Living in two worlds…

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text dp_text_size=”size-4″]by Olav Johansson

The other day something happened that made me reflect a little more deeply on the fact that we, as terrestrial human beings, actually live parallel lives in two different worlds, an inner spiritual world of thoughts, feelings and memories and an outer physical world, to which we have a more or less automatic way of relating in many ways. Of course, it was not the first time I have experienced and reflected on this phenomenon, but what made this experience a bit special was that it contained an element or a few minutes that at other times usually make me more or less painfully aware of the fact that I live in a heavy physical body in a world of resistance – and sometimes with a head wind.

This is all about a long and at times rather steep hill, that I force myself to climb on a daily basis, peddling my bicycle on my way home from work. The hill offers me a degree of resistance that usually causes me to experience physical, bodily reactions in the form of a greater or lesser degree of breathlessness and sweating. That is why I have never before succeeded in reaching the top of the hill without being more or less painfully aware of the physical strain with which it is associated.

But this time it happened that (the whole distance that I cycle is about 7 kilometres one way, and the challenging hill appears after about 1-2 kilometres) I had probably cycled at least 5 kilometres before it suddenly dawned on me that I was actually sitting on my bike and must have already passed the hill – but I have absolutely no recollection of how it happened, due to the fact that I was so deeply involved in my own world of thought. I did not notice any bodily reactions either. A well-meant, but probably not complete, explanation or interpretation could of course be that the strength of my legs and my level of fitness had increased, and therefore the hill did not cause me the same resistance as it normally had earlier. But this alone cannot explain why this time I did not consciously notice passing it, because as late as the previous day the same situation had caught my attention.

Now, if, as some people claim, our consciousness is a by-product of our physical body and its evolution, then is it not a little strange that we can sometimes mentally “step out of” this body to the degree that we don’t even notice our physical situation and our surroundings? Furthermore, this phenomenon appears to grow as we develop. The common animal lives in its time-and-space-related present with all its senses focused on what is currently taking place in its physical surroundings. It is a product of the animal’s instinct of self-preservation that it needs to have this outwardly directed attention in the present all the time, since without it its life could be in danger. For the animal, this focus has therefore become a purely automatic function, which is also conditioned by the fact that its “spiritual bodies” – to use Martinus’ terminology – are still too undeveloped to create the possibility of this kind of mental “travelling” in time and space, which we who call ourselves human beings, to an increasingly higher degree fill our existence with. That we in this way can “travel” or shift our focus between an inner and an outer world shows that our state of development is neither totally physical nor totally spiritual.

The driving force of evolution in the physical world is what we could call “the principle of pleasure” or a striving to experience pleasantness and to avoid unpleasantness. In the common animal this is associated with its physical experiences and its physical body (or body of “gravity” as Martinus calls it). But when the animal reaches the stage of development of the terrestrial human being, another dimension of the experience of pleasantness and unpleasantness is added. Martinus explains this in the following way:

“Just as the reactions of the interplay between the body of gravity and the outer energy of gravity are identical to pleasantness and unpleasantness – that is to say, wellbeing and suffering – on the plane of gravity, so are the reactions of the interplay between the embryonic body of feeling and the outer energy of feeling identical to pleasantness and unpleasantness on the plane of feeling, but here wellbeing and suffering appear respectively as synonymous to “joy” and “sorrow”. The advanced being in the animal kingdom can thus also experience wellbeing and pain on the plane of feeling as well as on the plane of gravity, or the physical plane. But as the plane of feeling is not a physical plane but a spiritual one, this indicates that joy and sorrow are in reality by nature spiritual. And here we see again how terrestrial mankind’s daily existence to a large extent takes place in the spiritual world. But in accordance with the degree to which the individual can experience sensing on the plane of feeling itself, he also acquires the ability to manifest it likewise. In this way he gains the ability to create consciously joy and sorrow for fellow beings” (Livets Bog, vol. 1, section 193). 

We can therefore conclude that for us as terrestrial human beings the experience of pleasantness and unpleasantness is not just connected to the physical organism or the present. We can for instance also experience pleasantness and unpleasantness in the “spiritual space” that Martinus calls time. Memories of things and events that have been experienced a long time ago can still awaken pleasantness or unpleasantness in us in the form of joy and sorrow and can evoke both laughter and tears, just as our more or less speculative ideas about the future can create effects of the same kind in our inner world. Or as the writer Mark Twain once expressed it: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”

The fact that we live in two worlds does not only create more arenas for the experience of pleasantness and unpleasantness, it also gives us a “zone of protection” in relation to outer suffering or pain. We are not at the mercy of physical influences in the same way as the common animal is, since in our inner world we can experience something completely different that can allow us to forget physical pain and outer unpleasantness. Not least if we can see a meaning with the pain or the unpleasantness and thereby arrive at a conciliation in relation to them. They then seem to lose their sharpness and when enough time has passed since we experienced the pain, we may even experience them as “blessings in disguise”, that is, experiences that we absolutely would not wish to be without, since we realise that they have been important for our development.

According to Martinus the “body of gravity” is only one of six “bodies” with which we are always equipped in varying combinations and strengths (see symbol no. 12, “The Combination of the Basic Energies”). These bodies are subject to a cycle that involves that one of them is always at its culminating stage (in our case the body of “gravity” at our present step in development), two are increasing (in our case the body of feeling and the body of intelligence), two are decreasing (in our case the body of memory and the body of instinct) and one is latent (in our case the body of intuition). The reason why Martinus gives these forces of consciousness the designation “bodies” is that he claims, based on his personally acquired cosmic or intuitive sight, that they all are “material”, even if they are not physically material. Here is a quotation from my article, “Like fish in water …”.

“According to Martinus, rays and waves are also the kind of matter that all our thoughts, feelings, memories and dreams are made up of. But since these rays and waves are inaccessible to physical senses, and thereby for physical research, they cannot be explored by materialistic natural science. But this does not mean that they are “immaterial”. Just like everything else that is created, they are a part of the cycle of matter, more particularly the state in this cycle that Martinus designates the “ray-formed” state, which is the fourth, and for us invisible, form of existence besides the solid, liquid and gaseous matter. This ray-formed state furthermore forms the basis of the other three forms of matter that are mentioned above. Quotation:

“Just as matter can appear as “solid”, “liquid” or “gaseous”, it can also appear as “ray-formed” in visible or invisible form. And just as the physical organism cannot exist without being an interaction between the “solid”, “liquid” and “gaseous” conditions of matter, this interaction cannot possibly take place without being based on the “ray-formed” state. (Livets Bog, vol. 2, section 588).

And further:

“An individual’s fate is thus entirely based on the I’s manoeuvering of matter which means its combining of substances of different consistencies or appearance in the four different states of the cycle. By means of the “solid”, “liquid” or “gaseous” states of matter the individual creates the physical aspect of his fate, as well as his physical body or organism and the external phenomena or manifestations produced by them. Through the fourth state he creates the consciousness, the “mental” or “spiritual” part. Through the “ray-formed” state of matter the individual acquires material for creating his thoughts, his consciousness and exercise of willpower. It is in this “ray-formed” matter that the I creates its “mental” or “spiritual” bodies such as the bodies of instinct, feeling, intelligence, intuition and memory, which again determine the creation of the body of gravity, that is the physical organism” (Livets Bog, vol. 2, section 590).

These “ray-formed” forces and bodies are electrical by nature, but of such a “high-vibrating” or “finely electrical” kind that they cannot be perceived with physical senses or registered with physical measuring instruments. But it is these that make also the physical body and its organs alive. A criterion of brain death is that the measurable electrical activity in the brain has ceased. It is then a “short-circuited organic, electrical apparatus” (Livets Bog, vol. 6, section 2154). But we also know that a “short-circuiting” of an electrical apparatus affects only the apparatus, not the electric current. In the same way the “short-circuiting” that we call “death” affects only the apparatus that consists of the physical body – not its electric current in the form of our consciousness!

Also when we sleep, we temporarily step out of our physical day consciousness. What happens then – in any case during the so-called deep sleep – is that our day consciousness is initially moved from the “body of gravity” to the “body of feeling”, which is the body that is the next in turn to take over the role as the bearer of our day consciousness after the “body of gravity”. When you look at the two Martinus symbols that follow after the article you see that in the first symbol is the “body of gravity” (symbolised by the orange colour) the bearer of our day consciousness, while in the symbol below it is the “body of feeling” (symbolised by the yellow colour) that has taken over that role.

That happens also at the event we call “death” and during sleep. But this also takes place when the individual finally leaves the animal kingdom and enters what Martinus calls the “true human kingdom”. At that point the individual is just as brain-conscious or day-conscious in its spiritual existence as it is in its physical existence, and can therefore “travel” mentally between these planes of existence according to its own wishes.

Of course, for many people this sounds like a fairy-tale, but the fact that we are already spending increasingly more of also our awake time on the physical plane, “travelling” between our inner and outer world, shows where we are heading …

Symbol no. 6 The Living Being

For further explanation of the symbol go to: http://www.martinus.dk/en/martinus-symbols/overview-of-the-symbols/symbol-6

Symbol no. 90 The Living Being 1. Night-consciousness

For further explanation of the symbol go to: http://www.martinus.dk/en/martinus-symbols/overview-of-the-symbols-2/symbol-90

Mary McGovern & Sören Grind

Podcast; Our Eternal Core by – Mary McGovern & Sören Grind – [/vc_column_text][vc_text_separator title=”” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-right” i_color=”sky” i_size=”xs” color=”sky” border_width=”2″ el_width=”80″ add_icon=”true”][/vc_column][/vc_row]