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Articles by Martinus
 

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M1440

The origin of life force 

by Martinus

 

1. Terrestrial mankind is to some degree derailed


Among present-day human beings there exist many derailments, both sexual derailments and derailments to do with excessive use of drugs and alcohol. Such derailments will cause the beings in question in future incarnations to be to some extent mentally retarded or will lead to congenital, physical defects, which the derailed beings will spend several incarnations overcoming. Beings such as these, who have come through the darkness of a derailment, will be so well-equipped with experiences and compassion that once they have regained their health they will be the very best helpers and guides for those fellow beings who are in a state of derailment similar to the one that they themselves have come through.

So there is truth in the old saying that "nothing is so bad that it is not good for something". But that does not mean that I would recommend my fellow beings to become derailed in the aforementioned areas; it is perfectly possible to achieve the necessary life experience without going down that road. Of course no terrestrial human being can gain cosmic consciousness without going through experiences, sometimes unpleasant experiences, that are in themselves in a way derailments. From a cosmic perspective it is actually the case that practically the whole of present-day mankind is in a great many areas derailed. And I am certainly not saying that as a criticism or as an expression of the fact that I am outraged at the way things are. Terrestrial mankind cannot be any different than it is at this moment, since it is on its way from an animal state to the state of being a true human being. But it can change, and it will change.


2. The false experience of life

I use the term "derailed" in relation to terrestrial mankind's present state in order to denote that an enormous number of terrestrial human beings have grown away from the way of being that is absolutely necessary if they want to liberate themselves from the difficulties and sufferings of daily life. Many actually represent a way of being that causes them to have a false experience of life. To them life is seen as "evil", which is the greatest illusion that exists. Life is not intrinsically evil; it is radiant love. But it is based on logic, which means that it absolutely cannot allow someone to go unpunished if he or she causes other living beings suffering or pain. "To go unpunished" is, however, not the correct expression as it can lead people to believe in an "angry" god. What we call "evil" is not a punishment in the true sense of the word; it is a phenomenon based on the law of cause and effect. And it is an absolutely necessary phenomenon, as without it no living being would be able to have consciousness and become a freely creative being capable of becoming a lord of life and death and a "human being in God's image". All terrestrial human beings are now at a stage in evolution where they have in the past created a great many causes, the effects of which are now taking the form of a variety of unhappy fates, and they will continue to do so into the near future. As a result, the world has ended up as a "vale of tears", as some believers would call it, or it has "gone to hell", as others would prefer to say. Both phrases are much more an expression of the mental state of the person than of the world that they want to describe. If we call the world a "vale of tears" or a "hell", these expressions can only be descriptions of an absolutely false world picture, but they can at the same time be characteristics of a more or less diseased ability to experience life.


3. Human beings' "defective" instruments

The most important thing for all human beings is to find the way out of illness, out of suffering and away from the false experience of life. But how do we leave these things behind? As I have so often written and said, one cannot say anything about the living being's "I" other than that it is "something that is". One cannot therefore say that the I is false and is the cause of a false experience of life. In its essence life is not false, and neither is the entire living universe, which displays its life force in accordance with eternal laws. Minerals have their particular way of giving expression to life, even though humans are unable to perceive it. Plants have their particular way and animals theirs. In the micro- and macrocosmos, with their "particles and empty space", there also exists a way of giving expression to life, which humans are beginning to have a vague inkling of. None of this is the expression of falsehood. The only thing that can be false is human beings' ideas about the world, and this is entirely due to the fact that the instruments or tools that human beings use are either too undeveloped or too defective as a result of misuse.

By human beings' "instruments" I do not mean telescopes, microscopes and other means of technically extending human beings' ability to sense physically. What I am referring to is the human being's own defective or inadequate tool for experiencing life – its organism. In saying this, there will be many who think that I am referring in particular to the human being's physical organism. But I am not, for the human being's physical organism is really only an organ in a very much larger organism that is not made up of physical matter and therefore eludes, or is inaccessible to, physical sensory perception. It is this cosmic organism that cannot at the moment give human beings the true or perfect experience of life in the universe or the eternal Godhead. Inadequacies or defects in the human beings' physical organisms are exclusively an effect of an inadequacy or defect in their cosmic organisms. The road away from the false experience of life and thereby from illness and suffering, the road towards life or the perfect experience of life can only be established by creating for oneself a perfect tool with which to experience life. In order to do that one must be familiar with the laws of creation and know what kinds of materials one is dealing with. And it has become my task to analyse these things, revealing them to the enquiring researcher, and to show him or her a world that is not false and a world picture in which so-called evil is the "unpleasant good", thereby becoming a part of the great final conclusion: "Everything is very good".


4. The living being's eternal body and its renewable organs

As well as the organ in the cosmic organism that we know as our physical body, human beings possess five other cosmic organs or bodies that are also parts of the cosmic organism. All of these six organs or bodies can be replaced and renewed and therefore exist in the temporal dimension, that is to say they are subject to the concepts of beginnings and endings. This, however, does not apply to the living being's cosmic organism in which these bodies are renewable organs. The cosmic organism is eternal, which is why I also call it in my analyses the living being's eternal body.

The I or creator with its creative ability and its eternal body form a triune reality that has no beginning or end, and for this reason all living beings are eternal beings. But their very experience of life is based on the fact that "something" that is eternal creates and experiences through "something" that involves beginnings and ends, and that is nevertheless in essence eternal. This attribute represents the living being's eternal body, which is an eternal and permanent instrument for the living being's ability to create and experience, but its six organs – its organ of instinct, its organ of gravity, its organ of feeling, its organ of intelligence, its organ of intuition and its organ of memory – are subject to change and thereby to having a beginning and an end, each end being followed by a new beginning.

The physical part of a living being, its organ of gravity, is only one of the organs in the being's eternal body, and it is an organ that can be renewed. This takes place through the process we know as "death". Before the being once again creates for itself a new physical organ in its eternal body, that is to say a new physical organism, there is a pause in which its day-consciousness is borne in turn by its body of feeling, its body of intelligence, its body of intuition and its body of memory, which means that the being experiences a cycle through the spiritual worlds, which it does so through the relevant bodies. How much or how little a human being experiences in these spiritual or ray-formed worlds between two physical incarnations depends on how well developed are its respective spiritual bodies or organs. As these ray-formed spheres are not the source of painful experiences and suffering, human beings enter a world of light when they, as we say, "die". It cannot be stressed enough that there is no reason to be afraid of death. In the case of certain people the initial transition can be a little difficult if they are filled with dark thoughts, anxiety or a bad conscience. But these are the very things that human beings should seek to overcome while they are experiencing through their physical organism. The reason why they incarnate in physical matter is to learn how to overcome resistance, initially by using violence and force – qualities that belong to the primitive stages – and then by using insight and neighbourly love. It is these qualities that will lead the being out of the false experience of life.


5. The experience of "I" and "it"

Since the physical body is an organ in a large spiritual organism it is not purely physical. Spiritual forces are at work in this body; if they were not, the physical processes themselves would come to a halt. Through the functions of the physical body, experience and creation are revealed. There is "something" that experiences and creates through them. It is not the eyes that see and it is not the ears that hear; these sensory instruments merely register. This fact becomes even clearer through our perception of life, which we experience in two essentially different details. One can sense something that is oneself, and something that is not. One can sense something that one can bind oneself to and let go of again, something that one can be bound by and can release oneself from. Where is the boundary between what is oneself and what is not?

It is not so difficult to see that we are not our surroundings, we are not the other beings, and we are not the things that surround us. So are we our physical body? No, we say: "My body, my eyes, my ears, my limbs etc". Here the word "my" is an expression for the I, which is something other than the body and its organs. We can sense that there is something "behind". But it is not possible for us to get behind the I. Everything that we can sense and experience is separate from this I and can be summed up in the word "it". "It" is something we can bind ourselves to or free ourselves from, but no one can free themselves from their own I. One's I is not something that one has or does not have; it is something one is. The I is eternal and can bind us to or free itself from "it", where "it" appears in a never-ending mass of variations and combinations of energy that are created, that is to say mixed, partly by the I's and creative abilities of other living beings, and partly by ourselves and our creative ability. Our experience of life is itself an interplay between on the one hand the combinations of matter, or "it", that we ourselves have set in motion and on the other hand the combinations of matter of Nature and other living beings or I's, which are a different variation of "it". This latter variation of "it" is in reality the entire universe; it is one great, cohesive, living, cosmic organism for the living being in which we all "live, move and have our being"; it is the eternal Godhead. As a result the living being's experience of life is an eternal interplay with God, with You "who art in heaven".


6. Superconsciousness and subconsciousness

Through its eternal ability to create and experience and its constantly changing instruments, organs or bodies, the eternal I experiences a chain of causes and effects in its interaction with "it", which are in reality the manifestations or answers of the eternal You, or the Godhead, to the living being's thoughts and actions. The being sows and has to reap what it has sown, thereby forming its fate from one incarnation to another. Present-day terrestrial mankind has itself sown its "derailed" state or its false experience of life. It is neither the result of the punishments of an angry god nor is it just pure chance; it is nothing other than an effect of the inadequate or partially destroyed mental and physical organs through which human beings experience and create. What is needed is that terrestrial human beings create for themselves better mental and physical bodies with which to experience and create.

As we have said, every living being has six bodies, which are all organs in its eternal body, and while the being is incarnated its day-consciousness is borne by its physical body, which I call the body of gravity. At present a great many human beings are enshrouded in the illusion that this physical body is their only body, in fact many go so far as to mistakenly believe that this body is identical with themselves. In reality it is a combination of energies that the I has bound itself to and that this same I will sooner or later free itself from through "death". Before we "die", we free ourselves to a certain extent from our physical body every time we go to sleep. While we are physically incarnated we have both a "day-consciousness" and a "night-consciousness", and whereas the day-consciousness is borne by the physical body the night-consciousness is borne by the other five bodies. Together the six bodies and the day- and night-consciousness represent what I in Livets Bog characterise as the living beings' "subconsciousness". This subconsciousness, which is borne by bodies that are subject to change and to having a beginning and an end, must of course also be subject to the same principles and therefore be time- and space-dimensional. But just as the six time- and space-dimensional bodies can only exist because their changes take place within the living being's eternal body, which is not time- and space-dimensional, the time- and space-dimensional subconsciousness can also only exist because it is rooted in and borne by something that is not time- and space-dimensional, namely the eternal factor that I call the living being's "superconsciousness". The superconsciousness is the eternal organ with the help of which things of value in the living being's consciousness are transferred from one subconscious body to another, and it is at the same time the "store room" or "filing cabinet" for those energies of the consciousness that are not at the moment being used by the subconscious bodies.


7. The superconscious and the subconscious function

Just as the living being, in order that it can be an eternally experiencing and creating being, must possess both an eternal body and time- and space-dimensional, renewable organs or bodies, it must also possess a superconsciousness that is by nature eternal and a subconsciousness that is changeable and time- and space-dimensional. As we have said, the superconsciousness is the permanent organ for the organisation and storing of the energies of the consciousness. But it is not enough that energies and things of value are organised and stored; organising and storing energies of consciousness does not result in experience. And without experience the living being would be regarded as an automatically functioning machine. But that is not how living beings appear. Because the superconsciousness through its fate element with its talent kernels (the organ for the organisation and storing of energy) transfers the energies of consciousness to the subconscious organs or bodies, the energies reach the point where they are something that the I can experience with its awake day-consciousness. Day-conscious experience therefore takes place through the subconscious bodies (in the case of present-day terrestrial human beings through the body of gravity), whereas the superconsciousness and the eternal body guarantee the living being's eternal organisation of energy, the storing of its talent kernels and the regeneration of its abilities through the formation of new talent kernels.


8. The mother energy and the six basic energies

With the superconsciousness we come into contact for the first time with what we call energy. I call this energy in its first phase the "mother energy". And just as the six bodies of the subconsciousness are organs in the eternal body, the energies that make up this body are six individual basic vibrations or basic strains of the mother energy. I have named these six energies instinct, gravity, feeling, intelligence, intuition and memory. The reason that there are six organs in the eternal body is because the I has an organ in which each of these energies takes the dominant role while the others in this organ are either in the process of developing, or in the process of degenerating or are completely latent. The combined mass of energy in the whole of existence is made up of these six basic kinds of energy, and every living being's ability to experience and create is based on its ability to juggle with these energies and combine and mix them in an infinite number of variations. All solid, liquid and gaseous substances are different mixtures of these six energies, but the same applies to the ray-formed forces that human beings do not normally perceive as matter. They are simply other mixtures of the same energies. This therefore means that whether we are talking about the hardest metals or types of stone, about liquids or gases or about electricity or other forms of waves or radiation, e.g. human beings' thoughts, feelings, ideas and memories, they are every one of them different mixtures of the six basic energies of the universe. Every energy has, just like musical notes, a series of octaves from "bass" to "treble", but also stretching beyond the "bass" and "treble" into areas that are beyond the normal sensory capacity of terrestrial human beings. In some of these octaves the energies are the material for macrocosmic beings, and in others they are the material for microcosmic beings, and in between these two there exist what I call "the mesocosmic octaves", that is to say the world of living beings that we can perceive with our physical senses, namely plants, animals and terrestrial human beings, as well as spiritual beings that we cannot experience with our physical senses. In the mesocosmos, especially in the case of human beings, we know that consciousness and energy are connected. With respect to animals we can also recognise that there is a primitive form of consciousness behind their manifestation of energy. As far as plants are concerned we can go so far as to talk about life but not about consciousness. And in the case of the mineral world, we perceive it as "dead", even though we nevertheless acknowledge that it is bound energy that can be released, and that when we look at it in a micro-perspective it is made up of particles and empty space. But we have not the slightest inkling of the fact that it should have anything whatsoever to do with the concept of consciousness, because as yet the only laws of life that we know about are physical laws.


9. Energy and consciousness, the sons of God and the Godhead

Seen from the micro-perspective, even the most solid matter is made up of particles and empty space, and the empty space is permeated by energy, rays and waves that are in movement. Wherever there is energy and movement, there is also life, even though it is in a form of matter that is perceived by human beings' physical day-consciousness as "dead" matter. But with cosmic sight one can go further and say that wherever there is life, there is also consciousness. All manifestations of energy in the universe, whether they manifest in what is from the human being's perspective the microcosmos or the macrocosmos, are created by the consciousness of living beings, living beings that form universes and matter for one another. All these living beings "live, move and have their being" in the living universe that is God's consciousness, and as a result the Godhead is equally close to every single being, whether it be an atom, a human being or a galactic system. Consequently all living beings are of equal importance, irrespective of size or temporal perspective. One day is therefore as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day to the eternal Godhead, who experiences through all temporal perspectives and through all living beings, they being the Godhead's organs. For the beings in the microcosmos certain octaves in the scale of the basic energies form the material for the creation of spiritual and physical bodies, and of consciousness and thought processes and the resultant creative activity outside their own organisms in the matter that surrounds them. Other octaves are used by beings in the mesocosmos, including terrestrial human beings, and yet others by beings that are planets, solar systems and galactic systems and even larger beings in the macrocosmos. This means that behind all the movements and functioning of energy in the entire living universe there is a consciousness that creates and experiences, whose origin is living beings within living beings. In fact the expression or the description "the image of God" can be analysed as "living beings within living beings". As a result human beings are also "in God's image after his likeness", as both their physical and their spiritual bodies are built up of living microbeings that "live, move and have their being" in these universes that these bodies are to them. But there is an important difference between the eternal Godhead and all the eternal sons of God that live in "him" in spiral cycles within spiral cycles, and that is that whereas the sons of God will always be both macrobeings in relation to living beings in the microcosmos or spiral cycles below their own and microbeings in relation to the beings in the macrocosmos or spiral cycles above their own and at the same time have their outward experience in the mesocosmos, there are no beings above or outside the eternal Godhead, and "he" has "his" experience exclusively in "his" own inner world, in which "his" consciousness is borne by the sons of God, which are God's organs and instruments. In the octaves of the basic energies in all spirals the living beings interact with one another, and as the consciousness of all these living beings is a part of the Godhead's consciousness, their experience will be a part of God's experience. God is equally close to every single being. Every sigh, every cry, every sense of sorrow, every sense of joy, all suffering, all delight, every longing and urge to create as well as every sense of joy and gratitude in a completed work of creation that streams through the consciousness of living beings, also streams through the consciousness of God, through the spiritual beings that are "his" receptor organs. But like all living beings "in his image", the Godhead does not only have organs for receiving but also organs for sending out, that is to say living beings that represent the principle of guardian angels and the principle of world redemption. Such beings take part in helping and protecting where it fits in with the way the fates of other living beings are formed, as well as in promoting evolution in a sphere such as terrestrial mankind, for example.


10. Feeling – the energy that binds

Let us turn from these enormous cosmic perspectives towards something that is at this moment very closely related to the terrestrial human being's physical body and its life force. But before we do that we must take a close look at physical matter as a whole. The building that you are in at this moment as well as the house that you live in are made up of the energy of consciousness. This is inevitable since there is consciousness everywhere. All six basic energies must exist in such a building: instinct, gravity, feeling, intelligence, intuition and memory. The reason you do not usually perceive it in this way is because here these energies appear in octaves that terrestrial human beings cannot normally experience as energies of consciousness; they rather experience them as substance or matter. That this is so is due to the cosmic principle of perspective. They are the manifestations of consciousness of living beings that cosmically are very "far away" from terrestrial human beings. But how can we know that they are energies of consciousness? Let us take a look at how the energy that I call the energy of feeling reacts when we look at it in various perspectives.
 The energy of feeling is an energy that binds and draws together. We can recognise this in the case of human beings' emotions. Feelings of love bind people together, whether just two people or a group of people of any size. What we call the love of one's native country is an example of a feeling of being bonded, just like the feelings that exist between the members of a family. Is there not a strong bond of feeling in a mother's love? It can sometimes be so strong that when the child reaches the age at which it wants greater freedom and independence, it feels far too bound and it does what it can to free itself. Through their power to bind, feelings can be a positive force in love, friendship, cooperation and mutual contact between living beings. But they can also have a negative effect. They can become bonds that have the effect of binding inwardly in the human being's own mind. They can become "mental prisons" that can bind a human being's thinking to such an extent that only the guardian angels that help human beings in the transitional state after death can help the being, through the use of suggestion, out of the self-created hell or purgatory consisting of jealousy, bitterness, envy, hatred or other such feelings. This purgatory can perhaps also consist of anxiety or a guilty conscience resulting from actions that such feelings caused him to commit at times when they had total control over the human being's consciousness. They can be directed outwards towards the surroundings, and they can also be directed inwards into the mind. But they always have the effect of an energy that binds.


11. The state of tension between fire and cold

Since the energy of feeling as well as the other basic energies works in an infinite series of octaves up into the macrocosmos and down into the microcosmos, and since at the same time each of the energies maintains its eternal characteristics and ability to react to the other energies, it means that the energy of feeling in the macrocosmic and microcosmic octaves also has the effect of binding and drawing together. Under what conditions are terrestrial human beings faced with a force in Nature that they are unable on their present step in evolution to experience as consciousness, but that they have to acknowledge as a force that binds? When they come up against that force in Nature that is the coldness of the universe. Coldness is the energy of feeling, a force that will always in all situations bind and hold together whatever it rules over. But the universe is not a mere combination of matter bound together by coldness. Just as the energy of feeling exists in an infinite number of octaves above and below terrestrial human beings' mesocosmic, day-conscious ability to experience, its absolute opposite, the energy of gravity, also exists in macro-, meso- and microcosmic octaves. This manifests itself in those octaves that are beyond terrestrial human beings' consciousness as warmth and fire, a force that will cause whatever it comes into contact with to expand. The state of tension between these two cosmic or universal energies – feeling, the energy that binds, and gravity, the energy that expands – which exists in all octaves of the basic energies, whether micro-, meso- or macrocosmic, forms the basis of the power behind all life force and power to manifest in all living beings' physical and mental renewable organs through which they have day-conscious experience. And thus this state of tension forms the background for all life force, both physical and mental.

In those octaves in which terrestrial human beings juggle with these two energies in their consciousness, the energies decide what form the mental life force will take. But also in relation to physical life force the tension between gravity and feeling is of the utmost importance. But here it is in octaves where they appear as fire and coldness. In terrestrial human beings' physical body the state of tension between the universal fire and coldness, between the energy of gravity and the energy of feeling, shows itself as the being's normal body temperature, which has a very great deal to do with the human being's physical life force. If a human being's temperature rises several degrees above or drops several degrees below what is normal it can be registered in the being's physical life force, and it will perhaps not be long before their life force disappears altogether from the physical plane and they die. The normal temperature of the Earth is also based on a balance between warmth and coldness, and if this state of balance were to cease, if for example warmth were to take over, the Earth would have a "high fever", which could lead to the death of all animal life in its organism, including terrestrial human beings. But human beings need not be afraid of this happening, even though there are many who due to the world situation perhaps believe that such an event could be approaching. The world situation is not a sign that the Earth is sick and close to death. It is a sign of a development that has to do with the state of tension between gravity and feeling in its consciousness.


12. Mental and physical balance

The normal body temperature of terrestrial human beings shows how these beings, over long periods of time and with the experience of many incarnations, have succeeded in creating a renewable body with gravity and feeling in balance. This has become an ingenious, automatic function. And the same applies to the Earth being in its spiral, which is the reason why we also fit into its organism. This means that both the Earth being and we ourselves have brought the tension between fire and coldness under control and are holding this tension in a permanent state of balance, and this state of balance is the same as physical life force. Explosions are taking place in the organism, but they are all under control in the same way that they are in an engine. The beating of the heart, the circulation of the blood, in fact all the movements that take place in the organism or that are made by it are initiated by this controlled tension. But what form does the relationship between gravity and feeling take in the mental area of the Earth being and terrestrial human beings? Are the explosions here also counterbalanced through the will by the binding energy of feeling? No, they are not, and this is the sole cause of the present state of the Earth being and terrestrial mankind. But the Earth being is on the point of gaining this mental balance in its consciousness, thereby having the same power over its psyche as it does over its organism. This will, from the Earth being's perspective, take place in a short time. The Earth will then have gained cosmic consciousness. In terrestrial human beings' time perspective it will take about 3,000 years, during which time human beings will succeed – one by one and some ahead of others – in gaining a mental balance between gravity and feeling. This means that they will be in control of their minds so that they will not explode in hatred, anger and irritation, and neither will they be "imprisoned by their feelings" of bitterness, jealousy, disappointment, anxiety and depression. Human beings' life force, which according to the plan of Providence will be united with high spiritual energies, has in the time- and space-dimensional worlds its origin in the balance between gravity and feeling, and when terrestrial human beings gain mastery over their minds to a degree that is equivalent to the mastery that they normally have over their physical bodies, their life force as love and wisdom, which regulates how they act, will reach such heights that one would nowadays be inclined to think of it as the stuff of mere fairy tales. But no fairy tale can come close to describing the radiant marvels that human beings will themselves one day experience once the gravity and feeling in their consciousness are under the control of their will and reason.



From a lecture by Martinus at the Martinus Institute on Sunday 21 February 1954. Manuscript for the lecture revised by Mogens Møller. Revision approved by Martinus. First published in the Danish edition of Kosmos no. 14-16/1968. Original Danish title: Livskraftens oprindelse. Translation: Andrew Brown, 2010.

Article ID: M1440

© Martinus Institut 1981, www.martinus.dk

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