Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1619

1619. Terrestrial mankind has now eaten of the "tree of knowledge" to such an overwhelming extent that it has begun to be satiated with and to loathe all materialism. But through it, it has developed a colossal mastery of matter and, by means of huge motors and engines, can make the elements or Nature work for it. This mankind thus possesses a knowledge and know-how through which it can bring humaneness and love, and thereby joy and blessing, to undreamt-of heights of manifestation the day it understands how to use its intellectuality in the service of unselfishness instead of in the service of selfishness or egoism. And daily life has long since established that things are moving in precisely this direction. People are becoming satiated to bursting point with sufferings and difficulties, with unkindness and war. And the quicker this satiation increases, the greater the desire for the opposite, which in this case means a luminous existence. And once it is a scientific fact for the beings that a truly luminous existence cannot possibly be created in any other way than by letting the advanced materialistic knowledge and know-how they possess be promoted by unselfishness, it will be impossible for people to continue regarding acting selfishly as logical. And with the discovery of the illogicality of a selfish way of being, the struggle to free oneself from such a way of being arises; if the opposite were the case, the being would be abnormal. "Adam" and "Eve", which here means mankind, thus stand today at the gates of light, just as they once stood at the gates of darkness. And so they will just as inevitably go in through these gates of light or paradise as they once went out through them in order to go in through the gates or spheres of darkness and death.