the ideal food

By Martinus

Among the great rapidly developing problems is the question of what is the ideal food.

It has long been a fact for the developed spiritual researcher that mankind is undergoing an evolution, ascending from a primitive, coarse animal state to a more perfect or refined form of existence. It is likewise also a fact for this researcher that the more refined an organism is, the finer the sustenance or nourishment this organism must have. While the primitive human being can eat almost unconstrainedly from a dustbin or consume putrefied and stinking products, the refined, civilised human being can consume only so-called “fresh products” produced, preferably “untouched by human hands”, under the most refined hygienic processes. However, it has to be pointed out that the evolution of the latter being's senses of nutrition, which in this case means the organs of taste in particular, are still far from being able to keep pace with the rest of its evolutionary state. The purpose of the senses of nutrition is to produce natural hunger and natural thirst. By natural hunger and thirst must here be understood a healthily or naturally appropriate desire for those particular substances the organism must absorb and assimilate for its fully healthy maintenance. The countless instances of organic illness and considerable suffering that the civilised human being endures are a proof that the senses of nutrition of this being do not create a completely natural hunger and thirst but, on the contrary, to a great extent promote hunger for unnatural sources of nourishment and unnatural stimulants. From a cosmic point of view only a very small percentage of civilised people are absolutely healthy. But here other circumstances must also be taken into consideration, such as their relation to climate, exercise, sleep, fresh air, light, cleanliness and clothing. One's appetite for these realities must also be healthy; if not it is no use that the food is healthy. So it is no use if a human being consumes healthy food while living constantly in bad air and light or while wearing clothes that are far too thin, just as it is equally no use his living in fresh air and a healthy climate, and wearing good, warm clothes and so on while constantly taking into his organism unnatural substances in the form of food. Originally, every living being is equipped with organs that develop normal hunger and thirst or normal appetite for food that is absolutely natural for the organism, or for the fulfilment of the particular special conditions upon which its absolutely healthy existence is based. Generally, in the animals, these organs and this consciousness of nutrition are still in their purest form, protecting them almost one hundred per cent against errors in ways of living or to a corresponding degree bringing about the fact that only those forms of consumption and ways of living can be felt as pleasant that are absolutely normal for the evolutionary standard of the beings in question. Something quite different is the case for those beings we usually call “human beings”, but who, according to “Livets Bog (The Book of Life)”, are not completely evolved as such, and therefore to a certain extent still belong to the animal kingdom. The senses of nutrition of these beings are, to the very highest degree, distorted, degenerated and unreliable. This in turn means that the beings in question can sometimes have a very strong hunger or even a very strong desire for more or less unnatural substances; indeed, sometimes to such a degree that these in many cases become their daily food and drink.

Since unnatural substances, which means substances whose actual food content demands for its extraction far too great an expenditure of energy on the part of the organism, are virtually indigestible by the human organism and are almost entirely without food value (just as they of course also sometimes represents an output of energy that is far too strong in relation to the organism and therefore shake it to its foundation), these unnatural substances become pure poison for this organism. It is a matter of course that when the senses of nutrition or organs of taste of terrestrial Man are so poorly stabilised that they can sometimes dictate a daily or constant consumption of such poisonous substances, the organisms of these beings become to a corresponding extent sick, abnormal or miserable in appearance.

When the individual has neither the instinct nor the intelligence to choose the absolutely perfect food

As for terrestrial human beings, they have, through religions, wisdom and science together with the other phenomena of life itself in the last few centuries, gone through a rapidly accelerating process of evolution. This has in particular caused an outstanding development of intelligence in the individuals. This development of intelligence has widened their sensory horizon and given them mastery over forces or realities of which they had previously no notion. As this new mastery is, of course, the same as an increase of so-called “free will”, this “free will” of the human being has thus been raised a little above the ordinary, habitual, primitive animal form of “free will”. While this latter form of will is largely directed by an aptitude for instinct, the former form has now to a great extent gone over to being directed by an aptitude for intelligence. The terrestrial human being has thus to a certain extent raised himself above the ordinary animal kingdom by the conquering of extensive new spiritual or mental terrains. But to the same extent as the human being has in this way come into new spiritual areas, using intelligence instead of instinct, instinct of course degenerates; for it is an unbreakable law of Nature that those parts of an organism, such as organs, limbs, senses and so on, that are not used, finally become unusable and degenerate, to be completely dissolved at last through various following incarnations, and disappear; so they can be maintained absolutely only by being used. Since the animal's pre-eminent and developed instinct is thus degenerated in the human being, and this instinct was the basis for the ability to feel absolutely normal hunger and thirst, the terrestrial human being's ability to feel this is thus to a corresponding degree degenerated.

If the terrestrial human being's organism had not been refined at the same time as he evolved out of the animal kingdom but had, on the contrary, continued to be equally robust, enabling him to consume the usual coarse animal food, then his habitual consciousness would have been able to save him, for there would not then have been any change in his way of living. But the organism is, as previously mentioned, refined; and correspondingly refined substances are demanded for its maintenance or existence. But, as the terrestrial human being in his evolution has thus come into areas where his organism can no longer tolerate to the same degree as before the old animal food but demands new and refined products for its nourishment, and as his instinct in these new areas is in a degenerated condition, so this instinct can no longer guarantee the individual's desire for or choice of the right food as in the old areas. And the individual must then with his intelligence seek to arrive at an understanding of which foodstuffs are the right ones for his organism's present step in evolution. But since nothing in the organism can be born fully grown but can become usable only through gradual development, so intelligence too cannot be born fully grown but must be developed. Since intelligence can be developed only through experiences, so the terrestrial human being must, in those areas where he has lifted himself beyond being led by the old animal instincts, learn from experience the true realities. But experience arises on the basis of error; so the terrestrial human being finds himself in a zone of evolution where he, precisely because of his failing instinct and his as yet lacking intelligence, makes an immeasurable number of mistakes. By virtue of his developed free will he can choose what he wants to eat and drink, but he has neither the instinct nor the intelligence to choose the absolutely perfect food or that food which is absolutely appropriate for his organism's evolutionary step. He therefore, to an exceptionally great extent, comes not only to choose foodstuffs that can only in a general sense be said to be foodstuffs but he even chooses realities that are absolutely not foodstuffs. Now, to take into an organism foodstuffs that are not appropriate to this organism creates disharmony in it. As disharmony in an organism can elicit only illness or pain, it is understandable that this has given rise, within terrestrial mankind, to such realities as “medicine men”, “quacks”, “wise men” and “wise women”, “faith healers” and “doctors”, all of whom constitute more or less successful repairers of undermined and overburdened organisms. Furthermore, it is the same circumstances that cause distressed mankind to cling to the innumerable “patent medicines” that flourish so prolifically, or to all kinds of powders and liquids, if only they have the label “medicine” stuck on them, quite regardless of how dangerous and undermining for the organism they are, according to cosmic analysis. Anaesthetics, which certainly relieve temporary pain but thereby in reality undermine the organism's recognition of the presence of these poisonous substances in the organism and its struggle or resistance to them, have likewise been discovered or invented. It is a matter of course that a form of life or existence that in the shape of unnatural food and drink so promotes a continuous accumulation of poisons within the organism and furthermore as “medicine” promotes another accumulation of poisons, which perhaps in certain cases can remedy the effects of the former (but on the other hand in many cases leave behind quite other harmful and incurable effects), finally undermines even the highest creative power of the individual or the “X2” referred to in “Livets Bog”. According to eternal laws of love this undermining will culminate in a catastrophe. This catastrophe is admittedly terrible in itself, and appears as the very highest or most radical experience that exists, but, on the other hand, precisely by virtue of its strong effect, it stops total undermining and thereby brings the individual back to what is normal or natural with the will and the power never more within the present spiral of evolution to depart from the normal or divine ways within the area of nutrition. This catastrophe is thus elicited through the individual's having for a while completely lost his creative power and, in the worst cases, in many incarnations being thereby completely unable to create a perfect or normal physical body; he must therefore in such periods appear on the physical plane as a person whom we term “mentally handicapped”. Here we must bear in mind that, according to “Livets Bog”, the present physical appearance of the individual is determined by three sets of heredity in the form of innate talents or natural capacities - namely his own talents from a previous existence - and the talents or natural capacities of his father and mother, which to a certain extent are present in his physical body. While the natural capacities or tendencies of the father and mother to a certain extent dominate the individual during childhood, thereafter to decline up to the age of thirty, then the individual's own heredity or innate tendencies from a previous existence dominate his body from that age until and beyond death. And it is this inheritance from a previous existence that determines the normality of the individual's present physical incarnation. But this problem is too vast to be elucidated here, and for the study of this I must therefore refer the reader to my main work, “Livets Bog ”.

So terrestrial people find themselves in a zone where they struggle with illnesses and sufferings based on their unfortunate choice of stimulants and sources of nutrition. This struggle is so dominant and the food consciousness so erroneous for a vast number of people that it is already now evident to cosmic consciousness that the beings concerned are well on the way to losing their normality or ability to create perfect bodies in their next incarnations, and therefore in these incarnations will be comparable to those beings who today fill our homes for the mentally handicapped, mental hospitals and hospitals. Such aspirants to future more or less abnormal incarnations or existences based on an erroneous food consciousness are identical with those who in daily existence appear as weak-willed “morphine addicts”, “alcoholics”, “smokers” and so on. Those stimulants that bring the beings into these categories are all, without exception, realities that are pure poison for the organism and that are accumulated in this organism only because of an emerging or habitual hunger or thirst that is quite unnatural, since these substances have nothing whatsoever to do with nutrition; in their absolute purest forms, they are totally alien to the organism.

As substance is in reality the same as power or energy, and energy in turn creates movement or vibration, none of these alien substances or energies can be introduced into an organism without creating corresponding movement or vibration. It is this vibration that is the basis for taste. If substance were not concentrated vibration, one would never be able to be taste or smell it. When something tastes sour or sweet, this particular taste is only an expression of the reaction between the vibration of the substance and the vibration of the substance in our tongue or organs of taste. In the same way it is the reaction between the vibration of the substance and the vibration of the substance in our organs of smell that is identical with what we call the “scent” or smell that is identical with what we call the “scent” or “smell” of the substance. The continuous introduction of alien substances into an organism means the same as a maintenance of an unfolding of alien energy in this organism. But such an unfolding of alien energy can spell only trouble for the organism's normal and necessary unfolding of energy, since it cannot exist in the organism without resisting or restraining the normal functions of the organism. So the reaction arising between the normal energy and the alien energy cannot mean anything but disharmony for the organism. It is such disharmony we call “illness”. When the alien energy is stronger than the normal energy and completely overcomes it, the physical body perishes and death occurs. Through death, or life in the spiritual world, the individual, by virtue of “X2” or his principle of creation, acquires the ability to incarnate or be born in a new physical body. But just as he has, by faulty ways of living, undermined or worked against his principle of creation, to that same extent will the abovementioned ability be lacking. And the individual will then, as previously mentioned, to a corresponding extent come to appear as abnormal or ill in his new physical existence. Through these dark lives or profound experiences, however, the “I” is again led back to the light, but in a new, transfigured form.

While the stimulants described here are all without exception in reality not food, and have therefore nothing to do with nutrition, it cannot be denied that the stimulants I will now mention to a certain extent really are food; but note only “to a certain extent”. They belong to that form of food suited to organisms of lower or more robust and primitive natures than the human; in other words, they are foods from which the terrestrial human being has in reality more and more grown away - to a great extent without knowing it. The numerous abnormal states brought about by these foods have, however, given rise to the beginnings of a rapidly accelerating development of the individuals' food consciousness or tendencies to desire more refined food, more appropriate and natural to their advanced organism and elevated spiritual mentality.

So the foods from which terrestrial human beings have grown away, and to which they are therefore beginning to take a dislike, cannot be regarded as normal for these beings since they are also, to a certain extent, a manifestation of alien energies extraneous to large parts of the organism. Such foods include meat, pork, fat, lard, fish, lobsters, crabs, shrimps, snails, mussels and the like. These foods are suited only to beings with coarse and robust organisms such as lions, tigers, hyenas, dogs and cats. To the same extent as the evolutionary step of the terrestrial human being lies above the steps or stages of such beings, these food products will be unnatural food.

If people nevertheless to a great extent consume these products as daily food, it is an expression of the fact that their food consciousness and taste organs have not been able to keep pace with the evolution of the other parts of their organisms. These taste organs do not yet therefore cause the hunger or thirst proper to people's advanced step, or the normal desire for those food products suited to that step. In other words, the nature of the particular taste of these products is still not so pleasant or habitual for them as to outdistance the taste of the above-mentioned animal substances. Curiously enough, one therefore finds that people today choose the coarse animal foods or meats, which are in reality, as sources of nutrition, too far below that step for foods which, for the cosmic or occult sight, proves to be the proper one for the organism of the advanced terrestrial human being.

So present terrestrial mankind, which is otherwise to a very great extent modern or up to date, is thus within the area of nutrition in reality out of date or old-fashioned. The same being, not only within spiritual areas but also within the areas of nutrition, must be said to be, in the words of the Bible, “the prodigal son who eats with the swine”. Indeed, he not only eats the above-mentioned primitive products, which he seriously considers necessary for the maintenance of life, but he has at times even turned this eating or the satisfaction of this unnatural hunger into the core of every form of recreation. So, in these cases, he lives in order to eat, while he in reality should eat only in order to live.

Since all the above-mentioned animal products are taken from the organisms of beings that have been killed, they must of necessity be termed “corpse-substances”. And every form of consumption of these is therefore identical with “the eating of corpses”, and can as such belong, of course, only to a primitive animal nature and absolutely not to a higher form of human culture or existence.

But let me here hasten to say that I of course do not put forward the present analyses in order to attack any meateater, butcher, hunter or fisherman. On the contrary, I think that the relation of every individual to the above-mentioned problems must be decided by himself, in accordance with his spiritualattitude, abilities and development, and not by me nor by others. When I put forward these analyses it is because the question of nutrition is for mankind of such a serious nature that none of its individuals can become really healthy or have an existence really free of illness before it comes into contact with that source of nutrition which, absolutely without existing on the basis of murder and dismemberment, in accordance with eternal laws, is suited to the step in evolution of the advanced human being. I will therefore in this book show the evolution of the presence of such a source of nutrition on the earth, at the same time giving an overview of how the above-mentioned animal foods or products, besides meaning killing or dismemberment for the beings from whose organisms they are taken, also mean murder and suicide for the human beings who take them into their organisms as nourishment, and who are thus in conflict with the very law of existence or the eternal commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, animals do not provide the correct food for the human being. Since the terrestrial human being is a transitional being between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom, the particular, special natures of these two kingdoms will each be more or less represented in the manifestation of the said being. It is, of course, mainly the former kingdom that dominates, since the physical body of the individual is still an animal body. The terrestrial human being is a “mammal”. His whole system of fertilization and reproduction is subject entirely to the laws of the animal kingdom. The finished or perfect human being is not at all subject to these laws but appears in a quite different, liberated, independent system of maintenance, which, however, I cannot explain here. Yet it is towards this completely developed human being or “Godlike human being” that the higher nature in the terrestrial human being is aspiring. Since the animal nature is the oldest or the most familiar, its manifestation has long since been transferred to the consciousness of the individual as firmly ingrained habits or tendencies. This in turn means that it demands no particular effort of will for its manifestation. It appears or is elicited quite automatically. Something quite different is true of the human nature in the individual. As it is of relatively recent date, it has only to a very small extent become habitual consciousness and is actually released only by an effort of will. It is thus for the great majority of people considerably easier to retort to an insult, easier to live for one's own advantage than for the advantage of one's fellow-beings, easier to lose one's temper or become angry than it is to elicit the opposite form of manifestation. This latter form, which means “turning the right cheek when one is smitten on the left”, occurs only to a very small extent as a natural ability; it must in the great majority of people be enforced by willpower. Everything that comes under the term “love” stimulates this willpower. This love, in the forms of religion, idealism, morality and so on, influences people, contributing to the development of this willpower in every single individual on the basis of his sufferings and the ensuing beginnings of the development of feeling, gradually transforming the individual from animal to human being. This in turn means that the terrestrial human being is more and more breaking the habit of revenging, killing and dismembering.

Since most forms of religion and morality have attached far more importance to the intellectual and mental life of the individual, and to his behaviour towards his fellow-humans, than to his physical organism itself, his nutrition or food, his relation to animals, this latter side of his conscious mental life is, as previously mentioned, still lagging very far behind in evolution compared to the rest of his condition. This in turn is reflected in the fact that terrestrial mankind in the above-mentioned less developed fields of consciousness is living in almost incredible excess, under the effects of which, in the form of chronic illnesses and immense sufferings, it is today sighing and groaning.

Through the new spiritual or cosmic world-impulse, which is at present sweeping the earth, and from which (according to “Livets Bog”) a perfect spiritual science, a purer and higher idealism, morality or culture than the present one will be created, terrestrial mankind's nutrition-consciousness will likewise be perfected. So one will now far more than before attach importance to the fifth commandment. Terrestrial mankind has now advanced so far forward in evolution that it literally cannot get any further until it has, learned to respect and properly to observe this commandment.

Since the effects of every form of action sooner or later in the eternal existence of their source will return to this source, manifesting themselves as killing, mutilating or caressing and edifying, on the same scale as they were elicited by the individual, so no individual can attain to an absolutely perfect fate or become free of mutilating or killing energies as long as he himself is still the source of such and is, by virtue of this, tied to the home or plane of existence of these dark energies. One will thus come to revise one's understanding of the above-mentioned divine commandment. It does not, as we know, read, “Thou shalt not kill people” but states purely and simply, “Thou shalt not kill”, thus implying absolutely no form of exception whatsoever. But people have not respected this commandment to the full and have, by virtue of their still undeveloped feeling and habitual animal desire for the consumption of blood and meat, made animals an exception. They slaughter, kill and mutilate them, indeed, in almost a darker form than even the beasts of prey. From these beasts of prey every animal has at least a chance to flee; they are as a rule overpowered only through their own lack of caution. But this is not the situation for the animals in relation to the human being, since this being has multiplied his capabilities as a beast of prey with extensive technical aids including long-range firearms, traps and the like. But what is an even more ingenious manifestation of the beast-of-prey-consciousness is the artificial breeding and rearing of animals. Here the animals are already captured and sentenced to death before they are born, indeed, even before they are conceived. Here there is no possible chance of fleeing. The little baby animals are entirely within the power of their murderers from birth, everything in their existence being based solely upon their becoming either the best possible beasts of burden or steaks. Here the beast of prey has thus gained the power and the ability to slough off his real skin, appearing almost in the form of an angel as a “friend” and “protector” of the animal in order later, when a suitable opportunity has arisen, without any sort of mercy or compassion, to hand it over to slavery, slaughter or mutilation. In this way the human being deprives such an animal or living being of a smaller or greater part of its physical lifetime, sometimes many years, merely so its organism may become a meal. In truth, such a form of manifestation or existence belongs to the consciousness of those beings who are at the blood- and meat-hungering stage of the animal and who have still not to any degree felt the flame of universal love through their veins and who are unable to any significant extent within the given field to use the divine power we call “thinking”.

Blood- and meat-eating human beings have thus a side to their nature that they have not yet managed to lift up into the zone of thinking and love where they are otherwise in reality situated, and which is the reason they can adorn themselves with the name “human being”. And it is this permanent blood- and meat-eating that darkens the existence of the terrestrial human being, since the sun of love cannot possibly shine where the human being is devoid of all respect for the living being's right to life, having made it a pleasure to exist on the death and mutilation of other beings. This pleasure must therefore be the eliciting factor for that reality we express as “Hell”.

Hell is not a prison in the form of a glowing fireplace somewhere or other fit for the eternal incineration of living beings but, on the contrary, appears as a very well-known reality in daily life since all illness, sorrow and pain are hell. Absolutely no other hell exists. Since illness, sorrow and pain, or all misery, are the expression of the effects of elicited actions that have not been in contact with the eternal laws by virtue of which the universe is maintained, Hell is thus the same as the collected disharmony in existence. As the terrestrial human being does not constitute a completely developed human being but in many fields is still ignorant of these eternal laws, he lives in a constant violation of these. As violation can occur only through a force radiating from the individual, and since no force or energy, according to “Livets Bog”, can go in a straight line but must move in circular paths, of necessity returning to its source, the energy elicited by every form of violation will return to its source, causing this source a corresponding disharmony. This source will thereby become subject to, or the victim of, the same fate as that which he has inflicted on his surroundings or fellow-beings. Since all slaughter and all consumption of blood and meat cannot possibly take place without meaning unnatural death and terror for those beings whose organisms are sacrificed, then the blood- and meat-eater cannot possibly be exempt from sooner or later meeting the effects of this greater or lesser complicity in generating a dark fate for these said beings. Since the effects described, from the time they are elicited until they return to their source, must sometimes negotiate an immeasurably long passage or circular course in the universe, they are often several hundreds of years en route, despite the fact that they move with a speed far exceeding that of light and ordinary radio waves. This in turn means that people who are today taking part in slaughtering or fishing, or who in any other way are killing animals, will not, in many cases, meet the main effect of their action in their present life, but in later lives. Here one must remember that all living beings are eternal realities and have thus always existed, but of course in successive organisms or bodies, since these consist of substance and therefore, like other material realities, machines and tools, must continually be renewed, for they gradually become old and worn out. However, when these effects return to the individual they will mix with his radiation and state of being, thereby causing pain and suffering. So they become the causes, albeit invisible to and concealed from the ordinary terrestrial human being, of his involvement in war, mutilation, manslaughter, murder and so on. In the same way the great majority of the people on earth in their present physical lives are subject to or victims of the main effects of their blood- and meat-eating in previous existences, at the same time as they are of course also subject to the effects of their other actions or manifestations from previous lives. No being can thus escape the effects of his imperfect actions. But this is nothing but divine. For if the opposite were the case, all evolution would thereby have ceased, and death, instead of life, would rule the universe.

It is a matter of course that I cannot here go into detail about the creation of fate itself and must therefore refer the reader to “Livets Bog”. I must, however, point out that the above is not in any way mere speculation or theory but is real fact; the circular paths of the rays creating fate can be observed moving through the universe through higher occult senses with the same ease as physical realities can be observed through physical senses.

In addition to the main effect of blood- and meat-eating there is also a secondary effect. The waves of energy promoting these effects follow only very short paths. The said effects are therefore brought about immediately; that is, they begin at the same time as the digestion of the animal products in question. These secondary effects are usually microscopic, so to speak, and are not noticed when the products are so-called “fresh goods”. But through continuous consumption they have an undermining effect on the organism and are therefore all the more dangerous since they are concealed or hidden, appearing only in their culmination in the form of organic illness. These effects are produced by the excessive difference between the internal vibration of the“corpse-substances” and the vibration of the living organism in which they have been absorbed as nourishment. When this difference is maintained constantly, which occurs through a continuous consumption of blood and meat, the vibration of the corpse-substances will finally overcome that of the organism, the individual concerned thereby to a corresponding degree losing control over the normal functioning of the organism. Where the vibration of the corpse-substances is the stronger the organism is defenceless against the invasion of foreign bodies (germs and bacteria), since the vibration of these are in harmony with that of the corpse-substances; they have thus nothing to overcome in order to take over all or part of the organism. And where the organism has in this way become defeated it displays a more or less conspicuous life-threatening organic illness. And it is such an undermining of the organism's normal vibration, partly in the form of blood- and meat-eating and partly in the form of drug-use and other unfortunate forms of nutrition and care that are the absolute cause of any form of illness whatsoever, whether it be tuberculosis, cancer, abscesses, arthritis, gall stones, kidney stones, excessive obesity, heart weakness, abnormal blood pressure, anaemia, digestive and eliminative problems of the like.

Neither narcotic stimulants in all their forms nor the consumption of blood and meat can exist without the promotion of one's own all-too-premature death. But a being precipitating or promoting his own death is committing “suicide”. Every human being who has not yet come into contact or harmony with the natural source of nourishment is thus, by virtue of his consumption of blood and meat, not only taking part in murdering his fellow-beings but is also taking part, even if slowly, in murdering himself. He is both a “murderer” and a “suicide”, and so to the greatest extent represents the breaking of the fifth commandment and the undermining of the eternal basis for a perfect life: Thou shalt not kill. Such an individual is still the expression of, or therepresentative of, heathendom and must to a corresponding degree be subject to the laws and consequences of this; he must be encumbered with illness and sufferings quite regardless of whether he is a “priest”, a “bishop” or a “pope”, or how much he calls himself “Christian”, “holy”, “converted”, “blessed”, “orthodox” or the like. No individual will experience the really great overshadowing by “the holy spirit” or the fundamental form of “the great birth” and the glorified existence as a “God-like man” elicited by this as long as he is still hungering for the flesh and blood of other beings, as long as he is still both a murderer and a suicide. And this being must therefore in the same space of time to a corresponding degree still lack “cosmic consciousness” or the real ability to “see God”.

For many of my readers my pointing out incorrect nutrition will quite naturally give rise to various objections. There are people who think that there would be far too many animals if people did not eat them. But such an objection can arise only from sources who have absolutely no profound insight into the divine world order, for, if they had, they would see that the number of living beings is regulated in completely different ways. The same forces that regulate the animals in the sea, the hosts of insects and the myriads of other beings outside the reach of mankind also embrace and regulate the beings within mankind's area and field of activity. That people should be overrun by sheep, cattle and pigs because they stopped eating them could never become a fact, particularly since all artificial breeding of them would stop. What has fallen to mankind's lot to regulate of the number of living beings on the earth is in reality but insignificant beside the true regulating factor - the spiritual atmosphere of the earth - since this is the direct promoting factor in the earth's ability to attract and repel, this constituting in turn, according to cosmic analyses, the basis for the earth's astronomical position and thereby for its climate. Consequently, the spiritual atmosphere becomes decisive for all nutrition and possibilities for existence, and thereby for the number of living beings on the planet as well.

Another strong objection will be concerned with the question of what will happen to the means of existence of the many thousands of people whose livelihood is based on employment within the large businesses or concerns providing the population's supply of those stimulants containing drugs and alcohol, and their supply of animal products. Those who raise this objection are victims of the notion that all these people would become destitute if everyone suddenly turned away from narcotic and animal sources of nutrition. But such a notion will, on closer observation, likewise show itself to be an expression of quite a superficial view and has nothing to do with absolute reality. Evolution takes place according to particular, eternal, hair-fine, unshakable laws. Among other things this means that it cannot occur by fits and starts but absolutely has to follow a quite slowly ascending scale of small steps from imperfection to perfection. Of these steps, which are so microscopic that a single one can hardly be distinguished from the one lying immediately above and the one lying immediately below, none can be jumped over, but must be experienced by every living being. A lion cannot suddenly become an ape, just as an ape cannot suddenly become a civilised human being. Such a process of transformation can take place absolutely only through an immensely long and, in a single incarnation, quite unnoticeable process of evolution or transformation. As people's conditions of nutrition or consumption are also a question of evolution, these too cannot possibly be changed in an instant. Little as the narcotic-animal source of nutrition and the great firms and expensive installations connected with it, which in technical skill are approaching the highest form of genius, could have come into existence in one day, but have done so through the daily life and activities of many generations, just as little can the new source of nutrition suited to and adapted for human beings, together with the firms and installations suited to this, come into existence suddenly, but only through the gradually ascending evolution of generations. There are therefore no tobacco companies, no breweries for the making of alcoholic beverages, no slaughterhouses, no cattle-breeding businesses or any other firms pertaining to the narcotic-animal sources of nutrition that will be ruined or go out of business because of mankind's sudden transition to the new source of nutrition, for such a sudden transition is an absolute impossibility. People are spread over far too many different steps in evolution for them to change to the new source of nutrition at the same time. The transition to this can therefore occur only gradually by one person after the other as they reach further in evolution through their disease and sufferings, through their experiences, through their intelligence and feeling - coming to feel and experience the imperfection in the old, animal source of nutrition. However, this gradual transition is no new phenomenon but a reality that is already developing fully and is apparent in daily life. To go against this is hopeless; it would be the same as going against thunder and lightning; it would be the same as trying to change the course of the earth and the position of the sun in the universe. Everyone has therefore reason to feel quite calm, for the transition to the source of nutrition will not take shape in such a way as to become a nuisance or something unfortunate for people. It is a natural process that every terrestrial human being inevitably must meet and go through in order to become the true “God-man” in the same way as he once had to meet and come to know the animal source of nutrition in order to be an expression of genius in the animal form of existence.

In reference to my description of the consequences of the animal source of nutrition, the question of how “everything can be very good” if these consequences are true might arise. But here I must refer the reader to “Livets Bog”. I can, however, say that all beings must of necessity go through darkness and sufferings, for without the experience of darkness, there would be no experience of light. Darkness is thus a divine arrangement. The question is only: Who should elicit or manifest this darkness? Providence or the Godhead must use those beings who by nature are best suited, which means those beings whose ability to love is still so primitive or latent that this way of manifesting darkness is still their greatest pleasure or happiness and thereby a vital necessity for them. By virtue of their unfolding of darkness, however, these beings are bound to the zones of darkness or suffering. But, as the effects of their dark way of manifesting or existing fall back on themselves in the form of great sufferings and states of unhappiness; a weak longing for a more perfect and purer existence will begin to develop in them. A vague feeling of a higher plane of existence will thus begin to dawn in their innermost layers of consciousness. And it is for the beings at this dawning that these lines are written. In the obvious beasts of prey no such dawning is to be found, and not in the consciousness of the most primitive human blood- and meat-eaters either. Here the notion that the human being cannot live without meat is still unshakable; that is, he is in the same condition of existence as the beast of prey. Talking to these people would be hopeless, but one can naturally be entirely tolerant towards their view of life, for they have too small an ability to love to be able to understand, and they must therefore for a time elicit those causes, in the form of blood- and meat-eating, that will sooner or later overshadow them with that quantity of suffering they still lack so that they can have a perfect ability to love and thereby an absolute disgust at being instruments for the eliciting of the killing principle or suffering. This book would thus not be understood or accepted by these beings and is therefore intended only to be received by those beings who have already begun to feel antipathy or disgust towards all slaughter and killing, but who, because of insufficient information, still find themselves among the ranks of corpse-eaters. My words are thus directed towards those beings who long for a higher and purer form of existence and whose entire attitude of consciousness is concerned with transforming themselves so as to be fit for being pervaded by the very highest energy of consciousness or “the holy spirit”; to beings who have a real hunger and thirst for knowing “what they should do in order to be blessed”. My words are for those beings who want to train themselves to be the highest instruments for the unfolding of wisdom and love, and who wish to take part in making “the kingdom of God” or the real human kingdom a fact on Earth. For those that have the ability to see it, my words are a scientific supplement to those of Christ to Nicodemus - “Without being born anew of water and the spirit one cannot enter the kingdom of God”.

“The kingdom of God” is that kingdom in which there is no “crying or torment”, it is that kingdom in which “righteousness lives”. This in turn means the kingdom that I, in “Livets Bog”, refer to as “the real human kingdom”.

As the individual's physical body consists mainly of water, being born again of “water” is the same as being born in a new physical body. But a new physical body does not mean merely a new incarnation but a new kind of physical body. This new kind of physical body is “the real human body”, which is at the moment developing rapidly, precisely because of the very disgust growing in the individual for the eating of corpses, or blood- and meat-eating. “The real human being” can only love his neighbour as himself, and, as a consequence of this, cannot possibly have, as a condition of his existence, the eating of the organisms of his fellow-beings, or their death and mutilation.

As spirit is the same as consciousness, being born anew of the “spirit” is the same as being born with a new consciousness. But if this new consciousness is of the same kind as the old one, it will, just as well as the latter, be without influence on the incorporation of the individual into “the Kingdom of Heaven”. The words of Christ express therefore not only a new consciousness but also a new kind of consciousness. This new kind of consciousness is 'cosmicconsciousness“ or “the holy spirit”. As “holy” is a term for the highest purity, and this in turn is the same as true love, and love in turn is the highest life-giving principle and the opposite of the killing principle, which is a vital necessity in the animal consciousness, being “born of the spirit” is the same as being born to “the real human consciousness”. The words of Christ converted to a modern scientific form can be expressed as follows: “If the physical body of the terrestrial human being is not changed from an animal body to a human body, and if the same being does not change his animal consciousness to 'cosmic consciousness' or 'the holy spirit', he can never become a perfect subject in 'the real human kingdom' but must still belong to the zone of the killing principle or the animal kingdom and there be subject to its dark form of existence.”

For this reason the divine voice says to today's mankind: “Blessed are they that turn away from the killing principle and have begun to make love a vital necessity, for they are on their way towards a glorified existence.” Through them the 'kingdom of God' will arise on the Earth.”

Having drawn attention in the previous chapters of the present book to the disharmony that the consumption of blood, fat and meat causes in the spiritual as well as the physical organism of the human being the great question will arise for every earnestly seeking reader: What is the ideal food?

In order that the answer to this should not be too discouraging it will here be necessary to give a brief overview of the attitude of meat-eaters to the absolutely natural food for human beings. This food is so simple, so little sophisticated and devoid of spices and stimulants that for the habitual meat-eater it will seem just as boring and impossible as water or milk would be for the alcoholic or drunkard. Just as the latter has cultivated a quite unnatural desire as far as drinking is concerned, so have the adherents of animal nutritional products, even if unconsciously and over a far longer span of time, cultivated in themselves a totally unnatural desire as far as food is concerned. People, through a great many generations, have so accustomed themselves to the taste of meat-products that, where previously they evoked natural disgust, they now evoke great unnatural pleasure. Just as the organism, through habituation to tobacco, alcohol and other unnatural stimulants, loses its natural ability to react to these poisonous substances, these thereby becoming “stimulants”, so too does the organism, through habituation, lose its natural ability to react to the poisonous substances appearing in the form of animal food, whereby these, like tobacco and alcohol, evoke an unnatural feeling of pleasure. But even if the habituation to some degree hardens the organism against the effects of the poisonous substances, it cannot be denied that the organism in the long run becomes completely undermined. This undermining is visible mainly through occult sight, which can follow the individual through numerous incarnations.

Since it is the purpose of the sense of taste to create aversion or repugnance in the individual's consciousness to unnatural nutritional products and create a desire for natural ones, it is here evident that the meat-eater's sense of taste is lost since it does not create aversion to blood products, but on the contrary lets their taste, as previously mentioned, be a very great pleasure. But feeling pleasure from things that destroy or undermine the organism and whose nature should therefore, by means of the sense of taste, be hostile to the individual, is the same as a vice. Breaking of the habit of eating the bodies or bodily parts of animals is thus the same as getting rid of a vice. But getting rid of a vice sometimes costs tremendous effort and willpower. Liberation from this vice consists in transforming the warped sense of taste so that it regains its natural ability to react to damaging stimulants. But transforming the sense of taste can only be done by getting used to natural products. What makes this process of habituation so difficult is that the natural products, because of the faulty sense of taste, are, if not disgusting, then boring or less satisfying for the spoilt individual. But just as tobacco, alcohol and other unnatural stimulants were repulsive and unpleasant before one became accustomed to them but gradually came to produce a feeling of pleasure, so too will it be possible for the natural nutritional products gradually, through a process of habituation, to return once more to promoting the real, healthy and natural feeling of pleasure in the individual concerned for which Nature originally created him. But training is required.

The fact that this vice is universal - one's parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, great-grandparents, friends and acquaintances and so on as a role being also victims of this -does not change the principle or cancel out the effects of the vice, but, on the contrary, in many cases blinds the individual's sense of reason so that he does not see clearly in the field concerned, indeed, is sometimes simply suggestionized by these circumstances into believing that the entire problem of faulty nutrition is not a problem but absolutely in harmony with Nature and therefore also in harmony with health. And it is a matter of course that this attitude of consciousness is absolutely fatal for the desire for what is natural. Such refined individuals would therefore never come out of this suggestion, and therefore out of the vice, if the eternal laws on which Nature is based did not have the effect that a vice can never in any case whatsoever exist without being identical with the undermining of the organism in question, quite unaffected by the extent, however great, to which it may be a pleasure for the individual concerned. And it is this undermining that, in the form of all existing organic illnesses, is the greatest instigator for people's evolution towards the true human food. As the illnesses increase to the same extent as people's nutritional aberrations increase, and as absolute health or an existence free of illness is thereby impossible as long as the vice or the narcotic-animal source of nutrition is maintained, all people, through their organic sufferings and illnesses, will ultimately be led to a purer source of nutrition, to absolute health.

The main factor in the leading of mankind towards the real human food, towards health, is thus not ordinary propaganda in the form of speeches and writings, for, even if these were totally lacking, mankind would all the same inevitably be led forward to being in harmony with Nature. The mainstay in this leading of mankind is the sufferings or illnesses. But written or spoken information is a splendid supplement to the sufferings and makes evolution progress more quickly for those beings who have reached so far through the sufferings that they have become receptive to the theoretical form of influence and want to, and have energy to, comply with it. For the other beings all teaching or theoretical influence is quite without meaning. For these the narcotic-animal source of nutrition based on their faulty or unnatural sense of taste is still a kind of quagmire, a kind of flypaper, from which they cannot free themselves. Illnesses or sufferings are therefore for these beings the only telling or effective language. And it is up to everyone to be tolerant and understanding towards such beings, for they have not yet the ability to grasp or understand the seriousness of the situation.

The difficulty for the adherent to the old form of consumption or of nutrition will thus consist in the transformation of his sense of taste, the overcoming of an all-too-strongly developed desire for food, which for him has become nothing less than a form of amusement or entertainment and thereby a vice. He must accustom himself to the fact that a meal that is in harmony with the divine laws, which means a meal that is absolutely beneficial to health, thereby preventing illness, cannot possibly consist of so many different kinds of conventional dishes (in many cases each involving highly unscientific chemical compounds damaging to the organism) or so many different kinds of more or less alcoholic or poisonous drinks. He must realise that a table “well-provided” in accordance with the highest fashion of today constitutes a road, hidden in silver, crystal and flowers, to the hospital, a festively decorated short cut to death. It is the cause of organic disorders and calcification. While the disorders are directly destructive factors for one's mood and temperament, calcification has a restrictive influence on all spiritual functions. The aforesaid table also promotes obesity. The artistic slim line intended by Nature as the contour for the human bodily form is to an all-to-great extent lost. It is thus a rarity in individuals who are over forty years old. Here one often sees a physical outline that is just as glaringly unnatural as the “well-provided” table that is its cause. That “the fair sex” tries to recapture the lost natural line by means of just as glaringly unnatural, but well-advertised, slimming remedies does not improve matters. The metabolic organs once destroyed do not allow themselves, at the wave of a hand or by a “magic formula” in the form of “pills” or “powders”, instantaneously, as if by a miracle, to be restored to their normal function.

For cosmic sight it appears that such a destroyed metabolism in the worst cases can pursue the individual through numerous incarnations. In these incarnations the individual has thus an abnormal metabolism from birth. The individual shows already at an early age tendencies to an overriding obesity. Here it will perhaps be claimed that these tendencies are inherited from the parents. But why is the individual born with precisely such parents and not with parents where these unfortunate tendencies are not to be found? A birth, which for the spirit of the individual would determine an unnatural existence, indeed a downright imprisonment in fat, would be an expression of the highest injustice or darkness if there were not something about the individual concerned that for the occult observer shows itself to be identical with the individual's own creative ability from a previous existence appearing in its body of eternity. This body of eternity constitutes a spiritual body in which the I of the individual appears, regardless of whether it is incarnated in a material or physical body or discarnated. Through excesses, through accustoming oneself to faulty or unnatural tendencies in a material existence or an earthly life, the individual to a corresponding degree reduces or destroys this creative ability.

As far as the aforesaid unfortunate nourishment is concerned this can also so affect the creative ability of the individual that he or she, among other things, becomes unable to build up normal metabolic organs in his or her physical body in a new incarnation. The effect of this is that the body right from the creation of the embryo is subject to excessive obesity. The fact that such an individual is as a rule born to parents' with similar tendencies, or if he has destroyed his creative ability through drinking and thereby is a rule born to parents who are dependent on alcohol, or in other ways is born to parents who have the same good or bad tendencies as himself, is due quite naturally to the law of attraction and repulsion. But in order to understand this we must go right back to the discarnated state of the individual in question, which means his spiritual existence before his present birth. In the existence mentioned, besides appearing in certain subordinate spiritual bodies he also appears in a general or main body. This body is described in “Livets Bog” as the individual's “body of eternity” or “X2” and is the main seat for the creative ability of the individual and is the basis for the manifestation of the individual and his ability to be reborn. This body is also the most profound eliciting factor in the individual's creation of a new physical body. Through the former body, which itself represents the seventh basic energy, the individual corresponds with the six other basic energies of existence, which means his daily life and activities, his building-up and breaking-down of matter, his youth and old age, his physical and spiritual existence. Since the same body thus appears as the seat for a constantly changing combination of the basic energies, it thus represents at any given time a corresponding form of radiation. This radiation can in turn be expressed as the individual's “spiritual halo”. This halo consists of spiritual energy. But, since spiritual energy, according to “Livets Bog”, comes under the term “electricity”, the said halo will thus be of an electrical nature of one sort or another. However, a quantity of electrical energy appearing in a particular limited form can be expressed as a “wavelength”. But a “wavelength” can in turn be directed only by attraction and repulsion. Attraction and repulsion in turn can be elicited only through “apparatuses”. For the spiritual or unborn being these “apparatuses” consist to a certain extent of the physical bodies of incarnated beings. When a male and a female being through their physical bodies enter into a sexual connection, and this connection is perfect, which means that fertilisation takes place, these beings, even if unconsciously, have attracted the spiritual halo of a discarnated individual. Through their sexual intercourse the two beings have thus acted as a “receiver” for the halo or “wavelength” of an unborn individual. This “wavelength” is in turn directly secured by the “receiver's” “condenser”, which means the female being's organs of fertilization. After this connection has been made, the energy of the unborn or discarnated individual, by virtue of the above-mentioned organs, begins to vibrate in physical matter. And the result of this is what we call “embryogeny (the creation of the embryo)”. The female being thus acts here as a direct medium or tool for a discarnated individual or spiritual being who is now materialising or creating a new physical organism for itself. When this body reaches a certain adequate position it is separated from the physical body of the medium, by the process we call “birth”, after which it becomes visible on the physical plane as a “newly born” world citizen. For this individual the female being is the “mother” and the male being the “father”.

I naturally cannot go into the details of such a comprehensive problem here but must refer the reader to future volumes of “Livets Bog”. If I here give these few vague outlines of the problem it is merely in order to show that no innate tendencies are innocently inflicted, but that these in absolutely all cases will be identical with the results of the individual's own conduct in previous lives or existences. For, as every discarnated individual constitutes a “wavelength”, and the character of this wavelength consists of the habits and tendencies, the building up and destruction of the ability to create that the individual has cultivated in his immediately preceding physical incarnation and the particular limitation of the “apparatuses” for its “reception”, the “spiritual halo” of the discarnated individual cannot be attracted to any “apparatus”, which means, a medium or parent, that is not in one way or another tuned into the same “wave-area”. It is this divine arrangement that determines that cows cannot give birth to bear cubs, that bears cannot give birth to elephants, that elephants cannot give birth to people and so on, but that each species of living being gives birth to those individuals particularly appropriate to it. But, just as the eternal laws thus determine or guarantee the right births for the species, so too do these laws determine that the defective and the perfect individuals each get births specially suited to them so that no tendencies, good or bad, of which they are not themselves the original source, can be inflicted on the individual through heredity. The law of attraction and repulsion determines that each individual always has the threads of his own fate in his own hands and can unceasingly work on his own deification. The most important point for this individual is to recognise his own paramount divine power in order thereby to use it in the guiding of his own fate towards the highest peaks.

The individual's innate good or bad tendencies are thus not inherited from the parents but are a direct “inheritance” from his previous existence. This “inheritance” is stabilised or elicited through the fact that the individual is attracted to parents within the same “wave-area” or with the same tendencies. When the individual is born with tendencies towards being overweight it is likewise his own “inheritance” from previous existences that is manifesting itself. Regaining the natural line or slimness can thus happen only by becoming accustomed to natural food. Such a process of habituation can of course not be achieved in days or weeks, but only in months or years for individuals in whom such tendencies are innate. For those individuals who suffer only from tendencies from their present life the matter is much simpler. For both parties, however, the way to health and vigour does not go through artificial medication but on the contrary exclusively through the transforming of the erroneous sense of taste of all the individuals so that all unnatural foods or products harmful to the organism, through this sense, give rise to a feeling of disgust, while the products that are absolutely healthy for and beneficial to the organism likewise through the sense of taste give rise to a natural feeling of pleasure and satisfaction.

As an erroneous sense of taste and its ensuing unfortunate tendencies are universal, the following question is of immediate interest - how does one change this sense of taste? The answer to this is quite simple; it is of course -through training.

This training consists in getting oneself used to eating natural products, which I will here show constitute the absolutely right food for the human organism's state of vibration.

When the individual has so accustomed himself to it that the taste of these products is the only appetizing thing in the world, then he is liberated from the lethal food that now, because of the force of habit, binds him like a chain to a primitive view of life, to illness, sorrow and mutilation.

Since meat or blood produce, as the reader already knows from previous sections, does not constitute the natural food for the human being, that food which must be pointed out as the right one can be found only among those substances we term “vegetarian”. This means that the human being's natural food can stem only from the plant kingdom.

Now here objections could be made and it could be emphasized that plants are also living beings and that their destruction or their use as food is just as much against the great commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as the use of meat is. And I must admit that this is really to some extent true. But, as the following will show, the plant beings are not so far advanced in evolution on the physical plane as the animals. This means that they do not have such a complex or sensitive nervous system as the animals and consequently do not experience pain in the same sense as they do. As the physical area of the plant being's consciousness still constitutes merely its “subconsciousness”, it has no day-consciousness on the physical plane and its defining of happiness and unhappiness is felt not as realistic fact but, on the contrary, at the very most as a vague feeling of pleasantness and unpleasantness. The plant is thus, unlike the animal, not at a stage in evolution where it has a completely functioning day-consciousness on the physical plane allowing the analyses of its fate, as rows of thought promoting conscious terror and anxiety, happiness and well-being, to file past its inner I. It can therefore feel its physicality only in terms of the two definitions: a vague feeling of pleasantness and a vague feeling of unpleasantness. It has admittedly a day-consciousness but, in relation to the animals', it is microscopic and, according to “Livets Bog”, corresponds merely to the sixth plane of existence, namely “the kingdom of bliss”. It is the divine atmosphere of this kingdom, converted into physical form, that gives the plant kingdom its array of glowing colours, beautiful smells and pleasant sounds. The plants are thus, according to the highest occult analyses, spiritual beings whose descent into darkness, the material plane or the zone of “the killing principle”, is not yet so advanced that their shining halo of bliss has been covered by or shrouded in coarse physical material but still casts its divine enlivening radiance over the continents of the earth as well as under the waters thereby transforming these immense deserts into gardens for everything living.

As the plant being is not so far advanced in physical evolution as the animal beings and does not therefore suffer as much through killing or mutilation as they do, since the plant cannot feel anxiety or terror and cannot experience pain realistically but merely in the form of a vague feeling of unpleasantness, it will be obvious that by killing animals one creates greater suffering than by killing plants. Of two evils one must choose the lesser. And in the present case it would be the lesser evil to kill plants. By choosing vegetarian food one will thus to the least extent break the fifth commandment. This choice will furthermore result in a great advantage since vegetarian food to a certain extent can be produced entirely without killing or mutilation. The vegetable area includes in its highest examples substances that are simply designed to be absorbed as nourishment in organisms. This in turn means that these substances are in such a state in Nature or are under such conditions that their absorption as nourishment in organisms means life and evolution instead of killing and mutilation. It is the emergence of these substances that will replace “the killing principle” on the earth and make it possible for the old saying “one being's death is another's bread” not to continue being valid on our planet.

In order to show the true relations between the terrestrial human being and animal and vegetable food, it will now be necessary to lead the reader through some cosmic or occult analyses. These can perhaps be somewhat difficult for the untrained researcher, but, for him or her who has the ability, energy and interest to really think them through, they will be irrefutable proof of the unshakable harmony of my book with the absolute facts or the true circumstances. It is thus not my task to demonstrate the above-mentioned sources of nourishment in the form of chemical analyses or in modern, current terms such as “vitamins”, calories“, “acids” and so on. For the spreading of that form of knowledge mankind already has a whole host of competent scientists. It is likewise not my mission to write a series of new vegetarian recipe books. The world is beginning to be well supplied with these too. But while modern scientific research as well as recipe books are based on and constitute a result of “the thought process from below”, the information that I have to give is a result of “the thought process from above” and thus expresses the highest occult analysis of the above-mentioned two sources of nutrition, which means the analyses of the living life itself in these sources of nutrition.

By “the thought process from above” is to be understood the highest sensory perception or experience through “the holy spirit” where everything is perceived from the “aspect of life”, “the thought process from below” constituting merely the experience through the coarse physical senses where everything is seen only from the “aspect of substance”. Modern science is, for the time being, based on the latter form of sensory perception, but evolution will result in its later coming to see things from “the aspect of life” too, thus becoming elevated above the many illusions and pitfalls that sensory perception from “the aspect of substance” represents.

I will now go on to demonstrate or show things from “the aspect of life”, thereby giving the unshakable foundation on which all science of nutrition and authorship of recipe books ought to rest.

The entire universe, everything that can be sensed or perceived, is, according to the highest occult analysis, living. But all life has two aspects, namely “the aspect of substance” and “the aspect of life”. When we see something we call “substance” it is really something “living” we are seeing from “the aspect of substance”. When we, however, see something we call “living” it is in reality the substance we are seeing from “the aspect of life”. In this way substance and life become identical, but can be felt through two fundamentally different forms of sensory perception.

As the ability to feel life from “the aspect of substance” constitutes the most primitive form of sensory perception it is common to all living beings at the primitive stages in evolution. The ability to sense substance from “the aspect of life” is, however, not fundamental until the higher steps in evolution where the beings have gone through the “great birth” mentioned in “Livets Bog”. For beings who do not fundamentally sense life from “the aspect of life” but merely from “the aspect of substance” all life appears as “substance” or “matter”. This matter is in turn identical to energy, power, movement or vibration. The vibrations represent in turn an endless world of variations appearing for the senses as colours, sounds, rays, and bodies; in brief as everything we know of as “created things”. Since everything that can be sensed from “the aspect of substance” is movement or vibration, nothing from this aspect will be seen as eternal but only as changeable. Everything is therefore temporal. If one, however, senses from “the aspect of life”, everything becomes life or “living beings”. As one does not sense matter from this aspect “living beings” cannot appear here in forms or bodies nor show any signs of change, since the movement or vibrations cannot be sensed here. Living beings therefore reveal themselves as eternal realities, which means that they have never begun and will never cease. As these eternal realities constitute those points from which all vibration or movement emanates, they are the only absolute “fixed points” in existence. These eternal “fixed points” constitute the foundation for everything that can be sensed from “the aspect of substance”; they constitute the source of all creation; they constitute the eternal living kernel in every organism and determine that these organisms achieve identity as living beings. It is such a kernel of being we have come to know through “Livets Bog” as the “I”. For occult sensory perception these “Is” or “fixed points” thus become the very highest and ultimate direct analysis of everything that can be sensed. As they constitute the life itself or “the living” in the universe we will call these points “life units”. These “life units” can thus through primitive sensory perception be perceived only as “substance”, but through the highest sensory perception this “substance” becomes visible as “life units”.

A “life-unit” thus constitutes the living being seen from “the aspect of life”. The “life units” of which one has most knowledge on Earth are of course those constituting terrestrial human beings or those to which the individuals themselves belong. Next come the animals, then the plants and after them the minerals. While the primitive or terrestrial sensory perception to some degree indirectly elicits the view of human beings, animals and plants as “living beings”, or as here termed, “life units”, it is significantly more difficult through the same sensory perception to experience the minerals as “living beings” or “life units”. These are, on the contrary, sensed more as substance, vibration or movement. But gradually, as the human being begins to be able to sense through “cosmic consciousness” or “the holy spirit”, it becomes more and more evident that the materials or substances mentioned also constitute “life units”. And it is on the basis of this evidence, which allows everything in existence to appear as “life units”, that one can prove that it is not animal but vegetarian products that constitute the natural food for the human being, just as it is also from the same experience that one can show that cremation, as I have shown in another book, is flagrantly against the laws of Nature.

As all substance is thus in its highest analysis “life units”, and our food, our flesh and blood, the air we breathe, even our skeletons, our nails and hair in reality also consist of “life units”, just as the material for our clothes, shoes, furniture, houses, tools and so on consist of hosts of billions of “life units”, one must naturally to a certain degree become acquainted with the “daily life and activity”, so to speak, of these “life units” in order, through this acquaintance, to attain absolute knowledge about the harmony of our existence with the rest of life in the world. For without knowledge of the manifestation and living conditions of these “life units” we would not be able to know, for example, if the “life units” in the food we eat are killed or mutilated or if they gain life and development from our contact with them. There are, as mentioned above, “life units” whose absorption as nourishment in organisms means natural development and life, just as there are other “life units” for whom the same absorption means death and mutilation. (By “death” one must here, as elsewhere in my books, understand a destruction of the living being's body, not of its I, for this is eternally indestructible, an absolute death being thereby impossible.)

People who, in the form of food and drink, consume “life units” for whom this consumption means unhappiness, death and mutilation, here inflict upon themselves a “list of sins” that, regarded numerically, is of such dimensions that the otherwise known “list of sins”, for which they, through religion, the church and the priest, have asked forgiveness, is nothing in relation to this. It can here be at most a matter of some hundreds of individuals in their daily surroundings against whom people in one way or another have sinned, but the number of “life units” they have sinned against through faulty nourishment numbers billions. It is true that in the latter case it is merely a matter of microscopic beings. But in accordance with the eternal facts, for the divine or cosmic consciousness “one day for the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”; for this consciousness microcosmos is consequently equal to macrocosmos. The eternal laws are valid for small things as well as large. The fifth commandment does not state that one may kill small beings. The results of this mass murder of “life units” through wrong nourishment do not fail to appear; they are the cause of the fact that the whole of terrestrial mankind is not healthy but to a great extent a collection of individuals more or less mortally wounded and mutilated by organic illnesses, who, in hospitals, clinics, and sick bays, are making their last efforts to regain the health, life and vigour that for them is a lost country.

The same mankind cries to heaven about “disarmament” about “the abolition of war”, about “an eternal peace”. But how can such realities be fulfilled by individuals, by units, who in themselves are active explosives against all harmony with peace as its foundation? World peace cannot be borne or maintained by individuals whose very innermost selves are battlefields for mass murder, war and mutilation, constituting the concentration of all contrast to the warmth of life itself or eternal love. The individual can never come to experience a lasting peace outwardly until he has rooted this peace inwardly in his own heart, in his own body or in the “universe” in which he is himself a Godhead. When the individual reaches as far as choosing the foodstuffs for whose “life units” it is vitally necessary to be absorbed as nourishment in an organism, then the mass murder in his physical culture will decrease, then his illnesses will stop, then he will literally create “world peace” in his own breast and can look forward to the karma or fate of coming to live in an outward zone of peace. Only such individuals can send out the vibrations or energies from which a fundamental world peace can arise.

As previously mentioned, the terrestrial human being constitutes the “life-unit” that the same being would most easily be able to investigate or observe. Let us therefore look at this “life-unit”. We are witness to the fact that this has a physical or material body. This body constitutes its “aspect of substance”. It consists of many different kinds of substance or matter. This matter is in turn to be expressed as a collection of energy-combinations or releases of force. In this body there is thus released digestion, oxidation, blood circulation, the development of muscle and so on, all of which are intended to sustain or maintain the body in question. Through the same body the “life-unit” corresponds with its surroundings, which means that it exerts an influence on its fellow beings, on other forms of matter and so on. It is this unfolding of energy that we call “creating”. This creation thus constitutes the manifestation of the “life-unit”; and it is this manifestation that can be expressed as the “vibration of the life-unit”. The “life-unit” can thus be expressed as a “fixed point” from which movements and vibration emanate.

Just as the human being constitutes a “life-unit”, so too does the animal constitute a “life-unit”. The same is true of the plant. If we go further downwards in evolution it gets more difficult to distinguish the vibrations of the individual “life-units” from one another; and this apparently inextricable unfolding of energy or vibration is actually what we usually term “substance”. Since people cannot separate the vibrations of the individual life-units from each other they tend to regard these vibrations or this “substance” as “lifeless”, which means without connection to I's. But the “substance” is far from being without connection to I's, and is just as far from being “lifeless”. It is just as much an expression of the manifestations of the living beings as a collection of paintings, drawings or other man-made things. There is thus absolutely no “substance” without “life-units”; but where one cannot separate these from each other, one expresses their collective manifestation or appearance as “substance”, “vibration” or “matter”.

Our happiness does not depend only on our relationship to our fellow beings but also on our relationship to the “life-units” or the “substance” in our organism

All “life-units” each, as mentioned above, elicit vibrations. As these vibrations vary, the “life-units” can be divided into types according to the character of the vibration they each represent. And it is on this mutual difference in types that everything coming under the term “evolutionary steps” is based.

Everything in existence thus constitutes vibrations. Vibrations are in turn based on life-units. The life-units are to be found on an endless scale of steps, since there is an endless scale of different, more or less prominent, types of vibration. The terrestrial human being thus represents one particular type of vibration on this ladder. These different vibrations are mutually dependent. This in turn means that our daily vibration, which is the same as our daily manifestation and experience of life, cannot possibly take place through our own vibration alone but is determined exclusively by a mutual co-operation with the vibrations of the other beings in our surroundings. If this co-operation is harmonious, our life will be perfect. If it is disharmonious, our life will be mutilation and suffering. Knowledge of these life-units and their vibrations, on which a life in perfection for the terrestrial human being depends, is therefore the necessary condition for reaching absolute health of mind and body. So a perfect, happy existence depends not only on good cooperation with the life-units in existence that we perceive as our “fellow beings”, such as people, animals and plants, but is also to the very highest degree determined by our cooperation with the life-units that we do not usually regard as living beings; namely the life-units that to physical sight show themselves as “animal” and “vegetarian” “substances”. And we will therefore, in what follows, make acquaintance with those of these life-units that are for, and those that are against, the terrestrial human being in his daily journey through life.

In order to become acquainted with these life-units we must first become acquainted with the basic principle of the life-unit itself. In order to simplify access to this I have made the attached symbol. The round figure as a whole symbolizes a living being's appearance as a life-unit. The innermost white round field with the triangle signifies the I of the same being. But an I cannot exist or experience life except by virtue of organs or bodies; and the living being has then also, according to “Livets Bog”, six such general organs or bodies. Of these only the physical body is fundamentally experienced by the terrestrial human being, while the other bodies in the individual's physical existence, which are of a spiritual nature, step into the background as “subconsciousness” and have their seat in the “eternal body”, also mentioned in “Livets Bog”. This entire combination of bodies is shown on the symbol as the dark ring encircling the round, white field. Within this ring we see eight circular figures that are each similar to the entire picture or main symbol. These figures signify the organs in the physical body of the individual. These organs are, according to “Livets Bog”, “living beings” and thus each constitute a life-unit. The fact that there are eight figures in the symbol is randomly chosen and does not signify the actual number of the living being's organs, since this is far greater in each living being. As these organs are living beings or life-units, they too consist of an I and a combination of bodies that, like the main figure, is shown by a white, round figure with a triangle and a dark ring round it, within which we again find eight figures of the same kind as the main figure, only smaller. This means that the organs, when considered as living beings, are also equipped with organs that are in turn to be expressed as “living beings”.

As these latter organs are thus living beings too, they are also equipped with organs that again are to be expressed as living beings. We can continue in this way without ever reaching an end or the cessation of life. Life in reality consists exclusively of “living beings”. Everything is life. But since this immeasurable host of living beings spans an infinite panorama of evolution, the same beings reciprocally come to represent a correspondingly infinite variety in their very manifestation or appearance. It is this variety that is the absolute determining basis for the same being's existence or experience of life. It is precisely this variety that determines that the living beings each, in the form of the experience of their own lives, can be organs for other living beings thereby promoting life for one another. But how could they fulfill their mission if they were exactly the same, living in the same dimensions or of exactly the same size? How could our lungs be lungs for us, or our kidneys, cells, molecules, atoms, electrons and so on be serviceable as material for our physical body and manifestation if they were “human beings” or living beings of the same category as we are? Such an eventuality would be the opposite of that which is a fact, namely, life. And a real death or an absolute “nothing” would thereby prevail. The universe with its galaxies, suns, planets, continents, oceans, spheres and planes of existence, and other manifestations of the eternal father, would never have been perceived by the brain of a living being, for such a brain would exist just as little as all these realities would. But exactly the same would be the case if our organs, cells, molecules and so on, or everything that belongs to the term “substance” or “matter”, were not identical to “living beings”. If the substance were not a combination of life-units it would never be able to represent vibration or movement. A lifeless thing absolutely cannot bring about any movement whatsoever. Here you may object that in daily life we see many “dead things” move themselves. We see the clouds moving across the sky, we see the water roaring in rivers and streams, we experience the noisy breakers of the ocean, just as we have also become familiar with the course of the planets and stars amongst each other. But are all these realities now “dead things” too?

No! It is naturally only in the primitive or spiritually un-enlightened human being's imagination that they are perceived as “dead” and, as such, are expressed as “the forces of Nature”. But the truth is that all these movements, or the collective macrocosmos, are also expressions of living beings or life-units. Just as our organs, cells and other bodily material are life-units within us, so are we ourselves organs within a greater being's organism. This greater being is the earth. The earth is also a life-unit with an I and a physical body. The physical earth is thus the physical body of this life-unit. The earth constitutes in turn an organ in the solar system, which is also a life-unit, whose physical body is made up of its physical solar body with the planets belonging to it. The solar system is in turn an organ in the galaxy, which in the same way also appears as a life-unit with an I and a physical body. This being, or gigantic life-unit, is in turn an organ in an even greater system or being, and so on continuously into infinity. So no living beings can exist without being organs in a larger being, just as they themselves equally cannot exist without being built up of an ocean of smaller beings or life-units. By virtue of this, the symbol can be used to express the principle of life of any living being whatsoever. If we imagine the smallest circles on the picture, those that are almost invisible to the naked eye, as expressions of the life-units that appear as people, the larger circles in which they appear would signify beings of the order of the earth. The larger circles in which the circles of these latter beings appear will then signify beings of the order of the sun or-the solar system, while the circles of the next size are to be regarded as signifying the galaxybeings. These circles are made up of the eight largest figures of the main figure. The symbol as a whole thus in this case signifies a being so large or a life-unit so gigantic that our galaxy constitutes merely a single organ in it.

If we imagine the symbol as a whole signifying a human being, the eight largest round figures in the ring, as already stated, will signify its organs, while the figures of the next size signify its cell-beings. The circles of the ensuing sizes will then signify its so-called “substance” or “matter”. And here we come down to the regions of life-units that are to be found in our food and drink.

Martinus Institute

SYMBOL OF THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE-UNITS IN THE UNIVERSE

The entire main figure on the picture signifies a “life-unit”, that is the principle “a living being ”. Just as this figure in the picture repeats itself on a smaller and smaller scale, so the principle of “the living being” repeats itself again and again on a smaller scale in the organism of every living being. So there are beings within beings, and organisms within organisms.

The main figure thus constitutes a “macro-individual”, and the smaller versions of this are the “micro-individuals” of this “macro-individual”. These are then in turn “macro- individuals ” for the even smaller beings existing within them, and so on ad infinitum.

“Inner” and “outer” conditions for the life-units or micro-beings in our organism as well as for ourselves.

Just as the life-units we call human beings, animals and plants, in order to manifest themselves or maintain life, require certain “inner” as well as “outer” conditions, so the small life-units that appear for us in the form of substance or our intake of food, drink, tobacco and so on also require “inner” and “outer” conditions for their perfect existence. For people, animals and plants the “outer” conditions consist of the universe, the natural surroundings in which they live, which in turn means the planet on which they are situated, the forces of Nature surrounding them, the climate, the spiritual atmosphere or all the realities that together constitute the “organism” in which the mentioned beings experience life. The “inner” conditions for the same beings will on the other hand be the harmony between the life-units that, in the form of organs, cells, molecules and so on, experience life in their bodies, together with the introduction of the right life-units or living beings that, in the form of substance or matter, should be material for the maintenance of the same bodies. For the life-units in our intake the “outer” conditions are likewise the “universe”, the “forces of Nature”, the spiritual atmosphere or all the realities together constituting the organisms within which they live, with the one difference that, while for people these realities are the ordinary known universe, the known forces of Nature and their religious or cultural standard respectively, the universe for the above-mentioned small beings consists of the bodies of the people, animals and plants in which they are situated. The circulation of the blood, the digestion and the oxidation that take place in the body in question will thus be the “forces of Nature” for the small beings, while the cultural standard for these beings is determined by the level of evolution to which the organisms in which they are situated belong, which in turn means whether these organisms are plants, animals or people.

The “inner” conditions for the small beings or life-units in our intake are naturally also that they get the proper nourishment, the proper “surroundings”, but these affect us only in such cases where we, in the form of food and drink, have introduced some of the same life-units into our organism that do not belong there and therefore cannot get their vital conditions fulfilled in this, but achieve an unnatural, sick and deadly existence. Through the introduction of such life-units into our organism disharmonies arise in it, disharmonies that can sometimes be so intense that they ultimately make this totally unsuited as a universe or residence for the life-units that in reality belong there, whereby this must therefore perish in an unnatural way. These disharmonies are identical to the fatal organic illnesses that occur in daily life. For the human being it is thus of great importance to introduce, in the form of food, the proper life-units into his organism or physical body.

As the “life-unit” constitutes matter's “primordial substance” the universe becomes identical to an ocean of “eternal life”

Through the symbol just described we have gained insight into the living being's principle of life and have, through its analysis, come to the finest, absolute definition of what the matter or substance in existence can be divided into, namely “the life-unit”. Life-units are thus the basic analysis of any substance whatsoever. They are the highest division into fine particles of all matter and so constitute existence's absolutely only primordial substance.

But as this primordial substance, in the form of living beings or independent particles of life itself or “the living” in the universe, constitutes the creating basis of everything that can be manifested and sensed in microcosmos as well as in macrocosmos, the identity of the universe as an all-embracing ocean of life is, through the principle of life-units, guaranteed as an eternal, unchangeable fact.

It is this fact that is revealed in every form of movement, in every form of transformation, in every form of creation. It is upon this fact that “the tooth of time”, as well as the decomposition process of corpses, is based. If the substance were not life, an eternal stillness would be the true fundamental analysis of the universe; no movement whatsoever would be possible. But without movement there can be no manifestation, and without manifestation the universe would be identical to an eternal, absolute death. An eternal “nothing” would have replaced the life now existing, the life that, as a fact, in the form of life-units or living beings, sparkles and radiates, identical to all things; the life in which all things live, move and have their being.

As all living beings in the form of life-units are “substance”, and all substance in the form of “life-units” is living beings, an absolute lifelessness would thus be an impossibility in the universe. But as lifelessness is an impossibility, absolutely “dead things” will also be an impossibility. But when “dead things” are an impossibility, disharmony will certainly arise in such fields where an individual regards “living things” as “dead”, and of necessity treats them accordingly. It is this abnormality that to a far too great extent holds true in the fields where the terrestrial human being deals with substance or matter, and particularly where he has to choose the substances for his nourishment and the maintenance of his organism. And on the basis of this illusion he comes to “sin” or act wrongly against himself as well as against the small beings or life-units in the substances or its intake of food, drink and so on. I will therefore later point out the matter or the substances consisting of life-units that to a particular degree suit the human organism, that is to a particular degree achieve, not a mutilating or deadly, but a perfect or natural existence by being consumed as nourishment in the above-mentioned organism, whereby there arises for the human being concerned an unmistakable way out of the dark barbarism of heathendom or the traditions of killing in the area of nutrition, which, through the present book, have been shown to constitute the most profound cause of the opposite of all absolute heath or of the joy and happiness that must of necessity be among the basic pillars in a sustained peace on earth.

The “intrinsic vibration” of the living being and the “intrinsic vibration” of substance

We have now come so far in the analysis of matter that we have reached recognition of the fact that this matter or the substances are life or signify the manifestation of living beings. They each signify a particular kind of energy or vibration. Gold, silver, copper, iron and all metals each has its own particular vibration, just as meat, blood, juices, acids, sugar, salt, fruit, roots, kernels, leaves, stalks and so on each have theirs. As the human being, by virtue of his identity as a “life-unit”, also constitutes a particle of a “substance” made up of all terrestrial human beings together, this “substance” has naturally its particular kind of vibration too. This kind of vibration is so close to us that we are here not physically excluded from seeing its details, as we are with the vibrations of ordinary substances; one sees these in all their particulars. The details in the kind of vibration that is emitted from the substance in which people are life-units comprise all the things and traditions created by the human consciousness, such as houses, bridges, dams, engines, works of art, clothing and jewelry as well as unions, sects, cultures, fashions, manners, customs and so on. All these realities express various strong, and less strong, vibrations, together of necessity representing a particular standard of force, which in turn means a particular unit of measure of energy or vibration. This unit of measure constitutes “substance” for a sufficiently superior layer of consciousness, for example such as belongs to globe- or planet-beings. For the terrestrial human being himself it does not of course constitute “substance”. He has to go just as far down in the ladder of evolution beneath him as he himself is under the planet-being's place on the same ladder before he begins to regard things as substance. In this connection it may be pointed out that the “substance” that is made up of the collected manifestation of terrestrial mankind, and in which the human being is a “life-unit”, is the cerebral matter of the earth. The world cultures with their religions that pass over the planet are the workings of the earth's brain, are the earth's “thoughts”. These cultures are the amounts of energy through which it forms its influence on its “fellow-beings”, that is other planet-beings, other globes. But here we are at the limit of the “cosmic sight” within the reach of the human being. We cannot sense what the earth “tells” one of its fellow being or another planet, since the prerequisite for this is based on that part of evolution by which the earth is ahead of us and which we as yet have not travelled. We can just manage faintly to discern its “messages” so much that we can see if they are “evil” or “good”. We can thus feel if they are “hot-tempered”. World wars are thus “outbursts of anger” by the earth. But to which planet, to which “fellow-being” of the earth the amounts of energy of such outbursts are directed is quite another topic. I will therefore not go into further detail about this here.

When I have ventured into the present problem it is in order to show how the small beings are dependent on the large, and the large dependent on the small. Just as the earth during its “outburst of anger” in 1914-18 suffered terribly, got many of its brain cells (people) killed, others mutilated, or, in brief, had large parts of its “cerebral matter” (terrestrial human society) destroyed or deranged, so too does a human being derange large parts of his cerebral matter through his fits of temper. Here many of the life-units in his brain are likewise killed or mutilated. As the brain is normally the seat of physical vital function, this function is necessarily to a corresponding degree undermined by every fit of temper. This in turn results in disharmonies in the experience of life itself for the individual concerned; it can even poison the blood.

So we see through this that a certain interplay is promoted between the substance and the individual using the substance as material for his manifestation; this in turn means between the intrinsic vibration of the substance and the intrinsic vibration of the individual. During an outburst of anger these two vibrations collide with one another and disharmony arises. These kinds of vibration do not harmonize with each other. So every living being has to do with two general forms of vibration: its own intrinsic vibration and the intrinsic vibration of the substance. To create and make use of one's manifestation on the basis of the harmony between these two kinds of vibration is the highest goal on every plane of existence. To live in this harmony is the culmination of happiness in each of existence's six general forms of experience of life. (See “Livets Bog”.)

We have with this come through the most difficult analyses connected with the ideal food. For some readers they have perhaps been just as boring as they have been difficult. But for those who have had sufficient energy and interest to study these and have thereby got the correct view of the problems, this view will now give them access to understanding the substantiation of the following analyses of the ideal food to such a degree that these analyses will be science or facts for the same beings.

Total lack of moral insight into the individual's relationship to the myriads of beings that constitute its “substance”

The above analysis will thus mean that every living being by virtue of its manifestation, by virtue of everything that it produces, but chiefly by virtue of its particular bodily standard, represents a particular collective energy or type of vibration. On this type of vibration depends its entire experience of life, its feeling of pleasantness and unpleasantness. This is its instrument for the maintenance of its identity and place in existence as a “living being”. This maintenance is thus based on a certain way of overcoming other forms of energy. If this overcoming, in addition to meaning harmony and happiness for itself, also means harmony and happiness for the source of these other energies, its own experience of life will be the culmination of harmony with the laws of life. But if this overcoming means death and mutilation for the source of these energies, its own experience of life will be correspondingly identical with mutilation,suffering, and pain or what we call a dark fate. The individual's entire formation of fate is thus based on this interplay between its own energy or vibration and the vibration or unfolding of energy of its surroundings. That this holds true for that part of the individual's surroundings that are to be expressed as its fellow human beings and other forms of living beings having a size that is physically visible is common knowledge and is stimulated through religions and faith and is thus the basis for its morality. What is not common knowledge, however, or not included in the terrestrial human being's morality, but which will now gradually begin to hold true in the new world culture's view of humanity, is the individual's interaction with that part of its surroundings which is regarded as substance, a part of which it has to use as food or nourishment. Through the analysis of the life-unit we have seen here that the source of the substance is also living beings, but of microscopic dimensions. This in turn means that the individual is here faced with a host of living beings with whose unfolding of energy it must also interact. If this interaction, as previously mentioned, means life and evolution, not only for the individual itself but also for the substance-beings, then its experience of life reaches a peak of health and its ensuing well-being. It becomes absolutely free of illness. But if the interaction means killing and mutilating for the substance-beings, it will elicit returning forces that will mean ill-health and illness for the organism and thereby the undermining of the individual's mental functions.

In accordance with the above one will in the new world culture go more and more into the question of the ideal food. As all the substances and materials with which we must of necessity come into contact are alive, and as we, by our cooperation with these substances, can inflict suffering and pain upon these life-units or give them a natural evolution and happiness in the same way as we, by our co-operation with the otherwise recognised, physically visible living beings or fellow beings can inflict suffering upon them or bring them happiness. I will here point out the substances whose life-units attain a natural evolution as nourishment in the human organism, and those whose life-units attain an unnatural evolution through the same process.

As I mentioned previously, vegetarian food constitutes a state of vibration which, by its nature, is adapted to the human organism's own vibration, while animal food, with the exception of milk, constitutes a state of vibration which is too close in evolution to the human's own vibration. This in turn means that between the life-units of the vegetarian food and the life-unit that is made up of the whole human being or individual there is a suitable distance in evolution. The intrinsic vibration of this individual is thereby sufficiently superior to the vegetarian state of vibration. So there will be no particular, unnatural resistance for the human organism to overcome when converting the correct vegetarian products into nourishment. It is quite a different matter with animal food, whose life-units have come further on the ladder of evolution and are therefore closer to the human being's identity as a life-unit. As a consequence of this, these foodstuffs or substances represent a correspondingly stronger or coarser state of vibration than the vegetarian sources of nourishment. Since the human organism, as a result of its development, has reached so far that it is adapted or attuned to the vegetarian state of vibration, a state of vibration that is coarser or relatively stronger than this will come to constitute a resistance to the human organism. The same organism has in reality grown away from the level of the beast of prey and does not have an organism that, like this being's, is built for the release of such a strong state of vibration that animal food does not constitute an unnatural resistance. But let me say in this connection that even if the animal food suits the beast of prey this does not, all the same, prevent the life-units in the same food experiencing being killed and mutilated when being absorbed as nourishment into the organism of the animal in question. But it is precisely this circumstance that constitutes one of the great factors making the zone of the beast of prey a lower plane of existence, an imperfect experience of life. And to the same extent as the human being represents the same level he too is also an expression of imperfection.

For the human being animal food is therefore too resistant. This in turns causes the human being, in order to digest this food, to use a reserve of strength that he in reality, because of his development, is neither mentally nor physically any longer able to use without risk to health or the existence normal to his step in evolution. And it is the reaction of the production of this perpetual reserve of strength, this permanent overburdening of the organism that, as mentioned previously, is the basis of all organic illnesses. It is true that the human being is not yet so advanced that it can eat such vegetarian food as would guarantee him immunity to illness, but vegetarian food, even in its coarsest form, will, nevertheless, reduce the percentage of illness quite significantly and produce a quite different powerful, healthy physical well-being than the animal food, and will thus be one of the inevitable main factors on the road towards a more beautiful, purer and clearer experience of life. It is the indispensable admission card to a glorified existence.

As previously mentioned animal food constitutes an unfolding of vibration too strong for the human organism. So, in order for this food to be converted to nourishment, it must produce a surplus of energy, that is, an amount of energy that it in reality, because of its stage in evolution, has grown away from being able to supply without risk to health. So the digestion of animal food means a permanent over-exertion for the human being and ultimately becomes the fundamental cause of the majority of organic illnesses. It is in order to remedy this that the boiling of food has been devised. What then really happens during boiling?

In order to understand this we must remember that all substances consist of life-units, and that the step in evolution of the animal life-units is too near our own on the ladder of evolution. Being assimilated as nourishment in the human organism meant therefore an unnatural death for these units. And against an unnatural death all normal life-units fight. Through the assimilation of the animal life-units as nourishment into the organism, this organism must take up the fight against the resistance or death-throes of the life-units. Only when this is finished and the small organisms of the life-units are killed does actual digestion begin. But one must not believe that this digestion applies to the small killed organisms. On the contrary. These are decomposed in a quite natural way like all other corpses by a process of putrefaction. Corpses cannot be “digested”, but these killed organisms contain a certain percentage of those life-units that are so far back in evolution that their life and well-being means being assimilated as nourishment in an organism. These cannot therefore be killed by this assimilation but instead, by virtue of this, acquire conditions favourable to life. So we are dealing here with two forms of life-unit. For practical reasons we will call the former “A life-units” and the latter “B lifeunits”. A life-units are those whose organisms are killed, and B life-units are those whose organisms acquire life through assimilation as nourishment in an organism. Through the process of putrefaction of the organisms of the “A life-units”, the “B life-units” encapsulated within these are liberated. These are then guided in a living state by the being's digestive organs, in which they are assimilated as food, to the areas and localities in this being's organism in which they can each find their particular conditions favourable to life. The killed organisms of the “A life-units” on the other hand are guided by the digestive organs out of the organism again. And it is these remains of corpses or stinking products that we know as “excrement”. So animal products are in reality merely indirect food, as it is only these life-units' life-units that are direct food. And in order to liberate the latter life-units the former must therefore be killed. And it is a matter of course that nourishment based on this process of killing is far heavier or more difficult than nourishment where this is not needed. Here one must naturally take the individual's step in evolution into account. If we, for example, go down to the beast of prey we will see that the organism of such animals is to a particular degree based on and built for the promoting of the above-mentioned process, but as one reaches further in evolution the organisms become more and more refined, and more and more lose, to a corresponding degree, their ability to promote this process. In human beings this ability is degenerating at a very rapidly increasing rate. This therefore means that as a human being develops, it becomes increasingly difficult for the process of killing to be carried out through his organism. This has in turn resulted in his finding other ways through which this process can be promoted. The most fundamental or comprehensive of these is precisely boiling. In the boiling of products what happens is that the A life-units are killed, and only the B life-units are left behind, since these are to a great extent unaffected by boiling. So when people today cook their food it is to free their organisms from undertaking this process of killing. This process of liberation therefore means relief for the organism. The human being feels that he has not nearly as much difficulty in “digesting” the cooked products as he has in digesting the raw ones. He has realised that boiling makes the products “tender”. This “tender” state is due only to the fact that the “A life-units” are already killed before they are eaten or assimilated as food in the organism. But this does not alter the fact that they are all the same corpses that are eaten and that the life-units that are living and therefore constitute the true nourishment for the organism can, as previously mentioned, be released or liberated only through the putrefaction or decomposition of these corpses. As this process of putrefaction, in addition to liberating the “B life-units”, just like all other processes of putrefaction, is a combination of all the substances that are destructive and damaging to the organism, such a permanent state cannot in the long run be free from damaging effects on the advanced organism. The goal of evolution is therefore, among other things, to lead individuals forward to a state in which they can more and more assimilate the “B life-units” directly and not indirectly through a prior process of putrefaction or decomposition of corpses through which the organism at the same time, to a corresponding degree, must permanently be a well of poison, a sewer or a residence for all materials, substances or vibrations lethal, detrimental or damaging to life.

The goal of evolution is therefore, as previously mentioned, the guiding of people away from such a primitive existence where a very great percentage of their digestion is a process of putrefaction and where the organism must extract the living life-units necessary for its maintenance from decayed or decomposed corpses. It is not the intention that the organism should continue being a rubbish dump for all the sources of organic illness. Evolution will thus lead people to a state where their organisms are transformed so as to be able to assimilate nutritional life-units directly from Nature, which means assimilating only such B life-units as are encapsulated in substances that must first be decayed or decomposed for their liberation to take place, life-units that are liberated by Nature and wait only for their assimilation as nourishment in an organism in order that their further development can be promoted normally.

Do such life-units exist? Yes, I have already pointed out the vegetarian source of nutrition as the way towards the above-mentioned state. Within the vegetarian source of nutrition there are precisely such life-units, which are only very lightly or thinly encapsulated and whose liberation is therefore not dependent on any prior process of putrefaction or decomposition through digestion. Such life-units are present in many different kinds of “fruit-flesh”. Fruit-flesh should here be understood as the “flesh” around the kernel. In the edible fruits this “flesh” consists almost exclusively of life-units that are transferred directly to the organism and for which assimilation as nourishment in this organism is therefore a natural development. As no special prior release of energy for killing; no prior process of putrefaction is needed here, and as the organism is hereby to a corresponding degree freed from being a dustbin for all kinds of useless remains of corpses, it will of necessity become finer and finer.

So the highest food here on Earth is pure fruit-flesh, but of course from only the absolutely fully ripe edible fruits. In unripe fruit the life-units are still not mature enough to be assimilated into the organism as nourishment. The fruits that at present can be termed true human food include apples, pears, plums, grapes, bananas, melons, edible berries and many other fruits that have flesh around the kernel. As the life-units in these fruits are almost exclusively B life-units, which, as we have seen, reach the organism directly and therefore do not need any prior process of killing, the boiling of these will be absolutely meaningless and useless, indeed even damaging, since one thereby lowers the level of health of the life-units. The fruits mentioned constitute therefore the absolutely perfect and really true “raw food ”. They belong to existence's most elevated “dishes” since they, unlike all other forms of a source of nutrition are not based on the release of the killing principle but are produced by life's highest “food expert” - life itself - in accordance with the most perfect chemical laws. It is life's own serving of the “daily bread” for those beings who have to fulfill love's great commandment or for the terrestrial human being when he one day, “born anew of water and the spirit”, will be a manjfestation of the true God-like human being.

As the fully ripe fruit-flesh constitutes the future absolutely right human food, or the food that will prevent all nutritional diseases and make the human organism's state of vibration such that it can unhindered vibrate in contact with “the holy spirit” (which means that the organism's brain and nervous system can vibrate unhindered in the highest and finest thought-materials the individual thereby becoming enriched with the highest wisdom) evolution will gradually guide all the energy people now use on animal nutrition over to vegetarian nutrition. This will in turn mean that in the coming world order, instead of the present great slaughter-houses and cattle breeding establishments one will find huge concerns whose function will be to promote the improvement of plants and the evolution of edible fruit-flesh. This will in turn lead to the gradual development of fruits of simply fantastic dimensions compared with today's known species. Evolution will therefore lead to today's agriculture becoming horticulture. The waving cornfields will become flourishing orchards.

As this form of nutrition will not require nearly as much space as the present form, the surplus land will be converted into large public parks. From magnificent groves with great lawns, fountains, flower beds, canals, arched bridges, works of art on exhibition, pavilions and so on, one will look back at the barbarism of the past. One will read with horror about man's eating of corpses, about how the human beings' love for animals on a large scale was merely a cannibal's love of meat. In wonderful museums great axes, sheath knives, butcher's knives, sporting-guns, fishhooks and other instruments of murder will speak their silent language to people of the future about the primitive mentality of the past. In a disease-free existence one will, in historical works, read with a shudder of disgust about the sick mankind of today, its tuberculosis, cancer, kidney troubles, gall-stones, arteriosclerosis, organic heart disease, digestive troubles, nervousness and so on, and in truth have the words of Jesus confirmed - that his kingdom was not of this world.

I have with this hinted at the course of evolution towards “the real human food”. As the terrestrial human being in evolution has not reached so far as to constitute a real or finished human being, but to a certain degree still belongs to the zone of the killing principle, “the real human food” cannot be said to constitute entirely “the ideal food” for the same being. This means that his organism is not yet so

advanced in evolution that it is completely adapted to pure fruit-flesh. While the vibrations of the organisms mentioned are really too weak to process the animal food, they are still too strong to deal with fruit-flesh alone. So the ideal food for the human being of today will, in addition to a certain quantity of fruit-flesh, be something between animal flesh and fruit-flesh. It is therefore important here not to get the idea that the being in question can live exclusively on fruit-flesh. The present organism of the terrestrial human being is as yet (even if it really has grown away from nutrition based on animal flesh) all the same according to the power of habit equipped to a certain extent to be a residence for the process of decomposition and the passage of the remains of corpses. Its entire digestive system, its stomach and intestines, is still based on the transport of a certain quantity of waste and absolutely only a natural evolution, which means a slow habituation over hundreds of years, will be able to change people's digestive organs so as to be one hundred per cent adapted to pure fruit-flesh. A sudden transition to living entirely on fruit-flesh would be such an assault, such a breach of the laws of Nature that its consequences border on the destruction of the organism. Such refined food belongs to the “real human being” or the finished God-like human being in the same way as universal love is the innate main characteristic of the same being. So the terrestrial human being must, in accordance with the nature of his organism, still eat impure food or extract its nutritional life-units through a process of killing and the decomposition of corpses. But this does not of course alter the fact that his evolution carries with it another fact: that he, to an increasing degree, must seek his nourishment among such products as will less and less require the ghastly process described above and that he is thus, in the area of nutrition, also on his way towards his temporary goal and highest ideal: “the consummate God-like human being”.

As we now know, the ideal food for the present terrestrial civilised human being is absolutely not animal foodstuffs but is to be found among the vegetarian foods. Of these the edible fruit-flesh is the purest and noblest, but as it lies too high for the above-mentioned being, so that it cannot yet constitute one hundred per cent of his nutrition, he must also look to other vegetarian products to replace the missing percentage. These products can be divided into three categories, namely “grain products”, “root products” and “leaf products ”. To the first category belong such products as are made from the kernels of plants, grains and nuts, such as bread, flour, meal, nut-meat, together with the various meat- free bean dishes, pea soups and so on. To the second category belong such products as are made from the roots of plants, which means dishes that are made from potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroots, celery or other edible roots. The third category includes all dishes that are made from leaves and stalks, for example salads, vegetable dishes, the various forms of meat-free cabbage dishes and the like. Individuals who want to leave animal nourishment will thus be referred to seek their nourishment among the above mentioned products or dishes, which constitute the great connecting link between meat- and fruit-nourishment. To lay down what he should eat or preferably choose from these foods is not possible, for this can in the main be decided only by the individual himself. As the great majority of the people on the Earth are unhealthy and are therefore to be regarded only as “patients”, it will be very individual what the various beings will be able to tolerate. What can be tolerated by one is very often very bad for another. Furthermore the mental attitude has a fundamental significance. The organism of the profoundly spiritually enlightened and loving being will in many cases be able to digest the strong, coarse root-products only with great difficulty, just as the same can also sometimes be true of the coarse nut- or kernel-products. Such an organism will therefore be able to tolerate only the more mild and refined sorts. It can therefore be recommended only that the beginner vegetarian carefully tries out and monitors the effects of this or that food made from vegetarian products in order to ascertain what for him or her is particularly appropriate or suitable. Every individual must carefully keep to the foods that cause him no inconvenience and whose digestion he, so to speak, does not notice. Here some will perhaps say that they can digest animal foods very well; but to this I must answer that it is really only a question of time how long they will have this ability, since it is due exclusively to the power of habit through inherited traditions. The loss of the energy that the individuals in question must supply when assimilating the animal nourishment in their organisms will sooner or later result in a reaction in the form of one organic illness or another. Kernel, root and leaf products contain to a certain degree, like the animal products, a series of A life-units, the nature of which is not, as previously mentioned, to be assimilated as nourishment in an organism. During the assimilation in the organism of the products mentioned there will therefore also be a certain resistance to overcome, since the organisms of the said life-units must first be killed and decomposed before the B life-units within them can be liberated and transferred alive to the organism as nourishment. As the A life-units in the plant substances are not nearly as numerous and not nearly as far advanced as the A life-units in the animal products, the smell of their process of decomposition or putrefaction is not nearly as pungent and penetrating as in the decomposition of animal products. This in turn means that the excrement is not nearly so stinking or poisonous after the eating of vegetarian products as it is after animal products. The killing principle is therefore far less extensive in vegetarian nourishment than in animal; it is not such a great violation of the fifth commandment as that, and is therefore to be considered to belong to a higher layer of consciousness.

As the vegetarian products mentioned here contain A life- units that have to be killed before the B life-units can be released, people, as they become more developed and their organisms become more refined and less suitable for carrying out this process of killing, have gone over to using boiling as the means of killing. What is left for the organism is only to carry out the process of putrefaction or decomposition. But for this the organism, by virtue of the digestive organs, is equipped with particular conditions for this to be carried out artificially.

In addition to boiling, people have discovered “frying” for the promotion of the process of killing or destruction of the A life-units. This method of destruction is not to be recommended. True, it promotes the killing of the A life- units, but it also to a great extent converts their corpses to charred substances or ash, a process that is most unfortunate for the organism since this is created only for the promotion of the organic corpse-substance and not for the treatment of ash. All frying will therefore be avoided in the households of the future. It is a different matter with boiling. It does not convert products to charcoal or ash but only liberates the organism from the process of killing the A life-units. It will therefore be retained as long as people are still obliged to use coarse vegetarian products where the B life-units are encapsulated in the A life-units. This does not, of course, alter the fact that there are people today whose organisms are of such a robust nature that they themselves can carry out the process of killing and so, for a time, can still make boiling superfluous, and eat the products as “raw food”. But from a moral point of view nothing is gained, since the A life-units that are not killed by boiling or any other artificial method have all the same to be killed by the organism before the B life-units, which are the true nourishment, can be released. Moreover, it is also a fact that the organism is evolving towards becoming more and more refined. We see that the primitive human being can eat raw meat and coarse roots, and can to a far greater extent eat raw products than the refined, civilised human being. If the latter being therefore went from eating the products in a cooked state to eating them in a raw state it would be, at any rate in the case of the coarsest and most indigestible plant products, a step backwards.

But fortunately evolution does not go backwards. It goes in the direction of the refinement of the organism and thereby makes it less and less suitable to carry out the killing process itself, at the same time as it to a corresponding extent leads forward to the pure fruit-flesh, which, as previously mentioned, constitutes the highest ideal “raw food” for the human being.

With this we have come through the most important, principal analyses of the terrestrial human being's nourishment. These analyses have shown us that the ideal food, or the food that is most in harmony with the highest and moral laws and the new view of the world, is that which consists of vegetarian products. Of these fruit flesh constitutes the highest, since its content of A life-units is extremely limited, the B life-units, for which it is vitally essential to be assimilated as nourishment in an organism, thereby preponderating to a corresponding degree. Pure fruit-flesh as a means of nourishment will therefore be in contact with the observance of the great commandment of love, and will therefore exclusively become the food for the perfect being of love or the future human being. As the terrestrial human being has still not reached such a stage in evolution but still finds himself on the road towards this, he cannot yet live entirely on fruit- flesh alone but must, as previously mentioned, eat such products as belong to the killing principle. But with ascending moral evolution or growing humaneness the terrestrial human being moves more and more away from animal nourishment and moves, either consciously or unconsciously, towards the aforesaid highest food. This transition, however, cannot go in leaps and bounds, but only by the organism gradually getting used to the products we have described as the ideal food for the human being of today.

Martinus Institute

THE VIBRATIONS OF THE IDEAL FOOD

The round figure in the uppermost comer to the left signifies the human being as a “life-unit”. The stair-formation to the right signifies a section of the ladder of evolution of all living beings. The lowest step signifies the zone in evolution where the beasts of prey are. The next step signifies the zone to which the terrestrial human being at present belongs. And the following step symbolises the area of “the real human kingdom ”. On the lowest step to the right one of the life- units making up “meat products”, which are the food of the beasts of prey, is shown. The life-unit on the next step constitutes one of the life-units making up kernel, root and leaf products, which are the proper main source of nourishment for the terrestrial human being. The third life-unit comes from fruit-flesh, which is the highest food in the first zone of the real human kingdom.

The dark area in the meat life-unit constitutes that part of it that consists of “A life-units”, or the life-units that are not suitable for assimilation as nourishment into an organism and for which this assimilation means death. These life-units therefore resist this assimilation in a natural way. Their collected vibration, which is shown on the picture as a zigzag line, is therefore far too strong for the human organism, whose vibration is shown on the next step in the form of the dotted zigzag line. If one looks at the symbol for the life-unit on the same step one will see that the dark area here is relatively smaller than in the meat life-unit. This means that the A life-units are not nearly as numerous as the B life-units. And as the process of killing, as a consequence of this, is not nearly as great as with the assimilation of these products into the organism, it is this that determines that it is more ethical, more in harmony with the law of existence for the progressive human being to use these products as food, just as the vibration from these, as shown in the picture, is much closer to the vibration of the human organism than the vibration of the meat life-unit.

On the next step we see that the symbol for the fruit life- unit does not have any dark area. This means that there are no A life-units here. There is, however, a small percentage of B life-units in the skin of the fruit that cannot be assimilated into the organism, but these are conducted undamaged and alive through it. All the remaining life-units are assimilated alive into the organism and continue their natural development in it. There will therefore not be any particular unnatural resistance from these life-units for the human organism to overcome. As this, however, through the force of habit involving meat and coarse vegetarian food, is trained to practise a far greater manifestation of power than is necessary for the assimilation of fruit-flesh as nourishment, the vibration of this organism, as shown on the picture, is a little too strong for the fruit-flesh, which is why

it cannot as yet constitute the main source of nourishment for the terrestrial human being. On the picture this is expressed by the fact that the zigzag line here is somewhat smaller than the zigzag line for the human vibration.

From the symbol of the human being as a life-unit in the upper left-hand corner here are three dotted lines leading down, each to their own particular step. This symbolises merely that the terrestrial human being 's field of nutrition stretches from the meat life-units, via the root, kernel and leaf products to the pure fruit-flesh. Of these the lighter or milder forms of root, kernel and leaf products will therefore constitute the temporary ideal food for the terrestrial human being. Here a growing habituation to fruit-flesh must be taken into account, which will exclusively become the ideal food for the perfect or completely evolved human being in the first zones of the real human kingdom and thereby make him a divine aspirant to later and even higher zones, where this food will then again be replaced by a one hundred percent “air-nutrition”. The lungs will thus ultimately come to take over the entire process of nutrition, and the human being will then have left behind all the coarse physical forms of existence and have come into a zone where his organism will no longer have to obtain its nourishment from corpses through a process of putrefaction or decomposition, will not have to be a well of sewage or a means of conveyance for stinking excrement or waste products, but will be exclusively a manifestation of the fact that here too the great creating power of love has also overcome all difficulties or all the forms of trouble that today bind the human being to the primitive sphere of sickliness and illness.

To give instructions for combinations or compositions of vegetarian products or the preparation of vegetarian dishes lies, as previously mentioned, entirely outside my mission or task, since in this particular area there is now a whole literature with tables and chemical analyses written by capable experts. I would suggest only that the dishes be as simple as possible. Enjoy them preferably without strong spices and get entirely away from “big dinners” with many courses and all the superfluous alcoholic or poisonous drinks and sweet desserts. One or at most two vegetarian dishes and a single glass of water or fruit juice do not over-exert the organism and promote the highest level of health and physical well-being. For the beginner vegetarian healthy, fresh milk can also be recommended since it, like fruit-flesh, contains mainly B life-units. Do not, however, forget that the ideal food for the terrestrial human being mentioned here is not the final goal, but that evolution goes on and determines that coarse vegetable products must also gradually be left behind, just as the animal meat and blood products must now be left behind, and that the growth of love guides the human being forward to the maintaining of his existence through products for whose life-units it means life to be assimilated as nourishment in an organism, and where no promotion of the killing principle can thereby be elicited.

Before I finish this book on the ideal food I would just like to point out that there are also” stimulating sources of nourishment“ made from vegetarian products that cannot in any way be rightfully regarded as food. To this category belong all strongly stimulating narcotic substances. That these cannot be regarded as proper sources of nourishment is due to the fact that they act with vibrations that are far too strong, vibrations that are far superior to the vibrations of the human organism, and therefore cause this organism to vibrate in time with them. As the effects of this appear in the fonn of stimulation, intoxication, anaesthetisation or loss of self-control and the complete physical and mental undermining of the individual, these “stimulants” can belong only to a primitive level of consciousness and cannot possibly belong to a zone where a real overshadowing by “the holy spirit” or a pennanent experience of a glorified consciousness can take place.

It now remains for me to say only that the purpose of this book has particularly been to show that in order to gain a completely happy fate one must learn not only to love one's fellow beings and other visible and universally known species or forms of living being, but that one must also learn to practise the great commandment of love in our relation to those forms of life that, in the shape of substance, elude our physical sight and which constitute the microcosmos in our own organism. Only through this can we hope for a similar kindness or glorified existence from the great macrocosmic being in whose organism we ourselves are the microcosmos. So it has been my wish to give my readers an understanding of the fact that without the practising of love towards our own organism's myriads of small, microscopic rightful inhabitants there can be absolutely no perfect observance of the fifth commandment, absolutely no qualification for being a perfect instrument in the divine world plan, in the divine order of individuals, in the divine consciousness. And without this identity the individual must still be a sick and imperfect being, bound to lower forms of existence, still satisfied with being a manifestation of a mere shadow of the existence whose mental sunlight he is in reality meant to be.

Original Danish title: “Den Ideelle Føde” (Book no. 5)

First published in 1933

Translated by Mary McGovern 1991

� Martinus Institute