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“Letters Beyond the Veil” continues the love story of Elisabeth and Dietrich Seidel. In this volume the reader will learn how, after Dietrich’s physical life came to an end, Elisabeth found a way to communicate with him, beyond the “veil,” writing down her thoughts for him to read. These thoughts became letters, and she began receiving replies from her beloved.
Their letters reveal what is truly most important for our eternal life. It is not success in the form of fame or fortune; it is not material possessions. Rather, what is most important is love, true love, eternal love, the eternal relationship of heart that is forged during our physical life on the earth.
Reviews
Elisabeth Seidel’s heartfelt new book takes you on her path to life without the physical presence of her beloved husband. She continues to feel his presence many days. Letters and writing helped her get past the loneliness and longing for him. Her faith and beliefs help her get through every day; also, the memories they shared of how he is always there for her and she is for him. Chapter after chapter you feel her pain and her happiness that one day she will be with him again, her beloved.
When you read Elisabeth’s book, the first thing that comes to mind is how much she loved her husband and her husband loved her, for better, or for worse, through everything, and how hard it was for her when he passed away. The letters helped her survive and still do and keep his memory alive. It is a very touching book about how we need someone in our life, beside God. Elisabeth had that with her husband, her soulmate.
~ Betty Woertz, San Diego, California
“Letters Beyond the Veil” is a love story between a husband who has passed and his wife who remains in the natural world. It filled my heart with hope, inspiration, and emotion as I read each letter of love and honesty between two God-loving people. This book broadened my outlook on life here and thereafter. It captivated me from the moment I started reading it until the final paragraph. Each letter and correspondence opened me up to learning and knowing about our life that never ends. It was a joy to read.
~ Rev. Richard Buessing, President, Senior Pastors Association
This book offers a touching and heartfelt look at the power and beauty of love that lasts beyond the limitations of this earthly life and into our eternal life. It is a moving tribute to the endless love of two people that began over 40 years ago and is shared in a previous book “Beloved Forever Together: Letters of Eternal Love.” This volume continues their story and relationship as told through letters that have flowed between Elisabeth and Dietrich Seidel after his death in 2016. Those who have wondered if there is a spiritual reality beyond death will find the annotated presentation of valuable resources on life in the spiritual existence to be insightful and comforting. Of course, the heart of the book features the letters that have continued between the couple – a communication between Elisabeth on this side of the veil and Dietrich on the other side of the veil. Their love jumps off the pages and into our hearts as we become witnesses to the power and beauty of true love.
~ Kathy Winings, EdD, Vice President of the Board, IRFF, President, Educare
The Conjugation of Love: “Marriage is a long conversation,” Friedrich Nietzsche said.
But how long, exactly? Can the conversation be eternal, can lovers conjugate the verbs of their conjugal feelings beyond the veil?
Nietzsche didn’t say. But Elisabeth Seidel provides insights. Her book is not just another volume about life after death or about communicating with the dead. It’s about the languages of conjugal love on earth, and in heaven.
“Love is strong as death” said King Solomon in Song of Songs 8.6. In her Unificationist song of songs, Seidel suggests that love can be stronger than death. We learn how Dietrich and Elisabeth declared their nascent love when they were young, how they conversed while on earth, not always with romantic words, and how the quintessence of eternal love is expressed after Dietrich’s ascension in 2016. He is absent in the chores of daily life, but remains a spiritual presence, with whom the conversation continues, on another level.
Before passing, Dietrich told Elisabeth that death is natural, as natural as life is. Those who were truly one in heart on earth continue to communicate with their beloved. Here, “truly one” means naturally one. Special powers spiritual gifts or techniques may help establish a communication. But a genuine and blissful communion can only come through natural feelings connecting hearts. The love after is only a prolongation of the love existing before.
Any person with a genuine heart may keep talking to their beloved, provided the couple had a record of saying love on earth, and not just making love. Nietzsche said, “When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you’re together will be devoted to conversation.”
Why were Dietrich and Elisabeth able to keep a lasting love in their marriage, with the promise of living eternally together? The book provides some insights, especially this letter of Elisabeth to Dietrich,
“I miss the places where we were together: my Alpine mountains, your Austrian Alps. When we saw mountains, we felt at home. We saw God in our mountains (…) We were sharing our dreams together with our Heavenly Parent. We wanted to be victorious for the sake of our Heavenly Parent.”
Here, the couple is depicted both in relationship to the Creator and to His creation, which is like the shrine of love. Dietrich was a typical Austrian, whereas Elisabeth was born in France, near Mont-Blanc. Nature is omnipresent in their love story. Anyone familiar with European culture remembers how the Alps have constantly inspired modern lovers, since the romantic age. The Swiss writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau invented the romantic description of the landscape. His love stories have nurtured generations of romantic people. Dietrich and Elisabeth are romantic Unificationists, not unlike Reverend Moon who said, “The ideal married couple referred to in the Unification Church is a couple who can truly manifest the highest forms of art and literature.”
Nature and the natural feelings of love create the bonding and human affection, but without the spiritual commitment to God, the natural and human affection may not mature and can even fade away. Elisabeth speaks honestly about the many incidents that affected their married life. She confesses that without God and spiritual discipline, their couple could have been mediocre. The secret of Dietrich and Elisabeth lies in the proper balance between the romantic love and the committed, ethical love. Before Dietrich passed away, she kept promising to continue and said to him,
“Do not worry. I will take care of everything. How to pay the bills and repair the house. How to write emails and figure out the computer. How to keep in touch and spread love around. How to figure things out without you around. Things left unfinished (…) All the wrongs I will make it right. All the pains I will heal. All the miseries I will make them joys. Because you left me with a reservoir of true love.”
On his side, Dietrich keeps showing signs of affection and tenderness, but moreover, from the afterlife, he keeps telling her, “My main mission is to love you.”
The book is written in an unusual format. It looks like a collage, combining various literary genres. The book is partly a well-documented spiritual essay on life after death, with quotes from scholars. The book is also the memoirs of Elisabeth, but without any chronology. We jump from the present time to the remote past, and from there to the future and future perfect. Rather than following a logical and rational order, the author follows the stream of consciousness, a typically American technique of story-telling. The last part of the book belongs to a special genre, called the epistolary novel. It was popular in the classical and pre-romantic French tradition. In the last 40 pages, the author presents the letters she wrote to Dietrich in the Spirit World and the letters she received from him. It is probably the most moving and thrilling part of the book.
The book covers many additional topics such as the supporting role of a spiritual community as well as the life of Dietrich and Elisabeth’s children. Another topic is the role of angels. They seem to play an important role in the life of Dietrich and Elisabeth. We are reminded of the lyrics of Abba’s famous song “I Have a dream”:
I believe in angels
Something good in everything I see
I believe in angels
When I know the time is right for me
I’ll cross the stream, I Have a Dream.
Elisabeth wrote a good book. Her Unificationist convictions are expressed very naturally, with deep respect for other traditions. It is a realistic account of the solitude and vacuum experienced by widows. It is also a book full of life and reasonable hope, coming from a person who feels gratitude, confesses her weak points, and never complains against her fate.
~ Laurent Ladouce, writer, France
I met Elisabeth in 2019 when my daughter and son-in-law rented her home in Red Hook. My husband was pastoring a church in a nearby town at the time. Elisabeth visited our church several times and we often prayed together for her travels.
In 2020 my husband died of multiple myeloma. Through the loss of our husbands, and our faith, God connected us in a very special way.
I very much enjoyed reading Elisabeth’s book. She shares how important her faith has been for her. It was faith that brought Dietrich and her together. It was their deep faith and commitment to each other that sustained them as a couple. It’s her faith that sustains her now.
Elisabeth was able to share many letters that she and Dietrich wrote to each other, expressing feelings about their life and continuing to assure each other of their love and commitment to one another. What a special relationship they had with God and each other.
In Elisabeth’s book she shares her faith walk with God during the many seasons of life. Through her writing she has been able to continue the legacy that God started in her and Dietrich’s couple. I know many lives will be touched and comforted by her book as she shares practical ways God has given her to navigate through the grief process, as she remembers the special relationship she had and still has with her beloved.
Every person has their own grief journey. My grief journey has been very different from Elisabeth’s, but alike in so many ways. She has encouraged me and I hope I have been able to encourage her.
~ Virginia Millard, Red Hook, New York
Dietrich F. Seidel 