Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 985

985. The above-mentioned ways of perceiving the details in the beings' sensory horizon are thus all without exception conditioned by a collision with the principle of perspective or the law of experience or image formation. The beings are making an evaluation from a "false" centre. So, what does this "false" centre constitute? This "false" centre is matter. As long as the individual is in the materialistic state and is denying the existence of any spiritual details, believing that his own life ceases completely with the death or dissolution of the physical organism, he has nothing with which to evaluate life or existence other than the relationship between this organism and life or existence. This organism therefore becomes the centre that determines the perspective of his view of every object. As this organism has a beginning and an end, it constitutes a so-called "temporal object". The relationship of every object to this "temporal" object (the organism) cannot possibly be anything other than a correspondingly "temporal" or "finite" relationship. The individual's view of any object will therefore be merely an evaluation of one "finite" or "temporal" object's relationship to another "finite" or "temporal" object. This view will therefore be the same as a so-called "relative" view. But such a "relative" or "temporal" view cannot satisfy the individual in the long run. He will see more and more clearly that the universe is an "eternal" reality and therefore cannot be explained in terms of "temporal" answers. Regardless of how splendidly realistic an answer may be within this individual's physical horizon, it cannot constitute anything other than a mere "image of the moment". It can express only a "temporary" image of eternity, as eternity existed before this image came into being and will continue to exist after this image has ceased to exist. The "temporary" or "temporal" image can provide no information whatsoever about the part of eternity that lies outside the image. And as this part is the most important, whereas the isolated little part of eternity expressed in an "image of the moment" can never be anything other than a rather insignificant part, the living being can therefore never ever acquire an analysis of life or of the universe through mere "relative" or "temporal" answers. To the extent that the individual realises this, the universe and the life within it will be a "mystery", that is to say, an unexplained or unanswered question. An unanswered question is in turn the same as a hunger that demands satisfaction. If it were therefore possible to sense or experience only in terms of mere "relative" answers, this hunger could never be satisfied. But as Nature under no circumstances whatsoever can create a hunger without at the same time having created phenomena through which this hunger can be satisfied, it becomes a fact that there must also be phenomena through which the hunger – which, in the form of the great question: "Who is life?", occupies living beings at a certain stage in evolution – can also be satisfied. But this does not exclude the fact that the "relative" or "temporal" answers are justified to a great extent; they are in fact totally indispensable in the divine world plan. Without these answers or without this form of experience, the being's journey from its state of light in the "divine world" and the "kingdom of bliss" to the materialistic, physical state would be totally impossible. There would be no contrast to the light or absolute knowledge. And things to which there exist no contrast are entirely beyond sensory perception. Quite simply no expression of consciousness would take place without these answers. We will therefore express all "relative" answers as "life substance no. 53".
But as these answers could not come about without the organism as a "false" centre in the sensory perspective, we will express this "false" centre as "life substance no. 54".