Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 918

918. The physical being that is waking up from the cooled-down materials of the sea of fire must in the first instance assess the whole world from the little local area that it itself constitutes in the great plan. This little local area is its own consciousness. What else does it have to use as a yardstick for its assessment? It is aware that it is itself a living being, and it reveals this by producing movements, that is to say, manifestations or actions. And because of this, it assumes that the movements in Nature must also be expressions of life, or the manifestations of a living being. And the idea of a god or gods becomes its way of explaining the universe. In its daily life it can be irritated or angry and can vent this anger in the form of revenge or by creating unpleasantness for the being that provoked the anger, and it is therefore quite natural for it to believe that all the unpleasantness that it meets in life must also be a wrathful god giving vent to anger, revenge or punishment. Hence the concept of "hell" and "damnation". It can feel a stronger sympathy for one being than for another, and it expresses this sympathy by being especially kind and generous towards the being that is the object of its sympathy, and also here it quite naturally believes that all particularly pleasant or fortunate events in its life are evidence of favours bestowed by Providence, and it therefore considers itself in such cases favoured by Providence. Hence the notion of being "saved", "holy" and eligible for "paradise". How could it be otherwise? These notions of a "wrathful" God, of "hell", of being "favoured" by the Godhead and of "paradise" are – when seen from this tender, initial mental stage and the scanty store of experience that the individual has access to at this stage – completely logical conclusions, even scientific hypotheses. They constitute an assessment of things that are unknown with the help of what is known. Here the beings have sought to explain what they did not know on the basis of what they knew. The fact that later in evolution they were forced to alter their hypotheses to some extent, is merely what also takes place within authorised scientific research.