1502. Compared with the animal, the terrestrial human being has degenerated colossally, while it has at the same time developed colossal mental faculties, faculties that animals do not have and that therefore elevate the terrestrial human being correspondingly above the animals' mental sphere. In terrestrial human beings we thus find essential characteristics that are far beyond the ordinary faculties typical of animals, and at the same time we find that the actual animal faculties, that is to say the characteristics that enable it to kill, have been brought to a peak of perfection or genius that turns this being into a demon, indeed, into almost a "devil" or the diametrical opposite of "God's image". The terrestrial human being's mentality or consciousness is thus the scene or sphere of an aspect of consciousness that has reached its culmination and cannot therefore ascend any further, this being the reason why it has to degenerate, while at the same time we see in the same sphere an aspect of consciousness that is at its first tentative stage. At the same time as this becomes a reality for the researcher, it becomes evident that the terrestrial human being is a finished or completed being with regard to the aspect that has reached its culmination in its consciousness, while, on the other hand, it is a feeble beginner with regard to the aspect of consciousness that is at its first tentative stage. Thus the divine will regarding the terrestrial human being or the meaning of its life is revealed to the advanced researcher. Since the aspect of consciousness that is culminating and thereafter degenerating in the terrestrial human being is the animal principle of killing, the principle that sabotages life itself by determining that the living being must kill in order to live, and the incipient new aspect of consciousness is that which determines the opposite, namely, that one must give life instead of sabotaging it, which happens through one very much preferring to give rather than to take, or by loving one's neighbour as oneself and thereby preferring to allow oneself to be killed rather than that he should be killed, it hereby becomes apparent how the structure of the new being must be. The Godhead's or Providence's intention for the terrestrial human being is thus inevitably to shape it into a being that is one hundred per cent in favour of life. And this cannot possibly be done in any other way than by allowing the animal, life-sabotaging faculties to degenerate, and the life-building faculties to develop.
      It is hardly surprising that the animal aspect of life that is degenerating has gradually been perceived as "evil", and that the incipient new aspect has been perceived as "good", and that religion, morality, politics and law are increasingly in favour of the new aspect of consciousness. And it is the same circumstance that determines that one increasingly seeks to camouflage one's offensive nature as a defensive one, and that no warring power will admit to being the attacker or the initiator of a war, just as all warring parties declare "eternal peace", or a very high ideal that favours this peace, as the object of their military action. Everyone in the intellectual part of terrestrial mankind today is thus more or less conscious of the course marked out for terrestrial mentality towards the anti-killing state or condition or towards the abolition of the principle of killing in favour of the development of neighbourly love or the creation of the absolutely perfect form of existence.