Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1437

1437. But the living being is more than "matter". Treating it entirely as "matter", as something that one can cut, file or hammer nails into, as something one can break into pieces or join together as one pleases, creates a reaction in that part of this neighbour that is not matter, but "spirit". If the neighbour whose "spirit" has been treated as "matter" by a fellow being is just as ignorant as his tormentor, believing that everything is "matter" and allowing himself to react or get even by beating his neighbour's "spirit" with a hammer on an anvil, as if this "spirit" were "matter", iron or copper, what we call "war" arises. The beings hammer away at one another, each believing that it can fashion the other party to its own advantage. War is thus nothing but a result of the "dead" state or the "cosmic" ineptitude of "living beings". The beings that fell as warriors on the battlefield were already "dead" before they began the war. And the beings that won the war and became its victors are just as "dead" as their mutilated or murdered opponents. No beings "die" in war, for all those taking part in war are already "dead". And war is the sign that shows that these cosmically "dead" beings are truly or unmistakeably "dead". These "dead" beings call themselves "living beings" but treat one another as "matter" or "substance" and believe that they really can treat the "living" in the same way as they treat the "dead". And the "eating the tree of knowledge" was to lead the living being or "Adam" and "Eve" to this very point. They were to "surely die". They were to reach so far down into mental or cosmic barrenness that they really could not distinguish between "living beings" and "dead substance", and were therefore removed completely from their awareness or knowledge of their real immortality or eternal life. It is true that they see phenomena that they call "living beings", just as they also characterise themselves as such, but an understanding of the really "living" something in these beings and in themselves is lacking. They believe that this "living" something has a beginning and an end, and is thus merely a "created thing", which in turn means, a thing that is formed from "matter" and thereby constitutes "matter".