AES
Current mood: excited

I just watched Zeitgeist Addendum (ZA) and I was really intrigued by the way the authors presented the ideas of this movement called the Venus Project (TVP). The ideas of TVP, concerning a fundamentally different system from what we now know which is based on resources instead of money, is quite simular to Martinus views regarding the World State. You can read about the latter here: http://www.geocities.com/athens/olympus/3987/marworld.html

Facing the greatest financial crisis in the history of it's independence, Iceland is suffering a severe economic meltdown resulting in massive layoffs, inflation, decrease of purchasing power because of the drop of the Icelandic currency etc.  The situation was made worse as the British government invoked a 2001 antiterrorism act to freeze an Icelandic bank's assets in Britain.Without this monetary system in place everything would still be in full blossom because of wealth in knowledge and technological advancement, but Iceland is an advanced welfare society which used to be one of the richest countries in the world. Now we are suffering from a completely useless currency making international trade almost impossible. Why is it that one of the most advanced societies in the world is suffering from a recession that is quite unneccecary or uncalled for. Why is that?

I think, if you have watched ZA, the answer to that question is quite obvious. The monetary system causes inflation and recession independent from the political system in place, whether it be communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism or liberalism etc. I find the perspective in the movie where technological advancement is said to be the number one factor of human evolution, to be quite logical. Money are becoming more and more obsolete. In fact, money or business for profit can be an obstacle to the technological advancement of human beings, e.g. because of patents and knowledge or information concealment. This important factor, that money or search for profit can actually be an obstacle to human advancement, I think is something very inventive and almost ground-breaking. This is something I don't think Martinus ever talked about. On the other hand the element that makes TVP not as ground-breaking as it seems is in fact the very basis of their Alternative Economic System (AES), i.e. the monetary-free system. In fact TVP are not the first to come up with the idea of a money-free system. Martinus ideas concerning a monetary-free system or an AES of the World State were written in the 1930's in his first book, Livet's bog I.

Now let us look closer at the simularities:

• TVP talks about machines doing all the work. Martinus predicted that the maschines would, to a greater or lesser extent, replace human labour.
• TVP claimes that with the AES commerce would no longer exist whereas products would no longer be of any value in the alternative economic system.  In a simular manner Martinus says that the international world-court of the future will have to cancel the general principle of the present system of trade "which actually depends on all goods have to be paid by an excess price, because it is based on- not earning, but- a profit"².
• Everyone can enjoy a high standard of living with all the amenities of a high tech society¹.
• TVP says that in a resource-based economy all of the world's resources are held as the common heriatge of all of Earth's people. Martinus says that in the era of the World state all resources will be in the state's possession and then "there will only remain on Earth but one single property-owner or capitalist, namely, united terrestrial humanity"².
• TVP states that by overcoming scarcity produced by the monetary system, most of the crimes and even the prisons of today's society would no longer be necessary. This is exactly what Martinus says about the life of the coming World State:

"Therefore, as there cannot be any financial crises in the coming world-administration - no high prices, no struggle for money and valuable goods, no mutual exploitation of individuals, no "gratis-existences" no parasites on society, no unemployment, no homelessness, no need for poor-relief or subsidies, no super-abundance and no poverty, but, on the contrary, a healthy prosperity and easy access to all material and spiritual values for everyone, then the kingdom of the world will be far from tedious; it will not be a life in servitude and bondage, nor will there be any ideals of wealth and power, but quite the opposite - a life of ideals which can only be concentrated on the highest endeavour for representing the greatest effective performance, the most beautiful work, the most perfected creation and the deepest love. In this way, life in the realm of this planet can be only a life in the highest freedom, spirit and culture, a life in the greatest harmony, happiness and joy " (Martinus, 1959: 114)².

There are, however, some things that differ between TVP resource based economy and Martinus World State. For example there is the factor about labour or work. According to ZA TVP says that in their system people would not have to work but according to Martinus people would be required to render minimal work to support themselves. Martinus says that machines will replace most hard labour and shorten the work week so people will enjoy more leisure time. People will only work in their area of interest and thus they will be able to do more and be more efficient:

"Finally the working hours that are required are only those that it will cost for them to maintain themselves. It shall not pay for their children. It shall not pay for their partner. All beings will be paying during their working époque [period] that they will have- from when they are about 20 years of age and forward on until they shall not work any more. In these working hours, that they will perform, it is accounted for their childhood, ageing and their states of sickness, so that no individual will live at the benefit of another. There is nothing that has a value. You cannot go and sell something. You only have your passbook, which shows that you have done the work you shall do. Thereby you have access to the living standard, that was precisely paid for ³"

For me this project named after the warmest planet of the solar system, Venus, is perhaps just the thing the world currently needs. People are eager for change and even though there are 2-3000 years until we will have the perfect World state on earth there is still room for dreams for a brighter future.

References:

1) The venus project website: http://www.thevenusproject.com/

2) Martinus. (1959). Livets Bog I (The Book of Life 1) (A. Örnsholt, transl.). Copenhagen: Martinus Institute of Spiritual Science.

3) http://home3.inet.tele.dk/thorkil/cosmology/index.html

9:21 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Contrasts of life
Current mood: imaginative
Category: Life

Now it is mid summer in Iceland. It is the most beautiful period of the summer when the contrasts are at their peak. The summer solstice is over now and it's starting to get dark again at night. That reminds people of the existence of darkness which is mostly absent in brightest period of Iceland's summer season (around June 21st).

People that visit my country find that there is intense energy all around. In the rocks, rivers, glaciers and mountains the spirit of nature unfolds with it's myriad forms. Martinus once wrote that Icelandic people see beings in the landscape because of the energy from the rocks. The beauty of the mineral kingdom on the material plain stem from the kingdon of bliss on the spiritual plain. Hence the folk lore that elfs and huldufolk (i.e. hidden people) life in rocks and hills close to peoples residence. What an individual is actually seeing when he thinks he sees an elf or a huldumann (i.e. hidden person) is only a reflection from the spiritual world.

There are few places in the world that are as lively and have as vibrant geology as in Iceland. The land is forming and changing every minute and every second. Earth quakes happen several times per hour and beneath the island is a hotspot which causes great volcanic activity. The weather is harsh and people who lived here before the industialization had to live under extreme conditions often with few or little resourses. Even though catholic and later Lutheran influences were substancial, the folk belief and mythology was strong in the national mentality and played (and still playes) an important part in the national image building of Icelanders.

Today Iceland is a rich country with one of the highest GDP per capita in the world and the best living conditions. Even though the currency is weak and unstable the standard of living is one of the highest in the world. As a welfare state with capitalist system there are, of course, many social issues and problems. Is it possible to presume that quality of life is good, given the fact that living standards are high in the country? I believe not. Many maladies are bothering Icelanders and are all more or less side effects of capitalism or materialism.

Could it be that the industralization or modernity has interupted these unique ties Icelanders have had with the Icelandic nature? Or is it maybe that we have evolved to that point where we are able to exploit forces of nature for our benifits? Could it be both? Maybe the Indians are true when they say we are disconnected from mother nature because of our lower natures or instincts resulting in the destruction of earth. Martinus beliefs that material progress or that state of development where human beings become masters of matter to be a premise for the formation of the true human kingdom on earth. This process is not very pretty for it will result in Armageddon or Ragnarok. But as the saying goes "it's always darkest before dawn". In the dark times ahead it is important to be loving; to be a spiritual sun in the darkness for other fellow human beings that have been led astray.

Rejoice for the spirit of truth will soon arrive to carry the message of hope to those who have lost their path on the road of life.

Blessings

ITH

6:26 AM - 5 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

A Chrismas Story by Martinus

In the occation of Christmas I thought it be appropriate to put on my blog a lecture,  once given by Martinus  (in December 1946), called "A Christmas Story". It's one of my favorite lectures and shows how versatile and a great writer and a speaker Martinus really was (e.g. he usually held lectures without a written material or preperation).

A CHRISTMAS STORY

The basic principle of Christmas is to light a candle in the darkness

Since we have now again reached that time of year when the Christmas lights begin to glow around us, as they have already long been doing in the shops and soon will also do in homes all over the Christian world, I would like to talk today about the Christmas tree.

The principle of spiral cycles

What then is a cycle? It is a period of time within which living beings experience the four existing basic principles of the manifestation of life: spring, summer, autumn and winter. These principles are in turn respectively the same as evolution, culmination, degeneration and the latent state. Nothing in the world can exist without representing one or other of these four principles. Every single thing finds itself either in the stage of evolution and thus represents spring, or it is at its culmination and thus represents summer, or it is degenerating and represents autumn, if it does not appear in an apparently lifeless state, the latent state of life that we call winter.

If we imagine a twenty-four hour-period, of which today's daytime is a part, we can see that it is also a cycle within which the same principles hold true. This moment is a part of the day's "spring", but in our language we do not express it in this way; we say that it is "morning". However, we know that the sun is at its highest in the sky at 12 noon, at which point in time the day manifests its principle of summer which we call "noon". In this way the afternoon becomes the day's "autumn", and night the day's "winter".

If we think of the human being's own organism, we can also see there how it expresses one or another of the four seasons. Either it belongs to the child-stage and so still constitutes something of the latent physical form of life, the principle of winter, or it belongs to youth, which is the same as the principle of spring, a state in which the previously latent powers unfold and start to develop. Some people's organisms have reached the stage where they represent "summer", the age of maturity which is the culmination of the unfoldment of consciousness on the physical plane if they have not already reached the physical degeneration of old age which, expresses the principle of "autumn". But, just as the cycles of the year create a cohesive chain and a continuous renewal based on the same laws and principles, so our present life, within which our organism at the moment represents one of the four seasons, is only a little link in a chain of lives, only a "day" in a much larger cycle, which is called reincarnation, within the cosmic spiral cycle which you know from the analyses in "Livets Bog" (The Book of Life). In this way, everything that we can at all sense and experience is a link in a cycle which repeats itself in higher and higher forms. This is also true of "lighting a candle in the darkness".

Spiritual light and darkness

Just as we can be tired or satiated of the physical darkness and hunger after lighting the physical candle, so can one also become tired of darkness on another plane and likewise there long for light. The "other plane" I am talking about is a cycle of darkness and light which lies above the physical plane. It is thus not a question of physical darkness and light but of psychic or mental darkness and light.

What do we mean by this? Here we understand everything that has to do with our thought-life, our mental structure, which expresses itself in the physical world through our nervous systems. By virtue of this structure we sense a darkness and a light which lie on a higher plane than the physical. This darkness we know of as sorrow, dejection, hopelessness, depression and a sense of being forsaken by God; it may also be characterised as the human being's ignorance of his own identity as an eternal immortal being. And the light on the same plane - we know it as joy, inspiration, zest for life, love and creative power - can also be characterised as the beginning of cosmic consciousness, or the high-intellectual state where a being possesses knowledge about his immortality and cosmic identity.

The spiritual light is the true Christmas candle

Since people live mentally in the sphere of sorrow and sufferings, which is the winter zone of the soul, it is not surprising that the same beings long for or hunger after the light of the soul, its spring and summer. Just as there is a joy in lighting a physical candle in the dark period of the year, it is also about to become a joy to light a candle in the zone of spiritual darkness, and it is this spiritual light which is the true Christmas candle which all physical Christmas candles that are lit at this time symbolise on the physical plane. To light a real or true Christmas candle will thus be the same as lighting joy and zest for life in living beings' minds. The being who lights a candle and so brings zest for life into other human beings' spirit is a "cosmic Christmas candle".

The great world-redeemers have all been strong, shining beings in terrestrial mankind's mental winter zone

Looking back at the history of mankind, we see beings who have been so expert at illuminating souls that millions of people even today maintain their zest for life by virtue of this light. The great world-redeemers and truly wise men have all been strongly shining beings in terrestrial mankind's mental winter zone; what they, through writings, speech and behaviour, have given as neighbourly love, as information and wisdom, has enriched people's minds and made it easier for them to bear the burdens which weigh them down in life's sphere of darkness. If the light from these beings had not shone in the terrestrial human beings' winter zone, the history of mankind would have contained only descriptions of wars and more wars. The killing principle would have manifested itself to an extent which is impossible to imagine. Not in one single place would there have been hope of spiritual summer and sunshine, all hope would have been abandonned and spiritual polar night's ice-storms would shriek and whistle a funeral song over dead souls.

But this is not the case. Even though mental winter storms with cold, frost and death have raged over mankind's mental sky, hope has not left us, precisely because the Godhead, through the strong warming light of the world-redeemers, has lit a new hope, new longings, inspiration, joy and courage to face life in terrestrial mankind's dark mental winter night. Here we meet Christmas in its very highest revelation; mankind's history reveals to us that we are at a Christmas party given by the eternal Father himself. Terrestrial mankind is the dark fir tree on which the eternal Godhead has already lit, and is still in the process of lighting, shining and sparkling "Christmas candles" in the form of the world-redeemers and all the protagonists of humanity. Cosmic consciousness, high-intellectuality, the experience of immortality and of being one with the Father, and the ensuing lasting peace or bliss, are the Christmas presents mankind one day will receive. For most people these presents are still hidden for a time behind the great tree on which the individual human being himself will become a shining candle lit by the flame from a candle which has previously been shining clearly. When the human being himself becomes a Christmas candle whose warm humaneness radiates to all sides it will also be the time for this human being to receive the divine presents. The universe is God's great assembly hall; the planets, solar systems and galaxies are each of them windows which face the world of time and space. But we are ourselves eternity. One with the Father, we outlive suns and stars in order to see new suns and stars be lit. We are the masters of life and death; it is we who light and blow out the candles, our use of the will is our voice in the universe's hymn of thanksgiving and hymn to life. Equally well it can resound with a death-song, since death is necessary, but only in order that what dies can be born into a new life in higher forms, to the darkness of higher cycles where a greater candle can be lit in the darkness to make the shadows of the night retreat.

The "kingdom of heaven" will come to radiate from all people

Many people today take the attitude that they have "grown out of celebrating Christmas". They do not know that they are in the middle of a cosmic Christmas party where candles are continuously being lit in the darkness. But as long as human beings do not know this, it is divinely granted that people at any rate once a year celebrate the festival of light and experience the joy of giving. With Christmas we celebrate the fact that a child was born on this planet, a child who grew up and became a spiritual candle for people, a divine messenger from "the kingdom of heaven".

But he told people that "the kingdom of heaven" is also within them. There where the human being is prepared to serve rather than be served, there where he will rather suffer himself than be the cause of others' suffering, and there where he works on developing his humane abilities for the benefit of the whole, is "the kingdom of heaven" not only within him but beginnning to radiate out from him in thoughts, words and actions. It is "the mentality of Christmas", a mental Christmas candle which lights up in the mental winter night. One can train oneself to achieve a real Christmas in one's own inner self by seeking to control one's own mind. There is plenty to irritate one or make one angry or bitter, even at Christmas-tide; this is the spiritual darkness, the snow-storm and the biting frost. It is the "Herod-mentality" which wants to kill "the Christ-child". But we of course know from the Christmas gospel that "the Christ-child" was not killed; he was saved from Herod's soldiers.

This old story tells us not only about an event which has taken place but about an event which is still taking place. The Christ-child was born not only in Bethlehem almost two thousand years ago; his birth is also about to take place this very day in you, in the individual human being. When the Christmas-tree shines and sparkles with so many candles and the star on the top, when people take each other by the hand and form a chain as a symbol of what people of all colours and all nationalities will one day do, when they sing about "peace on earth, joy on earth" and give each other presents, they also celebrate the birth of the Christ-child in their own inner innermost selves.

My cosmic analyses are a logical progression of thought, but they are also part of the Christmas message

It has been my particular mission to transfer the cosmic principles to intellectual analyses so that they suit both intelligence and intuition. These analyses are a logical progression of thought which the developed human being who has experience-material to work with can appropriate and see if they fit with those manifestations of life he meets in daily existence. But it is also a part of the Christmas gospel. There where these analyses become knowledge for you, a part of your lives, there is also world peace. Where cosmic knowledge becomes a reality for both the feelings and thoughts, neighbourly love must unfold itself, not as sentimentality but as real love which in an appropriate way benefits the individual being as well as the whole. I do not mean that because one works with spiritual science one becomes too "grown up" to celebrate Christmas. On the contrary, through spiritual science one comes to see many things in a different perspective than from before, and this will, with time, change the materialistic aspects of the customs of Christmas.

But it has become a necessity for people to celebrate the principle of Christmas, "to light a candle in the darkness", especially for those who live in the earth's physical winter zone. And it is important to think about the fact that the "basic notes of Christmas", the candles, the peace it is to give presents are the same as "the basic notes of the universe", neighbourly love, to be of benefit to the whole. It is that mentality which in time will be spread throughout the whole year and over the entire earth; then the "Christmas story" will have become a radiating reality in a physical world, and the earth a "Christmas star".

(Original Danish title: "Et juleeventyr" transcribed from a lecture given in December 1946, and edited and published in the Danish edition of Kosmos no.16,1973)

5:15 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The World’s situation
Current mood: Intellectual
Category: Intellectual Life

In connection to a discussion I had with Evolving in one of my early blog post on MySpace Blog where she declaired her concerns for Martinus prophecies I want to quote a good man, Sören Jensen,  who has written a great deal about the modern prophet in the Discussion Forum on the Third Testament website (www.thirdtestament.com). This is part of a conversation Sören had with a man on the forum:

Dear Guido
As you know The Third Testament describes the principles/fundament for the coming finished human kingdom on earth.
Concerning how to get there I see Martinus meeting us in whatever subject and through analyze showing the way, which is always a personal moral matter.
The physical world is not what it looks like. Being rich or poor are – cosmically seen – a matter of learning situations. The almighty loving Father is helping his daughter/son to understand that giving is the only thing they need to learn to create happiness and overwhelming richness. Not as a sudden fanatic decision, but through a natural step by step process of seing ones own animal tendencies and only cultivate the human behaviour.
According to Martinus "being rich" is no compliment from God, and "being poor" is no punishment, because both are necessary experiences for everyone to go through from incarnation to incarnation. The way we meet this destiny shows what we´ve still left to learn.
Buddha left his rich surroundings to serve the sick and the poor, Muhammed cared for the fatherless children, Jesus was born in the stable as also Martinus spend his childhood with the stable behind the wall.
A human genius would never want to live through the life of others, understanding that freedom can only be build through our own work.

As Jesus told his disciples: the coming finished human kingdom on earth is born in the inside. This is the place to sow the seeds of giving instead of taking, and the first place for human culture to arrive.

But this analyzes inspired by The Third Testament is followed by comments to today's world. One must be able to see what`s wrong before wanting to change. Martinus also analyzes of the world of today. He's main point is that the cosmic truth principle of trading: giving as good as one gets, is today replaced with the principle of the strongest taking what he wants. The price for a specific product is determined by the strongest, smartest etc. This happens through the struggle between employers, union workers etc. There's a war going on right in front of us. A war with much more victims that the visible wars.

A serious war with thousands of people tortured, and suffering all kinds of disease. The battlefields are west as well as the east. The poor parts of the bigger citys as well as the starving population of the south. The victims are suffering from stolen workhours through underpayment and miserable working environment.
In the other part of the world (and the town) people are suffering from stress trying to fullfill the social rools of upperclass life. Through the weapon of "money" the smart and wealthy can steal the workinghours of the poor. Legalized by modern law and only to a tiny degree moderated by laws and unions etc.
The example I wrote concerning the cost of producing an average apartment in the higly developed welfare state of Sweden is an example of this. I got it from the magazine "Ny kultur". It quotes an example calculated from the building of an appatment by the building producent "Platzer Bygg AB". It was also calculated by the SABO Sveriges almännyttiga Bostadsföretag. (A public non profit housebuilding firm/society)
The total amount of working hours for planning, producing material and building this average apartment on 70 m2 was calculated to 1450 hours.
The total amount of working hours which the buyer actually came to pay back was estimated to 22431 working hours. The giant difference appeared because of the bankloan-system, the middleman's profit and the whole money circus.
The surprising result of this calculation was said to bee within the precision range of 5 percent. (Even if the precision was 50 percent, it would still reveal the modern robbery called "trade")

I'll list some factors which can be steps in the changing of this system. Today these factors are ruled by the animal tendencies of terrestial man, but it is easy to see how these factors ruled by the humanity could be perfect instruments for creating the real human kingdom on earth.
A. Computers which can handle calculations such as world consumption.
B. Cards being used more and more instead of physical money. (Making the change to cards with the working hours noted on instead of a sum of money, easier)
C. Cartel building. These are ofcourse a tool for the big companies to get even more power and control. But these production centers can easier bee taken over by a central administration in the management of UN.
D. Unions between countries. Today these are instruments of nationalism. For instance we se the European Farmers supported by the "Europeans State" to a degree making the farmers of Africa and other countries on their knees, giving no market for their products. But these unions as in Europa, or America or Asia (Fighting against the other superpowers) can offcourse also bee seen as the beginning experiments of what is meant to happen in larger scale managed by UN.

The forthcoming trouble caused by this uncontrolled liberalism will get more and more. I've seen calculations of the incomedifference between rich and poor countries through 150 years. In 1820 the difference was estimated 3:1, in 1950 it was 35:1 and in 1997 it was said to bee 727:1.
Todays 200 richest persons income is more that the income of 41 percent of world poorest population together... But you know about these figures.

Cartels and money-trading happens much faster than the eyes of politics and laws. The unemployment can not be abolished within this system. We've probably only seen the beginning of this process. Not that Martinus does recommend any kind of revolution. A sudden violent change would probably cause even more suffering than the one caused by today's system. The changes on the surface can only come AFTER the changes of within. Martinus defended everyone. I read one place he described how a creative businessman through his work and money was able to do several times much more good things that average man was able too. Money can of course already today be used by love.

The close connected economy of today makes it clear that national economy is over. The problem of colaps in one country is a problem for the outside. This problem can only be solved by international solutions. The moneycircus is a ticking bomb - a roulete without control. Seems like The worshipping of the golden calf will peak in the times we live in. The need for a new way will in these times become more and more visible for everyone.
Martinus analyze dictatorship, democracy, communism and liberalism and shows that these principles are being used and controlled by the unfinished animal tendencies of man.
It is hereby obvious that the fastest way to real Christianity/communism/democracy is through a spiritual science revealing the real possibilities for action:
• Letting go of ego
• The use of prayer as a guidance, because there is a plan for fulfilling Gods plan for paradise on earth.
• Helping the wounded victims of the nonvisible war here and in the poor part of the world.
• Letting go of the illusions of ownership, understanding that cosmic seen one only owns his ability of love and creating which he can develop and bring with him from one incarnation and learning situation to another.

Søren J

I think this applies so very well to current situation in the world of today and I feel that we should all speculate what we in our own might can do to change things in our own lives and ask God for the courage and strenght to act!

6:51 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Existence of Evil
Category: Religion and Philosophy

Everything is very good

The Bible talks about everything being very good and Martinus, who does many explainations regarding the Holy Bible and says it contains many hidden truths, supports that statement taking it further and saying that there is no such thing as true Evil.

I think this statement is very interesting and Martinus logic is that the existence of contrasts are fundamental for the experience of the being and thus the Godhead it self. People have heard the phrase "one cannot taste the sweet without the bitter" (sometimes it's used the otherway around, but I like the sweet more ), "no pain no gain" etc..  Whereas evil is used as a contrast to the good, hell has been created (by men) to contrast heaven and the devil to contrast god. This is very simplistic one might think to explain this as man's creation but if one studies the bible hell and the devil has been used as a tool by the sages to make the primitive men fear to do evil deeds and start doing good deeds like helping their fellow men.

So if one reads Martinus one will see fairly quick that a fundamental part of his teachings is that there is no evil there is only good. This does not mean that sufferings and pain or negative feelings are not real because they are real, that we all know, in fact pain is necessary for any development of human kind and higher learning of the being. So what is it that supports Martinus argument that evil does not exist. In short all we do and is regarded evil we do out of ignorance and lack of knowledge of mental laws of life. Through karma we learn to face the consequences of our actions and finally through many incarnations we learn how to love our neigbors like our selfs and god above all things. 

Martinus says that we are evolving towards the state of being where we will become masters in knowing the difference between right and wrong. What creates happiness for one self and others (good) on one hand and what creates unhappy fate for one self and one's neighbor on the other (evil). So it is all in our own hands. We create our own destiny, we sow the seeds of our happiness or misery based on our own actions.

Livets Bog (The Book of Life) teaches Love

"As the Father has thus allowed what I myself have experienced, as well as the forming of my own accumulation of experience and the state of my consciousness, to be such that the re-telling of it in the form of "Livets Bog" is identical to a revealing of the identity of all living beings as "sons of God", at the same time as it uncovers the close mutual relationship that the religions bear to each other like clusters of rays from one and the same sea of light, thereby constituting a further defence of all beings in existence, he has thereby, in a wonderful way, made "Livets Bog" into a tool for pointing out and removing the last remnant of that form of ignorance that leads to intolerance and its companion "suffering". For ignorance is in fact the true cause of everything known to the world as "evil". Where ignorance has been removed, so-called "evil" ceases to exist." (Livets Bog I, paragraph 19)

8:20 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Passion of the Christ

Through reincarnation and evolution Man gradually develops new faculties that change his way of thinking and acting. The law of karma, "what you sow you must also reap", guarantees that he gradually becomes perfect, a moral genius capable of differing between good and evil. The human being of today will thus finally appear as a real human being - "man in God's image after His likeness".

(Source: Martinus Institute)

In this symbol we can see an orange arc moving from the left in towards the centre. The arc symbolises that one has met with a hostile action. In this case the cause is the persecution that Christ was exposed to and that led to his crucifixion. In the centre we can see a christ being with outspread hands towards us that shows how such a loving being responds to darkness and "hostility" with friendship. There is no better example of the art of forgiveness than the one we have been given through Christ's life and work. This is represented with the heart and the handclasp in the middle of the big arc. On the cross he prayed for forgiveness for those who had brought him to death. (So if you resent someone the best way to get rid of that feeling is to pray for that person).

This reaction creates the yellow arc moving from the centre of the symbol out towards the right. One could call it the humane arc of karma, which will later return to the being itself in the form of light and joy. The fact that this arc is yellow shows that eventually, with the Christ-mentality, mankind will leave the life zone of the animal kingdom (orange color) and enter the true human kingdom (yellow color). For further explaination of the kingdoms of existence see my blog post, Our Present Circle, below.

This is also what Christ himself said: "My kingdom is not of this world". It is this behaviour that will lead mankind out of the darkness (symbolised by the clouds), which is supplanted by the light from God (the radiant triangle) through world redemption (the radiant star surrounding it).

What did Christ know that his enemies did not? Those who crucified him did not know themselves! They did not know where they came from and where they were going. They were blind towards the laws of life it self but Christ was sertainly not. His message was that we should love our enemies. On the cross he proved that he practised what he preached. He prayed for forgiveness for those who brought him to his imminent death. They did not know what they were doing for they were ignorant about these before mentioned laws of existence. Christ understood perfectly well that only at a later stage in evolution would mankind be able to understand the logical explanation of the message of love. This is clear from the following statement: "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me".

If we look back at the symbol we can see a small orange circular arcs at the bottom gradually turing into yellow ones. The Third Testament explains that our present earthly life is one link in an endless chain. The large arcs above in orange and yellow can be seen below, smaller in size and repeating again and again. They change colour from orange to yellow in the direction from left to right, which symbolises the evolution from animal to human being.

Life is seen here from the perspective of eternity.The plots or fields below the arcs indicate the life of the human being. Each of the orange or yellow square fields that follow on from each other symbolises a single earthly life from birth to death. The smaller light yellow rectangles symbolise the periods spent in the spiritual world between the physical terrestrial lives. The arcs that connect the various earthly lives symbolise our actions, everything that we do to our surroundings, i.e. to God or our neighbour. According to Christ, we "reap what we sow", and this means that we are ourselves, the cause of both the evil and the goodness that we experience. Our actions towards our neighbour create our fate.

Our present fate is the result of actions, the roots of which form branches reaching far back into previous earthly lives. With our actions today we are sowing effects the result of which we will reap in future earthly lives. It is not surprising that Christ taught us that the way out of darkness and suffering was through forgiving our enemies!

The suffering that we experience is not punishment from an angry God. Quite the reverse, fate is a loving God speaking personally to each one of us. There is no injustice. We reap what we sow. Everything is learning and evolution. Through initiation into darkness we become prepared for initiation into light and love.

To become "the perfected human being in God's image" takes mental training and many earthly lives spent acquiring personal experience. This is the goal for all life incarnated in physical matter. Through the innumerable lives in the physical world, God eventually grants his eternal son of God his own almighty, all-knowing and all-loving divine consciousness. We will all at some point become like Christ and be able to say "I and my Father are one".

Terrestrial human beings' steadily increasing awareness of their conscience shows that they are on their way to the state of being all-loving. Eventually they will only be able to bear to do good, like the Christ being in the symbol.

(text based on information retrieved from The Third Testament website)

7:19 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Cosmic Consciousness

I never seem to get tired of Martinus so I'll let him speak and you to comment on it:

"My spiritual mission began with several psychic experiences the particular structure of which was something entirely private to myself alone. What proved to be of significance to other people was the fact that they left me in a state in which I was able to receive far-reaching knowledge about the whole universe, in fact even the divine world plan was completely laid out before my sensing faculty and became awake day consciousness. I was granted the faculty to sense things that it was impossible to experience through mere physical sensing. I saw how every limited thing, irrespective of whatever size it might occupy, revealed infinity and thereby eternity. Eternity thus became visible as the fixed point, while time and thereby space were whatever was moving. As I was thus conscious in eternity, I became identical with what was "absolute" and "everlasting" and I saw all things from this "absoluteness" and "everlastingness". As I had become conscious in eternity and was identical with immortality, I lived beyond any concept of time. I lived both before and after anything whatsoever and could thus see both its alpha and its omega, its beginning and its conclusion, that is, the whole of its life course. And it is this experiencing faculty that in my main work, "Livets Bog" (The Book of Life), I have called "cosmic consciousness", just as I have called the descriptions of the details of life seen from this observation faculty, "cosmic analyses". These "cosmic analyses" of mine are thus the same as observations made possible as a result of my liberation from time and space.

My psychic experiences were a process that in a manner of speaking suddenly brought about this liberation in my consciousness. I had experienced an "initiation". It was through this process that a change took place in my consciousness. Whereas before I had only been conscious in a certain time and a certain space, I had now become in a certain way conscious in all times and in all spaces. Whereas my consciousness before this experience of mine was an expression of "local consciousness", it had now become an expression of "universal consciousness". And after this change in consciousness I had no problem in finding my bearings with respect to the fate of the living being and thereby the fate of terrestrial mankind. It was no problem for me to see that the whole ocean of sufferings that terrestrial human beings are in the midst of is exclusively due to the fact that they are still not mentally liberated. They are still bound by time, by space and by matter. Their view of life and the world has therefore nothing to do with actual eternal life or the real world plan. At the very most it constitutes merely the view of a local area of the universe. But to know or sense only a local area and to believe it to be the whole, is the same as to live under an illusion. And to live under illusions is in turn to live in error. And because a life based on errors can give rise only to disappointments we have arrived at the very cause of terrestrial mankind's daily existence being a life of disappointment, sorrow and suffering."

Quoted from the first chapter of the article, "Mental Sovereignty" - English Kosmos no.1 – 2003.

Is this state something you would desire? Could you handle it, bare it's responsibility?

Martinus was not from this world but had lived as a much more evolved being on other planets before he came to Earth. Once as he stood in a room giving a lecture he said to the audience that he had done much worse things in his former lives than anyone in that room. He had been a murderer and a rapist in his former lives but through the initiation of sufferings and forgiveness he knew the divine and eternal world plan and became a man in god's image after his likeness. He had become a perfect being and chose to become a teacher on earth to help mankind evolve, just like Jesus Christ did. Martinus mission was to write and finish the Bible with the Third Testament but not to promote himself to be worshipped.

So you can see he bodes the same principle as Jesus did and many things in the Cosmology is characterized by these exact same principles as Jesus preached.  e.g.  'love thy neighbour as thyself and god above all things' being the number one.

11:29 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Our Present Cycle

The symbol explains how each living being (the little white triangle) is connected with God (the large white triangle) through a cosmic, organic structure (the grey, white and vi­olet pyramid).

    The rectangular coloured fields round the edge of the circle symbolise the living beings and kingdoms of the spiral cycle. For the living being in order to complete a cyclic movement it has to pass the 6 realms: the plant kingdom (red), the animal kingdom (orange), the real human kingdom (yellow), the kingdom of wisdom (green), the divine world (blue), and the kingdom of bliss (indigo). For in depth information about these kingdoms you can read his main work Livets Bog or The Eternal World Picture where this symbol amongst others are fully explained.

            The two slanting black lines divide these coloured fields into the spiritual world, above, and the physical part of the universe, below. The part with the orange rectangu­lar fields symbolises the animal kingdom. The two of these rec­tangular orange figures that are the shortest symbolise the first ape-like terrestrial human stages. Today these have become completely extinct on the Earth and they incarnate on more pri­mitive planets in the universe. The rectangular orange figure to the right of these symbolises the stages of the primitive peop­les that are in the process of dying out on Earth, and the figure to the right of this symbolises civilised human beings who more and more looses their ability to believe. Next field (oran­ge/yellow) the culmination of materialism and spiritual dead. As long as we are still selfish, greedy, lusting for power, intolerant, revengeful, angry and hateful we are still part animals. We are animals to the degree that we are still influenced by selfish and intolerant thoughts. A person characterized by selfish and intolerant thoughts is an unfinished human being.  After this culmination the beings are more and more evolving into true human beings, who are approaching the "great birth" and cosmic consciousness (the yellow part of this field).           

            All living beings stand on different levels of development depending on when they entered the present cycle. Everybody stands at the peak of his development and nobody can be any better than he is today based on the experiences he has had in this and former lives. Martinus says that ‚all is very good' and things cannot possibly be better at this moment than they are, he also claims that nothing exists as pure evil. Providence sees to it that we do not destroy ourselfs or the planet. This is very comforting in these last and worst times.

            Prayer is the tool that leads us all through the last problems and sufferings on this road. Every prayer to God is answered in such as way that it brings most lasting joy to the being itself as well as its surroundings. Through the genuine wish behind the prayer that "not my will, but thy will be done", the being unites its own will with the will of God. Allied in this way with the al­mighty God, the being builds up its vitality and its ability to "take the rough with the smooth". With every loving resolution there streams into the consciousness renewed joy in living. It is these "straight and narrow paths" that in time lead us to a true, orga­nic talent for joy in living and mental balance, despite all the dif­ficulties. This road inevitably leads the being to the point where, like Christ, it can say: "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30).

Can you see mankind standing somewhere in this evolutionary cycle?

Text based on a brouchure downloaded from  Third Testament website
Text edited

5:24 PM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

My reply to Evolving

In this particular discussion there is one important thing one should take into consideration; the three basic types of individual characteristics or three spiritual stages of human consciousness based on Yogi Philosophy I think might be appropriate to the subject in question (actually all spiritual seekers of truth for that matter). I think this classification is very interesting and helpful for one to situate oneselfs in one existence. Who am I? Where am I? And where am I heading?

Three stages of spiritual consciousness

The first stage is that realm of life where impulsive mind dominates. Intellects are little evolved and the intuitive mind inappreciable. Thoughts centre on food, shelter and fulfilment of physical emotions. Human beings on this stage fulfil their needs without thinking. They have a spontaneous belief on a higher power and do not ponder opon it.

            The second stage begin when the intellect start to take over. The mans feeling for good and evil awakens. Human beings on this stage group everything into goo or bad and the bad appears to be in majority. They are very moderate. They love their own, i.e. people of the same race, religion or other related relations but hate others. Hate is strong on this stage and grows out of self-justification. The sense of unity of all things, that human beings make out in the first stage and both see and sense on the third stage, does not appear on second stage.

            Third stage human beings see good in everything and feel that everything is a part of the great masterplan. The developed soul sees good and evil traits in each person. It chooses to see the good in the sinner and the bad in the saint. The developed soul sees something good in all religions, even though it cannot follow their restricted or narrow dogmas. The finest thought of the third stage human being is the awareness of Unity of Everything, he has sympathy towards all living. In this consciousness men divest themselfs of fear, hatred and prejudice. It brings us knowledge in stead of blind belief. Human beings on second stage often misunderstand human beings on third stage and assume that they belong to the first stage, because they do not see anything bad in what others condemn and see good in what does not seem to be. The idea is that third stage people will grow in numbers and when it becomes ample, a peaceful revolution will occur on Earth. Then the human being will no longer benefit from living in luxury while his fellow being starves. All is one. Thus will the Golden Age begin. Ones injury is everybodys injury, ones joy is everybodys joy.

            I translated this text directly from Icelandic so notice it may contain some grammatical errors.

Source material: Advanced Course in Yogi Philosophy and Oriental Occultism by Yogi Ramacharaka (1904).

6:15 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

A new mentality is a necessity

Martinus Cosmology provides an all-embracing world picture logically describing and analysing the spiritual laws of life. In his works Martinus describes a concept of life that can be summarized as follows: All living beings have eternal life. Man has reached his present stage through evolution through the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, and is at present a sphinx being, part animal and part real human being. The temporary goal for our evolution is the establishment of a real human kingdom, a union of all nations in one global state capable of guaranteeing every living being on earth peace, justice and a completely happy life.

Through reincarnation and evolution Man gradually develops new faculties that change his way of thinking and acting. The law of karma, "what you sow you must also reap", guarantees that he gradually becomes perfect, a moral genius capable of differing between good and evil. The human being of today will thus finally appear as a real human being - "man in God's image after His likeness".

Quotation from Martinus Institute's website www.martinus.dk all rights reserved

So it's not a religion in the common defintion of that word. Religion is beliefs and worship: peoples beliefs and opinions concerning the existence, nature, and worship of God based on dogmas and often in forms of rituals or ceremonies. There is no fearful worship of a vengeful God that will smite you if you don't obey his will. There is no cult or any religious establishment around Martinus works and that's what's cool about the Martinus cosmology. The solution to the problems of the world today is not a formation of a new religion but an institution or an insertion of a new higher mentality that will transfigure man and mould him into a real human being - a man in God's image after His likeness".

5:10 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment