Introduction 

I attended private classes to obtain my high school diploma, and later, when I studied law at the University of Vienna, I had to rely on my own resources again and attended evening courses at a private school. The curriculum of the first part of my studies also included canon law and church history, and the lecturer continually amazed me with his discourses on the numerous falsifications and the lack of authentic works. It was wholly incomprehensible to me that the church was teaching things as the truth that theologians have long known to be falsifications and tendentious literature.

    After passing my First State Examinations, I attended, probably because I had become curious, one of the lectures of a »Society for the Unification of World Christianity«, which took place in a rented room at the University of Vienna. At that time I did not have any idea about sects and thus thought I would be able to have sensible discussions with the pleasant young people who had come to the lecture. A young, very nice girl, fifteen years old at the most, was immediately introduced to me as a kind of »minder«. After the lecture I accepted an invitation to join a discussion of the group. I was astonished to learn that a certain Mr. Moon from Korea had come to this world as a new Messiah in order to successfully complete the mission in which Christ had failed. I was soon to find out that they were not speaking about a unification of Christianity at all but about a new version under the leadership of this Mr. Moon. Their worst enemy was »evil Communism«, which was roundly condemned. Some elements of the so-called »Divine Principles« which this group disseminated seemed highly childish and ridiculous to me, and some of their explanations of history did not correspond to what I had learned in canon law. So I raised my objections and for the first time in my life I realized how friendly and apparently truth-loving people can listen reverently without heeding a single word.

    After I had joined in several of their discussions and trips, the head of the group invited me to his office and explained to me that now the time had come to make a decision. He asked me either to move in with the group and work for them or to refrain from attending their meetings in the future. This inhumane request for mental and physical servitude came as an enormous surprise and shock. On the one hand because I came from the provinces – my parents were mountain farmers – and I had not yet come across this kind of brutality; on the other hand because I liked the young girl and did not want to lose her.

    At that time I already felt that Moon, as a new Messiah, was not at all harmless. In each and every breath he spoke about love, but his kind of love obviously seemed to come to an end as soon as he encountered differently-minded people, in particular communists, whom he considered as a new force for evil. People who followed the thoughts of the new sect were good and useful, those who thought differently – or maybe even sympathised with communism – were evil and satanic. A phrase that I once heard somewhere kept hammering in my brain: "If you do not want to be my brother, you must be my enemy." No, and no again. I would never sell my soul at any price!

    In this way my search for the truth began. Other painful disappointments followed, I even changed my plans for my future and completed my law degree. For many years I searched in the maze of religious doctrines and studied various fields until it finally became clear to me why people are wandering around as if in a fog and do not even know what they are, where they come from and where they go to after their time on Earth has come to an end.

   At first I spent a great deal of time in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The members of the sect had raved about spiritual experiences and claimed that it was possible to talk to the dead. They fasted for some days and experienced something. Of course I tried it myself, too, and after three days of abstaining from eating and drinking I discovered forces within myself that somehow seemed to spin around. I clearly felt how some of them were significantly greater than my body and how they entered and left me so that I could sense their dimension from the time between their leaving and re-entering my body. Only much later did I learn that these powers are well-known as chakras in Far Eastern philosophy.

    At the National Library I found numerous books about the spiritual dialogue with the hereafter. It seemed to me that some works had by no means been written by lunatics, and were open and sincere. I also found a so-called Factual Report, which soon captivated me because it seemed extraordinarily nice, frank and earnest and because it answered the question about how life had evolved in a scientific spirit. I visited the publisher, an elderly gentleman, and soon realised that he could not have written this factual report. So I visited the so-called medium, a man who at that time was already over eighty and was a former tram driver in Vienna. He was a nice man who told me how he had been trained as a medium and how he had functioned as a writing medium for a long time. He described to me how during the night his hand had started to write of its own accord, and how he found numerous pages in the morning which had been written by his hand and whose contents amazed him. To my mind the factual report could not have been a product of his mind either.

    In the factual report, the author claimed that his name was John and that he had been a disciple of Christ. He had been instructed by beings of the other world, notably by Christ's disciples, to write the report for mankind's sake and to disseminate it through a medium. He explained that Christ had described the God of the Jews as evil and had therefore been persecuted by them. All records of Christ’s disciples had been destroyed by the falsifiers and had been replaced by misleading assertions. He, John, wrote down in the factual report what Christ really had said and taught.

    The factual report captivated me more and more the longer I dealt with it. For example, it was claimed that Christ had descended from the Essenes and not from the Jews. In actual fact some years later numerous scrolls were found in Qumran on the Dead Sea from which it may be assumed that Christ actually descended from the Essenes.

    Everything would have worked out well and I might have become a fervent supporter of this report if I had been more of a ‘believer’. As it was, I could not stop reflecting on every unclear or obviously incorrect statement. To my surprise I found a second factual report which in some chapters differed significantly from the first one. How – for God’s sake! – could it be possible that there were two different versions of a true factual report transmitted from the hereafter?! Naïve as I still was at that time, I was unable to digest this fact. It took up an enormous amount of my time and caused a great deal of inner restlessness until one day in a fit of desperation I threw the whole factual report into the fire.

    I had been able to get rid of the book by burning it, but I was not able to erase it from my memory. The thoughts kept hammering in my brain and I had to reconsider and examine each of them over and over again until I finally managed to understand the inconsistencies, keeping the good aspects and accepting the disappointing ones.

    Not long after finishing my law studies and a few years after burning the report, I became a youth worker in an home for problem children because I wanted »to do something good« in the spirit of the factual report. I soon became familiar with this job and eagerly studied the CVs of the children and teenagers who lived in the home. I was soon to experience another disappointment when I gradually realized that bringing up children and young people in a home like that was simply impossible. How could one house hundreds of children and teenagers from difficult families in a barrack-like building and take care of them with far too few carers? Weren’t the youth workers overtaxed? Could they even come close to giving the children and young people the feeling  they needed so badly for a more or less satisfactory development? One day I dared to ask one of the staff why he had appeared to start his night shift only ten minutes before it ended. But he did not consider it necessary to give any explanation to a young colleague like myself. So I decided to make an entry in the log book, especially because this youth worker used to like to make disparaging remarks about the young people. The director of the home was delighted about my apparent courage, while the other staff were outraged and after previously calling me »dear Mr. Sauerschnig«  they now began to ignore me in a way that would have been worthy of a film. What I unfortunately had not known was that the member of staff about whom I had made a comment in the register had been playing cards and drinking with colleagues.

    Having learnt from this bitter experience, I left my job as a youth worker and became self-employed in a profession in which I had never worked before, but for which I was granted a trade license due to my qualifications obtained through my high school diploma. I set up a copy shop, started off by taking on all kinds of clerical work and over time bought printing, copying and typesetting machines and even a process camera. When after a few years I also bought a computer, it seemed natural to me to write my own programs, so then other companies came to ask me to optimize their computer programs or even to write new ones for them. When a salesman expressed his intention to put my programs on offer at a trade fair for office equipment, I decided to change my job again. I moved to the Waldviertel region and set up a software company.

    However, I not only did programming work, I also sold hardware and taught computer courses at an educational institute offering adult courses for high school graduation. I studied the structure of computers, their functions and basic programs and increasingly came to understand what it meant to have ideas and to use these ideas for bringing a machine into being. I compared the programs with biological processes and realized certain similarities. In this way I delved into studies of biology and physics to find out about the correlations.

    Soon after having started my search for the truth, I began to ponder on how different worlds could exist alongside each other. If the hereafter exists – I said to myself – there has to be an answer to the question of how two or even more worlds could exist parallel to each other. At that time, however, I was still very much influenced by the thoughts contained in the factual report and was generally not able to see things more clearly.

    The factual report described in an impressive way that everything is spirit, whereby spirit should be considered as a force (energy). Many other reports and treatises also suggested that everything was spirit. Einstein indirectly confirmed theories of the other world that suggest that matter (mass) is only a form of energy (of spirit). Only many years later did I understand that energy as well as space, colours and shapes could only be the effects of spirit.

    Today I am convinced that everything is spirit and that everything which exists is founded on spirit's expressions of will. 

With my increasing doubts about whether the factual report was right, I relinquished my belief in the existence of an omniscient and all-powerful God (which Yahweh claims to be). Above all I came to understand that it was impossible to actively grasp several processes happening at the same time and still be fully aware of all of them. Think about a particularly intelligent person and compare him or her to a simple person. Where is the difference between the two? The difference is that the especially perceptive person is able to act in a more imaginative way than an unimaginative person. Both, however, can only do one thing at a time. Reading, writing, singing, watching television, cooking, observing animals etc. cannot be done at the same time by even the most intelligent person.

    If it is in the nature of consciousness that it can handle only one item after the other, there cannot be any creature that is omniscient and that can at the same time align its consciousness with all things and living beings, with all the worlds and billions of galaxies. Because they cannot correspond to reality, such excessive ideas only lead to many people rejecting the concept of a »spiritual almighty« out of hand, although one can easily perceive that nature and the universe function according to intelligent principles.   

The fact that there is more than what we actually perceive became well aware to me through a personal experience. One day I was going to Amaliendorf together with Christine and her two children. Christine was driving the car and I was sitting next to her in the front. Suddenly a strong sensation that we might be involved in a crash with another car took hold of me, although there was no vehicle to be seen. And sure enough, a few minutes later a car appeared approaching us head-on in our lane. Just before we collided the driver swerved to prevent a crash. How could I have sensed that there was a vehicle approaching that represented a danger to us? It could not have been a mere illusion, as Christine’s son told me afterwards that he had felt a similarly strange sensation too.

   Certain dreams have also made a great impression on me. In the first years in which I intensively sought the truth and had many unanswered questions, I often dreamed the answer to my questions and awoke exactly at a certain time. It even happened to me that I did not wake up myself but was only woken up by some other noise, e.g. a child shouting. When I looked at the  clock it was exactly the same time again. One day when I again had many unresolved questions, I dreamed again –  but this time I dreamed that from that time on I would no longer dream and that I would have to go my own way. Since that time the dreams stopped and I no longer wake up at a certain time, even though I have often wished to do so.

    Of course these are personal experiences which, however, may be taken seriously even from a scientific point of view. I am firmly convinced that many people have various spiritual experiences but do not talk about them for fear of being laughed at.

    On television I have seen how a shaman had his tongue cut off and how then the piece which had been cut off immediately grew onto the stump again. Running over hot coals without burning one’s feet may not be proof of the existence of spirit. But all these facts and experiences are clear indicators that there is more than we are currently willing to admit.

    In the course of the many years in which I have been active as a businessman I have employed numerous people and as a systems programmer have gained insight into hundreds of companies. I have learned about people’s strengths, but also about their weaknesses and faults and have enjoyed wheeling and dealing. I have tried to write user-friendly, self-explanatory programs to help people in business. In my job I have learned about existing limits and the rafts of laws which have to be made for a society like ours. In a country in which everyone tries to get as much as possible for themselves, there will never be enough for everyone, and the Government will always be illiquid despite technological progress. In a community in which the strong try to grow even stronger by cleverly investing their money and letting it work for them, and in a community in which humans can set up boundaries which nobody is allowed to cross without asking permission, there will always be privileged and disadvantaged people, and poor, hungry and starving people. As long as rich people can become even richer not through the work of their own hands but through speculation, and as long as people with certain opportunities can multiply their money rapidly, while others are paid next to nothing for their work, there will always be regions, continents and population groups who have to »live« in anxiety and poverty, and near to starvation. In such an unjust world, new ideologies will always develop which claim the right to take away the advantages of others by force. War, misery and tears are the consequences.

    It is clear to all non-primitive people that living together in harmony is only possible with a truthful spirit and love. Nobody needs to stand up and cry out how evil and nasty human beings are and how they are unable to love others. It is not that simple. In Paradise it may be easy to sing hallelujah and smile all day long, but here on Earth we live in conditions which more often make us cry than sing.

    Many of our most serious problems are due to the laws of nature of the world into which we are born. We come into this world helpless and totally dependent on our parents; and we leave it again tired and worn out. Between arriving  and leaving  we strive to get ahead, we seek security, recognition and a certain degree of satisfaction of our needs and wishes.

    As a father and youth worker I have never met bad children, only highly prejudiced adults. Maybe there is such a thing as really bad children, and maybe some people are wicked by nature, but I have never experienced it. The so-called difficult children with whom I lived for some time were problem children because they grew up in unbearable conditions; for me they did not represent any proof that humans can be evil by nature and that they are born with original sin as the church suggests.

    Our prejudices are detailed, and very often we do not even see them as prejudices. The way adults expect children to act and to be is often a disgrace, and makes children into what they are when grown up. They begin to believe in all kinds of nonsense and have to bear a heavy burden of prejudices until some of them break down under the load.

    Take a look at the things which are so important to us! The constraints imposed on us begin when we are born and only end when we die. How much knowledge children have to acquire! If they are not sufficiently gifted, they get bad marks at school, as if a less gifted child was somehow worse than a naturally gifted one. Instead of promoting their abilities, we heap knowledge onto them, which aims to facilitate their access to the next stage of constraints, their job. But then it really gets going: producing, earning money, increasing turnover and productivity, paying taxes, outsmarting competitors, modernizing, automating, growing bigger and bigger and even bigger until we head for sheer madness. Those who are not productive enough are removed, compensated with unemployment benefit and removed to the sidings like old and worn-out locomotives.

    Why do we talk so much about unemployment? Is there really not enough work or just not enough well-paid work?

    Since Darwin impressively showed us that evolution is based on a successful fight for survival, the strongest and most cunning have taken this as confirmation that in this fight for survival one can use all available means in order to gain advantages. Thinking of one's own advantages has spread like a weed, and nowadays it is natural that everyone thinks about his or her own benefits first. Whenever we do something, we ask ourselves what profit or benefit we will gain from it. Everyone sells him- or herself as well as he or she can, everyone tries to get as much as possible from the Government, i.e. from the community.

    When people start feeling guilty, many of them develop into real masters of putting unpleasant things to the back of their minds or reinterpreting them. They create theories and justify whatever requires justification. Many accept decorations and titles and orientate themselves towards supposed role models, people who live in beautiful houses, have yachts, wear beautiful clothes and spend more in a day than many families do in a year.  

So what about this claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds?

    The fact is that this world is far from being the best of all possible worlds. In reality it is cruel and tough and forces us into repulsive and disgusting behaviour. Is there anything worse than the fact that a living being can only exist at the expense of another creature?

    In the factual report Christ offers us beautiful words »A living being serves another through charity«. Nice words for the one who is eating, but not for the one who is being eaten.

    I refuse to accept the fact that we somehow constantly lie to ourselves and go through life as large or small hypocrites. Let us accept things as they are and refrain from continuously concealing them behind all sorts of lies, which only makes things even worse.

    Many people talk about the truth, and mean that which they themselves consider the truth. Many talk about justice and mean that which seems pleasant to them. Many believe in God, but this is a God of their beliefs. He has to be and act in a way which they themselves consider right and proper.

    In this way a spiritual morass and an ignorance about life can be created from which there seems to be no way out. Truth, however, has above all got to do with veracity, sincerity, openness and charity. If we really want to find out what is behind life and not to be content with beliefs of all sorts – even if they are scientifically packaged – we first need to act sincerely, to start eliminating our prejudices and to know ourselves.

    It is obvious that our little world is one of contrasts, a world in which people of different spiritual convictions can live together in order to learn from each other and to mature. It is not a paradise; it never was and never will be, because its meaning and purpose are different from that which those who invoke revelations and divine orders believe in.   

    After my long search for the truth I have come to be convinced that not everything is coincidence. However, we will only understand the meaning of life and gain insight into spiritual processes when we start to understand spirit and ourselves, when we move on from our current spiritual level and devote ourselves to truth and charity. 

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