform all kind of functions. They were educated until they were able to perform that function.

People serve the state and the state is under angels. In that way, human beings don’t serve God or their own original development, but they helped angels to build up a world in which those angels were the spiritual subjects.

Compare this to God’s ideal society. In God’s world, no single person is leading by him- or herself. Each individual is not simply steered by someone above him, but directly by God Himself. Each individual is free to do what God wants. This is not a hierarchical system, but more a system like in a family, in which each person can develop him- or herself entirely, living in freedom, under God yes, -- but God is the one who wants you to be happy, to feel good.

Such free individuals are developing themselves all the time. They are free and out of their own choice they want to make creations and also organizations in society. Because organizations and larger creations could not be made by single individuals, those people do work together. In a free situation and out of the urge to be creative, people will form groups and organizations, learning how to do this by getting revelations from God.

In God’s ideal world it is impossible that people would only develop to learn to do one simple profession. People don’t develop to just take their place in society, but original people do never stop to advance in all aspects of their lives.

In the human world controlled by angels, each person was educated to perform a certain task in society. In our modern world this means that people work for 8 hours a day and for five days a week to do what they have to do.

A cabinetmaker is needed to make chairs for other people. The cabinetmaker is hardly interested in the personal situation of the people, but he just makes furniture and tries to sell that. He works 8 hours a day and then he is happy that he can go home.

In God’s ideal world, adults will be like we see it still in children. Could you command children to play only a certain number of hours daily?

Children play the whole day, until they are tired and need sleep.

In this way, adults should learn to work, experiencing it as playful and creative development, never tired of doing it unless they really are tired and need sleep.

In such a world, productivity would surely not be smaller than in the world controlled by angels.

*****

Let us become clearer about the internal disposition of humans who are actually slaves in the angels’ world, and the motivation of original people living under God’s dominion.

In the societies as we have known them until now, people worked hard for money, or for a higher position with accompanying benefits, or sometimes also for physical survival. The essence of life did become one of working to get something.

While in the angels’ world of humans people are working to get something, in God’s ideal world people live to give something. They want to give to God and to the people around them. This motivates them to be creative.

In the world of angels people count how many hours they still have to make. Some very ambitious people don’t care how many hours they have to put in, because they want to come higher up.

In God’s world, nobody wants to come higher up. People just want to give out love to others. If you cook each day the same meal, people who eat it get bored. So, creativity includes that you always want to invent new things. And to invent new things, you need to learn and develop more.

Your love for people is the motor to be more creative. And to be creative, you have to develop yourself all the time; otherwise you can’t make something new.

*****

In the human world as it always has been controlled by angels, there also has been education. In the old world, education was always instrumental in order to get something. Certain people needed a lot of education because angels wanted them to perform higher positions in society. Other people needed much less education, because their task was only rather simple.

Education in the old world was always meant to get something, money or position, or the means to get all kind of satisfactions. That world was controlled in spirit world by angels and in the physical world by pharaohs, kings, presidents or emperors. You worked to get position in that world. Eventually this meant that you always were under the angels. Your position was given to you by angels and your education was meant to get that position.

How different is education in God’s world! In God’s world, you are educated so you develop. You develop so you become greater and more love-giving and more able to do good things, to contribute to others. Position or money or sex are not the goal in God’s world. Your development will never end. There never comes an end to your school of education.

*****

Now you should understand that this kind of original creativity cannot at all be compared to what in the old world is known as peoples’ hobbies. To do a hobby is to do what you like, usually in the time that is left ‘free’ after you did your duty in societies initiated by angels. To do a hobby means that you already have done your ‘duty’ and now you can do what you like.

To be creative in God’s world is not at all a hobby. To be creative in God’s world is to be super serious.

*****

It is not right when you simply do what a leader may ask you, but it also is not right when you simply disobey what a person in a central position is asking you.

There has to be something extra in whatever you do. You should act while having a personal relation to God. You should act out from your own creativity. All this means that you should work to give to others, not just to get a better life or a higher position.

*****

The old world cannot simply be banished to begin a new world.

To make the new world, God’s ideal world, restoration is necessary. The new world grows out from the old world through restoration.

When we speak about restoration of an individual, we speak about the Formula-Course of Restoration. I want to make a few remarks about our way of going the Formula-Course of Restoration.

Often the course of restoration is seen as a kind of stairs. The original way of growth, which is a development through stages of growth, could rather well be compared with a stairs. But the Formula-Course of Restoration is much more complicated than a staircase.

The essence of original growth is that we live for longer time on a certain level. Then, at a certain moment, we are ready to enter the next stage. Everything in our life changes. First we were on one level, now we come on a higher level. At first we find it very difficult in that new situation, but we get used to it, or we fall down again from the stairs, to a lower stage.

This is already rather complicated. But in restoration, everything gets still more confused.

A fallen person is characterized by a split nature: there is good and evil, white and black in them.

There are consequences from our split nature for our position in the Formula-Course of Restoration. Normally, in the original world, in our original way of growth, we are on one stage only. But fallen people don’t stand in one particular stage. Practically all fallen people do stand with one leg in heaven and with their other leg in hell.

They live in two worlds.

We could live on several stages in the Formula-Course of Restoration simultaneously. And there are still huge individual differences here.

Some people are just evil and are deep down, belong to the evil tribes.

But there also exist people who have touched high levels, who even have reached the level of the completion stage, and still, at the same time, they also do belong to the evil tribes. This can be very complex.

It is sometimes possible to determine which level people stand, but because of the contradicting, conflicting nature of fallen people, their level is very much fluctuating over time.

Fallen people might live in several stages at the same time and they need education and training on all of these levels.

God wants to give to each of us the right education for our good development. God wants us to be giving and creative. That is very difficult to do. We need training. The training we need will differ according to where we are.

In the original ideal we only would need training on one level, but in the complicated situation of human fall, we might need training on many levels at once.

We go up, and fall again.

*****

The most important characteristic of the original culture is liberation, is making us free, such that each individual enters the track of continuous, original self-development.

Original development is not to get a position in society. Original development is to become similar to God.

August 14, 2003, transcript from a speech

Your own spirit self

Image by nikoretro via FlickrIf such is the kingdom of Heaven

It is through my spirit self that i relate to the spiritual world. Through my physical self i relate to the physical world.

Suppose that we would not have a spiritual self then there would be no meaningful connection between the spirit world and the physical world.

What would this mean? It means that those who died cannot anymore relate to those who are still living in the physical world. Suppose you built a family and you have children and grandchildren whom you love. After you died, they would disappear for you. You could not see them again as long as they are still living in the physical world. Spirit world would become like a prison.

Because many people living in the physical world did not develop their spiritual life and their spiritual self, they are very handicapped once they come into spirit world. For them life after death, in spirit world, feels like a prison.

Many people who died will hang around their descendants still living on earth. Although such people usually didn’t learn much how to behave in spirit world, but their love for their children and grandchildren or other people makes them come back and stay in spirit with their beloved ones. Yet, usually the people in the physical world are hardly or not aware of this. This is very frustrating for people in the spirit world.

Imagine: you want to say something to your grandchild, but that grandchild doesn’t hear or notice you. You want to warn for a danger, but it is like you speak to a wall. This is the situation for many people in spirit world.

The reason that it is like that is that both the ones in spirit world and the ones on earth haven’t learned to use their spirit selves.

God did not intend it to be like that. In God’s ideal world, there is free interchange between spirit world and physical world. As a spirit you will be able to speak to your descendants on earth, you will be able to guide them, and you even will be able to often use their bodies so that you will still have experiences on earth long after you passed away.

Because spirit world is the world of those who have more and longer life experience, it is logical that spirit world should be subject to the physical world. God’s Kingdom of Heaven is built starting from the spirit world. God’s ideal is not possible unless there are people who have full control over their spirit selfs. Such people are needed to live in spirit world and to live in the physical world. Only with such people God’s Kingdom of Heaven can be built. It is not possible in any other way.

Now, what is my spirit self? My spirit self is my real self. My physical self is a temporary self only.

Suppose that you drive in your car day and night. You drive so often in your car that you begin to see your car as your own body. You get so dependent from your car that you think that this car is your real self. You don’t think much about yourself, but you think about your car all the time. In such a situation, which is quite realistic for many people, you yourself actually become more and more a dead person. No one likes you anymore, because you always want to speak about your car only. You become more and more lonely and live for and with your car only.

There are many such people around. Some love their cars, others love money, or their house, or their computer. The center of your being is then not your spirit self, it also is not anymore even your physical self, no, the center of your being is a dead thing. All your relations to other people have to go through the center of your being, which is that dead thing. Car lovers can only relate a bit to other car lovers. Computer lovers can only relate a bit to other computer lovers. The world of such people becomes very limited and small. They live a degraded, materialistic life.

When such people die and go to spirit world, they go where their love goes, which is for instance to their car. But the car does not exist as such in spirit world. The car, as long as it exists in the physical world, only has a shadow in spirit world. Such a spirit is nevertheless stuck to that shadow. When the car goes to the car wrecker, the spirit has nowhere to go. Anyway, you are what you love. When you only love that car, and that car only exists as a shadow in spirit world, you yourself only become a shadow in spirit world. After the car is demolished, you won’t even be a shadow anymore, but you are practically non-existing.

You are what you love. When you love God and the whole cosmos, you yourself become like God and you will truly be a microcosm. You will experience it like this and your life will be full and exciting and extremely joyful.

You are what you love. When you only love a physical car that gets demolished entirely after time, you yourself will eventually be almost entirely demolished. It is only because no human being can go down so far that his being becomes identical to that of a car that still a dark cloud or a shadow will remain from you in spirit world.

My spirit self is most of all created and shaped by my love. Actually, as i am God’s creation, it is first of all God’s love which made me what i am. Then there comes the love of my parents and others who care for me. Then there is my own love resulting from all this. Eventually it will be mainly my own love, as i responded to God’s love and the love of others, which determines my spirit self.

My love expresses in my mind in thoughts, feelings and plans, which again result in actions of my body. My spirit self is created from the love in my heart as it finally expressed itself into actions. The love in my heart is originally installed there by God first of all, but eventually it is decisive what i do with the love in me.

Therefore, it can be said that my spirit self, which is what remains of me after i died in the physical world, is like a recorder of my entire life. The spirit self is created by myself. I create it with my actions. But my actions result from my thoughts, feelings, plans, and these again come from the love in my heart.

When i live a physically-oriented life, my spirit self suffers and could eventually almost die out. When i live a good spiritually-oriented life, my spirit self blossoms and it will become like God and will encompass the entire cosmos.

But what is spiritual life? I should live a spiritual live in order to develop my spirit self and this is necessary for having a gratifying existence now and ever in the future. But how must i do that?

God is God the Creator. Man is God’s Child. The most essential quality and also task that we inherited from God is that we also are creators. We must create ourselves and the world around us. Eventually God wants me to be the creator of the cosmos myself, with God living in my heart.

To be creative you must give more than what you are now. That is the special thing about creativity. It is not creative when you just act from what you are now. It is creative when in your creative act you do more than what you could yesterday. In your creativity you grow and develop. And this is only possible based on your desire to do so. Where does this desire come from? From your love for someone. You love someone and you want to give something to that person. Now your creativity comes out in a practical sense. Your desire transforms into creative actions. Through your creativity you create something new, which did not exist before. And by doing this you have grown. You try to give to others, but in the creative process of doing this, you also gave something to yourself. You gave to yourself and caused in yourself your own spiritual growth.

This is why it is the reality in spirit world that painters and music composers and other creative people all do have an advantage over those who did not develop their creativity in life on earth.

Out of God’s creativity came about the entire cosmos which has three axes. One of these axes is the axis which determines spiritual and physical existence. It is creativity that brings into being the existence of the spiritual. It is like that for God and it is like that for you and me.

More specifically, to develop my spiritual life i need to convert my love and creativity into controlled energy. When i use that energy for making a physical object, then there comes into existence that physical object. But when i add extra or surplus energy into that physical object then there comes about a spiritual creation. The more that i am aware of this, the better that spiritual creation will be.

It is through my awareness, which also is the sense of my mind, that i can bring forward spiritual creations. My awareness should be steered by my creative desire which sprouts in love for someone.

When i don’t love other people, i cannot develop my creativity and i cannot learn to live a true spiritual life. When i don’t love God, there is not the source of good love in me and there cannot come about good desire and in that case i also cannot develop my spirituality.

It is important to realize that the spiritual existence is not dreamlike or unrealistic. The spiritual existence can be seen as uncondensed energy, but it is energy that has been shaped into forms with content. The spiritual world is a substantial world. It does exist and is very real. It is not the result of dreams or fantasies. It is the result of the highest creative process that is possible in God and man.

The only way that i can experience and steer spiritual phenomena is through my own spirit self. Therefore, i must become aware of the existence of my spirit self.

My spirit self exists as spirit heart, spirit mind and spirit body. In my spirit heart is living God, and my spirit body relates to spiritual creations. Furthermore, my spirit self relates to my physical self, and through physical selves of people the spiritual world can have influence on the physical world. My spiritual self exists in forms of united masculine and feminine aspects.

Here we shall try to find out mainly about how i can develop my spirit heart, spirit mind and spirit body.

EXERCISE 1. First of all, we want to become aware of how our spirit self can be experienced apart from the experience of our physical self. As long as we live in the physical world, this separate experience is not so easy. Important to realize is that when i focus on dealing with the physical world, it is my physical self doing this. When i focus on dealing with spiritual phenomena, it is my spiritual self.

You should make yourself aware in many situations whether you are focused on physical phenomena or on spiritual ones. For example, when you wash your car, you can just physically wash it and then it is only your physical self doing this. But you could also concentrate on washing the spiritual car. Then, all of a sudden, it is your spiritual self doing this.

Try to do whatever you do by adding a spiritual component to it. When you do the dishes, do not just only wash the physical dishes, but make those dishes shine in spirit world. It is your spirit self that does this and in the process of washing the dishes spiritually you become aware of the existence of your own spirit self.

Do such kind of exercises in all what you do in life. When you put on your clothing, also put on your spiritual clothing. When you do your daily work, then consciously add the spiritual component to what you do. Remember that this is only possible when you add extra energy which must come from your awareness that sprouted in creative desire. And for creative desire to emerge you must have love centered on God.

Now while you do this kind of spiritual exercises, you must make yourself clear that such actions done in a spiritual way do come from your spirit body, and your thoughts and feelings and plans steering your spiritual actions do come from your spirit mind, and your love which steers it all comes from your spiritual heart.

In that way, in your daily life, you can practice to discover and to develop your spiritual self. This is actually true spiritual life in the fullest way. When you center it always on God, it is religious life as well. You don’t need to go to a monastery or follow courses to learn to meditate. All you need to do is to bring the spiritual component into your daily life.

EXERCISE 2. Once you have become aware of the existence of your spirit self in the way as described in Exercise 1, you should actively work to develop your spirit self. For this no exercises can be given here. You must become a religious person who lives life under God. There is not meant here a life under religious rules, but a life centered on the living God. God whom is with you and whom you experience always and ever directly.

July 1999

Opening your spiritual senses

Image via Wikipedia

Painting: The five senses, by Jan Cossiers

We have the same spiritual senses as we have physical ones. We have physical eyes and spiritual eyes. We have physical ears and also spiritual ones. We have physical smell and taste and also spiritual smell and taste. Besides our physical touch we can touch and feel spiritually.

These are the two times five senses which are connected to the physical body and the spiritual body.

These senses’ characteristic is that they are directed outward. The 10 senses are directed to sense what is going on outside of the body.

Also the mind has a kind of sense. The physical mind senses on the level of physical mind and the spiritual mind on the level of spiritual mind. These senses are called physical awareness and spiritual awareness (in German language this would be called Bewustsein.)

Finally, there are the senses of the heart (physical body's center of love, not the organ 'heart.' The physical heart’s sense is called physical intuition and the spiritual heart’s sense spiritual intuition.

We have now 14 senses which are directed outward, 10 senses of the body, two senses of the mind and two of the heart. Of these senses, half is physical and half is spiritual. Seven of these senses therefore are spiritual senses and about these this chapter is explaining. (Note that what often is called “sixth sense” actually is the collection of all seven spiritual senses.)

There also are senses directed inward. These senses are basically of the same kind as the senses directed outward. For example, the body senses what happens outside of the body with 10 senses, but the body also senses the working of the own mind in the body. A thought or emotion of the mind causes a sensation in the body, and this sensation is felt with the senses of the body, but now the senses are directed inward. Some of the physical senses are limited in this respect, for example the physical eyes cannot look into the physical body but only at it, but the spiritual eyes can look into the spirit body.

The mind senses what is in the mind and which came from the heart with what is called conscience (in German language Gewissen). Conscience is the same as awareness but now the awareness is directed inward. Conscience could also be called self-awareness (self-consciousness or, in German language Selbstbewustsein). Also the conscience has two components, the spiritual conscience and the physical conscience.

The heart senses what is in God. It is through this sense that man can receive revelations directly from God and that man can feel God’s pain or happiness in certain situations. For this no word been used in the past. We shall call this man’s divinity. Also divinity of man has a physical and a spiritual aspect.

Summarizing: There are five senses of the body, there is a sense of the mind and there is a sense of the heart. These are altogether seven senses that each have a very different character. Each of these seven senses can be directed inward (into the person’s self) our outward (outside of the person’s self). That makes altogether 14 senses. As long as man lives in the physical world, these 14 senses have both a spiritual aspect and a physical aspect. This gives altogether 28 senses.

But when we disregard whether the senses are spiritual or physical and whether they are directed inward or outward, we distinguish seven senses of man with each a very different character:

1. Seeing

2. Hearing

3. Tasting

4. Smelling

5. Touching

6. Awareness

7. Intuition

How many spiritual senses do we have now?

1. Spiritual eyes outward

2. Spiritual eyes inward

3. Spiritual ears outward

4. Spiritual ears inward

5. Spiritual taste outward

6. Spiritual taste inward

7. Spiritual touch outward

8. Spiritual touch inward

9. Spiritual smell outward

10. Spiritual smell inward

11. Spiritual awareness (outward)

12. Spiritual conscience (inward)

13. Spiritual intuition (outward)

14. Spiritual divinity (inward)

In the remaining part of this chapter we shall come to understand more about these 14 spiritual senses and learn exercises for the development of our spiritual senses.

1. SPIRITUAL EYES OUTWARD

With my physical eyes i see the world around me. Later, when my physical body has died, i live in the spiritual world and then with my spiritual eyes i will be able to see around me just as well as i now do with my physical eyes in the physical world.

But as long as i live in the physical world it takes time and effort to learn to use my spiritual eyes.

The physical world is a world of condensed and visible energy, while the spiritual world is energy in an uncondensed form and it therefore is less visible.

Moreover, the more that my physical desires dominate my spiritual ones, the more that my desire pushes me to only see in the physical world.

When i cannot yet see with my spiritual eyes, there are two problems to be solved. The first problem is when your physical desires dominate your spiritual ones.

When person A drives around in a car, A might only see trucks all the time. This is because A likes trucks and therefore only sees trucks. Person B sees birds. B doesn’t care about trucks, but loves birds. Person C sees houses everywhere, because C is an architect and is interested in how all these houses were designed and built.

Your desire determines what you see. If your desire is for the physical only, you will only be able to see the physical.

EXERCISE 1. If you do not make your spiritual desires to be dominant over your physical ones, then you will never be able to develop your spiritual senses. This exercise is to help you to develop your desire for spiritual life.

Take some time daily to pray, meditate and think about the purpose of life. Specifically ask yourself about the purpose of physical and material life. Make yourself aware of who and what you are. Is it worthwhile to live like an animal or do you want to reach higher goals in life? The purpose of the exercise is to make yourself aware of the value of spiritual life. Try at least daily to come to some kind of insight in this respect.

This exercise alone can never make you a spiritually-oriented person. Only living a good life centered on God can really make you understand the value of spiritual life.

The second main problem is that you have a physical body with physical senses, and these physical senses tend to dominate your spiritual senses just by the fact of the character and the strength of these physical senses. When you try to look with your spiritual eyes, you cannot help that you also still see with your physical eyes. Your physical eyes receive an image of the physical situation, while your spiritual eyes simultaneously receive a picture of the spiritual situation. You actually get two pictures to see at once. The physical picture is strong and clear and is what you are used to, while the spiritual picture is weak and unclear and seems to be unrealistic.

Let me try to make clear with an example what this problem means. Suppose someone draws for you a picture of a person on piece of paper. You can clearly see this picture. Suppose that now another, clear picture of a landscape is drawn over the picture of the person. That landscape is drawn with strong and thick lines. Now all of a sudden you can clearly see the landscape but you find it hard to still discover the picture of the person.

Another example. Suppose there is lit one candle in a dark room. You can very well see the light of the candle. Now someone switches on the electrical light. Suddenly the whole room becomes clearly visible while the candle is just a small detail in the room.

Note that these are only examples to show you a little of the nature of the problem that the spiritual world is difficult to perceive as long as you are also using your physical body’s senses. For the rest, the two examples do not tell us anything meaningful about spirit world.

EXERCISE 2. We must get used to see the spiritual reality on top of the physical reality. Whatever we see in the physical world, there always is also something to be seen in the spiritual world. When you see a house in the physical world then there also is a house in the spiritual world. When you see a physical dog, there also is the spiritual dog. And so on.

We begin our practice with trying to see the spiritual atmosphere in a room. The spiritual atmosphere in a room is something which cannot only be seen, but it often is more felt or smelled. But here we focus on seeing the spiritual atmosphere.

First you must find a room of which you know that there is a good atmosphere. If you cannot find such a room, then you can also go to a beautiful place in nature, where it is clean, and which is not much cultivated by man. You also should find a room of which you know that there is a bad atmosphere.

The exercise is that you frequently visit these two places of which you know that the one has a relatively good atmosphere and the other a relatively low atmosphere. Maybe you could find such places on your daily trip to your work. Each time that you visit these places, you try to look through the physical visible place into the spiritual room. You must look at the room without consciously looking at what happens there physically. You look into the distance, beyond the physical images, and you ask yourself: What do i see more than with my physical eyes?

When you do this often you will begin to see a difference between the dark place and the good place. Now focus on this difference and ask yourself what exactly is the difference between what you see in those two places. Once you notice a difference, you have already seen something with your spiritual eyes, but you might not be so aware of that. Important is that you make yourself aware of the fact that you dó see with your spiritual eyes, you only didn’t realize it so well. Every person sees with spiritual eyes, but most people haven’t been trained to know that they do this. You do have spiritual eyes and with these spiritual eyes you do see. You only are not yet aware of this, and therefore you think you didn’t see spiritually.

Continue to do this exercise daily and focus on the difference. Make yourself clear what exactly is the difference between these two spaces. You focus on seeing the atmosphere, and you see something then. What you see is already a spiritual phenomenon. Bit by bit you will see that in the good place there is a light atmosphere which looks bright and clear. In the dark place it is literally dark and smoggy.

EXERCISE 3. The next exercise is that you expand your efforts to seeing the spirit of people. Usually you know people who often are in a good mood, and you also know people who give you a bad feeling when you meet them. Although it is hard to know always when a person is in good spirit or not when you didn’t ask God or when you yourself are in bad spirit, but still, deep in your heart you know when someone is more okay or less okay.

Based on other spiritual senses you know if a person is in relatively good spirit or in relatively bad spirit. You must now look at the spirit of these people. Again, while you look, you must not clearly look at their physical appearance. Try to look through the person, as if you look far in the distance. At the moment that you do not anymore see the physical appearance clearly, you will still see something. What you then see is the beginning of spiritual seeing.

You will find a difference between the sight of the low-spirited person and that of the high-spirited person. You should focus on that difference. Think and meditate about that difference. Make yourself very clear what differences you have seen, and that those differences are differences in what you spiritually saw and not just contrasts in the physical appearances.

EXERCISE 4. Condition yourself to see the spiritual appearance behind each physical person, animal, plant or object. To develop your spiritual senses you must make effort over a long time, and it also needs high concentration each time that you want to see spiritually. It does never go without making effort over time and each time and again.

When you go through a street, try to see the spirit of the homes. You must always do this in prayer centered on God, because your spiritual senses only open in a good way if God allows it. So if your attitude is against God, God will not open your spiritual senses.

When you receive a letter, then look at the letter before opening the envelope and try to see spiritually if the content of the letter is good or evil.

The exercises are near endless, and in order to develop your spiritual eyes you must practice always and ever, day in day out.

EXERCISE 5. Until now you have practiced to use your spiritual eyes to see the spiritual aspects of physical beings and objects. It is more difficult to see spiritual beings and realities that are not expressed in a physical body.

We can see spirits and angels and sometimes also spiritual realities beyond the physical earth. But you cannot see a spirit if that spirit is not there with you or near you. You cannot see what is not there. So, depending on whether you can see a spirit is whether that spirit is near to you.

Furthermore, there are many spirits who are almost invisible even in spirit world. Such spirits lived such a low life that their spirits are practically non-existing. Such spirits you can almost not see, even if your spiritual eyes are developed to the highest degree.

Even a higher spirit is only visible if that spirit expresses him- or herself. When spirits are emotional or highly motivated to express themselves in a situation, they become visible to our spiritual eyes.

To learn to see spirits, you should develop your relation to God. When God tells you that a certain spirit is there, you can make effort to see that spirit. The spirit appears to your eyes like the spiritual aspects of physical beings and objects did.

2. SPIRITUAL EYES INWARD

As you can look with your spiritual eyes to see spiritual beings and objects and phenomena, you also can look with your spiritual eyes into your own body. This is a special ability which one can develop for example in order to discover diseases or disorders in the own body.

For now this ability is not of so much significance, so no exercises are given for this.

3. SPIRITUAL EARS OUTWARD

Just like for any visible entity in the physical world there is a spiritual aspect which can be seen, so for any physically audible entity one could hear a spiritual component.

In the sounds of all which we hear around us there is audible with our spiritual ears what kind of spirit is connected to the sound.

For example, when someone is angry, that anger shows a certain quality of the spirit self. When an angry person speaks, his or her speaking will be expressing that anger not only in a physically audible medium but also through a spiritually audible expression.

Of course, the physical components of sounds can never be seen apart from the spiritual ones.

Computer-made sounds can be made to sound like real, human-operated instruments, but a computer cannot put a spiritual component into that sound, other than the spirit expressions that come from the energy of the computer itself. Therefore, computer sounds usually cannot move our hearts. These sounds lack the spiritual aspect through which love and emotion can be expressed much more fully than is possible with just physical sound.

Physical sounds have impact on the physical world. Loud physical sounds can make buildings vibrate or deafen our physical ears.

Spiritual sounds have impact on the spiritual world. Spiritual sounds do not have direct effect on the physical world. Spiritual sounds have direct effects only on the spiritual world.

EXERCISE 6. Concentrate on hearing the spiritual component of each sound that you hear. For instance, when you hear sounds made by a person, try to feel in those sounds in what kind of mood the person is. If someone angrily slams a door, the physical sound already tells you much, although it also could be that a draught slammed that door. But in the sounds made by a person we can hear in what kind of spirit that person is. It is just a matter of making effort to discover more and more about people in that way. Make yourself aware that what you hear is spiritual and that now you are using your spiritual ears.

Train yourself to listen to music and to find out about the spiritual atmosphere in which the concert was given by focusing on the spiritual component of that music.

Listen to the sounds of nature and that of the weather. Even the winds have a certain spirit of which you can become aware by listening to it.

There also sound in the regions of spirit world that are not connected to a physical aspect. These solely spiritual sounds can be made by spirits. When you have become aware of the presence of a spirit, you can open your spiritual ears to hear what the spirit tells. You can ask that spirit a question and sometimes the spirit answers you. The more energy the spirit person puts into what he or she says, the better you can hear it. Be aware that commonly spirits are not better or worse than physical people. They are just people and they often may know less than you do. Never fall on your knees because you hear spirits speaking, because after that you will arrogantly and mistakenly put yourself high above the people around you.

4. SPIRITUAL EARS INWARD

Just like you can see things inside of your own spirit body, you also can listen to what happens in your own spirit body. Also this ability is not something which we practice here.

5. SPIRITUAL TASTE OUTWARD

Each of the senses of the body has its own special use and purpose. With our eyes we look around and all of us are very dependent of our sight. But there exist people who are very focused on their hearing, sometimes because they are blind or because they are just very much centered on that. A painter will have trained his ability to see while a musician trained the ability to hear.

The taste is mostly connected to food.

When we make food, it is extremely important how this food is prepared spiritually. I myself have often experienced to get dead-sick from eating a little food which was prepared with a bad spirit. The sickness then is sickness of the spirit body.

I could write a whole book about the topic of how to spiritually prepare good food, beginning with cultivating the food in a garden to harvesting to preparing it in the kitchen. It is a big and important topic.

With our spiritual eyes we can see if food has a good spirit or a bad one. But this demands much experience added to much concentration at the moment of looking.

The spiritual sense of taste is necessary for us to guarantee that we only eat good food. Food that was prepared with a good heart will have a good effect on our spiritual condition and health. Food that was prepared with a bad heart will have a bad effect on our spiritual condition and health.

The higher is your standard for spiritual life, the more you will be affected by the spiritual component of food. When your standard in spiritual life is very low then it doesn’t matter very much what kind of food you eat, as long as that food is in order physically.

To simplify it: food can be prepared having good spiritual value or bad spiritual value or no spiritual value. Food with good spiritual value can only be prepared by people having a high spiritual standard using food components that also have been cultivated and treated well. Food with bad spiritual value can be prepared by someone in an evil spirit, or there have been used ingredients with low spiritual value. There also is much food that has almost no spiritual value. It is spiritually empty food. When you eat it, it only fills your physical stomach while your spiritual body still is hungry after eating. Such kind of food without having spiritual value is usually made in factories where machines do much of the work or it is prepared by people who have a very businesslike attitude. Most quick-food restaurants serve such kind of food. Yet, such food is still to be preferred above food with a bad spiritual value.

EXERCISE 7. You should become critical about the food you eat. Of course, your physical food should be of good quality, but as you improve the quality of your own spiritual life, you also should learn to eat food with good spiritual quality.

Whenever you eat, always make effort to discover what spiritual value that food has. If you are sure that the food has a bad spiritual value, don’t eat it.

Try to taste the spiritual emptiness of food from fast-food restaurants.

Prepare a piece of bread, put it in a plastic bag and then for one hour on a street. Physically the food has not changed, but now taste how that food tastes spiritually! If you are not too far down as a spiritual person, you only need to do this exercise once in your life…

6. SPIRITUAL TASTE INWARD

With your spiritual taste directed inward you can taste in your mouth in what spiritual condition your own body is. You can also taste the effect of certain thoughts on your body. Good thoughts give a good taste but bad thoughts and feelings give you a bad taste in your mouth.

7. SPIRITUAL TOUCH OUTWARD

With your physical touch you feel the wind and the shining of the sun. You feel warmth and coldness.

Your spiritual touch does the same but it feels only spiritual contact.

When someone touches you, you can sense what is behind that touch. The physical contact tells you something about the one who touches you. If someone gives you a soft hand, it could tell you about a weak character, but it could also be that the person has an illness in the muscles of the hand. The spiritual contact tells you clearly about the spiritual reality of the person who shakes hands with you.

Maybe you have the experience that when you met a person you suddenly felt cold. Did you realize that this feeling of coldness is a spiritual experience?

When you come into a room or house with a low spirit, or you touch things used by someone with a low spirit, you will feel like getting dirty. Take such experiences very seriously, because your spiritual skin warns you that spiritual dirt is all around you. That spiritual dirt first touches your skin, but if you are not careful, it will enter your spirit body and make you ill.

EXERCISE 8. It is difficult to give exercises to develop your spiritual senses as living with spiritual awareness is something that must be learned in lifelong daily and even hourly experiences. To develop your spiritual sense of touch you basically must do the same as what you did to practice the other senses. Find situations in which you know that there is a bad spiritual atmosphere. Train yourself to experience how that feels on your spiritual skin. Find situations in which there is a good spiritual atmosphere. Train yourself to experience how that feels. Then make yourself aware of the differences between contacts that made you feel good and contacts that made you feel bad.

Do also train yourself to detect spiritual touching on your skin from the presence of a spirit who comes near to you.

8. SPIRITUAL TOUCH INWARD

Spiritual touch inward is the complex of sensations of how you feel you are in a spiritual sense. It is a very important sense as the condition of your spirit body is felt by you inside of your physical body, but what is felt is not just the physical condition but especially the spiritual condition.

Sometimes you can feel ill or sick although there is no external reason for it. When you had to deal with people in evil spirit for some time, your own spiritual body becomes sick and this you feel through your spiritual touch directed inward.

9. SPIRITUAL SMELL OUTWARD

Some people smell good and others stink. Probably you have the same experience as i had many times.

Almost always that smell is a result of the spiritual condition of that person. Ugly spiritual beings stink while good people smell nice.

EXERCISE 9. Train your spiritual smell by concentrating on it what you smell when you come in different places. Make yourself aware that when you come into a house, you can smell the spiritual atmosphere there, as you can smell the spirit of a person. Every being and every thing has a spiritual smell.

You also sometimes can smell the presence of spirits. It is a matter of concentration and making effort to develop your spiritual sense of smell.

10. SPIRITUAL SMELL INWARD

The spiritual smell directed inward is again a spiritual organ which is useful to detect certain illnesses or in general to determine the condition of yourself as spirit being.

11. SPIRITUAL AWARENESS OUTWARD

The mind senses expressions of other minds. Like the body can observe other bodies and entities of creation through five senses, so the mind can sense what is manifested on the level of the mind. When this concerns actions of other minds, then that awareness is directed outward. In this chapter we speak about spiritual senses, so we will try to understand what spiritual awareness is and how we can develop this.

The body does not only sense other bodies, but also senses phenomena on the level of creation. Likewise, the mind does not only sense activities of the mind but can also be aware of expressions of bodies. However, this is only possible when a mind is united with a body. The senses of the body pick up signs and because the mind lives in the body, the mind becomes aware of these signs.

The mind is also able to note or to be aware of the impulses coming from the own heart, but the mind cannot detect what goes on in other hearts. Only when those hearts express in mind phenomena, then the mind can again become aware of that. When the mind is aware of the expressions of the own heart, we call this awareness directed inwards.

From which directions can the mind sense something? First of all expressions on mind level that come from outside the own self. But when a stone hits your body, your mind also becomes aware of the pain in your body. This also is awareness of what comes from outside. The mind actually senses what happens in the own body.

The mind can also sense what comes from the own heart. The heart expresses into the mind and this again is felt in the body. For instance, when you suddenly feel a strong love for someone, then this affects your mind but also your body. The mind’s observations of this complex of phenomena is all awareness directed inward. This can also be called self-consciousness. In the following paragraph we will speak about this more.

Awareness of spiritual phenomena from outside of an individual, which is shortly called spiritual awareness outward, is called Bewustsein in German language, while awareness of spiritual phenomena inside of a person is called Selbstbewustsein.

Important to know about spiritual awareness inward is that there basically are two lines through which sensations can become conscious to my mind: there are the sensations in my body which resulted from impressions from outside of my body which are felt by my mind, and there are the direct impressions transferred from another mind to my mind.

When i sense what happens in my body as a result from actions coming from the outside of my body then i sense something in myself, in my body. This, however, should not be called self-awareness or Selbtsbewustsein in strictest sense because the sensations were not caused by myself but by someone or something else. Nevertheless, the ability to be aware of such sensations in my body is the same ability as to be aware of sensations in my body resulting from causes within my own self.

The awareness of my mind is an awareness in which thoughts, feelings and plans are playing a major role. Strictly speaking, i first become aware of something with my mind. This results in feelings and thoughts and can lead immediately or intermediately to plans.

Awareness of my mind can be of spiritual phenomena which are either connected to physical entities or of spiritual phenomena solely occurring in spirit world. To influence or create in spirit world i need a high degree of awareness of my mind. Man is supposed to become creator in spirit world, in life after death of the physical self. To become creator in spirit world one needs to have developed spiritual awareness to the highest degree. My life after death will be extremely joyful when i am able to be creator in spirit world. God made spirit world as a place intended to be created by man as God’s Heavenly Kingdom. It is only when man learns to develop the spiritual sense of awareness during life on earth that man can create heaven after life on earth.

EXERCISE 10. First we shall try to train our awareness of what comes from the outside of myself but which is sensed in my own body. When a stone hits my body, then i feel not only physical pain but also spiritual pain. The physical impact on my physical body depends on how hard the stone hits me and where. But the spiritual pain is depending on the reason why the stone hits me. If i myself throw a stone into the air and accidentally that stone drops on my head, then there probably is not much spiritual pain (unless i unconsciously committed an act of self-infliction). But when someone who really hates me throws a stone at me, then that stone could cause a serious injury to my spirit body. It is only by making effort to make myself aware of what happens to me in such a case that i can elevate my awareness of such phenomena. You must take time to pray and meditate about all what happens to your body to find out what is the spiritual meaning behind it. By analyzing the sensations inside of your spirit body, you train the awareness of your spiritual mind.

Important to know is that our spirit bodies are also affected by spiritual actions of other people, who are either near to us or farther away. When someone really hates you and in his mind curses you and even plans actions against you, then you can become aware of this through the sensations which occur in your spirit body.

Each action of the heart, mind and body does have effect. Such effects never get lost. When someone plans something against you, there is energy directed against you. Part of that energy will go into the plan and actions itself, but part of that energy comes directly to you. You are able to feel this if you make repeated efforts to learn to become aware of such things.

EXERCISE 11. As it is possible to become aware of how other people affect my spirit body through the activities of their minds, so i also can become directly aware of what other people think or feel. In this case i do not (just) sense this in my own body, but i directly read that person’s mind.

It is also difficult to give exercises to develop this quality in yourself. It is a matter of often making effort to read the minds of people around you. You must develop trust in your own ability. Try to read the mind of a person and check the facts and pray if this is right. Often the person later speaks out what he or she already thought. In that way you know if your readings were right or not.

Strong thoughts and feelings to which much energy is bound can be sensed much easier than weak expressions of another mind. When thoughts are confused, you can discover that the person has a confused mind, but you usually cannot find out the content of the thoughts.

EXERCISE 12. After you trained your awareness of direct expressions of other minds you can learn to detect thoughts, feelings and plans, and actions of spirit beings who have no physical bodies. When the spiritual senses of your body told you that a spirit is near to you, you can also sometimes find out what this spirit thinks or feels or plans.

12. SPIRITUAL AWARENESS INWARD

Already in paragraph 11 of this chapter something has been said about this ability. Spiritual awareness directed inward is awareness of the impulses of your own spirit heart and awareness of the effects of your own spirit mind on your spirit body. This spiritual awareness directed inward is also called self-awareness or self-consciousness or Selbstbewustsein.

In the beginning of this chapter this also has been called conscience. Conscience is the spiritual organ that tells us how to live right. Usually conscience is seen as restricted to our awareness of what is right and wrong, but to see it like this is actually a too restricted view. God lives in my heart. My heart lives in my mind. My mind lives in my body. When i am united with God, then all what comes from God is good and i myself am entirely good. I automatically live right and therefore my mind is an original and good mind. My awareness of God living in myself and my awareness of my heart expressing in my mind and that again resulting in sensations and actions of my body is to be seen as one round and complete and united awareness of God living in me. That awareness is what is called conscience in the world.

Fallen people have made their own rules based on their own, often limited or false views on God. So fallen people created their own god which lives in their heart, mind and body. Sometimes people did revere Satan or other angels or spirits as god. Then such a false god lived more or less in their heart, mind and body. This led to the existence of a false or fallen conscience.

In this book we mainly speak about the original situation as intended to be so by God. Conscience is then a rather limited concept for what actually should be self-awareness or Selbstbewustsein. Self-awareness in this original meaning is nothing else than to be aware of God working and living in yourself.

EXERCISE 13. To train your self-awareness you should learn to make effort to distinguish between good and evil in yourself. There is no use in developing your self-awareness if you do not make effort to become a better human being.

Your conscience is divided in a heavenly part and a worldly part. The heavenly part is what is left of the original mind in yourself. The worldly part is actually an evil conscience. When you are convinced that what you did is right, but those actions were against God, this shows that there is false conscience in you.

To develop your original mind or your original awareness directed inward you should first of all make effort to get rid of all what is false in your mind, inside of yourself. This you do by centering yourself on God and living a life under God. In that way you can gradually root out the false conscience and you learn to develop your original spiritual awareness.

13. SPIRITUAL INTUITION (OUTWARD)

Intuition is the sense of the heart. When it is directed outward we call it intuition. When it is directed inward we call it divinity.

Just like it was the case with awareness, intuition can be intuition of what other hearts express and it can be intuition of the impressions that the own mind makes on the own heart.

Divinity is the effect that God has on the heart and also the effects of God on the mind. These effects are sensed with the heart.

When we speak about intuition and divinity, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between them. The heart is our most internal part of our being. The more that something is internal the less it is possible to distinguish between segments or partition. For example, the body has five main senses. Although these senses bring about a more or less united effect on our self, we can clearly distinguish between these senses.

In the mind we can still distinguish quite clearly between effects on the mind coming from the own self and from outside. Also the awareness can be sensed more as thoughts or more as feelings or more as plans.

But on the level of heart the sense becomes more and more diffuse. Love is experienced as positive and hatred as negative. But very often we do not know if our intuition about something came from God working in ourselves or from outside sources.

When i have an intuition about something this also must be distinguished from the level of feelings. Intuition is higher than feelings and emotions (feelings are seen more on the level of mind while emotions are sensed in the body).

Intuition is a sense of the heart and i sense the heart expressions of others. I can directly sense their heart expressions (for example whether a person loves me or hates me) and i also can sense the heart expressions of another as these expressions were having effect on my mind via the mind of the other.

Intuition does not always need to be true intuition. You can sense whether someone loves or hates you, but you cannot deduct from that intuition whether that love or hatred is good or evil. Only by centering your heart on God you can know whether your intuition is correct. Therefore, intuition should be completed with divinity in order that the intuition can be trusted.

EXERCISE 14. When you want to develop your intuition you should first of all develop your other spiritual senses. You also should develop your relation to God in order to be able to trust your intuition.

It is impossible to do exercises to develop your intuition. Intuition grows in you as you yourself grow spiritually. Your relation to God should become better and deeper. Then you must learn to trust your intuition.

14. SPIRITUAL DIVINITY (INWARD)

Divinity is the gift of your heart to be able to receive God’s guidance, revelations, love, directions immediately.

It is a gift that God sometimes grants to people in order to use such people to pass on God’s guidance to others. In that case such selected people, also called prophets, made a foundation to have this gift of divinity, but that divinity is often only there temporarily, as long as the revelations from God come. God elevates the sense of divinity in a prophet for the duration of the period that God needs to reveal something to the prophet.

When God uses you as prophet you should not think that you therefore reached the highest. God uses you as instrument to serve others. Many prophets misused their abilities and revelations and became evil and false prophets. A false prophet is someone who does as if he received revelations from God but in reality those revelations had another source.

In your personal life you should reach the level that God can always and ever steer you. That means that you should reach perfection under God.

Even then, God sometimes elevates your divinity in order to give special revelations.

Through your divinity you must check your intuition, your awareness and the senses of your body.

I cannot give you exercises for developing your divinity other than that you love God and learn to love God more.

All spiritual abilities lose their meaning when you as a person are not loving God and eventually become united with God. When you develop your spiritual abilities your purpose should always be to develop your relation with God and to be able to better perform your mission under God.

July 1999

Note: I used some German expressions as the German language, which has been frequently used for philosophic writings, occasionally gives a better understanding of concepts that have to do with the mind. I studied German for this reason. JE