Every single human being on earth, through its everyday life, really carries out the functions of a ruling prince. The kingdom over which the individual human being rules is, however, different from those kingdoms that are ruled over by the people we usually call princes in that it is not of this world. Every terrestrial human being's kingdom has three regions that we call past, present and future. The prince has his seat from which he rules in the central one of these three regions, which is what we call the "present" and he is known by the title, "the I". It is only through the present that the realm over which the individual human being rules has any connection with the physical material world. This connection is the more or less open channel that the individual human being has to the kingdoms and domains of the other "princes". Import and export, which is so necessary to the life of the kingdom, takes place through this channel.

What kind of products are these that are so necessary to life and that are imported and exported? They are thoughts. The human being's mental life, the whole of its psychic state depends on the way it juggles with this importing and exporting of thoughts. They are partly thoughts deriving from experiences gained through the physical senses, through the organism's contact with physical matter, Nature, or through contact with other living beings' physical organisms, that is to say thoughts that result from an interaction with the physical environment; and partly they are thoughts that, after being processed by the imported thought material in the human being's inner kingdom, are sent out again to the environment and so to the "kingdoms of the neighbouring princes". It may be that the thoughts are in an improved state after this processing, they may perhaps even have been perfected, but perhaps they have deteriorated and been dragged down onto a lower plane, all depending on whether the human being in question is an authority in ruling or is merely a "beggar king", a faded and tarnished representative of man's innate high divine worthiness.

So the daily functions of ruling of every human being consist of being a leading authority in the interaction between its own thoughts and those of foreign princes, and this interaction is the same thing as the experience of life. But as every manifestation of thought can take place only under certain essential conditions, it is not possible to be a leading authority without these very conditions also being met. This is what human beings do to a greater or lesser extent; where it happens only to a lesser extent it is inevitable that the prince becomes aware of his shortcomings as a ruler. The conditions that are needed are an overview of and an insight into the special nature of exchanging thought. To the extent that this insight is lacking, the function of ruling, that is to say the exchanging of thoughts with one's neighbour or the surrounding princes, is to a varying degree unsuccessful. In fact it can perhaps even be catastrophic. This lack of insight is all the more dangerous to the extent that each human being has complete sovereignty in its own kingdom. If the possession of this power is based on inadequate or even false insight, it is catastrophic. In these situations wars arise, which sooner or later result in defeat so that the prince's kingdom can be ravaged and destroyed. All that can then be exported from the kingdom are poor quality thoughts that no one has any need of as they are of no worth to others. There is consequently no demand for them and there would soon be hunger and misery in the kingdom, it would be a "hell", which is the lowest pole of the experiencing of life.

When the prince's kingdom has been brought into this sort of state by its ruler, it can happen that the prince wants to abdicate. His insight and overall understanding is so slight that he believes that he can run away from the hell that he himself has created, that is to say the human being believes that it can commit suicide. It does not know that, thanks to its divine identity as a son of God, it can absolutely never lose its position as a prince or its kingdom. The past, the present and the future will constitute its domain for all eternity. The human being that runs away from its responsibility as a ruler, will, after the suicide, experience that it is still in its kingdom and that what has happened is that it, through ignorance, has broken the connection with the channel through which it had the greatest possibility of changing the state of misery in the kingdom, this channel being the physical body. Through the physical body, which it has now by itself destroyed, it had a special possibility of changing the state of misery in the kingdom, that is in its own psyche. So the physical body was precisely that channel through which it could interact with the kingdoms of other princes, from which, as long as it had something itself to give, it could receive or import thoughts that could contribute towards making its own kingdom happier. But after the suicide the human being becomes locked into its own spiritual world, which is dark and full of bitter and sad thoughts. It is a state of affairs similar to a lake that has no river for its water to run out of and no river bringing in fresh water resulting in the lake becoming stagnant and full of poisonous gases. This is not a "punishment of hell" inflicted on the being by an angry god; it is the hell that the human being itself has created by juggling with erroneous thoughts. The being is still in its seat of government, that is it is still experiencing the present, but because it believes it has broken the connection with the future by committing suicide, it is its unhappy past that dominates its existence for a while. It is suffering in its own self-created hell. It is not only people who commit suicide who experience their own "purgatory" or their self-created hell, but all the human beings who die with their minds full of dark and bitter thoughts. Of course this state is not an "eternal hell" as primitive human beings imagined it to be; such an idea could arise only in the consciousness of human beings that have no knowledge of the laws of the universe. These laws guarantee to the greatest possible extent that every form of hell is created by the living being itself, and also that these forms of hell can be removed and overcome by living beings.

But what happens to the human being when, either due to suicide or some other cause, it finds itself in an unhappy state, being locked into its own dark world of thought once it has left the physical body? What happens is what always happens in the living being's psyche when its need is greatest, when it can no longer endure the situation it has brought itself into - and this is the thing it could have done instead of committing suicide in the physical world - it prays to God for help in its need. The prince, the son of God, appeals to his Father, he reopens another channel that perhaps has been blocked for a long time due to lack of use: he uses the power of prayer. The greatest prince ever to live on earth who himself said, "My kingdom is not of this world" has shown human beings that there is a divine king above all princes, that is to say above all living beings, whose kingdom is not of physical matter, and it is in the kingdom of this king that we all live move and have our being and whose help we can pray for and receive in the very form that we most need at that moment. In this way the unhappy human beings who after dying have locked themselves into a dark world of thought, but who pray for help, will be released from their hell. Guardian angels, who are the instruments of the Godhead, will appear to them and, using suggestion, remove the dark thoughts so that they can experience as much of the higher spiritual worlds as they are able to with their limited consciousness and small world of thought; it will be a beautiful holiday from which they will return to the physical plane in a new incarnation in order to practice the skills of governing and ruling their own kingdom that they proved in a previous incarnation to be so lacking in that they led to catastrophe.

Of course it is not the intention of Providence that the being known as "man in God's image" should continue to end its life in the physical world in some form of hell, thereafter to feel trapped in the world of thoughts that is the cause of this hell, and to eventually come out of this web of illusion only when other beings have removed it using suggestion. The intention is that the being or the son of God should really become a sovereign, divine master who creates a happy, peaceful state of affairs in its own kingdom's three terrains: its past, its present and its future, and at the same time bring inspiration and happiness to other princes and kingdoms. Terrestrial mankind is on its way towards experiencing this state.

We will now go into the living being's principality, that is the region that the prince rules over, and look at how the living being relates to the kingdom's three terrains or regions: the past, the present and the future. The being's daily experience of life takes place in the present. It is here that it directs its own fate. Its will is here, and here it gives its orders. Here it receives thoughts from the outside and from here it sends out its own. The whole of its existence and fate is made up exclusively of this interaction and its results. On what does the being now base its authority and its qualifications to understand this interaction? How do the imported and exported thoughts come about?

Human beings find themselves in a zone where the instinct for self-preservation is far more complex. Here they have to practice new habits and overcome others, and this cannot automatically come about before they have carried out and practiced them over many lives. So human beings have to create new mental manifestations or thoughts. The creation of these thoughts is generated especially by the faculty of memory. With this faculty terrestrial human beings in reality make themselves a special catalogue of all the thoughts that enter, these thoughts being the outcome of all the experiences that they have come across. This catalogue is situated in that province of the kingdom known as the past. In this way all the thoughts that have become the essence of the physical experiences are stored in its memory element, or memory body (a more accurate description), and this has its deepest roots in the fate element. The whole of the human beings mental capacity depends on this catalogue, which is the deciding factor in its behaviour in any situation. The memories of all light experiences and all dark experiences concerning both friends and enemies go into the catalogue. Every time the being in the present has an experience in the physical world, it instantaneously looks it up in the catalogue to mobilise everything it might possibly know about this experience that is happening in the present. If it has experienced a similar situation before, it has it in its catalogue and so is able to recognise the new experience and know to a large extent how it will proceed. Any new details in the experience that are different from what it experienced earlier slip straight into the catalogue for use on a later occasion. But if the experience in the present is of a completely new sort that the being has never previously been exposed to, so that it has no material for comparison it in its catalogue on which it can base its thoughts about how to deal with the situation, it is quite at a loss, confused and unable to know what it is experiencing. But of course the experience enters into its catalogue and will, supplemented by others of a similar sort but with new details, make it possible for the being to manage future situations gradually more and more easily.

In this way the living being has the whole of its past at hand in the present in the form of its memory, which is the individual's treasure chest, from which it can draw the material for the thoughts it sends out towards its neighbour. Because this catalogue plays such a large part in the being's mental manifestation, it is very important that it is in harmony with real life or the laws of the universe. If it is not, the individual's creating of new thoughts will be false and the ideas it forms about its experiences and those thoughts that it imports will be catalogued as an expression of completely different things to what they really are. One cannot therefore be careful enough when incorporating thoughts about other living beings into one's catalogue; if one is not it is easy to be unjust to them and that will benefit neither them nor oneself. One is unjust if one fills one's catalogue with such thoughts as: he is an idiot or she is irritating, without at the same time thinking about why they are as they are and being content with assessing them rather than judging them. And at the same time one can forgive them due to the fact that they cannot at the moment be otherwise than they are because of their past, which is their mental catalogue. They certainly cannot act on the basis of experience and knowledge that they are only going to gain in the future. Of course if one knows that a man is a thief or a cheat one should do what one can to protect others and oneself against his actions, but if he is only entered into the catalogue as "a cursed thief" one's idea about him is not in harmony with reality.

But then the catalogue of mankind as a whole is full of false ideas! This is certainly the most common way of thinking not just between man and man but also between individual states. Yes, this is precisely what is wrong in the world today, and only spiritual science can help in this respect, helping the individual seeker to revise his spiritual catalogue. The results of the catalogue are manifested in that other province of the living being's kingdom known as the future, and that of course has to be just as the contents of the catalogue can create it. The more the catalogue is in harmony with the principle of neighbourly love, the more the prince will be in a position to govern his kingdom using a priceless treasure chest to create new thoughts that can be exported to the princes of other kingdoms where they will give rise to such joy and offer such benefit that these products of such a high quality will enter into the kingdom and the prince, who perhaps was once a "pauper prince", will, by using his own energy, eventually overcome all forms of purgatory and hell, and his wealth from the spiritual world will flow through the channel that is his physical body, as high intellectual creative energy and play a part in transforming this world from a physical hell into a "kingdom of heaven".