DURING ITS SOJOURN in Subsequent Creation the human spirit must often change its physical covering. It is born, dies, and is born again.

When it dies it lays aside its perishable earthly covering each time, and continues to exist beyond the earthly world. For it is not the case that all is over after physical death. After leaving its physical body the spirit, which with its nonphysical coverings forms the soul, remains intact in human form as an independent personality.

Just as little does it correspond with reality that those who have passed on will find eternal rest in the beyond. In all Creation there is no absolute rest. Everything is in continual movement, and especially in the beyond a much more active life prevails than here on earth, because there the considerably more ponderous characteristic of the earthly-material drops away.

Because of this livelier movement, the experiencing of the soul there is also much more direct and quicker than on earth. But above all, through lack of the earthly covering as a protective mantle, a continual and exact classification of the spirits takes place in the beyond, for which the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species and the Law of Gravitation are especially effective.

Even as on earth, time and again “birds of a feather flock together,” in small as well as in great matters, this applies all the more so in the planes beyond, where the attraction of similar species is even compulsory, and where each homogeneous group has its definite place. Whether it is envy, hatred, lying, passion or whatever other faults and weaknesses man is capable of producing, he is constantly forming for himself the corresponding places, which are always populated by similar souls. Thus hell too is not as one might think a place of punishment created by God, but it is the work of men alone. To bring about this work he misuses the spiritual power streaming through Creation, by shaping very active evil forms with it, by means of his intuitive perceptions, thoughts and deeds.

In the places of Darkness the souls can give vent to every passion and live out all faults and weaknesses without causing harm, because here only the like-minded are concerned, who through mutual suffering provide the opportunity for recognition of their guilt and thereby for gradual improvement.

But also the human spirits aspiring for what is higher find themselves in various places of the lighter regions.

In reality the so-called beyond comprises many divisions and gradations, beginning with the Regions of Light, which are the first steps to Paradise, as far as the Land of Twilight, and still further down to the Regions of Darkness that form hell.

The belief in various abodes for the departed in the beyond is an old one. The Gospel of Luke (16, 22-26), for instance, describes a place of punishment and one of the luminous spheres, and points to the unbridgeable gulf between them. Lorber in his Great Gospel of John mentions a place in the beyond for the arrogant: “An arrogant, tyrannical man is not judged by the Lord, but in the beyond he is placed in the same condition and the same life as on earth, but with the difference that there his fellow creatures far and wide have, are, and want the same as he.” From this description it follows that the real punishment lies in the togetherness of these homogeneous human beings!