Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/1927

1927 Light or dark state after death....

May 20, 1941: Book 28

As soon as you end your earthly life, a change takes place around you and your surroundings. The bodily eye is extinguished; what you now see you see with the spiritual eye, and this is now able, depending on the soul's state of maturity, to grasp what is around it.... It will be able to take in everything if the human being has striven spiritually on earth and therefore the soul has already attained a certain degree of maturity;.... but it will see little if the soul is still immature. For then its spiritual eye is still closed. And thus it is still dark and lightless around such a soul. Like shadows it sees everything and it now wanders around in a desperate state, like a person deprived of sight who cannot find his way anywhere. It is a sad situation and the soul is now far from seeing its surroundings as a divine realm. It wanders around restlessly until, after a long time, it comes across souls in the same state.... The souls can and do complain about their suffering, depending on their realization.... They will complain and grumble or remain in complete apathy in despair. And yet meeting with such souls is the only way to improve their condition by counselling each other and considering the means to get out of this lightless region. And as soon as this desire is aroused in them, beings of light appear in a cloak of their light form and give them advice on how to improve their situation. In this desperate state, souls seize every opportunity if they are not completely obdurate and they then end up in ever darker regions instead of coming to the light. There is so much misery and suffering in this lightless realm that many a soul feels the desire to help and now does everything in its power to alleviate the suffering. Then their activity of love begins, which they had neglected on earth. And with this activity of love, the spiritual eye also begins to become capable of scooping.... The soul will be able to recognize more and more around itself, and thus it will also become more knowledgeable, for it now sees what spiritual knowledge brings in, has a desire for ever brighter light, thereby enters into contact with beings of light, receives extended knowledge from them, passes on the knowledge in its urge to help and is thus constantly active in love.... So it now strives upwards, it becomes ever brighter and clearer around such a soul, and soon it has escaped the dark realm to be constantly in the light. Once the soul has made up its mind to love through the suffering of the souls surrounding it, its condition is no longer hopeless. But it is bad for those souls who remain in their inactivity, who only think of their own dreadful condition and who are completely unaffected by the suffering of others. They cannot be left in this state either, otherwise other emotions could never develop in them. Therefore, their state becomes more and more lightless, their agony more and more unbearable, so that they finally try to escape their surroundings, so that their own suffering also awakens compassion for the suffering of others. For the soul can only redeem itself through loving activity, i.e. free itself from darkness and ascend to the light. In such a state the soul is particularly in need of the prayer of people on earth.... for this gives it strength and strengthens its will to ascend. These souls are so pitiable and can be helped extraordinarily through prayer with love; yet how many souls have to do without prayer.... who have never been lovingly active on earth, few good thoughts follow them into the beyond and that is why their state is so exceptionally bleak. And yet the struggle on the part of the beings of light for such souls does not let up.... And even the souls which have already progressed further take care of them and try to help them, for the beings of light constantly descend into darkness in order to redeem what is not entirely irreconcilable....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers