Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 952

952. But if these two sensations, which constitute the basic analysis of the experience of life, are thus incontestable facts, it is an equally incontestable fact that the basic analysis of the living being will be, by its very nature, totally impossible in every situation in which it is not founded on precisely these two basic principles of the experience of life. Since a thing cannot simultaneously constitute the opposite of itself – for example, one cannot stand up and sit down at the same time, just as one cannot shout and at the same time be silent – it is a fact that the living being must be analysed as consisting of two fundamentally different parts. It must consist of a part that is "bound to a certain place" and a part that is "free". How else could the experience of life consist of the two previously mentioned sensations? So what is the part that is "free" and what is the part that is "bound to a certain place"? The question is actually easy to answer. Everything that cannot be in two places at the same time is "bound to a certain place". And this applies to everything that is directly accessible to sensory perception, such as organisms and everything that can be described as "matter" or "substance". Whatever we might point to here is limited. It constitutes a size and a weight and is therefore in every way "bound to a certain place". If there existed only organisms or matter, that is to say, everything that is "bound to a certain place", how would it be possible for the sensation of "freedom" to exist? A thing that does not exist cannot be sensed.
There therefore exists something that is not "bound to a certain place". Since it is not "bound to a certain place" it cannot have size, weight, colour, volume or any analysis other than that it constitutes "something that is". It is revealed as a fact that it does actually constitute "something that is" through the sensation of its existence in the form of its "sensation of freedom". And this constitutes our sensation of ourselves as the "audience" of our own lives. This sensation that we have is thus in reality an indirect experience of the "self" or the "I". That we do have this sensation has long been established through the fact that in language we have had to find an actual term for this sensation. It is this sensation that we acknowledge when we say "I saw", "I felt", "I went" and similar expressions. This "I" expresses the aspect of the nature of our being that is the "audience" of what is happening, whereas the subsequent expressions, "saw", "felt", "went", are not expressions for the I itself, but for what the I experiences or is the "audience" of. The analysis of the living being can therefore be seen to consist of the "experiencer" and the "experience". Of these two factors the I constitutes that which is "free", and the "experience" that which is "bound to a certain place". Since a "place" or the "state of being bound to a certain place" falls into the category of "that which is experienced", it cannot be an analysis of the I. The I cannot therefore in any way whatsoever be "bound to one place". Only the experience can be bound to a "place". But being bound to a "place" does not in principle just mean being in one place or another; it constitutes in fact all the forms of limitation of a thing, such as the aforementioned size, weight, volume, cubic capacity, speed etc. The identity of the living being is thus made up of two unshakable realities: "the something that is bound to a certain place" and "the something that is free". The "something that is bound to a certain place" comprises everything that is limited, everything that is changeable, and for this reason it has been termed in everyday life the "temporal". The "something that is free" consists of that which is not changeability itself but is its "audience", "creator" or "originator", and changeability cannot therefore be the analysis of this originator, thus making it by its very nature eternally unchangeable, and for this reason this "something" has been termed in everyday existence the "eternal". As these two factors are therefore fundamentally unshakable in the analysis of every living being, since the "temporal" consists of "that which is experienced" and the "eternal" consists of "that which experiences", we will express the "temporal" as "life substance no. 39" and the "eternal" as "life substance no. 40".