We live in times where the world is on fire. Two great world wars have devastated the Earth, and human beings still live in fear that a new world conflagration might flare up in the form of a war that will be worse than anything we have known so far. In our time, it is not how it was in the old days, when war only affected certain specific peoples and areas, while in other places on Earth people perhaps had not the faintest inkling of the existence of a war. In our time, war does not only affect those countries where the war is actually taking place, but its effects extend over the entire Earth. It is not so surprising that human beings are afraid and that they think that world peace is a utopian ideal, and one hears over and over again that it cannot be the case that mankind is in the process of evolving, since human beings are becoming worse and worse. One sinks into pessimistic thinking, expressing it in the words: "There has always been war, and there will always continue to be war". In recent times perhaps adding: "until human beings have succeeded in bombing themselves and the whole Earth to pieces".

One can indeed call such statements "doomsday mentality". One feels that the Earth and human beings are sentenced to obliteration. But who will impose the sentence? Human beings themselves. Can one imagine anything more absurd? And one claims that one is fighting in order to create peace. It is the same as wanting to put out a bonfire using fire. There are, however, many human beings around the Earth who can see the complete absurdity in mankind's present situation, which can be likened to a ship's crew who have ended up quarrelling between themselves, and begin breaking the ship to pieces so that they can use the pieces as murder weapons, thereby causing the destruction of both the ship and themselves. But those human beings who can see the absurdity in the world situation, and who do their best to oppose the use of such things as atomic weapons, are so few that their voices are drowned out by the din from the preparations for war and the threats of the "cold war", so that the whole thing is completely hopeless and without meaning. This is how it can look when one looks at the situation from a local perspective, which is what the majority of terrestrial human beings do, but it is actually possible to look at terrestrial mankind's situation in a different and larger perspective, and seen in this perspective the situation is not so hopeless. Seen in the cosmic perspective, one can certainly say that terrestrial mankind is experiencing "the last days", but it is in quite a different meaning than the current one, in which it is seen as the destruction of the Earth and mankind. It is certainly an "annihilation", but it is the annihilation of neither the Earth nor mankind, it is the annihilation of war itself, the last days of the use of the killing principle.

Here in the North where we experience the most perfect manifestation of the cycle of the four seasons, we have an old saying: "As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens". As we come into February, and sometimes even into March, we can experience that frost, ice and snow are increasingly dominant, even though it becomes lighter earlier in the morning and darker later in the evening. Does not this light mean a great deal to all of us? We long for it, and it seems easier for us to withstand the cold, the snow and the ice when it is getting lighter. We become aware that a new period is approaching and we know that eventually the sun will be so strong that the snow and ice will melt, causing streams to begin to trickle, announcing that spring is on its way, and that the period is approaching where totally different forces are dominant in Nature. But the cycle that we in the north are permitted to experience in its complete manifestation as the seasons is just one of the ways in which the universal principle of cycles manifests. All of the universe's innumerable cycles normally manifest in four seasons, due to the fact that they are based on the principle of contrasts. That is to say two stages where one or the other of the contrasts is dominating, and two stages that constitute transitional stages. Is not winter a period in which the principle of darkness and cold is dominant, and spring a period in which the transition to the contrasting period to winter, namely summer, takes place? We have experienced this so many times that it has become a fact to us. And similarly autumn is a transitional period in which cold and darkness gradually intensify to once again culminate in winter with its ice and snow. In the twenty-four-hour cycle we experience precisely the same four stages in a lesser manifestation, and we term them night, morning, noon and evening. Human beings are so familiar with this that they never think about it; it has become habitual to them. Neither do they think about the fact that it is the same principle of cycles that is visible in a normal human being's life, with its four stages: childhood, youth, adulthood and old age. Childhood is the being's night or winter zone, where all forces that will later find expression are still asleep. In the period of youth, which is the human being's morning or spring, all these forces begin to grow, and in the mature years they come to their greatest manifestation, and it is here that human beings are at the midday peak of their lives or their summer period. The gradual onset of old age, with greying hair and the gradual decrease in energy, is the human being's evening or autumn of its life. Death is the human being's sunset, but its sun will rise over new horizons to new existences and incarnations in its eternal existence and evolution. And this brings us back to our starting point, the old saying: "As the days lengthen, the cold strengthens"

The terrestrial human being's evolution has taken place over millions of years of incarnations in physical matter, all the way from mineral states, through the vegetable, animal and primitive terrestrial human states to the evolutionary step that they now represent. Such an evolution takes place within the area of a gigantic cycle, which in my cosmic analysis I have called a spiral cycle, and which like all other cycles has its four phases. In its present spiral cycle terrestrial mankind finds itself in the very cosmic season that can be characterised by the old saying mentioned above. We are in a cosmic winter zone but have nevertheless come so far forward that the light, which in this case means the light of the spirit or the knowledge of the laws of life, has already become much brighter. What we are referring to here is terrestrial human beings' intelligence and growing humaneness. But even though the "days are lengthening", we are also experiencing that the "winter is strengthening", because the killing principle of winter is showing itself among human beings as never before. Now they can also use their intelligence to kill, since intelligence is a neutral energy and can be used in the service of both the life-giving and the killing principle. Terrestrial human beings' greater knowledge and ability has, due to the fact that this knowledge and ability is still not great enough to be purely human, made them into transitional beings between the animal and the human kingdom. From the cosmic point of view, one can say that they are a kind of "devil-being", in whom a human form and way of thinking has begun to make itself felt, but they are not yet true human beings. They are in a cosmic zone of night or winter. However, they have come so far towards the morning or the first signs of spring that the light is dawning in their consciousness. They are beginning to long for more light, in the sense of greater knowledge, and they are beginning to long for peace. They are talking enthusiastically about the "united states of the world", about "one world", about the liberation of human beings and the rights that every human being has, irrespective of nationality, religious belief or colour. They are founding schools, universities and laboratories, and attempts are being made to make admission to such places open to all. They have hospitals, nursing homes, Red Cross and many kinds of medical care. All this and much more of a similar nature represents "the lengthening days". But at the same time they are producing more long-range weapons of destruction. They are threatening each other in the belief that one can create peace through the use of power and outdoing the opponent in the production of weapons and in the invention of new means of destruction. Why does all this occur? Because the road to "heaven" goes through "hell", that is to say, the road to the light goes through darkness, or the road to life goes through death. I am using the word "death" here to refer to the materialistic state that the greater part of civilised mankind finds itself in. However, after this "death" there will be a "resurrection", that is to say a manifestation of truly human forces, a human springtime will blossom, because it will blossom in each individual human being's consciousness on the basis of the experiences they have made in the zone of darkness, which they have eventually become satiated with.

Seen in this perspective, all wars have been a necessity, some people would say a necessary evil, but I prefer to call them an "unpleasant good". I know it is difficult to see war in this way, not least for those people whose lives are at the moment being closely affected by it. But were it not for the thousands, even millions, of people who have been killed or wounded in wars in the past, there would today be absolutely no opposition to war in the minds of human beings. The people who are living today are the same as those who have experienced wars in the past. It might seem strange to you that human beings have not stopped fighting a long time ago, because there have been plenty of wars that they could have learnt from. But it takes time to build up a real talent for peace in the living being's consciousness. First come the stages when they dream of revenge and retaliation. The beings want to be stronger than their opponents, and want to conquer them, and there are no desires or wishes of this kind that cannot in the end be satisfied. Their opponents, of course, have the same wishes, and so war or the condition that we can call "hell" or the "kingdom of the dead" would exist eternally were it not for something called the principle of hunger and satiation. The principle of contrasts is closely linked with this principle of hunger and satiation, and peace will therefore gradually come closer, as terrestrial human beings become satiated with war and the effects of war and they begin to create new causes that do not lead to war.

At this point someone might raise the objection that wars were created by the "mighty", by those in power in the worlds of politics and finance – two areas that are very closely linked. There may also be others who might say that if a Hitler had not come to power, a second world war would never have taken place. World history is a long account of military commanders and their wars and of these commanders' total lack of respect for human life. Some of these commanders were perhaps thinking only of their own personal power, while others had national, religious or political plans, in which war was a means of carrying out the plans, a play of victory or defeat. And the human beings were merely the material that the commander had at his disposal, and it was therefore a question of indoctrinating each individual soldier with the right fighting spirit so that he would be willing to die for king and country on the "field of honour", as it is called. Nowadays, however, one cannot use old clichés, since the "human material" is different. War is now seen as a "dirty job" that has to be carried out in order for there to be peace. This change of attitude is also a proof that "the days are lengthening", and an even more conclusive proof of the change in attitude is the fact that today there are conscientious objectors and young people who specifically seek civil duties, where they can perform work of assistance instead of killing, this being an example of the change in attitude that is taking place and which eventually no dictator or commander will be able to overcome, no matter how many attempts are made using propaganda and suggestion.

So what role have Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and all the statesmen, kings and military commanders of the past, played in the evolution of terrestrial mankind? They have been special tools for the "commander in chief", that is to say for the eternal Godhead, who is leading the beings from their most dead state to their most alive state. Without the wars the divine world plan would not be able to develop, and of course neither would it have been possible without the special tools that the great military commanders have been over the centuries. These commanders are also ordinary human beings who have merely had a particular destiny due to the special abilities and talents they had developed over many incarnations. Of course these commanders also have to reap what they have sown, as all others have to do, until they are satiated with war. And they will then be just as great tools in the service of the life-giving principle as they were previously in the service of the killing principle. They will be benefactors of mankind and will play a part in building up a culture of peace. Naturally, this belongs to the future, just as spring and summer do while it is still winter. But the "commander in chief" has made his plan, and it is no "plan based on warfare"; it is a plan that will lead on towards world peace and the united mankind.

A link in this plan is that human beings, of their own free will, will choose peace and create peace on the basis of the experiences they have made, and they would not be able to do this if they had not experienced what it means to both gain a victory and suffer a defeat. What they sow through victory they reap in defeat, and the experiences of defeat will bring a new sowing and a new harvest. War begins in the terrestrial human being's own mind, and that is where peace must also begin. It is true that in the case of the great wars there is very little the individual human being can do when one merely looks at the purely outer circumstances. The great political drama is a result of causes that have set this drama in motion in the past, and it continues in accordance with certain laws. The individual human being's freedom lies in the way in which the being in question reacts to the inevitable events. It is here in its hands that the whole future of mankind lies. The plan for the future of mankind is to be found in the words of the Christmas gospel: "Peace on Earth and goodwill towards all men". So can we create peace in the midst of a world of war and hatred? Yes, every single terrestrial human being has that possibility, and it is not up to them alone. The commander in chief, or the eternal Godhead, is in command of forces greater than those of human beings. As a consequence they will never ever blow up the Earth and themselves. There is a limit to human being's capacity concerning the display of destructive forces. And even though it seems as if there is also a limit regarding the display and protection of life, this limit is only created by mankind's provisional moral and intellectual abilities. In the case of the human being who works with his or her own development to the benefit of the whole, these limits will little by little be transcended and he or she will become a tool for the eternal Godhead in the creation of peace and neighbourly love on Earth.