- 13 - Thus, everything in Creation leaves behind an Odic trace of its presence that links the day of its coming into being with the last day of its life. I can best explain this by a material example. If a wagon laden with a finely ground substance [e.g., flour] is driven along a road, and a constant stream of this substance runs through a crack in the bottom of the wagon to the ground, the course travelled by the wagon can be traced by following the trail of the substance, which is like a band connecting the point of departure of the wagon with that of its destination. • Such a band is formed by the emitted Od of every creature on its way through life. It is the trail by which migratory birds find their way back to their homelands and the swallow finds the same roof under which it had once built its nest. The Odic sensitivity of these creatures is extremely well developed. You call it animal ‘instinct’. But this instinct is active only so long as they are in good health. Sick animals, because of the weakening of their Odic powers, lose their Odic sensitivity for following their own or another creature’s trail. For this reason, migratory birds that are in poor health cannot find their way home, and a sick dog cannot follow its master’s trail or its own. There are also human beings whose Odic sensitivity is so great that they can perceive the Odic scent of another individual at some distance and find it pleasant (they find the person likeable) or repulsive (they dislike the person), even if they have never met or otherwise come to know the individual in question. • Mutual attraction or repulsion ‘at first sight’ is merely the reaction to Odic sensitivity. Hence the popular expression: ‘They can’t stand each other.’ (in German: Sie können sich nicht riechen. ‘They cannot (bear the) smell (of) each other.’) Od is among the most wonderful things in God’s Creation. The Odic band not only keeps you in touch with everything with which you came into contact in life, but it also reflects your entire life: every experience, every act, every utterance, every thought of yours is reproduced by it as in a film. • It is the ‘Book of Life’, in which everything is recorded. It is a photographic record that retains and reproduces everything. It is a film that does not lie, and whose revelations cannot be denied. It is the evidence by which you will one day be judged by your Creator. For every terrestrial being its predestined fate is imprinted in its Od from the outset and can be seen both in the Odic body as a whole as well as in every particle of the Od. The fate of a being can therefore also be read in the Odic particles adhering as emissions to everything with which that being has come into contact. Not all that you do or suffer in life is predestined. Most of it results from the self-determination of your own free will. Only the general path of your lives, together with certain turning points along that path, is predestined. What you do while traveling that path and how you act at those turning points is for you to decide. That is your responsibility. • Your life has one purpose only: to raise your spirit to a higher level on the road that has been mapped out for you, to bring it nearer to God. Your path through life is one of tests. Its nature and length are fixed in advance; these you cannot change. The turning points on that path are intermediate exams, and corporeal death is the end of the path. Whether you do your duty as you go along the predestined path or not depends on your free will. Whoever passes the final examination, his spirit will continue to progress in the Beyond until it reaches its final goal: union with God.
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