Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1094

1094. Since all sensory perception depends on a relationship of perspective, which means the relationship of a sensed thing to the centre of the range of sensory perception through which it is sensed, all sensory perception or experience is thereby by nature absolutely compelled to be individual since no being can constitute the experiencing centre in another range of sensory perception than its own. It will therefore be true of any experience whatsoever that its appearance, character and nature in reality are a description or an expression of the relationship of the experienced thing to the centre of the experiencing being's range of sensory perception. When one being says of another that it is "evil", it thus expresses only the specific "indication of place" that this being's way of acting has attained in its range of sensory perception. The terrain of this range of sensory perception extends from the "periphery" to the "centre", and constitutes a circular, or rather a spherical, area. Any experience of a thing must thus take place within this area. Outside this area the individual cannot possibly experience anything. Whether the thing is to be found in the periphery or the centre or in another "place" between these two extreme points will depend on the experiencing being's own "whereabouts" in the spiral cycle itself. Wherever the individual goes on the physical plane it will still have around it its range of sensory perception or its sensory horizon, but the details of this horizon will no longer be the same. To the extent that the living being moves forward, the details will be left further and further behind, and will eventually disappear behind the horizon's limit of vision, while new details turn up and approach the centre where they have a decisive influence on the being's exercise of will and its entire experience of life. So the things do not move with us when we move. Precisely the same is the case with our mental "movement" forward. Here the details or the things in our range of sensory perception do not move with us either. Since, from a mental point of view, we move continuously forward and thus never "stand absolutely still", everything that we sense or experience will be in the process of changing position just as continuously within our range of sensory perception. Things that were previously distant, indistinct details in the haze of the periphery ahead later became clear, sharply delineated, realistic details in the centre, just as these sharp details in turn later fade into the distant haze of the periphery behind us. Since every experience of a thing must go through this passage from periphery to periphery, passing the centre, it cannot thus be perceived or sensed except by virtue of the fact that at the moment of experience it constitutes one or another "indication of place" in the passage mentioned above. While the "indication of place" means "distance" for physical sensory perception, it means "state" or "condition" on the cosmic plane. The passage of a thing through our range of sensory perception is thus registered by the senses as it goes through a series of "states", which in turn here means "changes". And since it is precisely these "changes" that indicate the "cycle", we here see that an "experience", from the point where it begins in the outermost edge of the horizon ahead until it disappears behind the outermost edge of the same horizon behind, goes through exactly the same principle as that to which the "living being" itself is subject, namely the very "principle of reincarnation". "Experience", which in turn in the final analysis is sensed as "thought", simply must therefore, in order to be complete and perfect, go through the principle of the spiral cycle itself.