Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1203

1203. Since it is generally true that the above-mentioned happy period of a marriage can be counted only in days or a few years, but not in more than a few decades, we see here that this marital "honeymoon" is merely a repetition of a state that was originally the general rule throughout the history of "Adam's" and "Eve's" evolution. This repetition corresponds exactly to all the other repetitions of previous states or layers of consciousness that take place within the living beings' stages of childhood and youth. As previously mentioned in "Livets Bog" these two stages are, so to speak, nothing other than the repetition of stages from this beings' previous paths of evolution. Thus we see children going through periods where they show tendencies that clearly point back to primitive human stages. Is it not so that children go through a stage or period where they mostly like to play at being "cops and robbers" and "chiefs" and "Red Indians", and during this period they are not averse to being involved in fights and conspiracies where the idea is that this or that person should have a beating, be teased or tormented, indeed, sometimes with no demonstrable, realistic reason. Does one not also see in certain children and young people a desire or tendency to torture, mutilate and kill animals without any outer cause or extenuating circumstance. Hence the concept of the "awkward age". And is it not a fact that these natural capacities for cruelty can disappear totally in these beings when they reach manhood or maturity; indeed, they are even sometimes the first to criticise and chastise their own children and those of others for the same cruelty? This bloodthirsty tendency was thus not the true character or nature of these beings. If it had been, it would not have disappeared with the onset of maturity, but would have still been in evidence, as is the case with some beings. We thus find people who throughout their lives represent a more or less cruel or brutal attitude towards other living beings; indeed, they can practically hurl abuse from their deathbed. While there are beings that have only a very short period or a stage during their childhood and youth when they are inspired by brutality and cruelty, there are others that do not lose this brutal nature within this lifetime. The explanation for this is that the former beings had already overcome their brutal nature in a previous life and therefore relive it merely as a repetition at a point in their present life between being an embryo and the onset of maturity (around the age of thirty), where they reach the standard of evolution that they had reached in the above-mentioned previous life. The latter beings, whose brutal tendencies accompany them throughout their entire life, have not overcome the stage of brutality in previous lives in the present spiral and must therefore continue having this kind of nature in their present life and succeeding lives until they have entirely overcome it. It is this repetition of previous tendencies or states that is also in evidence in the very formation of the embryo. Here we see how, from its first, frail beginning in its mother's womb, the embryo is formed or created by passing through various principles and tendencies of animal origin. And why should marriage be an exception?