There are seven spheres, of which the first and the second one have a lot in common with the earthly sphere, though on a spiritual basis.

Over there, a person gradually starts to develop, in preparation for the higher spheres.

The nature was as people on earth know summer, mild, with a clear blue sky and a few snow-white clouds, but then in the morning when it is still so wonderfully dreamy, when the nature sings and everything appeals to you.

It is like that in the first sphere.

The trees here rise up to a height, which they cannot reach on earth.

They look like cypresses, even if the leaves have a different shape.

Look, we’re already in the first sphere.

You won’t notice the slightest difference between here and the earth.

It is the earth, yet in the spirit.’

André saw a country, as Alcar had said, which resembled the earth.

He saw birds and flowers and trees, and greenery, he saw all the things that can also be found in nature on the earth.

‘How is this possible Alcar, we’re on the side beyond and yet on earth.’

‘Exactly, André.

All human beings know that they live in the spirit, but his feeling finds attunement to matter.

They were dressed in a coarse-material but some already wore beautiful garments.

He sensed what that meant.

These individuals might soon enter a higher attunement.

In the first sphere the human being is approximately thirty to thirty-six years old.

The body accepts the age in the spheres.

The higher you come there, the younger the soul body.

You can meet a young man in the highest heavens and yet he is a cosmic master, a conscious being and a sovereign of love.

They all fight their heavy spiritual battle to ascend, they won’t rest until they have reached Summerland, the first happy sphere.

That’s why the first, the second and the third sphere are purification spheres where man casts off his material feeling.

Not until they’re in the third sphere will they feel free from matter, and there they prepare themselves to enter Summerland, which you visited during your previous journey.

So their battle is a battle to conquer themselves.

You must feel how hard it is, because they have to dismantle themselves bit by bit.

All the earthly pedestals crumble down on this side.

First they must demolish what they thought they possessed.

Their earthly possessions are nothing but a hindrance in the life on this side.

‘Can people develop faster here than on earth?’

‘On earth it’s easier to develop spiritually than on this side.

This has the following reason: on earth, in a material condition, a heavy battle must be fought to acquire spiritual happiness, and it demands a lot of power and effort.

Matter is the means, through matter it can be attained.

Life on earth isn’t hard when one possesses all the things that make life more pleasant.

Matter can enable one to develop by helping others.

This means freeing oneself from all existing material conditions.

But matter is the downfall of many people.

Cutting oneself loose from the earth, in other words enriching oneself spiritually in a material condition, that’s what we’re after, that’s what God wants from all His children.

The lives of many, as I said, are ruled by matter.

During one’s life on earth a single deed may suffice to make a person happy.

One deed, performed as an act of love, entails development in life.

The earth is in deep darkness, and it takes a lot of power to emerge out of the darkness into the light.

Those who are capable of that will see light when they pass on.

They see the light which they carry within, and will find their attunement here.

The landscape here is the same as a summer’s morning on earth.

I let the sublime silence penetrate me.

Anyone who wants to have an idea about the spheres, must be aware that even this silence is almost too much to deal with.

It is so sacred, so deep ...

No one disturbs us here.

The flowers, they only radiate.

The birds only sing.

The water is crystal clear and not a particle of dust affects that purity.

There were no hard pieces of ground where I could hurt my feet: the ground was as soft as moss.

Tears of gratitude rolled down my cheeks and I was not ashamed of it.

I saw several souls on my journey who thanked God with their tears, because words could not do that.

What possession was revealed to those who had mastered the first sphere.

The atmosphere never changes here.

As nature reveals itself in all its sunshine, it is the astral reality, it suddenly occurs to me now.

From whom did I receive this thought?

I was completely open to it and waited for the explanation.

But it did not come and so I continued my walk.

I looked up as if I expected to see the sun there.

But the feeling which came to me again, told me that the sun belonged to the material universe.

The light which I saw here was the astral light which had been built up by the good deeds of the first souls.

It was maintained and even strengthened by those who followed.

I was also contributing to this light, as I was allowed to witness.

And this applies to everyone who carries out a good deed.

The light here can never be obscured, there can be neither rain nor mist.

Those situations belonged to the spheres underneath.

Since there was no love there, the light could not shine.

This was how it was for the people there; those who did not love, closed themselves off from the light.

The worlds of this side are as people themselves feel!

It is a law, which no soul can escape.

How sacred life in the spheres of light is.

There are no disruptions in anything.

My eyes glide along the garments again.

Not one garment is the same, but they all radiate.

I am also clothed in a similar garment.

And it was as if it had already belonged to me for centuries.

Wherever I look, all I can see is beauty.

On earth a person can have beauty, however, here it is a spiritual possession.

The buildings in the first sphere have an amazing architecture.

They are high up and built from snow-white marble.

Each of these buildings has its own meaning.

As a result of this their radiations also differ.

It touches my life as it were, since I am part of this sphere.

One building in particular attracts my attention.

I will walk over to it and try to find out what it means.

However, with the first step which I take I already know.

The thought occurs to me as if of its own accord again, it is father, I feel, who is now helping me from a distance.

In this building the sick people of the earth are studied, as well as cures for their illnesses.

I now also know that father and Angelica are in this temple of knowledge at the moment.

I will not disturb them and just calmly follow my path.

I gradually enter deeper into the life of the first sphere, it is absorbing me completely.

My thoughts and feelings likewise become deeper, thoughts and images come to me as if of their own accord.

If I think about a tree or a flower, then these children of nature immediately begin to tell me about their lives, so that I can follow this in all its stages.

A bird does the same.

A building tells me for what purpose it was built, what it serves as.

The ground on which I walk tells me how it emerged.

In this way I continue to penetrate further into God’s creation.

I sit down on one of the many benches, and I think about the large number of things which have been revealed to me.

Wherever my eye wanders, the spiritual life smiles upon me.

I see masses of people coming and going along the many paths which lead to the buildings.

I tune in to them and realize that they are busy mastering one kind of study or another.

Pure love and the will to serve drive all these souls.

They fill their time with work and prayer, in the need to master a higher emotional degree.

Also the people who are walking round there or have lain down, are busy doing this.

While thinking, they penetrate deeper into creation and as a result of this they gain more feelings, more consciousness.

Birds come to me and perch on my hands and shoulders.

I look at the little creatures and notice that they look a lot like the eastern types on earth.

However, their whole radiation and their behaviour show a greater wisdom.

These little creatures understand the higher consciousness which lives amongst the souls here, and are completely tuned to it.

Like us people, they finally came here after a long stage of development and are now growing towards the highest degree of life, which their sort can achieve.

This happens as of its own accord.

It is nature, which forces this life to carry on, to return to God who created it.

I get up.

There, not far from me, a pond glistens.

I want to go there, to sit down at its banks.

I want to ask this water to tell me how it emerged.

The birds accompany me, fly ahead of me.

God, how wonderful Your creation is, I repeat again and again.

The silver water tells me and I listen with my head bowed and my hands joined.

In this way wisdom reaches us in the spheres, life itself tells us about its origin and its development.

Thinking about all of this, a very different feelings surges in me.

I start to follow it and the feelings take me to a life which is related to mine.

I know this life and feel one with the happiness which radiates from it.

This feeling becomes stronger and I raise my head and look around, believing that someone is approaching me.

Then I am looking into my own child’s face.

‘Liesje!’ I say, ‘Liesje, have you come to visit me?’

Immediately afterwards I saw a few shapes radiating light high in the heavens.

‘The masters of this sphere’, it came to me, ‘greet you.

They know that you live in the spheres and follow you.

So just carry on, Theo.’

Father!

That could only be father, only he says my name in that way.

And I can now feel him as well, along with Angelica, and I am aware to be carried by their love.

I was afraid a moment ago to carry on, I did not dare to move an inch, frightened by the power of what was happening.

Now this has disappeared.

The masters know that I live here.

They know every soul, which enters here, their enormous consciousness makes this possible.

They look after all life here and watch over it.

This is also wonderful and moving at the same time.

We will go to the second, the third, and the fourth spheres.

We experienced that the first, the second, the third are still situations, must be worlds which have attunement to our earthly life of feeling.

That material has still not gone from us; we still have the organism in us.

We want to use our hands, but we no longer need those hands.

We want to go, we want to walk; we still have time ... we have the feeling for time, but there is no longer time.

We are spatially conscious, eternal ready and sure for what will soon come.

We do everything there by means of feeling, a look from your eyes immediately tells the other life what you want, what you see, what you feel, and immediately that wisdom is accepted.

The power for the human spirit lies completely open.

If you now step out of the body, then you have to think for spatial reality.

Are you presently, at the moment, real, true?

Which of you can now say: “I know how I must walk there?”

You only have to think: ‘I do that here, I can do that here.’

Yes, here you have legs, feet to walk, but there you do not have the ground to stand on.

Fundamentally that building up has been neglected, you have not yet started with it.

We see the human being coming with a great deal of material possession.

Look, my boy, we’re now entering the first sphere.’

André saw people, houses and other buildings; many dwellings reflected the inner attunement of the beings that lived there, and they had been built in keeping with their power of love.

He had visited this place before, but now he was to learn about their art.

The first sphere resembled the earth.

He saw other buildings too, erected in various styles, some of which were very beautiful and had a different meaning.

The spiritual dwellings were everywhere, in the mountains and on the waterfront too, built to their feeling, taste and strength.

It was all spiritual substance, and as such it appeared genuine and natural.

‘What is that big building over there, Alcar?

It looks much finer than all the others.’

‘The master builders who erected it dwell in a higher sphere.

So it was accomplished in accordance with their inner power and feeling.

It’s meant to urge those who live here to reach that same level in art.

At the sight of a higher attunement they will exert themselves accordingly.

Is that clear to you?’

‘Yes, Alcar.’

‘As you know, a spiritual dwelling reflects the inner condition of the being that lives in it.

Those who built this, all possess a higher attunement; this makes them sense a higher form of art, an architecture of greater beauty.

Consequently, all these buildings are also maintained by them.

This applies to all the spheres.

Art in this sphere corresponds with the level of the second attunement, and as we ascend we find higher forms of art.

In my sphere we are acquainted with art from the sixth sphere, which is taken care of by higher beings just as it is here, because both spheres are connected with each other.

It’s like the reflection of light from a higher level which, as I said, will urge us on to attain that level in art, that love.

This is because everything is love, nothing but love, because love means life and feeling and man will create after his feeling.’

Now we will go over to the first existential sphere in the spirit (the first sphere of light).

Those who live there, André, know that they have passed on on earth.

They know that they dwell in eternity, even though their feeling is material.

This sphere is therefore identical to the earth, yet as spiritual substance.

That’s why it’s the first existential sphere, which means that they truly attune in the spirit.

So here we have a natural condition.

Everything that lives there is true, it’s real because it’s an existential condition.

I showed you the Spheres of Light.

It is so wonderful to speak about the spheres because then we live in the peace, the quiet, the bliss and the silence.

But what use is it to you?

When the word, the not understanding comes out of you again, passes your lips, therefore something that is already in disharmony with the reality – you must get the reality out of everything, we teach you – then you already kick yourself out of that first sphere.

Men and women live there together, and younger people too, but no children.

The children live in other spheres, where the little ones find attunement, and later on, when they have reached the appropriate age they will enter into an existential condition.

The children’s spheres are situated in the higher areas, which we will visit.

But others, I mean the younger beings, have reached the age of fourteen when they arrived here from the earth.

Those who are younger, meaning from the age of seven up to fourteen, live in different spheres again than the even smaller beings that have left the earth.

In other words: there are different conditions for the small ones, namely the connecting spheres which lie between the third, fourth and fifth sphere.

The youngsters who live in the first sphere are together, as far as their parents aren’t in the same or other, higher spheres.

So if their parents possess a different attunement, then they’re alone until they have won themselves one single attunement and possess one love, which is their attunement in the spirit.

But we know that there are mothers who are alone, and fathers and children who are alone, just as various friends and relatives, who will all be united later on, to remain together in all eternity, in happiness, in love, in perfect holy happiness.

But this won’t happen until they have reached the first blissful spheres in the spirit.

Many are therefore impatiently awaiting the moment of their reunion.

Accordingly, man arrives here from the earth and believes he will meet his loved ones, only to find that they dwell in other spheres.

It makes these people very sad and we witness doleful scenes.

There is nothing more gruesome for man than to have to descend into the dark spheres.

Many return to earth again to help loved ones they have left behind.

They convince them that their life goes on forever, and they urge them on to develop themselves in the spirit.

Others descend into the dark areas to help the unfortunate because they want to mean something to others and in that way they take themselves in hand.

On this side man can only develop by giving, which is the love that serves.

The development of those who merely demand comes to a standstill.

Life on earth cannot be compared to this life, even if the outward appearance of this sphere is similar to the earth.

Don’t forget that earthly conditions are meaningless in the spirit.

Here people live for each other.

On earth a person may be a servant.

Those who have lots of property let themselves be served, but there’s an end to that here.

So all who have reached the first sphere are convinced within of their spiritual life.

This sphere also encompasses other conditions, which are also intermediary spheres where those people dwell who closed themselves off on earth, to spend their life in solitude.

Here they go on living that same kind of life, because the attunement of their feeling doesn’t change.

But when we point their situation out to them, they reply: ‘I’m happy, don’t you see my light?’

Of course they’ve got light, but what is their light compared to the light of those who live in higher spheres?

However, if they continue in this way, then hundreds of years will pass and they will remain in this attunement all that time.

Their development will be at a standstill because they close themselves off to life.

You see from all these conditions that only those will be happy who become one with all of life; this is the path of love they must follow.

On earth one learns to possess, here one learns to give, to make others happy.

That is why the goal of life on earth is not understood.

To many people their study and scholarship is fame and destruction.

However learned the scholars may be, on earth possession means sensation to many of them.

Here one qualifies to serve life.

To experience life as happiness, that is what the study, the wisdom of many here is all about.

On earth one can train to become a physician to comfort suffering mankind, to obtain a quality which will alleviate its misery.

But how many sense their calling?

Some of those you just saw are scholars who once lived on earth, and now they are guided along by those who weren’t learned, who never studied.

What does that tell you, André?

The latter possess love, and love is wisdom.

No material skill can bring that about.

So it’s worthless if one doesn’t possess love.

The scholars of the earth ought to submit to them because they are beings with a higher attunement.

Here one bows one’s head before love.

Here one is filled with awe by love, because love is light and wisdom on this side.’

‘Are we going over there, Alcar?’

‘Yes, we’ll go and listen to what he has to say.’

The one who was talking was a middle-aged spirit, dressed in a spiritual garment.

‘Brothers’, the spirit spoke, ‘once we dwelt on earth and knew nothing about this life.’

André sensed that he was talking about eternal life.

‘Now everything is clear to us.

I already told you that those who profess a different religion meet up with hatred, but here such a thing is impossible.

Here we are one and know only one Father, a Father of Love.

Christ made our Father known to us.

And how beautiful it is to love, to be able to mean something to others.

But how can we help ourselves and others?

Descend, brothers, descend into the dark areas, where your children and your brothers and sisters live; they need your help.

It’s the road others followed, and which we must follow.

I dwelt there for a long time, so I know how many there are who need help.

Why are you still waiting?

Don’t you hear them calling?

You will be creating your very own condition in that way, and when you return, you will enter other, even higher spheres.

Those who don’t live for others don’t develop.

We must work and pray, that’s where our power, indeed all power stems from.

Those who wait are not alive, they are alive yet dead.

I call out to you all, help them, your sisters and brothers.

Don’t you feel the urge to tell others about your life, that goes on forever?

To say that you’re alive?

That your mother or your father and children are with you?’

Full of fervour the spirit went on talking, but André felt that they would move on, so they left.

‘You see how on this side people must also be urged to mean something to others.

In the second sphere there is no more need for that.

I know the one who was addressing them and I’m very pleased to see him again on this road.

I met him in the dark spheres, he was thoroughly unhappy and he asked me to show him some proof of a higher life.

Only then would he be able to accept it.

I showed myself to him in a higher condition and now, after a hundred years, I see him again, convincing others.

You heard him telling them about a life he once experienced, and he has a clear knowledge of all the transitions of feeling in the spirit.

This is how one being acts upon another, and how he himself will develop by helping others.

I couldn’t have demonstrated this to you more clearly.

His road is ours, and our road is that of the One Who, on earth, was nailed to the cross.

Following his road, that is God’s holy Will.

I convinced this man with a single piece of proof, and it made him take himself in hand.

Deeds, only deeds will lay one stone upon the other and build a spiritual dwelling.

Everything will radiate when they possess these inner powers, which they acquired by helping others.

This truth is inherent in every condition I show to you.

Soon he too will ascend; he has already received his spiritual garment.

Lots of happiness and love await him in the second sphere.

I call out to man on earth: Start now, don’t wait until you get here; what you possess on earth, you need not acquire here.

Everyone already shapes his own task on earth, and will do so on this side too.

Those who are not aware of their task are not alive and will first have to be roused.

But this may take a long time, and that is why we come down to earth to explain to them that they must follow our path.’