Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 737

737. If the talents did not come about as a result of thinking, experience and practice, what is the point of all the educational provisions that are to be found throughout the civilised world? Why should children go to school and why should young people be placed as apprentices to a trade or in higher forms of study? And is it not precisely here that we can follow with our purely physical senses a talent's entire development? Is it not precisely in this way that we first gain knowledge, either through theoretical instruction or through practical experience? Is not this knowledge or experience the very first source of the talent? The talent is the same as routine or skill. But is not a skill without knowledge or experience an impossibility? The very first stage of the talent is common knowledge or experience. It is this talent's first stage that, here in "Livets Bog" and supplementary writings by the same author, we express using the term "knowledge A".
But this "knowledge A" cannot in turn exist without it forming the foundation of the being's manifestation of will. Is it not a fact that there is no other means by which a normal being can consciously regulate its will than through its experiences or its knowledge or through what the being thinks is its knowledge? But as this knowledge, that is to say this "knowledge A", in this way becomes the regulator of the will, it is thereby converted into action. But when this knowledge is converted into action, the individual experiences whether the action is beneficial or disadvantageous for its existence. If it is beneficial, it will be repeated again and again. But it will thereby be identical to practice. When the being's knowledge has reached the stage of being action or has become a permanent, but still conscious, manifestation of will, we call it "knowledge B". But when an action is repeated over and over again it becomes a habit. The fact that it becomes a habit means that gradually it has become an independent function that can be triggered quite automatically, in certain situations even without the assistance of the individual's day-conscious will. A habit is a kind of automatic function that the being has cultivated through constant repetition or practice. The habit is thus the mastery that comes about through practice. That a constant repetition of an action can become an automatic function is due to the fact that the being, through this constant repetition, develops an independent centre in the body of the brain for that very function, so that its day consciousness can thereby be relieved or liberated in favour of new manifestations of thought. When a manifestation of will, or "knowledge B", has been repeated so many times that it has become an automatic function that can operate largely without the being's particular concentration or conscious assistance, it constitutes a new stage. It has now become the very thing that we understand to be a talent. When a knowledge has reached this "talent stage" in the being, we express it as "knowledge C".

Symbol no. 11

The Solution to the Mystery of Life