The difficulty for the adherent to the old form of consumption or of nutrition will thus consist in the transformation of his sense of taste, the overcoming of an all-too-strongly developed desire for food, which for him has become nothing less than a form of amusement or entertainment and thereby a vice. He must accustom himself to the fact that a meal that is in harmony with the divine laws, which means a meal that is absolutely beneficial to health, thereby preventing illness, cannot possibly consist of so many different kinds of conventional dishes (in many cases each involving highly unscientific chemical compounds damaging to the organism) or so many different kinds of more or less alcoholic or poisonous drinks. He must realise that a table "well-provided" in accordance with the highest fashion of today constitutes a road, hidden in silver, crystal and flowers, to the hospital, a festively decorated short cut to death. It is the cause of organic disorders and calcification. While the disorders are directly destructive factors for one's mood and temperament, calcification has a restrictive influence on all spiritual functions.
      The aforesaid table also promotes obesity. The artistic slim line intended by Nature as the contour for the human bodily form is to an all-to-great extent lost; it is thus a rarity in individuals who are over forty years old. Here one often sees a physical outline that is just as glaringly unnatural as the "well-provided" table that is its cause.
      That "the fair sex" tries to recapture the lost natural line by means of just as glaringly unnatural, but well-advertised, slimming remedies does not improve matters. The metabolic organs once destroyed do not allow themselves, at the wave of a hand or by a "magic formula" in the form of "pills" or "powders", instantaneously, as if by a miracle, to be restored to their normal function.
      For cosmic sight it appears that such a destroyed metabolism in the worst cases can pursue the individual through numerous incarnations. In these incarnations the individual has thus an abnormal metabolism from birth. The individual shows already at an early age tendencies to an overriding obesity. Here it will perhaps be claimed that these tendencies are inherited from the parents. But why is the individual born with precisely such parents and not with parents where these unfortunate tendencies are not to be found? A birth, which for the spirit of the individual would determine an unnatural existence, indeed a downright imprisonment in fat, would be an expression of the highest injustice or darkness if there were not something about the individual concerned that for the occult observer shows itself to be identical with the individual's own creative ability from a previous existence appearing in its body of eternity. This body of eternity constitutes a spiritual body in which the I of the individual appears, regardless of whether it is incarnated in a material or physical body or discarnated. Through excesses, through accustoming oneself to faulty or unnatural tendencies in a material existence or an earthly life, the individual to a corresponding degree reduces or destroys this creative ability.
      As far as the aforesaid unfortunate nourishment is concerned this can also so affect the creative ability of the individual that he or she, among other things, becomes unable to build up normal metabolic organs in his or her physical body in a new incarnation. The effect of this is that the body right from the creation of the embryo is subject to excessive obesity. The fact that such an individual is as a rule born to parents with similar tendencies, or if he has destroyed his creative ability through drinking and thereby is as a rule born to parents who are dependent on alcohol, or in other ways is born to parents who have the same good or bad tendencies as himself, is due quite naturally to the law of attraction and repulsion. But in order to understand this we must go right back to the discarnated state of the individual in question, which means his spiritual existence before his present birth. In the existence mentioned, besides appearing in certain subordinate spiritual bodies he also appears in a general or main body. This body is described in "Livets Bog" as the individual's "body of eternity" or "X2" and is the main seat for the creative ability of the individual and is the basis for the manifestation of the individual and his ability to be reborn. This body is also the most profound eliciting factor in the individual's creation of a new physical body. Through the former body, which itself represents the seventh basic energy, the individual corresponds with the six other basic energies of existence, which means his daily life and activities, his building-up and breaking-down of matter, his youth and old age, his physical and spiritual existence. Since the same body thus appears as the seat for a constantly changing combination of the basic energies, it thus represents at any given time a corresponding form of radiation. This radiation can in turn be expressed as the individual's "spiritual halo". This halo consists of spiritual energy. But, since spiritual energy, according to "Livets Bog", comes under the term "electricity", the said halo will thus be of an electrical nature of one sort or another. However, a quantity of electrical energy appearing in a particular limited form can be expressed as a "wavelength". But a "wavelength" can in turn be directed only by attraction and repulsion. Attraction and repulsion in turn can be elicited only through "apparatuses". For the spiritual or unborn being these "apparatuses" consist to a certain extent of the physical bodies of incarnated beings. When a male and a female being through their physical bodies enter into a sexual connection, and this connection is perfect, which means that fertilisation takes place, these beings, even if unconsciously, have attracted the spiritual halo of a discarnated individual. Through their sexual intercourse the two beings have thus acted as a "receiver" for the halo or "wave-length" of an unborn individual. This "wavelength" is in turn directly secured by the "receiver's" "condenser", which means the female being's organs of fertilization. After this connection has been made, the energy of the unborn or discarnated individual, by virtue of the above-mentioned organs, begins to vibrate in physical matter. And the result of this is what we call "embryogeny (the creation of the embryo)". The female being thus acts here as a direct medium or tool for a discarnated individual or spiritual being who is now materialising or creating a new physical organism for itself. When this body reaches a certain adequate position it is separated from the physical body of the medium, by the process we call "birth", after which it becomes visible on the physical plane as a "newly born" world citizen. For this individual the female being is the "mother" and the male being the "father".
      I naturally cannot go into the details of such a comprehensive problem here but must refer the reader to future volumes of "Livets Bog". If I here give these few vague outlines of the problem it is merely in order to show that no innate tendencies are innocently inflicted, but that these in absolutely all cases will be identical with the results of the individual's own conduct in previous lives or existences. For, as every discarnated individual constitutes a "wavelength", and the character of this wavelength consists of the habits and tendencies, the building up and destruction of the ability to create that the individual has cultivated in his immediately preceding physical incarnation and the particular limitation of the "apparatuses" for its "reception", the "spiritual halo" of the discarnated individual cannot be attracted to any "apparatus", which means, a medium or parent, that is not in one way or another tuned into the same "wave-area".
      It is this divine arrangement that determines that cows cannot give birth to bear cubs, that bears cannot give birth to elephants, that elephants cannot give birth to people and so on, but that each species of living being gives birth to those individuals particularly appropriate to it. But, just as the eternal laws thus determine or guarantee the right births for the species, so too do these laws determine that the defective and the perfect individuals each get births specially suited to them so that no tendencies, good or bad, of which they are not themselves the original source, can be inflicted on the individual through heredity. The law of attraction and repulsion determines that each individual always has the threads of his own fate in his own hands and can unceasingly work on his own deification. The most important point for this individual is to recognise his own paramount divine power in order thereby to use it in the guiding of his own fate towards the highest peaks.