We have previously become acquainted with the way life or existence in the spiritual world forms itself according to the concepts or ideas about this world that one has become accustomed to believe in while one is living on the physical plane. Here as long as one lives in ignorance and superstition, in false and not false ideas, one will be able to experience the physical world only in the same way. Ideas or beliefs and superstitions do not change because one dies or loses one's physical body. And just as here on Earth one does not experience the true physical world, as long as here one has not understood the true physical laws, in the same way neither will one experience the true spiritual world or reality as long as here one has not understood or become conscious in the special laws of this world. What do primitive peoples in the jungle know about the true physical reality? Is not Neanderthal man or the Peking man to a colossal extent devoid of the physical knowledge of a Bohr or an Einstein? Do they not each have their own extremely differing ideas about physical existence, and yet they live on the same physical plane or in the same physical world? What is it that makes the difference? Why do not the physical beings see the physical world in the same way? How can human beings live in the same world and yet each of them experiences it completely differently? Why is not the physical world the same for everyone that lives in it?

As I have already explained, the great majority of the human beings on Earth do not see the pure truth. They have not found what in the East or the Orient is called the pure truth. All the various religious sects have their own special view of the truth or reality and see the physical world only in relation to it. The view of the religious sect is the adherents' world picture, totally irrespective of whether it is in agreement with reality or whether it is in itself the pure truth. And of course it stands to reason that to the extent that their world picture, and their morals and way of life that are based on it, is not in contact with reality, their existence will be an illusory or false reality. Their [life] does not fulfil the laws of life, and it therefore becomes unhappy and full of pain. The so-called unhappy fate, with war, suffering and mutilation, illness and hardship and a far too early death are the inevitable consequences, totally regardless of however much one has laid down the law that one's sect is God's truly chosen commandment, and however much one believes that one is one of the holy ones of the last days and the favourite of the Godhead. And it absolutely does not alter the principle that instead of belonging to a religious sect one belongs to a fundamentally materialistic political party. Here the world picture, and therefore the morals and way of life, are equally adapted or made according to the material or physical ideas that one has been governed or possessed by, totally regardless of whether they are in contact with reality or the absolute world picture.

It is a matter of course that the kingdom of heaven – that is to say the ability to experience the absolute truth, and thereby the absolute world picture, and thereby the truly spiritual world – does not dwell in the beings that live in a false or illusory experience of the world picture, and thereby of life. The kingdom of heaven is the experience of the true life, the pure truth. The kingdom of heaven is God's own mental sphere, the world whose sphere of thought is the highest and absolute knowledge of the world plan, the laws of life or the absolute truth. It is that sphere of thought that in the Bible is called the "holy spirit". The kingdom of heaven and the holy spirit are therefore the same thing. It is the true view of the world, and consequently both the kingdom of heaven and the holy spirit are things that, as Christ says, dwell within the beings and are not a kind of external kingdom or an external sphere.

After this it will therefore now be totally clear to us how perfectly or imperfectly one will experience the spiritual world after death. The majority of the Earth's human beings have still not arrived at the absolute world picture, neither the religious sects, the political parties nor the materialistic scientist, who is in fact further removed than ever from the ability to experience the true world picture, since he believes that it is something external that he can weigh and measure his way to. He believes that the solution to the mystery of the world is something physical, and he therefore also lives in a fantasy world. This entire company of beings can therefore not experience the kingdom of heaven, the absolute truth or the holy spirit. Their spiritual experience can culminate only in an experience of paradise. If they are in contact with their belief, whether it is religious or political, spiritual or materialistic, and therefore have no pangs of conscience, they may well experience beautiful experiences of bliss on the spiritual plane. The holy ones of the last days experience the spiritual world as they have been used to imagining it, and the adherents of political parties see it in the limited or completely obliterated form that their materialism dictates. The same thing applies to the materialistic scientists. They also go through life after death without understanding that they are in a spiritual world. They go on experiencing the spiritual world only in the form of their physical habitual consciousness. This of course results in them claiming that they are not dead but are still living on the physical plane still thinking that they are mortal beings. It is on the basis of this that the Indians experience their hunting grounds, the warrior experiences his paradise and the believer his paradise.

There are no hindrances apart from those that can form purgatory, that is to say the acknowledgement of having been in disharmony or conflict with the morality of one's view. This creates anguish. The rest cannot form purgatory, since it is steps on the way. There is nothing one can do oneself about which step of giftedness one is on. It would be rather satanic if one could be punished because one's capacity for giftedness did not represent a certain number of points on the scale of evolution. Only where one is not in contact with the morality of one's world picture, or if one discovers that the world picture that one believes in and the moral values that one has as a result cultivated are also false, only there can one experience purgatory. Wherever these circumstances are not present one will experience paradise.

But paradise is not the true spiritual world since it is a product of the beings' fantasy. It is a world that the beings have built up in their own image. Above this spiritual world lies the true spiritual world, the one that is not fantasy, the one that is an expression of the pure truth, the one that is the absolute kingdom of heaven. Paradise is therefore really only a spiritual underworld, a kind of forecourt to the true paradise or the kingdom of heaven. Since it again will be possible to divide the kingdom of heaven into two spheres, which we can call the inner courtyard and the holy of holies, the whole of the spiritual world can therefore be likened to a tabernacle or temple. And here it is the case that, just like the tabernacle in the Bible, everyone may enter the forecourt, whereas only the priests may enter the inner courtyard, and only the high priest may enter the holy of holies. The great majority of the human beings on Earth, both in this world and the next, find themselves in the forecourt. The forecourt is the paradise that is built on illusion.

But once human beings have come through all the physical desires and the resultant joys and sorrows, once they are satiated with the religious and political memberships of sects or parties, once they are satiated of playing a role, satiated of being admired and respected, once humility and unselfishness more than arrogance and selfishness govern the being, so that they to an increasing degree more and more feel sympathy for other living beings, so that the welfare of other living beings is of concern to them, once neighbourly love begins to compete with copulatory love, only then will the beings begin to be worthy of the cosmic priesthood. They will then begin to be able to enter the next hall in the temple of life, the "inner courtyard". As life here reaches no higher than it can one hundred per cent be experienced and practised on the physical plane, it will be the goal for terrestrial mankind's new world epoch that is now beginning. The "inner courtyard" will therefore be the state of life on the physical plane that I call in my main work, Livets Bog, the "true human kingdom". But this kingdom, which is the last kingdom on the physical plane, is the highest that can be manifested of the kingdom of heaven on this plane. And the perfection of this manifestation still lies about three thousand years in the future. But this does not prevent this part of the kingdom of heaven from already being in the process of forming within many human beings, that is to say within the previously mentioned beings that are satiated with primitive physical amenities. The holiest part of the kingdom of heaven will arise within the beings long before it arises in the outer world. It cannot arise in the outer world until the majority of the Earth's population have developed this part of the kingdom of heaven within themselves.

But this is where reincarnation is of benefit to the pioneers of the kingdom of heaven. Since after death they can experience, precisely in the spiritual world, the true human kingdom in its full expression or flowering, and there strengthen their love and their longing and interest to be its pioneers in their future physical incarnations. That it is possible for these beings to experience the true human kingdom on the spiritual plane between their physical incarnations is due to the fact that the true human kingdom already exists on certain other, sufficiently developed, physical globes, and these therefore have the true human kingdom's mental or spiritual sphere surrounding their physical globes. And it is therefore the spiritual atmosphere or world of these human globes that becomes a kind of home, a school or educational establishment for the terrestrial human beings that have come to the point where they have reached the aforementioned satiation with the primitive physical amenities and self-worship, so that unselfishness and neighbourly love have taken the place of arrogance and selfishness. And what does one see in the true human kingdom's spiritual world?

After having arrived at the highpoint or culmination of creation on the physical plane, where the individuals appear as creative geniuses in physical matter, the divine goal has been reached with reincarnation or the living beings' immersion in matter. They now have the law of all creation in their hearts and minds. They no longer need the physical world that they have totally grown out of, just as their organism is also so refined and independent of the earthly plane that it is increasingly seldom that they are born or incarnate in physical matter. They lived on breath and could materialise and dematerialise at will. As the desire became weaker and weaker the ability to incarnate in physical matter ceased, to a corresponding degree. Meanwhile their mentality grew to a colossal extent. They have now released all the energy and power that was previously used to manage the heavy physical matter and it can be used in the area of thought. Eventually thought became the tangible food for their daily, fine, etheric existence. They became more and more preoccupied with ideas and plans for new creative processes and improvements of old ones. And their plane of existence gradually became a kingdom in which one occupied oneself exclusively with the elaboration of new, future, physical models of organisms for heart-, lung- and hearing functions, models of entirely new figures, the future organisms of plants, animals, human beings and angels. Here we are in fact in the universe's educational establishment and drawing office. Here the beings are the universe's cosmic civil engineers, cosmic masters or highest centres of creation. Here we can see the living models for all new, future world phenomena. We can see an area of strange landscape with curious phenomena, living beings, plants and animals of hitherto unimaginable forms. It is a model of a new surface of a globe. In another place we are walking inside a very strange machine in which beings are in the process of improving it and making it function. It is the model of a future new animal organism, in a future new physical world. Everywhere one is witness to models of future new mineral, vegetable and animal phenomena.

Since the beings here are not bound in solid, permanent organisms, as they are on the physical plane, and therefore have thought-matter only for the coarsest, outer material, and this material is at the same time the material for revealing their thought, we do not therefore see the beings themselves. We see their manifestations, their consciousness. Just as here on the material plane we see only the beings' physical organisms and manifestations but not the beings' inner structure, spirit and I, so here in the kingdom of wisdom we now see only the beings' consciousness. This is an eternally changing creation of scenery of immense beauty, since here creation is one hundred percent in contact with love, and thereby with perfection. Here we are high above the creation of weapons and military equipment and the creation of machines of killing. Such phenomena belong to the cellars or the sewer networks of the temple of life. But since we are in the upper stories of the temple, which have been made into places for beings of love to live in, and which are the culmination of wisdom, what we witness here is nothing other than the very peak of God's creation, the culmination of the colouring of the universe. Wherever we go, we are walking on living beings' thoughts, transformed into gloriously beautiful created phenomena. Well, walking is not really the right expression because we feel no downward pull of gravity towards the ground, as we do on the physical plane and in the physical organism. Here we simply feel that we are existing in the midst of the whole, supported by our own willpower and our thought. And while we ourselves are not absorbed in admiring the surroundings, we are ourselves in the process of creating wonders that are then the only outward visibility of ourselves to other beings. The beings' direct visibility of each other therefore takes place only in the form of a vision. Behind the outward, visible world here in the kingdom of wisdom there exist invisibly the I's of the living beings, surrounded by their superconsciousness and subconciousness, which here are free and independent of physical, coarse matter.

If they want to have a pure, intimate, personal contact with another being, they create an expression in visible thought matter, which is the identification mark of their person. Such an identification mark can be a sun that scintillates, radiates and glitters in all shades of gold, it can be a star, just as it can be the most colossal, radiant angelic figure appearing in gold and purple, in mother of pearl and opal. It can appear with radiant wings, and it can appear as a figure without wings, and it can appear in all sorts of figures both radiant and shining as well as without shine and sparkle. This outward phenomenon of manifestation is merely something that is created for the moment, and lasts for only the duration of the personal contact with the being for whom the visibility was manifested. Such a revelation corresponds to a conversation on the physical plane. But here on the physical plane speech is unnecessary, since the beings' consciousness and thought is something outwardly visible and not something hidden inside, as on the material or physical plane.

Such a vision or contact is never, even for a split second, created without it being identical to a mutual manifestation of love. It is the culmination of the highest fire or the release of sexuality of this plane of existence. Here this divine act of love is not connected in some form of cohabitation or marriage. It is a perfectly liberated and sovereign, mutual state of experiencing. It is a divine intercourse for all to see, without it being an embarrassing breach of public decency that promotes jealousy and scandal in other beings. Here there is no nakedness that should be hidden, there is no right of possession that should be protected. Here there is no sexual rivalry. Here there is no marital monopoly that can be violated. Here such a loving contact between the beings is the very culmination of life's highest caress, the manifestation of life's innermost feeling and thought for another being, revealed in outer, visible matter. First and foremost their personal expression, or their organism that they have created for the moment, appears in such a radiant, intellectual and angelic revelation that this high stage of thought and art can produce, and next they create for each other, and around each other, a culmination of beneficial and intellectual or spiritual, caressing manifestations that become, not only for themselves, a radiant sensation of God's presence, and their own transformation into a harmonious entity or that which on the physical plane is expressed, in what here appears in its lowly, coarse form, as being one flesh, but it will also be some of this plane's joy- and love-promoting experiences for the other beings on the plane. Here there is only love and love is all one knows. Jealousy, scandal, breach of public decency and monopoly of sexuality or caressing of other beings is a hundred thousand light years away from this plane. Here all sexuality is united with and identical to the very purest, one hundred per cent neighbourly love. Everything that takes place can therefore be nothing other than a pleasure for all. Every being's most intimate experience is everyone's joy, is everyone's experience. Just as on this earthly plane in the domain of the animal kingdom one lives in a state of everyone at war with everyone, here one lives in a state of everyone's love for everyone.

After the special experience of life in the kingdom of wisdom has culminated, another form of the experience of life comes increasingly into play. However, it has to be said here that the transition from the kingdom of wisdom to the "divine world" does not constitute a particularly noticeable form. There is no marked contrast between these two kingdoms as there is, for example, between the lower kingdoms. Between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom there is a very great contrast. Between animals and plants there is also a strong contrast. But between the human kingdom and the kingdom of wisdom the contrast is more smoothed out, eventually to be almost totally smoothed out between the kingdom of wisdom and the divine world. As I have already explained, the kingdom of wisdom is the drawing office of the universe, its world of models. Here are the models for everything that can possibly be created. Here everything is visible – the models for the future plant kingdoms, animal kingdoms and human kingdoms. Here new variations of eternal existence, the eternal experience of life, come into being. Here they can be seen and observed. Here all the knowledge of the entire world exists, its science and wisdom. Here is the last field of the being's outward concentration.

In the last zone of the kingdom of wisdom the being's ability to concentrate outwardly towards the created phenomena begins to diminish in favour of a strongly increasing concentration towards the Godhead itself. In fact, it is as if here its I is in private together with the Godhead itself. But as neither one's own I nor the Godhead's I is a created phenomenon, and the created phenomena here are absent or can be excluded, the fundamental experience in the divine world is an experience of existence or life without created phenomena. Here, however, there exist the eternal superconsciousness with the talent kernels and the subconsciousness, and as a result the I's invisible or image-free experience of being together with the Godhead can set into manifestation or visibility whenever the I in question feels the impulse or urge. The body of God, the all-overwhelming light, is also the body for one's own I. And yet one cannot be totally swallowed up by this light, in the way that a drop of water is swallowed up by the ocean. Our I is not like the drop of water, a created detail that is without an I and that is subject to a beginning and an end. Our I is, by virtue of the middle aspect of the triune principle, X2, eternally guaranteed individuality. All the I's of the living beings together constitute God's I, but are merely separated and made distinct by God's X2. We can therefore, when all manifestation or all created phenomena have been removed, experience the individuality of our I's identity to eternity, just as God's I is in the same way identical to eternity. The culminatory experience of life in the divine world is therefore the experience of one's absolute sense of belonging together, one's identity to, or one's being one with the Godhead beyond all visible forms.

This experience reveals itself to oneself as a sense of being present, without a body, in an endless ocean of a particular kind of fire. An insuperable feeling that, in this golden fire or this gaseous, shining gold, one is facing, or is in, the very eternal Godhead's something, his being, consciousness and field of radiance. Here exists the all-governing, all-overwhelming divine I that exists behind all creations, all manifestations, all thoughts, all science and wisdom. Here one stands, in a great variety of ways or with abundant strength, before that which science first denied and later uses all it has in its power, with its microscopes and telescopes and calculating machines, to seek and search for, but which it will never ever be able to find with the help of instruments and calculations in weights and measures. Here sparkles and shines in radiant gaseous gold the eternal, life-directing something that is the originator of the brain and the heart in every living being, in the same way that it is the originator of the wisdom and the reasoning that reveals itself in the logic with which the globes of the universe and the organisms of the living beings are created. Here is the aliveness that is to be found only in, or is, the holy of holies of the temple, and which is therefore inaccessible to every human being who is still unfinished or unprepared, it is inaccessible to, and can kill, every being who does not have, guarded in love, the necessary preparedness or habituation to this governing energy of light or highest fire. Here in the divine world the beings can therefore move out of and into this ocean of light, into and out of this melting together, and being one with the Godhead. Into and out of this, their own, personal and individual experience of their identity to the Father, eternity and infinity.

But also this extremely alive experience of existence directly together with the Godhead has its satiation. The cycle's eternally life-conditioning law is in evidence since the being has grown out of life's very highest experience of togetherness with God at the heights. After having experienced the culmination of creation, after having experienced its being one with the Godhead, after having experienced the culmination of life and creation, the being is given the chance of having an experience of itself appearing in God's image. It is given the chance of experiencing being the supreme directing power in the universe, the supreme directing love, the all-governing wisdom behind all manifestations. The individual is given access to this divine ethereal existence through a certain plane of existence, just as it was through certain planes of existence that it had been granted access to the many other planes of existence for particular forms of the experience of life. This plane of existence is called the kingdom of bliss and is borne by the sixth basic energy – memory.