In the same situation, another person who had passed over told about his life on this side.

He came back to me as a result of a conversation, which we had had together, shortly before he passed over, about life after death.

Gerhard was an acquaintance of mine who met me now and again and who was a coachman for a funeral undertaker.

I met him while I was at the graveyard near the exit after he had taken someone to his final resting place.

He beckoned to me from afar to come to him.

After the usual conversation about everyday things and questions about each other’s families, he asked me: “I heard that you take part in strange things, is that true?”

I immediately felt what he was getting at and asked: “Strange things, you say?

What do you mean by that?”

“Well, I mean that spiritualism, do you take part in that?”

I smiled and asked: “Is it strange to take part in that?

Do you know what spiritualism is and means?

You do not think it is a sort of sport, do you?”

“I do not know”, he said, “but you hear so much about it.

I do not understand it and think it is ridiculous, but I heard that you draw and paint through the dead.”

I clearly felt his sarcasm, but did not go into it.

“Are you making a fool of people?” he continued.

“Is that really what you hear said?

I do not believe any of it.

I will tell you some­thing”, he said, looking at me.

I meanwhile gauged him and when I felt the state he was in, I had to laugh aloud.

High above my head, on his coach box, wrapped in blankets, with a whip in his right hand, he continued: “Why are you laughing?

Do you already know what I want to say?

Is it trickery?

I thought so.”

I did not answer and let him finish talking, it was so funny!

“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’.

Really, Gerhard, you must not mock it.”

He was apparently not yet convinced and said: “Now be honest with me: Do you really believe that it is the truth?

I repeat; death to me is death.

There is surely not enough carnival in the world, we can just about cope with that carry-on.”

“That carry-on?”

He felt that I was bothered, but he said: “Do you like reading?”

“Yes, now and again I read.”

“Then I advise you to read the works which deal with spiritualism, there is already a lot written about it and then you will think differently.”

“Did you also read them?”

“I have read little, but I can see the spirits.”

“What did you say?” he asked in amazement.

“Can you see them?”

“I can see and hear them,” I continued calmly.

“I know their life because I can see their life and I can hear them speaking to me.”

This was too powerful for him.

“But you don’t take part in that, do you?”

“In what?

What do you mean by that?”

“Well, that table dancing like those other people.”

“Which other people?”

“Do not pretend that you do not understand me, you sense what I mean.”

“Are spirits not spirits, is influence not influence?

However, you do not understand any of it.

That same table, which you laugh about and that you call that carry-on, has comforted many mothers, fathers and children; and connected them to each other.

But when people know nothing about it, they mock it.

However the spirit manifests itself, spirits are spirits and there is no death.

You say that not one opens his mouth, and that is the truth, but would that also be possible?

That a dead body will not speak, but it is the spiritual body, and that lives eternally.

I repeat, you are not a bad person, and a good family man, but you must stay away from these things if you know nothing about them.”

“Do you not take part in séances, or whatever it is called?”

“Carry-on”, I said and for my part, I looked him sharply in the eye and waited to see what he would say.

“Well, now I mean it seriously, I do not know anything about it, do I?”

“Yes”, I resumed the conversation, “I have experienced a great deal in that area.

You will not believe it, but if you are interested, come to my house some time, then you can look at my paintings which the spirits made through me.”

He did not answer, but said: “If I am there”, and he started to mock again, “then I will come and tell you.”

“What do you want to tell me?”

“That I am alive, and then I will knock, like that”, and he thumped a few times with his whip on the vehicle and called: “Knock, knock, knock” and burst out laughing.

I controlled myself, he felt that he was going too far and asked me:

“Are you angry?”

“Not at you; people who speak like that mean nothing to me.”

“I can imagine that”, he said, “but I think it is horrible.”

“So, do you think it is horrible?

Do you know, Gerhard, what I think is horrible?”

“What then?”

“That mocking of yours about the dead.”

“Who mocks more, you or I?”

His words came out in a sharp way and he continued: “Every day we see new faces, but not one says anything.”

“Are you starting all over again?”

He could not be convinced, however seriously I meant it.

Yet I would not give up so easily and said to him: “Do not forget that when that alarm clock inside you refuses, you enter that life as a mocker.

How soon can that not happen?

We are people of a second and then you will stand with both feet, as you now are, in eternity, deeply unhappy.

I think that you will forget about that mocking.”

He did not say anything, looked in front of him and prepared to leave.

“Look, there are my people.

Are you angry?”

I shook my head and he called again to me: “Keep well, fellow, and good luck with the spirits.”

I only half heard him, because I was too wrapped in thought.

What a mocker!

This is what people thought of sacred spiritualism and made a mockery of it.

He is not a bad chap, but unskilled in the great truths.

I had never known him before like this.

To him death was death and he knew nothing about spiritualism.

People should leave the dead in peace, It was the same old story.

I thought it was sad.

All those great academics that had sacrificed themselves were surely also crazy!

I had known Gerhard for years, but I hardly ever saw him.

A wonderful discussion, I thought, but he cannot be reached; he does not want to be reached.

He knows death, but death will remain death to him.

How simple it was for him not to start to think differently; for people found it easier to think this way.

A strapping fellow, and yet, what is the human being when he speaks like that?

They laugh at their own stupidity.

“Not one of them has ever opened his mouth!”

It was not just for him, but for all those other undertakers who thought about it as he did.

He was involved with the dead on a daily basis; they were his friends and he was not afraid of them because he knew them.

They were dead, but he did not know death, even if he brought the remains to its final resting place.

Bones could not speak, and how simple it was.

They did not think of another and eternal life.

Everything, which had to do with spiritualism and the dead, was gruesome and yet spiritualism was the most sacred thing given to the human being by God.

Poor spiritualism!

However, one day their eyes will also be opened, but only on the Other Side.

They will see, hear and feel that they live eternally.

Death was still a horror and it sowed suffering, sorrow and misery.

It threw sand in people’s eyes and they stood weeping at graveyards and were broken.

They did not know any better, but they did not want to know any better either.

They remained dead, blind and without feeling.

Life, which had led an existence in the material body, returned to eternity.

Then it supported from that side the people who wanted to be connected with it.

How grateful the human being should be for all that beauty.

Spiritualism had nothing to do with the devil.

Here it was their friends and loved ones who returned to them in order to tell them that they were alive and were happy.

Could the human being be given something more sacred?

I knew a spiritualism shining like a sun, as pure as eternal life itself was.

I would not have thought for a single moment that Gerhard would pass over so soon.

A fortnight later death had come to him.

He was wiped out in one blow, far away from wife and child.

The monster ‘death’ had also touched him.

The mocker now lived in life after death.

I was shocked when I was told about it.

How amazing God’s laws are, which people still knew so little about.

It was as if people had called to him and said: “Come, friend, see and perceive, see whether you are dead, or whether there is an eternal life.

Perceive, you, human being of the earth, here nothing can be hidden; here you will get to know yourself.

See and feel that eternal life is within you.”

Thousands of thoughts whirled through my head.

Yet, it was remarkable, but I was pleased that I had still spoken to him about it.

He could cling to that, to that simple, trivial conversation full of sarcasm and mocking.

I still heard the thumping of the whip, which would be there as a knocking on the house of his soul, just until he would awaken.

I knew that he was alive.

How surprised he will be, I thought, when he sees that he is alive.

I heard the following about his illness.

He did not feel well for a few days.

In the morning, he had a swollen throat and in the evening, he had died.

It could not be any faster.

He had entered the unknown from the known.

How would he feel?

Now I will soon see him, I thought, because he will come to visit me, as Jeanne and priest X had done and many others whom I had known on earth.

However, would he possess the strength that was needed for it?

I doubted it, because he was not yet that far.

As a result of my journeys, which I had been able to make with my leader through disembodiment, I knew that people had to posses the power of love, if they wanted to manifest themselves on earth.

He would know little or nothing about that.

He would remember his conversation with me, because nothing is lost of the earthly life when people enter that other life.

I prayed for him and waited, but he did not come.

It was only months later that he came through to the séance to which I was connected as a medium and he gave a short report of his life.

I thought it was a dreadful pity that I had not been there precisely on that evening since a serious patient demanded my attention.

The following day I received this message:

“Just tell Jozef that it is me, he said his name and I would recognize him.”

Yes, I knew him and found it strange that he had said nothing about our conversation.

Now I will see him soon, I thought, but it still took a week, and it was only at the following séance that I came into connection with him.

The people who were present were all intellectuals and did not know the simple coachman.

This also removed all thoughts of telepathic influence when he came through when they heard later that I knew him.

This was a piece of proof that he was alive, but I was amazed that I had to wait so long, because if he had come to me, I would have been able to see him, after all.

Yet, my leader said to me to wait and see and I would get to know the meaning of this.

The following week I went to my friends to hold a séance as usual.

They talked about the last séance and also about him, whom they understood little or nothing.

We had barely sat down when I saw him, something that pleased me greatly.

When I had taken my place, he was standing next to me.

However, I did not concentrate on him, but kept tuning into my leader and waited to see what would happen.

Finally, I was connected with Gerhard and I asked: “Is it really you, Gerhard?”

“Yes, chap, it is me.

I am alive, Jozef, I am alive.”

I thought about our conversation.

There he was, the mocker!

His head was bent, and I felt a deep and sacred respect, as the respect, which lay within him.

How human this reunion was, how great it was.

I felt the seriousness of the life within him, he was awake, and he was open to everything that lived.

How you have changed, I thought.

Gerhard was blissfully happy.

“Can you feel me, Jozef?”

“Yes”, I said.

I felt that he placed his hand on my shoulder.

A soft but intense feeling of love entered me, given immaculately and purely, which welled up from deep within the heart of a human being who had got to know life.

It cheered me up and it caressed me, so that I felt very happy.

Not much could be said, but he stood next to me the whole evening and stayed in my vicinity.

However, we were one in feeling; I felt him, he felt me.

I saw that he carefully saw everything that happened, while another intelligence stood next to him, speaking to him from time to time.

However, I heard nothing about his life, yet, I had the hope that Gerhard would still come through, but this did not happen, so that the evening passed without Gerhard having spoken.

Strange, I thought, why does he not say anything?

Would he no longer remember our conversation?

However, that was not possible, after all, nothing is lost, for that matter.

Somewhat disappointed, I went home.

I kept concentrating; perhaps, I thought, I will see him at home and he will talk to me.

However, that did not happen either.

I asked Alcar why Gerhard had no longer spoken to me, or through the board.

A week before he had also come through, hadn’t he?

So why not now and why not here in my own surroundings?

Alcar replied: “Do you think all of this is strange?”

“Yes, Alcar, I think it is strange; he can talk to me, can’t he?”

“He would also have liked to do that, but it was not possible.

Our laws are not earthly ones and our life is different to yours.

His time has not yet come.

Understand this well, there is guidance in everything, also in this.

Wait patiently”, Alcar said to me, “he will come back and will tell you a lot about his life on this side.”

I accepted it, I could not change anything about this, after all, but I still found it strange.

I did not hear or see anything of Gerhard for a long time.

I prayed a lot for him, but I also stopped that after having prayed for two full years.

I had not heard anything, anything at all from him, or seen him.

I did not understand that, I could not explain it.

If one person could return to the earth and receive a connection, why could he not?

It was so simple, after all.

How much I wanted to know how he felt and how he had arrived there, but a secretive haze lay and remained around Gerhard.

A few years passed.

I no longer thought of him; other matters took up a great deal of my time.

However, one afternoon when I was busy with the second chapter of this book and the spirit of Jeanne, I had to stop for a moment because a brother wanted to speak to me, I saw Gerhard, who came to visit me.

Gerhard said: “I may tell you that I am here.

Can you see me, Jozef?

The master says that I may wish you good day and that I may tell you about my life after the sister.

Did you already know that?”

“No”, I said, “I did not yet know it.”

“When the sister has finished, then I may begin.

I am so happy, Jozef!

See you later!”

Then Alcar spoke: “You knew that, because you were told a few years ago and now that moment has come.

We conducted everything like this, because we knew that this would happen one day.

Now the time has come.”

I bowed my head deeply and understood it.

I had no longer thought about that.

Before me I saw a spiritual net of which all the threads had been calculated beforehand and were twisted together, which we earthly people knew nothing about and would not know anything about either.

The spirits saw far, very far, ahead, when they wanted to.

To me it was a lesson and it also taught me that I could calmly surrender to everything.

I felt a deep respect for this great problem.

The sacred guidance lay in everything.

Those who had lived on earth and continued to live on the Other Side knew secrets and truths which remained hidden from our earthly people until we would also enter that life.

Only then would we pass into all those secrets.

Then problems and wonders would no longer be problems and wonders, and there we learned to know the true reality.

Those who had gone before us lived in that wonderful life behind the veil, which had been lifted up for them, they had got to know themselves and that life.

The truth was revealed to me, that knowledge and wisdom is of the spirit.

I bowed my head to it and surrendered willingly.

I found Gerhard very enthusiastic.

Happiness lay in his voice, which continued to vibrate deep within me.

The spirit of Jeanne continued, was soon finished and said farewell to me.

Then I waited until Gerhard would come.

When I had sat down at my typewriter the next day, I did not need to wait long.

I had already seen Gerhard in the morning.

He sat down to the right of me; my leader Alcar, who guided all of this, stood to my left.

Gerhard had tears in his eyes.

How he had changed!

He could not speak a word; he only looked up, as I clearly saw, as if he was asking God for strength for this event.

Gerhard would therefore have to fill a part of this book.

I waited until he would start to speak.

He now stood where priest X and Jeanne had stood, the mocker!

The man who thought that everything was nonsense.

“You have to let the dead rest”, I could still hear him say.

Yet, I did not want to think about that now and I therefore freed myself completely so that he could reach me.

I had to receive a spirit, a human being who had lived on earth, whom I knew, saw and felt.

He stood next to me, great, powerful, young and beautiful.

His eyes shone and around him lay a beautiful light.

We were still not connected, but I felt him coming closer and closer to me and within me.

I knew how that happened.

In order to be able to serve as a writing medium, the spirit must be able to connect itself completely, at least now and in this way, because there were also other possibilities.

Gerhard entered me, and we were one in feeling.

I was elevated into his life and now he started to speak.

I felt his conversation going through me and at the same time, it was recorded by me.

In feeling, I was continually where he was talking about.

While writing I experienced everything, felt his struggle, suffering, sorrow and happiness and his love within me.

I was not allowed to stay in this state for too long because I would not be able to stand it.

That part of the book was therefore also recorded in a fortnight.

Yet, I was watched over in everything.

At that time, I lived in feeling in the spheres, but I also had to live through my earthly existence and was continually in contact with earthly people who needed my help.

I therefore lived in a double situation, until the book was recorded.

Now I felt empty and could no longer think about what belonged to the earth, but an intense influence came into me, so that I felt the silence of their lives.

He will begin soon, I thought, and I had felt it well because I heard Gerhard say: “So, here I am, finally a bit calmer!

I was a bit nervous, but from pure happiness.

To add to it I have to tune into my earthly life, if I want to be able to give you a clear picture of all my experiences and that is not so simple because I am full of them.

I thank our Almighty Father, Jozef, that this was given to me and allowed.

To think that I, the mocker, who thought that bones could not speak, the only truth which I uttered during our conversation.

I have not forgotten it; it lies word for word in me.

But now, dear chap, I am happy, but first I ask you for forgiveness.

How I made fun of you and the most sacred, which is given to people.

I did not believe in eternal life and death was death to me.

What a bad time I had, but now all that terrible part is behind me.

How I worked on myself!

The heaviest work was not too much for me when I knew and accepted that I had died on earth.

I did not believe that I was dead, but more about that later.

I am first at the beginning of my eternal trip and yet I have ground under my feet.

Really, Jozef, I am on firm ground, I cannot sink away in it.

Where I now stand, that is lasting, I have experienced it and had to discard myself for it, completely discard myself.

Do you feel what it means, to have to discard yourself?

I had to learn that first, because I could not do it.

Nothing was given to me.

Nothing for free, people say on earth, but on this side, you get to realize that for the first time.

I have made it, but do not ask how!

You will hear, I will tell you everything, everything up until this moment, the most beautiful for me in all that time that I have lived here.

How I longed for it and what a path I had to walk!

How terrible that piece is that I have covered.

People will not believe it, but you are not given an inch on this side.

Here you have to earn everything, pay with your spiritual blood, but when you are at that stage, then there is happiness, then you are and you feel happy and it has happened, at least as far as the place where you have arrived, because we go continually further, continually higher.

You are happy then because you understand life, because you are alive and were one of the living dead before.

You learn to not only understand life on earth, but the awe-inspiring, which lives in space.

I now talk and think differently, you will surely hear that, I have changed.

A great deal has happened in all those years and I have learned to no longer laugh at other people.

I was stupid, very stupid.

All of those who do the same thing are stupid.

I was mad, Jozef, and not you or those others who know spiritualism and accept it as a religion.

It is sacred, sacred!

Not anyone who builds on it is building castles in the air, but he is working on his eternal dwelling.

It was only here that I learned to understand this.

Oh, how could I have endured everything; I took back everything word for word, so that I thought I would suffocate in it.

Yet, I did it, however difficult it was for me.

Our life is natural, people only know false naturalness on earth, because people do not know the natural forces which are within us, do not feel them and do not want to see them.

That unnaturalness brought me into a terrible state, a state of insanity, so that I thought I was going mad.

I did not want to accept what people told me, because it would cost me my whole personality.

However, it concerned me the salvation of my soul, and when I finally understood that, I accepted it.

But it cost a lot of strength and effort because I did not know or understand myself.

Everything would have been different if I had convinced myself of eternal life and had already passed into it on earth.

The human being on earth cannot imagine any of this, people have to experience that and they will experience it, but only on this side.

No one who lives as I lived on earth will escape this.

They will learn that here and the mockers will get respect for what they mock.

I see upwards and have already asked for forgiveness; I also received that because God is love.

Now I know that great unknown, what I once pointed at when I teased and laughed at you.

I cannot bear thinking about it, but how stupid and small I was!

I accepted this a very long time ago, but it is not so simple to master eternal life.

It is wonderful to feel ground of eternal substance, to know a world where you never have to awaken and where the silence of the spirits pamper you, as the mother her child.

Where you see nothing but light and it will remain so eternally and you only awaken for even higher and more beautiful spheres, which await you, await every child who wishes to call himself a child of God.

Spheres, which appeal to you, where you will be absorbed and where God watches over you, will continually watch over you.

I was awakened in that by the love of the sisters and brothers.

When I knew and saw that no damnation existed and never has existed, and then I bowed my head, deeply, very deeply to our Father.

When I felt that I was alive, only then could I do that, I sent my inner prayer to heaven, and I prayed as a child of God should pray.

I, who had laughed at the dead, may now tell of my own life on this side.

Could you have imagined anything so beautiful?

Not I, but you see, this wonder will also happen.

It is quiet here, Jozef, I know that silence.

It is the silence of the spirit, of those who work for you; who give you spiritual food, who protect you and want to convince humanity of an eternal life after death.

Here, in the sphere of the earth, where there is never peace and which cannot be found either, I find spiritual peace, the peace of the spirit, of the higher being.

I come from the first sphere to you and I will remain there for the time being, a very long time.

Now we will begin.”