The individual evolves through suffering and pain to a transfigured existence. Science becomes more and more difficult to prove for those people who can only sense on the material plane. There is no way to reach higher knowledge and learning or to "see" God except through refinement of the spiritual life
232.
It is through much suffering and continual killing, war and mutilation, through the great exploitation of other living beings, and the strongly egoistic way of life which terrestrial mankind - due to its sense of mastery - manifests towards both fellow beings of its own kind and towards ordinary animals, that the seed is sown from which - according to the eternal cosmic laws we will learn about later in Livets Bog - mankind will irrefutably come to reap the fruit.
As this fruit is of the same nature as the seed, meaning sorrow and suffering, the individual will inevitably sooner or later, either in the present life or in coming lives be involved in and conditioned by this self-sown state of suffering.
But as pain and suffering to a certain degree develop and ennoble the faculty of feeling by this means the individual becomes receptive and sensitive to feeling energy.
But as feeling energy, when it is in harmony with intelligence energy, becomes genuine "love" and love again is the same as manifesting unselfishness, and warmth of the spirit, the human being gradually, as the faculty of love develops, begins to sow another seed, the fruit of which he will later just as inevitably come to harvest.
This fruit is not by any means pain and suffering but constitutes the real human abilities and tendencies which lead the individual towards the Great Birth and which will enwrap him in a transfigured existence.
With this development of love all animal skills and faculties will degenerate, and in this way mankind will become less qualified as an animal and more and more qualified as a human being.
And it is the different grades in this transformation which represent the different steps of character shown by terrestrial mankind.
But at the same time as the individual develops his faculty of feeling and becomes sensitive to feeling energy, through this he begins to have a new form of experience, meaning an experience which an individual poor in feeling is unable to have.
When this knowledge of feeling is in harmony with that individual's knowledge of intelligence, then, as we mentioned, there arises
knowledge of love, which is the same as
"wisdom"; simultaneously
while he is in that condition of consciousness the faculty of intuition, or cosmic consciousness, is developing in him.
In other words,
terrestrial mankind's science will be transformed into the "science of love" in the same degree as its instigator's standard of feeling becomes refined and approaches the real human kingdom.
But to the same degree as science approaches that kingdom it begins to reach beyond the physical plane, and to the same degree as it reaches beyond material things it becomes more and more inaccessible for those who have not yet developed the faculty of feeling, in other words - love.
It becomes more and more difficult to prove facts and experiences to people who still only sense on the material plane, indeed even in those cases where they are presenting themselves as "scientists" of an ordinary present-day standard.
Thus we see that in no way whatsoever can we avoid a refinement of consciousness or mental life in order to attain higher knowledge and wisdom.
And without higher knowledge and wisdom there is no admittance to the Eternal Truth or to the all-penetrating sight of God.