Martinus, Darwin and Intelligent Design - A new Theory of Evolution

Translator's preface

This is a remarkable book and a timely one. It is topical on two counts. Firstly, 2009 marks a double Darwin anniversary; it is 200 years since his birth and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. Secondly, it addresses itself to the contemporary version of the perennial debate about fundamental issues currently taking place within a postmodern context that is suspicious of overarching narratives, be they religious or scientific.

The title of this book is in itself intriguing, as it juxtaposes three very disparate elements. Darwin is an eloquent symbol for the power of a great idea and its part in creating our modern post-religious sensibility. Intelligent design alerts us to the reluctance among many people, particularly those to whom a religious world-view remains meaningful, to wholeheartedly accept evolution as an explanation of our origins. And Martinus (1890–1981) is, to begin with, the name of a little-known Danish writer.

And yet this book deals primarily with Martinus, using Darwinism and its critics as a foil against which to bring out the stupendous cosmic vision that we owe to this Danish seer. It is time he was more widely known, not least in the English-speaking world.

Martinus developed a cosmic model that can sharpen our awareness of what it means to be human and deepen the sense of mystery about our existence that a superficial scientism appears to have banished. And yet he was neither a philosopher, nor a scientist nor even an imaginative novelist. He was a man of little schooling who experienced a momentous enlightenment in his thirtieth year which never left him throughout his long life. He spent the rest of it, some sixty years, in expounding his ever-present vision. There seems no better word for it, for his cosmic model claims to be neither theory nor speculation, but a straightforward description of the world in its totality (not just the physical world that is the legitimate object of science) as seen from the perspective of infinity and eternity. It is this latter viewpoint that saves his vision from becoming just another meta-ideology: indeed, it respects our humanistic sensitivities while honouring our link to an open-ended matrix of experience.

It would be easy, if premature, to dismiss his work on the basis of its origin, which smacks of revelation, a source that is rightly rejected as a basis of knowledge. However, if we venture to examine his ideas, we will find ourselves seeing our familiar world in a fascinating new light. His cosmic model bears the hallmarks of elegance, harmony, simplicity and coherence that we look for in a good scientific theory. It presents a satisfying explanation of the underlying structure of the universe on the basis of a very few fundamental principles – William of Ockham would have approved. Moreover, it offers us concepts and approaches that have the power to harmonise the most disparate competing claims of science and religion (in their best aspects) to give us a broad picture of reality. The sheer optimism of his world picture is exhilarating, as is its grounding in the twin elements of eternity and infinity (so troublesome to science and religion alike) and its surprising take on the vexed question of consciousness.

One aspect of Martinus' work does need explanation. He places it in a spiritual context, while making a sharp distinction between his spiritual science and religions. He would thus appear to plunge into the morass of untestable assertions that bedevil any discussion of spirituality. And yet, his writings breathe an empiricism that is both astonishing and beguiling – he makes us blink and look anew at what we imagined reality to be. But the avowed pantheism of this cosmic model will appeal no less to those of a secular cast of mind, simply because it transcends such categories and reconfigures them within a broader context. We should not stumble over words, but see what he means by them. After all, he had to draw the words available in his surrounding culture to give expression to a vision that by its nature represents the very crucible of pre-verbal experience.

It is as if Martinus' personal consciousness had been raised to a point at which we hear the living universe speaking through him about itself. And yet he is no mouthpiece of dubious higher beings, but steadfastly remains his own source: he describes reality almost prosaically, if sub specie aeternitatis, and yet in a way that resolves the deepest puzzles of existence in an appealingly human way. Simply to allow these thought pictures to pass before our inner vision is a deeply stimulating experience: there emerges a way of understanding the world which is entirely consistent with our scientific mindset while allowing us to see pre-scientific, religious and mythological world-views as symbolic expressions of a vast underlying reality that surrounds us today as much as it ever did.

He throws detailed light onto our pre-natal and post-mortal existence in a way that weaves the pericope of a human life into a richly meaningful tapestry and shows us how we can resolve the conundrums of time and eternity in an intuitively satisfying way.

His description of the evolution of human sexuality is perhaps one of his most intriguing contributions. Our contemporary culture, characterized as it is by changing patterns of sexuality and gender, gains in depth when seen from the perspective of a gradual transformation away from the male and female states to a new kind of human being who combines the best aspects of both sexes, in a process that will gradually give rise to a transfigured human body.

His insights into the nature of health and disease are scarcely controversial in an age so aware of psychosomatic relationships. He effectively scotches the myth that ill-health strikes randomly and shows us convincingly that we can indeed be the masters of our fate, and not least of our health. In short, Martinus cosmology is a deeply inspiring well of insights into the human condition and our profound interconnections with the entire cosmos through space and time.

From a humanistic angle, Martinus' cosmic model offers a perspective that avoids the twin pitfalls of a theistic threat to our hard-won individual autonomy (characteristic of religion) and a narrow interpretation of reality (typical of scientism) that ignores the fundamentally provisional nature of the scientific enterprise. It consequently fits happily into the enlightenment project that lies at the heart of Western culture while lending it wings to expand into breathtakingly limitless dimensions.

Before Darwin, so much of life appeared inexplicable that it seemed reasonable to accept the existence of a deity. In a post-Darwinian world, we can see through the fallacy of explaining the unknown by something even more unknown. The triumphant march of science since his time has bequeathed to us a rich explanatory matrix rooted in a reasoned observation of reality. It has perhaps been less successful in describing a universe in which human beings can feel truly at home. That is where Martinus comes in. His vision gives us the tools to reinterpret our scientific world-view, and not least the powerful explanatory principle of evolution, so that we begin to sense our central role as knowers within an evolving cosmos of which we are, as individuals, an indispensable and eternal part.

Richard Michell, 2009

Foreword

This book deals mainly with Martinus (1890–1981) and his account of evolution, which offers a third explanation as against Darwinism and intelligent design. The last 150 years have witnessed a dispute between Darwinists and theologians about the reasons for the emergence of complex organisms in nature. This dispute has blown up again because Biblical creationism in the form of intelligent design has been proposed as a scientific theory with the aim of being accepted on an equal footing with Darwinism in scientific enquiry and for teaching biology in schools.

Darwin's theory explains the evolution of life essentially on the basis of two factors, namely natural selection and random mutation. Among randomly originated variations, the best suited will survive in the struggle for existence (survival of the fittest), so that useful properties accumulate by propagation. Darwin assigned a creative role to this natural process of elimination because it implied a gradual increase of well-adapted organisms at the expense of ill-adapted ones. He said that: If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.[1]

Intelligent design, which is officially presented as a scientific theory independent of the Bible and religion, aims to prove that Darwinism is wrong! – Its advocates claim to have shown scientifically that cells contain such complex structures (specified complexity and irreducible complexity) that they could not have originated by successive mutations, all of them with advantages for survival, as Darwinism postulates. This leads to the conclusion there must be some other cause, indeed an intelligent one! – There must be a design in nature. But this is where the argument stops. In contrast to Martinus, the theory of intelligent design does not attempt to explain the motivations and mechanisms behind the formation of complex organisms in nature.

The first five chapters of the first part of this book The Universe and the World Picture are an introduction to an understanding of Martinus' account of evolution. The second part, which is half of the book, presents the main topic, namely Evolution and Conscious Creation in a total of sixteen chapters. The four last chapters in the third part of the book Defective Genes, Sickness and Health examine Martinus' analyses of the causes underlying pathological genes and the significance of experience for the future stages of evolution that lie beyond the present human stage: for Martinus claims that evolution has a goal: it is like a one-way street that leads to perfection!

In his two main works, Livets Bog (LB1–7) [The Book of Life 1–7] and The Eternal World Picture (EWP1–4), Martinus explains that natural science is based on intelligence and investigation from below, whereas spiritual science is based on intuition and investigation from above: he tells us that these two kinds of science will in future merge to form a single holistic science.

Martinus has been completely ignored in the public debate that has taken place in Denmark over the past six years about Darwin and God, the theory of evolution and intelligent design. The main focus of the book has consequently been placed on Martinus Spiritual Science because it is essentially unknown in the public arena despite its vast scope and immense perspectives.

Ole Therkelsen, Copenhagen 2007

PART 1

The Universe and

the World Picture

CHAPTER 1

Martinus and his world picture

Unlike Darwin and intelligent design, Martinus is completely unknown in the world of public discourse. And yet he has developed not only a model of evolution, but a whole new cosmology in the form of an eternal world picture.

1.1 Who was Martinus?

Life is a fairy-tale. When we look back over the millennia, we see that once in a long while a truly extraordinary genius is born, a prophet or world-renewer. I am convinced that our beautiful green and blue planet has received a visit from such a fantastic person in our time, namely Martinus (1890–1981). He was born out of wedlock in the small village of Sindal in north Jutland, Denmark, where he spent his childhood and the early part of his youth. He subsequently worked in various dairies around the province until he acquired cosmic consciousness at the age of thirty. During the last 60 years of his 90-year long life, he created a completely new science and world picture on the basis of his cosmic intuition – an Eternal World Picture (EWP).

Martinus referred to his work as a science of love. He considered it to be an intellectualised or scientifically based Christianity. So in 1975 he began to call his collected works The Third Testament, because he felt that his spiritual science was in fact the promised continuation of the Old and New Testaments in the form of the divine advocate, the Holy Spirit (John 16, 12–15 and 14, 26). He also used the expression the Martinus Cosmology to designate his work. Cosmology is defined as the branch of philosophy concerned with the origin and nature of the universe. Cosmos stands in opposition to chaos – it implies a well-ordered universe based on laws. In brief, the Martinus Cosmology is a description of an ordered universe. It is a science of life showing that everything has a meaning, every detail is indispensable to the whole, and that in its final analysis everything is logical, purposeful and loving.

1.2 What was the background to Martinus' work?

In the Preface to his main work Livets Bog (LB1–7), Martinus writes of the profound transformation of consciousness that formed the background to his entire written works. He tells us that at Easter 1921 he underwent the white and then the golden baptism of fire that endowed him with cosmic consciousness.

He writes: The cosmic baptism of fire that I experienced and which I cannot explain in more detail at this point had left me with new senses that allowed me to perceive the spiritual forces, invisible causes, eternal universal laws, basic energies and basic principles underlying the physical world, not merely as glimpses – but as a permanent condition of wide-awake day consciousness. So the mystery of existence ceased to be a mystery for me. I had become conscious in the life of the universe and had become initiated into the divine creative principle (LB1 §21).

This transformation of consciousness and associated new insight became the starting point for an authorship that lasted for 60 years.

1.3 What does life look like from an eternal perspective?

After his cosmic baptism of fire, Martinus discovered that he had gained new senses and was able to see into eternity itself.

He writes: I saw that I was an immortal being, and that all other beings in existence were eternal realities, who like myself had an endless series of earlier lives behind them, that we had all evolved from low primitive forms of existence to our present stage, and that this was merely a provisional stage along this evolutionary scale, and that we are on our way towards extremely highly advanced forms of existence in the distant future. I saw that the universe consisted of a single vast living being in which all other beings are organs, and that all of us – human beings, animals, plants and minerals – comprise a single family, may be said to be of the same flesh and blood (LB1 §21).

1.4 Was there any limit to Martinus' knowledge?

After having become cosmically conscious at the age of 30, Martinus discovered that he had acquired a permanent intuitive capability that gave him access to the universe's ocean of knowledge. He could obtain answers to any question he was able to formulate. He now had a set of senses built up from and regulated by a highly evolved love, intelligence and intuition, which enabled him to experience the highest knowledge and the solution to the mystery of life (see LB1 §11 and §19).

Martinus tells us that intuition has no limits, it is a form of energy that penetrates absolutely everything, allowing the individual to see the highest realities of existence and the meaning of life. A fuller description of the function of intuition is given in his main work, namely Livets Bog (LB1 §196–209 and LB2 §355).

Martinus said several times in his last lecture that he had never encountered any limits to his knowledge or consciousness. There are no limits to what can be observed by intuition. He added that as soon as he had attuned himself to write his cosmic analyses, the knowledge almost rushed into his consciousness.

1.5 Martinus calls his analyses an expression of wisdom. But what is wisdom?

Martinus says that intellectualised feeling and humane intelligence are the characteristics of universal love and wisdom. Science and technology must become humane if the future destruction of the earth is to be avoided. Humaneness and Christianity must be intellectualised in order to obtain scientific guidance for morality and human conduct. As evolution proceeds, our intelligence will be regulated by humaneness and our feelings will be controlled by logic and reason. A balance between fully evolved feeling and intelligence will open the way to intuition and cosmic experience for all human beings.

With his intuitive and logical explanation of the perfect mode of behaviour, Martinus has created a science of love that unites religion and science as well as the thought of East and West. His work unites feeling and intelligence, or, in other words, the heart and the head.

1.6 Does Martinus refer to other writers?

Martinus regarded himself as living proof that it was possible to arrive at the highest knowledge through oneself without having studied. He sought no support from other writers because he wanted his entire work to be a pure product of his cosmic awareness.

Once, after a lecture, a listener said to Martinus that he must surely be a disciple of Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). To which Martinus answered with some force: No, I am certainly not a disciple of Oscar Wilde, or of anyone else for that matter. I possess complete sovereignty.

The theory of intelligent design first arose in the USA at the end of the 1980s and was obviously unknown to Martinus, who died at Frederiksberg Hospital on March 8, 1981. But nowhere in his complete works does he mention Darwinism or Darwin by name either. However, he does analyse the mode of operation of science and its materialistic conception of nature and life in a general sense and in principle.

In response to those who complained that they were unable to square spiritual science with natural science, Martinus pointed out in 1979: What I have written is not intended to conform to science in any way. I am completely autonomous.

It may sound like boasting when Martinus spoke of the power of his cosmic consciousness, but he reminded his listeners that he was by no means unique or an exception in eternal evolution, a point that he also stresses in Livets Bog.

He writes: My cosmic experience and condition became the impulse for my subsequent activity in the world and for the creation of Livets Bog. And as already mentioned, this spiritual process will be experienced by every individual when he reaches the necessary stage of evolution in his eternal existence. It will then become apparent that my sensory gift does not represent any particular privilege or any exception at all from the rule. In the course of eternal evolution, I can never become a whit more than what all other beings before me have been and what all other beings after me will come to be (LB1 §22).

1.7 Should the Cosmology be explained in academic terms?

A university professor who was interested in the Cosmology was keen to sponsor a doctoral thesis about the world picture it described. It was to be explained in scientific terms and gain academic recognition, and some of Martinus' associates were equally enthusiastic to see it explained in a manner that could convince scholars and scientists. But Martinus had written his work without using any learned vocabulary and had explained the meaning and mystery of life in such a simple and clear way that it could be understood by everyone. So he failed to see why his work should be rewritten to allow scientists to gain access to it. He said somewhat in jest: Scientists are surely not that much less intelligent than other people that they have to have it written in a special way in order to understand it.

1.8 What is the general attitude to spiritual science?

The cosmic laws and eternal realities can be experienced only through intuition, and the problem is that today's science does not recognize this faculty as an instrument of knowing. Martinus calls his descriptions cosmic analyses because they are based on a holistic vision that takes its starting point in the eternal and infinite universe – the cosmos.

Brief intuitive experiences that Martinus calls cosmic glimpses are harbingers of permanent cosmic consciousness. But the cosmic phenomena that a human being experiences in such a glimpse cannot become facts for others. They can at most become theoretical knowledge.

Martinus writes of the difference between natural and cosmic science: Therefore the difference between today's science and spiritual or real cosmic science is that while the former is a result of a mode of sensing common to everyone, and can therefore become a fact for everyone, the latter knowledge or science is a result of senses still possessed only by a small minority. So it can naturally only be a fact for this minority, depending on the degree of development of their humaneness and their consequent intuitive capacity. That is why the great majority of terrestrial humanity will continue to be sceptical of real cosmic knowledge or spiritual science for a long time to come (EWP2 §21.24).

1.9 What is the Martinus Cosmology in a nutshell?

Science has shown that all changes in physical matter are subject to laws. Martinus shows that there are also laws for the mind and for thinking. Knowledge of these universal mental laws will allow terrestrial humanity to gain dominion over its mentality and in the course of time to create a kingdom of love and peace upon the earth.

CHAPTER 2

Natural and spiritual science

2.1 How do intelligent design and Martinus relate to science?

The theory of intelligent design is officially presented as a scientific theory entirely comparable with Darwinism – quite independently of the Biblical story of creation and of religion in general. The advocates of intelligent design fully accept the scientific method. They attempt to use the methods of science to disprove the Darwinian theory of gradual evolution.

In contrast, Martinus claims to have created a new science in completely finished form, a spiritual science whose scope of definition and method extend beyond the narrower framework of natural science. Martinus recognises the autonomy of natural science in its exact quantification of measurements made within the domain of matter. He merely points out that by virtue of the definition of its domain and mode of operation, it excludes a series of eternal realities of life that cannot be quantified. That's why he insists that natural science has fundamentally cut itself off from the possibility of solving the mystery of life and of explaining the causes behind the creation of complex organisms in nature.

2.2 Is it unscientific to assume that there is intelligence in nature?

The theory of intelligent design aims to prove that an intelligent cause must lie behind the creation of the complex organisms in nature. It does so in particular by pointing out that nature contains systems that are so complex that their origin cannot be explained on the basis of the theory of evolution.

Within natural science, it is regarded as unscientific or as merely a religious question to seek meaning in life. Science is based on the postulate of objectivity. Nature is regarded as being objective. So it cannot be an expression of any thought, plan or purpose. Nature is regarded at being non-projective, in contrast to human beings, who can project their thoughts and plans out into the world.

The postulate of objectivity and the definition of science as a specific method have already excluded the possibility of intelligent design in nature from the outset: the question is simply not up for discussion! It is a scientific dogma that there cannot be any intelligence in nature. So natural science must reject the possibility of design in nature by definition.

2.3 What is science?

Science is the documentation of facts on the basis of our senses and their extension by various measuring instruments. Scientific results must be capable of being reproduced and confirmed by measured data drawn from experience or experiment, i.e. by exact quantification. Science is defined on the basis of a specific mode of investigation in which every hypothesis must be empirically verified.

2.4 Is Martinus' spiritual science a true science?

Natural science describes the manifold observations that are made in nature. In contrast, Martinus explains how everything in life plays a meaningful role. If we wish to compare Martinus' spiritual science with recognised academic disciplines, we have to turn to the humanities, which incidentally used to be called spiritual sciences in many European languages (for instance Geisteswissenschaften in German). The humanities are concerned with finding and acquiring an understanding of meaning. However, they see meaning purely as the product of human activity. The special feature of Martinus' cosmic analyses is that they also show a meaning in nature outside of human activity. Martinus has created a spiritual science showing that all of nature is a product of conscious life, and that everything in nature has a meaning.

Martinus was no philosopher who thought up ideas and set up hypotheses. He said quite modestly that the eternal laws and principles of life existed before he was born and that he was merely endowed with a faculty of sensing that enabled him to experience them. He tells us that after having acquired cosmic consciousness in 1921, it took him three years to obtain a complete overview of the world picture and get it all to fall into place.

It is interesting to read about how Martinus acquired cosmic consciousness and experienced the cosmic laws and principles of nature. But the essential thing for the spiritual investigator must be to determine whether what Martinus writes is true and agrees with the facts of reality or fails to do so. Martinus himself or the way in which he gained his knowledge are entirely secondary. The formulation of the law of gravity is more important than the story of how Newton (1642–1727) sat under an apple tree and saw an apple fall to the ground, inspiring him with his brilliant idea. German chemist Friedrich Kekulé (1829–1896) solved the problem of the structure of benzene when he saw its molecule shaped like a ring in a dream, but it became science only after his insight had been verified in the laboratory by experiment.

2.5 What is the starting point of science?

Spiritual and natural science are both based on specific starting points or axioms that cannot be proved. This is the case for all sciences. Martinus presupposes the existence of the world, i.e. the existence or constancy of energy, as well as the validity of the law of cause and effect. This starting point, that Martinus shares with natural science, is described in his basic conclusions no. 1 and no. 2 of the 12 basic conclusions of his solution to the mystery of life (LB2 §559–560, LB3 §680–681 and EWP3 §32.3–32.4).

But Martinus breaks out of the framework of natural science when he continues with his basic conclusion no. 3 Logic or planned activity. Here he tells us that the investigator must recognize how this expression of nature's cause and effect reveals a plan that shows itself upon closer inspection to be completely logical and purposeful. For example, is it not obvious that cell chemistry and human physiology act in a completely purposeful way?

In basic conclusion no. 4, Consciousness, thinking and the creation of ideas he goes a step further and concludes that the logic and purpose that we see in nature must be an expression of the existence of consciousness and thinking. So there must be purposefulness and a plan in nature.

In basic conclusion no. 5, The existence of the living being, he goes on to show that consciousness cannot exist as an isolated phenomenon, but can only appear in connection with a living being (LB2 §561–563, LB3 §682–684, EWP3 §32.5–32.7). So the marvellous structure of the universe indicates that it constitutes a living being. Martinus' symbol of the living being corresponding to basic conclusion no. 5 is shown in Section 3.7.

2.6 What is the difference between natural and spiritual science?

The crucial difference between natural and spiritual science is that the latter assumes that life is – like energy – an eternally existing phenomenon. From a logical standpoint, there can be only two possibilities: 1. The phenomenon of life