Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1074

1074. Since the "living being" can exist only as a unit consisting of "time" and "eternity" it would be impossible to make a just analysis of this unit or the "living being" if one ignores either of these two phenomena, thus recognising only one of them. If we therefore say that the "living being" is neither loving nor unloving, we thereby ignore completely its identity with "time" or the "now", and emphasise only "eternity". But if the being were to constitute only "eternity", it would not constitute a "living being". In order to constitute a "living being" it must also constitute the "now". But the "now" cannot possibly constitute more than one realistic contrast. It cannot at the same time be a realistic, practical manifestation of this contrast's opposite. One must remember that it is in the "now" that all realistic or practical experience occurs. And in the same "now" that one opens one's mouth, one cannot close it. As previously mentioned, only one contrast at a time is possible in the "now". Other contrasts can certainly be present in the "now", but not as realistic or practical experience, but merely as "imaginary" opposites based on memories from the "past" or "imaginary" suppositions about the "future" emerging from this "past". The "living being" cannot therefore in realistic, practical appearance, be both "loving" and "unloving" in the "now". In the same "now" it can be only the one or the other. And since without the "now" it is not a "living being", one cannot rightfully say that the "living being" is both "loving" and "unloving". Its existence as a "living being" is determined exclusively by it being merely one thing at a time. If it could be both things or manifest both contrasts in the same "now", it would not exist, since the one contrast would then cancel out the other and its appearance would equal "X" or merely "something that is", which is the analysis of the I. But the I alone cannot constitute the "living being". This being exists only by virtue of the fact that the contrasts cannot be manifested at the same time but only alternately, which is fixed by the law of the cycle or "X2" and "X3". The "living being" can therefore be nothing other than either "loving" or "unloving", either "big" or "small", either "beautiful" or "ugly", "evil" or "good" and so on, for otherwise it would not be "living". Life, which means the actual experience, is nothing but the ability to recognise the contrasts or the differences, which would be impossible if these occurred at the very moment of experience (the now) in such a way as to totally cancel out one another. And without the experience of contrasts there would be no life, and without life only "something that is" would exist. On the contrary one can justly say about this "something" that it is neither "evil" nor "good", "beautiful" nor "ugly", nor does it constitute in any other way anything whatsoever over and above its analysis, which is "something that is". But such an analysis cannot be used for the "living being", since one thereby, albeit unconsciously, totally denies it the very faculty to experience and thereby its life. And a "something" without life cannot be "living". It must therefore always be implicit that such pronouncements about the "living being" can hold true only for this "something that is", which means the I or "eternity", and not for its very appearance as a "living being", as the "now" or "time". In this latter appearance it is identical with the changing contrasts and must then be one with the contrast that predominates or is realistic at the moment of being experienced. And this state of being one with this contrast must be the absolute analysis of the experience of life until it is supplanted by its opposite, which must then become the rightful analysis of the experience of life or the "now".