One of the factors that would help to solve the great problems of life would be for human beings to come to realise that a providence does exist. In the human beings' epoch of instinct, or their state as primitive human beings, they did not doubt the existence of a providence, a Godhead or godheads beyond the whole physical world, beyond its elements, movements and creative processes, but in our highly enlightened materialistic epoch the notion of a Providence has so to speak got lost. Even the notion that there do exist more highly evolved beings than humans is treated by many as extremely naive, as something that intelligent human beings cannot really be seen to take seriously. As the belief in a providence has been lost, the question quite naturally arises: how long can the whole religious, ecclesiastic body of people, together with its two thousand-year-old traditions, guide and lead human beings? In the past the church has certainly exercised an extraordinary power, and it still does to a certain extent in certain places on the globe. But because more and more people are breaking out of the religious realm and are looking for the solution to the mystery of life in other ways, the churches will be unable to prevent their power from becoming weaker and weaker, in spite of the fact that people will in these other ways, again find religiosity in a new, un-dogmatic way. At the present time large parts of mankind have in their search eaten abundantly of "the fruits of the tree of knowledge", they have gained tremendous knowledge of the material plane but they have not found a providence there, even though they have delved into the worlds of microbes and searched the gigantic systems of stellar nebulae. They go on discovering and experiencing new forms of movements on an infinitely large scale and on an infinitely small scale, and in return they have lost the fixed point in their existence.

But if people are still evolving and becoming cleverer and more capable does it mean that they no longer have any sensation that a god or a providence exists? Yes, most definitely. People can in fact only go so far in their evolution without experiencing Providence, but then on the other hand they will be able to reach an evolutionary step where they cannot avoid seeing the hand of Providence in absolutely everything that they experience. The most essential point in this connection is that without it understanding a providence it will be impossible for it to become "man in God's image", a state that people at the moment - albeit without knowing it - are striving towards. It will be impossible to abolish war and strife between nations as much as between men; it will be impossible to overcome illness, suffering and everything that comes under the heading of unhappy fates. Of course they will not regain a blind belief in a providence, such a thing is impossible; it is the understanding and experience of that reality that is hidden behind the concept of providence that will gradually be revealed to every single human being, an experience of a living reality that is of vital importance to the life of all beings, without which no life would be able to take place, which is to say no experience of life, no creation or renewal of life, in neither the mineral world nor the plant world, among neither animals nor humans, in neither the microcosmos, the mesocosmos nor the macrocosmos.

People were taught when they were children that they must love God above all things and their neighbour as themselves. But usually they did not learn to do either of these. They cannot be blamed for this and it is first and foremost they themselves who suffer from the fact that they have not learnt it. But suffering offers experience, and personal experiences bring with them a certain form of learning, a learning the one cannot get from books; it is what they have learnt from these personal experiences that has turned many people of today into seekers, into people who are seeking a fixed point in existence. They do not believe in an aged Lord God somewhere out in space; neither are they satisfied by a narrow-minded, materialistic view of life. These people who are seeking are very often good, loving people who would rather inconvenience themselves than cause other people difficulties, and they would rather suffer themselves than be the cause of other people's suffering. Their behaviour and way of being is, without them being fully aware of it, a blessing to their surroundings and so therefore also a blessing to Providence, and this they are not aware of at all. The fact is one cannot love one's neighbour without in so doing also loving God, just as one cannot love God without loving one's neighbour. And by loving God and one's neighbour one also comes round to loving oneself in a way that has nothing to do with the concept of egoism. It is very important for people to arrive at an understanding of this, because from such an understanding their behaviour will gradually become a joy and a blessing to Providence and to their neighbour just as much as to themselves. On the other hand where a person's behaviour is based on hatred, intolerance, jealousy, bitterness and other, from a human point of view, negative thought-climates of relating to one's neighbour, the person is a blessing neither to Providence, to his neighbour nor - even though he perhaps thinks he is - to himself. When one thinks, feels and acts in this way, one sabotages life and the effect, according to the laws of life concerning sowing and reaping or cause and effect, will be that one's fate will in one way or another be unhappy. One cannot in fact sabotage life without it really being one's own life that one sabotages.

The idea of a providence is not something thought up by human beings. As instinct it is already found in the living being long before the being has developed its faculty of intelligence or its ability to reflect and analyse. Animals scream when they are in a life-threatening situation, and this scream is really a cry for help, a cry to an unknown providence. The animal itself does not know whom it is screaming to; it is an automatic function, that is to say an organic function. Because the animal is unable to think, there are no thoughts connected with this function; that is something that comes about much later in its evolution. From a cosmic point of view primitive peoples are animals on a higher evolutionary step. They also have in them as an organic function the religious instinct, and because they have developed mental abilities that the animal does not have, they quite naturally connect these abilities with the inbuilt automatic function that manifests itself in them as a blind belief in a providence or in higher powers that guide and rule over human beings and nature, and with whom it is a question of maintaining a good friendship. Primitive human beings have no higher form of ability to think. Their religion is based on instinct and feelings and, because they are still close to the jungle, their belief is connected to bloody sacrifice and other forms of cruelty and animal mentality. But they believe blindly in higher powers, whose favour they seek and whose favourites they would like to be, while wishing the wrath and curses of the gods on their enemies, wishes that they offer up as prayers and invocations that are really the same as the animal's cry of terror, only more clearly formulated and connected with different energies of consciousness to those of the animal. So there exists in animals and primitive human beings an organic function quite outside of the field of speculation or thought that causes animals to cry out in fear when in a desperate situation, and primitive human beings to appeal, in their primitive way, to the powers that rule, pleading for help in their struggle for existence. Appealing to a providence is something that all living beings do even though they mix their energies of consciousness in widely differing ways, and they are conscious of their appealing to varying degrees. Even the most confirmed atheists experience that a cry or a prayer, or both of these things combined, automatically bursts forth when they suddenly find themselves in a life-threatening situation, and this happens even though there is not another person for miles around who can hear their cry and rush to their aid.

The reason animals and human beings have eyes is because there is something to see, and they have ears because there is something to hear. Nature's creative processes are logical and they are carried out so well that the creative human being can have no better teacher than Nature itself. But why do animals and human beings, as well as many other organs and organic processes, also have this organic function that manifests outwardly as a cry or as prayer. It is because there is also something or someone to appeal to with the cry and the prayer. The animal does it only as a quite spontaneous act and does not possess the ability to combine other consciousness energies with this prayer. The primitive human being is endowed with imagination and the ability to form pictures, which they naturally combine with their religious instinct for believing in gods and demons. Little by little this unarticulated makeshift principle becomes a civilised appeal to a providence. Gradually as peoples' intelligence develops, even though it is still a primitive intelligence in relation to the combination of instinct and feeling that is dominant, a series of dogmas and teachings that within the confines of the various higher religions decide what people have to believe in order to be saved, and if they do not believe in them they are condemned to obliteration or eternal perdition. Prayers to Providence have for a long time been concerned with gaining "the grace of God", avoiding perdition or obliteration and gaining salvation and eternal life. Just as animals instinctively have a fear of death, so do human beings. The human being, however, does not just combine its fear of death with instinct, but also with feelings and the beginnings of thinking. That is why they have attempted in every possible way to "secure" protection and grace. But what about present day people who believe neither in God nor in eternal life? People of today have begun to think along new lines, and when they eventually manage to connect these thoughts with the inbuilt automatic function that they possess, whether they want to or not, a new and for more intense experience of God and of eternity will replace the atheistic, materialistic "empty space" that dominates these days. It will be just as natural for the human being to communicate in prayer with that "something" that is the eternal Godhead as it is for the same being to see something or to hear something or to experience anything at all.

The human being that in an open and unbiased way observes the processes of nature both in the macrocosmos and microcosmos, will through this observation of nature be able to gain confirmation that this "something", with which it and other living beings communicate quite automatically and instinctively in situations of need, is a reality.

Beyond our organism we all have - without us being able to locate it - a sensation of our I, and we give expression to this sensation of our I or our centre by example saying "I see", rather than "the eyes see". We don't say "My ears hear" either, but rather "I hear" and so on. There is an I, a "something", that uses the eyes, the ears and the whole organism as an instrument for experiencing and manifesting. This instrument is, as mentioned before, a whole universe made up of myriads of living beings. And so really we use these micro-beings. They are living instruments by means of which we are able to experience and create in the physical world. We can sense neither pleasure nor displeasure, delight nor pain without it taking place by means of these micro-beings of ours. And where we are concerned with the human being's experience of physical pain or wellbeing, this takes place by means of those of our micro-beings that are animal in character. When we cut our hair or our nails, we can do so without experiencing any pain, because the micro-beings in these "living spaces" are mineral in character and do not have their day-consciousness on the physical plane. But if when we are cutting our nails we happen for example to cut our finger, we will certainly notice that it is not mineral matter that we are cutting into. An injury occurs, a catastrophe in some part of our universe if the micro-inhabitants are animal beings, meaning that they have day-consciousness in the physical world and are able to feel pain. Disharmony has occurred in their living space, a restriction of their natural functioning and rhythm of life, and this experience of theirs does not stop, just as it does not stop when we humans, who are also animal beings with physical day-consciousness, meet with greater or lesser catastrophes or restrictions of our natural means of manifesting life. The human being who cuts his finger feels through his nervous system that it is hurting, and he stops this function which is a negative one for both the organism and for his own sensation. From a cosmic point of view it was a "prayer" from living micro-beings that was "heard" and that resulted in the cessation of the "catastrophe".

There is a constant connection between our I and the I's of our micro-beings, a constant reporting on the situation in the particular regions of the body. Every single micro-particle in our organism is located in a living space that is under our control, and we cannot withdraw this control without the organism, as the instrument of our manifestation, having to suffer for it. If we form our daily life and our daily way of being in such a way that our organism's micro-beings become ill, they will not be able to fulfil their mission in the organism; we recognise this breakdown of the organism as illness, pain and suffering. In the long run it may actually lead to the destruction or death of the organism. The fate that we give our micro-beings is the same that we ourselves are subject to, and it is clear that all living beings that begin to understand that the way one treats one's body is significant, will gradually become a better and better "providence" for those beings that "live, move and have their being" inside their organism. It is important that one gets the right sort of food, enough rest and relaxation, the necessary amount of exercise, and all the other things that benefit the physical body itself. But it is just as important that one is able to overcome those thoughts and feelings that can have a directly destructive effect not just on the nervous system but, through the nervous system, also on the widely differing regions or living spaces of the organism. Human beings can definitely become physically ill through having negative thoughts. These electrical forces can straight away create a short-circuit, leading to complete natural catastrophes in the body's micro-world. So when people are bad-tempered, irritable, bitter or full of hatred it is not just their fellow-beings in the mesocosmos, that is to say other people and animals, that suffer for it, but they also create bad weather, storms and terrible earthquakes that cause death and mutilation, sorrow and suffering for thousands of living beings that, even though they are microscopic in relation to our size, can in their mental perspective suffer just as much as we can, seen from our perspective. But if our micro-individuals are in this way subject to a providence, what about ourselves?

We also live in a great organism. Most people already accept as a fact that we are not surrounded by empty space. All around us there is logical creation, there is "digestion" or transformation of substances in exactly the same way as within our own organism, there is condensation, evaporation, melting and other ways of transforming matter, there are electrical and magnetic effects, and why should all these mighty forces in suns and milky ways not be charges of energy in an organism in exactly the same way as they are in our own organism. Everything here is definitely logically governed and fulfils planned purposes. If we look at the earth itself and really try to leave behind the traditionally accepted prejudice that what we inhabit is just a mineral sphere or globe somewhere in the universe, we cannot help seeing that the earth is also a living being. It both breathes and takes in nourishment, it has a bloodstream and glandular functioning and so on, just like other physical beings. The form of these vital functions is certainly different from our own, but in principle they are absolutely the same. So, seen from a cosmic perspective, we are micro-beings in the organism of the earth-being. Between this macrocosmic being's I and our I there is a similar connection to the one between our I and our micro-being's I's. Our pleasant and unpleasant sensations, in fact even the slightest of our sighs of distress, do not go out into the universe unheeded. It is a vital necessity for the earth-being to help its micro-beings; we are under its protection and control just as our micro-beings are under our protection and control.

What is it that people have to learn from living in the earth-being's organism? According to what we were taught as children people have to learn to love God above all things and our neighbour as ourselves. For many people this is just something they have learned by rote, and which they cannot connect with in a realistic way. After all what and where and who is God? That is what people do not know. And there has been so much preaching about neighbourly love that one does not listen anymore. Just as one does not truly see the things that one sees every day. It has become the custom to say that one should be good to each other, but still it is the custom that one is not. And what about loving oneself? People say, "Yes, but that is wrong, one should definitely not be egoistical", at the same time as being precisely that. Mankind needs a thorough explanation of what it means to both love God and to love one's neighbour as oneself, an explanation that will show that it is really the same thing only seen from three different perspectives.