But what an odd place it is! Instead of seeing people around you as you normally would, they appear only when you want to see them. Unless you call them, they do not appear. You feel very much alone.
Then you meet guides, who explain to you, “You have died. You have come to the spirit world.” Still, you don’t believe them. You have a feeling that you collided with a car far away somewhere as in a dream, but you do not feel that you have died. You are still connected with the earth.
Dazed, and not believing you are dead and in the spirit world, you think, “I must go home.” You try to go to your house in the physical world, but you cannot.
Then your ancestors from some generations back come and explain, “You are no longer on the earth. You have entered the spirit world.” You finally say, “Ah, so this is the spirit world.” (194:41-42, October 15, 1989)
What will be your thoughts when you pass into the spirit world? At first you will be welcomed into a vast world. Yet right away you will recognize that its way of life is not what you were used to in your small hometown. On earth there was racial discrimination and conflicts among people of different backgrounds and cultures. Some people’s ways were incompatible with yours, and you handled things by insisting on your own viewpoint and affirming that your own values were best. Now that you have arrived in the spirit world, you will want to leave those outmoded values behind. But your past life does not go away. It revives in the spirit world with all vividness.
The more you feel the immensity of the spirit world, the more you long for your home and for life on earth, because you cannot easily absorb the environment of the spirit based on your limited sensibility. Yet there is where you will spend eternity. Still, can you ever forget about your earthly life?
When you first arrive, you will meet only strangers. In the midst of such an unfamiliar environment, how you will long to meet someone you knew in the past! You cannot escape your emotional connection to your past life. You think about the people you loved. You wonder how your mother and father are doing, and how your grandparents are living. Yet it is not easy to meet them. (187:285-85, February 12, 1989)
Suppose through some misfortune a man died while still searching for the ultimate goal. However, death does not mean the end of the quest. Once in the spirit world, he would say, “I died while searching for love, and now in the spirit world I will find that love.” If a man dies in the bosom of God’s love, then it is not a miserable death. Did death shatter his love? No. God, the subject of love, will recognize the value of his death, saying: “You died for the sake of the love that I have been searching for.”…
Suppose a wife sacrificed her life for her husband. What will happen when he joins her in the spirit world? Or suppose an elder brother arrives in the spirit world after his younger brother had died for him. Would they be happier or less happy than they were when they were together on earth? Can the depth of love they formerly shared on earth even compare with that precious love for which one offered his life? It would certainly transcend that earthly level of love…
So, in searching for the path of love, death is not a problem. Though you die, it would not be the end, but new life. By this kind of sacrificial death, you would pass through the tollgate to reach a world of love that is eternal and of a higher dimension. From this perspective, there is no reason to fear death. (67:173-74, June 3, 1973)❖
