What are hunger and satiation? Well, are they not the two phenomena in the experience of life that you have to the very highest degree experienced? Is there any situation at all that does not represent one or the other of these two principles? No, absolutely not. They constitute the very first things that you experienced when at your birth you stepped into the physical world. And they control you throughout your entire life, and will be the very last thing you experience when you once again at your "death" step out of the physical world. Hunger and satiation are life itself. Without hunger and satiation absolutely no life would exist. But as these two principles take the form of that which is all-controlling in life, the study of these two principles can reveal a rather extensive body of unshakable wisdom or true spiritual science.

This therefore enables us to see that our entire life, not just our relationship to food and drink, but also our relationship to our environment, or our neighbour, is a question of "hunger" and "satiation". If in this way a human being feels antipathy towards his neighbour, this really means that this neighbour represents something that he is more or less "satiated" with, something that he was satisfied by long ago. If on the other hand a being feels strong sympathy for another being, it will in the same way mean that this other being represents something that he himself hungers and thirsts for. This will in turn mean that our neighbour really constitutes a kind of "nourishment", a kind of "food" and "drink", for us. We are therefore to the very highest degree dependent on our neighbour. But in this way Jesus' words are proved to be scientifically true when he says that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God". The "mouth of God" is nothing other than our neighbour in its highest analysis, and can never in any situation whatsoever be anything else. And this neighbour's actions and way of being are the same as the "words of God". This in turn means that our neighbour's actions and way of being are therefore a part of our "food", just as our actions and way of being naturally in the same way constitute a part of his "food". Our entire existence and our relationship to our environment, or our neighbour, is therefore to the very highest degree a question of what we hunger for and what we are satiated by, what we feel attracted to and what we feel distaste for. To feel "attraction" and "distaste" is therefore something quite natural, since it is identical to hunger and satiation and has nothing whatsoever to do with "sin". On the contrary, the big problem for the living being is to know "what is food for whom". It is true that Nature's unfolding through the living beings' appearance and way of being constitutes "food", but which "food" is suitable for "whom"? It is certain that, purely physically, all living beings cannot eat the same food. What is food for one species might be pure poison for another. And this is how it is also with respect to the cosmic hunger, or the nourishment that we want from our neighbour's manifestation and way of being or relationship to us. Just as it can be extremely enlivening, promoting vital nourishment and mental and physical wellbeing and happiness for us, it can also create the most terrible agony and sufferings or unhappy states for us.

For beings that are below terrestrial human beings' step, these physical and cosmic questions of nutrition cause no difficulties or problems, since here the beings are guided purely instinctively to eat and drink what is absolutely the heathiest and most suitable food for these beings' step, just as their way of being towards their surroundings is also the most perfect for their step. Here there is nothing that can create psychological conflicts or "qualms of conscience" for them. For terrestrial human beings the case is completely different. They are to a colossal extent in conflict or disharmony with not only the purely physical question of their hunger and satiation, but they are to a truly gigantic extent in conflict with the question of their hunger and satiation regarding the "food" or "diet" that to them constitutes their neighbour's way of being and manifestations. To become clear about what is absolutely the most correct food for the psyche as much as for the body is the one thing that is absolutely necessary.

But is the situation any better regarding the beings' purely psychological, that is purely mental, wellbeing? Indeed, are we not living during a time when this wellbeing is even worse than the purely physical wellbeing? Is it not therefore here that human beings have begun to mutilate, murder and kill or exterminate themselves? Can there be a worse psychological state? The very beings that should "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" are mutilating, killing and exterminating one another. This must surely be the very culmination of "hell". Can there be a worse way of living?

Since the whole of existence is, as previously stated, solely a question of desires and satisfaction of desires, which is in turn identical to hunger and satiation respectively, we cannot therefore avoid the fact that the will of both the herd and the individual being is therefore really a question of what both the herd and every single individual give themselves in the way of physical and psychological food. But since the will of the herd in terrestrial mankind is, as I mentioned before, the predominant factor in exterminating itself, and this extermination is really its psychological food, it will mean that in reality the herd is "eating itself". One needs to be only ordinarily gifted in order to understand that this must be glaringly against the laws of Nature, and must thereby be the absolute "Fall" or "eating of the forbidden fruit". It is not surprising that eating of this fruit must be, in the first place, so-called "death" or the prodigal son's, or the divine son of God's, degradation to the level of "eating with the swine".

So what is the correct food? The correct food must of course be something that is healthy for both mind and body. Health is in turn the highest mental and bodily sensation of life. This sensation is in turn the kingdom of heaven, it is the highest ability to sense blessing, happiness, joy and bliss. It is the sensation of being one with God. It is being one with the way, the truth and the life. The most perfect and thereby the correct food for mind and body must be something that through being taken up into the mind as much as the body should create a hundred per cent wellbeing. What does not create this sense of wellbeing in these two phenomena is an absolutely wrong food, is something that cannot be transformed or digested, but that on the contrary breaks down and undermines the organism's mental as well as bodily state.

The fact that animal beings are eating food of animal origin is in principle the same as the fact that "human beings are eating human beings". We are far too closely related. We are eating fellow beings in the same kingdom. The perfect, pain-free and thereby happy life can only exist where the will of both the herd and the individual being is to consume only material and phenomena from the kingdom underneath its own. Animal beings, that is to say the so-called "animals" that eat food of plant origin, create no terror, death and destruction for the fellow beings in their own kingdom. This expression of terror is found in those beings that consume flesh and blood. That it is a vital necessity for beasts of prey to live on food of animal origin does not alter the principle. These beings have merely throughout their many incarnations or lives released this particular form of satisfaction of a desire to such an extent that their entire organism has been transformed in favour of this desire, they have developed teeth and claws, power and suppleness, in fact the whole of their being has become a well-developed talent in promoting blood-thirstiness, a development that is actually only the beginning of the enormous talent in the direction of the state that terrestrial human beings today represent to such an extreme. And is it not precisely this talent that these days causes the great herd of terrestrial human beings to "eat themselves". There can certainly be no greater culmination of the beast of prey's nature. Terrestrial human beings have for a long time been able to make tools for murdering and killing, beside which the common beast of prey's claws and teeth and strength fade away into pure helplessness. Terrestrial human beings are therefore the perfected form of beasts of prey.

This perfection of the nature of the beast of prey that is found in terrestrial human beings consists not only of them being able to procure food of animal origin with greater ease than the ordinary beast of prey, but also in that their psychological food is also of animal origin, which means that they are consuming other beings' normal psychological health. They are also murdering and killing each other mentally and are therefore living a life of luxury off these murderous mental victories. They are hunting other people's positions and trying to undermine beings who have a better position than they do. They are stealing, deceiving, lying, slandering and murdering, ripping to pieces and flaying other beings' joy and happiness in being alive. This undermining of other beings in order to thereby elbow oneself forward over one's neighbour's mental and physical destruction is therefore to a large extent the beings' psychological food of today. Since the victims of this are to a large extent also beasts of prey that fly into a rage and use every possible exploitation of their mental and physical killing talent to avoid their opponents, we have arrived at the outlet that can be nothing less than hell itself, or a mental jungle.