Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1733

1733. It thus ought to be a matter of course that the time has come for every modern, thinking, intellectual human being to begin to understand that world peace is not something that is created outside its own innermost being by world politicians, so that it itself need only sit down and wait until the day these beings have solved the problem. Such a being must be advised in the strongest terms to reject this illusory view of its own situation. It must be made to understand that real, true peace is something that can be created in its own innermost being by itself alone. To the same extent as this innermost being is cleansed of animal tendencies, that is to say, selfish principles, to the same extent has the being become a cell in world peace. World peace is a unit that can be built and maintained only by cells whose individual mentality and innermost being are in themselves absolute peace, unselfishness or neighbourly love. Mankind cannot expect real, absolute peace as long as it is a unit consisting of cells (single individuals) that in themselves are more or less "war cells" and thus to a corresponding extent centres of discord and persecutors of their neighbour's general happiness and normal health. Such beings are "jungle cells". A whole in which these beings are cells can naturally become or be only a "jungle sphere" or the culmination of the animal principles that has been called "hell", the "Day of Judgment" or "Armageddon" and that is manifested particularly in the present age.
The peace that can be created by maintaining a police force and a highly developed judicial system for states and individuals is not actually peace. It is merely a kind of discipline, a kind of dressage. This peace can therefore be perceived only as coercion and loss of liberty as long as the being's mentality is animated by only selfish or animal desires, whose eradication or curbing is the very object of the legal proceedings and activity of the police force and the judicial system. The peaceful, unselfish nature in the being will inevitably render completely superfluous all judicial laws and every police force, as well as war and militarism. World peace can thus be created only by individuals who are cleansed of selfish tendencies, that is to say, beings that are animated solely by the view that "everyone is for his neighbour". How could peace consist of any other view? The animal view – that "everyone is for himself" – is that which prevails and which, through its thousand-year-old traditions, has established as a living fact, that it can manifest only discord, war and persecution. Because of this attitude beings must always fear beings. But how could beings who are afraid of one another create peace with one another?