Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1677

1677. "Hell" or darkness, in conjunction with "light" or the "kingdom of heaven", is thus the foundation of life. "Hell" is the dark colour with which the Godhead dims his superterrestrial flood of light to degrees that can be made accessible to sensory perception. It is these veilings of the Godhead's light that become the consciousness of the living being. It is these veilings that become the nuances in matter, the seven colours of the spectrum, and matter's degrees of solidity and gaseousness between its two extremes – "stone" and "spirit". It is the same veilings that form the kingdoms and seasons of the spiral cycle, just as they form childhood and maturity within the terrestrial life cycle, winter and summer within the year cycle, and night and day within the twenty-four-hour cycle. How, indeed, could existence take form without this veiling of the all-outshining divine light? And how could this veiling take place except through the absolute opposite of the heavenly light? And what could be the absolute opposite of this light other than the "darkness of hell"? Seen in conjunction with the world structure, this darkness is a part of the material through which the Godhead breathes consciousness, experience and the ability to think into all beings, and thereby blesses them with the "breath of life", with which he wishes to let all existing living beings become the living work of art that was the goal of his creation, namely the "human being in God's image". "Hell" is thus not a "curse", a "punishment" or a "manifestation of anger" on the part of Providence, but a vitally necessary factor in the universe's eternal structure of creation.