I would like to open my series of lectures here at the holiday centre with a lecture about world peace and what we can do about it. The holiday centre has in fact come into being as a link in the work of creating all the knowledge, wisdom or science that will provide all the factual proof that world peace is the absolutely most perfect goal, and indeed the only goal, for both the individual and mankind as a whole. It is therefore my wish that you will never ever forget that this holiday centre is intended to be a gathering place for people who have begun to wake up from the dead state that manifests itself as spiritual ignorance, stupidity and naivety. These three factors merely express one and the same thing, namely the death that is the consequence of eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Every being that is to some extent infected with this death will show himself to be spiritually very ignorant. When this ignorance is found in a person who is at the same time highly egoistic, it turns into stupidity. Stupidity leads to actions that inevitably wound, mutilate and kill beings in the surroundings. These beings in the surroundings will follow their instinct of self-preservation and defend themselves and thereby present a war front to the individual, which it in turn will have to defend itself against, and so on. The being is therefore in itself a war front, the surroundings are also a war front, and the whole of this being's world or its experience of life becomes nothing but war. All uninitiated human beings wherever they are in the world therefore live, to the extent that they are spiritually ignorant, more or less at war. In all those areas in which they are spiritually ignorant they will inevitably wage war.

It is these human beings that are a danger to world peace. As long as these human beings represent the vast majority of people on Earth one cannot expect there to be real, permanent peace with all its blessings, such as flourishing of culture, art and cosmic science that could replace a life of slavery, working in a job purely out of material necessity, with resignation, poverty, illness, hunger and misery. All spiritually ignorant human beings are the primary cause of war. All human temperaments and thought climates promoted exclusively by egoism, all worship of the right of possession and acquisitiveness, all envy and jealousy, all slander and defamation of one's fellow human beings are the virus that gives rise to all the fears and murderous manifestations of the great wars. War has nothing to do with how things are progressing in Korea; war has nothing to do with communism, fascism or Nazism. It has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of deadly -ism. Neither has it anything to do with dictatorship, canons, tanks or hydrogen bombs. All these phenomena have already become war; they are the very flowers and fruits of war. These will to the very highest degree continue to blossom as long as the war-promoting virus has not been eradicated from the soul or mentality of human beings.

What difference does it make that human beings speak out about the creation of world peace and bright and pleasant conditions in the future, when they themselves are full of the virus or infectious germs of war? What good does it do for them to take part to a large extent in condemning this or that warring power, this or that political party, this or that religious view of life etc., when they themselves, with their strongly unloving criticism, condemn other human beings and think nothing of slandering their closest friends and thus injecting all and everything with the dangerous war virus that spreads antipathy, conflict and hostility among beings that have otherwise lived together peacefully as friends? World peace can certainly not be created through peace movements, united nations, political or religious sects and communities as long as the members of these movements are to a large extent the carriers of the virus or infectious germs of war, since wherever they spread propaganda about peace they are to a certain degree spraying those with whom they come into contact with the noxious fumes and infectious germs of war.

The most dangerous matter within terrestrial mankind is therefore the war virus. It not only leads people and countries into situations in which they kill and destroy culture, but it is also the very thing that undermines the purely bodily health of each individual. It is the most fundamental cause of cancer, just as all the other illnesses are in reality also its flowers and fruits. It has ravaged, murdered and tortured human beings throughout their entire history, or for as long as their I's have been incarnated in terrestrial human bodies. The entire history of mankind is an account of the war virus. It is extraordinary that we have still not become aware of this most dangerous of all poisons. It is not only the most effective physical poison for wounding and killing, it is the very culmination of mental poison. There is no poisonous substance that is stronger or more effective when it comes to destruction. It is the mother poison of all other poisons, which are in reality merely this poison in a diluted form. The poison in a snake bite, just as much as a derogatory thought about one's neighbour, are diluted forms of the war virus and will inevitably begin to brand the being towards whom it is sent, unless this being has been vaccinated against it and thereby rendered immune to its effects. But how can one make oneself immune to a poison that one does not recognise, or that one even denies in advance due to one's spiritual stupidity and naivety? One cannot. This is the reason why we see millions of human beings ending up in gas chambers, millions of others ending up as victims of canons and bombs and millions more perishing out of sorrow for their slaughtered and wounded relatives or through speculation, ruin and bankruptcy and the consequent nervous breakdown and mental illness. Still others become war-psychotic, swearing by the greatest possible build-up of arms and the creation of the most effective murder weapons for slaughtering, wounding and killing and the creation of a propaganda based on lying that totally pollutes the atmosphere of terrestrial human beings and that like a carpet of smoke attempts to cover up everything that had previously in reality shown signs of humanity, democracy and the development of wellbeing for mankind.

In truth Adam and Eve's fig leaves, or their tendency to hide their nakedness, has reached the stage of genius. This carpet of smoke, that is to say the lies and exaggerations of propaganda and advertising, constitutes the true element of the war virus. This carpet of smoke can maintain the power to kill and the ability to infect throughout spheres and zones where it would otherwise be impossible. People are hurriedly reaching for their newspapers and magazines or rushing to meetings of political parties or sects, and are swallowing with open mind and body the war virus that has been camouflaged by the carpet of smoke and made to look like promises of beautiful, paradise-like spheres where one can attain the most beautiful ideals and states of paradise, as long as one hates and persecutes all beings who think differently. They have in fact gone so far as to use torture and burning at the stake or modern witch trials to force the people of today to join a party or society that can supposedly get rid of war by using war, or can eradicate the killing principle from the world by creating this very principle, or can create peace by creating unrest. A more ingenious expression and instrument of spiritual stupidity cannot be manifested. These world rulers think they are creating peace for mankind and cannot see that they are in the process of fuelling the hellish bonfire in which they themselves and their life's work will perish.

The abolition of war is therefore, as we have already said, not a question of who wins the battle in Korea or China, but to the very highest degree a question of which of war's infectious germs or viruses can be found in our own mentality or soul. If we have overcome the war here, we will no longer have anything to fear of war. War will then be exclusively something that concerns the other human beings and their way of relating to its virus. War will then be a phenomenon that you are completely immune to, you will be able to even take part in healing and removing war from the sphere of other human beings, having free access to the battlefields, occupied territories and devastation. No one will be able to harm a single hair on your head. Here it is literally the case that the very hairs of our head are numbered and no single sparrow falls to the ground unless it is God's will.

But one cannot combat the war virus with spiritual stupidity. There exists only one way of combating war, and that is with a mental vaccine. This mental vaccine consists exclusively of combating spiritual stupidity. How do we combat stupidity? It is absolutely not combated with self-induced feelings of superiority, that is to say a pharisaical view of oneself. If an uninitiated human being believes that he is to a large extent wonderful or infallible, this is already an infallible symptom that he is to some extent infected with the war virus. Boasting, self-contentment and imagining yourself to be superior, thinking of yourself as the hero of all times, boasting that you are to some degree clairvoyant or that you have psychic powers, that you have read many authors, believing that you know life inside out so that there is no one who can teach you anything whatsoever, is an infallible sign of spiritual stupidity, and this stupidity is the infectious germ of the war virus. There are many ordinary people today who are boasting about their greatness, that they have had spiritual experiences or cosmic glimpses, and are boasting about a knowledge that has absolutely nothing to do with cosmic glimpses but is taken from a certain cosmic author, whose name they take care to hide, so as to not put their own name in the shade. People could just as well read the same author themselves and become just as clever, it's too bad that they don't. Is this not lack of love and spiritual stupidity or the war virus?