Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/5172

5172 Earthly life - illusive life....

July 17, 1951: Book 58

Earthly life is but an illusive existence. As soon as you humans realise this you will have reached the point of ascent. Then you will live consciously, working towards the life which is true existence, which only starts when your body, your soul's material shell, passes away and the soul can rise unimpeded into the spiritual kingdom. Everything that arises on earth before your eyes, everything that is visible to you, is merely temporarily formed spiritual substance which has to serve its purpose on earth as matter to facilitate spiritual maturing. And earthly life itself is also a mere physical function as long as the soul within you still has no understanding of what it was, is and should be.... If the soul does not acquire this understanding during its earthly life it will indeed believe even stronger in the reality of life, it will only regard earthly life as significant and thus strive to live as long and as well as possible on earth; and this desire will only diminish the moment it becomes enlightened, for then it will become conscious of the real life and earthly life will fade to the same extent as real life becomes more valuable.

Only then will the soul be able to distinguish between appearance and reality, only then will it live consciously.... It received life to enable it to prove its will during an illusive existence, to enable it to be active during a certain stage of strength, where it can utilise the energy of life in a God-pleasing way, and thereby become entitled in real life to receive an abundance of strength and use it in accordance with God's will. Thus it has to pass a test of life first to demonstrate that it is suitable to receive unlimited strength. For only the utilisation of this strength is the actual life, where the soul can be creatively active and also carry out extensive redemption work. If it fails the test of life, if it uses the energy of life at its disposal wrongly, it will forfeit the supply of strength in the true life, which it then would also use wrongly if the soul were to receive an unconditional flow of strength.

It must have attained a certain degree of maturity during earthly life, which will then make it a suitable recipient and steward of strength in the spiritual kingdom. And for this it received its earthly existence. Yet this is usually regarded as an end in itself, not as a means to an end and is therefore also used wrongly.... it is deemed to be the only desirable life, even though every person knows that he himself cannot prolong this life by one day when his hour has come. And precisely this should make him realise the worthlessness and transience of what seems extremely important to him. As an intelligent human being he should make provisions for 'afterwards' and not be satisfied with things which are subject to the law of transience. Earthly life if but an illusive life, something on loan, which can be taken away again at any time.... But the human being should manage borrowed wealth well, he should use it such that it will earn substantial interest, not in an earthly-materialistic sense but he should use it to gain spiritual wealth, then the energy of life will be used correctly and the test of life will have been passed successfully, and then the person will be suitable for the spiritual life, for the true life, which will last eternally....

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna