The general conception today is that man only lives once and that this one earth-life should be enjoyed as much as possible and so on and so forth. How man arrived at this conclusion is not hard to imagine when we consider that we only evaluate everything from one aspect only as we are only able to acknowledge the earthly and nothing else. The man of today’s ability to understand is limited only to things of this earth and no further. When anything spiritual or ethereal is spoken of he quickly becomes confused or even hostile thereby betraying his uncertainly and fear.

Man has limited his own ability to understand ethereal or spiritual things because he uses only his intellect to evaluate things. Since this intellect is born of the earthly it is therefore only able to understand the things of the earth and is unable to go beyond this. The man therefore who has subjected himself completely to his own intellect thereby chains himself to the limitations to which the intellect is subject. He is therefore unable to understand things that are higher than the intellect and that goes beyond its range.

This then accounts for the hostility, confusion and anger when spiritual and ethereal things are being considered. Man is completely helpless in this regard and tries to dismiss it all as fairy tales and fantasy. He does not consider that he is the one who has made himself incapable of understanding such things. He has crippled himself.

This sorry state of affairs has unfortunately found its way into all religions and virtually almost everything that is being taught has been tarred with the brush of intellectualism hence we hear so much being made of scholarship and scholars, Biblical scholars and so on which indicates nothing but the subjection of these religions to intellectual domination because where scholarship is spoken of then the intellect must dominate and as such the limitation to which this intellect is subject must be found in these religions.

This will account for the fact that there is no single religion today which can claim to have found the answers to all the questions of existence, something which is only to be found beyond the earthly sphere to which they have closed themselves when they decided to subject religion to earthly intellectual scholarship and erudition. 

The answers to all the questions of existence cannot be found with the intellect and as such institutions and human beings who subject themselves to the intellect and acknowledge it as the most important tool for investigation will never be able to make an end of their quests. The intellect is derived from the earthly and will never be able to provide answers to questions which can only be found beyond the earthly.

Hence the religions of today as long as they subject themselves to the intellect will never be able to provide the answers to our questions. The same goes for science and ultimately with the individual human being.