Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 704

704. These things, above which we should therefore love our neighbour, are all phenomena that come under the term "created things". It therefore becomes clear that it is the living being behind the manifestations that should be loved above the manifestations. These therefore come last. What a living being can create should therefore not be what leads us in our love for our neighbour, because it will then be these created things that we love more than our neighbour. Our neighbour should be loved above all the things. If the things determine our love for our neighbour, only the great geniuses and the outstanding artists who can create or produce wonderful things in culminating intellectuality will be loved, while the less gifted or the beings with only a tiny, weak and feeble ability to create will be totally ignored by us. And, in fact, what about our love for so-called "murderers", "thieves", "criminals", "gangsters" or beings who to a large extent produce things that are not particularly in our favour? Do we not tend to condemn, despise and hate these beings? Is it not the things that direct our sympathies and antipathies rather than the being behind the things? What has become of our love for our neighbour? If it has disappeared, it means that we are faced with an area in which we are lacking love for the Godhead. To love one's neighbour totally regardless of the things, regardless of his appearance and what he produces, is to place the neighbour above the things; it is to "love God above all things". And it is this form of sympathy or quiet love that constitutes worshipping God "in spirit and in truth". And only with this relationship to one's neighbour will one discover that it is in this, and absolutely only in this, that one can stand before the fount of glory of the Almighty. Only this fount of glory can be the "image of God". And only this "image" can be the true light in our hearts, sparkling and shining from our eyes, vibrating wisdom into our speech, causing our I to understand, our spirit to forgive and our hands to caress, and thereby confirming the highest nature of our spirit, namely being one with the Father, one with the Way, one with the Truth and one with the Life.

Symbol no. 11

The Solution to the Mystery of Life