Since it is very important for every human being to come into contact with the Godhead, it is also a question of gaining a closer knowledge and an understanding of the technical aspect of the relationship to God, since without this it will not be possible to arrive at a really perfect correspondence with him. The reason I am working so much here with the spiritual issues and I am acquainting you with many different cosmic analyses is not so much in order to give you more theoretical knowledge of the things that the cosmic analyses illuminate, but it is to a higher degree so that you will be able, with the help of this knowledge, to adjust your consciousness to the true fixed point in the universe. Only when you have become a genius in adjusting your consciousness to the true fixed point of the universe will you have found your way to the true relationship to God. As long as a human being has not found the way to the true relationship to God – and they have not done so as long as the Godhead has not become even more alive for them than their fellow beings – there is anxiety, restlessness and dissatisfaction in their minds. They soon become interested in something but before long they reject it because it has not brought them serenity and peace of mind, soon they become interested in something entirely different, and now once again they think that in the new thing that they have become interested in they have found the right thing, but after a period of time they lose interest in this too, because it was not what they were looking for, and so they continue searching for it once again.

The fact is that in the long run a human being cannot be sufficient in itself, and as a result at some time in its life it cannot avoid searching for some fixed point or other outside itself, a higher power that arranges everything, because in every living being, whether it is a being in microcosmos, mesocosmos or macrocosmos, there is a tuning into Providence. This tuning can be conscious or unconscious, it can be based on instinct, feeling or intelligence, or it can be latent or culminating, all depending on which stage in the spiral the being in question is on. It is very important to be clear about the fact that this tuning is never totally missing in any living being whatsoever, because unless one is clear about this, one will have no real understanding of the relationship between the living being and the Godhead. As far as terrestrial human beings are concerned it is the case that this tuning into the Godhead will eventually reach the point where it is the fixed point on which they base their existence in such a way that it can be as perfect as possible, and so that terrestrial human beings can be perfectly conscious in the entire universe and be "raised up to the Godhead's own viewpoint" and see consciously and with perfect clarity that "everything is very good".

Previously it has not been expressed so clearly, but this is what Jesus means when he says in the Sermon on the Mount: "when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly". The "secret closet" is a symbolical expression. One should not think that it should be taken literally. Here one is not talking about a room with four walls and a closed door. The fact that the relationship to God is here likened to a "secret closet "is because we are talking about a principle, a symbol for a large area. The "secret closet" is a principle that is partly an expression of the fact that, when one wants to pray to Providence about something or other, one should rather pray peacefully and silently by oneself in "secret" than standing in the street or in a square, as is common practice in certain religious movements, since a public prayer can easily have a pharisaical tinge to it, and partly the principle of the "secret closet is an expression of the fact that in this way by praying peacefully and silently by oneself in "secret" one comes, in the safest way, into a truly intimate and personal contact with the Godhead, so that it has the character of a personal, confidential conversation between oneself and the Godhead, without any unauthorised person becoming involved in it. I mentioned that the "secret closet" was a principle, because when one has cosmic clearsightedness one sees everything as principles, substance, energy etc. Everything that is accessible to sensory perception can be expressed using whichever of the previously mentioned names that one wants, because all of these names are synonyms for the same thing.

I mentioned earlier that when one learns that "everything is very good" one could be led to believe that there is nothing to pray about. It must be added that of course it would have been more important to learn how to pray for something if life was only a question of praying for something, but fortunately this is not the case. Imagine if we in our everyday existence could never meet up with someone without immediately asking each other for something, it would be a rather tedious and disharmonious existence we would have, but now fortunately it is also the case that we do other things when we meet up. We exchange thoughts and tell each other about our experiences, we thank each other for gifts we have given each other, we entertain each other, give each other something without being asked to, we create comfort and wellbeing for each other and so on, and it is nice that it is so.

And in principle the same should preferably be the case regarding the Godhead. Just as we in our everyday existence do other things than asking each other for something, our prayer in the "secret closet" should also preferably consist of something other than asking God for help in some situation or other in which we cannot get help from any human being, for example it can consist of thanking the Godhead for the many things that we receive and experience. But if one is finally in the situation of needing help it is a matter of not merely using the Godhead as a kind of first aid and in other situations being totally indifferent. If one makes use of the possibility of asking God for help, it should preferably be something that one does every day, not just to rescue oneself from a difficult situation, but on the contrary to ask, for example, for energy and strength every time one is going to do something important, so that the best possible and most loving thing comes of it, not least for the others. In this way it would be a good idea if, for example, a lecturer every time he should give a lecture said a prayer, or an actor just before going on stage, or a businessman before making an important business deal, or an important decision etc. And finally it is also a part of the genuine prayer in the "secret closet" that every evening before going to sleep one draws up a kind of personal "balance sheet" covering one's behaviour over the course of the day, so that one can as quickly as possible assign the manifestations of the day to the past, and draw out the essence of them so that one can become clear about what one would like not to do another time.

You are now accustomed to seeing everything that exists – forces of Nature, globes, suns, stars, galactic systems, human beings, animals, plants, minerals etc. – as a multiplicity, and since you have learnt through my analyses that all this together is the Godhead, this will mean that you see the Godhead more as a multiplicity, but to see the Godhead as a multiplicity does not lead to an intimate, true relationship to God. For this reason there exists another principle in existence that leads to seeing the Godhead as a unit and this other principle is what I call the "secret closet". In the "secret closet" one is able to manifest the highest and most intimate form of "prayer". Prayer is not something that will one day become old fashioned and therefore disappear. On the contrary, the advanced human being will arrive at the point where it uses prayer every single day to an extent that people today can only faintly imagine. Prayer is a principle that is implanted in every single living being as a tuning into Providence.

In this way we have now seen that neither the animals nor the terrestrial human beings depart completely from directing their attention to a Providence, and since the even higher beings live in a permanent correspondence with the Godhead it becomes apparent that there exists not one single living being that does not have some form of relationship to God, some form of "prayer" or tuning into Providence, even though terrestrial human beings can only temporarily enter a state where this principle is not particularly visible on the surface. We have seen that this principle can be manifested under many different forms, not merely as the animal's cry in the fear of death, but also as human beings' striving towards higher ideals, or towards the light.

We can follow the evolution of the light further and see it once again in Jacob's dream of the ladder reaching up to heaven, up towards the light. Jacob's dream is also symbolic. It expresses that the living being's striving goes towards a state that is lighter than that in which it finds itself.

In this way, evolution goes all the way up to modern civilisation. If we consider a representative of modern civilisation, for example a soldier on the battlefield who has just dealt an enemy a deathblow, one would then presume that having overcome the enemy he would feel like a hero, but this is absolutely not always the case, on the contrary many soldiers find themselves in a state of despair over what they have done.

This is also a form of "prayer", an appeal to Providence, or a form of striving towards the light. But it is not only on the battlefield that human beings find themselves in states of confusion, in which all their sorrow, fear and agony act as a form of "prayer" to Providence. Also in many other situations we can see that the modern, advanced human being, despite being a good judge of many things, nevertheless often finds itself in a state of distress and confusion. The fact is that even though one has become a good judge of many different things, one will nevertheless still end up being in a state of distress and confusion as long as one has not found the road to the light.

If we take a look at the individual human beings we can see that they are also tuned into different schools of thought and have different ideals. Some are tuned into the ideal of the killing principle, and focus on the concept of "might before right", whereas others are tuned into the opposite ideal. But there are also human beings that have both of these ideals in their consciousness, but in such a way that for periods one of them has taken over. These human beings are often interested in a great many material matters, but since the true concept of justice is still not fully developed in them they are often a victim of ambition, thirst for power and elbowing their way forward in front of the others. But the kinds of thought that form the basis for these states belong to the lower zones and inevitably give rise to sufferings, anxiety and grief. The same thing applies in the mental states in which the killing principle has taken over, and human beings think of it as "admirable" to take revenge, hate or annihilate. But on the deepest level, anxiety and distress are the releasing factors for impulses or "prayers" directed towards the eternal Providence. As already mentioned, human beings are with a part of their consciousness focussed on the opposite of the ideal of the killing principle. The fact that they also worship the opposite of the killing principle, namely the ideal of neighbourly love, shows that they are with a part of their consciousness focussed on the "light". The "light" is the new world impulse through which all beings will arrive at the state that I call "cosmic consciousness". The light is the "seed in which all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed". Through it, everyone will arrive at a living correspondence with Providence. But on their journey towards the light terrestrial human beings are still not generally particularly tuned into Providence. Through the satisfaction of their longings, they will learn what the longings really hold in store. One has to learn that it is divine and loving to have longings and interests that give rise to darkness, anxiety, sorrow and confusion, since without the satisfaction of these longings and interests it would be totally impossible to be able to arrive at wisdom. At this stage, which terrestrial human beings are at, it is generally the case that "one man's death is another man's bread". It is at this stage that human beings' longing goes in the direction of being a powerful, materialistic magnate. You must understand that I do not say all this in order to criticise, but in order to show what is actually taking place in life.

The same thing applies to the Earth. Once the enormous world conflagration has spent itself, all the nations of the Earth will be in harmony. All the nations will have an equal share in all the various resources that there are on Earth. They will all be tuned into peace and harmony. All governments will be subject to a government that is common to the whole Earth, and the true human kingdom will then be a reality on Earth. The Earth will then have become "one flock with one shepherd". In the case of the individual human being it will, as I have said, mean that all its centres of consciousness will be tuned into the Godhead. It will then understand that the combined sum of all living beings is the Godhead, and that all the beings that surround it – regardless of whether they are beings that are against it, are unpleasant towards it, offend and speak ill of it, or whether they are beings that are loving and understanding towards it – are all an expression of something the Godhead wants to teach it. It will then understand that not only it itself, but all beings all the time without cessation, are subject to the influence of the Godhead. Once the individual human being understands this there is no longer any place for indignation against anything or anyone, regardless of how they might behave; the highest that can take place is for the being to turn the right cheek. That is the same as replying with reason. So the being goes on its way and has no dealings with those who have tried to offend or irritate it. It is an expression of culture to let "the other go to the right when one goes to the left". In this way the human being achieves peace in its consciousness and a living understanding of the fact that everything that it experiences as unpleasant is God working on it. As long as it has not achieved a living understanding of this, and does not have its consciousness totally concentrated on all that is good, light and perfect in life, it is clear that there must be unrest, commotion, a state of war and illness in the consciousness. When the individual human being has got all its centres of consciousness tuned into the Godhead, or into the light, it has reached the end of its journey towards the light.

It is important that you understand that we cannot exist for a single second without working together with the forces that are placed at our disposal. It is not an expression of "dead" forces, even though many of the forces that are placed at human beings' disposition, for example the forces of Nature, are usually seen as "dead" forces. On the contrary, they are expressions of the highest planning, each of them has a totally fixed form of reaction, they are organised and arranged with reason and logic, so that when we are sufficiently evolved we can see that they are expressions of an appeal from the Godhead to us. When we experience something or other, we can see that it is an appeal from another being, and therefore it will be desirable that we reach the point where we can see everything that happens, whether it is severe cold, or unpleasantness and slander from other people, the fury of the elements, world war, unemployment, illness and so on, as an appeal from the Godhead to us.

And the reason I am now telling you all these things is so that you can be conscious in this appeal and arrive at the true relationship to God. It is necessary to be conscious in all these things that I am telling you about – I am doing so not just in order to give you knowledge about these things so that you can show other people how much you know about them, but rather so that, with the help of this knowledge, you can arrive at the stage where you experience a really harmonious existence and are in contact with the laws of life. It is not an expression of a really harmonious life to know, only theoretically, that one lives after death. You really have no knowledge of what you have actually been born to, and of how your fate is determined. You have no real knowledge of what you experienced in the first years of your existence, if you do know about it at present, it is something you have heard from your parents, but when you have cosmic consciousness you will be able to experience realistically that one lives after death, and also experience what you have really been born to, and how your fate is determined, and many more things. You will then have a really divine experience, you can then experience these things directly from the Godhead, you can then get a direct answer to everything that you ask the Godhead about. It sounds fantastic to you, but it is nevertheless perfectly true. You will then have concluded the journey towards the light, you will have come into contact with the Godhead, the whole of your existence is now one great correspondence with the Godhead, you now talk to the Godhead as a man talks to his neighbour, one's entire behaviour is now one great "prayer" in the "secret closet".

The first stage in this journey is the animal stage. If we examine the animal's consciousness, we see that there is no balance between feeling and intelligence. The animal has an overwhelming feeling in relation to the tiny amount of intelligence that it has control over. The animal lives almost exclusively on instinct and habitual consciousness from a previous spiral. This habitual consciousness causes it to let out a cry of fear when its life is in danger. The animal, purely habitually and automatically, lets out its cry of fear in the face of death, when there is no longer any hope of being rescued. This cry of fear in face of death is not directed towards the animal or the hunter that is pursuing it; on the contrary it is directed towards the unknown. The animal has no day-conscious knowledge that in the unknown there exists a providence. The animal's cry of fear in face of death is the first tiny form of "prayer" or relationship to God. It has now come a little bit of the way in the journey towards the light.

The first sphere is a sphere that we have a great deal to do with, since there is here a host of beings whose task it is to help the terrestrial human beings, among others, to come into contact with the Godhead, that is to say, to promote the fulfilment of the "prayers" that are made in the "secret closet". Just as we mostly cannot help our fellow beings unless they in one way or another ask us to, and we cannot perceive their appeal to us either other than by using our senses, so the Godhead cannot perceive our prayers either other than by using sensory tools, and to these sensory tools belong, among other beings, the mental beings in the first sphere. Our prayers are "picked up" by these mental beings whose task it is to carry out everything possible that is in favour of our prayer being heard, that is to say everything that does not collide with the way our fate has been decided.

In order that a mediumistic connection can be established through another being, a physical organism has to be made available to the mental being that should deliver the loving thought that the person who has died wants to send to its child. But in order for a physical organism to be made available to a mental being, it is necessary that the physical being in question that owns the organism should withdraw its consciousness from it, and we would say about such a person that they "fall into a trance". There are situations in which it can be meaningful that there are mediums, but in general it must be said that training to be a medium is not so advisable as one can find oneself in situations and subject to forces that can be dangerous for those engaging in mediumism. If one practices these forces without having a very close knowledge of their range, the most terrible things can happen. The fact is that the first sphere, as already mentioned, borders immediately onto the physical plane. As a result there are in the first sphere a great many beings with the same imperfect character traits – for example, ambition, malice, revenge seeking – as here. If they are, for example, ambitious and want to play an important role they can on such occasions find it amusing to try to make the beings on the physical plane believe that they are this or that important deceased person. It is, for example, often the case at spiritualist seances that the mental beings try to make the seance participants believe that they, the mental beings, are beings such as Christ or Buddha. And as a rule the participants in the seance are completely at the mercy of what is said. It is very important to be clear about the fact that it is very dangerous to have anything to do with such things without expert guidance. In fact these things ought to take place only in laboratories under the expert supervision of scientists who are working with the aim of finding the absolute truth in what they are dealing with. At present these things most often take place in the form of a religious service with hymns and such like, but this represents a primitive stage. In the future one will carry out psychic research in cosmic-chemical laboratories to which entrance will be granted only to beings that are working in ways in which these things are of benefit to mankind.

In the next sphere all darkness has been removed from the consciousness through suggestion. Here there is harmony, peace and happiness. This is where the actual life of the spiritual world begins. Here the terrestrial human being has come back to its true home. Cleansed of every form of mental darkness, it now experiences the beauty, the existence of which it had an inkling of through its religious feeling. It is now at God's own viewpoint, and it perceives its life as a radiant experience of light and beauty, of intuition and bliss.

But there is a great difference in how much the individual beings use their sensory tools to establish a contact with the Godhead. At certain times the living beings are very sure of themselves and display almost no energy to establish a connection with the Godhead, and in such cases the Godhead withdraws his sensory tools. Here the being does not listen very much to what the Godhead has to tell it. At other times the son of God finds itself in a mental "trough" and, like the soldier on the battlefield, it cries out in its despair to Providence for help, and here the Godhead's display of energy is great. Wherever the son of God is in need, the Godhead is closest, or as the saying goes: "Where the need is greatest, help is closest". The principle that I have depicted here applies everywhere. It is clear that wherever we have lack of resistance, it is we that are in command, and wherever we have resistance, it is we that are the little ones, and there the surroundings are in command.

As long as we see merely the individual minerals, globes, suns, stars, planets and so on, and do not realise that they are living beings, which are the Godhead's sensory tools, the world is in reality to us a dead thing, and the Godhead is in essence of absolutely no interest to us. We will then see the Godhead as merely a multiplicity, but we should rather learn how to see the Godhead not only as a multiplicity but as more of a single unit that is all that in reality exists for us as a centre that can direct everything else. But here Providence has also come to our help. It is so conveniently arranged that we cannot see the whole all in one go, if we could it would be difficult to see the Godhead as a single unit. At present there is always something we can take in with our senses. It is the known. It is the multiplicity. Then there is something that we cannot take in with our senses, namely the unknown. But we can address the unknown in the "secret closet". In the "secret closet", which we have wherever we are, whether it is on the ocean, in the desert, in the forest, wherever it is, that is where we can address the Godhead as a single unit. The unknown is really the "secret closet" where we will find the Godhead.

There is a "something" in you that is at all times at the boundary between the known and the unknown. It is your I. It is in the unknown field that the animal lets out its cry of anguish. In the case of the primitive human being he will form for himself an idea that there is a providence in stones, trees and so forth, but it is still merely an idea of the unknown. The Christian human being also has his idea of the Godhead. But gradually the ideas about the Godhead will disappear, because the Godhead should not be worshipped in a specific form. The habitual consciousness of the existence of the Godhead, which we first met in the animal's cry of anguish, begins to become more and more alive in the consciousness in the form of a "higher" idea of a God, and through all the many dark situations that the being experiences it cannot avoid coming into situations where it meets the Godhead, and then it happens that the I sends a ray of energy, an impulse, towards the unknown, where it has an inkling that there is a God. These impulses or prayers are, as previously mentioned, always picked up but cannot always be granted in the order that the being itself would like. The prayers are divided into various categories in accordance with the stages that they reach up to. Some reach up only to the lower stages, some reach a bit further, and some reach all the way up to the highest stage, where cosmic beings see to it that they are carried out.

This study of spiritual science causes some latent brain cells that are lying waiting to be used to begin to manifest, so that one can, with the help of a combination of intelligence and feeling, begin to research the cosmic realities. Eventually, you will have a certain urge to develop these latent brain centres and this causes you to train to be more and more receptive to the higher cosmic energies, and then something extraordinary takes place.

But if it has been the true experience, it will, after the first of these kind of experiences, be the case that wherever you previously were looking in the dark has "opened" itself to you, so that you can see clearly. You will notice that rays of light issue from you and the Godhead's rays of light go into you. You will find yourself in an immense ocean of light. You will look out over planets, oceans, star-cities, out over all physical worlds. If you direct your consciousness towards the spiritual world it will also open itself to you. It can take fractions of seconds to experience what it will take you months to describe. I have experienced it myself. I have never read anything about these things. This experience is in reality the meeting with the Father, and all sons of God will in the end, unavoidably arrive at this meeting with the Father, so that you will see him in living reality, will see him in every single living being, will see the interdependence between all living beings.

The person with cosmic consciousness sees the universe at all times as a radiant ocean of light, sees the same halo of light, no matter whether the person in question is a murderer or a saint, it sees the same light everywhere. One can then only address oneself totally to the Godhead and make the words of Christ into one's own, where he says "Father, not my will but Thy divine will, be done". If one has cosmic consciousness there is absolutely no need to ask someone if there is something or other that one would like to know. At the very instant that the wish to know something or other is sent, one focusses one's consciousness on the issue. The universe opens itself to you and one freely sees whatever one wants. When I want to clarify some problem or other I sit down at my typewriter. My cosmic consciousness then opens up and I see a great many things, and then I write these things down. Again and again it happens that in fractions of a second so much comes to me that I cannot manage to write it all down. And so I make symbols and can always later with the help of them describe what I have seen.

It is actually the case that the Godhead is focussed directly on every single individual, and you will then surely understand that prayer will not become something old-fashioned that one will do away with because one has gained more knowledge – on the contrary – the fact that one has more knowledge will cause one to be more and more focussed on being a genius in using the prayer in "the secret closet", and saying "Our Father, which art in heaven", without thereby representing this "Father" in the form of a picture, which is limited.

It would be lovely for you to have a happy fate and enter a state in which everything is pleasantly light, where you are one with the Father, and where you, in absolutely every situation, are at the Godhead's own viewpoint, from where you can see that never again will you be able to be subject to suffering and injustice, where everything is one single radiant revelation of love, demonstrated in all existing forms of manifestation of colour, manifestation of energy, manifestation of body, in fact everything that can be imagined. When one understands that everything is one single radiating, culminating revelation of love one cannot avoid living in a conscious togetherness with the Godhead, and this togetherness is the greatest experience that exists. This togetherness with the Godhead is the "light" you are unconsciously speeding towards when you feel the urge to hear what I have to say, because there is something in you – like in the animal when it lets out its cry of anguish – that is crying out to Providence in the unknown.

When you come here to listen to me, to study these things and use your brain to find an explanation of the things that you experience, it is actually a continuation of the animal's cry of anguish. It is the animal's cry of anguish at a more advanced stage. It is a longing to be united with the Godhead that causes you to have the urge to explore life, to study my analyses and live according to them. This guidance in loving your neighbour as yourself, which makes up the cosmic analyses, cannot help but bring you to the bright morning where the Godhead will show itself to you fully alive – and from that moment you will have become "one with the Father" and can manifest only a radiant light and loving behaviour towards your surroundings, and you will then be able to create only love and joy wherever you go.