Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1100

1100. Before we go further in the passage and development of a "thought" through the cycle, we need to dwell a little on the very principle of sensory perception. In order to be able to "sense", one must be a "living being". Something that cannot "sense" cannot be a "living being". This being is "living" precisely by virtue of its ability to be able to "sense". Since "sensory perception" in turn is the experience of "cause and effect", it is an eternal function, since no "effect" can arise without a prior "cause", and no such "cause" can exist without constituting the "effect" of yet another "cause" existing prior to this "effect" and so on. If there had been a point in time when no "effects" at all existed, they could not possibly form any "causes", and without "causes" new "effects" could not possibly be formed. Absolute stillness or immobility would exist. But absolute immobility or stillness is the same as a "dead point", absolute "death" or "nothing", from which "something" could not possibly come. "Immobility" or "stillness" cannot produce "movement", and without "movement" there would be no "creation", no manifestation, no sensory perception or experience and thereby no "thinking", consciousness or life. The "living beings'" experience of life or "sensory perception" is thus an eternally existing function, an eternally alternating manifestation of "cause and effect". And this manifestation is thus identical to the cycle of the substances, the stages of which are known here in "Livets Bog" as the six stages of the "spiral cycle", which in turn are the six different phases of conscious mental life or the experience of life.