I - Spiritual awakening

Yesterday, on Sunday, the first of August 1948, something so incomprehensible happened that it is still difficult for me to put it into words today. (And yet I feel and know that I should do it, because it does not only concern me.) To you, my best friend, who has been a clear-sighted and unselfish helper to me for this day, a doctor for my death and my rebirth, I want to tell as the first human being what I am able to grasp already about these events.

For many years I have suspected that I was standing closely before the gate of an inconceivably vast new world. But I could not find the bolt that still kept the gate locked for me, because I was blind, blind for fear, as I know now. Now I became able to see, after I had experienced and thrown off all fears, unfounded and founded, that a human being can feel, from me. I started seeing, found the bolt and the gate flung open, it became bright and clear within me and around me, so incomprehensibly sudden, so overwhelming, as if in the middle of the night, with a thunderclap, the sun was thrown over the horizon.

You know: many years of unfathomable religious darkness preceded this sun-fire.

During the last months I often had experienced myself as a body-free being, as a wanderer in the unearthly regions. More than ever I was in connection with good and evil powers. Gradually, I learned to hear and see them more clearly. I also came to understand what the ‘distinction of the spirits' means, which the Christian teaching demands. Before that, I was much too unclear and trusting.

Since then, I could free my inner powers and radiate them: a blue-white dazzling archangel-fire to fight the diabolical powers, and a purple-violet (however, I'd better name it velvet-red) that I felt as a ‘radiation of peace'. Today, since it has somewhat changed and has become brighter, purer, I know that it means something quite different still. Nevertheless I felt that I still lacked one: the radiation of joy. Still other radiances I suspect, though quite remote.

I also experienced the secret of freedom in a distressing manner. God and all light powers enforce nothing; they want complete freedom of the will. So no human being may be forced by other people to be good, either. Only diabolical powers try to enforce things and therefore seem at first to be stronger than the light powers. Are the diabolical powers also wanted by God, and necessary? I had an answer, a rash answer, to that. Later on I will see more clearly.

I experienced that a human being turned away from me in bitter hate. He clad this aversion in icy words, which seemed to mean a final decision. I had wanted to help him and to force him to be good, according to his own inner wish. Right from the start, though, I had sensed that one may not force anybody into something, who has a free will. But I disregarded this voice, I did not hear it clear enough yet, I was still blinded. So I went through a necessary error and through a great lot of sorrow, before I reached a clear understanding.

Although this man had icily turned away from me, I nevertheless still wanted to stay at his side (inwardly). I believed myself to be obliged to do that. At the very moment this decision was established in my heart, I saw a light shape above me (which, as I know now, was the spirit, the Eternal Self of a human being still alive) and heard its voice: ‘Whenever a human being turns away from you, you may not seek to help him any longer. Let him follow his own ways.'

Now I know this voice was right. One may not impose help to somebody else, just because one thinks to see further than he does. However, one must always be prepared to help, if the other person will allow himself to be helped. One may not tolerate any inner pique. But I took the advice, as if I had to let this man down, to consider him lost. I felt that this was not right and for the first time I disagreed with a light spirit, unequivocally and resolute - because of a misunderstanding, though.

This took courage and self-confidence, because until now I had considered it self-evident to follow these beings in blind trust , who were so very superior to me, only distinguishing them clearly from the diabolical powers that continually force themselves upon people as ‘friends' and ‘advisers', deceptively resembling the light beings. (Everybody who knows the world of souls will know how difficult it is to distinguish them)

So I protested, and so far I was in the right with it. At last I realized that one should not obey anybody blindly, against ones own conviction, even if it should be an error. Only diabolical powers do not know a conscience, a free decision any more and therefore also seek to suppress these within all others.

Frightened afterwards, I expected to have offended the light shape above me by contradicting, though not from evil intent. But no. A movement of joyful surprise went through it, as a sudden illumination. This also swung in its voice. I heard: ‘Now you have passed the hardest test'.

I have already gone through many tests. They always were about decisions for or against the divine light. Some particularly hard decisions in the last one and a half decade were about the question whether I wanted to remain a ‘natural' man or become a super-natural, spiritual human being. I have always felt completely free to make these decisions, I was aware of them . Though I often had to gain them strenuously, they nevertheless seemed quite obvious to me.

On this last decision I had to break with my deep-rooted inclination to blind worship. (Worship as such is a necessary, initial stage to divine love.) It was difficult for me to understand that blind worship is blindness too. Neither God nor any other light power wants blind worship, blind belief. Also at this point the spirits separate.

A day passed. I was unclear and confused. It took me quite some effort to understand that also inclinations, being unequivocally good in themselves, could be wrong, a weakness. (But in the same way love, pity and all other light qualities may also be distorted.) Caught in these conflicting thoughts, I lay on a meadow. Then, as a flash, it occurred to me: If also light powers can lead me astray, if I follow them in blind trust (because I could easily misunderstand them), I'd better only rely on myself .

And then it happened. With a silent and yet smashing blow, such as when a grenade or a lightning bolt strikes in the immediate proximity, so that one stands in a crushing radiance but hears no sound any more - the deepest and highest abyss of my being tore open. For months I had already been able to fly into it, but I had always seen it above me, outside of me.

Only later on I will be able to describe how this was yesterday. Here I'll only say what I saw and perceived. I felt myself in the center of a space that nevertheless was ‘myself' too. A weaving, consuming fire like a living sun streamed over this center. It didn't come into the space from outside, it streamed in it. Below stood a quiet breathing, bluish light, that lost itself in the depth as in an abyss. This I saw during an immeasurably short while. Then everything was a sea of golden fire.

The realization struck me like a blow: the divine and earthly parts of my being have united. ‘Over' and ‘below', Higher and Lower Self, spiritual human being and earthly man are one: the Mystical Wedding.

What meanwhile happened to my body, I don't know. I lived without it and only later on found it back. I rose as quite a different person and could only afterwards impress these events into my body-bound memory. It was as if an abyss separated me from my previous life. This abyss is the mystical death. Can a human being experience still greater things? Something still greater happened.

In the evening I entered a church, although I would not call myself a Christian, just as little as I would call myself a Buddhist. This is not in contradiction to my experiences and understandings of the past few years, which taught me to understand Gautama Buddha and Christ in an ever deeper way.

As I left the church I said, just like I had done for years: Lord, if you are really present here, I greet you and bow to you. - Then a voice came to me as if from the depth of my own being: For you I am not present here. You must find me otherwise. –

While still pondering on these words in the evening - only now the light-space, in which I see myself constantly since the mystic wedding, came plain and clear to my consciousness as well - suddenly the voice that I had heard in the church - and before, at crucial turning points - was in me again. The voice was like a breeze, it rose as if from a well in me, and yet I felt it like the voice of somebody else. It did not produce understandable words before they penetrated into my thinking, word-building consciousness, after I had accepted and endorsed the breeze in the depth of my being. The words were as follows:

I love you and I want you to love me, if you yourself want it.
You are my innate son, whom I love.

I had a feeling as if I would fall into an abyss. I could not breathe and think any longer. Then I suddenly comprehended: This breeze is God. God himself speaks to me , to one of his children, as if I were his only child. Thus God speaks to every one of his children that has grown up to be a completed, unique personality. Anyone, who has grown up to that, is a unique appearance that in the entire spiritual world won't find its equal. And each of his children is his innate child. In the creating lap of the deity itself (not in the outer world) it was begotten and born from it. All his children have the same divine dignity because of their common divine origin. Thus also Christ said: ‘Don't you know that you are sons of God?'

Only after I had comprehended this, God's breeze came to me again:

You should not worship me,
you should love me,
if you yourself want it.

Do not call me ‘Lord';
call me ‘You'.
I want you to be equal to me,
if you yourself want it.

When you speak to others about me,
call me ‘It'.
You should not worship anything or anybody,
you should not bow to anything or anybody,
you should only love, because you yourself want it.

In a confusing way the thought of Christ fell on me. Then I heard the voice again: ‘Christ was my messenger. Everyone, who wants it, can be Christ. Don't think about it now, your consciousness is not yet ripe for it'.

At the beginning the breeze, the voice, was hard and strict. It did not raise any feeling in me; it didn't entice me to love. I just perceived it. And another strange thing happened. From the depth, from the bluish abyss below me a twisted shape of hate had risen like a shadow - a demon of arrogance. His lips moved, as if the breeze, the voice, came from him . The first words of the voice were distorted by what seemed to be whistling and screeching. For a moment, fear took hold of me. But I decided to believe; I saw and recognized that the voice, the breeze was the truth.

For an immeasurably short time I considered: if the truth is so strict, so hard, so repulsive - according to human concepts - I detest it, I'd rather keep far from it. But I decided: I want the truth, whatever it may be, just because it is the truth . At this very moment of decision the blue-white fire burst out of me, as dazzlingly bright as I had never seen before, but without rage, just law-like, and swept the demon away.

I know that the demon did not try to tempt me to haughtiness, to arrogance. He sought to put fear into me - the fear that I could possibly become arrogant by the words of the voice. Because of this fear I would no longer be able to recognize the voice, the breeze, as the truth.

The voice was strict, hard as such, or rather: before my choosing the truth it seemed so to me, since I could not yet recognize divine love.

I have experienced it, and it still makes me shudder deeply in my soul, when I realize: the unshakable will to want the truth, whatever it may be, decides for always and ever. Only after I had turned to the truth, completely by my own free will - as I realize - and endorsed it, just because I recognized it as truth - nothing else, no feeling or no promise enticed me to it - the voice filled with a love and kindliness that my consciousness could not comprehend any more. If I should nevertheless try and pronounce the inexpressible as a realization - and I know that I should - I can only say: God doesn't punish. God is not a demon of revenge, of vengeance, of Eternal Damnation. Its justice is of quite another type. It stems from the infinite fullness of its love that wants infinite freedom for all. God doesn't judge. Everyone is his own judge. Whoever turns away from God, whoever chooses the darkness, sentences himself to degeneracy.

God is no ‘He', God is an ‘It', beyond all earthly sex-concepts. God, origin of us all, is at the same time father and mother to us.

God is infinite love. God is only love.

God only wants to love.