The Great Gospel of John
Volume 7
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord on the Mount of Olives. (cont.) Gospel of John, Chapter 8
- Chapter 66 -
The nature of soul and mind. The soul in the afterlife.
I said again to Agrikola: "You can now present your case, - thus start speaking!"
2
Said Agrikola: "Lord and Master, that the soul of a person continues to live after the death of its body, is now a completely confirmed case of the clearest truth. But where does it go to, and what is actually its nature and what is the nature of the totally pure spirit? Since according to Your teaching space is infinite, then also the souls and even the purest spirits must be present within the infinitely large space; since any 'outside' of it is completely impossible.
3
Then another question: What form does a soul on its own have, or even a pure spirit, and why is it that a natural person cannot always see souls and spirits? Lord, only on these my questions give me a clear answer, and I will ask You about nothing else; because our complete ignorance in this matter is actually the reason, that makes death even more bitter and frightful. But if we people have also therein sufficient light, we will easily die and not clutch fearfully to the life of the flesh."
4
Said I: "Yes, this would be very easy for Me to explain this to you, if you only would possess the free understanding for it; but this you not possess as yet, although you, since being here, have heard many things in this regard which I have explained at length and yourself also have seen and experienced well-organized miracles. And therefore this is a very difficult matter to explain to you in greater detail than it already has been explained to you.
5
The soul of a person is a ethereal substance, thus - if you can understand that - it is composed by many light-atoms or possibly smallest particles put together into a perfect human form by the wisdom and the omnipotent will of God, and the pure spirit is actually the will emanating from God, which is the fire of the most pure love in God.
6
The pure spirit is a thought of God, emerging out of His love and wisdom, and becomes a real being by the will of God. But since God in Himself is a fire out of His love and wisdom, it is similar with the thought which in a certain way has been placed outside God and has been individualized into an separate being. Just as fire is a force, also such a thought out of God is a force in itself, is aware of itself and can act by itself in such clarity, from which it emanated. As a pure-force it penetrates everything what you call matter, but cannot be penetrated by matter, because matter is in the further extend nothing else than an external expression of the spirit of God.
7
The soul is, as it were, matter dissolved by the power of the spirit, which, forced by his power, transforms into the spirit's own primeval form, and as such united with its spirit, forms the light-ethereal-substantial body, just as the soul forms and builds its future dress through the pure strong will of its spirit from the flesh-material surrounding it, if this has been completely decomposed and dissolved,
8
There you have a very short and true representation of what a soul is and what the pure spirit is.
9
To determine the place and space where the soul will stay after exiting its body, will be even more difficult for you to understand; nevertheless I will give you an idea, from where you can draw some light for yourself. You will only recognize the reality in yourself, if you have reached in yourself the full rebirth or the full unification of the spirit with the soul, because the soul cannot fully comprehend such, for as long it does not develop itself through the power of the spirit inside it, to be able to become completely one with its spirit.
10
The space and place where a soul stays after the death of its body - especially during the initial period of its existence - is normally there where it lived when still in the body on earth, that is, if it enters the fleshless kingdom in the beyond when it is not yet perfected.
11
In such a case it does not see or hear anything of the physical world where it lived when still inside the body, even though it is spatially present in the very same world. Its being is more or less like a clear dream, where the soul lives in a surrounding or landscape which also has been created by it and acts completely similar as it would in the natural world, and it does not miss in the slightest the physical world which it has left.
12
But by God's permission the surrounding where it lives, is often destroyed, and the soul gets into another surrounding which perfectly fits its inner state. With such a soul it takes a very long time, until it gets through various lessons to the point, where everything it thinks it owns, is futile and trifling. If through various experiences and appearances it obtains this insight, only then does it start to think about its state and being and becomes more and more aware of the fact, that it has left the former, earthly world, and the desire starts to grow in it, to get into a more stable and unchanging state of life.
13
In such a state it will be taught by more developed spirits what it has to do; and if it does this, it will become brighter in it as its inner spirit starts to penetrate it more and more. The more the inner spirit penetrates it and grows in it like a child in the mother's womb, everything around it becomes more lasting.
14
Once a soul has reached the state where its inner spirit has penetrated it completely, it attains full clairvoyance and a clear recognition, fullest consciousness and a clear recollection of everything: what it was, what it has become, what it has done and what the world, where it has lived in the body, looks like and how it was organized.
15
Such a soul can very thoroughly look through this earth, as well as the moon, the sun, all the planets or worlds circling around the sun, to an extend that until now no astronomer, neither a Greek nor any of the older Egyptian surveyors has ever seen - and also the other suns within a greater system, which I already sufficiently explained yesterday, and in the highest degree admire their wondrous forms and construction and experience extreme joy in the love, wisdom and power of the one God."