But as a being, even one endowed with great intelligence, cannot see for himself what the absolute truth is, he must base his life on his own philosophy resulting from his own growing intelligence. This philosophy, being based neither on authorised religious precepts nor on a higher cosmic understanding of life's absolute analyses, can only be based on the phenomena or experiences which are most predominant in the daily coexistence of people on Earth. And for the still feeble faculty of intelligence these phenomena and experiences can only find vent in the concept "Every man for himself".
      This philosophy, however, being just the opposite of the concept expressing the certain road to happiness, namely "Every man for his neighbour", then every being who bases his life on the former concept will sooner or later come into collision with the laws that condition earthly Man's future and perfect happiness. Diseases, unhappy love, family discord, economic struggles and many other adversities of daily life, which are far beyond their power to cope with by means of their intelligence, will occur. And the result of this is the situation we recognize from the parable of the "Prodigal Son" in which he "sees the errors of his ways" and discovers his own spiritual and intellectual barrenness, which then makes him give up all the complacent and arrogant parts of his mentality, i.e. those which made him leave his ancestral home.
      He realizes that his own knowledge, which he held in such high esteem, could not provide him even with a life as perfect or desirable as that of his father's hired servants. His whole consciousness is filled with with the humility that asks only that he become one of these most humble servants in his father's house. He rises and returns to his father. And thanks to this humble attitude, which means the discovery of his own helplessness, he finds happiness and joy in his father's arms on returning home. Here we have a splendid metaphorical picture of the materialist's situation. As long as the materialist has not experienced the inadequacy of his own faculty of intelligence in the creation of true happiness, the ancestral home (which means all that is religious in life, all talk about a Godhead, all talk about life after death and so forth) is of no interest to him. In most cases he will feel repelled by these most elevated subjects of conscious life. If he eventually progresses so far that he really has some interest in these subjects and in a number of cases, by means of his intelligence, is able to see that they contain the truth, his materialistic attitude will still dominate in these cases in which he has not yet discovered the limitation of his faculty of intelligence, for he still believes that all the problems of life can be solved by this faculty alone. In these areas, owing to his exaggerated confidence in or imagination of the capacity of his faculty of intelligence, he argues with everyone he meets, even with true authorities in these fields. Even the world-redeemer would be no exception if it were his fate to meet this real authority on truth. He thus argues with the "father" and must therefore live away from the ancestral home for some time yet, that is to say away from the absolute truth in his heart and thereby away from the real happiness in life, although he is able to juggle mentally with some of its analyses in a theoretical way.
      But living apart from the real truth in one's heart is the same as for the most part being unable to practise its special nature in daily life. And as any kind of life which is not practising the absolute truth can only be a collision with the laws of life and such collisions can only result in a so-called "unhappy fate", the materialist or the atheist will not be able to avoid meeting with or being enveloped in this fate. Now the "prodigal son" discovers his own impotence and will again need the eternal father. And at this stage of the "prodigal son'"s evolutionary cycle we find a great part of so-called "modern" mankind today. They are beings who have long ago left the "ancestral home", i.e. faith in the religions, and have been through an atheistic stage and its ensuing zone of pain and suffering.