Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1582

1582. But this new section or the "real human kingdom" also has a dark area. Since real, bodily sensations of pain, illness and suffering can be experienced only in the animal kingdom itself, the darkness in the "real human kingdom" is not physical pain and suffering. It is merely satiation with the particular forms of bodily states or organisms with which one could fulfil or satisfy one's desires for manifesting neighbourly love in this kingdom. These particular forms become, as it were, antiquated, and the longing for new organisms more suited to the progressing expansion of "cosmic consciousness" becomes acute; it becomes the all-outshining object of one's experience of life; it becomes the "light". And it is the consummation of this longing that gives the being access to the next kingdom of love, the "kingdom of wisdom". And in this way, in the form of the perfecting of the body, "light" and "darkness" come into existence in the even higher kingdom of love, the "divine world", in which love itself culminates. From here the being grows into the next kingdom, the "kingdom of bliss", in which it re-experiences the entire past cycle, in order, through becoming satiated with this, to gain a desire or longing for the new spiral cycle's main manifestations of "darkness" and "light". After its long experience of light in the "kingdom of bliss", the being now experiences "darkness" as "light" or idealism. And through this mental attitude it begins to enter the outer world. And it is this entry of life into the outer world of the beings of bliss that gives rise to the emergence of the "mineral kingdom" and thereby to the beginning of a new spiral cycle. Through the desire to eat of the "tree of knowledge" the beings are now led further in the new spiral cycle, through its "plant kingdom" into its "animal kingdom", in order to experience there what it is to "surely die". After this experience, life or the beings are led further towards the higher worlds of the spiral cycle, and so on continuously, spiral cycle after spiral cycle for ever or for all eternity. That "light" is experienced in the first part of a kingdom in a spiral cycle is thus ensured above all by the fact that the being is one hundred per cent in harmony with its wishes and desires. It has met the requirements for gaining access to the kingdom. Here it no longer has any struggle. It no longer finds any difficulty in being in harmony with the ideals of the kingdom concerned.
But gradually, as satiation sets in, so too does dissatisfaction with its current way of life or the "light" in which it lives. And a longing for the ideals of the next kingdom begin to develop. But at the same time as this longing or desire develops, the evolution of the conditions within the organism for these new ideals also begins to make its presence felt in the old bodily or organic structure, which thus begins to degenerate correspondingly.

Symbol no. 12

Life and Death