Testing the spirits

Adam and Eve fell because they did not know how to judge an angel who deceived them. Since that time the spirit world has become a veiled place for almost everyone. Even for those with their spiritual senses more open, temporarily or always, the spirit world is a mysterious and hidden reality.

When spirits contact us, be they angels, ancestors or any other spirit, we want to be sure that we can trust them. It is for that reason that we may have to test the spirits. But there is a shadow side to this too. For example, imagine that you are in spirit world and you wish to visit your beloved grandchild, and that beloved grandchild is not open to you but suspicious and fearing that you may be a fraud. What feelings would you get?

Just like it is a good tradition to approach physical people in trust and good faith, we need to maintain this attitude towards our friends in the spirit world. But we should also not be stupid! Many people have been deceived by spirit world because they were too gullible and eager to hear something they like from the other world.

I think that a main principle for all our relations, spiritual or physical, is that we firstly should be able to trust ourselves. If a person is all the time desiring to become rich by winning the jackpot, he or she may easily be fooled with temptations of money. We need to be confident of our own good motivation and of our own good relation to God.

Even then, it is sometimes difficult to discern between good and evil spirits. Lucifer is also known as the angel of light and he or any evil spirit can appear to us as lightworkers. They could even heal us from diseases, may make us wealthy and influential, as long as they see benefit from it.

The spirit world influences the physical world. Confused spirits bring confusion. Hateful spirits make people around to hate us. Spirits who tend to blame others bring strife and conflict. Whenever troubles afflict us we do good to check if everything is alright with the spirits that are attending us.

Good spirits bring truth to us, but deceiving angels and spirits may also give us information that is new and sometimes amazing. We can feel deep emotions when we come closer to God, but certain angels who are not under God can also give us strong emotions to make us believe in them as agents of goodness.

Can we guarantee to be protected against evil spirits by making difficult conditions, such as cold showers, working hard, making many bows, even offering long prayers? All these conditions can help but they are no guarantee. Don't we also know of evil dictators who sleep little and work hard and invest everything to 'serve' their followers? Motivation, intention cannot be easily deducted from such external acts.

Can we test the spirits by asking them information that only they should have access to, like personal information? This kind of test can be helpful but again, it is not a guarantee for reliability. Sometimes i get information from a spirit who gives me a complex code, for example a url of a website to direct me to information that i need. That tells me only one thing, that this spirit knows the web address of that particular website. It tells me that there is a real entity in the spirit world who knows things, but it doesn't tell me yet who that spirit is. Even in the case of personal information, such information could have been stolen through spying in the spirit world. Some angels know even how to read the minds of other spirits.

Testing the spirits is no easy task. Although we can get many clues from testing spirits, the ultimate standard has to be in yourself, in your own good relation to God, in your own conviction that you want to go the right way. That won't provide you with easy answers concerning the reliability of spirits, but it guarantees that you want to know what is true and what is good. It brings you to checking again and again, praying again and again to know whether you are going the right road and whether you can accept help from certain beings in the spirit world.

Death and the shroud

When you are born, to you is given your first clothing. Clothing always means that what you wear to perform certain functions or tasks. People with special positions in society do also wear special clothing. Sometimes you wear working clothing and sometimes clothing for going out.

When Jesus was born, there was no clothing prepared for him. This shows that there was nothing prepared for his mission on earth. Only some towels were put over him. The same happened with his birth into spirit world. After his crucifixion, Jesus was wrapped in towels. Jesus had not completed his mission on earth. Therefore, in spirit world he got the same mission that he had left uncompleted on earth.

But Christians made betrayal with the meaning of Jesus’ death. They made it look as if it had been the highest fulfillment. Also with the clothing that Jesus wore when he died was made betrayal. For long time, the shroud of Turin that shows an image of the face of a person who was said to be Jesus, was told to be the shroud of Jesus. Not long ago the cloth was investigated and modern time-measuring methods proved that the shroud is not even 1000 years old and therefore is a fraud.

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Many people are afraid for death because they don’t know what spirit world really means. The normal way of looking is that one dies and disappears or that a new life in spirit world begins. But even this latter way of looking is not entirely correct. We do not really begin a new life in spirit world because we are now already living in spirit world.

Often the spirit body is depicted as next to the physical body, in the following way:

But this way of depicting it is not so right. This way of showing is more like one sees when a person is dying but the spirit has not left the body yet. In such moments the spirit body of the person hangs above the physical body and is only connected to it through the life cord.

A more correct picture of the spirit body connected to the physical body shows the next figure:

The black inner form is the physical body. The red outer form is the spirit body, that shines out (yellow stripes). The spirit body is not in the physical body but is actually larger than the physical body and, for a healthy person, is dominating the physical body.

Both the spirit and the physic of a person are expressions of energy, like are all elements of creation.

How should we see the function of the body in relation to everything outside of us and in relation to the deeper part of ourselves?

Energy comes to us from outside. There comes energy in spiritual form, there comes energy in physical form. Our body acts like an organism full with senses equipped to receive impressions from this energy.

Compare it to a radio. A radio receives energy in the form of radio waves. There is equipment in the radio that enables it to receive such radio waves. There are all kind of other waves floating around in the air, but the radio can only receive those waves for which it was made fit. The radio also has equipment that transforms those radio waves into audible sound.

Like a radio transmitter our body has senses that pick up energies in all kind of forms. The physical body has senses that pick up physical energies, the spirit body has senses that pick up spiritual energies. Those energies are in all kind of frequencies and therefore we have different kind of senses to pick up those different waves. Eyes pick up light waves, ears pick up sound waves, and so forth.

We also have organs that express energy in all kind of ways. A radio can only pass on the waves that it picked up without changing them. But we are living and responsible beings who can determine ourselves what kind of output we give.

With our mouths we can speak and with our arms we can move things. On the way through our bodies, the energy is influenced by God in our Heart and Mind. I am giving you a very schematic and simple depiction of how energy goes through our bodies and what role the body plays in it.

What we should not forget is that each impulse of energy has a content. I can give you a slap on your shoulder with a feeling of love for you, or i can do it with the same force but i am angry at you. Externally there is no difference, but there is a large difference in content. Each energy expression has a content. The content is that of love or hatred, and certain thoughts and feelings that are conveyed through the energy.

What is also important is that each energy impulse has both spiritual and physical aspects. Always energy is both spiritual and physical. But there is a lot of spiritual energy of which the physical influences are not experienced or not right away visible. There also is a lot of physical energy of which almost nobody feels the spiritual content.

For example, God let angels work with spiritual energy and out from that there came physical creations. But sometimes such a process took millions of years and therefore nobody could witness a direct relation between the spiritual and physical aspects of that energy.

When we feel the sun beams we feel warmth and see light. There is also a very big spiritual content of the energy of the sun. Through the energy of the sun, God gives to us very much of His love. When we make effort, we can feel that there is such a content of love in the sun beams.

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People are the only creations of God that have both an independent spirit body and a physical body. No other creations do have this. Angels can relate to the physical world but they have no independent physical body through which they stand in direct contact to the physical world. Animals do have spiritual aspects but those spiritual aspects do not automatically live on after the physical body of the animal dies.

Only man is able to relate to both the spiritual world and the physical world at the same time. This shows the special position of man in the cosmos.

How can we call the spiritual? The spiritual is energy that has a certain content expressing itself in a very fine frequency. When we say ‘energy’ just like that, then this corresponds mostly to the aspect of man that is called mind. When we say ‘content of energy’ we are referring to mainly the aspects of energy to which the heart of man does relate. And when we say ‘expression of energy’ we are talking about that aspect of energy with which bodies can deal.

For the physical aspects of energy we could say exactly the same. But the difference between spiritual and physical is that spiritual energy is less condensed and physical energy is more condensed. It is the same energy but appearing to us in a different state. You can compare energy to water. Water can be frozen and then you could use a chunk of ice to throw it to someone and hurt the person. That same water can also be damp and then we usually hardly notice it.

Spiritual and physical are expressions of energy, of the same energy. Why is it that energy appears in such different forms?

The physical life is connected to a stage of development for man. All of creation was made for the purpose that man would exist and grow. And the whole physical world was created by God so that man could use physical life for a stage in man’s own development.

Man, in his or her life, goes through three main stages. This brings us back to the topic of the beginning of this guidance. Before man is born, man is a fetus in the womb of the mother. In that stage of life, both physical body and spiritual body are in the process of being formed. Compare that to the process of making a car. Before you have the bodywork of the car, you cannot put the motor in it. And if you have no motor, the car would not drive. Bodywork and motor are constructed in separate processes and are put together once they both are functioning well. In the same way, spirit and physic of an unborn child are growing to a stage that they can be connected. The process of connecting happens at birth.

In the second stage of life, that is life in the physical world, spirit and physic are closely knit together. You can compare this to when someone has to learn to drive a car. You are compulsorily put into a car and you have to drive for one hour even though you might feel very awkward about it. But once you are able to drive cars, you can go in and out cars and use many cars to drive in. You have become free.

In a similar way, the spirit must learn to drive the physic during life on earth. Once the spirit self has learned to have complete control over the physical self and over life on earth, it is time for beginning the third stage of life in spirit world.

In that phase, the spirit self is free from the physical self, but the spirit self will still relate to the physical world. Like God can live in the bodies of Adam and Eve, God’s children, so parents in spirit world can make use of all the bodies of their children and grandchildren to come into their bodies and experience and guide life on earth.

We could say that God created spirit world for our experience and for our real life, while God created the physical world for our development, for our growth.

Death seen in the right way is actually the victory of a fulfilled second stage of life, that of life in the physical world, and it also is our birth into spirit world.

Transcript from a speech given on December 27, 2001

Differences between true and false realities in the spirit world

Here is a way of thinking that leads to many misunderstandings: 'The physical world is the world of illusion, of 'Maya' (a concept from Hinduism meaning the limited, purely physical and mental reality in which our everyday consciousness has become entangled.)' In one breath there is then added the notion that the spiritual reality, the 'above,' is what really determines the physical reality, the 'below', and this spiritual reality is described as a world that is caused by the workings of your mind only.

When we think this through, reflect on what it really means, we must conclude that in this way of thinking the physical world would entirely be an instrument in the hands of the spirit world, and the spiritual reality is made entirely by the working of your mind.

But, the spirit world is a substantial world and a creation of God. So is the physical world. Although we may have a hard time understanding the physical world in relation to the spiritual reality, the physical world is not just illusion. Everything in the physical world of God's creation has a purpose given by God.

Many angels in the spirit world have made illusionary realities there. They created their own worlds; and indeed, to make things in the spirit world, the workings by the mind are essential. But also the spiritual world originally is a substantial world, be it of another dimension than the physical world. The spirit world does really exist and isn't only a product of the minds of those residing there.

People in the physical world can make a movie, or a computer game, or a virtual reality on the internet. Some people get entangled in the nets of such fantasy realities. They lose connection to the real world. For example, i read about a couple that was so addicted to going online and playing internet games that they neglected their own baby who starved to death.

Similar problems exist in the spirit world. Some groups of angels and human spirits who have learned to create their own realities there have managed to convince themselves and many others that this would be the real reality. They also inspire philosophies that anyone is free to do what they wish, can master to do such things and that the real spirit world is just a product of whatever they wish to think or believe.

It isn't like that. God created the worlds of spiritual and physical reality in such a way that we are free to make these worlds good. We can only do this when we adhere to God's principles, learn to apply them and grow in such a way that we mature in our ability to do this in the right way.

How does the spirit world look like?

Image via Wikipedia

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

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.

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