The most unfinished or incomplete concept in the earthly human's mind is the concept of love. If this were not the case, today's world would appear quite different than it does. So what is real or absolute love? Love is a radiation of energy, which is of use and benefit to all living beings. But the fact that it is of use or benefit to all living beings, does not mean that it is a joy to all living beings. That something is of use or benefit does not necessarily mean that it is definitely felt as pleasant in the moment that it happens. Love can be felt as something that to a large extent is unpleasant, and this is the very source or cause of the earthly humans' misunderstanding of the concept of love.

If love, or something that is of use or benefit to living beings, is felt as unpleasant, how can we know that it is love? For many people this is very difficult to understand because they directly connect the concept of love and pleasure and think that all the unpleasantness they experience is both unloving and unjust. They can perhaps see perfectly well that something unpleasant that another person experiences is justified. They say "It serves him right", "He could have stopped behaving as he did". But can these people also say these things when it is they themselves that are suffering? Not usually. And if they could they would only barely be able to see that it was justified that they got this or that unpleasant experience. But most people at that moment would have difficulty in understanding that the experience was loving because they cannot see life in a large enough perspective.

Earthly humans have in the past created for themselves moral concepts that were based on the persecution of things that in reality were essential to life, but which they thought were unjustified and therefore also unloving, just because they were unpleasant. Was not Christ's persecution and crucifixion based on the fact that the high priests and Pharisees considered that his manner and way of being and behaving were undermining everything that to them was pleasant and justified, namely their own power and position? The fact that Jesus' position and power increased, was for them extremely unpleasant and in their eyes also unjustified. That it was of use to the world and to human beings and so also an expression of the highest love lay outside their sensory range and their ability to comprehend. Christ understood this and so was able to say "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do". Their judgement was based exclusively on the fact that his manner was unpleasing to themselves. Similar things have happened many times since then, even in the name of Jesus, which does not mean that they were also in the spirit of Jesus. When the Inquisition was established it was based on the fear that certain psychic forces, described as "the power of darkness", "the devil" and "Satan", through the work of so-called witches, wizards and heretics might assume greater power than the church or the clergy. These men and women, who were reputed to be practicing witchcraft, very much displeased the church authorities, because it was thought that they undermined their power and position, and for that reason witches were burnt at the stake throughout the Christian countries. The ecclesiastical judges could have no knowledge of whether the people who were burnt at the stake were useful or unuseful in the absolute sense, but they knew that they constituted a danger to the power of the church, they were therefore unpleasing, and on that account they were in their eyes justified in having them executed. So they were in the same situation as the church authorities who murdered the world redeemer.

The crusades that we have read about in history, were based on the same foundation. It was a situation that the Christians didn't want and that they found unpleasant, that the holy land should belong to the heathens, even though it was obviously to a greater extent the heathen's native land than it was the Christians'. And so people ignored the world redeemer's word about putting up the sword as all those who take the sword shall perish by the sword; and on the contrary sought to conquer, by means of the sword, the holy land for the Christians. People have on the whole during the history of humankind again and again felt themselves justified in killing and causing suffering to other people, solely from the point of view that their activities, in fact perhaps just the fact that they existed, constituted a threat to their own comfort, power and position. And things are today just as they were in the past, although the modern "crusades", "crucifixions" and "burnings of heretics at the stake" take place in a slightly different way than they did in the old days.

People today have to a very large extent an interest in what is pleasurable either to the individual or to small groups of people. Whether it is beneficial or harmful to the rest of the community or the rest of the human race is not important. The principles of the world of commerce are based on the ideal of "the greatest possible profit or income". Of course it is intended that we believe, when we read advertisements, that our lives will become much happier if we use the various products that are advertised, and that business peoples' sole interest lies in being public benefactors. But this does not conform to the truth. Behind the scenes a power struggle is going on for gain and position, where they are fighting each other, because it is unpleasant if the competitors get too much power. They give no thought to what is useful or useless in the absolute sense, in other words to humankind as a whole. The most extreme consequence of these conditions is world war, where people because they are fighting against the unpleasantness that they consider the enemy in inflicting on them, create even greater unpleasantness for the enemy and thereby even greater unpleasantness for themselves.

The concept of justice in the earthly humans' understanding is that the individual gets what he or she "deserves". We know this from the Old Testament where it is expressed in the words "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". The ideas of revenge and punishment are not only Old Testament ideas but also extremely modern ones. Our society today is still based on Old Testament morality and not on the morality that forms the basis for the New Testament or true Christianity. So what is the morality of the New Testament? It is that we should love our enemies, love those who hate and persecute us, and turn the right cheek when we are smitten on the left. It was exactly this that Christ taught and it was also what he demonstrated in practice. He proclaimed that God is love and he knew that nothing that befalls a person is unjust or unloving when seen from a cosmic perspective, which means from a perspective where we can sense and experience from the point of view of eternity, and see things, occurrences and living beings from the viewpoint of the Godhead. Ordinary people can naturally not do this, not yet that is, but they can learn to do it. Spiritual science is one factor in modern society that little by little will teach people to understand and manifest real and absolute love.

How do the ideas of justice and love relate to each other? Many people claim that they are opposites, that one cannot be just and loving at the same time, because love excludes justice and vice versa. But it is not so if one looks at love and justice from a cosmic perspective. Cosmically seen, the highest love and the highest justice are one and the same. That a person reaps what he has sown is not only just, it is also loving, even though it can be unpleasant. It is precisely this reaping that gives us learning experiences, knowledge and understanding. Learning experiences, knowledge and understanding bring about a new way of thinking and acting, a change of development in living. All the unpleasantness people experience is not a sign that life is unjust and unloving, nor is it vengeance or punishment, but cause and effect. This is something that people are unable to understand as long as they are unable to understand the divine world plan. As long as their mental structure is based on the principle of "selfishness" they understand everything in relation to whether it has a pleasant or unpleasant effect on themselves. They call the pleasant, "good" and the unpleasant, "evil". This is the mental structure of the animal kingdom, and it forms at the same time a very substantial part of the earthly human's psyche. It is this selfish assessment of things that brought Christ onto the cross, and it is at the very root of the whole "Doomsday epoch" that humankind is experiencing. But what is it that is "condemned to death" in this Doomsday epoch? It is neither human beings nor the earth, but the mentality that regards selfish pleasures as life's primary factor that is condemned to death. There is to be found a way out of this "Doomsday state" or "hell" and it is love.

The cosmic analyses are created with the sole purpose of showing people that everything is very good. This is the great final answer, the actual solution to the mystery of life. The calculations that lead to this answer are given by spiritual science in such a way, that the advanced spiritual seeker can see how it fits into his or her own fate and experience of life. It has been repeated again and again to people that: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God over all things and thy neighbour as thyself", "Thou shalt turn the right cheek, when thou are smitten on the left", "He who takes the sword shall himself perish with the sword", "Avenge not, dearly beloved, I will pay, spoke the Lord Zebaoth, "That which you would that others do unto you, do unto them... ". But have people understood these answers? No, they haven't. If they had, life on earth would be different than it is today. They have been able to feel that there was a certain amount of truth in them, but have not been able to act according to them. So then people created dogmas after which the most important thing was not that people lived according to these principles, but just that they believed in them, and especially believed in the fact that Christ with his death on the cross had atoned the old righteous, revengeful god. People "put new wine into old flasks" by pressing Christ's teachings about love into a dogma system of atonement and grace, which in fact belongs to the old sacrificial religions. But it was quite natural that it happened. Humankind was still not ready to understand love. Through Christ, however, it was demonstrated and made open to all. It was demonstrated that it was possible to be nailed to a cross and yet to forgive and pray with love for those people who would in an ordinary earthly human way of thinking be called "enemies". Today the "old flasks" are about to burst, fewer and fewer people are inspired by dogma and more and more long to understand, long to know the calculations leading to those life-answers, they feel must be right.

Physical science, which through measurement, weighing and physical calculations has taught humankind so much about cause and effect and cycles, as far as physical matter is concerned, is however unable to teach people anything about justice and love or other spiritual realities. Only a spiritual science can do that. Physical science and technical development can help to make life more pleasant for people in many areas. But as long as these pleasantnesses are reserved for certain groups of people, and are not based on being a benefit and joy for the whole of humankind, they are not based on love but on selfishness. Science and technology are of course used just as much in the service of war as of peace, used to wipe out groups of beings, that are thought to be a nuisance or unpleasant to that group that one belongs to oneself. Modern warfare is to a very high degree based on technology and science, based on a knowledge of the way substances react in the physical world. But what about peace, that peace that people long for to such an extent that they say that they are fighting for peace? Real and total peace must also be based on science. Not a science of physical matter, but a science of the spiritual or psychic matter, which is the cause of the oscillations, vibrations and cycles of physical matter. Such a science is also a science of justice and love. Such a science will not conflict with religion, but will on the contrary point into the kernel of truth in religion behind all the dogmas.

Because the great final answer that the seeking student can arrive at by making a thorough study of spiritual science, is that all is very good, we have to conclude that war, the burning of heretics at the stake, religious strife, and peoples' selfish wishes to obtain pleasure, even at other peoples' expense are also very good. They really are. None of all this can be avoided in the great world plan; but it won't continue to be like this. It is very good that people by means of the law of cause and effect or sowing and reaping, can learn to do towards others what we would have that others do towards us. And it is very good that people will gradually be able to learn that they have always two options: either to be a tool for the unpleasant good or to be a tool for the pleasant good. Out of this choice they at the same time sow the seed, that they will in the future come to reap. The old words in the Bible "Avenge not, dearly beloved, I will pay, spoke the Lord Zebaoth" are a cosmic chemical formula, the explanation of which is that it is not up to the individual person to see that "he that did this to me" or "she that said this or that" gets what they deserve or what "serves them right". According to the world plan, they cannot avoid reaping one day what they have sown, just as we ourselves cannot. The Godhead has plenty of tools that are on exactly the right evolutionary step that is needed to release such a fate wave. But the person who has begun to be on the same wavelength as the love of the universe, will more and more choose to be used as a tool to banish "hell", war, suffering, need and misery from the earth, by shining, through their way of living, just like the sun, over both "the just" and "the unjust". Such a person is one of the Godhead's tools for creating peace on earth, because he, with his day-consciousness, is tuned into being of benefit to the whole, with his feeling, his intelligence, his intuition and his practical way of behaving.