What is very much required is the human beings' ability to differentiate clearly between physical and spiritual experience. Human beings are very confused about this. In reality, they do not know what is in essence physical and what is spiritual. For this reason, it is very difficult for human beings to understand the spiritual existence, that is to say the form of existence that applies when one no longer has the physical body. They sometimes believe that experiences that in reality are purely physical are spiritual, and they very often believe that spiritual experiences are physical. It is therefore clear that wherever human beings take spiritual experiences to be physical ones and therefore have to believe that these experiences must of necessity cease at the onset of death, which in this case means the process that separates the physical body from the spiritual one, they cannot understand how life can continue, since they cannot imagine experience of life in situations where sensory perception has ceased. Where human beings see spiritual experience as physical, they must, as we have said, believe that this experience must cease at death. Death is in such cases bound to be seen as a loss of consciousness, which is in turn the same as lifelessness. If it really was so that the ability to experience life ceased at death, the separation of the physical body from the spiritual one would be identical to a true death. And it is of course also this superstition that today rules millions of human beings, even though they also call themselves Christian or are baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. It is these supporters of death that today make up most of die-hard materialists. And it is this superstition that is the root of all the mass murdering that we call war and that constitutes the direct and unavoidable consequence of materialism.

The only purpose of any form of war is to murder and kill everything that can be assumed or perceived to constitute a threat to its originator's own life. The foolishness of war will therefore become more evident when one arrives at the point where one understands that nothing can be killed and no one can kill. The enemies that you think you have murdered or killed, you go on having as enemies. That you have destroyed their physical bodies does not alter this fact, but merely causes you to be, in the worst case, still able to be mentally persecuted by these enemies, quite apart from the fact that these enemies are born again just as you yourself are also born again in a new physical body, and will in accordance with the law of attraction and repulsion find yourself standing face to face with these mortal enemies of yours. But this time it is not them but you yourself that has to bite the dust. It will then be these beings that have the conditions that are needed to deprive us of our physical body and thereby bring our physical existence to a halt for a period of time, until we once more are born in a new physical organism. In this new existence we will possibly – in proportion to the mortal hostility or hatred that we feel in relation to these enemies of ours – once again kill them and in this way the hatred with its murder and killing will continue to go from one to the other until the hatred is replaced by forgiveness, friendship and love for the enemy.

The more evolved a physical living being is, the more spiritual it is. The fact that it is more spiritual will in turn mean that it has greater knowledge, a greater sense of logic, a greater insight into the physical events. This knowledge, sense of logic and greater insight into what is taking place around us in the physical world therefore consists of what we call spirit. Spirit is therefore in reality the same as consciousness. Since consciousness or spirit is our knowledge, it will therefore be possible to divide it up into many different related details, which in turn will be possible to divide up into groups or categories all according to their particular nature. There is our knowledge of ourselves, there is our knowledge of other human beings, there is our knowledge of the animals, of the plants and the flowers. There is our knowledge of the past, our knowledge of the present and our hope for the future. There is our knowledge of our childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. There is our knowledge of any illnesses we might have, of poverty, hunger and misery or of any good health and wellbeing that we might have, wealth and superior social position, our fame or notoriety, our children and our marriage partners, our parents and siblings, our friends and acquaintances and many of their merits or fates and much more. The whole of this knowledge is therefore recorded in our consciousness in the form of pictures. These pictures of consciousness we call thoughts. Thoughts therefore constitute pictures. Every being has a whole world of these pictures. The physical being therefore has this world side by side with the outer physical world.

The physical being thus exists in two worlds: the outer physical world and the inner spiritual world. Just as it can experience the details in its outer world, it can also, if it wants to, experience the details in its inner world. In the first case, it has to focus its consciousness outwardly and the experience becomes a spiritual physical or material experience, whereas in the second case it has to focus itself inwardly into its thought world and the experience then becomes a spiritual experience. But whereas the being with the help of its willpower can stop its physical experience by resting, sleeping or by closing its eyes and relaxing completely, it can never in any case be without spiritual experience or spiritual functioning. Since it can in many situations also experience spiritually without any physical involvement whatsoever, while it never in any instance whatsoever can experience physically without the assistance of the spiritual ability to experience, it is not the physical but the spiritual ability to experience that is the primary one, whereas the physical is therefore merely a secondary state of experiencing. For this reason the living being is therefore mainly a spiritual being. Its physical appearance is merely a matter of secondary importance in its eternal spiritual existence.

But it is not only memories that we can experience in our thoughts, also here we can meet with pure, new experiences, experiences that we absolutely have not had on the physical plane. Here one can combine and create, build houses and castles, machines and works of art that we are absolutely unable to make on the physical plane. Here we can work out one thing or the other. We can construct plans of things that we want to create on the physical plane, indeed we can not only do it, but have to do it in all such situations, since without such planning we cannot carry out any logical creation at all on the physical plane. We therefore live in a permanent spiritual function that is in turn the same as spiritual existence.

Dreams are memories of experiences that occur when the being is more or less unconsciously asleep on the physical plane. The fact that these memories are not always perfect but have become more or less broken up, more or less infiltrated with thoughts from the awake plane while the being is waking up, has caused dreams to be misunderstood and seen as something unreal. One therefore says: "Yes, but it was only a dream". But if one now did not wake up to physical day-consciousness the dream would be real enough. This fact is further affirmed on the step on which the beings can for a few minutes consciously go over into the spiritual world and there observe phenomena, natural catastrophes, conflagrations, accidents and so on, thousands of miles away in far-away places, and bring the experiences of these phenomena into the awake, physical existence, just as it is also in this way that one can see into the future and the past, and likewise take the results from there into the awake existence.

And so finally there is the being's existence after death, which is purely spiritual. The being's spiritual organism has then left behind the physical and the being experiences and lives on the spiritual plane. During all physical unconsciousness the beings appear in an awake, spiritual day-consciousness. That these two worlds seem to be so separate, or that the spiritual world is so unreal to the physical beings, is merely due to the fact that the terrestrial human being is still so far behind in evolution and finds itself right at the first weak beginnings of its awakening from materialism. Knowledge, experiences and interests will now gradually very much influence its senses and experiences, and will thereby gradually perfect the abilities and dispositions whereby the being can transfer its memories of the spiritual experiences to its physical day-consciousness. Following this it will be a mere act of will for the being to make itself wakefully day-conscious in its spiritual appearance, just as it can now make itself wakefully day-conscious in its physical appearance. And then there will be no difference between life and death. What we today call death will then on the physical plane be just as much day-conscious life as physical experience.