In this century the religious tendency and view has disappeared from large parts of the earth's population. Just as a terrain becomes desert when all the water disappears from it, so the human mentality becomes a psychic or mental desert where the religious tendency has disappeared from the human view of life. In this mental desert there is admittedly a lush mental vegetation, but, from a psychic or mental point of view, it consists only of desert plants. It gives nourishment only to that part of the human mentality which, because of its underdeveloped state, is still bound to the purely physical or bodily sphere of interest. "Plants" that can give nourishment to the spiritual or psychic side and thereby to the primary or eternal part of the living being do not occur in this desert area. But here there are, as previously mentioned, great desert plants that give an abundance of nourishment to the physical, bodily or purely material side of the being in question. The mental desert vegetation consists of a countless number of species that, so to speak, belong to the same family. This family is known by the concept "money". By the various species is here to be understood the many methods by which the money is appropriated. We know these methods by such terms as: profit, dividends, interest, earnings, salary and so on. These many plant species of the mental desert vegetation have gradually become a vital necessity for people at the same time as being extremely unhealthy for the soul, since they are nearly all infested with a certain percentage of a well-hidden poison called "dishonesty". This poison is absolutely deadly to the creation of real, lasting happiness. Not only does it not give real nourishment to the human being's spirit, but it destroys everything that can create a mental foundation for life through which the dark fate-situations of physical life can be experienced without nervous breakdown, without worry, fear, pessimism and suicide, quite apart from the immunity to great areas of dark fate that lasting, absolute honesty or being-one-with-the-truth gives.
      The entire administration, structure and maintenance of life of terrestrial mankind has gradually become totally dependent on this mental desert vegetation. All governments, all politics, all social conditions, all positions, honour and prestige, living standards, civilisation and so on are today exclusively a question of money. Because of people's underdeveloped morality, the appropriation of or hunt for money has become the great problem of their lives. Seen from this point of view the otherwise so highly acknowledged civilized states together be come merely a society of primitive people whose main source of nourishment is the hunt for money. Everyone is compelled to take part in this hunt. It has gradually become such an all-outshining vital necessity that it has eclipsed religion and the worship of God.