Love is usually considered a characteristic of the more highly developed beings in the animal kingdom, a characteristic which promotes their sexual urge and ensures the survival of the species. In this form it is actually present everywhere among these beings as a connecting link between the masculine and the feminine sex. It is also the basis for the parent-principle, or that tendency in the beings which promotes their urge to protect and defend themselves. Naturally, this love between the sexes is far more varied in terrestrial man than in the rest of the animal kingdom. Terrestrial man, who is a transition-being between the real animal-kingdom and a higher plane of development, is capable of reflecting some of the radiance from a higher world onto this area of passion- and fertilization-energy. The love-poems, romantic novels and the glorification of love between men and women in art and music throughout the whole world express a mixture of animal and human energies. Love-dramas, both in real life and in literature, show however that the relationship between the sexes for terrestrial mankind does not only result in happiness and blessedness, but also in jealousy, hate and a desire to possess, which can make life hell for people.

Through the most highly developed and cosmically initiated beings who have lived on this globe mankind has heard the concept of love mentioned without it particularly concerning the love between men and women. These wise men and world-redeemers have talked of love as a culmination of unselfishness, a love to one's neighbour, to everything living, which is not dependent on it being returned in the same way as the erotic state of being in love. This neighbourly love is referred to as that psychic and moral state every being must aspire to in its development in order to become the perfect man who is god-like and can be master over his own fate or existence. The culmination of neighbourly love is a state mankind is developing towards, a state of unselfishness and self-sacrifice for the benefit of the whole; the more highly developed a person is, the more that is reflected in love and sympathy towards their neighbour. One hears time after time about people who have devoted their lives to a work which involves helping ill or needy fellow-beings. Such work is of very great importance for mankind's development, especially if it is undertaken without the thought that those helped should do something in return or show gratitude. Real human love brings its own reward and demands nothing in return. That it will eventually, according to the law of cause and effect, give the person a lighter and happier fate and in this way 'repay him', is something that the person carrying out a really loving action does not think about at the time. He does it because he cannot help it; it is a life-condition for him; he hasn't the heart to do otherwise. The robust, primitive person, on the contrary, can hate and persecute other people without scruple, and can feel a thirst for revenge which can only be satisfied through violence and murder. Erotic love can often be a substantial ingredient of such revenge- and murder-dramas, so it is not that which promotes human development. It is exclusively the growth of unselfish neighbourly love among people that is the reliable means of banishing war, with its terror and mass-murder, its oppression and misuse of power.

But the great religions have of course preached love and unselfishness over thousands of years, and it could seem as though it has hardly helped at all as the world is now more full of murder, terror and dictatorship than ever before. Is all that talk about neighbourly love just sentimental daydreaming, and nothing to do with reality? Much of that which goes under the name of neighbourly love can be so one-sidedly emotional that it can be characterized as foolish kindness and romantic sentimentality which can even border on fanaticism. But real love can be found, and a great many people long for it, just as they long for peace. If real love had not been a reality as a universal, cosmic force, life's greatest source of light and warmth, then all material warmth and light would be deadly for living beings, an obstruction to their experience of life. No eyesight, no respiration, no blood circulation - in fact no physical life would have existed on this globe if love was not the life-giving force.

The physical, strongly sexual love is also an effect of the cosmic or divine love-force, an effect which is both natural and divine at certain stages of development. These are stages where the beings' selfishness is, for a time, a necessary factor in their struggle for existence. One link in this struggle is the fight over 'owning' a mate. The right of ownership over one or more beings of the female sex is quite natural for the male being in the animal kingdom, and this is carried further into the terrestrial human stages of development, not just in the harems of the East, but also here in the West, where many married men still believe that they possess a kind of 'right of ownership' over the woman who has married them. Conversely, many women can be of the opinion that they 'own' their husbands; but life will gradually teach both men and women that one cannot own another being. Parental love can also reveal how the parents believe that the children are, in a way, their property - 'their own flesh and blood' as one says - but just as there are a great many conflicts and difficulties within marriages these days, there is also a great deal of incompatibility between parents and children which, in time and through experience, will become the contributory cause of people getting to know real love, the love which does not require anything for itself.

The great wise men who have lived here on the earth have all, in their own way, sought to enlighten people about the love which is the fulfilment of all the laws - the only one thing needful, as Christ called it. It is this which holds electrons as well as globes on their course in micro- and macrocosmos, and it is this which will create peace on the earth if people will unite themselves with it. Through their feelings they have been able to perceive something of this love, and they have been able to be moved and to feel enthusiasm at certain times. But feelings can easily lead people astray without intelligence as a regulating factor. That is why one sees how the religions, whose priests talk about love, have literally been able to be used in the service of war, and similarly have been used in fanatical persecution, terror and misuse of power. Real love is not just feeling but intellectualised feeling, which cannot be led astray by explosive forces but, on the contrary, through its harmonious conditions, makes possible the person's correspondence with the energy of intuition, the all-penetrating force of the universe or Godhead through which unity with 'the Father' and eternity is experienced. It is therefore not so surprising that the most developed people have made it their sole mission to tell others about this love, at the same time as they have shown that people would only understand a very small part of what they said. Nevertheless, real love has in many ways gradually penetrated quite practically into human society; the Red Cross movement both in war and peace, care of the aged, disability pensions and many other forms of help for those in need are the small beginnings of a truly humane society. In a future society one will manage to abolish the causes of all misery instead of patching up the effects. But it will take time before humanity reaches this point. What then are the causes of human misery - or rather the cause, for there is only one? - a lack of love.

One cannot blame anyone that this love is not a dominating factor in terrestrial human society. It must grow in the single person's mind little by little through experiencing the contrast to love, which people experience so plentifully. One must long for love before it will grow. Today such a longing is found in millions of people's minds - yes, it can literally be expressed as a hunger for love. Every natural hunger which arises in the living beings' consciousness has, in fact, a possibility of gradually meeting satiation. But of course one finds thousands of people who die of hunger! It still happens in this world, and it is really a hunger for love that they die from. All people who died in gas chambers and concentration camps, practically all those people who were killed during the war, died from a lack of love. The hardships of love' ravage the world of terrestrial people. But if it is possible to satiate this hunger, why then doesn't it happen? Because it has to happen through gradual development - it cannot happen in any other way than through the people themselves. The dead are not dead - they return again with the experiences from earlier lives in their subconsciousness, and those people who show the greatest desire to help, to create peace and to show neighbourly love are precisely those people who earlier had themselves gone through profound experiences of suffering. Why did they go through these experiences? Because they had to reap what they themselves had sown earlier of lack of love, revenge, hate, jealousy and desire for power. When things in the world today seem apparently worse than ever before, it is because the religions, which were earlier able to keep the unloving forces somewhat in check with their authority and suggestion, are beginning to lose their power over people. People no longer live so much on their feelings - they have begun to think more and more, also about the religions, which they find illogical and in many ways not in accordance with the love that is preached. Science, which has become the authority of today, does not deal with love, even though it can in many ways express love by the benefits it gives. But it is of course also used in the service of the opposite principle. It is neutral, and concentrated on the movements of material. Mankind's position today is characterized by instability and imbalance because there is no firm basis in life - no faith, no hope and no love.

But if the hunger for love is so widespread, and a lack of love shows itself to be the most fatal evil in the world, why hasn't every effort been made to stamp out this evil? After all, a wealth of forces have been set going to fight against other evils, for example by building hospitals and sanatoriums where people try to fight against the worst illnesses which plague mankind. But how can one remedy the hunger for love? If there is famine in a land, then all forces are set in motion to obtain food from other lands. But which forces can be set in motion to fight against the consumptive lack of love which is mankind's worst sickness, and whose mortality rate is far higher than it is within what we otherwise call illness? From where can food be imported which can remedy the hunger for love? The only thing which can remedy this need is knowledge of the law of life. Such information can be given today to those people who seek it. It is established as a 'science of love' through which the person can acquire an understanding of why the conditions today are as they are here on the earth, and how, through the efforts of individual people, they can be otherwise. If one person fulfils those conditions required for the creation of a perfect life, then that perfect life will arise, quite independent of all other beings. In physical science one can demonstrate that a particular combination of certain substances will invariably give a very particular result, completely without regard to whether one or more people make this combination.

Being able oneself to acquire a perfect life in peace and harmony does not mean that people all over the world must also fulfil the law of life. It is quite enough that one fulfils this law oneself. One cannot fulfil it for any other being at all - everyone must themselves carry out this fulfilment or cosmic-chemical process with those chemicals which are that being's feelings and thoughts. It is one's own temper one must control, one's own selfishness one must remove from the mixture, and one's unselfishness one must liberally bring into the mixture of energy where there is both feeling and thoughtfulness. One really can banish all strife from one's own being. It is foolish to believe that all others must also fulfil the law of existence so that we ourselves can be happy. People do not stand on the same level of development, and there will, for a time, still be people on the earth who do not understand the law of existence and therefore will run around in the spheres of war and create their own 'hell'.

But there are millions of people who are far enough advanced in development that they can begin to understand the intellectuality behind life and nature - that is to say the laws whose observance results in a perfect life. To these people it sounds like this: "You see, there is light in the world, you only need to study, research and open yourself up to this light. You will see that everything without exception around the sphere of man is cosmic love. You will experience that in all places where the divine laws are fulfilled there sparkles and radiates joy, happiness and blessedness. You will see it in the sunrise and sunset; you will feel it in the light and warmth of the sun. You will see it in the flower-carpets of summer and in the newly-emerging leaves. You will notice it in the cool, scented summer rain and feel the Godhead's closeness in the fairy tale play of light and darkness during the summer nights. Even in the middle of the darkness and cold of winter you will be able to experience it in the sparkling play of the snow-crystals and frost-flowers on your window. When you open your mind you will know it in the fundamental cycle of life which creates time from eternity and eternity from time. Your mind will become one with this love and you will give it to others through your thoughts, feelings and actions."

Spiritual science, or 'the science of love', which gives knowledge about the law of life will, in time, become a help for millions of people to learn to obtain mastery over their own mind so that it begins to vibrate in contact with 'the basic note of the universe' for the benefit and joy of the whole. It will take its time, but it is of great significance that some people have already begun today.