3299 Belief in the survival of the soul....

October 19, 1944: Book 43

The certainty that there is life after the death of the body makes it much easier for people to bear earthly suffering, for they then only regard earthly life as a preliminary stage to beatitude, to the actual life in the spiritual kingdom. For them earthly life does not mean the highest, and therefore they do not attach so much importance to adversities and suffering, just as they pay little attention to earthly goods and the pleasures of the world because they know that these are transient. The life of the soul after death is a happy thought for them, and even death itself loses its terror because they do not fear it but only regard it as an entrance into spiritual life. Therefore, a person who believes in the soul's continued life on earth has an advantage in every respect over those who deny the soul's continued life. The latter only seek to exploit earthly life in an earthly sense, and they only strive to live long and well on this earth, since they consider themselves to have passed away with the death of their body. But the human being can only gain the convinced belief in the soul's continued existence through his own reflection, it cannot be conveyed to him by fellow human beings, instead, the human being can only be stimulated to think, and he must come to the conclusion of his own accord that God's creations must be enduring, otherwise the creator would have delivered a defective work. Yet everything the human being looks at is again a work of creation in a more perfect form than already existing works of creation, thus a constant upward development can be observed in it, which understandably cannot stop with the human being but continues in the spiritual kingdom. Yet this cannot be proven to the human being if he does not accept his own feelings as proof, which more joyfully affirm the thought of a continuation of life after death than the thought of a complete end with the conclusion of earthly life....

So the human being must believe what cannot be proven to him.... and yet he can still have the inner conviction of it which now also allows him to live consciously without doubt. For a person with faith in survival after death will arrange his earthly life completely differently than a person without faith in it, because he sees higher spiritual development as the purpose of earthly life, because he recognizes a state of spiritual maturity as the aim, which is the prerequisite for a blissful life after death. He now pays more attention to his soul, whereas the human being without this faith only seeks to maintain physical life and only pursues earthly aims. He is touched by everything that concerns the body, be it joy or suffering, because he does not find the compensation for it in his soul life. Emotionally and mentally he is indeed also in spheres which lie outside of the earthly, yet he is not aware of the fact that this is a search of the soul for which earthly aims alone are not enough. But the body's desire will always prevail and fetch the soul back from these spheres, and it will also succeed before the belief in its continued life has awakened and it then resists the body's desire. The adversity of the coming time will therefore be much easier to bear for people who firmly believe in survival, while others will be seized by despair since they consider their temporal end to have come and the knowledge of it triggers a paralysing horror in them. For faith will always be a source of comfort and strength, faith will never depress but uplift, faith will not be a weakness of will but a strength of will and likewise generate a strong will. Faith is not something human but something divine, although the unbeliever tries to smile disdainfully about it.... He lacks the strength which flows from strong faith. And therefore this faith should be struggled for first, for as soon as the human being believes himself to be immortal he also works for the salvation of his soul and is not satisfied with the successes of earthly life. However, the immortality of his soul can only be made credible to him when he is active in unselfish love.... otherwise selfish love will prevail and this will always reject the belief in a continuation of life after death, because the soul is aware of its inadequate state and therefore rather fears a continuation of life. And therefore love must be preached first again and again so that the human being's thinking will change and he will come close to the right faith, so that he will only learn to recognize earthly life as a transitional station and consciously strive for perfection in order to be able to enter the life in the beyond in a state which will ensure him eternal life....

Amen

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