So you have to give your creation the hope or the consciousness of immortality; and even if mankind has no insight into it, you make it a real hope, capable of achievement. At the same time mankind in the work-a-day world must submit to a consciousness under tension in order to liberate the disciplines of trade and profession.

The trouble about your condemning man to a consciousness limited to this mortal world, without hope of escape, is that he would not dare to adopt a perfectly relaxed consciousness as a way of life. There would be nothing to prevent his doing so, but without any vision of a world beyond he would not see the point. He would accept that his consciousness must necessarily be under tension the whole time. It would be a mistake for you, as creator, to condemn men to a consciousness always under tension, or even worse to a corrupted consciousness, from which they were incapable of escaping. Men would condemn you, however unjustly, for being responsible for, or for creating, evil. Moreover if you did make this mistake, any man whom you allowed to escape from the condemnation would legitimately turn round and regard his former…