Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1058

1058. Where we nonetheless can ascertain that a living being constitutes an "eternal something that is", and perceive this in the final analysis to be equal to "X", which thus means that it is neither highly developed nor primitive, neither evil nor good, neither just nor unjust, neither loving nor unloving, but is, in its ultimate nature, totally outside any of these analyses, depends exclusively on the fact that this "something" has an unshakeable contrast to its eternal, imperceptible or "X existence", namely its eternal, perceptible, "temporal" existence. Through this perceptible, "temporal" existence, which constitutes its realistic sphere of experience, it is able to create an existence that can be nothing but the antithesis of its "eternal" existence. It is obvious that within the sphere of experience this "temporal" existence cannot be the same as its "eternal" existence. Everyone who therefore perceives the living being by means of some "temporal" analysis and says, for example, that it is twenty years old and regards this analysis as the absolutely ultimate expression of this being's existence is to the greatest extent the victim of an illusion. The eternal existence of the being cannot be expressed by a number of years. Eternity is just as little twenty years as it is any other number of years or limited period of time, no matter how many years or how great a period of time one were to use to describe this. Twenty years can be nothing but an illusory term for eternity, and thereby for the eternal existence of the living being. The same holds true with regard to all other "temporal" analyses. If we claim that the living being is an unloving being or a loving being, if we say that it is just or unjust or in some other way sum up this being with such "temporal" analyses and refer to these as expressions of the absolute, ultimate nature of the being in question, we are likewise victims of an illusion. "Something" that is eternal can be neither just nor unjust, loving nor unloving nor constitute any other "temporal" phenomenon whatsoever, since these "temporal" phenomena are not "eternal", but in accordance with the cycle can appear in an individual only as changing rhythms, in the same way as hunger and satiation do. An eternal being must therefore, as we have already pointed out, be just as loving as it is unloving, just as unjust as it is just and so on, the two contrasts thereby cancelling one another out and determining that the "eternal" nature of the being cannot possibly be anything other than "X", as shown in the "X analyses" in "Livets Bog".