For the modern thinking person it can be useful to stand back from the common perceptions or public opinion, customs and so on of daily life in order to take a closer look at these phenomena, which include everything that has become "modern" in daily life in respect of nutrition, morality, religion, "good form" or commonly accepted manners, human behaviour and the perception of the meaning of life itself. If we stop a little and look back at our perception of these phenomena, it cannot be denied that this appears to have undergone a very long series of changes. These changes can be divided into epochs that have each represented their own particular form of contemporary public opinion or popular view of life and human behaviour.
      None of our previous views of life and behaviour have lasted, even if they have been very fashionable, indeed have been fixed by law so that it became regarded as criminal not to submit to them. Thousands upon thousands of people have been tortured and murdered, killed by a statutory death penalty for the breach of these authoritarian resolutions. These same obligatory resolutions have later been revealed as manifestations of pure primitiveness or culminating superstition that, for people of today, verges on the ridiculous. The history of the world shows a profusion of massacres of people who began to see through the glaring imperfection and naivety of authoritarian traditions and perceptions. Such people could therefore not accept these as the moral foundation or basis for their view of life and behaviour, and for this reason they became stamped as heretics or criminals and were sentenced to torture and execution. What does one think about, for example, the Inquisition or the witch trials in the Middle Ages? Were not many people burned at the stake merely because they could not submit to the prescribed religious resolutions of the ecclesiastical or religious authorities? The methods these authorities used to get those arrested to plead guilty of the charges brought against them were so diabolically refined and painful that the accused could be made to confess to anything whatsoever and therefore also of course to the charges they were accused of, even if they were totally innocent. Who can withstand the maiming of his organism, a culmination of the most refined sadistic torment? Would one not have to be almost a Christ or an initiated being in order to have sufficient strength of mind not to yield to the pressure of torture and make the confession dictated by the authorities which they, with all the instruments of torture at their disposal, were determined to have? It was apparently not the truth about the guilt or lack of guilt of the person arrested, but on the contrary exclusively the forcing of a dictated confession that was wanted, quite regardless of whether this was true or false. It seems as if the essential thing was to provide "living fuel" for the witch-burning fires. But with this the entire proceedings of the Inquisition acquire a tinge of sadism.
      However, the proceedings of the Inquisition were not concerned only with the ostensible fight against magic, witchcraft and sorcery. It stretched its fatal arm out to people with alien mental attitudes. Great thinkers and researchers who presented new points of view and discoveries about the universe or the world of the stars were thrown into the flames of the witch-burning fires of the Inquisition. The world picture had already been monopolised by ideas bound by traditions and protected by the death penalty, ideas that today are regarded as the culmination of primitiveness and superstition. How could an evolution of spirit and culture really take place when there were torture and the death penalty for every minute new deviation from the prescribed traditional thinking and perception of life? Because of its naive or primitive nature the "modern" human mentality and authority had to be suicidal. This authoritarian damning of the springs of life or new knowledge and facts had ultimately to give rise to enormous revolutionary powers that could burst the mental dams. Are revolutions and wars not to a great extent the breaking of these constricting and obstructing shackles for all evolution?
      Mankind came to adopt new traditions that also had their obstructions, restraints and decline, because these new traditions and kinds of attitude to the Godhead, morality and behaviour were also to a great extent based on primitiveness and superstition. And in this way one world culture after another fell into decline because of the still-prevailing primitiveness and superstition in each culture.
      Where ignorance, naivety or primitiveness involving torture and the death penalty dictates to people false ideas that in turn give rise to life- and culture-destroying traditions, deadly morality and behaviour, a perfect culture cannot possibly be created. It must lead invariably not to a culture but to a cultural breakdown, an Armageddon, mental chaos, depression and suicide. It is the fulfilment of God's words to Eve: "I will greatly increase your pains in child-bearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you." It is the fulfilment of God's words to Adam: "... cursed is the ground because of you! Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you... By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return." It is the fulfilment of God's words to Cain: "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will become a restless wanderer on the earth." It is the fulfilment of the parable of the prodigal son who came to "eat together with the swine". And it is the fulfilment of Jesus' words about the life of the goats at his left side on the day of judgement.