927. The main subject matter of the present chapter is "life substances". In our initial presentation of the life substances we came across the sexual principle and expressed it as "life substance no. 6". This principle constitutes the general principle in the living being's existence, the shaping of its mentality and organism, its attitude to the principle of killing as well as to the very principle of love or the culmination of the experience of life. This principle is therefore all-embracing, indeed all-determining, but is nevertheless, in itself, a partly incomprehensible mystery to ordinary terrestrial human beings. All they know of this principle is the little side branch that promotes their tendency to fall in love, in other words, the form of love that leads to procreation or fertilisation. We have therefore felt that it would have been unforgiveable or unscrupulous to continue analysing the "life substances" without having at least outlined for the readers this principle's particular influence on that part of the spiral cycle that terrestrial human beings are currently passing through. And in our revelation of this principle we have demonstrated how terrestrial human beings' differing conditions of culture and fate are, in a way, identical to manifestations of varying degrees of balance between the masculine and the feminine pole principle in these beings. We have demonstrated that the beginning of an imbalance between these two poles in the beings gives rise to the first signs of the emergence of "male beings" and "female beings", whose collective appearance we call in "Livets Bog" the "animal kingdom". Their appearance as specifically "male beings" or "female beings" indicates that terrestrial human beings still belong to that kingdom, or that section of the spiral cycle. The terrestrial human being's appearance as a "man" or "woman" thus constitutes a direct consequence of an imbalance in the state of their own poles. In the case of the "man" this imbalance is due to the fact that the masculine pole is able to play a dominant role over his feminine pole, while the opposite is the case concerning the "woman". Here it is the feminine pole that has the upper hand over the masculine pole existing within this being. It has long been a matter of course that this imbalance determines the type of mentality displayed by the two beings, their particular sympathetic manifestations and areas of interest, and it is thereby a decisive factor in the shaping of their entire destiny. Indeed, this matter of course has through the ages even become so ingrained that any other condition that shows a greater state of balance between the being's poles, resulting in correspondingly altered areas of interest and expressions of sympathy (love for beings of one's own sex), is considered "abnormal", where it is not considered simply a "criminal offence". It is on account of the ignorance and naivety in this deep area of the mind, in which the vast majority of beings are totally lacking in any understanding of the transformation that is occurring in the individual's mentality, that we have felt compelled to leave the main theme of this chapter for a short while in order to give the readers a provisional orientation regarding this great, general principle in life's highest structure. And in our temporary divergence from the main theme of this chapter or in the subsidiary analysis that we have gone through, we have given the sincere researcher or reader an insight into how the sexual degeneration in the daily lives of terrestrial human beings, their so-called excesses, their unhappy marriages, abortions, perversities, their falling in love with beings of their own sex and so on, all represent the first signs of the awakening into an entirely new state of existence above that of the animal kingdom, and that all the calamities we have just mentioned are the reverberations from the final stage of the animal kingdom or the killing principle, mixed with the birth-pangs heralding the dawn of a new sunlit kingdom.
      In this subsidiary analysis we have also been afforded the opportunity of seeing that some of the precepts in the Bible as well as the pronouncements of the world redeemer contained far more knowledge of these problems than is generally acknowledged or accepted in the dogmatic Christianity that has been handed down to us. Indeed, we saw that reincarnation or rebirth, "hell" or "hell-fire", the sexual transformation of terrestrial human beings as a condition for the creation of a new kingdom on Earth in which "justice dwells" were already fundamental knowledge to the great figures in the Bible.
      And having given the reader or researcher an insight into the all-embracing nature of these problems in the living being, we will now return to the present chapter's main analysis of the "life substances".