647. We have now reviewed the cycle of a terrestrial life. The four seasons of the year have unfolded before our eyes. We have seen a physical, earthly life begin as a being in its embryonic state. We have seen it grow to its culmination and flowering. And we have seen it degenerate, wither and die. In ordinary daily life this view creates deep sadness for many people. They still do not know that no cycle can exist without being a link or a single "spiral" in a "spiral cycle". Even though the beings are continuously experiencing as a fact the divine decree, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease", they are by no means sure that this decree applies to the living being's consciousness. They are quite unable to grasp that also this cannot possibly exist without being a "spiral cycle". And with this lack of knowledge, belief and trust in divine Providence's all-loving decree, they consider that physical death or the cessation of a cycle is the onset of an eternal extinction of the being's existence. Consequently, it is hopelessness and thereby sorrow and suffering that are the ruling factors in the terrestrial human being's physical burial traditions.
      But why should not the cycle's four basic principles or "seasons of the year" follow the divine decree, just as surely and steadily in the cycle of an earthly life, as they do so unerringly in the year cycle?
      Is there nothing in our recent experience of the "seasons" of the cycle of an earthly life that can show us that here there are "plants" or "trees" that, though leafless and apparently dead, can still survive the winter and reveal a new wealth of consciousness appearing in the form of a new spring's glorious foliage, colourful flowers and birdsong? On closer observation we cannot fail to be aware of certain phenomena that show incontestably that participants in the cycle of an earthly life are also participants in other cycles. Thus we saw the two categories of beings, one of which represents those who live in the "joy of parenthood" and the other representing those who live in the "joy of creation". And at the same time it is of course a fact that there are a whole host of individuals, indeed by far the majority, who live in the intermediate or transitional stages between these two categories, that is to say beings who partly delight in the "joy of parenthood", even though they may not have a big family but only one or two children, while still being able to enjoy the "joy of creation", even though at this point they have not managed to be specialists on any large scale or to any degree of genius. There are also those who have no children nor have they created anything in particular but mostly have a vagabond existence as parasites on society at large, as beggars, swindlers or those that are "chronically out of work", that is to say a type that welcomes any kind of pretext for avoiding really useful work, and we mention them here only for the sake of completeness.
      So why are terrestrial human beings not all the same during the cycle of their earthly life? It is certainly an incontestable fact that they appear as the aforementioned "procreative" type and "creative" type and to a great extent at intermediate or "transitional" stages between these two, and this fact becomes all the stronger, since these beings are too intellectually minded to feel entirely happy with the "joy of parenthood" alone and too primitive to derive sufficient mental fulfilment from altruistic "joy of creation" alone. The adjustment of their sexual poles is still such that their gender is like a pendulum swinging between the state of being a "procreative" type and a "creative" type. They are sometimes happily bound by fate in the animal traditions of falling in love and at other times complaining strongly about the after-effects of doing so, eulogising, hoping and aspiring towards liberated forms of existence lying beyond the physical process of procreation. It is a matter of course that it is not among these beings that one finds exceptionally large families of children, nor the unsurpassed pure intellectual genius of, for example, a "Christ".
      But as nearly all the prominent, civilised human beings in terrestrial mankind more or less belong to the type we have described as oscillating, in the sexual sense, it is not so surprising that mankind, in the marital or procreative sense, represents neither the culmination of the vigorous, animal, procreative existence, nor yet a world exhibiting an abundance of intellectual brilliance in social harmony or administration. The mentality of this mankind is therefore split, with regard to morals, politics and social order. Everything here is a cross between these two stages: "propagation of the race" and "ingenious creativity". And this cross in turn manifests as the collisions that occur between the sexual, and therefore the mental, "oscillations of the pendulum". These collisions are war in all its forms and in all its phases. This zone is the "zone of unhappy marriages" and can furthermore also justifiably be defined as the "zone of unfinished creative talents".
      Terrestrial mankind therefore consists of unfinished beings. But as Nature in no case whatsoever allows anything to manifest as unfinished without simultaneously showing that it is on its way to completion, there is no justification whatsoever for regarding the terrestrial human being as a completed or finished being. Indeed, we can even see that some beings appear more or less "finished" than others. Why should some beings be born more "unfinished" than others and therefore be more "unfinished" than them?
      Closer observation shows us clearly that physical age is not the decisive factor, for such "unfinished" beings do not manage to reach "completion" in their present earthly life, nor can one being catch up with another. Of course they can all to some extent learn a trade or catch up with one another in scientific studies, attaining the same certificates and examination grades, but this is not true intellectuality but is based only on a kind of intellectual training or practice, and does not imply that these beings have caught up with each other in cosmic perfection. They are still just as far from each other in the actual "procreative stage" or the "intellectually creative stage". This therefore makes it clear that this is not a question of ordinary intelligence or training, but simply that people in their one, material "terrestrial life cycle" visibly appear in a higher cycle, one that can be traversed or completed only through a whole series of "terrestrial life cycles". The standard of development possessed by the individuals – whether they happen to be pygmies in the jungle or professors at a university in a civilised country – will therefore depend on this "higher cycle". The two different levels in intellectuality that the two forms of mentality represent are solely levels in this "higher cycle" and cannot be changed through upbringing. The pygmy during his present terrestrial life cannot catch up with the foremost representatives of true intellectuality among civilised beings, regardless of how much he may practise and however good an upbringing this terrestrial life may provide him with.
      But just as the pygmy, in his present terrestrial life, cannot become a high-intellectual being through upbringing or training, so too is it impossible for a very masculine or feminine procreative being to be made to change the adjustment of its sexual poles through upbringing during its present terrestrial life, just as it cannot of course be changed by "seduction" either. A being may be "seduced" into realities that belong to the "terrestrial life cycle" but not into realities that have their roots in the "cosmic spiral cycle". A young masculine man can "seduce" a correspondingly young feminine woman into having intercourse or a so-called "natural" sexual act because that "seduction" is for both of them a release of their natural bodily urges and is a natural necessity for their completely healthy well-being. But the same masculine man will have great difficulty in "seducing" a woman whose masculine pole is the decisive factor in her being. Her sexual thoughts or bodily needs are quite different from those of a feminine woman and will not be able to find release in the "natural" act. If obtaining her consent to sexual intercourse proves successful, the sense of healthy well-being it should bring to the couple would be entirely absent in her case. It would be a mating between a "procreative being" and a "non-procreative being". A marriage based on that kind of relationship alone is no marriage at all. It is an abnormality. And the woman is, despite her "seduction", still a "non-procreative" being, regardless of whether the "seduction" leads to her becoming a mother or not. Her femininity will of course be strengthened, but this will not in any way be due to a cosmic, fundamental change in her consciousness, but solely to the strengthened functioning of her maternal organs that every fertilisation brings about for the protection of offspring, and that will be only temporary. The difference between her and a feminine woman is thus not a difference that can be altered by "seduction". It is the difference between two different steps in a higher cycle than the "terrestrial life cycle", and cannot therefore be altered in the latter.
      Obviously the same phenomena in reverse order will arise in a situation in which a very feminine woman marries a man whose feminine pole is the one that dominates his consciousness. It is an equally incontestable fact that such a man, even if he happens to become a father, will not be altered one iota, apart from the fact that he will have outgrown his married state even more or put it further behind him. A similar contactless situation arises when a man whose pole adjustment is decidedly masculine should fall for "seduction" by a man whose pole adjustment is decidedly feminine and he agrees to sexual contact, which for the latter would be a condition for his healthy well-being, whereas to the former such well-being would be completely lacking, apart from the reaction to the actual ejaculation. Indeed, the act would even evoke in his consciousness loathing and disgust towards the "seducer". And after such an experience he would have a sexual need that was even more masculine and desirous of women than he had before. "Seduction" therefore cannot change the being here either. If the man who was "seduced" did not actually react as suggested above but experienced a certain degree of well-being from the so-called "unnatural" act, this would reveal only that the adjustment of his own feminine pole had already begun. He is already in the area of the same type as the other being. His outward masculine appearance is in reality only a bodily one. Mentally he already belongs, consciously or unconsciously, to the other man's sexual area.
      That some of these beings try to conceal their condition by persuading themselves and others that it was definitely only for the sake of money that they had anything to do with the other man's sexual domain, is, to the advanced researcher, merely a further strengthening of the fact that they have long since abandoned the ultra-masculine adjustment of the poles. No one has ever yet seen a situation in which beings by preference chose to follow a career that "disgusts" them and is a "hell" for their whole soul. And it has as yet never been common for those who practise prostitution to struggle and strive to release themselves or to escape from their abnormal profession. On the contrary, there are absolutely no signs of the unhappiness and deep mental distress that would be a fact in such a being's appearance if their pole adjustment were mentally and bodily ultra-masculine or ultra-feminine, but they were forced by circumstances into a state that is in conflict with their mental and bodily inclinations solely in order to maintain their existence. As a rule they feel perfectly fine. It is this lack of mental distress that reveals the fact that their profession, apart from of course being a swindle, is in reality a camouflage of these beings' divergence from the ultra-masculine or ultra-feminine adjustment of the poles. Their consciousness represents phenomena that one cannot become accustomed to or rid oneself of in a single terrestrial life. Their mixed pole adjustment represents a level or a stage in a higher cycle than the cycle of a terrestrial life.