Seen from this point of view, ordinary terrestrial human beings leave very much to be desired. They are still very, very far from having mental sovereignty. One can in fact say that they represent the culmination of the very opposite. They are living to the very highest degree mentally imprisoned. This prison constitutes everything that comes under the heading of those substances or material things that they desire to such an extent that the fellow beings, the living life around them, is really perceived only as minor details, as tools or a means of enabling them to fulfil their material desires. In the midst of all this matter or sensing of matter each being sees in reality only his own I. Everything revolves around this I and it is the being's desire to bring everything under its control. And this is where they come into conflict with the laws of life. According to these laws, the living being has to bring under its control only matter, not the living fellow beings. Terrestrial human beings are thus faced with two great realities: fellow beings and matter. The whole of their fate, their experience of life, their complete mental freedom or mental imprisonment is totally dependent on the relationship that they have to these two phenomena, which are formed by their surroundings. The laws of life decree that the individual or the I should make itself the master of matter, but the servant of his fellow beings. The aim of the living being's evolution, its gaining of experience and all its experiences, both unpleasant and pleasant, is exclusively to make the individual a servant of its living fellow beings. But as the living fellow beings are the same as life, and life in turn is in reality the same as Providence or the Godhead, it means that the living being should serve the Godhead. The living being has to evolve to the stage where it can see the Godhead in any form of life whatsoever and can thereby serve this form of life.
      But in order to become a perfect servant of life, the living being has to first become a perfect master of matter. Matter is actually the only means in existence with which one can serve one's neighbour, one's fellow beings or the Godhead. But in order to become a real master of matter, the living being has to render itself one with matter. It has to learn to love matter just as highly as it loves itself. And this love of matter reveals itself under the concept of the right of ownership. When the being has a wish or a desire to own a car, an aeroplane, a palace, a castle, a fortune, servants, slaves etc., exclusively for the sake of its own pleasure, or exclusively in order to serve itself with these phenomena, it possesses a total or absolutely perfect love of matter, but has no love of its neighbour or of its fellow beings. It does not fulfil the laws of life or the conditions that are required in order for the individual to be one with Nature or one with life, that is to say, to possess "cosmic consciousness" and thereby sense the pulse of the universe, the Godhead and the very highest life. But when the being does not fulfil the laws of life, it lessens to a corresponding degree its real experience of life. To the degree that it loves matter in order to profit itself more than its fellow beings or its neighbour, it creates disharmony around itself, darkening life. This darkening we call primitiveness, unhappy fates, sin, hell or evil. These phenomena constitute the absolutely inevitable effects of the desire for, or love of matter, and the consequent behaviour of the being as a master of matter without being a servant of its fellow beings or of life.