Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1798

1798. But if this cycle is thus a fact, it is also a fact that this cycle, like all other cycles in existence, must also have its seasons. It is thereby also an unshakable fact that the present terrestrial human mentality, with its sexual orientation and view of life, its manifestation of sympathy for, and attitude to, its neighbour and its resulting state of experiencing life, is only temporary. It is thus shifting. And if we follow this terrestrial mankind's course of life experience, it is easy to see that it constitutes the season of "winter", and that evolution is leading, not towards any kind of "autumn", but towards a "spring" in the cosmic spiral cycle. The fact is that it is a manifestation of sympathy between the beings that is greater than the previous manifestation that is evolving, giving rise to the longing for lasting peace. If we look back, we meet the energies from the autumn zone of evolution or the cycle. Here it was not a lasting peace between the beings that was the great, common wish among people. Here it was Valhalla, the great home of the gods, the great paradise for all heroes that kill and are killed, that one fervently hoped to be allowed to attain. But this favour could not of course possibly be granted for people who died of old age in the normal way. In order to get there one had to kill and be killed. One had to be a genius of strength and killing, so one could really subjugate and enslave other beings. Such were the highest divine ideals in a now almost dim and distant past. Surely no better fulfilment or satisfaction of this state of life can be imagined than the Armageddon that later, as life's zone of winter, was to come to control the world? Has the ability to murder, kill, torture and subjugate one's neighbour ever been greater than in our time? Has it not here reached the height of its culmination? Does not the berserker, the Viking or the robber of the past with his spear and shield pale in comparison to the modern bomber who, flying above the clouds carrying atomic bombs, can release the forces of Nature and produce earthquakes and the complete physical destruction of cities and millions of living beings in a fraction of a second? Indeed, have not Odin and Thor themselves been outdone or surpassed? Is not their position in danger? Is it not likely that there will be a downright revolution in Valhalla when these homicidal or genocidal killers of the twentieth century make their entry into the bloody home of the gods? The Valkyries will surely turn their backs on the old gods in admiration of the fantastic genius of the new gods. Must not even the old gods throw themselves to the ground in prostration before the modern conqueror of the elements and lord over the life and death of millions of people, this annihilator of peoples and cultures? Indeed, the death-bringing winter followed the domain of autumn just as surely as midnight follows evening, morning follows midnight, and noon follows morning in the day cycle.