When the book ‘The Origin of the Universe’ by Jozef Rulof was published in 1939 in the Netherlands, science used the term ‘race’ as a classification of mankind.

People spoke about the ‘white race’, the ‘oriental race types’, the ‘negroes’, the ‘Papuans’, the ‘Chinese race’, the ‘Japanese race’, etc.

At that time, it was scientifically responsible and socially customary to think and speak like that.

‘The Origin of the Universe’ brought a new explanation for the mutual differences which people saw.

In that book the evolution of the soul on earth was described, and the physical grades which the soul went through in order to expand its inner life.

For the sake of the reader from that time, in that book the term ‘races’ was also used.

The classification into race types was the then view ‘as the academic saw that’, the writer on the other hand used the classification into seven physical grades:

In the book series by Jozef Rulof, the switch of the social thinking in races to the explanation level with physical grades was built up gradually.

If the writer had immediately claimed that no races existed, many readers would not have been able to make that step in thinking.

For most readers from that time, the existence of races was a fact that was confirmed by science and by their own observation.

In addition, the writer explained repeatedly that he first built up something new before he removed the old, so that the reader was not denied anything without being given something else in its place.

This is why the writer began with an extensive explanation of the physical grades.

For this purpose, he mostly used the term ‘material grades of life’ because they were grades by means of which the life of the soul formed itself into the material matter.

The article ‘material grades of life’ extensively describes the construction of the human body on earth.

It was only when the interested reader had been able to build up a clear image of this that the writer asked the reader to adapt his world image and to let go of the term race.

In order to explain what material grades of life were, the writer first used the word races.

Gradually, he explained that material grades of life did not coincide with races.

First it was described that the so-called ‘whites’ occurred in the fifth, the sixth as well as the seventh material grade of life.

In addition, the reader heard that various races could be placed within the same material grade of life.

In this way, as well as the ‘whites’, oriental people, Chinese, Japanese and people with a dark or tinted skin colour were also situated in the seventh and highest material grade of life.

For many readers in 1939 that was already a considerable step in thinking.

Many ‘whites’ at that time considered themselves superior, and to hear that they had to share their alleged superiority was not evident.

This is why, up until his last year of life on earth, Jozef Rulof emphasized that the seventh and highest material grade of life did not coincide with the so-called ‘white race’.

Next, the writer went a step further by cancelling the race difference within a material grade of life.

He stated that for instance within the seventh material grade of life no different races existed, but that the body of all these people had reached the seventh grade of development.

The distinction of ‘whites’, orientals, Chinese and people with a dark or tinted skin colour on the basis of their body is then no longer applicable.

Then the writer could go another step further and explain that no different races at all exist.

In order to expand the world image, this social thinking has to be let go of completely:

Many contemporaries of Jozef Rulof looked at the skin colour of their fellow human being and still connected particular values and meanings to that skin colour.

They thought in terms of ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’.

For Jozef it was clear that the skin colour was not in any way a distinguishing factor between the material grades of life.

Because there were ‘white’ bodies which belonged to the fifth, the sixth and the seventh material grade of life, and there were ‘coloured’ bodies which belonged to the seventh grade.

‘The Cosmology of Jozef Rulof’ already claimed in 1944 both that no human races exist and that also the skin colour must make way for the distinction into seven material grades of life:

For the writer himself the soul is central and not the temporary body of the soul.

By means of a material body, the human soul gains experiences as a result of which it can evolve spiritually.

Every soul experiences many bodies in all the material grades in order to grow inwardly and to heighten its feeling.

However, that inner evolution happens slowly, the soul needs thousands of bodies in order to reach a high grade of feeling.

A soul with a body from the sixth material grade of life has not necessarily evolved spiritually higher than a soul with a body from the fifth material grade of life.

The article ‘material grades of life’ gives a broader explanation for the difference between physical and spiritual evolution.

The system of material grades of life is not about ‘people’, but about the physical evolution of the material form of the soul.

A soul with a body from a particular material grade of life does not coincide with the term ‘human being’ as that is generally deployed.

This difference is explained in the article ‘human being or soul’.

In the article ‘explanation at soul level’ a fundamental distinction is made between two explanation levels which were included in the books by Jozef Rulof: the earthly thinking and the soul level.

The earthly thinking was used in the books for the sake of the reader from that time.

This level of explanation shows the thinking of that reader, and not the view of the writer.

The vision of the writer is the soul level that is slowly built up and is only fully unfolded in the later books ‘The Cosmology of Jozef Rulof’.

The term race belongs in the earthly explanation level, as the human being from 1939 thought.

The 27 books by Jozef Rulof were written in order to transcend this social thinking and to make the evolution of the soul the main focus.

For the soul no races exist, but various bodies do exist as a result of which the soul can gain experiences.

The soul level redefines most terms which the readers from then used, and adds a number of new terms in order to reach a new explanation level.

In order to build up the full meaning of those new terms, use was first made of existing and known words.

The fact that particular words were used in the books by Jozef Rulof does not mean that the writer gave any value or reality to those words.

It only means that those words were used by the readers from that time when the books by Jozef Rulof were published.

This is why those readers were told:

Because the soul level is built up gradually in the books by Jozef Rulof, it is not immediately clear to every reader that the word race does not indicate any reality and must be counted as part of the reality of the earthly thinking of the reader from 1939.

This problem is even greater when a quotation is taken from the context of this series of books.

This is why the publisher of the books by Jozef Rulof decided, for most of the sentences from these books in which the word race occurs, to include a reference to this article ‘races do not exist’.

As a result of the horrific crimes by Adolf Hitler and others, mankind has become aware of the risk of the term ‘race’.

During the second half of the twentieth century, science also reached the conclusion that this term must be abandoned, because there are no scientific grounds for it (see

statement_on_race.pdf).

This has freed the way, in the present time, for reserving the use of the word race for matters concerning racism, or for animal species.

Whereas the thinking in terms of human races at the time of Jozef Rulof was still part of the dominant world image, the consciousness of the present mankind has now transcended this.

Jozef Rulof already knew that no races existed, and during his time he fought against the racism that was found ‘normal’ in the mid-20th century and was even applied by the government of various countries.

Read more about this in the article ‘against racism and discrimination’.