All living beings on the physical plane have two forms of life-experience. The first form of life-experience is the one we call our awake "day-consciousness". The other form of life-experience is the one we experience when we are asleep on the physical plane, or are in other ways unconscious. We call this our "night-consciousness". Since these two forms of consciousness are quite separate, resulting in the beings experiencing each of them independently and unable in awake day-consciousness to remember the experiences from the night-consciousness, we look upon the night-consciousness as an unconscious state. Mainly we describe it as what we call "sleep". As the physical organism cannot function continuously without rest, it is fortunate that it gets this rest during sleep, since the being's day-consciousness is then transferred to the night-consciousness and functions on the spiritual plane. When the being is day-consciously awake on the physical plane its spiritual life-experience is almost a closed night-consciousness. The being normally has no memory of this and therefore calls it unconsciousness.

But the beings' night-consciousness is definitely not an unconscious state; it is intended to be just as awake as the physical day-consciousness. It is the essence of the experiences from the physical day-consciousness. It is formed out of the beings' physical experiences. And it is designed to constitute that consciousness or form of life-experience that will continue beyond the destruction of the beings' physical organism, that is to say, beyond so-called "death". Through the experiences of the beings' awake, physical day-consciousness, their sufferings, their good and bad actions, their wisdom and reason and not least their universal love, the beings' spiritual capacity becomes so perfect that it culminates in loving and wise behaviour, and is thereby in God's image after his likeness. The beings' night-consciousness is therefore the beginnings of their spiritual consciousness, which, as a result of the experiences of the physical, awake day-consciousness, achieve such a capacity that the beings can as a result become so perfect that they are eventually able to live in the very highest worlds where love and wisdom alone culminate, totally without the physical organism and living conditions.

The beings' physical state and ability to experience is what decides the capacity of their spiritual experiencing-state. Since terrestrial human beings are still unfinished beings, the capacity of their spiritual experience will to a corresponding degree be unfinished. Since the goal of the beings' evolution is the culmination of neighbourly love or universal love, it is not so difficult to see that human beings are still unfinished beings. They live in a state of war and with many different kinds of illness, pain and suffering. It is all these verifications of the human beings' unfinished human state that will be removed and that are the very reason why the beings find themselves in the physical world. To the degree that human beings are unfinished, their faculty for spiritual experience is correspondingly unfinished or imperfect.

The fact that the being is not fully evolved does not prevent its spiritual experience during sleep from being intended as a state of light, while human beings are still inhumane, evil and murderous and even have the killing principle as a basic necessity of life and thereby as their standard of goodness and morality. This standard of morality has even been the road to the highest paradise for extremely primitive human beings. In Norse mythology we can read about their highest paradise "Valhalla". Here the highest bliss was to vanquish all your enemies and to feast on pork and mead and have beautiful maidens, the "Valkyrie", attending to your pleasure. Only the strongest warriors and killers came into this paradise. All the other beings, who were not so murderous and perhaps even had a distaste for such behaviour, came to a kind of "hell" of those times. People believed that these beings languished here in boredom and idleness. They did not understand that they also came into a paradise that suited them, and in which they were happy to not have to kill. And there they remained until it was time for them to be born once again onto the physical plane. How could any other state of life-experience than precisely that of killing, which was the murderous beings' ideal and most favoured pastime, possibly be a paradise for such beings? Thoughts and experiences that they had never experienced and that they were therefore totally unaware of would never ever be able to be manifested in their spiritual experiencing-state or night-consciousness. It is not possible for something that a human being has never experienced and that they would therefore be totally unaware of – in fact would have a strong aversion to if they were to come into contact with the standards of morality and ways of thinking and living of this unknown area – to appear as a paradise to such a being. An experiencing-state that to a being is a paradise would have to be an experiencing-state that is the being's most favoured pastime or what gives it the highest joy in life. How could a Christian paradise – in which neighbourly love is the highest and most joyful state of life-experience, and in which one feels disgust in killing and murdering, disgust in all states of war, all intolerance, arrogance and oppression of other human beings – possibly be a paradise for beings having the opposite way of living? We can see that Helheim was therefore not some kind of hell for non-killing beings, but a paradise, since it fitted precisely their standard of morality.

Paradise is therefore not only the final goal of God's great creative plan for human beings, something they will only experience once they have become finished human beings in God's image after his likeness. It is a joyful life-experience that they have access to throughout the entire physical process of life-experience. And the possibility for this access is created every time the being finds itself in the spiritual existence between its physical incarnations, and also every time it gets it normal night-time sleep, regardless of which step in evolution it is on. Paradise always fits the step in evolution that the being in any given situation is on.

How is it possible that the spiritual worlds can be a paradise for all living beings? It is the case that God's creative process, which stimulates the creation of the living beings' consciousness from the mineral life-form to the life-form of finished human beings, occurs in a gradually increasing degree of perfection of the faculty for experiencing life. As the spirit or consciousness of the mineral life-form is on the spiritual plane, since it still does not have physical day-consciousness, it is therefore permanently in paradise. The plant life-form is also mainly only on the spiritual plane, since its only physical experiencing faculty is the faculty to have a "vague inkling". The other part of its consciousness is in paradise or on the spiritual plane. We then come to animals, which clearly have developed their physical senses and therefore live in physical experience. The physical experiences that animals have also give them, between their physical incarnations or lives, a kind of paradise-like experience, or a spiritual experience that particularly suits every species of animal. And this is where terrestrial human beings' existence begins, since an unfinished, terrestrial human being is only an advanced form of animal.

Terrestrial human beings have gradually developed their mentality or consciousness and formed it into a registered world of thoughts, the details of this world being given names using speech, words and text. These details constitute the beings' knowledge and experience, formed into spiritual copies of the physical experiences and events. These spiritual copies or pictures of the beings' physical experiences are the beings' awake, physical day-consciousness or world of thought. This physical world of sight, sound, colour and images therefore constitutes the result of all of the beings' physical senses. This is transferred to the beings' night-consciousness or spiritual state of existence through its physical brain, in the same way that it can transmit its inner sensory world to the physical brain and through the physical organism make itself known to other physical beings. The beings' night-consciousness comes about as a result of its day-conscious experiences on the physical plane, in the same way that its communications through its physical speech and other manifestations are the result of its physical experiences transformed into thoughts and day-consciousness. The beings' spiritual evolution therefore takes place as the result of an interplay between the beings' physical and its spiritual structure and state. And this interplay occurs in such a way that the spiritual state is a state of rest from the physical state, which is a state of work. This interplay comes about through reincarnation, which requires that the being alternates between having a physical life and a spiritual life.

The beings for whom the spiritual world and the experience of paradise are particularly relevant are those beings who have gradually developed the beginnings of a significant physical consciousness. These beings have a corresponding spiritual consciousness, which is brought about as a result of their physical development. We will now give just a short description of these beings' paradise. These beings are the unfinished human beings, to which terrestrial human beings more or less belong. When a being dies and comes onto the spiritual plane, what does it experience? It experiences a paradise that is the highest state of joy and happiness that its step in evolution allows it to perceive. At the stages of primitive humans the beings are warriors and do not know very much about humaneness and neighbourly love. According to the mentality of war, victors are heroes; here it is a question of being the strongest. And this worship of the hero is also the beginnings of these beings' religion. Their gods can only be seen as supremely superior, powerful killer or warrior heroes. And it can only be such heroes that form the ideal for such beings, with the result it must be their absolute wish to be able to experience themselves as such great, indomitable warriors. They cannot always have such wishes fulfilled on the physical plane. And especially in the case of those who are subjugated by other more gifted warrior heroes. But on the spiritual plane they can experience having such dreams fulfilled, following the ideal of their most sublime dreams experience themselves as great warriors or conquerors of other human beings. If it is the hunter mentality that is the highest ideal of their physical life, they can also here experience themselves as great hunters having command of the hunting grounds, even though on the physical plane they are only average hunters. Paradise is a state of life in which the beings are allowed to experience the fulfilment of their very highest dreams, as long as they are under development and are in an unfinished state. These spiritual experiences are of course limited to what the beings have evolved to the stage of being able to understand, and what they can conjure up in their imagination.

Unfinished human beings can be found on many different evolutionary steps. And consequently they still do not have the same view of life and existence. They live very different physical lives. And as the beings' spiritual giftedness and life develops through their physical life and giftedness, their religious views, superstitions and science, humaneness and love etc., their idea of paradise will naturally be formed according to the experience, knowledge and humaneness or love that they have come to the point of being able to practise in their physical existence. As the beings' deepest wishes form their paradise on the spiritual plane, the beings' experience of paradise will be the fulfilment of each being's individual wished-for existence, regardless of the being's possible dark fate on the physical plane. For a being in an unhappy physical state, so-called death will come as a temporary release from this darkness, this evil, in fact in certain cases it will come as a total cessation of this particular evil. At best the being will be born later on in a new, healthy physical body, and will be totally free of the illness or trouble in question. So radiant is the divine act of creation that, in the midst of this act of creation with its darkness and suffering, the beings, thanks to reincarnation, have an extremely pleasant, radiant and life-renewing rest in their transformation from animal to human being.

As unfinished human beings are really animals that have developed a certain amount of human consciousness, their entry into paradise after death is a bit different from that of real animals, which are still animals in their pure state. Human beings therefore have two forms of consciousness. They have a certain amount of animal traits that they have still not evolved away from and a certain amount of human consciousness that they have gradually evolved towards. There will therefore be human beings in whom their most favoured pastimes or dreams are animal in nature. The paradise of these egoistically-minded human beings must naturally belong to the paradise of the animal kingdom. But there are other human beings, whose dreams are human in nature, and who are unselfish, humane and loving. These beings are, to a corresponding degree, beginning to experience human forms of paradise. The animal paradises are those we have already mentioned that primitive, warlike, killing beings experience, owing to the fact that they can experience longings only within this field of consciousness in evolution.

But what about present-day, religious human beings, what do they experience when they die? If they live in harmony with their fellow human beings and practise their religious view or belief and they die having faith in this religious view, they will easily enter into the paradise that was their dream or ideal on the physical plane, and here they will experience life as consisting of as high an experience of light and happiness that they are able to conceive as a result of the evolutionary step that they have reached. Later they will be born once again on the physical plane, when the time is right, and they will continue their physical life in a new organism for as long as it is fit for use. Thereafter they will pass over into the spiritual world and from there back to the physical world, and so on.

But if these beings had still not overcome intolerance or bitterness towards human beings who did not share the same view as themselves, it would not be so easy for them to enter paradise. They would then be detained in the first sphere of the spiritual world where they would realise that one cannot enter the Christian, humane paradise of love with intolerance, bitterness and anger. If it were possible for human beings to give vent to their animal, inhumane nature in paradise, paradise would be a war zone just like the terrestrial, physical world. This first sphere we call "purgatory". All the human beings who have the true, divine, all-loving paradise as their ideal or deepest wish and as the foundation of their religious views are absolutely unable to take their animal habits or tendencies with them into paradise. With these habits or tendencies they can only enter the first sphere or purgatory.

Here in purgatory circumstances are such that it is possible for the guardian angels to free these beings from their animal tendencies so that they can, from then on, only manifest human manifestations, that is to say loving thoughts. They are then purified and are free to go into paradise or the light, where they can devote their time to the highest ideals of their faith. But if there are beings that have other human ideals, for example science, and if this is such a passionate hobby or longing that it is stronger than their religious faith or ideals, and consequently they have a greater desire to devote their time to science rather than to their faith, they will to a corresponding degree enter another spiritual paradise after having been purified in purgatory. This paradise is a sphere in the kingdom of wisdom where the beings can experience as the highest happiness the greatest ideals that they have longed for, even though here they may very well also devote their time to any religious faith they may have. But for them the true paradise is their scientific research. But it can also be the case that such scientists believe in neither God nor the spiritual world, but are nevertheless humane and loving, and in that case they will still experience their paradise in the world of wisdom.

The situation is similar in the case of artists working in all branches of art, whether music, painting or other forms of true art. As art is the greatest and most favoured pastime of these beings, their paradise after death and purgatory will be a great, spiritual, divine area that we know as "the divine world". Here artists will have the opportunity of seeing, as realities in material substance, every conceivable idea that they can possibly come up with. Here it is the areas of intuition in their perception that rule. This zone is the home of ideas in art and science. If an artist is also religious, he or she will also here experience their religious ideals in the highest light. After their experiences in these highest worlds they will be satiated and will enter the kingdom of bliss. Here they will experience all the memories of their previous lives in gold copies, that is to say in a glorified and pleasing form that induces joy, and this will stimulate the beings in their zest and longing for the physical plane, which is where they will be born when the appropriate conditions arise.

Once the beings have eventually evolved so that they have become totally free of their animal nature and have become human beings through and through, and they can think only along the lines of universal love and are therefore a blessing to their surroundings, they cease to incarnate in physical matter. They then belong in the spiritual world, where they now have the consciousness that enables them to live in the highest light for millions of years. Here they live in a world where they do not have to eat their bread in the sweat of their brows, but in a world where there is neither pain nor torment, in a world in which murder and killing, war, pain and suffering cannot possibly exist. And here the beings are, in the purely literal sense, one with God, one with universal love, one with wisdom. Here the beings live on the very summits of life, shining God's spirit, love and wisdom down over the living beings that are in the process of being transformed into human beings in God's image after his likeness down in the physical world, the material worlds of time and space.