Human beings nowadays live in a world that is full of problems, some of the biggest and most difficult of which are gathered together in the field of what we call marriage. These days there is nothing exceptional about unhappy marriages and divorces; it is more of an exception to come across people who have lived together a long time in a happy marriage. But what is the cause that terrestrial human beings live in what I term the zone of unhappy marriages?

So what about terrestrial human beings, are they to be found in the same paradise? No, they are in the process of experiencing "being driven out of paradise". They have "eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil", which means that they no longer base their lives exclusively on the expression of instinctual, automatic functions, but they have begun to use their intelligence to intervene in the very structure of existence through the use of their awake, day-conscious will. People have begun to be interested in creating, and this interest has increased to such an extent that it is no longer, as is the case with animals, merely the nest or the burrow that they want to form, they also want to some extent to delve into areas that lie quite outside the field of married life. They therefore no longer obey completely the laws of their animal, organic structure, but increasingly base their life on their dawning intelligence. The thinking and creative terrestrial human being is no longer a being that belongs in the animal paradise, even though for periods, especially when it is young, it experiences glimpses of it when it is in love with a being of the opposite sex. Human beings that are in love experience for a short while "the lost paradise" and in the intoxication of being in love they often think that this state can last for ever, or at least for an entire life, and they get married and have children. But one fine day they perhaps experience that they have nothing in common other than the children they have had. One of them (or perhaps both of them) falls in love with someone else and thinks that if only he (she) had married her (him) instead life would have been pure happiness. They divorce and each of them perhaps gets married again, only to realise after a period of time that this marriage is also not what they thought it would be. The children have become the children of divorced parents, and if they are sensitive they experience a disruption and rootlessness in their existence, which can cause them much pain and suffering.

But why should the fact that the human being is beginning to think and create, disturb the same being's ability to live a one hundred percent happy married life? It is because terrestrial human beings, both mentally and physically, are subject to a process of transformation. They are no longer true animals, despite their organism being that of a mammal, and they are not yet true human beings; they are transitional beings between the state of being an animal and a human being with some of the expression of energy of both zones in their consciousness and organism. The human being that – at the same time that thousands of birds are raising their voices in praise of the animal paradise that they find themselves in – is bewailing the loss of the unfaithful partner that has left them and been unfaithful and has gone off with someone else, such a being has been expelled from paradise. It finds itself out in the dark, and the one that was unfaithful will eventually realise that absolute happiness was not to be found with the new partner either. They can no longer experience the animal paradise other than in brief glimpses of happiness, and they know nothing about any higher form of paradise either. What has the divine world plan to say to such beings?

All the variations of unhappy states in the field of sexuality, including the great number of unhappy marriages that the Earth's human beings are suffering under during these times, are rooted in the cosmic principle that I in my analyses call the pole principle. This principle is what promotes the development of all consciousness through all mental evolutionary step that the living beings go through in the universe. It determines whether they have a light or a dark fate, whether they appear as a male or a female being or as a being whose masculine and feminine poles are in balance, so representing evolutionary steps that terrestrial human beings have still not reached in their present evolutionary spiral. No terrestrial human being is one hundred percent man or one hundred percent woman; the one hundred masculine and feminine beings are to be found in the true animal kingdom, where the opposite pole in the being is latent. In all the men and women of terrestrial humankind the opposite pole, that is to say the feminine pole in the case of men and the masculine pole in the case of women, is in the process of developing. This constellation of the poles causes the beings' consciousness and sphere of interest to be split, so that they become double beings of a sort. In the sexual area they are still governed by their urge to mate. This urge exists as a sort of primordial urge in their consciousness, and it determines their interest in and dependence on the mating principle. But their consciousness has also another part, a part that the animal does not have. This part is represented by thinking, knowledge, ideas, interest in social issues, religion, art, technology and science and so on, that is to say everything that has nothing to do with procreation. The admiration and interest in the marriage partner can take up a greater or lesser part of the terrestrial human being's consciousness, but not so much that a woman can expect to fully possess her husband or that a man can expect to fully possess his wife.

The terrestrial human being therefore has one sphere of interest that makes it an animal and a new aspect, a new sphere of interest, that shows that it is on its way to becoming another kind of being, a true human being. They have in their consciousness a primordial state that is degenerating and an aspect that is under development, and it is the case that these two states must of necessity be in conflict with one another, with the result they easily give rise to sorrow and suffering. The terrestrial human being who is in love and whose love is reciprocated experiences a divine meeting with the Garden of Eden, it has an "animal-like" experience of "the great birth", that is to say it experiences a state of inner mental balance in which everything shines in a divine light. This totally happy union is what we call a happy marriage. But normally this state of being in love does not last. It is not so common to meet people who have been permanently in love with one another for perhaps forty years. On the contrary, it is the case that life has confirmed that the culmination of the state of being in love is a phenomenon that does not last. We call this culmination the honeymoon. The length of this period can of course vary from days and months to years, and through it, human beings experience a final greeting from the radiant paradise of a zone from the past. So when the married couple arrive at the period in which their sense of being in love with one another is less strong, the question is whether their mutual friendship and common interests, and not least the love they have for their children, is strong enough to enable them to live together harmoniously on the basis of these human attributes. Thousands of human beings lack the patience to give it a try and they throw themselves into new relationships, which after a period of time might also lead to shipwreck, and if they have left their previous marriage partner and the children, this can give rise to quite an unpleasant fate in future lives. Marriage is one of the greatest tests for the terrestrial human beings at the moment; it is a spiritual grindstone that plays a part in grinding away the hard, sharp edges of the terrestrial human consciousness. From a purely human point of view, marriage is a sphere of activity in which someone who really wants to work on their own development has enormous possibilities to overcome much of their egoism and selfishness. It cannot be avoided that a human being will show its less attractive sides to those it is closest to and those that it deals with on an everyday basis, and for this reason there is a real need also in marriage for understanding, tolerance and human love, and it is these very attributes that are essential factors in how consciousness is expressed in true human beings. Of course, there may be cases where the state of affairs has become so serious that one of the partners, even when there are children, has to follow the old saying, "you go to the right and I will go to the left", and then it is best if you can overcome the hatred and bitterness towards the other partner that may have accumulated in your consciousness. In reality the other person is merely a tool through which you reap what you have yourself at one time sown.

When terrestrial human beings approach the age of thirty the organs of their consciousness have become fully developed and the period during which they repeat their previous lives is coming to an end. It is around this time that their new spheres of interest begin to make themselves seriously felt, and so it is often now that the marital difficulties begin. It happens that one of the marital partners discovers an aspect in the other one that they do not themselves possess and this can give rise to jealousy. Many married people are jealous of their partner's interests. In the course of many conversations that I have had with people who have come to visit me, I have had the opportunity to observe these things and have seen what sorrows and mental crises that they give rise to. It is important for me to point all this out so that you can more easily gain an understanding of your partner. To understand one's partner means to understand the way he or she thinks. It is important for you to understand that when you get married you become bound to a human being that in addition to having an interest in you also has interests in their consciousness that have nothing to do with you. My cosmic analyses will teach you that when you enter into a marriage you are in reality marrying a "twin being". This term twin is not something physical but something mental, and it is very important for people to become familiar with this as they mature as human beings. Every man has in his consciousness a "twin sister", just as every woman has in her consciousness a "twin brother". You bring a "twin" with you into the marriage, and this is something that most people do not realise. This twin is based on the gradual development in the consciousness of the opposite pole, and is experienced as one's human sphere of interest. It is not the masculine pole in the man and the feminine pole in the woman that creates the greatest difficulties in present-day marriages, but on the other hand, the man's feminine pole and the woman's masculine pole that causes marriages today not to last.

Why do so many people nowadays throw themselves into one sexual relationship after the other, when their ability to fall in love is degenerating? Since they go on falling in love with new partners one would think that, on the contrary, their ability to fall in love would be on the increase. All these cases of falling in love are not true cases of falling in love, like those that take place when people are young. They represent a kind of substitute falling in love. When the ability to fall in love is degenerating and the new sphere of interest is not strong enough to bear the being's expression of consciousness, it can happen that the being tries to regenerate its ability to fall in love by continually seeking a new partner. The being is not familiar with the cosmic forces behind its own state, but, given time, it will learn about them. As the new sphere of interest grows in the beings, it undermines the urge to fall in love. Whereas animals go on experiencing the urge to fall in love in the form of the regularly recurring mating season, we can see how the same urge in terrestrial human beings is increasingly restricted to the years when the beings are young. For every life the terrestrial human being lives through, this urge is repeated at an earlier and earlier stage. There is a certain stage in early youth, when one experiences the principle of marriage to perfection. It fills the whole of one's consciousness because it is a repetition. The being has at this point still not arrived at the spiritual maturity that it had evolved to in its previous life. Without knowledge of these conditions as they actually are, the beings feel convinced that the feelings that they have at the moment will last a whole life, and so they get married only to perhaps regret it bitterly later on. In the future world culture the beings will be taught to get to know their own nature, and they will be given instruction in what a marriage requires and what conditions terrestrial human beings have for creating a harmonious marriage. The issuing of a marriage certificate by the church or civil authorities does not solve this problem. The fundamental thing, in fact the only thing, that one can build on these days if one wants to live in a harmonious marriage, is mental contact and mutual interests. If these conditions are present, the marriage certificate is in essence unnecessary.