Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1575

1575. Thus the sensory experience of the principle of cycles occurs through the feeling of hunger and satiation. When one is hungry one has a desire to eat. Eating then feels "pleasant". But through eating one becomes satiated. And when satiation sets in, the feeling of eating is transformed from being something "pleasant" to being something "unpleasant". That which was previously perceived as something "pleasant", is now perceived as something "unpleasant". For this reason one stops eating when one is satiated, and not eating becomes "pleasant". But as the food is gradually digested, the feeling of satiation is transformed into a feeling of hunger. Eating then becomes a "pleasure" again. But it is not merely in the daily process of nutrition that the "feeling of hunger" and the "feeling of satiation" cause a manifestation to be perceived alternately as something "pleasant" and something "unpleasant". It occurs with all sensations without exception. There is thus no single enjoyment or pleasure that does not have its opposite stage in a cycle where it is not an "enjoyment" or "pleasure", but something "unpleasant" for the senses. It is for this reason that ways and customs are changed. The ways and customs, indeed, even the moral concepts that were acknowledged as absolutely ideal are always inevitably rejected as unsatisfactory by later times or generations. What one previously regarded as satisfying mental wellbeing or "pleasure" in the structure of daily life is thus later perceived or felt as something "unpleasant". New structures in the culture that are perceived as idealistic and thereby "pleasant" replace the old structures, which are then in turn gradually perceived as something "unpleasant" or "unsatisfying", and are replaced by new structures, which are at first also perceived as "pleasant", only later to be replaced because they are perceived as "unpleasant", and so on continuously.

Symbol no. 12

Life and Death