The Road of Life
The article: Mental Prisons
Chapter 8
"Pangs of conscience"
While the above-mentioned situations represent normal ways of living for the animal – since they are the only ones through which the latter can hold their own – for the advanced terrestrial human being they certainly cannot be considered normal, since this being has access to much more perfect ways of living, all based on the total antithesis to the ways of living of war or of the animal.
The difference between the animal and the terrestrial human being is that while the animal can choose only one particular way of living, namely the "animal" one, the terrestrial human being can make use of not only the animal form of life but also of a form of life that is its total antithesis.
Since this latter form constitutes an antithesis to all war, it is identical to neighbourly love.
In the terrestrial human being two great diametrically opposed ways of living are thus represented.
It is here evident as a matter of course that this not only creates the basis for war against one's neighbour, against the beings in one's surroundings, but also leads the individual into war with himself.
Since the individual has thus within himself the capability to use two ways of living (of which one is perfect and gives a perfect experience of life and the other is imperfect and gives therefore a correspondingly imperfect experience of life) he will, every time he uses the imperfect (animal) way of living and thereby experiences the imperfect experience of life, become dissatisfied with himself or unhappy.
It is this dissatisfaction we call "pangs of conscience".
For the advanced man of culture pangs of conscience will always mean the disclosure that he has used the "animal" instead of the "human" way of living.
He thereby experiences not only the purely physical unpleasantness to which the use of the primitive way of living has led; he also experiences the mental unpleasantness of seeing that he could have avoided the unpleasantness or the ensuing unhappy fate completely if only he had acted otherwise, more in the spirit of neighbourly love and less in the spirit of selfishness.
Since the animal has access only to the animal way of living, this way of living, as previously mentioned, is normal for this being.
It cannot therefore get any kind of pangs of conscience whatsoever.
It lives in contact with its existence, the destiny of its life, and is happy.
It is still to a great extent in "Paradise".
The advanced true man of culture on earth has, however, begun to acquire the right to decide himself whether his experience of life will be happy or unhappy.
He has access to the use of two ways of living, one of which giving him a happy and the other an unhappy experience of life.