Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 1, sect. 193

193. By slow degrees as evolution proceeds terrestrial mankind's faculty of sensing, or feeling, is becoming more and more developed, which means that it is passing further and further on to its own plane. Whereas with animals and human beings from a primitive zone this faculty can be released only on the basis of co-operation between the embryonic body of feeling and the much superior and more fully developed physical body by which purely physical pain or rougher forms of sensing can be experienced, it is when the embryonic body of feeling is more advanced that that same faculty can make it possible for the individual to experience sensing on the plane of feeling itself. This means that besides being able to experience reactions between its body of gravity and the exterior gravity energy (in other words undiluted forms of pain and pleasure) gradually, as the above-mentioned embryonic body gains in strength, it can begin to experience reactions between the body and the exterior feeling energy. Just as the reactions of the interplay between the body of gravity and the outer gravity energy are identical with the pleasant and the unpleasant - that is, with well-being and with suffering - so, on the plane of gravity, the reactions of the interplay between the embryonic body of feeling and the outer feeling energy are identical with the pleasant and the unpleasant on the plane of feeling; but there well-being and suffering appear respectively as synonymous with "joy" and "sorrow". The advanced being in the animal kingdom can thus also experience well-being and pain on the plane of feeling as well as on the plane of gravity or the physical plane. But as the plane of feeling is not a physical but a spiritual one, this indicates that joy and sorrow are in reality of a spiritual nature. And here we see again how terrestrial mankind's daily existence to a large extent takes place in the spiritual world. But in accordance with the degree to which the individual can experience sensing on the plane of feeling itself, he also acquires the ability to manifest it likewise. In this way he gets the ability to create consciously joy and sorrow for fellow beings. This manifestation of feeling does not of course especially promote joy in that first zone of development where the body of gravity and gravity energy are still playing an important role and, according to later analyses, are working so that the manifestations release themselves in selfishness, greed, and intolerance together with other forms of lower-consciousness tendencies. All of these latter tendencies constitute primitive manifestations of feeling. But as the embryonic body of feeling develops little by little and connects with the embryonic body of intelligence, and co-operation between these two embryonic bodies obtains mastery over the co-operation between the body of gravity and the embryonic body of feeling and the individual begins to be capable of working with harmonized energies of feeling and intelligence - which is the same as love energy - then experiences and manifestations of feeling will belong to that reality we call "pure love". And these are the manifestations which are usually expressed as "feeling". When we say about a piece of music that "it is played with feeling" this "feeling" is the expression of manifested spiritual feeling behind the physical playing. It is from this same level of consciousness that there arise the more noble impulses of feeling such as generosity, self-sacrifice, compassion and tolerance. All demonstrations of feeling thus constitute a wide scale of manifestations of life which reach from love to hate.