Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1089

1089. As we have previously mentioned, that which makes a "something that is" a "living being" is its range of sensory perception or sensory horizon. Without this it would not be a "living being". But since the living beings' sensory horizons are at different mental heights, their horizons will give them correspondingly different views. What we sense or experience of the "living being" is thus its mental viewpoint or vista and its manifestation and exercise of will determined by this. And since the being's mental horizon or overview completely defines the being's appearance in life as a "plant", an "animal", a "human being", a "being of wisdom", a "being of intuition" and a "being of bliss", these designations are really expressive of mental heights. In this connection it should, however, be noted that a "being of bliss" in itself is not expressive of a "higher" step than a "being of intuition". The difference here is that the former being does not live in an "outer world", but re-experiences all the outer worlds in the form of a largely isolated "inner world", the details of which, as previously mentioned in "Livets Bog", are memories appearing solely as "gold copies", which in turn really means its own "past" ennobled and perfected. By contrast, the "being of intuition", as well as the other beings of the spiral, lives fundamentally in the outer worlds. We already know these outer worlds, as well as the "kingdom of bliss", as "steps" on the "ladder of evolution" (symbol no. 7, Livets Bog 1, page 262). Since the experience of life can thus be divided into mental heights, it can really be expressed as a mental "mountain" upon which the points or steps mentioned are ledges. The "view" from each of these ledges has thus its own particular perspective, which is all the more detailed or complete depending on how near the ledge is to the "top of the mountain" (the divine world), where it culminates and thereby defines the details from all the underlying ledges or steps on the sides of the "mountain". Each of these ledges or "points of view" has, like all other points of view, its particular perspective. For this reason the beings on the same ledge will have more or less the same "view". Broadly speaking, they will constitute the same ranges of sensory perception and thereby, broadly speaking, also have the same attitude to the "sensory mountain" itself, with the exception of the little difference of perspective there must necessarily be between the single individuals, since they must each necessarily occupy their "place" or their "space" on the ledge. No being can occupy another being's space. And it is this impregnability of one another's little physical or spiritual space that, as previously mentioned, renders the beings "individual". Even though the beings find themselves on the same sensory ledge, they must each all the same constitute a central point of the perspective from the ledge. And since they thus do not constitute the same central point of the perspective, the view is not entirely the same for the beings, even though they are on the same ledge. We see therefore that the beings on the same ledge have a common "wide horizon" and an individual "micro-horizon". It is such a "wide horizon" that gives the ledge its name, for example, the "human kingdom". All normal adult beings within this kingdom acknowledge or see the existence of this kingdom as something separate from the other ledges of the "sensory mountain", for example, the "plant kingdom" and the "animal kingdom". So this view reflects the relevant ledge's main rules or fundamental features of perspective. It is the beings' "wide horizon" on this ledge.