What is meant by exercising the will? The exercise of the will is that power with which the being should guard against any destruction of its life. The exercise of the will is a very interesting factor in the living being; it can be a plaything of the desires, but the desires can also be a plaything of the exercising of the will. If we take for example an alcoholic, a drug addict, a tobacco smoker or a person who has become addicted to the pleasure of any other stimulant, we can see that these people's will is a plaything of their desires. And as these pleasures are very harmful to the human organism they will inevitably destroy these people's organisms and as a consequence their full experience of life. To the extent that a human being's organism and thereby its sensory faculties are destroyed, and thereby its faculty to experience life is destroyed, the being will begin to be abnormal. Its mental faculties, knowledge and capability will become unsteady, eventually rendering its originator a helpless being who, as a mentally-disabled individual, has to be looked after by other people, by friends and relations or by the community. This state of helplessness is thus a direct consequence of the being having allowed its desires to grow and take over its will, so that the will has become a play-thing of the desires. The being has therefore knocked out of action the very means, or the very power, with which it should be guarding itself against all kinds of abnormality, against any destruction of its experience of life. It is helpless and at the mercy of the whims of other living beings. This is therefore the exact opposite of the living beings' goal, which is to appear as a being in "God's image", in other words as being that is master of the perfect experience of life.

If we were to imagine a world led and governed by drunkards or other beings enslaved by vices, it would be clear to us that this world would end up being a world of imperfection, sorrow and suffering. Everything in this world would be in a state of decline and disintegration. But is it conceivable that things would be any better in a world led and governed by beings who are "down-and-outs" in other areas that are vital to life and the maintenance of normality? Is it conceivable that there could be harmony and perfection in a world or a society in which the majority have no will when it comes to serving their neighbour or to being a joy and a blessing to their surroundings? If such derailed beings or down-and-outs find themselves in the first rank of politicians or business managers, the vice known as lack of love or selfishness will take pride of place and the business or the politics that these beings, with their enslaved will, promote will already be doomed in advance to be a sphere of death, a cancerous tumour or some other illness that destroys the life of the surroundings.

This brings the true analysis of the terrestrial human being into sharp relief. And anyone who closes their eyes to it is making the same mistake as the ostrich that merely buries its head in the sand, thinking that it is thereby hidden from its enemies. Just as the ostrich cannot hide from or avert the danger merely by burying its head in the sand, the terrestrial human being cannot ward off the danger that is the consequence of its unfinished or imperfect way of life. The great solution that is currently relevant to the terrestrial human being is to arrive at the point where it can map out the human condition. It will then see that it is an animal that is about to wake up into a completely different sphere from that of the animal kingdom; it has in fact even begun to call itself a "human being". But it has within itself the animal tradition of being subject to will that is led by desire. This way of exercising the will is ideal in the animal kingdom. Here there is no such thing as the laws of love. Here such laws would immediately bring about killing. The animal has within itself those very desires that it should have to enable it to promote its will in favour of those phenomena that are vital to its state. To an animal will is a matter of secondary importance. Desire is the main thing. But this form of life is misery to human beings. This therefore demonstrates that human beings are a different kind of being. They would be miserable living according to animal traditions. They, on the other hand, are equipped with will. And wherever this will is not master of the animal desires, the "human being" goes to pieces and the animal comes to the fore. In order to protect the "human being" in the animal the will to be a "human being" must overcome the animal desires. In the human being the will has to be the main thing and the desires have to take second place.

The will of God is not generally regarded as something that sounds particularly appealing. Among many of those who have grown out of the beliefs that they had as children, it is treated with great contempt, as naive nonsense. Neither has it found a footing in modern science yet, but this is due to the fact that modern science is still only in its very first weak beginnings and is still based only on what can be weighed and measured using physical instruments. Will is not something physical, on the contrary, it is something purely mental and thereby spiritual, which in modern parlance can in turn be described as something psychic. But in the eyes of both science and the general public everything that is psychic is a mystery. But as the will of God manifests as the forces of Nature, it is not something that can be taken lightly or ignored. And in this quite short period of time in which what we know as the human being has existed, it is only in the most recent centuries that human beings have become total atheists and therefore make no efforts to arrive at any clarity concerning this will. And what is the result? An extremely dark, bleak and murderous world situation, that leaves terrestrial human beings in the midst of a world that in its structure is now so far advanced in its evolution that it is a perfect paradise both from the point of view of climate and its ability to provide nourishment. What more can human beings ask for? No one need live either in the Earth's inhospitable icy regions or in the extremely hot equatorial deserts. There are sufficient terrains, continents and spheres within the most pleasant climactic conditions on Earth for everyone to be able to live in an eternal spring or an eternal summer according to their desires. But instead, people go cold and hungry, quite apart from the fact that they murder and injure one another on a scale never previously witnessed, and on a scale which is not found among any other kind of being in the natural world. At the same time they are unable to build hospitals or increase the capacity of the existing ones quickly enough to meet the need. Everyone requiring hospital care has to undergo an unbearable period of time waiting. But it is not only purely physically that human beings are ill. They are also in a bad way regarding their mental health, likewise on a scale that finds no equal among the other of Nature's beings. Is it not the case that millions of people have to live their lives in overcrowded mental hospitals? Why? Why? Something must surely be wrong with human beings. Animals are happy in a completely different way. Can any being be more jubilant about life than the tiny lark, and are not the wild animals of the forests and jungles, such as the deer, the lion and the tiger positively majestic in the way they move? But human beings wander about perhaps hunchbacked, blind, crippled, limping and hobbling, freezing, weeping, bewailing, crying out and with hatred clamouring for revenge on their neighbour. And who can actually say that they are completely free from any of these conditions? Only that infinitesimal percentage of beings that has undergone the cosmic initiation has reached the understanding necessary for it to experience being one with the divine will. The whole of the rest of the millions of humankind are to a greater of lesser degree in conflict with the divine will, which in turn means with the laws of life. These millions are the prodigal son of the Bible who eat with the swine. All of them constitute cosmically "dead" beings. Their zone of existence is life's one and only sphere of death. To promote death, to believe in death being an obliteration of life, to believe that one has at some point come into being, is the same as having lost the complete contact with one's real life, which is the same as eternity. It is this death that Adam and Eve were told would be a result of the Fall. This is the only sphere that can be described as "Hell". The crucial question for the thinking terrestrial human being is: What is the purpose of this darkness? How can God possibly be an expression of love when he in his almightiness allows the existence of such darkness? To this question there is only one absolute answer, namely life's own speech. The critically-minded terrestrial human being has reached the point where he cannot be "converted" by this or that authority, religion, sect or political view. The advanced scientifically-minded being with a well-developed intelligence cannot be led back to the divine will through sacraments, baptismal ceremonies and articles of faith. There is only one way. Listening to life itself. So what does life say? With an enormously impressive power it gives expression to one single great account of light and darkness and the place and significance that these two phenomena have in existence.