Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1384

1384. "Neighbourly love" is thus the very highest form of mental and bodily ability. It is the very culmination of the experience of life. And thus the many evolutionary epochs in the history of the Earth, each lasting millions of years, are given their inevitable and unshakeable meaning. How else could this entire panorama of evolution have meaning? What would be the use of this enormous, logical process of creation, which has been able to transform glowing, burning, fluid, fiery masses into a heavenly body so tremendously richly endowed and brilliantly equipped with conditions for all human happiness as that shown by our planet, if it were to be merely a dwelling place for living beings or a mankind whose sensory capacity could never increase in scope, but would continue being the worst, insurmountable obstacle to the beings' own understanding, utilisation and enjoyment of these conditions and wealth? Is one to believe that Providence would have used all these millions-of-years-long epochs to manipulate the forces of Nature in order to create nothing but a living being that is its own worst enemy and that has such an inferior intellectual capacity that its ideals are "capital punishment" and the mutilation and destruction of other living beings, a living being that can perceive real "neighbourly love" as nothing but "abnormality"? As the planet is equipped with such abundant conditions for the creation of human culture and happiness as is the case, is it not then conceivable that this must be aimed at a mankind that really will attain a complete ability and talent to live among these riches and enjoy the completely beneficent happiness and joy ensuing from these, a happiness and joy that, under the concept of "peace", is already the innermost desire or most profound longing of all terrestrial human beings? Or is one to believe that Providence has used all these millions-of-years-long epochs in order merely to develop a being whose mentality today is a single great, burning question mark, a being for which everything around it – life, Nature and itself – is nothing but a "mystery", a being that knows nothing of its own I or its eternal, immortal nature, but believes itself to be one with matter and therefore asks, "What, who and why am I"? When Providence set in motion such a vast process of creation as that which we have seen the Earth undergoing for thousands of millions of years, it could surely not have been in order to create only a being that is filled with a glowing desire to know about itself, life and existence without ever being able to get an answer? A burning question is an equally burning desire. Is one to believe that the transformation or cycle of the elements from the state of fire into the mineral, vegetable and animal state over aeons of time took place only in order to create a being with a desire that could never be satisfied? The ultimate result or purpose of the divine process of creation would thus be nothing but a cosmically naive, ignorant being that is raised above a complete state of sleep or unconsciousness just sufficiently to enable it to sense its cosmic naivety or ignorance as an obstacle and a pain that it has no possibility of getting rid of, since the answer to its burning question or desire to know about its life is merely an expression of hopelessness: "the ways of the Lord are beyond understanding". Truly a rather poor result. What would be the use of creating in the being's consciousness a desire for something that does not exist. If this were the ultimate result of the divine process of creation, all the people of the Earth, from a cosmic point of view, would be abnormal beings. They would be martyred by a mental desire for which there would be absolutely no satisfaction. A godhead that could send the living beings into such a state could not be normal either. If the living beings were never to be able to obtain a real, concrete answer to their questions about the eternal facts, the deepest secret of their I and the identity of their existence as temporal or eternal, if the living being's true cosmic origin or identity and the existence of the Godhead were eternally to be questions that one could not possibly have answered, then the Godhead – the source of the entire logical, gigantic, millions-of-years-long creation – would be merely a revelation of "perversity" and "sadism", and the most profound mission of His work would be to torture and martyr the living beings for all eternity. How can a process of evolution that does nothing but bring the beings to the point of being able to perceive the highest structure of the whole of existence as a "mystery", as a question that they hunger and thirst to have answered, a desire that they can never have satisfied, a wish that can never be fulfilled, be anything else?