131. Up until the present time, in discussing spiritual development the word "sexuality" has not had a pleasant ring for terrestrial mankind. But this has been due to the fact that people have witnessed how much disharmony and suffering it has caused, and how it has promoted so many sorrows and anxieties, lower tendencies and passions in their consciousness and they have thus come to feel that their sexuality represents the greatest hindrance to spiritual development. But this, of course, is rooted in the simple fact that their sexuality belongs to the animal kingdom and hence encourages just those tendencies which have to be overcome in order to reach a higher state of evolution, meaning in this case the same as to attain the state of a cosmic being, or a fully developed, real human being. In this way terrestrial people have knowledge of only that part of the "Highest Fire" which maintains the life of the animal kingdom in existence. But as terrestrial mankind consists of beings who, in evolving, have passed the zone of culmination in the animal kingdom and have therefore begun to acquire human tendencies, and have begun to desire a purer and more exalted form of existence, then these tendencies and desires will now undermine the animal nature and propensities. But through this arises direct conflict with personal sexuality, which is actually maintaining that animal nature and its propensities. Consequently, people are necessarily bound to consider animal sexuality as belonging to so-called "evil". As terrestrial humanity is in a transitional stage between an animal and a human being, it is obvious that the greater part of sufferings and difficulties must be identical with degeneration, which here indicates the destruction of the animal kingdom in mankind's consciousness. And, inevitably, this degeneration has to be reflected in its sexuality. As people belonging to the second and third category find themselves mainly in the border area between animal and human sexuality, this results in many different forms of frustration in their sexual life. So we observe that some of them manifest much too strong a tendency to fall in love, causing unfaithfulness in marriage, illegitimate children and divorces. Among other people we observe also childless marriages, unwillingness to give birth and bring up children, the practice of birth control and abortions. In other cases we have people of indeterminate sex and people with the inclination to fall in love with their own sex. So within the areas of the second and third category we find the culmination of sexual degeneration. And as all sexual enlightenment apart from the so-called "natural" state, could not have been released until now because of the immaturity of the masses, so people have been helpless when finding themselves in very adverse circumstances, suffering persecution, hatred and misunderstanding as soon as they began to grow out of that "natural" state. This then has led on to terrible and distressing false tracks, to excesses and vices or forms of sexual illness which we find described as "perversity". It should be pointed out here that terrestrial mankind's development has no need to go through perversity in order to reach a higher sphere - on the contrary, perversity is an illness which may easily occur in the sexuality of the ignorant and unprotected individual in that zone where the transition from animal to human being is taking place. Admittedly, this zone comprises the entire area of terrestrial mankind's evolution, because a terrestrial person is the final creature within the animal kingdom. Therefore, all forms of degeneration and abnormality will culminate here; but it is in the part of this area which represents the evolutionary stages of the second category that we find the most serious marital conflicts, sexual crises and abnormalities. The people at these stages are therefore particularly connected to the "zone of unhappy marriages" and the "zone of infertility". Of course exceptions can be found; there are people at these stages still living in marital harmony, and there are those who belong to the zone of infertility without suffering sexual illness, but this does not generally happen throughout the whole of the second category. So we can understand that within these two zones the new world impulse will be met with considerable interest, for the new world morality of that impulse will differ from the old morality in expanding its guidance and enlightenment to include both these two zones.