Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1698

1698. Since we now know that the existence of the living beings in our spiral is experienced as "substance" or "matter" in the overlying spirals, it is easy to understand the "vegetable" and "animal" substance in our own spiral or in our own sensory sphere. The units within the two substances can of course be nothing other than "living beings" respectively; they can be nothing other than "plants" of a kind and "animals" and "human beings" of a kind in the spirals that lie immediately under us. This does not of course have to mean that they are vegetable and animal beings of exactly the same kind as those in our own spiral. On the contrary, they could not possibly be exactly the same. These small beings are identical, not in their bodily form, but in principle, to the vegetable and animal beings in other spirals. Since we now understand that the units in the animal substance in our own organism are "living beings", and the same is partly the case in the vegetable substance in our own sphere, it is not difficult to understand why these two substances have been described as "living", while mineral substance, whose units are not "living beings", are described as "lifeless". The term "living substance" should be taken to mean "substance" whose units consist of "living, wakingly day-conscious beings", while "lifeless substance" consists only of unconscious "power centres" or "power units". As previously mentioned, it is from here that concepts such as atoms, electrons and so on are derived. The fact that animal substance, unlike mineral substance, registers pleasantness and unpleasantness, pain and well-being, is not so surprising since these feelings are the living beings' mental and physical reactions to their experiences on their own plane of existence, which, through their combination of nerves, can be transmitted to the macro-I's knowledge, spirit or mentality. The macro-I cannot, however, perceive these reactions as an intellectual explanation of the individual microbeing's experience, but, on the contrary, as the merging of this experience with the experiences of thousands, indeed, millions of other fellow beings. Only by force of their number do they become a current that is strong enough to be registered by our nerves and senses as well-being or pain, depending on whether the general condition of the tiny beings is well-being or pain. The fact that mineral substance cannot send any mental reaction through the nerve combination to the macro-I so that it is registered as knowledge is also a matter of course since the substance in question does not consist of day-conscious living beings and consequently cannot register well-being or pain or express any kind of mentality. This is the reason for the "unconsciousness" or "lifelessness" of mineral substance.