Love

Introduction

In Martinus’ world picture, love is described as the basic note of the universe. It is also described as the profound aim of the terrestrial human quest. In its developed form, love is expressed as the desire to promote the happiness and well-being of one’s surroundings.

In this account, love is connected with intellectualised feeling, neighbourly love, forgiveness, the spiral cycle and cosmic consciousness. Martinus also distinguishes universal or neighbourly love from amorous or copulatory love. The two forms have different functions, although amorous love has a place in the development of beings who have not yet acquired universal love.

Love as intellectualised feeling

Martinus defines love through the relation between feeling and intelligence. When these two faculties are brought into balance, “the mental display that we call ‘love’ arises”. He therefore calls love “intellectualised feeling”. Feeling without intellectualisation can become pampering or spoiling, while feeling distorted by one-sidedness can become hatred. Harmonised feeling and intelligence, by contrast, allow the individual to perceive a matter impartially rather than through favour or antipathy.

Martinus connects this impartiality with the ability to sense and experience the truth of an object. Partiality colours perception in favour of hatred or pampering, whereas harmonised intelligence and feeling make possible a right attitude toward what is being experienced.

Neighbourly love and the purpose of life

Martinus presents neighbourly love as the fulfilment of the commandment to love one’s neighbour as oneself. He asks what love is and answers that it is the desire to give one’s neighbour happiness and joy, together with the joy of seeing one’s fellow beings and surroundings become happy. The whole mentality of the developed individual is therefore directed toward serving rather than being served.

This change is described as a movement from putting oneself first to putting one’s neighbour first. The perfected human being is no longer primarily occupied with defending its existence against other beings or acquiring advantages at their expense. Its highest satisfaction consists in being of benefit to its surroundings. Martinus associates this mode of being with the principle that it is better to give than to receive.

Martinus presents the world redeemers as examples of what neighbourly love brings to its practitioner. He describes their lives as expressing the highest experience of life and connects their neighbourly love with complete mental sovereignty, freedom and independence.

Martinus also presents neighbourly love as a relation through which the surroundings can reveal the individual’s identity as a son of God. In this account, the surroundings function as Providence and confirm the being who loves its neighbour.

In this analysis, love also determines the individual’s relation to fate. To hate one’s surroundings is to be in conflict with life and to become mentally imprisoned by the wish to remove the supposed cause of one’s unhappiness. To love one’s neighbour is to live in contact with life, because one’s desires are directed toward the neighbour’s advantage. This contact with life is described as the release of life’s intention and as the way toward unity with the Father.

Martinus further associates love with inner peace. He writes that those who love their fellow beings as themselves, which means loving everything and everyone, have a steadfast peace in their inner self. In such a being, love is connected with the revelation of the Holy Spirit or cosmic consciousness and with the light of intellectual understanding.

Universal love and amorous love

Martinus distinguishes universal or neighbourly love from amorous love. According to Martinus’ cosmological account, amorous love is an attraction that binds two beings together as a couple and thereby supports the creation of physical organisms and reincarnation. It depends on a particular sexual condition and on the partner’s reciprocation. For this reason, it can turn into hatred when its conditions are not fulfilled.

Universal love has a different character. It applies to the neighbour regardless of sex and does not depend on the reciprocal attraction required by amorous love. Martinus therefore states that the ability to love one’s neighbour as oneself requires a different sympathetic structure from the one underlying the attraction between sexual partners.

Amorous or copulatory love nevertheless has a function in the animal kingdom and in the unfinished human kingdom. Martinus describes it as a light in the darkness of those stages, where it gives the beings a limited experience of happiness and zest for life. Universal love, however, is unconditional, gives rather than demands, and cannot be transformed into hatred. In the progression toward the human being in God’s image, it becomes the more comprehensive form of love.

The gradual development of the talent for love

Martinus describes the talent for love as a talent that develops gradually. In the explanation of one of the symbols in The Eternal World Picture, he divides this development into three stages. The A stage is theoretical: the individual receives teaching about the structure and details of the talent. The B stage consists of intentional practice, which is still uncertain and marked by mistakes. The C stage is reached when repeated practice has made the talent habitual and largely automatic.

According to this analysis, terrestrial mankind is to some extent at the A stage and to a lesser extent at the B stage, while the C stage lies far ahead. Individuals who have become humane, peaceful and receptive to the cosmic analyses are described as being further advanced in the B stage. Through continued development, the talent for love becomes a natural and stable mode of being rather than an ideal that must continually be imposed by willpower.

Martinus connects this development with humility. In The Road to Initiation, he writes that love is the profound aim behind the terrestrial human quest and that love cannot exist without humility. Humility means recognising both the perfection and the imperfection of one’s own being. Such recognition enables the individual to respect beings who are further advanced and to love them as ideals and examples.

Love, forgiveness, and harmony

Forgiveness is a practical expression of neighbourly love. Martinus presents the instruction to forgive one’s enemies and to do good to those who hate or persecute one as a way of fulfilling the law of love. Repeated forgiveness removes the mental tendency to concentrate on another person’s faults while remaining blind to one’s own. In this way, the domain of suffering is to yield to the “radiant sunshine of love”.

The harmony of love extends beyond visible fellow beings. Martinus writes that one must learn to practise the commandment of love not only toward visible species, but also toward the microscopic forms of life that constitute the organism. He connects this relation to the individual’s health and to the possibility of becoming an instrument in the divine world plan.

In the explanation of Symbol 14, Martinus identifies disharmony between the I and other living beings with war, while harmony between them is peace, whose highest expression is neighbourly love. Harmony between the I and the microscopic beings in its organism is health. The highest experience of life is therefore a total harmony with fellow beings and with the microlife of one’s own organism.

Love among the basic energies and the spiral cycle

Martinus places love within the structure of the basic energies and the spiral cycle. In *Livets Bog*, the six basic energies are associated with six planes of existence: instinct with the plant kingdom, gravity with the animal kingdom, feeling with the real human kingdom, intelligence with the kingdom of wisdom, intuition with the divine world, and memory with the kingdom of bliss.

Martinus describes love as arising when feeling and intelligence are harmonised. In the same overview, feeling is associated with the real human kingdom, intelligence with the kingdom of wisdom, intuition with the divine world, and memory with the kingdom of bliss.

The spiral cycle includes both darkness and light. Martinus describes darkness as disharmony between the I and its outer and inner relations with fellow beings, while the experience of darkness produces knowledge of how to live in harmony with life. Through the later kingdoms of the spiral cycle, beings return to the experience of light, culminating love and God’s image.

Love and cosmic consciousness

Neighbourly love is connected with the emergence of cosmic consciousness. Martinus describes neighbourly love as the only real protection against war and unrest and calls the understanding of this principle the “science of love”. Through teaching, guidance and the development of a humane way of being, the individual becomes receptive to beginnings of cosmic consciousness. He identifies this consciousness with God’s consciousness, the Holy Spirit and the divine way of being.

Martinus also describes the world plan as the culmination of love. Although suffering and unfinished processes do not appear as joy to the terrestrial human being, he presents them as parts of a loving plan through which living beings are transformed toward God’s image. As the being advances in this process, more love appears in its behaviour toward fellow beings and surroundings.

At the highest level, love is expressed as the giving of life. Martinus compares the perfected being with the Sun, which radiates light and warmth to everything around it. The being that has developed this form of life maintains its existence by promoting the highest joy in its surroundings and by radiating love to everything and everyone.

Love is therefore described as the principle through which the being reaches harmony with life and becomes a human being in God’s image. In Martinus’ presentation, this movement is from the disharmony of darkness toward neighbourly love, cosmic consciousness and unity with the Godhead.

See also

• Martinus
• Livets Bog
• The Eternal World Picture
• The Road to Initiation
• Karma