570. As some of the fundamental solutions to the mystery of life put forward here conflict at certain points with the perception of life's mystery held by the authorized church as it is today, it will be useful to consider these conflicts in order to gain a more comprehensive view before continuing with our research into the fundamental solutions to this mystery.
      As living beings are the source of their own fate, as mentioned above, then life is completely just, that is to say life is a revelation of culminating "love", a factor that would be totally impossible in any other line of analysis than that put forward here. If living beings were not immortal, but had an actual "beginning" through conception and physical birth, as upheld by ecclesiastical authorities, then they would be "created", and would thereby constitute "temporal" phenomena, which is also proposed by the authorized church. But if they are "temporal" phenomena, then they can never become any different. They will continue through all eternity to express that span of time from their physical birth onward. They will represent a particular age of so and so many years old. There would be no such thing as the "eternal life" promised by the ecclesiastical authorities to those who are "saved", for the idea that "eternal" beings have an "age" can only express an analysis that demonstrates an abnormal use of the faculty of thinking on the part of the thinker.
      But quite apart from the above, in such a situation, perceiving that living beings are "created" phenomena, one would be obliged to accept the idea that "something can come from nothing". And it does not take a great deal to see that this analysis, too, expresses an abnormal use of the faculty of thinking. If living beings were "created" phenomena and their talents, skills and appearance were products of "heredity" – where, then, is justice and consequently love in the world? Where is the justice if one individual is born with frail health, primitive skills and lives the life of a tramp or beggar, when there are other individuals who are born with robust health, inherit vast fortunes and are famous, admired and esteemed? Why are some individuals born as pygmies or bushmen while others belong in a highly civilized society? Why must some beings be animals, be led to slaughter or be victims of blood-thirsty hunters, and other beings are born to be the slaughterers and the hunters? Does it express or prove the culmination of love that no other reason is found for a fate filled with sorrow and suffering and a fate filled with happiness and well-being, than just this one thing called "heredity"? What or who is behind the "distribution" of these widely differing forms of "heredity"? From what we learned as children or from the viewpoint of authorized Christianity, we understood that there is an "almighty" and "all-wise" Godhead. But such a culminating antithesis to love as the afore-mentioned "hereditary distribution" is hardly flattering to the "Christian Godhead". If this Godhead was "all-wise" and "almighty", then He must be a "sinful" God who Himself violates all the laws of love which the ecclesiastical viewpoint requires people to uphold. To assign to all the different living beings "created" by Him such an enormously unequal start at life's "beginning" and still demand the same final result when their physical life comes to an end, can never in any way be an expression of love. One is required to pray and repent of one's "sins". But can it be right that the "created" individual must pray and repent the creation of his own being? According to the ecclesiastical viewpoint he certainly has not created himself, but is a product of the Godhead's creative faculty. Consequently the Godhead has created the "sinners". But if the Godhead is "all-wise", He must have known about this beforehand. But as He is at the same time "almighty", this cannot have been due to any deficiency in His creative faculty. This same Godhead must therefore, consciously and with full deliberation, have created "sinners". But to create beings which He knows beforehand will end in an "everlasting hell" where there is "weeping and gnashing of teeth" reveals a tendency of consciousness which can only be described as "perverse" or the culmination of abnormality, the opposite of all logic and thereby also of love. Should it not rather be here that repentance would be more appropriate? It can hardly be "the created", but rather its "creator" who should regret the imperfection of his "creation".
      It is self-evident and easily understandable that a perception of life with such monstrous consequences, so far removed from the laws of love, would not be able to abolish poverty, war and mutilation in the world, and that the very few individuals who have been able and courageous enough to go thoroughly into this question have understood how dangerously misleading it is, and in despair have been compelled to cry out the inner protestation of their soul against this demonic falsification with the well-known words: "the ways of the Lord are unfathomable". The fact that people have tried to remedy those unpleasant consequences by interpreting the World Redeemer's Passion story as a "punishment" for the "sins of the World" cannot be a pleasure for the Godhead, for it once again confirms that His mentality is "ailing" or "abnormal", at the same time as His ways become still more inscrutable for any seeker after truth. A Godhead that grants the real "sinners" "forgiveness of their sins" on condition that, in their stead, He may mutilate and torment an "innocent" being who is "free from sin", does not show any justice, let alone love. Indeed, this is just a matter of "punishment" being meted out at any price; to the Godhead, it is quite unimportant whether it befalls the guilty or the innocent for only by meting out "punishment" to a being is His aim fulfilled and satisfied. Thus, the Godhead's greatest enjoyment must lie in seeing "weeping and gnashing of teeth", since He consistently demands that kind of manifestation and this, even though He has set free the "guilty". Heavenly justice is shown here to be far inferior to terrestrial justice, for according to the latter no one is allowed to take on a certain number of years' imprisonment or punishment in the place of another. Terrestrial justice is interested only in punishing the guilty. And if it did ever come to resemble the heavenly justice mentioned above, it would, of course, immediately render its own existence quite superfluous.
      But a philosophy of life which, if carried to its final conclusion, renders heavenly justice inferior to that on Earth, naturally cannot continue to lead mankind towards higher ideals. When its highest morality is lower than that already practised by the terrestrial judicial system, it cannot engender further interest. And so we see more and more empty seats in mankind's churches and temples, and we also see that this philosophy's image of God, as described here, does not particularly inspire individuals to "turn the right cheek when they are struck on the left". A Godhead who himself "punishes" and "takes revenge", and from whom one can buy or bargain "forgiveness of sins", by allowing another person to take over the suffering for one's own excesses, is so much against all logic, and so much against life's laws of love, that the belief in this Godhead must be rejected by all who really want to experience the true or absolute revelation of the mystery of life. This belief is a "veil", which in the mind of terrestrial man hides all the laws of love, that is the all-illuminating intellectuality or logical creation which we see openly in life itself, in Nature, in beings and in matter beyond the sphere of terrestrial man's control. If this "veil" were not drawn aside, as it is here, then life or existence would continue to remain a "mystery", and the investigator would never gain a real recognition of the truth. But when it is drawn aside, he will see a new and significant fact emerge, which, as a natural consequence of the eleven fundamental solutions already mentioned, will reveal the last phenomena of life's mystery as a wide open reality, namely, the revelation of the culminating justice and love which the universe manifests through all eternity, and in which "we live and move and have our being"
      That people's philosophy of life has become warped and has diverged from all logic and reality, as described above, is due to the fact that at one or another period, mankind completely lost the knowledge of reincarnation, that is rebirth. And in the belief that a living being begins life at birth, mankind has attempted to find extenuating circumstances or a defence for the calamities which arose on this account in the form of the theory of the forgiveness of sins and the saying: "God's ways are unfathomable", thinking that – far from the World Redeemer's own attitude – this defence might be able to "save" the world. However great a blessing this theory may have proved in that unrealistic perception of life, it has not, however, been able to bring about a fully satisfactory sense of security. This is easily demonstrated by its adherents' anxiety and reluctance in exposing it to logical investigation and research. In fact, they even consider such an investigation to be sinful and urge people, inducing them powerfully, to have exclusive "faith" in this traditional view of life, even threatening "damnation", "punishment", "hell" or "eternal perdition" for those who do not accept that faith.
      But a view of life which cannot stand up to investigation or exposure to logical research but must be blindly believed, cannot support a world culture in which powerful educational establishments such as universities and schools provide a better foundation for forming the mind than churches or temples. This is not meant as any criticism of those churches and temples, which are certainly supremely divine and have had a great mission in the development of "feeling" in living beings. But now, terrestrial humanity is about to pass smoothly into a new evolutionary stage, where it can no longer be guided through the influence of "feeling" and by ceremonies or ancient traditions. Now it is the clear light of reason and intellectuality which will gain access to every single individual. He must use his brain and reasoning to experience the logic of life in all the phenomena of Nature – that is, the highest wisdom and the highest love. It is this that in future must shine forth, like a beacon of intellectual sunshine, from every educational establishment, thus showing war, murder and mutilation to be superstition, folly and primitivity, and showing the eternal facts as scientific solutions. A philosophy of life which is to assert itself in guiding and supporting such a civilization cannot be an acquired, traditional world of dogma which must not be examined or investigated. It has to be itself the true soul of this new civilization, it must constitute life itself and be so great a truth that not even the very peak of intellectuality could in any way destroy it as a falsification, but on the contrary, has no alternative but to affirm it as an inevitable fact which shows itself to be in contact with eternity, and which is "one with the Way, the Truth and the Life".