I’ll give a few examples. When John was terminally ill and in the final stages of his life, I suddenly opened the curtains at a spot where they had always been closed. We have a large window in the living room and the curtains were always closed in some sections. I knew he always wanted them closed and I wasn’t going to suddenly open them now just because he wasn’t aware of it anymore. But I did open them and it felt right; I had a clear, intuitive feeling about it. Later I heard that the yew is called the tree of life and death. Do we have a yew in our little garden? Indeed we do, and it stands exactly in the spot that came into sight when I opened that curtain, just two weeks before his death. Because of that, the yew suddenly had a view of John as he lay dying. I then began to tune into the specific quality that the yew possesses. Every tree or shrub has a specific quality. I sometimes enjoy tuning into it. I did so with the yew. It wraps a small layer of enlightenment energy around a person. Normally, we are insensitive to this; it makes no difference to us. But when someone is dying, it does make a difference in their energetic field. Yews literally illuminate the dying process; they bring about enlightenment.

Another example. In this case, I had my own, human interpretation of why I was doing it. Later, I received information about this from my guides. The situation:

At a certain point, it was clear that John was terminally ill, though not yet to the extent that a life expectancy could be accurately predicted. In hindsight, his life expectancy from that point on turned out to be about six months. I began to surround John with flowers. Even earlier, from the time he was spending a lot of time in bed, I would bring him a small bouquet, but at a certain point I started filling the living room with them. It was as if it were a party every day. There were always four or five bouquets there. John would sometimes say: “Those flowers mean I’m going to die.” I interpreted his remark as follows: because I know he doesn’t have long to live and he knows that too, those flowers are there, because he loves nature and really enjoys looking at them. I do that because he doesn’t have long to live; I wouldn’t do it if he still had ten years to live. That’s a human reason.

Later, I was told by guides that John had meant something different: the presence of flowers means he doesn’t have long to live, because that is the meaning of flowers: flowers play a role in the dying process. Yes, they’re also at parties, but they’re certainly important in the dying process too. And John, who was claircognizant, clairvoyant and clear about everything, knew that. Ah. And how can flowers help with dying? What do they do then? That is very interesting and also the reason they are present at parties: flowers freeze time. They capture experiences. That is very suitable for parties: they freeze your experiences and open you up to a party: look at those beautiful flowers, and off you go. In the process of dying, they thereby already detach a part of you from your life; they freeze that. They start to extract your experiences from your system, as it were, by freezing them, by capturing them. When you die, there is less from which you need to detach. That does make it easier. The joyful experiences of happiness spring forth at that moment and accompany you through the first part of the experience of death. Then you feel happy. That happy feeling when dying has other reasons too, but this is one of them.

I describe these experiences to give you an insight into the subtle world. Because we are unfamiliar with it, we have no idea of what is all accessible in the subtle realm, available to people. It is not certain that you will come to this conclusion, but hopefully this will make you somewhat more aware of the fact that there are subtle matters lying behind the known reality that exert an influence.

From: 'Insight through percentage exercises' under 'Subtle exercises'