One glorious sunny day almost two thousand years ago, a voice resounded over the slopes by the wonderfully beautiful lake of Gennesaret in Galilee. The voice was certainly human, but the words came from a plane of existence far beyond the earthly sphere. They came from a cosmic world and were attuned to the level of a group of a thousand or so people who listened in wonder to the heavenly voice. The words and sentences were like glowing accounts of the all-controlling laws of love, with which an eternal, all-knowing and almighty Godhead guides the endless universe. It became apparent that this was no ordinary lecture that resounded from the lips of the speaker because the superterrestrial sound of it not only inspired and warmed the captivated crowd of listeners on the mountain side, but it spoke to the whole world, to the whole of mankind. It was a greeting from God to generations of people for thousands of years to come. It shed its light of love on kings and princes, on the rich and the poor, the joyful and the sorrowful, the sick and the healthy, on materialistic and religious people, on robbers and saints. And today the ringing tones of the heavenly voice are still heard by those who have ears to hear. What happened on that still, sunny day by the biblical lake among the hills of Galilee was timeless. Down through the ages people have continued to flock to this divine lecture. The little crowd of a few thousand grew and grew into millions and millions of listeners. And the divine greeting from the hillside in Galilee will go on shining its blessing and guidance upon the people of the earth through the present time and on through the millennia ahead. Everyone will experience the eternal lecture, because without the experience of the light in this lecture there would be absolutely no world redemption, no release at all from the sphere of darkness.

It was through the mouth of a world redeemer that God gave mankind his blessing in the form of a world redemption, which means a releasing from or a way out of darkness, out of the realm of ignorance and brutality, war and suffering, sorrow and hatred. The divine road to the light is paved with the glowing accounts of the eternal laws of love that govern life and being, which form a radiant sea that God revealed through the voice of the world redeemer on the hillside by the Galilean lake. The Godhead's revealing of the road of light is constantly renewed, and as people develop and can bear more and more of the divine light it radiates the eternal spirit of God with greater and greater brilliance. This lecture that was revealed, the so-called "Sermon of the Mount", was nothing less than the eternal truth presented in such a light that it turned its originator into "the way, the truth and the life". It is not so surprising that the world redeemer, Jesus of Nazareth, could say about himself, "I and the Father are one". That was why he became the saviour of the world and was the incarnation of God's primary consciousness, the eternal truth or the solution to the mystery of life. He was in this way a fully qualified guide and leader for all others wanting to walk the road of light or peace.

So what is it that turns a being into the way, the truth and the life and that with renewed energy constantly reveals the light from the sermon on the mount and will go on shining for unfinished mankind for thousands of years to come until mankind has become totally perfect, and every single person has individually become "the way, the truth and the life", has become a "human being in God's image after his likeness"? In St. Matthew's gospel, chapters 5, 6 and 7 the divine sermon on the mount shines out from pages of the book. Here we have the way, the truth and the life just as this divine foundation of life was revealed from the lips of the world redeemer. Here it says among many other things that "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their's is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their's is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you...". And so the glowing radiance of eternal truth continues to vibrate throughout the world to this day from the world redeemer's sermon on the mount, supplemented and combined with the speech of God through Nature's revelations in the physical world, which can be summed up as the light in materialistic science, so that the voice of almighty God is revealed from both above and below and thereby gradually becomes united in one true science, which is the same as "The spokesman, the holy spirit". This divine science will in its turn form the foundations for the last stage of world redemption's leading of mankind towards perfection or completion "in God's image after his likeness".

What gives the world redeemer great spiritual authority? It is his cosmic consciousness, his state of permanent animation by the holy spirit, which is exactly the same as God's consciousness. Because of this Jesus was "one with the Father". How could a being with such a consciousness and such a relationship to God be without supreme authority? How could such a being's words be unshakable for not only thousands of years but for eternity itself if they were not eternal truths? Do they not speak to millions of people all over the world to this very day? Are they not precisely made up of concentrated cosmic answers that contain the very solution to the mystery of life? Do not the words and the spirit of Christ set in motion gigantic forces of love right across the world when the Christmas spirit enters into every home, every town and every lowly dwelling? And did not the warmth of his love shine down with forgiveness from the cross to his mocking and maligning killers? And does not the eternal sentence "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" echo through space? Was it not precisely this world-saving road to real absolute peace, to eternal light, that he revealed to the world in his own way of being? Was it not precisely his own way of being as a world saviour that confirmed his total fulfilment of the law of love as a "human being in God's image after his likeness"? It is not so surprising that he could say about himself with great authority, "I am the resurrection and the life, all who believe in me shall live, even though they die". Who can truthfully say these words other than someone who, just like the world redeemer, is an incarnation of God's way of being or of eternal truth?

It is not so surprising that everyone who believed in the world redeemer, who was the incarnation of nothing less than God's guidance of mankind, would believe in an eternal life and so be freed from the widespread superstition that so-called "death" is a total annihilation of life and existence, that is to say, a total annihilation of the living being. Believing in the world redeemer was the same as being imbued with his consciousness, his knowledge, guidance and inspiration to live hoping for and believing in an eternal life, free of darkness, hatred, war and suffering. Everyone who believed in him would really eventually emerge free from the ignorant and superstitious concepts that surround the existence of a completely annihilatory death, together with all the dark thought climates of grief and depression associated with these concepts. But this belief in the world redeemer, this belief in the all-pervading light radiating from his sermon on the mount, has led millions of human beings to the beginnings of the birth of a new human world culture based on an understanding of the Godhead as a loving father who one can learn to love, rather than as an angry, vengeful and punishing Godhead who one fears. Through this world culture the sermon on the mount has been heard now by mankind for almost two thousand years and will still for some time to come echo through thousands of churches the world over. So what has this culture given to mankind? It has permeated the pillaging and murdering of the Viking culture with the humane ideals of the world redeemer's way of being. It forbids murdering, robbing, plundering, stealing, lying and deceiving; in short, it forbids everyone from annoying their neighbour, instead seeking to protect them through its public authorities, police force and judicial system. With its hospitals and infirmaries it seeks to help people who are sick and suffering. With its care of orphans and old people it creates protection for beings that otherwise would be in difficulty. Is it not the spirit or the light in the parable of the good Samaritan that here brings light and warmth on a practical daily basis? What about all the many other amenities and advantages, such as schools, universities and centres of learning with the more or less cost-free education that goes with them, that the former Viking culture today offers its inhabitants or citizens? Is it not precisely the light from the sermon on the mount or world redemption that vibrates here, sparkling and shining? And is it not precisely this light of world redemption in the Viking culture that causes it to be known as "the Christian world civilisation"? No, belief in the world redeemer has certainly not been in vain. It has created the beginnings of the global culture of peace that will turn the whole of mankind into one flock and one shepherd, into one people with one God and one religion, this religion being the eternal truth or the solution to the mystery of life as a clear fact or reality, and the ensuing peace on earth and great goodwill to all men that is mentioned in the Christmas gospel.

But world redemption has still not reached its conclusion. Mankind has still not become free from heathendom or the powers of darkness, free from the animal or killing nature in the human mentality or psyche. True Christianity or the law of love, that "thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind" is still a long way from being fulfilled in mankind's way of being. And the same applies to the words "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself". It is the purpose of world redemption to guide the human being towards being able to fulfil these two commandments. The ability to fulfil these two commandments makes the being into a "human being in God's image after his likeness". That will be the ultimate result of the mission of world redemption. As long as the human being is unable to live up to this ultimate result in its everyday behaviour it is still an incomplete human being and needs the guidance of world redemption. It is not difficult to see that in reality Christianity is only in its initial stages. People are in many ways, from a spiritual point of view, still more or less confined within Viking or heathen culture. This culture exists in the form of all those aspects of behaviour that do not fulfil the teachings of Christ or the laws of perfect existence. And let us take a look at people in today's modern civilisation. Do people live according to the Christian teachings? Do people love their enemies? Do they bless those that curse them? Do they help those people who hate them? And do they pray for those people who insult and persecute them? Do they forgive their neighbour, who is evil to them, as many as seventy times seven times a day? Do they acknowledge that all they who take the sword shall themselves perish with the sword? Do they take this teaching into consideration when they go hunting and fishing or in other ways take part in the killing of millions of animals, based on the age old superstition that animal food is a vital necessity for humans? Has it not been shown that the "Christian" states are the strongest warring peoples in the world? They have been the most skilful at killing and subjugating other people on Earth. They have been the most skilled in taking the "sword". What about the killing that they in this way bring upon themselves? Is it not precisely this catastrophic killing that we see in the form of the vast number of illnesses that people succumb to and that they fight against with all their power? What is illness? Illness is the killing principle within organisms. How can people ever become free of other people's manifesting to a greater or lesser degree the killing principle when they themselves are seeking to maintain their life or fate by virtue of that very principle? How can a society consisting of such beings be anything other than a primitive, heathen one based on the Viking spirit, or a kind of higher animal kingdom? Such a society is certainly not a "really Christian" one based on the sermon on the mount or on the shining, warming sunshine of world redemption. The people of the earth still do not represent real, "true Christianity", a Christianity that can be manifested only by living according to all the world redeemer's teachings. The degree of Christianity represented by present-day people of the earth is still very slight, despite the many bright blessings that have already been mentioned, that it has given mankind. Christianity has still not become the fundamental basis of life for mankind. Countries, civilisations and behaviour are still at the stage of being based on the power of the sword. Christianity is still only a little seedling springing up amidst the great wilderness of heathendom.

Christianity has not been able to reach a higher degree of manifestation than it has because people have had to evolve to become the extreme opposite of Christianity, namely the "antichrist". While the light of Christianity is love, the antichrist is hatred along with its consequences, such as the production of all forms of weaponry, from the simplest and most primitive right up to nuclear or chemical weapons and other hellish means of bringing about death. It is not exactly the Christian principle of life "Put up thy sword again", that we have as an aim here. The great world wars that we have experienced during this century show that man has no hesitation in using these massive weapons, with which he has increased his ability to kill a million times over and with which he has already attempted to wipe out large cities along with their populations and cultural assets. It is in fact the animal principle in the human that is being manifested. But since the human manifestation of this principle is millions of times more effective than the animals', one cannot call these human beings "animals". And because this animal form of manifestation is the total opposite of that of the absolute human, which is the same as the Christ form of manifestation, one cannot describe this killing being as a real "human" either. We can only express this opposite extreme of Christ consciousness or love as what the Bible expresses using the concepts of "devil" or "evil", which are the same as the "anti-Christ"; so it is this antichrist mentality that to an exceptional extent has reached its peak here with us in the twentieth century in the form of the world wars and everything that follows in their wake such as concentration camps and torture chambers, attempts at racial cleansing, robbery and assault, hatred and dislike, and cold or hot wars between states as well as people. Godless ideologies are more or less sought after by people who have dictatorship, violence and power forced upon them, in the same way that the ideologies seek to deprive people of their ability to think freely from their own personal experience and feelings. How can such straightjacketed thinking be an expression of civilisation? And how can a civilisation represent Christianity when nuclear weapons are triggering off something that is nothing less than hell? It is not surprising that people are afraid of people. People are looking towards heaven and are beginning to hope that help will come from some place or other. There are people who are beginning to understand that the road to light or to world peace, cannot be conquered by murdering and mutilating other living beings, and we shall see that the butcher's knife, the sword or the hydrogen bomb does not make up the road to the light, but on the contrary the light in the life-promoting teachings of world redemption does, the light in the sunshine lecture from the hill of Galilee as well as the light from the massive heights of Mount Sinai, that is to say, the ten commandments that were given to Moses and which can be condensed into the single commandment "Thou shalt not kill"; it is this light that constitutes the eternal road of world salvation.

World redemption has definitely not lost its power over people, but people have temporarily lost their connection with world redemption. They have to a large extent become what we know as the "antichrist". The antichrist is expressive of all the darkness in the world, everything that goes against the law of love and thereby against world redemption. All those people who go against world redemption, against the law of love, are not ready to understand or they are immune to an understanding of that degree of love and that way of being or behaviour that was expressed in the sermon on the mount by lake Gennesaret. People who are unable to believe that a Godhead exists are of necessity godless or materialistic. Their religious instinct, which forms the basis of their ability to believe, has degenerated, while on the other hand their intelligence has developed very strangely. But because one cannot experience the eternal truths or the solution of the mystery of life with one's intelligence, one is still of necessity godless or materialistic. And because each one of the basic truths forms a link in the unfolding of the keynote of the universe, which is love, they are to be found on a sensory plane that lies beyond the faculty of intelligence and the physical senses. These truths can be experienced only with one's faculty of intuition as eternal ultimate answers if one can understand the details of them with one's faculty of intelligence. But the development of the faculty of intuition does not really begin until the human being has managed to develop a certain humane faculty, which is the same as neighbourly love. The highest enlightenment, the eternal truths, the secrets of the universe, none of these are accessible to people who still have it in them to take revenge, or to hate and persecute other beings. Life requires great spiritual maturity of the one it initiates with cosmic consciousness. World redemption definitely cannot give people this maturity. It is born automatically as a result of the beings' dark, painful and unhappy fate. This fate is in turn identical to the effects of the sufferings or the nuisance the being itself has been to its neighbour through its imperfect behaviour, either in this present life or in previous ones, its neighbour being other living beings.

So we have now seen that "Christianity", as it is presented to us by the clergy and the church, is not sufficient to free mankind from its primitive epoch of life in war and illness. We have seen that the Viking spirit is flourishing and to a large extent rules the world, and that ecclesiastical Christianity is following a downward tendency; it is in decline. People are in the process of losing their religious instinct or that which enables them to have an inkling of or sense instinctively the existence of a higher world and therefore have the ability to believe spiritual leaders or world redeemers, and believe in the assertions of authorities, even though they have no intellectual understanding whatsoever of these assertions. And this is why people have been led over the centuries by the assertions and proclamations of authorities. However peoples' religious instinct is now in the process of degenerating because another faculty has begun to develop. This faculty is the intelligence. As this faculty progresses in its development the human being can no longer be led by belief or by authorities. This holds true for people under the divine light of world redemption in the other great world religions just as much as under that very light in Christianity. But neither is it the intention of life, or is it in contact with world redemption's predictions about God's creation of the human being in his image, that people should go on being dependent on others, go on being like children depending on the attitudes of adults. People will themselves become spiritually adult, will themselves become supreme religious authorities. The strong religious decline that we are witnessing in people today and the ensuing godlessness, materialism, arms' development, atomic weapons and the ability to kill millions of people at a blow and so on, definitely does not point to the decline or perdition of humans; human beings are eternal and therefore immortal beings. On the contrary their experience of darkness constitutes an indispensable link in God's creation of the human being in his image. How could any being have the faculty to experience light without its contrast? How could our faculty for compassion or love be developed if we never ever experienced suffering? Can one read a white text that in no way is differentiated from the white paper it is written on? How could the light areas of a photograph be visible and form a portrait if there were not at the same time shaded areas on it? So light and shade or the contrast principle form the foundation for all sensing. This is the case both physically and spiritually. And the time has now come when people are very much in the process of experiencing the darkness in order to thereby understand or become conscious of the fact that everything that we usually call "evil" certainly is suffering and in pain, sorrow and anxiety, illness and need, but it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with "eternal perdition", "eternal suffering" or the "punishment of a wrathful God". World redemption will now banish this superstition from mankind. The experience of this darkness is on the contrary an indispensable link in "God's creation of the human being in his image after his likeness". This creation does not consist of making beings immortal, because they are that already. All the I's in the living beings are eternal realities. God's creation of "the human being in his image" is, on the contrary, a transferring of consciousness to the ignorant being, making it more and more alive, and giving it increasing possibilities for experience and manifestation, as well as the more and more evolved physical and mental organisms and bodies needed for these greater possibilities. We call this replacement of organisms or bodies "reincarnation". And we call this growing state of consciousness "evolution". So evolution is the same as God's grafting or transferring of his consciousness, his knowledge and capability to the living being. This grafting or transferring of consciousness, knowledge and capability constitutes the being's experience of life, its own personal learning experiences and its manifestations. The aim or purpose of ever-increasing daily transference of personal experience is to advance the being so that it becomes "God's image after his likeness", that is the product of God's creation, the totally completed human being, a being that in every way is in complete harmony with God's consciousness and way of being, in harmony with the culmination of universal love, infinite wisdom and almightiness that is revealed through the universe and so, because of this, all human beings' physical experience of life is a "cosmic initiation". It leads them forward to cosmic consciousness, which is the entrance to real cosmic life in the highest worlds beyond reincarnation and physical darkness, misfortune and suffering. God steers these beings' great initiation by means of world redemption. The realistic direct grafting of consciousness is promoted by means of the beings' own light and dark learning experiences, which gradually make them mature enough for world redemption's higher and higher explanation of the eternal truths concerning the solution to the mystery of life. In the following chapters we will dwell a little on the three distinct epochs of this great initiation, each of them forming one stage in the great initiation.

So in order to be led towards the light by guidance alone, maturity is needed, as already mentioned, and this means a faculty for understanding the guidance not only spiritually but also physically. As the sole purpose of world redemption is to give mankind guidance, its mission can only be manifested where people are ready for it. And is this not precisely what we see at the moment in the materialism and godlessness that rules millions and millions of people the world over? These people are at the moment connected to neither religion nor world redemption. They are not primed for anything religious. The religious instinct, which in previous lives bound them to religion or to worship, has degenerated, making way for the development of the faculty of intelligence. But the faculty of intelligence is not a faculty for experiencing; it is only a faculty for analysing. With it one can analyse and make sense of what one experiences. The experience itself is conveyed by means of the other faculties. One of the ways that these faculties function is through the physical senses. In previous lives when the being's faculty of intelligence was still almost latent, people could assess their experiences only with the help of the religious instinct. It gave them the ability to have an inkling of or "sense instinctively" the existence of a providence, of a god or gods. That is the reason why they were compelled to believe in a providence or in gods. But from a purely physical point of view, an "inkling" was not enough. They had to have the confirmation of an authority, that is to say a being that to a higher degree than through instinctive sensing had information about religions or spiritual matters. Such a being we know as a "world redeemer". From him they got the authoritative confirmation, adapted to their religious inkling or instinctive sensing, that they could then go on living by. As their faculty of intelligence was, as already mentioned, almost latent, it was not an intellectual or scientific authoritative confirmation that they needed. Besides their religious inkling and the belief that followed on from it were much too strong; their belief bordered almost on wisdom. And with their almost latent faculty of intelligence they would certainly not be able to understand a really intellectual explanation of the eternal, highest truths; that would be something that would come later. All people the world over who are still religious believers belong to this category, irrespective of which religion they belong to, or which religion they have experienced the light of world redemption through. Of course this also applies to the very strongly "believing" Christians. So this category of people have their belief in higher powers that is based on strong instinctive sensing, and they have their world redeemer's authoritative confirmation of the existence of these powers in a form that suits them, and the result is that they are content. This religious epoch for humans, where, by virtue of their religious instinct and supported and guided by world redemption, they unshakably and instinctively sense the existence of higher psychic or spiritual powers and the existence of a godhead or a god, all according to the ability to understand and the instinctive capacity of their temporary step in evolution, constitutes the first stage in mankind's great initiation.

The second stage in mankind's great initiation or in God's creation of "the human being in his image...." is the one in which darkness reaches its culmination. It is the materialistic, godless epoch. It is the one that mankind is experiencing at the moment. It makes itself evident through those people that no longer have the faculty of religious instinct. They can therefore no longer sense instinctively the existence of Providence or the Godhead, and have therefore lost their ability to believe in them. Because they can experience only with physical senses, they can experience only physical or created things, which they are able to analyse with their now strongly marked intelligence. Because they can only experience physical things, these things are all they are able to analyse. The result of this is a colossal materialistic knowledge about phenomena or things that are purely materialistic or physical. It cannot therefore give mankind the solution to the mystery of life. It offers no knowledge about soul or spirit or the unseen "something" that is revealed through every living being's organism, an organism with which this "something" becomes visible as a "living being". So people in this category are cut off from the spiritual or cosmic sides of life. It is this godless, materialistic epoch that Christ said would come about as "Armageddon", in which "the devil" would rage in all his might. And it is this might that we previously described as the "antichrist", "devil consciousness" or those manifestations in human behaviour that lie totally outside Christian behaviour, such as warlike manifestations, Viking civilisation or heathendom. It is in fact the whole of this side of people's mentality and behaviour that has still not been transformed into true Christianity or "the human being in God's image". As mankind gradually more and more loses its religious instinct, it becomes correspondingly unreceptive to world redemption's spiritual or cosmic guidance. This growing materialism leads people away from churches and temples, away from the world religions, precisely because the guidance that they offer is adapted only to be received by means of the religious instinct, that is now strongly degenerating or dying out in favour of the marked development of human beings' intelligence. And with this development people accept only absolute facts or science. But as people can experience only by means of the physical senses, they can also observe only physical phenomena and experience these as facts. But due to the fact that they still do not have the ability to experience for themselves spiritual or cosmic realities, not having either the ability to believe in other people's experiences, knowledge and explanations of these realities, or the ability to believe in world redemption's cosmic analyses of the universe, which in turn constitute the solution of the mystery of life in an intellectual form that is accessible to a well-developed intelligence, human feeling and intuition, they are of necessity materialistic or godless. So one cannot experience the cosmic realities with the intelligence alone, only when it is connected with the other two faculties in an outstandingly developed state can the human being experience cosmic material that can be analysed by the intelligence and therefore to a corresponding degree experienced as fact or absolute knowledge. But without the faculty of humaneness, that is to say the faculty of neighbourly love and the faculty of intuition, the being will never ever manage to become "God's image after his likeness". However, because it is not life's intention that people should be solely in the "devil's image", in the world of killing or heathendom, these two higher faculties have to be developed in people. But because they believe neither in God nor the spiritual worlds, nor in reincarnation or the law of fate, they are more or less unreceptive to the guidance of world redemption, quite irrespective of whether it is a science or not. There is therefore only one way for neighbourly love or the sense of humaneness to develop, and that way is through suffering. And in all situations where people have no neighbourly love or high sense of humaneness, they create suffering for others. According to the law of movement, however, the effect of this suffering returns inevitably to its source and manifests itself in this person's fate as suffering. The law of fate states unavoidably that "whatsoever a man sows so shall he reap". And likewise that "whatever we would have others do to us, we ourselves should do to them". If we look at the epoch of mankind today, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as Armageddon or Doomsday. Over the whole world we can see a colossal amount of karma returning and afflicting people, karma that is the consequence of their behaviour and way of being not just in this present life, but also in many earlier lives. The formation of this dark karma or fate, this result of devil consciousness, Viking civilisation or heathendom in present and past behaviour, brings into being in people the faculty of humaneness or that faculty for loving with which one loves God above all things and one's neighbour as oneself. But the practice or manifestation of neighbourly love in turn gives rise to the cosmic faculty of intuition, with which one can experience cosmic consciousness, experience God and the universe or the real, true solution to the mystery of life. So Armageddon, doomsday or the darkness in the world is an indispensable epoch in God's creation of the human being in his image, and we describe it as the second stage in the great initiation.

At the same time that we are witnessing mankind in its second stage of initiation, which means its initiation into darkness, when it experiences the effects of its dark, killing behaviour or way of being and its unfinished state, we can see the beginning of the third epoch of mankind's initiation. To the extent that people pass through the epoch of darkness and suffering, their faculty of humaneness or their ability to love their neighbour develops to a correspondingly strong degree. They have reached the point where they get greater and greater pangs of conscience every time they do something evil or are unkind to their neighbour. They begin to wish for humaneness in all matters. They wish for humane laws for both animals and people. Because of their slight but now growing faculty of intuition, they begin to feel that darkness or suffering is not something accidental, but something that has to have some just cause or other, something that provides a link in a divine plan or purpose. They begin to notice that nature in its other creative processes or phenomena is absolutely logical, which means that these processes in the final analysis are a joy and a blessing for living beings. Such people long to create peace in the world and are the heart and soul of groups such as peace leagues, humanitarian organisations and those concerned with the welfare and protection of animals. These same people are, of course, also antimilitarists, conscientious objectors and are opposed to the death penalty and primitive, brutal prison conditions. They are also against killing animals and so live only on vegetarian food. Similarly they think internationally and sympathise with the idea of a world government common to all countries. They are entirely in sympathy with everything aimed at humane or peaceful settlement of conflicts. All people with this strongly apparent humanity or love for their neighbours are beings that have come through at least the main part of the epoch of darkness and suffering, that is, through the second stage of the great initiation. They demonstrate their strong desire to break themselves of the habit of all forms of brutality, violent temper and blaming, being slanderous and lying, just as they feel a strong dislike of living at other people's expense. They can also be recognized by their great helpfulness towards their fellow beings who are in distress. As we can see the light and warmth of the sunshine lecture in Galilee is beginning to shine and radiate warmth in their hearts. And their consciousness is beginning to turn completely away from materialism and godlessness, and back towards world redemption. These people are longing to have some light shed on the solution to the mystery of life. They are longing for a spiritual knowledge or science that will justify the fact that they are different from the majority of people in their attitude to life, an attitude of humaneness and neighbourly love, also with respect to their antimilitarism, their antipathy towards war and the death penalty, their antipathy towards killing animals and the ensuing distaste they have for eating meat or animal products and so on. These people have developed such humanity that they are beginning to feel that evolution has to go in the direction that they themselves are going in, but they are still unable to attain by themselves clarity concerning the absolute, eternal truth, the solution to the mystery of life, the real, cosmic loving world picture, that they, through using their faculty of humaneness and the beginnings of their intuition, are beginning to feel does exist. These people are now ready to receive again the guidance of world redemption. But now it is not a new religion based on dogma that they are seeking; they would be totally unreceptive to such a thing. What they are now receptive to is a world picture manifested in the form of a spiritual or cosmic science that is analysed in logical details that are adapted and made accessible to a sensory faculty consisting of a combination of intelligence, humanity and intuition. If a human being's sensory faculty has become so developed that it consists of an outstanding combination of these faculties of consciousness, then the cosmic or eternal world picture, the eternal truth about the Godhead, the immortality of the living being along with the keynote of the universe, which is love, can through research or study become theoretical fact. And through a thorough study, and by permanently keeping the eternal world picture's cosmic analyses in mind, it is inevitable that the behaviour of the seeker after truth will become increasingly in contact with the law of love or the aforementioned keynote. And the development of this way of being or behaviour into an everyday habit promotes the further growth of the faculty of intuition. And through this development the being begins to meet the real world, the real life beyond the physical world. This meeting with the other reality, not the physical but the cosmic reality, happens only in the form of quite faint glimpses. Such a glimpse is felt as a more or less sudden downpouring into the consciousness of a never-ending, beautiful sense of well-being, a feeling of pleasure or joy the like of which one has never known. In certain cases it can even give the being the feeling that it is enveloped in a strong white light. But the experience is only a momentary one. Nevertheless, it leaves behind in the being a little glimpse of cosmic knowledge. For example, in such a cosmic glimpse the being can experience its own immortality. It does not receive this experience in analysed, logical details, with the result it cannot explain or prove its own immortality to other people. All it knows is that it is absolutely immortal. Such a cosmic glimpse is an extraordinarily strong source of inspiration for this being over long periods of time. However, any unfinished sides of the being's behaviour that there may be will gradually create a little dark karma, but the being will always think back to its divine experience. And when it has outlived its karma in this unfinished area, it will again be receptive to a new cosmic glimpse. In this one it will possibly experience reincarnation; in one of the next glimpses it will experience for example the law of fate or that one is exclusively the ultimate cause of one's own fate. And in this way through cosmic glimpses one can experience eternal truths from the highest knowledge.

With these tiny glimpses of world redemption we have been able to survey mankind's cosmic situation concerning its fate. We have seen how God carries out his great plan of love with regards to transforming the primitive animal human into "the human being in God's image after his likeness". Likewise we have seen that darkness and sufferings are neither "revenge" nor "punishment" from an angry God, but on the contrary constitute an area within which the being can receive the opportunity to experience which manifestations or actions will make one's fate light and happy and which will make it dark and full of pain and suffering. How else could the being get to know the difference between good and evil? And how would they get to the point where they would be able to create their fate in a way that is perfect and free from suffering and so be able to experience a permanent happiness and joy in being alive? So we have seen that darkness and suffering are an indispensable link in the great process of initiation by means of which God creates the human being in his image. Because of their dark behaviour and way of being and because of Armageddon most of the people of the earth are in the process of experiencing what is evil and what is good. And gradually as they pass through this darkness and begin to have a faculty of humaneness and their consciousness begins to shift towards light and peace, and "the solution to the mystery of life" becomes more and more of a burning issue for them, they become aspirants for mankind's third stage in the great initiation. At this point they constitute those beings that Christ described as "the sheep" that would be separated from those beings that are still in the darkness and that Christ described as "the goats". So the first group of beings constitute those beings that are now more or less ready to receive and understand world redemption's new form of guidance, that is the solution to the mystery of life in the form of the cosmic analyses of the universe, in logically connected chains of thought that are discernible to the intelligence, the sense of humanity and the intuition. To the extent that one has this combination of sensory faculties one will meet the spirit of God, which is the same thing as "the spokesman, the holy spirit" in the cosmic analyses of the solution to the mystery of life. And the light from the sunshine lecture from the hill of Galilee will, with increased brilliance, lead people towards the Godhead's radiant glory beyond the gates of initiation and will lead "the prodigal son" back to his father.