“For all who still find themselves in the cycle of incarnation, the time comes for rebirth on earth. At that moment, the respective entity is brought again to the quarters or the authority that is competent for his whole cycle and that has arranged previous incarnations with him and done the accounting after the last one. That is where his particular and personal ledger is looked into and where temporary plans have been made for the next life, subject to change, according to the attitudes and activities of the being since this plan has been constructed.

“Now the final plan will be made for the incarnation to come; this takes considerable time. The proper choice of parents, nationality, religion to be born into, life circumstances, certain phases that are called fateful in life, are set down and considered. All these choices are being made in the most practical way. For instance, parents may be chosen to afford an environment best suited to bring out certain disharmonies in the soul; for that purpose, it needs certain imperfections in the environment; for if everything were perfect, these shortcomings would not have an opportunity to come to the surface. At the same time, the parents may also be karmically linked to the entity so that a karmic debt may be paid off. Difficulties and advantages in the life to follow are considered from the point of view of the plan. It is carefully weighed how much should be taken on, how much the entity should concentrate in this life on one character trend, or perhaps it would be better in this life to concentrate on a heretofore unsolved psychological problem. For entities of higher development — all this is, of course, relative — tasks for the plan of salvation are planned that they may best combine the entity’s own purification problems. Talents are chosen that may be brought forth, others are planned to remain hidden in this earth life.
“When all this is considered, the entity then has the chance to make his own choice in some ways; and where this choice cannot possibly be made yet, he is asked theoretically how he would choose if he could. Denials of choice are not made dogmatically, but the reasons are conscientiously explained. All this I have mentioned before.

“After an intensive period of study, the final plan is made for the life on earth to come. Special spirits are sent to various places, also on earth, to smooth the way, to make preparations by guidance and inspiration. And here or there, they may come back and report that conditions are not as hoped and therefore unsuitable for the purpose; then other karmic ties are used for this life that would have been concentrated on in a later incarnation if the first considered circumstances would have turned out as expected.

“When the plan is finally concluded and the conditions and preparations on earth checked, the entity is led into a different sphere. It is a great, great sphere, consisting mainly of what in your earth language you might call a hospital. Spiritual physicians are working there. Many physicians on this earth plane have been incarnated from such hospital spheres that exist on various levels. They are learning in these spheres. But there are also a great number of spirits active there who are out of the cycle of incarnations, as well as some who have never been in it. They have more responsible tasks. Others learn under them. This hospital sphere consists of several parts. To mention just one of them, there is one department where spirits are brought who have died in accidents or another form of sudden and violent death. In such cases, their fluidal bodies may be injured, and they are nursed back to health, if I may use this expression, before they begin the other activities in the spirit world that I have explained to you here. This is just one of the many parts of this sphere.

“A great part is the one where lives on earth are prepared. The entity ready for incarnation appears there before a certain spirit who has high authority and great responsibility. He, the entity to be incarnated, comes in company of his guardian spirit or spirits; it may be the same that has guided him through several lives before, it may be a different one. It will certainly be the one who will lead him through the coming life. This guardian delivers the plan to this spirit in charge in this sphere, where the plan is carefully studied again by this spirit. He will then call some of his assistants who will work on this entity. And again, minutely everything is discussed, planned, and preparations made.

“My dear friends, I can sense that some of you think all this is impossible. It sounds too human, it sounds too concrete for you to be credible, I know. Yet, as the saying goes, truth is often stranger than fiction! And this is the way it is, although, again it is different — different than on earth and different than you imagine. And yet, the words I have to use describe it the nearest. For all these spheres and hospitals and physicians and higher-placed authorities and assistants and ledgers and plans and whatnot, all this exists, for you have nothing on your earth plane that is not a poor copy of what has existed in spirit first, in some other way, but still it has existed.

“Now, when this plan has been carefully studied and preparations have been made, the entity to be incarnated is waiting until conception of the future parents has taken place. Astrological factors of conception are being taken into consideration, as well as a number of other factors of which you either know still very little or which you completely ignore. “Conception cannot happen unless it is the will of God, to put it plainly. If a conception today would not serve a purpose for the entity to come into your world, it is prevented by spiritual means, but it may take place next month. And then, according to the so-called genes of the parents, which of course have been studied beforehand and which again must be in correspondence with the entity to be born, certain magnetic fields, rays, fluids get to work — partly automatically as an effect of causes set in motion, partly by spiritual helpers. This is extremely difficult to explain to you.

“At the moment conception has taken place, the entity to be born is made unconscious. It is such a deep state of unconsciousness that a great part of his knowledge will come back only after life on earth has been completed. Another part of knowledge will come back during earth life, but only when the entity leaves the body — in other words, during sleep. But a certain feeling of self-consciousness will gradually and slowly come awake as a living human being while growing up. That all this can happen in exactly that way is due to preparations with certain types of fluids in the entity that are being made by these experts in the sphere I have described you here. It is a question of measurement, of a certain way of treatment of these fluids, and of a highly specialized form of processing. There is a refraction and extension of fluids. There are different types of fluids, each representing a different facet of the personality.

“Let us talk first about the physical aspects of the future human being. The parental genes are made to correspond and to effect the physical shell — in the meantime growing in the body of the mother in such a way that the physical karmic necessities of the entity to be born can be fulfilled. There is no coincidence possible. Nothing is just left to itself. And when it says in the Bible that God has counted each hair on your head, it is no exaggeration, my friends. This saying is to be understood in this sense. For every smallest detail has to correspond and has a meaning, a much deeper meaning and significance than you can possibly imagine. Symbolism is not the way humanity thinks. It is mostly the other way around. Your bodies are often symbols in one way or another for your spiritual development, for psychological trends, and so forth. But beware of rules and generalizations here. There are none.

“So these genes are worked in such a way that the shell is prepared properly. Some genes will therefore have an influence, some will not. In one instance, the genes of the mother have a greater influence; in another, of the father. In one instance, genes of the parents do not work at all; in another case, the genes of a grandparent or even a great aunt may all of a sudden be at work. All this is not arbitrary or left to coincidence. For every detail, there is a reason. This physical shell grows in the mother’s body although there is no spirit in it, but it grows according to the rays, to the magnetic fields that work in correspondence to the treatment in this particular sphere that is taken exactly according to plan.

“Also, many other factors are taken into consideration. There are certain highly trained specialists who concentrate on the physical shell, as I have just explained. Other specialists, equally highly trained, concentrate on psychological and spiritual factors. Furthermore, it is also a question of treatment of certain other fluids that some consciousness will return as the human being grows, other types of consciousness must remain hidden. Thus, one person will grow up with a strong feeling of God consciousness, perhaps even in spite of atheistic and materialistic parental influence and other influences. In another case, it is the other way around. In some instances, there is a strong urge to become, let us say, an artist or a scientist in spite of contrary environmental influences early in youth. This is due to the preparation of certain fluidal matter that has been made before birth. In other words, it is determined there what urges, trends, and leanings should come to the surface at what period. Others are prepared and processed in such a way that it is conditional on other factors, whether they have been fulfilled or not.

“You can perhaps glimpse vaguely on how infinitely complicated and exact this preparation in the so-called soul must be. By the same token, the faults that have been planned to work on in this life are, as you know and as I have often told you, energies or currents. These are treated in the fluidal bodies in such a way that they need very little outer challenge to come to the surface. These outer challenges are provided for in the choice of parents and other conditions in the incarnation. If faults remain dormant in the depth of your soul, you cannot become aware of them, and if you are not aware of them, you cannot overcome them. So not all problems or faults are prepared for raising to the surface. Some are supposed to remain hidden and are planned to be worked on in a future incarnation or, as I said, only if and when the plan of this life has been fulfilled. All this must be carefully studied in the plan by these experts and prepared properly. The same applies of course to talents, to psychological problems and complexities. Some are prepared so lightly that they will rise immediately, others only under definite conditions. This preparation in the fluidal bodies will perhaps be easier to understand if you think of each quality, each trend, each attitude, good or bad, as a power current, which it truly is! Now it depends very much on how these power currents are treated, insulated, or channeled.

“All this may be an explanation to some of you who have experienced a case in your family or your environment when someone has been known to be always a very decent person, conscious of his shortcomings, working at them, and obviously making great spiritual progress. And all of a sudden, something apparently quite new comes to the surface. Everyone is suddenly shocked and disappointed. From now on you will understand that this is often due to the fact that this person is working spiritually very well, and after having accomplished these trends that were on the surface, other trends left deeper embedded by the spiritual workers can now evolve to be worked on in the purification process. This is exactly why people on the spiritual path often display at certain periods trends that have never been noticed before. Of course, this may also be due to the fact that they were hidden by the mask self, but it may also be on account of the taking out of trends that have been left for consideration only until after certain other things have been accomplished. The same may apply to a good trend or a talent. These specialists look at their charts exactly. In one case, a strong talent is supposed to come out very soon. This has to be prepared. In another case, a talent is supposed to come to the surface only much later; in still another case, a talent is left conditional according to certain circumstances and whether the person is following through the plan or not. All this is shown on the plan, and the preparations have to be made in the fluids, in their processing in an exceedingly difficult procedure that is impossible for you to grasp entirely.

“This period of processing and treatment of the fluidal bodies takes approximately nine months, the time the human shell needs to grow. Sometimes the processing is completed a little before the nine months are over; then the entity is just waiting in an unconscious state. Sometimes life should start a little earlier than nine months because then conditions may be better suited for that entity to begin life under; and yet the parents in question also fulfill the best mutual conditions. In such a case, a premature birth will occur. In other instances, birth may be delayed a little.

“At this opportunity, I will just add one more detail in this connection. The attitude of the mother, as well as of the father, during the time of pregnancy may often determine a change. If the parents or even one of the parents should change their spiritual attitude, then the entity first planned to come to these parents would not fit into these circumstances anymore. It is not only that perhaps the parents are now deserving a higher developed spirit as their child if their attitude has changed for the better, spiritually speaking; but it is also that the being, first destined for these parents, may not find the necessary fulfillment with parents of this spiritualized outlook. There are enough parents available whose attitude would afford the limitations that the particular entity needs for growth. But there are fewer, indeed, who will represent the proper environment for a spirit who has more to give to this world. But this is also a task and a responsibility for the parents who have to be worthy to rear a child who has greater tasks to fulfill. This worthiness is often determined by the spiritualized way of looking at life. So, last minute changes can be made if the mother or the father or both change their attitude during pregnancy, either to the better or to the worse. There are enough possibilities available for such changes to be effected. “The spirit world can foresee fairly well whether or not such changes are within the realm of the possible, knowing the capacities of each soul much better than the human beings themselves, having the Book of Life available. So, tentative arrangements may be made already during the time of pregnancy, for instance the time of preparation for birth, that if the parents first chosen should change enough to warrant a different child for them, the first intended child will go without difficulty or delay to another pregnant woman. Therefore it is advisable for the mother in particular to become quiet within, to turn to God, and to spiritualize her whole being and attitude during pregnancy.

“Now there remains only this to say: when finally the time of birth has arrived, many spirits assist so that the fluidal bodies that have been treated in the manner described enter the body of the baby. And then the incarnation has been effected.” (PL #34)