Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1701

1701. The appearance of matter as "alive" or "dead" is thus merely a question of it being permeated by "spirit". Where this permeation is more or less brought to a standstill, matter is to a corresponding degree "unconscious" or "lifeless". Such an interruption of the spirit's permeation of matter is brought about by various methods including freezing vegetable and animal substances so that they can remain fresh for a considerable period. What is actually happening in such a case? What happens is that vegetable and animal matter is transformed into artificial mineral matter. Freezing matter forces it into a solid form where all conscious mental activity is rendered unviable. And here the spirit of the living microbeings that are incarnated in the vegetable and animal matter is forced out of the physical matter. From the spiritual plane they must now seek incarnation in another substance, where they can find expression for their thought, will or spirit. The movement or vibration in the abandoned physical matter, consisting of vegetable and animal corpses, is forcibly reduced to a minimum, a movement or vibration that is so infinitesimal that the corpses can be preserved apparently unchanged for centuries. Fresh meat that has been thoroughly frozen or encapsulated in ice can thus remain fresh for a certain period of time. But this freshness does not mean that the meat, when thawed, will be pervaded by the consciousness or spirit of the microbeings that originally constituted the life in the meat before freezing, for this spirit or life will have long since incarnated in other fresh meat, and will there have continued its spiral cycle. If the frozen meat seems to be fresh and unchanged when thawed, it is solely because the spirits of new microbeings have incarnated in the meat and brought it to life to the extent that the conditions for this are present, which in this case thus means to the extent that the meat has thawed. Freezing created the same thousands-of-years-old apparent stillness as that which prevails in all stone or rock formations and other deposits made of mineral matter. This absence of spirit or exclusion of vegetable and animal life from matter thus results in this matter remaining unchanged for thousands, indeed, millions of years or precisely as long as it is immune to the incarnation of spirit, consciousness or life. Only where life can incarnate does movement, change and creation occur. Where there is no spirit, and where spirit cannot incarnate in matter, there is the domain of lifelessness, that is to say, the domain of unconsciousness. There life is but sleep. It is this dormant state or absence of spirit we see in all mineral matter.