The Purpose of Life

The Purpose of Life

By Else Byskov, author of “Death Is an Illusion”

Does life have a purpose? Are we here for a reason other than procreation and the continuation of the species? Could there be a higher meaning with our existence?

These questions have been answered in the most convincing and logical way by the Danish 20th century intuitive author Martinus (Thomsen). This extraordinary man’s highly original work is still mainly unknown, but due to its uniqueness it deserves to become much better known than it is today. Martinus’ work is a goldmine of spiritual insight, perfectly adapted to our present needs.
Martinus was born in 1890 in Jutland (Denmark) as an illegitimate child, and grew up in very humble circumstances. He had only the most rudimentary schooling and was later trained as a dairyman. He had never studied anything, so seen in this perspective it is quite extraordinary that he was to become the author of 41 books of a highly philosophical and esoteric nature. The reason for this is to be found in a profound spiritual experience he had at the age of thirty.

One day in March 1921 Martinus decided to meditate. He blindfolded himself and sat down in his wicker chair. Now everything was dark. But suddenly a spot of light appeared to his inner eye. The spot grew bigger and bigger, and suddenly Martinus could see that it had a human form, that of a well-known statute of Christ. The form looked alive and glowed a brilliant white with blue shadows, as if it were made of thousands of microscopic sparks. It came closer and closer until it finally walked right into Martinus’ bodily form. At that very moment he felt how his consciousness was catapulted out of his physical body. Suddenly he could observe the Earth from a position high above it, he could see mountains and seas, rivers and valley, and he could observe how the planet revolved around its axis. The sky became brighter and brighter and finally he felt how he was enveloped in a bright, white and golden light. This, he felt sure, was the divine consciousness, and in its presence his being was flooded with enlightenment, insight and unconditional love. He saw how he and all beings alive were immortal and how everything that existed was governed by God’s wisdom, love and purpose. At this point he felt that he had reached the limit for what his consciousness could bear, so he had to jump to his feet, rip off the blindfold and open his eyes. He was now back in his humble room in Copenhagen, but the light he had experienced was still sparkling inside him.

The experience had a great impact on Martinus, but in the beginning he had no idea what had happened to him. But he felt that his own consciousness had changed. He was now able to see beyond the physical world into the huge spiritual level beyond. He had been endowed with completely new abilities, and after the experience it was so, that whenever he thought about a question, the answer presented itself to him immediately. It was as if he had been linked up to a huge sea of cosmic knowledge, a divine bank of data to which he had unlimited access. He had become an enlightened being and had achieved cosmic consciousness. It is on the basis of this intuitive insight that Martinus’ body of work must be seen.

As Martinus had no experience in writing it took several years before he was ready to publish his first book. This was the first of seven volumes of his main work titled “The Book of Life” (“Livets Bog”) and it was published in 1932. The 7th and last volume of “The Book of Life” was published in 1960. Apart from this Martinus published “The Eternal World Picture” (4 volumes), “Logic”, “Funeral Rites”, 28 small books and approximately 200 articles (1). His body of work comprises more than 8000 pages and is an extraordinary revelation of cosmic insight, all of it explained in a completely logical and undogmatic way. What Martinus says appeals to our sense of logic and to our intellect. He underlines that his work is not an object of belief, he solely asks us to compare his work with what we can observe in the empirical world. It is only when life itself confirms the veracity of Martinus’ revelations that they will be of value to us. His work can be said to form a basis for a merger of science and spirituality.

What, then, does Martinus reveal in his extensive work? He reveals a comprehensive philosophy, a complete holistic world picture, which not only explains the meaning of the many life forms we can observe in the physical world, but which also accounts for the existence of a spiritual level before and beyond the physical. He underlines that it is only when we include a spiritual level of existence into our world picture that we will reach final and satisfactory answers to the big questions about the mystery of life. As long as we are stuck in an understanding of life, which limits everything to the physical level, then we will remain cosmic illiterates.

But what is the spiritual level? Is its existence something that we can ascertain? Martinus points out that spiritual matter is basically the same as energy. Now, energy is not something we can see or hold in our hand, but we know that energy exists. Indeed we know that there is energy everywhere around us in the shape of cosmic and electromagnetic radiation. Martinus refers to energy or electromagnetic radiation as ray-formed matter and it is out of this type of matter that everything else has been created. Everything in the universe has been created from seven basic energies, which Martinus has named: the energy of instinct, the energy of gravity, the energy of feeling, the energy of intelligence, the energy of intuition and the energy of memory. These energies are embedded in the seventh energy, the mother energy.

When the energies exist in their most fundamental state they are
ray-formed, which means that they exist in the shape of waves and rays, or electromagnetic radiation. These waves and rays vibrate on a whole range of different wavelengths and frequencies, and most of them are inaccessible to our physical senses. We cannot see or touch these energies, but today we know that they are all around us, and that what we once believed to be empty space is not empty at all, but full of energy.

In their ray-formed shape the energies are the material of which thoughts and consciousness consist. Thoughts are not just “nothing”, they consist of energy, and we know that, because we can now measure thought activity. When a thought is measurable, it means that it consists of something. This something is energy. We also know that there is information in thoughts. This means that the ray-formed matter of thoughts contains both information and force, because all types of energy contain force. The force in our thoughts is our life force. Martinus refers to ray-formed matter, containing both information and force, as spiritual matter. The spiritual level consists of this spiritual matter and consequently it is a level of information and force, a world of immaterial energy. As spiritual matter or energy is the very matter of which thoughts and consciousness consist we are alive in a conscious universe, because there is energy everywhere “out there” in “empty” space.

When we are alive in a conscious universe, then obviously, this consciousness has to belong to somebody, because consciousness is invariably a characteristic of a living being. Who can this huge living being, whose consciousness is all around us, be? Well, we can choose from a whole number of names, but Martinus simply calls this huge being, whose body is the whole universe, God. Indeed, Martinus confirms the words of the Bible, which say, “In him we live, are and have our being”.

The whole universe is God’s body and it is pervaded by God’s consciousness, the ray-formed matter of “his” thoughts. Because the universe is God’s body it is teeming with life and we are definitely not alone in the vastness of space. Life exists on innumerable planets in forms and shapes that can either be similar to the ones we know on Earth or very different. Life manifests in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine. Indeed the planets themselves are living beings, as are the solar systems and the galaxies. The structure of life is so that living beings exist inside other living beings all the way from macro cosmos down into micro cosmos. There are life forms inside life forms on all levels.

Our own body is also comparable to a universe in its own right, as it is the home of innumerable living organisms from organs, cells, molecules, atoms and subatomic units. Likewise we are alive on the body of a living being, the Earth, which is an organ in the solar system, which is a part of the bodily structure of the galaxy etc. On the physical plane every life form is dependent on both macrocosmic and microcosmic life forms to sustain its life. Thus the structure is life inside life.
Obviously, this highly complicated structure of life forms inside other life forms has not come about by mere chance or on the basis of random luck and mutations. The structure of life and the many life forms have come into existence on the basis of an intelligent creative process. This intelligent creative process has a living being as its originator, as we have never seen intelligent creativity manifested by dead matter. The origin of all life forms and all matter is the creator or God.
It is from God’s consciousness matter or thoughts that everything has arisen. The thoughts were there first, because all creation starts with a mental process or plan. On our own level we know that it is on the basis of a mental process or plan that all our manmade inventions have been created. We have never seen a chair, a house or a city come into existence on its own accord, and this principle is also valid on the higher level. Just as there is a creator behind a radio, a car or a computer, there is a creator behind a flower, a fish, a beetle or a man. Nothing has come into existence by chance or on its own accord, but on the basis of an intelligent creative process.

The physical world is condensed consciousness matter or condensed energy. The basic energies can, through a process of condensation or crystallization, materialize on the physical plane as gaseous, liquid or solid matter – the types of matter that the physical world consists of. Today we know that all matter is vibration and it is the combination of the various basic energies or types of vibration that determines what type of matter we are faced with. It is the spiritual matter that causes the oscillation, vibration and circulation of physical matter. The whole of the physical world is condensed consciousness matter, materialized thoughts, or crystallized energy. In its final analysis everything is consciousness.

This means that the world, the universe, basically consists of two levels: on one hand we have the primary level from which everything else emerges i.e. the spiritual level, the level of consciousness, the level of cause, the level beyond time / space, and on the other hand we have the secondary level, the physical level, the level of materialized thoughts, the level of effect, the level of time / space.

The physical level could never have come into existence without being a result of a thought process, without having a logical, intelligent creative process behind it. The physical level is the result of the existence of an underlying thought level, the level where the plan for the physical world has been created or thought out. Without an underlying creative process there can be no physical world. Consequently the physical world is the secondary world and the spiritual world is the primary world. The primary world is the consciousness of God, the consciousness from which everything has emerged. God’s consciousness and God’s “I” are the source of everything.

Not only God has an “I”, but every living being does. The core of this “I” is a fixed point from which energies are put in motion. The “I” is an eternal reality and as eternity is a very long time the “I” needs something to experience. For that reason the “I” is able to dress itself in a whole number of different bodies, so that it can experience life in great variation. The bodies of the “I” evolve in accordance with the basic energies that are put at its disposal at any given moment, and this means that the eternal journey is anything but dull. The various bodies of the “I” evolve in cycles that spiral upwards. It takes millions and millions of years to complete a cyclic motion and in such a cyclic motion the “I” has to experience both light and darkness.
All perception is based on contrast, so in order to be able to experience eternally the living beings have to move between the two contrasts of light and darkness. Light is experienced on the spiritual level where the “I” lives in union with God, and darkness is experienced on the physical level where the “I” has been closed off from God to a certain extent. We have come to the heart of darkness when we believe that we live in a godless universe, ruled by chaos and chance, when we believe that only the physical world exists and that our existence is caused by random luck. We live in darkness when we believe that we can root out war with war, when we believe in death and are convinced that we only have one life. It is in this heart of darkness that we find ourselves today.

But, we are not supposed to live forever in this darkness. From the higher consciousness level knowledge is being revealed to us, which shows that this darkness is just a passage towards a higher existence, an existence where we shall have eliminated war and be able to live in peace, prosperity and happiness.

According to Martinus it will take us a few millennia to reach the point where the planet has become a peaceful and prosperous place, where living beings can live in harmony. We will develop towards this stage in accordance with our awakening to the fact that there is a spiritual world and that it is ruled by natural laws just as the physical world is.

One of the natural laws that spiritual matter is subject to is the cyclic law. All matter moves in cycles, and this means that there is no such thing as a straight line in the universe. As everything moves in cycles, this means that all the energy that is sent out from the “I” will sooner or later return to its point of departure. In this way we get back what we send out. We get it back, either in this life, or in the next. This is the most fundamental principle for the creation of our fate. The acts that the “I” carries out are also energies that it sends out. The energies will return to the “I” in the same shape as they were sent out. A loving energy will return as a loving energy and a hateful energy will return as a hateful energy. Martinus refers to this as the law of karma.

The law of karma decrees that we reap as we sow. If we sow love, happiness and forgiveness, then this is what we’ll reap. If we sow war, hatred and revenge, then these energies will return to us with murder, war and hatred. In this way we are all responsible for our own fate. There are no coincidences, no good or bad luck and no chance occurrences. The strictest justice rules the universe. We cannot sow war and reap peace and we cannot sow killings and reap happiness. This is indeed very logical, but still millions and millions of people believe that they’ll never be made responsible for their actions. As long as we think that we can eliminate war with war and terrorism with terrorism, then world peace is still a long way off. We can only reap that which we have sown, so if we want peace, it is peace that we must sow. Learning the workings of the law of karma is, according to Martinus, the biggest challenge facing Mankind today and a prerequisite for creating a happier world.

All energies that we send out will return to us, if not in this life, then in the next. As the energies move in cyclic paths through the universe, it may be a long time before a particular energy returns, but as the “I” is an eternal reality, everything it sends out will catch up with it eventually. As long as the “I” is passing the dark part of the cycle it has to reincarnate in physical matter, because the physical plane has been designed for the experience of darkness. The passage of the physical part of the cycle takes millions and millions of years and during this passage the “I” evolves through the stages of mineral, plant, animal and human bodies. This evolution takes place on the basis of a plan thought out by the creator and thus evolution and creation walk hand in hand.

Every time the “I” loses a physical body through injury or old age, it passes on to the spiritual plane, where it enters an area of light according to the most developed part of its consciousness. This period in the light can be considered as a holiday away from the hardship of the physical world, indeed as Paradise. But sooner or later the “I” must again reincarnate into a physical body in order to progress through the cycle.

Reincarnation is an absolutely fundamental principle; it is the prerequisite for the existence of life on the physical plane and all life forms reincarnate. But there is no death. Death is an illusion. The death that we have come to consider as the end of life is nothing but a transition of our “I” to the spiritual plane. We are as alive in our spiritual body, consisting of ray-formed matter or energy, as we are in our physical body, consisting of physical matter. It is in the ray-formed matter of our spiritual body that all the information that we have accumulated over millions of lives lies embedded. It is with this information that we reincarnate into a physical body. In this way we bring both life force and the accumulated information in the shape of our talents to that body. It is on the basis of the information embedded in the ray-formed matter of the spiritual body that the physical body is created. The egg and sperm cells only deliver the physical basic material, but all the talents, particular characteristics, personality and know-how of bodily creation are in the energy field of the spiritual body.
Every time we reincarnate into a new physical body we continue our evolution through the cycle, starting from the point where we had to “give up” when we last “died”. There is no “going backwards” to lower life forms, we can only progress. But what we see as death, is no death at all, indeed there is no death anywhere. Death is only an imagined, and not a real contrast to life.

This has been a short glimpse of some central points of Martinus’ world picture and, of course, much, much more can be said about it. However, when at the beginning of this essay we asked if life had a purpose, the answer is yes. Not only was the purpose of Martinus’ life to reveal these cosmic truths to Mankind, but he also shows that everything happens for a purpose. The purpose of our individual lives is to evolve towards the perfection of becoming “Man in the image and likeness of God”, because this is the aim of all development on the physical plane. When we have become man in the image of God and have created a peaceful world, then we have fulfilled our purpose on the physical plane. We then enter the part of the cycle where we live in the light, in a spiritual body in the spiritual world in union with God. We will then live in bliss for eons of time until we become so satiated with the light that we need to experience its contrast, darkness. We will then again enter the physical plane. But through both light and darkness, we are in God’s hands, encompassed by his love, because we are all a part of God.

Find out what survives death at: www.deathisanillusion.com