Martinus Cosmology and Spiritual Evolution: The Essential Ideas and Teachings, as Applied to the Gospels

By Anton Jarrod

Martinus Cosmology and Spiritual Evolution provides an innovative, authoritative, comprehensive and readable introduction to the works and ideas of the Danish spiritual writer Martinus (1890-1981), as applied to the four Gospels. Presented by a long-time spiritual practitioner and researcher, Anton Jarrod brings over twenty years’ experien

• Language: English
• Publisher: Light Pillar Press
• Release date: Jun 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780995665422

Book preview

Preface

When I published a version of this book in November 2016, it was ready to go to print. It felt like the right time and it still feels like it was the right time, even though I now present an essentially new book. If I had not first written the book that way, I could not have written it this way, in my view.

Yet, as a little more time passed after publication, I came to realize with reflection that the book was in fact at one small but significant step away from completion, a step which I sought to take with a new edition. Still, I ended up rewriting large parts of the text and what resulted was a new book. This was ready to publish at the start of March.

And then something unexpected and extraordinary happened. I decided that, in fact, I needed to rewrite the whole book again, from start to finish, in an entirely different way. This is that book. The creative process never ceases to surprise.

As originally intended, this work continues to draw on the essential teachings and ideas of Martinus and his cosmology, or study of the origin and development of the universe, but it is now complete in itself. Now complete, the work may stand as a single summation of those essential ideas and teachings as applied to the four Gospels.

So it is that I consider this work to be my true first and last edition and to represent my latest and most appropriately articulated thinking on this work’s subject. With that, I can now entrust this work to Divine Providence, with true and deep gratitude, humility, awe, hope and love.

Anton Jarrod

19 March, 2017

Introduction

In 2012 Rowan Williams said, There are an awful lot of people now of a certain generation who don’t really know how religion works[1]. He also said that there was a lot of ignorance and rather dim-witted prejudice about the visible manifestations of Christianity.

I think these comments could be expanded to stand well as a general critique, and across generations. To me, we live in times of a very widespread and profound ignorance, as well as deep prejudice, about many things. In particular, there is both prejudice and intolerance in the areas of religion, science and spirituality. I feel this is implicated in many of the problems that human beings and human society face today.

However, the solution is not simple. It is not a case of improving religious education or raising awareness. Ignorance, prejudice and intolerance cannot be overcome by studying scriptures, or by learning about others’ beliefs, though such things can be useful. Nor is it simply a case of only advancing the scientific agenda, or the secular one. Greater material technology or understanding of the world does not eliminate prejudice and intolerance. And where it does get rid of ignorance, new areas of ignorance arise. The horizon is always at a distance as we walk towards it. The solution, whatever it is, has to be radical.

I happen to think that the radical solution involves opening our minds. We focus too narrowly on consensus views of reality. We stick to well-trotted lines of thinking. We give pat answers to questions, rely heavily on traditional authorities. Our scholarship reaffirms our central beliefs. Our critiques pursue our own agendas. Of course, there is progress. Of course, people do good and valuable work. But we still haven’t taken down our idols, or revalued our values, as the philosopher Nietzsche encouraged (although he went mad trying). This does not mean that we should just abandon the mainstreams of thinking, enquiry and knowledge. To do so would mean we lose our anchor in the present. But we might think to extend our view and at least seriously consider alternative ideas and perspectives. In short, open our minds.

In this book, I introduce the radical work and ideas of Martinus[2]. After outlining some brief details about his life, I present a condensed overview of his ideas in Chapter 1, with a reflection on the opening to the Gospel of John. Chapters 2 to 12 then go through the four gospel texts and Martinus’s main ideas, broadly following the synopsis structure of Kurt Aland[3]. In the afterword, I present some further information about Martinus and his work, as well as some details about my own position and how this book came about.

It is not my intention in this work to say absolutely everything that could be said. I leave many, many questions unanswered. Instead, I take a broad view of both Martinus’s ideas and the Gospels. Moreover, I look at the Gospels through a Martinus lens. As a result, I assume the position of the perspective Martinus offers, as is necessary for a book like this to work. It is not, after all, a critical edition or biblical exegesis, and I do not provide or go into various arguments for or against certain points. I have no wish to try to persuade readers that Martinus is right or wrong. What is more, on the whole I leave aside the fundamentals of my own perspective.

My tour of both the Gospels and Martinus Cosmology is rather swift. This entirely befits a work such as this. I simply give a certain impression of the vast perspective that Martinus takes on life and everything. The best thing for a reader to do afterwards would be to read the Gospels and some of Martinus’s own works, and make an independent enquiry.

*

Martinus was born in 1891 in rural Denmark. He was given the surname Thomsen after a local man who was thought to be his father. Martinus suspected, however, that his real father was a man called Lars Larsen, who owned a farm called Christianshede. His mother worked as a housekeeper on the farm[4].

According to Martinus’s own account of his life, he had a relatively simple upbringing. He grew up learning about Christianity in the way that other children would have. At school, he learned the Catechism of Lutheran Christianity. Probably like most children at the end of the nineteenth century, he learned the Bible and went to Church.

He worked on various dairy farms, and entered military service in the navy, which ended in February 1914. During the war, it appears that he worked at various dairies before moving to Copenhagen in 1918 to work as a night watchman.

In 1921, a clerk at the dairy where Martinus worked named Ove Hubert lent him a book. It was about reincarnation and meditation[5]. Hubert had borrowed it from a certain Lars Nibelvang. Nibelvang, who was very interested in religious philosophy, sent a message that he would like to meet Martinus. Martinus reported that he met Nibelvang and talked about the new religious directions, which could have been Theosophy.

According to Martinus, a few days after this meeting, and having borrowed the book, he read a few chapters of it. He set himself to meditate and it was then that he suddenly had a spiritual experience. He subsequently calls this experience an initiation. After meditating a second time some days later, he again has an all-encompassing spiritual experience: I no longer had a body, and I felt that this was the consciousness of God[6].

He relates how the experience endowed him with an intuitive capacity. With this intuition, he felt able to answer any kind of spiritual question. He felt able to look straight into eternity itself[7], and experience his own identity as an immortal being, at one with God. This experience, this initiation, endowed him with a permanent, waking awareness of spiritual reality and oneness with God. He called this state cosmic consciousness.

Over the following years, Martinus spoke about his experience and began to talk with others about his new view of the world. Through his friendship with Nibelvang, Martinus honed his ability to frame his thinking about such matters and communicate it. In an interview, Martinus said, Thanks to Lasse [i.e. Nibelvang] my cosmic analyses became very strong and unshakable[8]. In his view, through conversation with Nibelvang his explanations became so firm that they could not be overturned.

At some point he began to write. He first wrote what became the postscript to Livets Bog (The Book of Life), which was published in volume seven. After some years, he wrote and published his first book: the first volume of Livets Bog. This was in 1932. From about 1922, Martinus was supported financially by both Nibelvang and friends. With this support, he was able to quit his job at the dairy and write full time. He also began drawing symbols.

Martinus’s main work, Livets Bog, consists of 16 chapters over seven volumes. The first volume introduces all his main ideas that will be explored in more detail throughout his oeuvre. The book serves as a key to the whole of Martinus’s thinking and way of writing.

Martinus made his ideas about reality available to and for all peoples. He called this work cosmology. This was mainly because his ideas concerned the origin and structure of the whole universe. This cosmology involves looking at the world in a new way. His works and ideas, like many great works in time, have the power to change the way people think about spirituality, and thus the narrative of human history. They can lead people to start thinking about and looking at things in a new way. For example, why did Christianity happen, if it wasn’t to just create misery and suffering for thousands of years? Can the modern spiritual seeker still learn anything from Christianity? Whether people are completely new to alternative spiritual ideas, or have already walked a great way down the road of life, there is something in Martinus’s Cosmology for everyone.

There is no Martinus religion, qualification, fellowship, community, church, sect or membership organization etc. There is nothing to join, and nothing to leave, nothing to believe. It is simply a picture of spiritual reality, shared in a series of books. As with any book, people may take or leave its ideas as they wish or see fit. There is no Martinus authority, no authorized view or teaching; people are as free to consider Martinus’s ideas as any other ideas in any other book.

Martinus shared his picture of reality in order to benefit humanity, but he had no interest or inclination to spread his ideas, become a religious figurehead or leader, or indoctrinate people. He expressed time and again how people should not at all believe what he had to say. Instead, people could in their own way, outside of any authority, independently give their consideration and judge by their own thinking and other abilities.

Here it is worth remembering that, at heart, a view of reality is still an individual’s view of reality. It can certainly help to look at the world through another’s eyes, and this is what we do when we read any work, or look at any painting or hear any piece of music. But we must always return to how we ourselves see the world. We cannot live through another’s eyes. And Martinus strongly encourages people to think for themselves and not to simply accept his view of the world as a given, as an article of faith. He tries to accurately and comprehensively describe what he sees but he does not expect other people to blindly believe him.

Yet, to see the spiritual world in a clear way is the inheritance of every living being; of every human being living today and that is to come into this sphere of being. But it takes time to see so clearly, and many challenges present themselves. Indeed, human beings really do need all the help they can get.

It was in view of this needful help that Martinus sought to share his ideas in the first place. And likewise in this vein, I warmly encourage people to give these ideas some consideration. But there is no proselytizing, no evangelism. There is only the pointing towards a certain direction, an invitation. You might want to have a look over there, says a fellow traveller on the way. Whilst the old saying about the horse and the water comes to mind, here there is no question at all of trying to make it drink.

I wish you very well on your journey.

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Bingham J. Rowan Williams defends Christianity against dim-witted prejudice as new crisis looms. The Telegraph. London; 2012 Mar 16. Rowan Williams was Archbishop of Canterbury between 2002 and 2012. ↵

Martinus was registered at birth as Martinus Thomsen, but as he himself preferred, and subsequently as convention has allowed, the surname Thomsen is normally dropped. He is also referred to as solely Martinus in secondary literature. Some further details can also be found at http://www.martinus.dk/en/about-martinus-cosmology/who-was-martinus/. The name Martinus is pronounced Mar-TEEN-us. ↵

Aland K. Synopsis of the four Gospels: Greek-English edition of the Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum, on the basis of the Greek text of Nestle-Aland 27th edition and Greek New Testament 4th revised edition. Stuttgart: German Bible Society; 2001. It is worth noting here that the New Testament texts relate Jesus’s teachings in numerous ways, and his core ideas are returned to again and again. Likewise, Martinus does not give out his cosmological picture in a systematic way; he too returns to his core ideas again and again. By following the New Testament as the synopsis outlines it, I avoid most of the repetition that would result from following each Gospel text in turn. However, some key ideas need to be returned to in several places. ↵

Details about Martinus’s early life come from three main sources attributed to him: the preface of Livets Bog (The Book of Life), Sections 19-22; the small book Omkring Min Missions Fødsel (On The Birth of My Mission); and Martinus’s memoirs, recorded on tape in 1963 and published in the magazine Kosmos in 1992/3. These memoirs are available online at: http://www.martinus.dk/en/articles. However, the accuracy of these memoirs has not yet been established, and I have not had the opportunity to review any tape transcripts. A full, quality biography in English does not yet exist. ↵

According to Ole Therkelsen, this book has now, after 90 years, been identified as: Hermann, Rudolph. 1913. Meditation. En Teosofisk Andagtsbog Med Anvisning Til Meditation (Meditation. A theosophical book of devotion including directions for meditation). Translated by Werner Blædel. København: J S Jensens Forlag. See Ole Therkelsen: Martinus Och Den Teosofiska Meditationsbok Av Hermann Rudolph (1865- 1946), YouTube, https://goo.gl/2gNejC↵

Martinus, [Martinus Thomsen]. 1992. Memoirs. Kosmos, no. 3. ↵

From Livets Bog, Volume 1, §20. Martinus, [Martinus Thomsen]. 1932-1960. Livets Bog (The Book of Life). Vol. 1–7. Copenhagen: The Martinus Institute. Livets Bog is pronounced LEE-Vuhs Bou. This is Martinus’s main work. It has been released in several editions since the original publication, according to the Martinus Institute website. Volumes 1, 2 and 4 are currently available in English in print and online. In referring to Martinus’s works, whether the printed or online versions, I reference the section number denoted by § rather than page number. Other works by Martinus are referred to by their original language title and English-language title in brackets, along with the section number. ↵

Martinus, [Martinus Thomsen]. 1992. Memoirs. Kosmos, no. 3. Also, the subsequent quotation. ↵

1

The Word, the Trinity, and the whole world picture

The New Testament opens really with John’s text on the Word. The opening In the beginning recalls, as perhaps we all know, the opening of Genesis. This sets up the gospel, and Christianity as a whole, to reframe previous thinking. It invites the reader of the gospel to look at Genesis and the Jewish thinking of the day in a new light.

*

Martinus sketched and painted a rich set of symbols throughout his life. He wanted to express in picture form the eternal principles he wrote about in his books. He published 44 of them in a work called Det Evige Verdensbillede (The Eternal World Picture)[1]. These 44 symbols