Source texts from the books by Jozef Rulof for the article ‘Death’.
These sources presume the prior reading of the article ‘Death’
A welcome friend
In the book ‘Those who came back from the Dead’, Jozef Rulof tells about a priest for whom death had become a friend:
I had already seen many people pass over, but not one like he.
One person was afraid, and others took nourishing food, because they did not want to die.
However, when death reported, no academic could help anymore and spiritual powers could not bring about a change either.
No one could escape it, which was the only justice on this dreadful earth.
This priest was familiar with death.
To him it was a welcome friend, a friend who released him from his suffering, who brought him happiness, light, love and beauty, yes, eternal life.
What remained of death?
Where was its power?
Where were all those terrible things, when people could call death a friend?
Death did not find any food with him.
Because he did not know any fear and did not feel any suffering or sorrow, from which death did too well.
Death had to and would suffer poverty with him.
He would starve, because he was not fed.
He carried out a wonderful conversation with death, he smiled at it and death smiled back.
They were familiar to each other, had become great, very great friends.
Life had taught him this by receiving all people in the house of his soul and not complaining when they even entered with their clogs, but by receiving them and going towards them in love.
As a result of this, he had learned to know death and he knew that this meant eternal life.
He saw through his mask, he was clairvoyant and saw behind the haze of decay and horror.
He saw that death was not the end, but a step forward to unknown areas.
To him that cruel man with his scythe was replaced by an azure heaven, a paradise of sheer happiness.
Fate ceased to exist; to him everything was God’s holy guidance.
God called to him and death disappeared, because he could not approach him.
No, this priest had everything that he needed in the land of eternal truth.
Death was happy that amongst all these people there were a few who were not afraid of him.
“Listen to me”, I heard death say to me, as it were, “you people of the earth, hear what I will tell.
Look at me; I am not dead.
It burns within you; it is God who sends His love towards you, which keeps all of you alive.
What you see, what you are and take care of outwardly, that will die.
However, something lives within you, which will live on, will continue to live on and will get to know infinite depths.
An exalted happiness awaits you, but only those who see life in me.
I did not give myself the name ‘death’, but you did that, you people, because you do not know me.
For you I was ‘death’, but I am only that to those who are the living dead themselves.
In you lies a spark of eternal life, in you lies the eternal truth.
Oh, people, do not let your life be soured by my name.
I am not death, I am life, and anyone who knows me will be happy.”
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
For Jozef death is life, because the soul rises out from the body and receives inner ‘wings’:
A happy universal, spatial joy lives in me.
And why not in you?
This life is not difficult.
Sir, if you talk about death, and reincarnation, then they say: ‘Oh, that difficult carry-on.’
Sir, I know death, and I talk to the Grim Reaper there at every moment.
Because he is not there.
He says: ‘They put a black empty hat on me.
And they put a hollow mask on me, a skull’, the Grim Reaper says that, ‘with two holes in it, without teeth; there are four lying out here and the rest there.’
Questions and Answers Part 4, 1952
But she is out of that, the soul, she gets wings, and life continues, because there is no death.
And is that sour grapes?
Does that bother you when you speak about death, which is and means life
Questions and Answers Part 4, 1952
By means of their out-of-body experiences, the priests in the temples of Ancient Egypt learned that death is only to do with the temporary existence on earth:
I could see everything clearly; I saw the places where I was.
The secrets of earthly and spiritual life were not mysteries to me now, for I lived in these secrets and saw into all those mysteries of which man was still unaware.
Now I lived consciously between ‘life and death’.
My present situation meant ‘life’, but ‘life on earth’ was temporary and related to death.
There one would die; here was no death, for here there was only life.
Between Life and Death, 1940
This sounds very different than the praying of a person who tries to stop death, in order to be able to keep the eternal materialism in an earthly body:
The mother prays day and night for the patient.
And that patient must die, that patient must evolve.
That death does not exist, but that death will come, must come.
And now you pray, you pray, and you want to stop that death, that evolution?
That divine evolution?
In order to pray that God will leave your mother, your father, your child, yourself here, eternally on earth?
What do you want?
What are you asking for?
How deep is your prayer and what meaning does your prayer have?
Go and look in society.
Go to the churches and listen carefully what a minister like that, a priest like that has to tell and to pray about.
And you will see it, they ask to be able to experience eternal materialness.
If only a death never came.
But a death is evolution.
If there was no dying, you would stand still here.
You do not ask: how did I receive the life, where do we come from?
We tell that now, the masters now tell that by means of the books.
This is universal wisdom for your soul, for your spirit, for your personality, your spiritual life.
Questions and Answers Part 5, 1950
Beyond the grave
In the book ‘Those who came back from the Dead’, Jozef Rulof tells about the coachman Gerhard who takes the ‘dead’ to their final resting place.
The coachman had heard it said that Jozef talks to the dead, which was impossible in his opinion:
“Death is death”, he said and looked me sharply in the eye.
“You know what I am doing, I am involved with the dead every day, but not one opens his mouth.
How can a dead body like that speak?
You have to let the dead rest.
People who take part in that – he pointed with his hand to his forehead – are crazy.”
Then he burst out laughing.
“People no longer know how to enjoy themselves; it must be so dull here and then they search for something else.
So you mean that the dead people draw through you?”
He grinned and looked at me as if he sympathized with me.
“Have you finished?”
“Yes, I do not know of anything else.”
“Very good, then I will answer you.
You are not a bad chap but you know nothing about these things and you must not mock them.
You are a mocker of the very worst kind and a stupid person.
You laugh about something you do not know or understand and the origin and truth of which you cannot fathom.
Many people do that and it does not credit their personality.
I ask you: Can you see from me that I am crazy?
Am I different than before?
Do I look like a mad person?
Now, just answer.”
“No”, he said, “I can see nothing special about you.”
“Now then, I paint and draw through the spirits.
Therefore, through people who have died on earth and yet are alive.
They come back to us and make the most beautiful paintings through us.
You know that I have never painted and that I cannot do it.
For that matter, when I receive those pieces, then I do not even know that I am doing it.”
“It is a mystery to me”, he said, “a great mystery.
Yet you have changed.”
“That’s what you think, but I have not changed, in no way.
I have only become wiser with regard to the great problem of ‘death’.
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
When Gerhard dies, his belief ‘dead is dead’ costs him dearly.
Much later, when as a spirit he may tell Jozef what happened to him, we learn that he had a major struggle to accept that he lived on spiritually.
After all, this was against his ‘belief in death’.
He tells how strange it was for him when a spirit of light tried to make him realize in what state he lived.
The spirit of light said:
I have strange things to tell you.’
‘Strange things, you say?
Is everything not strange enough yet?’
He looked at me and I felt that he was a good person.
‘You died on earth.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Died’, he repeated and he continued to look at me.
‘You now live in eternity and I have come to convince you of it.’
In eternity?I thought.
But that is not possible, after all, then I would be dead and I was alive, was I not?
I had sympathy for him and a terrible suspicion entered me.
He is a crazy person!
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
The coachman first thought that the spirit of light was insane, after all he claimed that Gerhard was dead, and that was not true, because he was alive and could feel and think.
In the book ‘Those who came back from the Dead’ the long struggle of Gerhard to discard his ‘belief in death’ and to accept that he died on earth is described in detail
As soon as he could control himself and remained calm enough, the spirit of light took him to the earthly graveyards:
Then we visited graveyards and saw the earthly people there who went to visit the graves of their loved ones.
I saw terrible scenes, but why did they visit them there?
They are not there, after all!
Put your flowers next to their portrait in the room where they have lived and worked and spoken to you, but do not put those precious flowers on the graves, in which nothing but bones rest.
It saddens the spirit who lives on this side.
I want to call this to the people from this side.
They visit their dead and next to them, those whom people think are dead stride along in a beautiful garment and light.
Is it not sad that people know nothing about it on earth?
When I spoke to you about all those things at that graveyard, Jozef, I said so already, I pronounced the great truth that bones cannot speak.
I mocked and I should not have done that.
With the people who were mourning, I saw the spirit, who was sad because he could not reach them.
I saw different situations there, one of which touched me deeply.
I will tell you about it.
Suddenly, I thought of my own material body.
Where did my body lie?
Was it buried in this graveyard?
I looked at my master and he knew immediately what was going on inside me.
I now also understood why we were at this place.
I therefore asked the brother: ‘Is my earthly body here?’
My master took my hand in his and said: ‘Are you strong enough to see your own body, Gerhard?’
I thought about it and said: ‘Yes, I want to see my own body.
Now that I have experienced all of this, I want to experience that as well, however awful it may be.’
‘Come on, follow me.’
‘How do you know where I am buried?’
‘It takes concentration, my friend, nothing else but the power of thought.
You yourself now form my connection; through you I will therefore find the other one, which once belonged to you.’
I trembled and felt my heart beating fiercely.
We walked along various graves and finally my master stopped me.
I read: ‘Here lies G.D.’
‘Your own body’, said the brother to me, ‘your body, which hid the spiritual body during the earthly life.’
I sat down on the edge of my own grave and looked at myself.
There I lay, dead, but I lived here and looked at what once belonged to me.
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
At that moment Gerhard would have liked to have been able to say to his mother that she must not look for him in the graveyard:
I thought about my life on earth.
Flowers decorated my grave, placed there by my loved ones.
I felt their loving thoughts for me, who had died.
This scene was horrific.
Why, I thought, do you search for me here, mother, and not in your presence?
How many times had my loved ones already been here and had wept, so that I could feel their suffering!
Soon only the bones would remain, it would not take long now.
However much I wanted to, I could not penetrate that body.
Something stopped me and I felt that it was my master who prevented me from doing this.
I had discarded my earthly garment and received another one, which lived on eternally.
My God, how wonderful this reunion is, how small and trivial the human being must feel who may experience this.
I also felt trivial and small; it had overcome me.
However awful it was, the image was educational.
Here my mother tried to find me again, here her tears flowed, but I would never come back here.
I wanted to go, far away from here.
I had thought I could deal with all of this, but still it became too much for me.
How great God is, Who controls all of this.
You are of dust and you will return to dust!
I thought about these words.
I had been dust and had become dust again.
I prayed intensely at the edge of my grave, very intensely, that I would be able to receive the power to open the eyes of my loved ones.
I prayed for this and my master along with me.
I would never come back here; I knew and felt that.
Mother, my dear mother, oh, do not come here again!
I am alive, I am happy, and I will see you again one day.
Throw flowers on human paths when they are still alive.
Give love, mother, to everything that lives, only then will you feel eternal life and you will not look for me here again.
Then you will know that I am alive and can return to you.
Do not look for me here, I no longer wish to see what lies here.
Thank God, I am alive and that there is dead.
Again, I stared at my body and then left that place very quickly, never to return.
Then I thought about you, Jozef, and admired you even more, that you recorded our life from the earth to make it known to mankind.
We left in silence; I had sunk into deep reflection.
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
Gerhard reaches the conclusion that only those who do not feel any love for the other life are spiritually ‘dead’:
Anyone who did not possess any love was one of the living dead in the spirit.
I would do my best, because I wanted to make progress, I would work hard on myself.
Now I understood the brother in every way.
How simple this life actually was.
On earth people spoke of religion, however, all those religions had no meaning when people did not feel love, possessed no love for everything that lived.
In the human being lay the Divine core; the human being had attunement to God.
However, these people were dead, spiritually dead, if I should be allowed to live that same life one more time, how differently I would live.
I would master nothing but love, because love meant light and happiness.
My master possessed a great deal of love, because he was open to me and he gave himself completely.
I wanted to be like that as well, like him and many others.
Those who came back from the Dead, 1937
Master Zelanus tells how he takes people who believe in a ‘last judgement’ to their grave after their death to show them that they may be pleased that God is not as they believed him to be, because then they would have to lie and wait in that grave:
But if you come higher for this wisdom, then you are faced with a theologian and then we must take along the theologian and say: “Do you see?
You lie there, just be grateful that God is not the way you built him up.
You must lie and wait in the grave until the last judgement comes.
Lectures Part 3, 1952
For a person who passes on to a sphere of light, death has lost its meaning.
When the spiritual guide asks whether the grave must still be visited, not much more time is spent on this:
“Do you also wish to see your death?”
“Yes, what does my death matter to me?”
“Well, let us see that first, then we can finish that.
You are lying there.
Ready?
Good.”
Lectures Part 2, 1951
Reincarnation
Jozef Rulof says the following about the painting which is shown at the beginning of the article ‘Death’:
I got a painting, a plate, a porcelain plate, recently; if you see that now, then you will say: ‘That is now the Grim Reaper, that is death.’
And then a wonderful apparition is standing there, a spiritual apparition as a mother.
She is floating.
You all look though that apparition, it has been painted in such a rarefied way.
And there is an old man sitting there, he is sitting there, and then that mother points with her staff - the staff is a law, evolution is a staff, is a law - and then she points to that life book and says: ‘Today it is your time.’
But there is an apple lying there, and there is life, and a flower - so he goes through life - and there is a girl sitting next to that, so he is reincarnated as a girl.
That is called ‘Motherhood’.
On a plate like that.
Questions and Answers Part 3, 1952
The masters explain that death brings us to a reincarnation, or to a hereafter where we continue to live as a conscious spiritual personality:
And the ultimate for all material can now be seen and be experienced”, we got to know that, by means of life and death.
If you die on earth, and which the human being calls dying, that is the experiencing of ‘great wings’.
You grow.
Evolution.
Death is motherhood.
What did the world, what did the church, what did the bible say about that?
Death is rotting and a Last Judgement stands on top of the human face, on the living heart of the human being and wants the human being to experience a resurrection from prehistoric ages.
If you die, my sisters and brothers, and all the life, then the God as mother stands next to you and this dying changes into a continuing, she takes you either to the world of the unconscious, reincarnation, you get a new life on earth, or you continue ‘beyond the coffin’ and you enter your first foundation for justice, harmony and love, and it is only then that you lay foundations for your spiritual personality.
That is the universal death.
Lectures Part 3, 1952
By means of death, we also get to know our twin soul, the soul that belongs to us for eternity.
In life after death, along with our twin soul we will experience a spiritual love which goes much further than the material love that we know on earth.
If there was no death, my brothers, then we would never get to experience our spiritual twin soul and that is our Divine being one anyway!
The Cosmology of Jozef Rulof Part 1, 1944
We got love by experiencing death and nothing else!
The Cosmology of Jozef Rulof Part 1, 1944
Books remove fear
Via Jozef Rulof, the masters of the light wrote thousands of pages in order for instance to remove the fear of death for the human being on earth.
Master Alcar is the spiritual leader of Jozef Rulof.
Master Alcar knows absolutely ...
He says: ‘We did not have to write at all.
Christ did not need to come either.
But because Christ came, and because we know that we are alive, why would we not take away the fear of death from the people, while death only just means happiness?’
This is why they come back and say: ‘We are alive.
Do not be afraid of death and do not weep for the one who is dead, because there is no death.’
So they are not obliged to tell us that, only this: ‘Love everything which lives and there is no death.
Then you are fortunate, because we are alive.’
And everything is in that.
Questions and Answers Part 2, 1951
In the book ‘Through the Grebbe Line to Eternal Life’, Theo wishes to remove the fear of death from his wife Annie, because her church has not succeeded in this:
Neither Annie nor her parents appeared prepared for death.
But how many people are, I wondered.
What difference did it make if you went faithfully to church, let your spirit be filled with quotations from the Bible, with words, if, despite all this, God remained far-away and threatening, if Eternal Life, which you heard so many wonderful things about, still appeared even more terrifying than the earthly life, so that you fought like an animal to keep it?
How little life there must be in the teachings of the churches and how unconvincing they must be, that after twenty centuries the majority of its followers have still not conquered their fear of death, of God and of Eternal Life ...
With even more gratitude I thought about the mild, even great proclamations, such as I had come across in my spiritualist books, which completely took away the fear of death, showed us God as a loving, strictly just Father, for Whom none of His children should feel any kind of fear, really a God in all His works!
And my longing to get Annie to share this thought became greater than ever, to take away her fear of death, so that she would later enter Eternal Life better prepared.
Through the Grebbe Line to Eternal Life, 1942
During a contact evening, Jozef Rulof deals with a question from a gentleman who has a real neurosis for death:
I am here: “The undersigned, J.J.Grouw ...”
From who is this note?
(Gentleman in the hall): ‘From me.’
Sir, you do not have such a nice letter there.
“ ... has a really terrible fear, neurosis, of death.”
Have you read our books?
(Gentleman in the hall): ‘No, sir.’
Sir, then I have twenty books for you which will take death away from you.
If you want to be rid of that neurosis then begin immediately with ‘A View into the Hereafter.’
You would be even better to take ‘Jeus of Mother Crisje’, if they are there now, because in them ...
I was eleven years old and then my father passed on - and I always saw ‘behind the coffin’ - and when he was buried then he walked with me behind his own corpse.
Then you will suddenly be cured, then you will suddenly be rid of the Grim Reaper.
It will cost you ten cents, sir, there (in the break people could lend books on the spot from the library of the society), and you will be rid of the Grim Reaper.
But that is not too expensive, is it?
And the Grim Reaper will irrevocably lose his crown‚ if you read that.
Quickly take a few books with you, sir, then you will be rid of that neurosis.
Questions and Answers Part 3, 1952
The fear of death can be removed by means of knowledge if that fear lives in the day-consciousness.
The day-consciousness is the consciousness that we experience during the day when we are awake.
If fear of death is due to experiencing dreadful transitions during previous lives, that fear has ended up in the subconscious and cannot be cured by reading:
“So,” sir says, “it can happen every day: I am in a very bad and miserable way.”
Wouldn’t you say so, sir?
‘And then that fear of death.’
Yes, sir, what should I give you for this?
Twenty books which remove the fear.
But it is possible, after reading, that you will still walk round with that fear.
And then it is a part of your subconscious.
Look, fear of death because of ignorance, that lives in the day consciousness.
A Protestant and a human being who knows nothing about these things, for that human being death is still death.
If you have a very religious person, a bible expert, he says: ‘Yes, we continue.
It says so in the bible’, if you get that out of it.
But the human being who really does not know the laws of life and death in life, for him death in day consciousness is also fear.
Questions and Answers Part 3, 1952
Death is fiction
In the first book ‘A View into the Hereafter, master Alcar already says to André that the human being on earth should be pleased that he may die, because in life after death he can experience a different happiness than is possible on earth.
An example of this is the reunion with our deceased loved ones.
In the articles ‘First Sphere of Light’ to ‘Seventh Sphere of Light’, there is a description of what other happiness also awaits us.
Alcar told him that man on earth should rejoice that he was allowed to die there.
Do you hear?
We ought to be glad that we’re allowed to die there.
Isn’t it dreadful for many to have to hear that they must be happy to be permitted to die?
Should one be happy to be permitted to pass on?
Had he understood Alcar clearly and correctly?
Yes, because he had said that God had a different kind of happiness in mind for the life that exists on earth.
A View into the Hereafter, 1936
Many people on earth still experience death as an animal that snatches their loved ones and finally violates them themselves.
They feed that animal with their own sorrow, tears and suffering, so that image takes on horrible forms.
In this way death becomes worse than an animal which only kills because of hunger.
For many people death is a pre-animal-like animal which randomly snatches people from the earth.
They do not realize that death has become so large by means of their own thoughts, that they have built up this image themselves.
They even think it is terrible when an old and sick person passes on who cannot experience much more happiness in that body:
And what did people do?
They would cry, many were even heartbroken when an elderly person passed on and left them behind.
They were broken with grief and their sorrow ruined them.
How long would it last before they had got far enough to joyfully and gladly let go of their loved ones who were bound for a higher life?
To lose all feeling of self-love, how long would that take?
When would there be people on earth who bore this wisdom within?
When would people be able to call out: Greet those who have already passed on?
When, for heaven’s sake?
It would take thousands of years yet, and meanwhile they are tormented by the thought of death.
All that time they would keep on nurturing their pre-animal-like inner being with their sorrow and tears and their grief.
It robbed them of all their vital juice until they were empty.
It was an animalistic thought.
Death made them shiver and shake.
A View into the Hereafter, 1936
By looking into life after this life, Jozef has experienced that the concept of ‘death’ is fiction:
André knew better by now.
The word ‘death’ was a swearword in the dictionary.
It defiled all other thoughts that had to do with life.
The word death smothered everything and robbed the living of the strength to go on living after they had lost their loved ones.
No, there was no death, death had never ever existed.
Death was a fiction.
Death was nothing and everything, death was life.
Death lived, how could that be?
Here he beheld life after death; there it was again, that word death!
In the life after this life people kept on living.
Eternally, forever together with those who were already here and lived anew.
A View into the Hereafter, 1936
The human being created the word ‘death’ and therefore thinks that this word also has a right of existence, that there is such a thing as ‘being dead’:
Just like that horrible word: ‘he is dead’.
No, he is alive!
And just like on the grave: he is resting in peace, and she too.
And she flies and flaps, and she is gone.
That is nothing which is lying there.
Is it?
All out of the dictionary.
That dictionary of ours is not right.
But we have, but the human being discovered that dictionary.
They used to be just scribbles, sir, in the stone age we only just had a story like that, and then we knew that: oh, to the right, to the left, you will find me yonder.
We kept making signs, and that became writing.
What all did the human being discover for himself?
Questions and Answers Part 3, 1952
In the newsletters there is much attention in particular for the number of people who ‘died’:
The human being possesses a death.
Do you see that this mankind still cannot think?
Death stands before you every day.
The papers note deaths, and there is no death.
In which falsehood, in which unconsciousness do you actually live?
Lectures Part 2, 1951
If ‘death’ does not exist, no one will die either:
Millions of people died, and not one of them is dead.
Questions and Answers Part 5, 1950
The soul does not die, she continues her evolution:
Now millions of people perish on earth, but still not one human being has died, what dies there is necessary, but that is material, the soul as spirit now goes further and higher, she pursues her evolution!
The Cosmology of Jozef Rulof Part 1, 1944