Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1653

1653. Since it at the same time finds itself in the midst of a world of "half-sex beings" of its own kind, its so-called "own sex", with whom it cannot experience the glimpses of bliss or the impulse of real life, it has no sexual interest in these beings. The one hundred per cent "half-sex being" has no talent for a sympathetic or loving connection or contact with beings of its own sex. There is no fire in such a being that here warms up its instincts so as to make it long to exchange caresses with these beings. And since these beings are at the same time rivals for beings of the opposite sex, which are, as will be remembered, a vital necessity for the balance of their mentality or mental life, they become, as already previously described in "Livets Bog", a nuisance or something that contributes to making life more difficult for their own sex. The beings of this sex will therefore in the worst case regard one another as deadly enemies and as beings they would prefer to see put out of the way so that they themselves could be the absolute monarch among the beings of the opposite sex. This mental attitude to the beings of one's own sex is the very first form of so-called "evil", and is known today by the concepts of "jealousy" or "envy". This "envy" is thus in reality a "drive for self-preservation". The "drive for self-preservation" is in turn the very trunk of the "tree of knowledge". It is the trunk on which all forms of hatred and thereby all forms of persecution or any designs on other beings' lives are the branches. Any kind of persecution of one's neighbour thus originates in "envy" or the "drive for self-preservation" in the same way as the branches of a tree originate from the trunk, and thereby get their vital nourishment from it. One can also say that the drive for self-preservation and its combined concentration of ideas – "selfishness" or "egoism" – is a river, and all the various forms of persecution of one's neighbour or forms of manifestation of unkindness are its tributaries, streams and brooks. And never before in the history of terrestrial mankind have these tributaries, streams and brooks of selfishness been a greater fact than they are today. Is not the entire terrestrial human existence in the present epoch an absolutely impenetrable labyrinth of these branches of selfishness? And was it not this culminating extent of selfishness or egoism that was predicted as "hell", "Armageddon" or the "day of judgment", and was not their epoch predicted as the "last days" after which a "new heaven" and a "new earth" would be revealed and prevail?
Thus we see here that the entire present-day terrestrial human mental appearance and fate originates in this division of the beings into two half-sex beings, and that access to bliss or the real experience of life through these beings is more or less based on an enslavement or extermination of one's own sex.