BEYOND THE THRESHOLD

Deathbed scenes

27 July 1847

Brother A. wants to know how the transition from the material to the spiritual life or the so-called life in the beyond takes place, particularly with the worldly great.

This transition can be quite easily and naturally described. You see, what difference does it make to the water, as to whether an important man or a poor, insignificant one falls into it? Listen, both will drown in the same manner! Or what distinction does the fire make? Listen, it will consume the emperor as well as the beggar!

If a beggar and a minister or emperor were to fall from a tower at the same time, both the one and the other will come to his death through his sudden fall.

What distinction does the grave make between great and little, between rich and poor, beautiful and ugly or young and old? You see, none at all! Everything decays and becomes the filth of worms and, finally, insignificant dust.

As the body fares in the realm of the so-called natural forces, the soul fares in the realm of the spirit. Whether it was a beggar or an emperor on earth, in the realm of spirits this is completely irrelevant. No one is given special treatment. In this way no one's pride is nourished and the great man is no longer blinded by his greatness and the poor man - having suffered much hardship in the world - no longer by his claim on the Kingdom of Heaven, nor the pious by his expected reward of the Kingdom of Heaven. As often mentioned, in the beyond - mind you - in the beyond nothing but the purest love is of value.

Everything else is like rocks thrown into the ocean, where the diamond sinks down into the eternal, stinking slime, just like the most common sandstone. In themselves they remain what they are and what they were outside of the ocean, but their fate is the same, only with the difference that the sandstone is dissolved sooner than the diamond.

This applies in the beyond also to the worldly nobility or to the worldly lowliness. In the ocean slime of the inexorable eternity they will continue for a long time, fancying to be what they once were in the world. There the emperor will fancy to be emperor and the beggar, with the claim for compensation, a beggar. In spite of that, in the great Reality both will share the same fate in the ocean slime of eternity. Only the poor man should go through fermentation sooner, where his nature will be filled sooner with the true, innermost little bubbles of humility, which will then pull him out of the mire, carving him up to eternal light and life, than the emperor or some other great man of the world.

You can precisely judge the transition of every human being according to this pattern or this cardinal rule. Therefore, adhere to love, lest you share the common fate one day.

Amen, Amen, Amen.