As mentioned in the previous chapter, animals do not provide the correct food for the human being. Since the terrestrial human being is a transitional being between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom, the particular, special natures of these two kingdoms will each be more or less represented in the manifestation of the said being. It is, of course, mainly the former kingdom that dominates, since the physical body of the individual is still an animal body. The terrestrial human being is a "mammal". His whole system of fertilization and reproduction is subject entirely to the laws of the animal kingdom. The finished or perfect human being is not at all subject to these laws but appears in a quite different, liberated, independent system of maintenance, which, however, I cannot explain here. Yet it is towards this completely developed human being or "Godlike human being" that the higher nature in the terrestrial human being is aspiring. Since the animal nature is the oldest or the most familiar, its manifestation has long since been transferred to the consciousness of the individual as firmly ingrained habits or tendencies. This in turn means that it demands no particular effort of will for its manifestation. It appears or is elicited quite automatically. Something quite different is true of the human nature in the individual. As it is of relatively recent date, it has only to a very small extent become habitual consciousness and is actually released only by an effort of will. It is thus for the great majority of people considerably easier to retort to an insult, easier to live for one's own advantage than for the advantage of one's fellow-beings, easier to lose one's temper or become angry than it is to elicit the opposite form of manifestation. This latter form, which means "turning the right cheek when one is smitten on the left", occurs only to a very small extent as a natural ability; it must in the great majority of people be enforced by willpower. Everything that comes under the term "love" stimulates this willpower. This love, in the forms of religion, idealism, morality and so on, influences people, contributing to the development of this willpower in every single individual on the basis of his sufferings and the ensuing beginnings of the development of feeling, gradually transforming the individual from animal to human being. This in turn means that the terrestrial human being is more and more breaking the habit of revenging, killing and dismembering.
      Since most forms of religion and morality have attached far more importance to the intellectual and mental life of the individual, and to his behaviour towards his fellow-humans, than to his physical organism itself, his nutrition or food, his relation to animals, this latter side of his conscious mental life is, as previously mentioned, still lagging very far behind in evolution compared to the rest of his condition. This in turn is reflected in the fact that terrestrial mankind in the above-mentioned less developed fields of consciousness is living in almost incredible excess, under the effects of which, in the form of chronic illnesses and immense sufferings, it is today sighing and groaning.
      Through the new spiritual or cosmic world-impulse, which is at present sweeping the earth, and from which (according to "Livets Bog") a perfect spiritual science, a purer and higher idealism, morality or culture than the present one will be created, terrestrial mankind's nutrition-consciousness will likewise be perfected. So one will now far more than before attach importance to the fifth commandment. Terrestrial mankind has now advanced so far forward in evolution that it literally cannot get any further until it has learned to respect and properly to observe this commandment.
      Since the effects of every form of action sooner or later in the eternal existence of their source will return to this source, manifesting themselves as killing, mutilating or caressing and edifying, on the same scale as they were elicited by the individual, so no individual can attain to an absolutely perfect fate or become free of mutilating or killing energies as long as he himself is still the source of such and is, by virtue of this, tied to the home or plane of existence of these dark energies. One will thus come to revise one's understanding of the above-mentioned divine commandment. It does not, as we know, read, "Thou shalt not kill people" but states purely and simply, "Thou shalt not kill", thus implying absolutely no form of exception whatsoever. But people have not respected this commandment to the full and have, by virtue of their still undeveloped feeling and habitual animal desire for the consumption of blood and meat, made animals an exception. They slaughter, kill and mutilate them, indeed, in almost a darker form than even the beasts of prey. From these beasts of prey every animal has at least a chance to flee; they are as a rule overpowered only through their own lack of caution. But this is not the situation for the animals in relation to the human being, since this being has multiplied his capabilities as a beast of prey with extensive technical aids including long-range firearms, traps and the like. But what is an even more ingenious manifestation of the beast-of-prey-consciousness is the artificial breeding and rearing of animals. Here the animals are already captured and sentenced to death before they are born, indeed, even before they are conceived. Here there is no possible chance of fleeing. The little baby animals are entirely within the power of their murderers from birth, everything in their existence being based solely upon their becoming either the best possible beasts of burden or steaks. Here the beast of prey has thus gained the power and the ability to slough off his real skin, appearing almost in the form of an angel as a "friend" and "protector" of the animal in order later, when a suitable opportunity has arisen, without any sort of mercy or compassion, to hand it over to slavery, slaughter or mutilation. In this way the human being deprives such an animal or living being of a smaller or greater part of its physical lifetime, sometimes many years, merely so its organism may become a meal. In truth, such a form of manifestation or existence belongs to the consciousness of those beings who are at the blood- and meat-hungering stage of the animal and who have still not to any degree felt the flame of universal love through their veins and who are unable to any significant extent within the given field to use the divine power we call "thinking".
      Blood- and meat-eating human beings have thus a side to their nature that they have not yet managed to lift up into the zone of thinking and love where they are otherwise in reality situated, and which is the reason they can adorn themselves with the name "human being". And it is this permanent blood and meat-eating that darkens the existence of the terrestrial human being, since the sun of love cannot possibly shine where the human being is devoid of all respect for the living being's right to life, having made it a pleasure to exist on the death and mutilation of other beings. This pleasure must therefore be the eliciting factor for that reality we express as "Hell".
 
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* Translator's note: The fifth commandment in the Danish Bible is "Thou shalt not kill".