851. To turn one's sexual energies, one's innermost, highest essence, into a mere article of commerce is therefore not the road to health and happiness, much less to "cosmic consciousness". But what about the beings who are "customers" in such a sphere? Do they not have a part to play in steering the others towards the abyss? Yes, to a certain extent they do. If there were no "customers", the prostitutes would not end up misusing their sexual aptitudes to the extent that is now the case. But on those grounds, one should not think that these beings would then belong to the sphere of perfect marriages. As we have previously mentioned, all those beings who engage in sexual relationships with beings of their own sex will already be sexually degenerated in their consciousness. Beings who are still flourishing in natural sexual contact with beings of the opposite sex would never agree to any kind of sexual phenomenon in connection with their own sex, because an inner aversion and disgust, which actually borders on hatred and rage towards and persecution of these phenomena and their originators, makes any sexual contact with their own sex impossible. It is this strong antipathy that finds particular expression in most preachers or guardians of morality, since these beings are as a rule still to a very great extent happy in the zone of marriage and have never yet in the present spiral had any inkling or understanding that there are other and far higher sexual spheres than the purely mammalian ones. In this way one can more easily understand that while they proclaim, as they have done for centuries from pulpit and rostrum to large and small gatherings the world over, that "thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself", they are nevertheless the last to grasp this sentence's deepest, divine consequence and meaning. That such a perfect, unselfish and pure love cannot spring forth in the individual out of "nothing", but demands certain special organs and aptitudes like every other function of the consciousness, still lies totally beyond the area of their horizon.