Jozef Rulof
Josephus Gerhardus Rulof was a Dutch author who was known as a self-proclaimed psychic and trance medium or spirit medium. He wrote about thirty books about life, death, and the hereafter.
Rulof claimed to be the greatest medium ever, and that nobody would ever surpass him. The next great medium would be the "Direct Voice Apparatus", a technical device that would enable people to communicate directly with the spirit world. The DVA would be based on another device to make all diseases disappear.
He claimed he was under the control of two guides: master Alcar and master Zelanus.
Tenets of his teachings
There is no death
The most important point in the teachings of Jozef Rulof is that there is no death. A human dies when the silver cord, which connects the physical body with the spiritual body, breaks. The spirit then leaves its body and goes back to the world of the unconscious awaiting a new birth, or it goes to a sphere of darkness or a sphere of light, depending on the spiritual attunement of that person.Suicide
Rulof believed that each human has a certain time to live. When someone commits suicide, they only lose day-consciousness. The silver cord does not break and the suicide remains in the material body. They then experience the body's rotting. According to Rulof, this pain cannot be compared with any torture on earth. When the body is rotted completely and the skeleton becomes visible, the person walks in an empty world and only sees and hears themselves. When the actual time of death has come, the spirit goes back to the world of the unconscious, or it goes to one of the spheres. For example, when someone commits suicide at the age of 35, and that person had to become 85 years old, they must dwell in an empty world for 50 years. The book The Cycle of the Soul tells the story of Lantos and what he experiences when he commits suicide.Cremation
Jozef Rulof rejects cremation. It would cause a shock and an unbearable suffering for the dead. Persons attuned to a sphere of light will not suffer much, but persons attuned to a sphere of darkness will burn spiritually. Persons going back to the world of the unconscious awaiting a new birth will not feel anything. In the book A View into the Hereafter, there is a story about someone who committed suicide and what he experiences when he is being cremated.Karma and 'Cause and Effect'
A person creates karma when someone commits murder. In a next life, the murderer is born as a woman and gives birth to the one who was murdered. This way, the murderer gets a chance to make it up. Cause and Effect means what you do to another, you do to yourself. According to Rulof, this Cause and Effect can be seen primarily in marriage. One could say that if the man wears the pants, the woman has to make good to him and if the woman wears the pants, the man has to make good to her.Body, spirit and soul
Jozef Rulof believed in a type of physical dualism between the mind and body, though took the split further. Instead, he considered living human beings to consist of three separate entities: the physical body, a "spirit" that looks like the body but is made of a different substance, invisible to the human eye, and the "soul", which persists across lifetimes and is capable of reincarnation.He believed that all entities possessing a "soul" are small pieces of a pure "All-Source" that existed at the beginnings of the universe, which he considered to be a propelling force which forces human souls to grow. The spirit was something more akin to a physical body, but existing in an alternate, parallel, invisible realm. He considered the spirit to normally be fully overlaid over the human body, taking the same shape, but also to be able to separate from it, such as in a near-death experience or out-of-body experience. The spirit, he claimed, is connected with the physical body by means of a silver cord, which works like a rubber band. Thoughts are sent via this cord through the solar plexus to the brain, where they are intercepted and analyzed further. He claimed that the brain acts only as some kind of resistor, not as a memory, which contradicts modern science. There exists to date no scientific evidence for the existence of a soul or spirit as Jozef Rulof explained these to exist.
Twin souls
A twin soul is what is called the One True Love. Every person has a twin soul, because the All-Source represents fatherhood as well as motherhood. Man and woman form one unity. Our twin soul is the cell with which we had sexual intercourse for the first time on the Moon. Two cells united and secreted another cell. This cell divided to form two other cells. These two new cells will unite just as the parent cells did. The chance a person marries his twin soul is very small: we are already too long on Earth because of our karma and Cause and Effect. But we have certainly met our twin soul in previous lives and it is nonetheless possible that we meet our twin soul during our current life, even without knowing it. They could be our son or daughter, a friend, or awaiting a new birth in the world of the unconscious.Theory of evolution
Jozef Rulof expressly disagreed with the theories of Darwinian evolution, though misinterpreted the theory. He believed that Darwin's theory stated that humans descended from "apes" as they currently exist, and claimed instead that "apes" descended from humans. Of course, Darwinian evolution does not claim either relationship, and instead argues that both human and non-human primates share a common ancestor.Jozef Rulof believed in a strict hierarchy in the animal kingdom, with humans at the top, and other animal species below. Throughout his texts, he strictly differentiates between "man" and "animal", giving them similar evolutionary distance that an animal would have to a plant. He claimed that the first living cells on the primordial Earth were cells possessed by human "souls", but primitive in their actual physiology. When these cells died, new life would emerge from their rotting process: these would be cells inhabited by non-human animal "souls". This process would then be repeated over and over again: new cells, inhabited by "lesser souls", would emerge from the rot of these animal cells, and so forth. After enough such divisions, eventually, the creations that came after would be so diluted that they could no longer be claimed to have a "soul", and these he called "after-creations", which would include insects. Through evolution, the human souls would reincarnate in descended cells that are further along in evolution, possessing beings of a fishlike state, towards an apelike being, towards a human-shaped being. In this context, he claimed, human souls have always been "ahead" of other animals and plants in terms of evolution. This, he claimed, he was told by his spiritual guide and master "Alcar".
Astrology
Jozef Rulof believed that astrology would never become a science. He claimed that planets can have an influence on the physical body, but that they cannot influence someone's personality.Cosmic Grades
A core tenet of Jozef Rulof's belief was that there are seven so-called "Cosmic Grades", which represent a human's spiritual evolution. The Moon was considered to be the first Cosmic Grade, Mars the second and the Earth the third. The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh Cosmic Grades all lie in their own universe and consist of seven planets and seven suns.Jozef Rulof claimed that there are 15 planets in our universe which contain human life. He claimed that each human soul started their divine cycle on the Moon and, after reincarnating on six intermediate planets, would reincarnate on Mars to reach the second "Cosmic Grade". After reaching this cosmic grade, they would again reincarnate on six new intermediate planets, to finally arrive on Earth to reach the third "Cosmic Grade". Each of the traversed planets would push the development of the human body a bit further, reaching something akin to non-human primates on the second "Cosmic Grade" and humans on the third "Cosmic Grade". This meant to him that there are no other planets in our universe which contain human life which is as developed as on Earth.
He further claimed that when a human soul's time of repeated reincarnation on earth has come to an end, they go further as a spirit in the so-called "spheres", which are ethereal places invisible to the human eye while alive, but are roughly located around the earth itself, like alternative atmospheres. In these "spheres", they no longer possess a body of meat and bones, but a similarly-shaped body made out of ghost matter called the "spirit". The spheres were divided into seven grades as well, and the grade that a soul would end up in after their final life on earth would depend on their physical and cognitive behavior on earth. Each soul, he claimed, is required to climb the spiritual ladder towards the seventh sphere, until they are attracted by the "Mental Areas" and proceed to reincarnate on the first intermediate planet of the fourth Cosmic Grade.
He claimed that when a human soul has taken full possession of the seventh planet of the seventh Cosmic Grade, it has reached "The All", a state of conscious merger, that unites all human souls back into one divine being, ending the divine cycle.
Jesus Christ
Jozef Rulof had specific views on Christian lore, often reinterpreting the Bible to fit into his teachings.For example, he claimed that
- Jesus was not born by a miracle of the Holy Spirit, but was born just like everybody else.
- Jesus was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot. Judas hoped that his master would show his divine powers. He was surprised that Jesus did not do anything when he was arrested. Because he saw that he had made a mistake, he committed suicide.
- Jesus did not die for our sins, he was simply murdered.
- Jesus was the first person who reached "The All".