What is a world culture? A world culture is a stage in evolution on the way towards the light. There have existed many world cultures on Earth that humankind has come through. Every one of these world cultures has been based on a certain view of life, a certain view of the universe, a certain view of God, gods or Providence. This view formed the foundation of each particular culture's laws of morality and behaviour. These world cultures have been very different from each other. But in common with them all is the fact that they have all been based on the religious principle. This principle is to be found in all human beings and is a feeling-based principle governed by instinct. It is this principle that causes human beings to be able to believe in authorities, prophets and world redeemers. This ability is particularly in evidence in human beings in whom the faculty of intelligence has still not developed. It is therefore very strong in primitive peoples, just as it is also this faculty that has bound other cultures to religion. It is this faculty that has bound so many Asian people to Buddhism and to Islam, just as it has bound Western people to Christianity.

But since the religions are intended to be the cultural foundation only for human beings on the particular evolutionary steps that fit the religions, they can be only temporary. Human beings do not stay put on the same steps but evolve onwards, whereas the religions stay put. For this reason there will always be an epoch in every culture in which evolution drives human beings forwards towards new experiences and questions, which the religion has no answer for, and was of course never intended to have the answer for. And as a result of these new experiences or growing material knowledge there therefore comes about to a corresponding extent a growing chasm between the religion and its people or adherents.

When such a state has taken place in a culture, the human beings in fact become increasingly helpless. And such a dying culture will every time be replaced by the beginnings of a new religious view that gives rise to a whole new world culture. Such a new world culture is strengthened in its beginnings and its growth by the divine principle, which we know as the principle of world redemption. This principle makes it possible every time for a more highly evolved human being, who possesses the spirit, culture, knowledge and humanity that the people of the dying culture are more and more longing for, to allow himself to incarnate or be born as a world redeemer or saviour of these people. When such a being incarnates among such a spiritually hungry people, his elevated consciousness, humanity, divine moral standard and behaviour and his cosmic knowledge and explanations will begin to implant themselves into the most spiritually hungry and humane or loving beings among his disciples and co-workers.

This group of beings can be very small, just as it can also consist of human beings that, from the purely material point of view, do not occupy a high position in the eyes of society. They can be quite ordinary unlearned human beings in the lowest paid, least highly regarded jobs. Receptiveness to the high spiritual forces requires absolutely no prior advanced scientific study, no intellectual qualification or academic training. Spiritual receptiveness is entirely a matter of the soul, not something physical. It is therefore not always the high-ranking and ruling classes that are qualified to receive the incarnation of the new culture in the form of the world redeemer. How could they possibly be? The high-ranking beings who are leaders and rulers are in no way finished with the old culture. If they were they would not have become leaders or have been born into high-status positions or would not work in the other important, prominent jobs or positions of authority. They are sitting surrounded by the fulfilment of their dreams of greatness and power. They are living at the very height of the privileges of the dying culture and are absolutely unable to see it as dying. They will therefore be the last to receive the new culture. And we can see that this is proof of Christ's words that "the first shall be the last".

And do we not have a shining example in Jesus' incarnation in the world. He was the incarnation of the very highest light in the world. Spiritually or cosmically he was of the highest magnitude or of an order of light that cannot be superseded by any other being whatsoever. Who can be at a higher stage than that of being "one with the Father"? Such an order or rank does not have decorations made of glittering, earthly gold, neither can it therefore be recognisable through medals, decorations or other sparkling attachments that, like a kind of refined billboard or advertiser's shout, makes the bearer's great material virtues – or presumed virtues – known to people, as well as the extent to which he is therefore raised above society's ordinary citizens. Spiritual greatness does not make itself known through gold-braided clothes hung with medals, which to a large extent are intended to show everyone the bearer's deeds, rank and title. This is the reason why we have seen what appears to human beings to be a quite extraordinary occurrence, namely that the world's greatest human being, Christ or "the human being in the image of God after his likeness", is born in a stable and had a crib for a bed and parents who were simple, ordinary people.

It was not therefore something material that announced that here was born a prince of the very highest rank. This is the reason why there are only relatively few human beings who realise when the world redeemer of a new world culture is born. They are first and foremost only those human beings for whom the old world culture is totally out-dated and is therefore unable to answer the many new questions that have arisen in them as a result of the old world culture. They are beginning to see that the old world culture has had its day and cannot therefore lead human beings any further in their morals and culture. We can see therefore that morals and culture are in sharp decline and will therefore to a greater or lesser extent end up in an Armageddon. Human beings would end up in total mental darkness were it not for the fact that a new world culture had not already been born behind the scenes and had begun to become flesh and blood in those human beings who were most receptive to this culture.

Regarding our own Christian world culture in existence today, what we are experiencing in the twentieth century is this culture's state of sharp decline. We can see how the divine religious principle, which up until now has formed the basis of morality and behaviour, is, like a setting sun, going down behind the dark mountains of materialism and godlessness. In the twilight of this culture we can to a large extent see how old moral restraints are being loosened and are disappearing. Manifestations and forms of life that were previously seen as immoral are now seen to a greater or lesser extent as moral. We see this moral weakening in many of the old Christian moral traditions. And this moral weakening reaches its fullest culmination in a total abandonment of religion, and thereby also of Christianity, in favour of a totally physical, materialistic attitude. The religious instinct has to a large extent left and is still in the process of leaving both those people who are working with their minds and those who are working with their hands. We can also see this increased moral weakening in the various branches of art, whether it is in the art of using language to write poetry and novels, or in the art of painting and sculpture or in the art of singing and music. In all of these endeavours we can see this soul-stirring weakening of tradition. It is the case that human beings' view of morality and culture is undergoing an extremely powerful process of transformation, in which a certain number of the old time-honoured traditions are in decline.

Since it was mainly these moral and cultural traditions that formed the foundation of the so-called "Christian world culture", this world culture is therefore in decline, and is in fact steadily and surely dying out. One should not therefore count on "Christianity", in the form that it has had so far, being the solution for the future. It is no longer relevant. Through the culture that is now dying out Christianity has resolved enormous issues for human beings. It has guided uncivilised human beings quite some distance towards the more open meadows of humanity and neighbourly love. Even though these still lie quite some way ahead, it is possible to begin to glimpse them in the distance. It is the Christian world culture that we have to thank for the transformation of the uncivilised human being, the transformation of Rolf Krake and the Viking berserkers, into the twentieth century campaigners for the abolition of war, the campaigners for humanity, the Red Cross movement, hospitals, care and help for the poor and those in need. There is no denying that it has managed to introduce many good things into the human mind and from there into the world culture. The human aspect in human beings has grown considerably in a large part of the Earth's human beings. Of course the other great humane religions have also introduced a certain amount of humanity into the world culture. But also these religions are in decline. Here there is still a great deal of darkness and lack of help to the many human beings in need. Also here the old moral traditions are in decline. Is there anywhere in the world where they are not?

The fact that the old, main, religious moral traditions are in this way losing their power over people's minds has not benefited human beings' sense of security or their belief in peace. Quite the opposite. Has not the twentieth century already been a blood bath of war and murder, an Eldorado of torture and mutilation, a revelation of what happens when human beings ignore their world redeemers' commandments: "Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword." "Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them." "You should not forgive only seven times a day, but you should forgive seventy times seven times a day." "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you." "You shall love the Lord your God above all things and your neighbour as yourself." Are not these commandments true Christianity, in a direct and unaltered form, straight from the mouth of the world redeemer? Is this not world redemption in a nutshell? Something that does not fulfil these commandments cannot be Christianity, cannot be world redemption, cannot be world peace. To the extent that it does not fulfil these basic principles of Christianity or world redemption it is still pure and absolute heathendom.

How can it be that the Christian world culture, which, as we have said, has such high commandments to live by, is in decline? It is perfectly natural that the Christian world culture in the form it has had during the past almost two thousand years cannot have been the final salvation of the world or the final perfection of human beings; it has even been predicted by the world redeemer himself. Has he not said that the devil will rage in all his fury, which in reality means that in the future there will be conflicts and world wars, and a proliferation of murder, killing, torture and mutilation? And has he not also said that "brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death"? Have we not seen in this very century concentration camps, which were in reality death camps or areas of concentration intended for the extermination of human beings using torture, gas chambers and sadism? And are there not many more millions of human beings here that are dying of hunger, poverty and wretchedness? And is there not also a whole area of human beings known as the "criminal world" or the "underworld" of society? Is it not precisely here that we come across human beings who think nothing of murdering, stealing and plundering and who have this special way of behaving as their profession? One is forced to admit the fact that these human beings do not live in Christianity, but on the contrary live to the highest degree in heathendom. But since the common, law-abiding citizen is at war, even a world war, with the law-abiding citizens of other countries, and their underworld lives by murdering, stealing and plundering, it is easy to see that the Christian world culture is no longer a particularly effective road to world salvation. Godless, materialistic movements propagandise in favour of irreligiousness and coarse materialism as the salvation of the world. They pour scorn on religiousness and the Christian divine commandments as naivety and superstition, and they see the churches as institutions that reduce human beings to a state of stupidity and that should preferably be removed from society.

In this dying world culture we meet the "antichrist" itself, which will also be a sign of the last days of the culture that is now in decline. The "antichrist" is not a person, but a godless, materialistic ideology that is already enforced in many countries, mainly through dictatorship and brute force. Even though such a materialistic movement can develop human beings' purely materialistic knowledge and capability and has produced significant results in this area, it cannot possibly lead human beings upwards towards world peace.

Materialistic knowledge and capability is very far from being enough to create world peace, quite apart from the fact that the absolutely only way it would be able to protect itself would be through superior military power. As this to an overwhelming degree would be maintained by force, the military power would be permanently at war with the oppressed. Oppression will always inevitably breed counter resistance. Human beings are born to be free and independent beings, especially on its current, advanced evolutionary step. It is normally impossible for them to feel comfortable in a state in which their thinking is slavishly bound and aligned to a very primitive and spiritually underdeveloped thought climate that they have long ago passed in their evolution. To use violence and power to limit human beings' normal mental faculties, so that they are not able to expand beyond the limit of the primitive and underdeveloped mental faculties of the person in power, is to sabotage evolution, it is to argue with thunder and lightening, it is to work against Nature or God's creation of human beings in his image. Have we not seen that just such a thing has driven its originator and many of its adherents directly to Armageddon, disgrace, contempt and murder or suicide?

We can therefore see that Christ was not mistaken in his prediction of the "last days"; they are still in the process of coming to fulfilment. But he also predicted the new world redemption and expressed it as the "Comforter, the Holy Spirit". So what is meant by "the Holy Spirit"? Spirit means consciousness. Consciousness consists in turn of thoughts and knowledge. The holy spirit therefore means holy consciousness and thereby holy thoughts and knowledge. But holy thoughts and knowledge can only be thoughts that constitute the absolute, unshakable truth about life, the universe, the Godhead and the living beings. In the phrase "the Comforter, the Holy Spirit", Jesus is predicting that God will give human beings this divine knowledge, which will bring to completion Christ's world redemption on Earth for the whole of humankind. Just as there has emerged a materialistic, fundamental knowledge of matter, humankind has now in the same way been given a real science of spirit, which means a real science of life's cosmic, immortal realities, which are in turn the same as the solution to the mystery of life itself.

This spiritual science or knowledge will lead human beings to the total great birth, that is, to cosmic consciousness and consequently to becoming "human beings in God's image after his likeness". It is the great conclusive answers to world redemption that are to come, or the great, new, cosmic world impulse, that are now at the root of the great, fantastic change that is taking place with so many things, in the fields of religion, science, art, music, painting, sculpture, literature, traditions and customs as well as in the previously mentioned weakening of morality and the resultant difficulties, illnesses and mental breakdowns.

The Earth's human beings are now living in an age in which the world culture is dying and is losing its religious and moral power over human beings' minds and behaviour. And the more the power is in decline, the greater the possibility for human beings to become derailed from the traditional, time-honoured moral commandments. It is not only the religious commandments that in reality no longer go together with the modern human beings' higher intellectual development, it is also the many traditions that are truly necessary in the building up of a culture, that are in fact absolutely essential. It is therefore dangerous for human beings to ignore the commandment to love one's neighbour. It is almost exclusively the fact that human beings are ignoring this commandment that in this present century is creating this so warlike epoch, Doomsday or Armageddon. It is certainly the case that human beings still do not entirely manage to live totally according to this commandment. It is an ability that one has to develop. But there is a difference between ignoring this commandment as a piece of naive, primitive nonsense and accepting it and seeking to incorporate this ability to a greater and greater extent into one's everyday behaviour. In the latter case the human being is in contact with God's creation of himself into a "human being in God's image after his likeness". In the first case in which the being totally ignores the commandment to love his neighbour due to his lack of development, he sabotages his own fate. To the degree that he is lacking in love of his neighbour, he will have a correspondingly unhappy and primitive fate. The fulfilment of the law of neighbourly love is the absolutely only thing that is needed when it comes to achieving a happy fate and thereby a happy life.

The old world culture can no longer particularly inspire human beings to love one another. This is the reason why a new world redemption is needed that can awaken human beings' interest in acquiring the ability to love their neighbour as themselves. But how will this new world redemption be able to bring human beings to the point of being interested in the law of neighbourly love? Of course it will do no good for it to promote the same sermons, the same expounding of the religious commandments, the same idea about "the forgiveness of sins" as a result of Jesus' crucifixion, the same idea about the "wrath" of God and "punishment" for "sins", the same idea about "eternal damnation" or an "eternal hell", the same idea that it does absolutely no good to do good deeds and the fact that they most definitely cannot save us, only the "grace of God" or "Jesus' blood" can do that. Neither can it do any good to tell people that after they die they will sleep until the day of judgment and only then wake up either to an eternal, terrifying suffering in hell or to an existence in heaven in an eternally radiant paradise.

Take for example the situation of an eternal, unceasing torment in a fire that can never ever be put out, and in a body that can never ever be burned up, but that nevertheless continues to provide fuel for this hell fire, so that the originator of this body can never ever be liberated. How can such a situation be an expression of divine love? Is it not written that God is creating the human being? According to this idea the human being is a product of God. Is it not also written that this product will become a "human being in God's image after his likeness"? The human being is therefore in the process of being created by God. If there is something wrong with this product that has been created by God, this can surely only be due to the creator and not the created product. That this wrongly created product or living being is to be tormented in an eternal hell for this fault in its creation can only be sadism in its most extreme and worst form. It can in fact only be a form of cruelty that a human being could never ever, even in his worst form of derailment, perform. It ought to be perfectly obvious that such an idea of the Godhead cannot lead human beings to neighbourly love or a true world culture of peace.

And this was certainly not what Christ in his mission of world redemption was pointing out. We also have to leave behind the idea of blessing war and its weapons, as well as praying to God to crush and exterminate the enemy. We have to leave behind the idea that war can be abolished through the use of war. How can one get rid of weeds by sowing them? We have to leave behind the idea that it is our neighbour who is the cause of our unhappiness. Is this not the reason why Christ's world redemption commands us to forgive our enemies not only seven times a day but seventy times seven times a day? Was it not also something similar that the world redeemer meant when he said, "Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also"? These divine commandments are not in agreement with the proliferation of the ability to murder, destroy, mutilate and wipe out human beings together with their objects of cultural value on the physical plane of existence. Neither is it in agreement with the principle, "Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword". Even though the old world culture is to a far-reaching extent influenced by Christianity, it is still to a very large extent heathen. And this heathendom will spread out and gain power over human beings unless Christianity is renewed.

What does it mean that Christianity will be renewed? It means that it will be revealed in a form that is acceptable to the current human intellectuality so that it nourishes intelligence- and feeling-orientated research, and from where it can become theoretical fact to advanced researchers. Until now Christianity has not been presented to mankind in a form that nourished the intelligence. It was presented only in a form that nourished human beings' religious instinct, which in turn promoted human beings' ability to "believe" in authorities. Belief is an ability to accept statements from authorities, regardless of whether these statements are true or false. It is the same ability that the child has towards its parents. It believes in its parents' statements as long as it still does not have the ability to analyse the statements intellectually. Consequently, the parents are like dictators with respect to their young children. Of course in its normal form this dictatorship is based on love. As long as human beings are still very primitive and unintellectual they, like the children, have to be guided by authorities. This guidance is also a kind of dictatorship in the form of religion. Children have to be guided by the adults. Ignorant, primitive and unintelligent human beings have to be guided by informed, intellectual beings. And it is this very principle that forms the foundation of world redemption. Buddha was the authority for millions of people. Christ was the authority for millions of people, and Mohammed was likewise the authority for millions of people. The religions were a guidance manifested in the form of postulates adapted to suit the evolutionary step of each particular nation.

But since human beings do not remain on the same evolutionary step, but like children are growing towards a greater maturity in intellectual capability and knowledge, they are therefore also compelled to grow away from the religion, to the extent that they are growing away from the evolutionary step to which it was adapted. And consequently the Earth's human beings are in the process of growing away from the evolutionary step to which Christianity and the other world religions were adapted. The Christian commandments, which were previously accepted as moral guidance and formed the foundation of people's lives, are today regarded by modern, intelligent human beings as mere postulates. Postulates are the same as commandments, for which there has been manifested absolutely no scientific or intellectual, logical basis. Such postulates were particularly suited for human beings who had no means of analysing them for themselves and who therefore could be guided only by others' authority and knowledge.

We have now come to the very thing that today lies heavily on the world. The leading world powers are materialistic and are sometimes even hostile towards religious traditions. This materialism and irreligiousness means that these powers, which have no spiritual or cosmic abilities and therefore have no insight into the spiritual realities that form the basis of the entire material world and without which this world would be a total impossibility, have in their materialistic abilities only superior force as the determining factor in relation to other forces, totally regardless of whether this is justified or not. For this reason the world is in a permanent state of war. This applies not least to the so-called Christian world. Sometimes this war erupts violently, as it has done a couple of times in this century. And sometimes it takes the form of an armed state of alertness, which we call "the cold war". It goes without saying that this kind of permanently alternating state of war cannot constitute a true and absolute human culture.

So what is a truly human culture? It is a culture in which the sixth commandment, "You shall not kill", is complied with to the letter. We can see how much murdering takes place in the world, not only in the case of human beings killing human beings, but human beings killing also animals in the belief that this nourishment is the kind of food that human beings truly deserve. Human beings are still unaware that they can live much more healthily on a vegetarian diet, just as they are also more or less ignorant of the death-inducing fate that they are inflicting on themselves through their way of living. Where is there true happiness among human beings? Do they not live amidst death-inducing illnesses? Are not the hospitals full to overflowing? Is there not sorrow, disharmony and insecurity in everyday life? Do they not live in fear of war between one human being and another or between one country and another? Have not many human beings realised that wealth, which so many are striving for, offers absolutely no true happiness? World fame, glory and power are not a stable basis of happiness either. It is true one can find great happiness through working, when this work is one-hundred-percent what one wants to do and it goes together with one's abilities, at the same time as it also provides one with a means of making a living. But this happiness is very unstable and offers no guarantee that it will last for ever. Illness and grief can come about that can completely break down the being's physical and mental state, and bring it into a state of depression. Are there not millions of human beings who are experiencing just such a state? Are there not also an enormous number of human beings all over the world who commit suicide? And in addition are there not also a great many human beings who are filling the mental hospitals and nerve clinics? What is wrong with human beings?

It cannot be the intention of life or Nature that human beings should be born into the world with such defective experiences of life. The Earth is an extremely highly developed planet. It has the possibility of giving human beings an existence of radiant brilliance, in which no one needs to go cold or hungry, absolutely no one needs to be at war, no one needs to create atomic bombs or other means of annihilation or machines of murder and mutilation or any other means of killing. It is so perfect that it can offer human beings a standard of living that far exceeds what we would today call a high standard of living. All human beings the world over would be exceedingly well provided for in all ways. Why is the world situation such that millions of human beings are starving to death in destitution and wretchedness, while millions of others are living in exorbitant or illogical abundance and wastefulness? Advanced researchers have long ago recognized the fact that on the one hand exorbitant abundance and wastefulness and on the other hand poverty and wretchedness create in both parties a false idea about life. It cannot possibly be desirable to live according to a false idea about life. Since world culture is nevertheless to a large extent based on a compromise between the false ideas about life of both the rich and the poor, it is not so surprising that this culture is in reality still only an embryo that will eventually evolve to become a world culture of true light, happiness and peace, in which sorrow, cries of agony or torment do not exist.

Regarding the new world culture, this has in some areas already begun long ago. The entire intellectual evolution that has taken place over the last century and a half is a result of the new world culture. The whole of modern science with all the advantages it has afforded human beings in the form of technical and chemical knowledge and capability is also the result of the influence of new mental and cosmic forces. These intellectual abilities in human beings differ from the abilities that are released through instinct. A very large part of animals' consciousness and behaviour is released through instinct. Also in primitive human beings it is to a large extent instinct that governs the beings' way of life. It is also instinct that promotes their religious life. This religious instinct is the same as the initial stages of a "human" ability. In addition to this human ability, primitive feeling or antipathy is also beginning to grow, that is to say, hatred of other beings that are competing for the physical necessities of life, and at the same time intelligence is also beginning to develop. As a result human beings became superior to animals. In animals there therefore emerged a new quality. This new quality was primitive feeling and intelligence. The development of this new quality transformed the "animal" more and more into a "human being". Quite naturally the human being in its first stages as a human being had almost the same consciousness as the animal. Evolution takes place only slowly. This human being in the making is therefore both "animal" and "human being", as long as it has still not reached the point in evolution where it has become a finished or perfect "human being in God's image after his likeness". The further a human being has come in this evolution, the greater are the human qualities in its psyche, and correspondingly the fewer are the animal qualities in this psyche.

Since the finished human being is a total contrast to the animal, it will have to evolve away from the animal state in order to become a human being. This development or transformation process is, in the first instance, promoted by the being's fate. Fate consists exclusively of the effects of the actions that we have previously carried out towards our surroundings, that is to say towards other living beings, which we also describe as our "neighbour". The law states that whatever we sow we are bound to reap. This applies not only in relation to physical seed, it applies equally to mental seed, that is to say our actions and behaviour. If we sow suffering, murder and killing in relation to other beings, our harvest, that is to say our fate, will likewise be suffering, murder and killing. If we sow neighbourly love, joy and blessing in relation to our neighbour, our fate will inevitably be neighbourly love, joy and blessing.

Why have human beings not long ago got used to manifesting neighbourly love, blessing and joy towards their surroundings? To display neighbourly love requires, like all other manifestations, an ability. If you do not have this ability you cannot display neighbourly love. Just as you cannot become a musical or artistic virtuoso without developing the ability to manifest such forms of art, neither can you display absolute and true neighbourly love without having developed the ability to love your neighbour. Neighbourly love is therefore not a mere act of will that you can release absolutely whenever you want, in the same way as according to your wish or your will you can stand up or sit down, walk or run, say yes or no etc. If you have developed the ability to love, you can yourself decide in which way you want to allow it to find expression, but if you have not developed it, it does no good that you want to display love. How can you display something you do not have? You can of course create a kind of civility, a kind of friendliness, but this is certainly not a truly felt love, it is at best a kind of friendliness. But this kind of friendliness can also in the worst cases be a camouflaged unfriendliness that you chose to adopt so that you can deceive the person in question. Either you have developed the ability to love to a certain extent and you are then loving to an equivalent extent, or you have developed it to a much lesser extent and you are then correspondingly much less loving. Love is a question of evolution, not a question of will. Of course it means a great deal to be able to show true friendliness if you do not have the ability to show love.

Human beings therefore develop as a result of their sufferings, which are in turn the effects of having broken the law of loving one's neighbour. The development of these sufferings promotes the development of the ability to be humane or to love one's neighbour. World redemption, and the humane world religions that it has given rise to, acts as a support and guidance for the ability to be humane. But since the guidance afforded by these religions fits only the human beings' temporary evolutionary steps to which they have been given, this guidance and help will be only temporary. The religions are therefore not final and for the time being have to be replaced by a new form of guidance, as human beings grow away from the evolutionary step to which the guidance was given. And today the Earth's human beings are all to a greater or lesser extent in such a situation, regardless of which religion they might belong to or have belonged to.

In the purely material area the new culture has gathered momentum in the form of the many material branches of materialistic science. But in the purely cosmic or spiritual area human beings have not developed very far. In fact, one could perhaps even say that they are very stagnant, and in certain cases have even gone backwards. This has everything to do with the invisible side of the living beings and the universe. That there is such an invisible side to life, that is to say a side that is not directly accessible to physical sensory perception, is a fact that no one can deny. The only thing that is directly accessible to the physical senses is matter built up into a multitude of different forms as created objects, including all the phenomena of Nature, all the living beings' organisms, all the solid, liquid and gaseous materials. All these materials have long since been recognised by science to be types of movement, vibrations and wavelengths. This applies to the hardest as well as to the most porous materials, to rocks as much as to water and air. In fact even flesh, blood and nails and everything contained in a living being's organism is only movement upon movement. So where is there anything at all that is accessible to the physical senses that is not movement? There is absolutely no such thing. If everything that is accessible to the physical senses is only movement, what is it that governs and guides all matter on the physical plane? What is it that promotes this vast, gigantic organisation and construction of matter that we can see in Nature's wealth of created details? What is it that is building up and revealing itself in the living beings' organisms? If everything that we can see with our physical senses is merely movements and combinations of movements, these cannot be what is directing and creating. One movement cannot experience another movement. A movement is not a living being, but an effect of "something" that must be its cause or instigator.

The truly living originator of the movements does not exist on the physical plane, this plane only contains the movements but not the originator of the movements. This originator can be sensed by means of an inborn instinct, the instinct that we have called "the religious instinct". It is this instinct that causes all primitive human beings, that is to say human beings in the unintellectual stages of their development, to have a firm belief in superior non-physical forces or gods that rule the world, and in whose favour the beings seek to be, if they are to get their help and support in their struggle against their enemies. From the very beginning there has been in human beings an organ that somehow connects human beings' primitive consciousness to a "living something", which they instinctively and firmly feel exists. The fact that a godhead or higher forces exists is not some idea created by a vivid imagination. On the other hand the appearance and way of life of this godhead or these higher forces does have its source in the imagination of the beings in question. But without this instinctive sense of the existence of a higher "something" behind the whole of existence they would not have been able to have formed the imagination of this something. They have an inborn sense of the existence of a "something" behind life and their own existence.

The first human beings form the existence of this "something", or the life and way of being of these superior forces, in their own image. But gradually as human beings developed and gained experience and greater abilities of consciousness, they also to a corresponding degree changed this image, and with the help of prophets and world redeemers the image of God became in their improved image. From being fighting, warrior gods the image of God eventually took the form of one single Godhead that held all the power in heaven and on Earth. Gradually as human beings began to have humane abilities and began to make humanism or the beginnings of the ability to love their neighbour into an ideal, this Godhead, together with the prophets and world redeemers, took the form of a God of peace and love that was also almighty and all-knowing. And at this point this image of God could not be transformed since there is no higher ideal. A Godhead that has all the power in heaven and on Earth and at the same time is all-knowing and all-loving cannot be surpassed or outshone. And at this point a great reversal therefore takes place in how human beings create culture. From forming the Godhead in their own image they now, also with the help of world redemption, form themselves in the Godhead's image.

It is just such a cultural reversal that is taking place with human beings in the twentieth century. Human beings are unaware of the religious aspect of this cultural reversal. They do, on the other hand, see that the religious aspect of the old culture is in decline. Human beings are becoming irreligious, they are becoming materialistic or godless. Moral standards are being slackened and it is easier for lesser moral phenomena to find expression. Art, music and literature are also sinking to a level that would previously have been unthinkable as culture. And at the same time, as an outcome of the first results of the new world culture, human beings have film, radio, loudspeakers and television that have increased the ability to spread information, teaching, science and entertainment to the masses. But to the extent that one can spread truly good culture, one can spread all the bad and primitive that human beings have become involved in during the current cultural decline. But one cannot lay the blame for this cultural decline on human beings. It is a stage in evolution. The more human beings have the opportunity to display their more or less animal nature, the more the effects of this nature will sabotage the particular being's fate, happiness or normal life in the future. But this unshakable fate and these sufferings have the divine effect of causing human beings to develop the ability to be humane. If they are deprived of the opportunity to release causes, both good and evil, they would never ever have experienced what was evil and what was good. And human beings have the opportunity to do this especially during a period of cultural decline. When human beings have to such an extent released causes, the effects of which have been, as we have seen in this century, suffering, war, racial oppression, illness, poverty, misery, torture and mutilation, it is just such a Doomsday that has always made itself felt in a similar way during previous cultural collapses.

The desire to possess the devilish atomic weapons that are appearing to an increasing extent here and there in various countries, and with which we already have the capacity to wipe out human beings and lay waste the Earth, gives no cause for optimism in relation to how the Armageddon or cultural collapse, which already began a long time ago, will end. Christ predicted that there would be very hard times before his kingdom would come about on Earth. The revelation of St. John certainly does not promise easy times either in mankind's godless, materialistic epoch, before it becomes ready for the great light. Why will such terrible effects come about? There is one and only one reason why they will come about. And that reason is that human beings are causing them themselves through their way of being. A temperament that wants to wipe out its enemies with atomic bombs, or wants to wipe them out using other weapons or with the sword, must itself be wiped out in the same way. How else could this temperament be eradicated? Has not the Bible proclaimed the sixth commandment: "You shall not kill"? Has it not in all possible ways explained to human beings the law of life: "You shall love the lord your God above all things and your neighbour as yourself"? Has it not explained that you should forgive your enemies over and over again? Has not the world redeemer said, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you"? Is it the act of complying with this divine commandment that human beings today have given the highest priority? Or is it not precisely the opposite?

As well as the fact that human beings are at war with human beings, murdering and mutilating them, they are killing animals by the millions and millions in the superstition that human beings, who have begun to be created in the image of God after his likeness, cannot live without consuming other highly developed beings' bodies, that it to say the bodies of the animals and beings from a kingdom that they themselves have not grown out of. It is not in order to criticise or blame these human beings that I am writing these lines, but only in order to show that this is one of the important, main causes of Doomsday or Armageddon. The nervous system and musculature of human beings' organisms has long ago become so refined that food of animal origin is no longer healthy food for human beings, quite apart from the karma that the killing of the animals itself inflicts on the killer. That the human being's body becomes refined and cannot continue to eat food of animal origin is one of the things that becomes a fact due to the circumstance that, for example, primitive human beings living in the jungle can eat the more or less unappetising scraps of food that they can find in other human beings' rubbish bins. Is it not the case that to eat such food would be more or less poisonous to advanced, civilised human beings? And there is no basis whatsoever to believe that civilised human beings of today have reached the peak of their organism's development regarding refinement of feeling and hygiene. A time will come when human beings will feel just as great an aversion or disgust in eating meat or food of animal origin, as they would feel today if they were forced to eat the more or less rotten contents of a rubbish bin, or they were forced to eat corpses.

All food of animal origin is the product of animal corpses. Even today there are human beings that feel the same disgust at the thought of eating meat, as the civilised human being has at the thought of eating human flesh. A time will come when human beings will look back at the present, civilised human beings in the same way that these beings look back at the cannibalism of primitive human beings. But the human beings of today are just as ingrained in the habit of eating meat as the alcoholic is ingrained in the habit of drinking alcohol, or the morphine addict is ingrained in the habit of taking morphine. There is just one difference between the effects of meat, alcohol and the other poisonous substances, and that is that whereas alcohol and the poisonous substances take effect rapidly and visibly, indulging in meat as nourishment for the organism is a poison that takes effect extremely slowly, but on the other hand it brings about a karma that shortens one's life, due to the killing of the animal whose flesh one eats. There is no avoiding the fact that killing animals is also a violation of the sixth commandment: "You shall not kill" and that this irrevocably has its effect on the fate of the meat-eater. Why are the hospitals full to overflowing with sick people? Why are millions of human beings dying long before they reach the age that is otherwise reckoned to be the length of time before human beings go over to the spiritual plane? Is it not possibly the case that human beings' faulty habits of consumption have something to do with it? We cannot avoid the fact that all these many forms of suffering are the effects of faulty ways of living.

What else can be the cause of human beings' sufferings and unhappy fates? And is it not precisely these unhappy fates that transform human beings from brutality to humaneness? Is it not precisely such conditions of fate that make human beings seek spiritual help? Are there not many of these sufferings that cannot be healed, or for which there exists no physical help whatsoever? It is not surprising that these sufferings cause human beings to seek some kind of spiritual help. It is also these sufferings that give human beings the ability to recognize and understand the sufferings in other beings. The sufferings therefore develop the ability to feel compassion and make the human beings receptive to spiritual development. Even those beings that today appear to be the most confirmed materialists will over the course of several lives be transformed from materialism to spirituality. And it is this spirituality, which can be developed through the twentieth century's world redemption, and which takes the form – not of dogmas and postulates – but of purely cosmic analyses that are accessible to the intelligence or as material for research. Just as human beings have now developed materialistic science, which to the physical world is divine, human beings will now begin to live according to a science of human beings' spiritual aspect of life.

This new world redemption differs from the relationship to previous world redemptions – which were based on one person's commandments that human beings should follow because they had no other way of understanding life – in that it is a spiritual or cosmic science, with the help of which human beings, to the extent that they are ready for it, can themselves find life's solutions to all important questions, so that they themselves become knowledgeable in these spiritual areas. This knowledge is of course theoretical, but it is supported by realities that they know to be facts. This science will gradually form the basis of mankind's continuing evolution towards the final answer: "You shall love the Lord your God above all things and your neighbour as yourself", whereby the being becomes a "human being in the image of God after his likeness".

The new world redemption is a science that supports and transforms Christ's words and commandments into science in the form of cosmic analyses. What are cosmic analyses? They are a logical support of the eternal answers that human beings with highly developed humaneness – or the ability to love their neighbour and the correspondingly developed faculty of intuition that is a result of it – can directly experience. Just as intelligence forms the basis of materialistic science, intuition forms the basis of spiritual science or the solution to the mystery of life. This science of intuition will lead human beings back to God, not in the form of a religion or the formation of a sect but in the form of this religious science, this intellectual support of Jesus' proclamation and commandments, and which is the very thing he promised with the expression, the "Comforter, the Holy Spirit", which should come to human beings. And it is this "Comforter" or "Holy Spirit" or these cosmic analyses of the Godhead and the eternal facts about life, the keynote of which is love, that form the world redemption of the twentieth century.