Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1391

1391. The fact that people can have only a theoretical experience that things are improving can of course make life nothing but a "mystery", uncertainty, fanaticism or superstition because people see that they will never experience this improvement for themselves (they will die or be wiped out long before this has become an actual reality) and that it can therefore be intended only for other beings who are fortunate enough to be born in the later era of this improvement. That one has oneself been allowed to belong to an era in which one can enjoy material, technical and chemical advantages that the stone-age human being could not benefit from, surely cannot possibly justify the circumstance that the stone-age human being had to live under harsh and primitive forms. Why is it that the beings must, generally speaking, die and be wiped out on the step on which they are born or have come into existence? Is it not easy to see here that all evolution, which means, this entire, great improvement of the living beings carried out by the process of creation, from the most primitive forms of life up to the beautiful and radiant forms of life and existence or mental and physical capability occurring today, is not in any way whatsoever experienced by the living beings themselves because they all die on the steps on which they are born? What intellectual human being or civilised being of today has experienced in its present terrestrial life being a "stone-age human being"? What bird of today has in its present life been a "lizard"? But it is nonetheless a fact that "lizards" have evolved into the "birds" of our day, just as terrestrial human beings have evolved from ape-beings into primitive human beings, and later into civilised human beings. But each of the fundamental steps of this evolution is of course so big that the individual beings are born and die on that step, so every step has its own beings. If every step thus really has new beings, that is beings that have never lived on the previous, lower steps, these beings have nothing to do with evolution. They cannot have taken part in the shortcomings or imperfections of the lower steps, just as they will never come to enjoy the perfections and benefits of the steps above. The true, realistic world they experience is thus merely the details of the step to which they each belong. The details of the other steps are the worlds of the other beings. But, from a mental point of view, the world of another being can be merely an abstract world. A bushman can thus probably see in a purely physical way that a civilised human being belongs to a higher mental sphere, but he himself will never be able to belong to this sphere, because it would demand such a long evolution that he would grow "old" and would have to "die" before this evolution could be completed. His terrestrial life becomes thus in reality merely a single "piece" in a larger mosaic, a single stitch in an embroidery. The "mosaic" or "embroidery" is called the "ladder of evolution". This "ladder of evolution" is thus fundamental to the great process of creation. It remains while the living beings "die" and disappear into the great "void". But who can believe this? Could the stupendous juggling with the forces, substances, worlds and billions of living beings by millions-of-years-long world epochs exist only in order to create a "ladder of evolution", that is to say, an abstract phenomenon for every single living being?