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| Living beings' age, standard of development and manifestation as a matter of cosmic perspective not an expression of their eternal existence |
267. Perhaps a question will arise in the reader's mind at this point as to how it can be possible that living beings are not on the same evolutionary step when all of them, without exception, are eternal, so that there cannot exist beings who, strictly speaking, can be younger or older, since all beings' term of existence is in reality of the same value, that is, identical with eternity.
This can be explained by the fact that although the length of all living beings' existence is, of course, equally eternal, this eternity is not affected by the energies and therefore neither by transformation nor evolution.
This means that a living being's present appearance, its size, talents, perfections and imperfections, its step in evolution and its bodily structure, can in no way whatsoever be the expression of its endless or eternal existence, but only the expression of a principle which originates in X2 and under the concept of the "principle of perspective" is dealt with fully in a later section.
Here we will only point out that just as perspective, for the artist, determines the formation of every kind of picture, so it also determines every form of sensing for a living being.
As infinity or every form of limitlessness is the same as a balance between the living being's own movement and the movements of its surroundings, and a balance between two forms of movement neutralises the contrast between them, and contrast again constitutes the condition for the same movement's accessibility for sensing, then infinity or any form whatsoever of limitlessness, becomes by its own nature inaccessible for sensing.
Limitation thus constitutes the imbalance or contrast between the living being's own movement and that of its surroundings and this conditions the whole of its manifestation and sensing.
Therefore any kind of limitation whatsoever, that is to say any form of manifestation whether it be an object, a size or a living being, is the same as "disguised infinity".
This signifies that an individual's infinite or eternal existence can be experienced only in the form of limitation and in this its temporal state constitutes in reality "disguised eternity".
All living beings, the so-called "youngest" and "oldest", the "smallest" and the "biggest", taken in the absolute sense, all exhibit the same "age", the same size - namely eternity and infinity.
But an age which constitutes eternity is no age, and a size which is infinite is no size, in that both these factors lack a beginning and an end, thereby becoming like "X" in the basic analysis.
And so the living being reveals itself to us on a plane where it is above time and space and is both holy and untouchable in its eternal presentation.
As for the principle of perspective, what we see may be likened to standing on a road which disappears into the distance in a long straight line. We note that this road, which is in reality, for example, 15 metres wide, merges into a point on the horizon. From the horizon up to where we are standing, the dimensions appear to our faculty for sensing to have all sizes up to 15 metres. Just as these various sizes are all exactly the same size or unit, so likewise every other kind of object for sensing, that is to say all manifestations, are just the same unit, the same value, namely "X" or infinity. The principle of perspective constitutes then, in its highest analysis, the limitation which makes infinity - or the universe - accessible for sensing and thereby the experience of life as actual fact. Living beings' ages, stages in evolution, sizes, manifestations and the whole presentation to the faculties for sensing are thus in the absolute sense no expression of age but are a matter of cosmic perspective. The so-called age of every living being is in reality - in the form of eternal existence - synonymous with those conditions which make it possible for that same existence to be brought to the knowledge of the living being. |
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