Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 929

929. Admittedly, the terrestrial human being does not feel the same strength in the experience of sensual pleasure through the caresses of Nature as it does through the caresses of its loved one, but, as we have said, this is not due to a difference in principle or type but merely a difference in degree between the two ways in which the caress is released. A feeling of pleasure is a feeling of pleasure regardless of how it manifests. The difference can consist only of a stronger or a weaker release of the feeling. But the fact that the intimate act does actually occur on a scale rising from a weaker to a stronger release is exactly what gives detail or colouring to the experience. Without this colouring it would be totally "neutral". It would not be able, as is now the case, to appear in any kind of culmination or highest form of expression. A form of expression that is always the same would not be able to represent a "highest" form of expression such as this. But if there is no "highest" form of expression of the sensation of sensual pleasure, there can be no "lowest" form of expression of the act either. But if there is neither a "highest" nor a "lowest" form of expression of the act, it would have to be an eternally unchanging state. And the individual would be unable to sense either culmination or rest in the sensation of the act and would thereby be totally cut off from being able to experience "hunger" and "satiation" or any "experience of pleasure". But in that way the divine value and life-giving force of the act would totally disappear, since an experience of pleasure cannot possibly exist other than as the satisfaction of hunger, appetite or desire. But a life without the satisfaction of desire, appetite or hunger is no life. It could constitute only complete stillness; in fact, it would have to exist as a "nothing". But all the facts show that life is not a "nothing" but a "something". The fact that feelings of pleasure appear in degrees ranging from hunger to satiation is thus in reality the same as the colouring of life. Life reveals itself to us as an orgy of nuances of pleasure, ranging from the darkest or pitch-black shadow formations to the most dazzlingly bright, sunlit perspectives. The living being moves between these two outer points in an abundance of richly detailed sensations of joy in the vivid or less vivid scenery of the colour spectrum.