Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1647

1647. All reactions are desires and the satisfaction of desires; they are "processes of hunger and satiation". But since hunger is a feeling of unpleasantness, and satiation is a feeling of pleasantness, all reactions are thus a play between pleasantness and unpleasantness. Since the feeling of pleasantness is a manifestation of contact between the I and its experience of life and is therefore felt as wellbeing, while the feeling of unpleasantness is disharmony between the I and the above-mentioned experience and is felt as pain, the culmination of pleasantness or wellbeing is the highest step of the experience of life, while the culmination of unpleasantness is its lowest step. Between these two extremes, feelings or experiences of all other degrees of pleasantness and unpleasantness occur. And this ocean of different experiences of pleasantness and unpleasantness in connection with an I constitutes life itself or the living being. Without this connection there would be no life, no living being, but only an existing "something that is". But here we must of course bear in mind the triunity of the "X's", which gives rise to the fact that without this connection the I does not or cannot ever exist in any situation whatsoever. If it did not have this connection, it would have no life. But if it had no life, it would have no ability to move. How then could it begin to move again by means of complete stillness? Here too the living being's eternal existence is thus evident as a fact.