Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1109

1109. In order to understand life in the "kingdom of bliss" one must thus remember such moments, here in awake, physical life, when we concentrated exclusively on memories, or when previous experiences took up our thoughts entirely, for such moments are in principle quite analogous with life in the "kingdom of bliss", even though here on the physical plane they occur in a very reduced or latent form. If these experiences, summed up by the memories, took place sufficiently far back in the past, they can, in the form of "memories", be of a beauty so radiant and enthralling that no realistic, physical experience can fill us with the same surge of happiness. And it makes absolutely no difference if the experiences at the time were joy or sorrow, suffering or difficulty, for, as sufficiently "ripened memories", they can manifest themselves in the "day-consciousness" of the "being of bliss" absolutely only as a surge of rapture. It is for this reason that we, here in the present work, call the zone in which the experience of memory culminates the "kingdom of bliss", and call the memories "gold copies". It is of course obvious that, in the case of the terrestrial human being, ordinary memories from yesterday or the day before yesterday, from this year or last year or from any other period of time within the last decade cannot be considered. If the memories from such a recent point in time give rapture or joy when relived, it can be only because they were already experiences of joy when experienced originally (the experience in the "outer world") and can then give rise to nothing but joy when "relived".
It is a different matter with the memories that when experienced originally were sorrow and anxiety, suffering and pain, indeed, were mutilation, brutality, violence and persecution from other beings. In the case of the ordinary terrestrial human being, remembering or "reliving" the events cannot give the individual any particular feeling of rapture until many years have passed, indeed, in certain cases even several lives, because before such a period of time has elapsed they are not yet "ripe". "Memories" are like fruits. They can be "sour" while growing and being created, but with sufficient influence from the sun, heat and nutrition, they "ripen", which means that they reach a culmination or the stage in their cycle that was their goal. For the memories, that which constitutes the "sun" and "heat" that "ripens" is the same as the "time that heals all wounds". When "memories" are "ripened", the "sourness", which here means the sting, the bitterness and the depression in which the "memories" were enveloped, is gradually removed. The thought of the pain and suffering, the sorrow and anxiety caused by the events that the "memories" were "copies" of, is weakened, which means is "forgotten". The mission of the "body of memory" or the "organ of memory" is to sort the contents of the "memories" or the "copies of the experiences" so that everything that is "unpleasant" about an experience is "forgotten" and everything "pleasant" is "remembered". By virtue of this function of consciousness all experiences are gradually placed in the golden, mental lustre that can awaken only "bliss" or a kind of superterrestrial rapture every time the "memory" that is liberated from darkness and thereby "ripened" turns up in the awake "day-consciousness". The "faculty of memory" is thus in reality a kind of mental faculty to gild. It removes that which is ignoble or untrue from the "memories", and keeps that which is true. The identity of these memories, being "copies" of the original experiences, can therefore in their "ripe" state be nothing but mental "gold copies".
It thus becomes a reality that the zone in the cycle where the "body of memory" dominates or supports the consciousness to the same extent as the physical organism dominates and supports the consciousness here on the physical plane can be nothing but a kind of "gilded" world, a "reliving" of the details of the outer physical world appearing in the most radiant and noble mental substances.