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Hell and Heaven are Within

It is generally difficult to understand the real meaning of the teaching that the Kingdom of God is within, just as Hell is within, too. You imagine that this refers to a mood and therefore to some unreal thing that cannot be grasped. People only take for real what they can see and touch; feeling states cannot be seen or touched. When we explain to you that thoughts and feelings are forms, it becomes somewhat easier for you to understand that these forms build corresponding spheres. Landscapes, surroundings, clothes, whatever it is, are in harmony or in disharmony with all the in-between gradations. This explanation, however, still may not make it clear how all this can exist within. Human beings believe that there is no space within for landscapes and spheres, and difficult as it is to explain this with words, I still want to try to lead you to further insight into spiritual states.

Just as time on earth is entirely different from its true reality in spirit, so it is with space also. Spatial dimensions like above, below, right, or left are concepts that you can grasp in your earthly habitat, but they do not exist in that way in the spiritual dimension. When human beings divest themselves of their bodies, they go inward into the spiritual worlds, because the whole universe is actually within the human being. This is a fact.

Maybe you can understand the concept if I give you an example, however insufficient: Think of opera glasses into which you look from the wrong end so that everything becomes very small. Then this little picture will be the reality according to your understanding. Now, you might pose the question how the entire universe, with its vast size, could exist in every human being. I would answer you in the following manner: Your earthly world is not the actual reality, not even in a figurative, symbolic sense; it is only a reflection, an image in a mirror, a projection of the real.

The body, which houses the spirit, brings about a separation. The moment the separating wall falls because you leave your body behind, the universe that exists in every single human being unifies—of course on condition that you have developed yourself far enough to reach the spheres where there is no longer any separation. The lower the sphere in which an entity finds itself—be it in the here-and-now or in the beyond—the more radical must be the separation.

Because of the limitations of human speech when spiritual matters are concerned, I can provide but a sketchy outline, which cannot be more than an analogy. It could, however, lead you to meditate on the idea that Heaven and Hell and all that is in-between is within you. What the teaching describes is not only an emotional state the way you people imagine it, neither is it something abstract. Everything that for you is an abstraction is concrete in spirit; everything that for you is formless, is form in spirit, form composed of higher matter. The difficulty you may first encounter in understanding that the earthly matter which you can touch is only a mirror image or reflection of the universe fully present in every single human soul, can perhaps be overcome to a certain degree by meditating on my words.

- Excerpt taken from Pathwork Guide Lecture #10 Male and Female Incarnations: Their Rhythms and Causes