Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1285

1285. But since the basic energies, the substances or matter to which they give rise, and the above-mentioned "mother energy" or "creative faculty" do not fully cover the living being's experience – this being the reason why there still exists a factor of this experience that cannot in any way be expressed or satisfied by the recognition of these two above-mentioned factors – the living being will thereby still constitute an unsolved riddle, will still be a mystery, as long as only matter and the creative faculty are recognised. In addition to these two factors there is "something" present behind the substances, the energies or the movements and the creative faculty that "experiences" and "perceives" the substances, the movements and the creative faculty. In itself this "something" cannot constitute the matter, the energies or the creative faculty. Neither an energy, a movement nor the creative faculty can "experience" or "perceive" itself. These phenomena will always be intrinsically dependent characteristics and thereby "dead" phenomena separated from the "something" that directs, governs and experiences them. We therefore return to the "divine something" or the I in the living being. And since we see that the substances, the energies or the so-called "forces of Nature" that make up our surroundings work according to a plan or purpose in favour of the whole itself, in the same way as every single organ or every normal phenomenon in our own physical organism does, we thereby see that the world or universe around us similarly constitutes in principle a great "organism" in which every single being, every single combination of energies, every single substance and so on is a specific phenomenon essential to the existence of the whole. But since this organism thus reveals or discloses the same planning or purposefulness as our own organism, and since this purposefulness can exist only as a result of thinking, and thinking in turn can exist only as a characteristic of an I, we thus see here that the organism, which the universe or cosmos constitutes, must also have an I. And so here we have arrived once again at the basis for being able to prove that the universe or cosmos is a "living being", and that the old saying about the Godhead and the living beings is true when it says: "In Him we live, and move, and have our being".