967. As this animal-like or selfish condition reaches its peak or turning point only in the materialism of the terrestrial human being, this being thus constitutes the greatest infringer of the laws of love, and is as a result furthest away from the Godhead. This being therefore constitutes the "animal" at its culmination. And we will now define this being as "life substance no. 44". We have before us in the form of this being the "prodigal son". In the cold, intellectually minded materialist we find a being that has concentrated for such a long time on matter and on the satisfaction of material, selfish desires created by this concentration that it has – temporarily or during this present period of its series of terrestrial lives – not only totally forgotten the Godhead, but he has also forgotten its own innermost or true "self", indeed, to such an extent that it even stubbornly denies the existence of these two fundamental factors. To this being everything is merely the effects of causes that are also the effects of causes, and so on without end. Everything consists of "lifeless" functions released by "pure chance". This son of God's entire knowledge consists merely of a knowledge of the weights and measures of these lifeless functions. He has lost his contact with the Godhead and with himself, and consequently with life. He considers himself to be one with matter and the chance occurrences of the lifeless functions. This godless being therefore swears by the very "death" that it fears everywhere and has an absolute horror of and which it does everything possible to combat, and in so doing, in spite of its wealth of intellectual knowledge and the many results based on weights and measures, it reveals its culminating naivety. It is afraid of an end to the life that it more or less directly claims does not exist. It says: "I know", "I understand", "I said", "I wrote" and it thereby expresses that the "something" whose existence it otherwise maintains to be an impossibility has both knowledge and understanding and is able to speak and write. A more inconsistent state of consciousness does not exist. In truth the son of God at this point has become "false", constituting something entirely different than an appearance in his Father's "image" or "likeness". It is this state of being at odds with the Godhead that is alluded to in the "parable of the prodigal son" where it states that he "ate together with the swine".