Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1840

1840. As for Nature's processes of creation, they are just as logical, law-bound and purposeful as the living beings' manifestations or creations. Is the genesis of the Earth not a gradual transformation and purposeful adjustment to circumstances that are a vital necessity for its inhabitants today? And is it not a correspondingly fortunate and purposeful relationship that is manifest between the Earth and the sun? Is this relationship not a law-bound, purposeful interplay, the result or effect of which means life for the billions of living beings on Earth? And are not all the forces of Nature bound by law in a purposefulness that, when complied with, means life, light and happiness everywhere, and death, darkness and unhappiness or suffering when not complied with? Is there not a law-bound purposefulness behind the existence of every living being, a law-bound purposefulness that cannot be infringed in any way whatsoever without giving rise to an immediate, corresponding disharmony in this existence? Is not all illness, all suffering – as well as all war between one man and another, and thereby the present Day of Judgment or "the war of everyone against everyone else" or the lack of peace and harmony in terrestrial mankind's existence – due to the fact that this existence is based not on chance but on a law-bound system, complete compliance with which is the foundation of peace, harmony and love and is thereby a guarantee for happiness and zest for life, a system that terrestrial mankind has not yet sufficiently respected or complied with? How can one imagine – in the middle of such planning and purposefulness, in the middle of the revelation of such an abundance of wisdom or human intellectuality in Nature's purposeful creation around us and in the love-revealing law-boundedness unveiled through this – that this creation, this huge ocean of logical manifestations or the universe itself could be merely an ocean of chance coincidences? Would it not be foolish to believe that the highest, rational experience and conscious or willed creative ability in this immeasurable ocean of purposeful processes of creation are to be found only in the terrestrial human being, this comparatively small microbe, which can be regarded only as a speck of dust in a storm? Is it not glaringly obvious that such a world picture cannot be a product of the purposefulness that Nature reveals through all its other processes of creation? Does not such a world picture correspond precisely to the disharmony or foolishness that always arises when living beings themselves prevent Nature's purposefulness being manifesting itself completely? Is it not likely that the microbe is slightly mistaken in its way of thinking? Nature has of course also a law-bound system for thinking. If this were not the case, there would be no one who could think perfectly or imperfectly. Where a being's thinking is an infringement of Nature's law-bound system for thinking, this being's contact with the planning or life-giving purposefulness that is the universal foundation for Nature's process of creation or manifestation is interrupted. And where a being loses contact with the purposefulness of Nature, which in turn is the same as the meaning of life, there can be only confusion of ideas, disharmony and thereby suffering and depression. And is it not just such a confusion of ideas that the modern materialistic world picture represents or constitutes when it claims to be an ocean that has arisen from chance, and is controlled by chance, and that the sole rational, conscious creation and experience in this immeasurable ocean of releasing energies is to be found only in the terrestrial human microbe and the other microbial beings recognised by this microbe? Imagine how sparse life is! The gigantic manifestation of the entire universe, its vast heavenly sphere, planets, suns and stellar cities, its oceans of colours, rays and movement, its variations of light and darkness, sounds and waves, time and space, this entire gigantic body has no more life and consciousness than that which can be contained within the terrestrial human microbe, this random speck of dust in one random area or another within this universe, just as the same vast scenery also does not have any other witness than the same random speck of dust in a storm. In truth, here the culmination and most extreme consequence of the eating of the tree of knowledge has been reached. Death broods upon the face of the waters.