Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1398

1398. But where does the terrestrial human being's strange attitude to the world picture as a whole and to its local details come from? What is wrong? Is it not, in brief, the fact that the terrestrial human being consciously or unconsciously ignores the "life" behind the world picture? It is preoccupied to such a great extent with the outer surface of the universe, indeed, is simply dazzled by it, yet does not see the "life" itself beneath this surface or behind the universe's masses of materials. Therefore its reasoning is inevitably as glaringly illogical as it is. It sees that those details of the whole that it can take in sufficiently are logical. But if each of these details is logical, they must of course be useful. And if they are useful, they must thus be loving, which means mentally radiant. But even if the individual thus sees that all these details are mentally radiant, it nevertheless cannot understand that the whole must then be radiant. A body that consists only of radiant details or, in a way, of small suns, must thus inevitably also be a radiant body. A city of suns cannot be dark. A phenomenon that consists exclusively of white things can never appear as a black thing. And this is the terrestrial human being's greatest mental shortcoming of today. As already mentioned, it perceives that the local details of the whole, as far as it itself can see them, are radiant, but it nonetheless comes to the conclusion that the whole is a large, dead or lifeless mass. It is certainly formed as a "ladder of evolution" on whose steps there are living beings, but since these living beings cannot survive the step they are standing on, this "ladder of evolution" appears as a "flight of steps" that no being whatsoever can ascend, since they, as previously mentioned, cannot survive the step on which each of them is situated. If people see the universe as a flight of mental steps, there must be something wrong with their sight if they cannot see that it is used by any living being. If none of the living beings can survive the step on which they are standing today, there is of course no reason whatsoever to form the whole as a "flight of steps" or as a "ladder". Of what use is a "ladder" if there is no being whatsoever that can use its steps? Of what use is an instrument or tool if there is no one to use the tool? Is it not conceivable that it is here that the perception of the terrestrial human being falters. It has not perceived the "something" that is to use the "ladder" or "flight of steps". The "life" that is to mount the steps is unknown to the terrestrial human being. "Death" is therefore the dominating factor in all its reasoning.