© by Martinus
Death will stop being a mystery
Something that must be a fact for all people. when they think about it,
is that they must die some day. Most people do not think about it except
when they. through the death of friends or relatives, come closer to life
than usual, and then the thought strikes them with terror. Death is a riddle
to most people. "No one has come back and told how it is on the other
side, and perhaps there is no 'other side' at all", people usually
say. it is therefore natural that 1, in my lectures, deal with, among other
things, the mystery of death, which will gradually stop being something
about which people feel anxious or terrified.
What then is death? First and foremost it is an experience that comes to
absolutely all physical beings in this world. No one doubts that they will
have to experience it as it is too apparent in all things around us. Furthermore,
death is not only a process that will come some day; it is already present
within us. You began to die when you were born. Where is the tiny baby's
body in which you came to the world? Where is the little child's face with
which you in excited expectation looked forward to Christmas Eve, the little
face that shone both when you, as a child, heard the wonderful adventure
of Christmas and when you experienced all the other happy hours of childhood?
This face does not exist any more on the physical plane. You have another
face now. And if you are an old person today one can ask where the young
and agile body with which you embraced the one you loved is now. And where
is the mature body with which you crowned your life's work and experienced
the peak of your physical appearance in this life? These bodies are, if
you are today an old man or woman, long since dead. The old person has actually
already experienced reincarnation or rebirth several times before he or
she has to die.
The transformation of the organism
It cannot be denied that these physical bodies no longer exist. Here you
will perhaps argue that an older person's present body is the same as the
body the person in question had as a child and as a young person, only now
it is worn out. But such a view is based on an illusion. An organism is
a "living thing", an organisation of living micro-individuals
that
we call organs. cells. molecules and atoms. With the exception of the organs,
the cycles of these micro-individuals are so quick that their physical existence
is of a far shorter duration than that of the macro-being. These beings
are therefore continuously replaced in the organism of the macro-being.
Every minute there are cells and atoms that are born and die in our organism,
so our organism is in fact subject to a continuous process of transformation
and in the course of only a few months is almost totally renewed. So it
is not an insignificant number of bodies an older person has already left
behind. Every renewal must be perceived as a new body. But you do not notice
these reincarnations or rebirths much since. behind these transformations,
you go on with a continuous. uninterrupted experience of life. The replacement
takes place gradually and in such a gentle and harmonious way that it does
not normally disturb or interrupt the experience of life. But if one imagines
that the replacement of these micro-beings took place at the same time the
organism would have to die and an entirely new organism would have to replace
it. A kind of deathprocess would then have to take place between these replacements.
The body we had as a child would then be unchangeable until that moment
when we were mature enough to take possession of the body we had as a youth,
and the concept of "growing'', in the sense in which we know it, would
be unknown to us. The replacement that could not happen gradually must then
happen suddenly. We would have to fall into a kind of sleep or hibernation,
and during this sleep the new body. which should bear our youth-consciousness,
would have to grow quickly and the child-body would just as quickly have
to shrivel up and be discarded in favour of the new. We would then wake
up in a new body and use it for a period until a new replacement should
take place.
There are in fact beings in this physical world who experience their renewal
of life according to this principle, namely various insects who go through
the caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly stages. These beings must experience
a kind of death-process between each of the stages within each local terrestrial
life. Imagine if we had to go through the same! One fine day we would be
overwhelmed by an intense desire to sleep deeply. and the body by which
our relatives and friends were used to identifying us would shrivel up and
wither, and a new body would grow in its place. The day-consciousness would
thereby again be able to manifest itself and we would wake up in a new.
beautiful body that no one would recognise as ''us". Indeed, we could
even participate in the burial of our recently discarded body. For some
people all this will sound comical. for others perhaps alarming, but there
are however beings in the universe and even on this planet that experience
the physical renewal of life according to such a principle.
The replacement of the organisms of terrestrial human beings
I have touched on all of this only because it in reality lifts a first
little corner of the veil that covers the process that people call "death"
and that is so often terrifying for them. But the human being has no cause
to be afraid of death other than those causes he himself creates. And through
spiritual science the modern seeker has the possibility to make himself
familiar with what happens during the process of death so that the anxiety
and uncertainty can be overcome and be replaced by confidence and security.
It is quite true that after the deathprocess with which people are familiar
there is only the discarded physical body or corpse left. One is not able
to see the being appear in a new form. But is this an unshakeable proof
that the consciousness is wiped out on the decomposition of the organism?
No - we can only physically experience another person's consciousness when
this other person has a physical body through which to manifest himself,
just as we can only experience radio waves when there is a radio through
which they are transformed into sound waves.
But we are in no doubt that radio waves exist even if we cannot hear them.
The consciousness or mentality of the living being is also a reality that
exists in ray- and waveform. It is these energies that cause the complete
renewal of life and the transformation of the organism, both where it occurs
in various stages as is the case with the above-mentioned insects, and where
a gradual, almost impair-
ciptible transformation takes place as in the case of the terrestrial human
being. And if one compares the replacement of the organism of the above-mentioned
insects and the replacement of the organism in that species of beings to
which terrestrial human beings belong does one not have a proof that this
ability to replace the organism is, like all other abilities. subject to
evolution'? The ability of the terrestrial human being to replace his organism
is in reality tar more developed than that of the insects.
To be able to replace one's organism quite imperceptibly as the terrestrial
human being does in one physical incarnation through the stages of childhood,
youth, maturity and old age without having to interrupt the functioning
of the day-consciousness, and to be able to have the feeling that it is
still the same organism, without this in reality being the case, is something
of an ideal in relation to the stage of evolution where the beings in one
incarnation have to go through a kind of deathprocess several times.
The terrestrial human being has reached a step in evolution where he is
free from that kind of unpleasant interruption in the transformation of
the organism until his earthly life, through ill-health, accident or the
natural wear and tear of old age, is interrupted and his consciousness is
carried by the spiritual or ray-formed bodies, which also carry the consciousness
during sleep. But when a more primitive way of replacing the organism than
that of the human being exists, is it not just as natural that there also
exists a way in relation to which that of the human being must be said to
be primitive, but that the human being can gradually learn to use'? This
means a replacement of the organism where the process we call ''death''
can also be changed into a gradual process of transformation instead of
an abrupt transition from one state to another. And thereby the "horror
of death'' will be overcome and
5 there will be no more state of shock associated with this process of transformation,
which can be the case for people now when they see, with their physical
eyes, the physical bodies of other people become corpses without being able,
with the same eyes, to see the same people in the ray-formed bodies now
carrying their consciousness.
Total and partial replacement of the organism
When the transformation of the organism, the principle of rebirth or reincarnation,
is thus subject to evolution, there must be a goal for this evolution. and
this is to make the replacement more and more imperceptible. Terrestrial
human beings and the categories of beings related to them have thus reached
this goal to perfection within the individual terrestrial life. Indeed,
they have reached such a degree of perfection that the human being does
not at all notice the replacement of his organism, and denies reincarnation.
They at the moment only notice the process of replacement where it is still
not perfect and is called "death". Here they have not yet been
able to create a partial replacement of the organism, and; because
they are only used to a "partial death", they believe that the
total replacement of the organism is tantamount to "total death".
But it is only a short time that people will have such a belief based on
lack of knowledge of the eternal laws of life. Many seeking people have
already begun to succeed in finding a solution to the riddle of death.
But it is not the purpose of life that people should concern themselves
with "death" and ''the spiritual world" on a mystical plane:
it has to become crystal-clear science, and the human being with his knowledge
and creative ability will in time be able to overcome death.
It is the will of Providence or the Godhead that the living being, after
a long period in the spiral of evolution, will reach a stage where he is
able to experience his eternal existence without the interruptions in the
organism that have to occur in the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom
of the spiral of evolution. This means that such an imperceptible replacement
of the organism as that which the terrestrial human being has come to master
within a single terrestrial life, will one day in the future also be mastered
by the same being when he glides from the physical state to the ray-formed
state.
It is really the concept "resurrection" that will in time be a
reality for the terrestrial human being who, when he has reached such a
step in evolution, where he is able to control matter with his will, can
no longer be described as a "terrestrial human being" but as a
"real
human being". a "human being in God's
In my cosmic analyses and symbols I show where in the spiral of evolution
this goal will become a reality. In the last part of the third kingdom of
the spiral, the real human kingdom. such a perfect existence will begin
to become a fact. Then the being's transition from the physical to the spiritual
experience of life will no longer be hindered by any "deathprocess''.
The transition will be just as perfect as the transition from childhood
to youth, from youth to maturity and from maturity to old age is today for
the terrestrial human being.
Learning to die by learning to live
Until this epoch of evolution has been reached the terrestrial human being
must, however. still experience his existence as an appearance demarcated
into physical and spiritual separate lives where the transition can only
take place as the total replacement of the organisms. This in turn usually
causes the being to be conscious in only one of the two spheres, that in
which he at the moment finds himself. and often during his stay, at any
rate in the physical world, he is apt to deny the existence of the other
sphere. In principle it is in a way the same as if the caterpillars were
to deny the existence of the butterfly. Through modern spiritual science
the seeking "human caterpillars" of our time have, however, the
possibility to get to know something other than their own little local "caterpillar-world".
They can acquire an overview of the evolution of life, of the process of
creation in the midst of which they are situated, and they can acquire knowledge
about what promotes the development of that state in which pain, suffering
and death are totally overcome.
This state of the imperceptible replacement of the organism that the terrestrial
human being now experiences in a physical incarnation has taken him a very
long time to reach, and it is just as much a matter of course that it must
take some time before the transition to the spiritual world can take place
in the same way. But even now the individual terrestrial human being has
the possibility to turn death into something beautiful instead of something
horrifying. He can learn to die by learning how to live, that is, by getting
to know the laws of life and trying to live in accordance with them. The
more the human being with his thoughts, feelings and actions lives on the
same wavelength as the basic note of the universe or universal morality
- to be a joy and a blessing for all living beings - the easier death will
be when it one day comes. It will be felt like a renewal of life. a lovely
rest from the. at times, rather difficult life in physical matter. But it
will not be the kind of rest one can get in an armchair or on a sofa. No
- it will be as if one experiences the most wonderful holiday one can imagine.
With one's thoughts as the means of transport one can visit zones and spheres
at will. This too is based on universal laws. Then a replacement of the
organism again occurs. The being must go back to that world in which there
is resistance (which causes evolution), that world in which it hurts to
think wrongly. But now he gets a new, healthy organism, which is built up
in his mother's womb. and new possibilities in a coming physical life to
learn to think and to learn to live so that he can gradually overcome death.
The above article is edited from a transcription of a lecture.
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