M1400: Life's Fate-Drama

M1400

Life's Fate-Drama

by Martinus

1. We are both the actors and the audience

Man's experience of life is really the experience of a gigantic drama, a drama in which we are all members of the cast. But a peculiar thing about this great drama - which we can call fate - is that we are not only the cast or actors, but at the same time also the audience. This play or fate-drama in which we are all both actors and audience is an eternal, scenic panorama with changing scenery from the most gory and hate-filled dramas and hellish settings to the most radiant fairy-tales and love scenes with settings of the purest mental gold.

Our fate is the same as the connection of our present with our past and our future, and life's fate-drama is therefore a presentation or display of these three different kinds of time. Past, present and future constitute three groups of actors in the fate-drama and our own role is the present. We experience ourselves as representing the 'now' or the midpoint in eternity in the same way as we feel ourselves to be the midpoint in infinity or the universe.

As the audience, we are witnessing the interaction between this present - or our own role - and the past and future which are played by our fellow-beings. All the other fellow-beings in existence are our fellow-players in the fate-drama. Some of them play the role of the past in their interaction with us and others play the role of the future. Our task is to combine the past with the future and thereby perfect the play's integrity and unity for the audience - which consequently means for ourselves.

Gradually, as the play proceeds, the audience begins to vaguely sense the connection. The audience is, of course, that part of our consciousness which experiences and reflects and, as it were, stands beside that part of us which moves and acts.

In our capacity as actors we are on stage from the cradle to the grave - which means, our present life. It is our awake, day-conscious, active contribution. When we die, we leave the stage for a time and go into our night-conscious world which, in this connection, can be likened to that world which, in the ordinary earthly theatre, is found backstage - a world with stage hands, stage electricians, dressers, stage managers - or whatever these helpers might be called - who are invisible from the auditorium but whose help is absolutely essential so that the play on stage can proceed.

The guardian spirits and other spiritual helpers are indeed, the invisible stage managers, stage electricians etc. of the great fate-drama - without whom life here in the physical world would be unable to unfold itself as it does - and when we leave the physical world, like the actors, we go off stage and into the room backstage -into the spiritual world - until, after this interval, the play has to continue and, still in the role of the present but with a new costume, that is, a new physical organism, we are again the midpoint in life's fate-drama.

2. The role of the past and the role of the future

When we begin such a new section in the fate-drama, we of course still have fellow-players, some of whom play the role of the past and others the role of the future. The fellow-beings or fellow-players who play the role of the past connect the present with the preceding acts. But what kind of fellow-beings have these roles in our fate-drama?

Our past is played by all the fellow-beings whose mentality exactly reaches the level which constitutes that still unfinished, primitive and undeveloped part of our consciousness. They are the tools or actors Providence uses in order to place us face to face with the unfinished sides of our own consciousness. Through them we meet now what we have sown in the past. From the micro-world, through plants, animals and primitive people, to the human types which almost represent the same step in development as we ourselves represent, we are, in fact, confronted with our own past embodied in our present. Here we can see all the mental steps and principles which have preceded the present in our life.

But how can the future be represented in the present? We are not only surrounded by beings who are on lower steps in development than ourselves, but we also meet beings who have overcome quite a number of the foolishnesses and imperfections to which we might still submit. The audience in us begins to reflect and have longings and desires about what should happen on the stage, and actually becomes inspired to have these wishes by taking in the behaviour of those beings who show a greater love and intellectuality or creative ability than we ourselves do.

Although the audience is a passive part of our consciousness, it is only passive in the way that it does not interfere with what is currently happening on stage. But there is also a form of activity in this part of our consciousness and it manifests itself in the way that the thoughts, wishes and longings of the audience stream into the superconsciousness in the fate-element and affect the talent kernels. That is where our experiences are gathered. The longings and the desires become the cause of the development of new talent kernels and the cause of the degeneration of certain old talents with which we are satiated and perceive as evil.

Thereby the activity on the stage is changed - that activity which is unfolded by ourselves as the actors who play the roles of the present. New abilities and talents are gradually revealed through practice and research and become inborn abilities which the same actor has with him in the coming acts, where, although he or she will appear in a new form, he or she is still, however, the same eternal being who, through the very capacities as both actor and audience, has the possibility of developing and of taking part in changing the scenery or the stage from being hellish, dark and full of pain and suffering to becoming a beautiful, fairy-tale world where neighbourly love and the unfolding of ingenious creative powers make life the most beautiful work of art.

3. We become fellow-directors

So, the sets and masks change on this stage - which is our physical day-consciousness - during changing incarnations. But it is only the settings which are changing. It is the same actor and audience (ourselves) who experience the changing scenes and take part in creating the changes. We are therefore not only actor and audience but, gradually as we develop, we also become fellow-directors as the audience in us is captivated by the action and begins to create desires and longings. Everyone becomes wiser day by day and will not act in exactly the same way as in the past. We should also remember this when we look at those fellow-beings and fellow-players in our fate-drama who represent the past. We could not imagine ourselves doing what they do and perhaps we criticise them - yes, perhaps we even say that we despise them. But when we cannot imagine ourselves doing what they do, it is because what they do is our past. It is something we have outgrown. We have the experiences and talent-kernels in our fate-element which causes us to cease robbing and plundering, stealing and swindling, lying and slandering etc. It is no longer the present for us but only the past and consequently we see this past represented by other beings around us.

But when these characteristics were the present for us, we did not, of course, have the experiences and talents we have now. But neither have the people whom we tend, perhaps, to criticise. And one cannot insist that any individual should think or act upon experiences which he has not yet had. In our criticism of them, or our contempt for them, we are then nearly as foolish as they are themselves. We have therefore developed ourselves that minute amount which causes us to be unable or unwilling to do what they do, but not to such an extent that we can see and understand that they cannot be otherwise than they are at the moment so that we are able to forgive them and perhaps try to help them. We must try to bear in mind that in their fate-drama each of us is one of the actors who represent the future, and the more inspiring effect we can have on the consciousness of the audience by our example - by the way we think, feel and act - the more we are taking part in changing the scenery here on the earth's stage. And in this way we also change our own fate-drama.

Of course, it is not only the beings who represent our past and the more primitive part of our consciousness who create fate. Where we are helpful to others by our humane and intellectual abilities - or perhaps just by a loving manner - thereby having an inspiring effect on the 'audience' in the consciousness of these others - we create fate for ourselves in the way that the beings who represent the future for us will appear loving and inspiring towards us and will create new possibilities through the longings and desires that will set in motion the development of new talent-kernels of a high-intellectual character in our fate-element.

4. Interaction between 'God' and the 'son of God'

So, we are also fellow-directors in the great fate-drama. But the guiding and constantly creative chief-director, who is invisibly present behind everything in life's drama, is the Godhead in whom we all "live and move and have our being". This director guides the actors who represent our past as well as the actors who represent our future. Yes, one can even say that in a way he is identical with these actors - that their 'I' is a part of his 'I', their creative power a part of his creative power, and the material clothing in which they play their role at the moment is an organ in his great organism. All these, our fellow-players in life's fate-drama, are the Godhead's tools.

Of course, there are really only two performers on the stage -'God' and the 'son of God' . The settings represent everything which comes under the expression - nature. The masks, as far as God is concerned, represent everything which comes under the expression - fellow-beings, while the changing masks and costumes, as far as the sons of God are concerned, comprise all the physical and psychic organisms he has represented and will represent through earthly lives or evolution's many different stages. Everything that we have been representing - from mineral, plant and animal to terrestrial man - is therefore only a series of masks the 'I' must make use of in special situations during the performance of its role in the fate-drama, just as all kinds of . fellow-beings in the same way constitute the special masks through which God can manage the clothing of his roles in the many changing settings in the eternal play.

There is no role in life's drama which a terrestrial man will not get a chance to play at some time if desired through the 'audience' in his own consciousness. Everyone can become a 'person of consequence' and be much admired, if they want it strongly enough, and they can live in power and in splendour. But naturally they must all experience what they, in a certain role, inflict on others, perhaps in the form of tyranny, arrogance and indifference towards other people's lives. It will meet them in the next act. Their past plus other actors in life's fate-drama become the past represented in the 'now' showing them how those actions were experienced by their own previous surroundings.

By this means, there arise in the consciousness new wishes and desires, and longings for a condition without tyranny and oppression, and the talents of neighbourly love begin to be formed. In the consciousness, seeds grow up to a high-intellectual display of life and although organism after organism becomes worn out and dies, the living beings will appear in still more beautiful organisms and have, as a basis for their appearance on life's stage, their eternal 'I' and eternal creative power unfolding themselves in the 'now' through the talent-kernels which the son of God -in his capacity as actor, audience and beginner fellow-director in life's fate-drama - continues to develop in the fate element of his superconsciousness.

"Man in God's image" is the fellow-director in life's fate-drama who has gradually become acquainted with the principles for creation and transformation which the 'great director' continuously unfolds, namely, to be one hundred per cent helpful to living beings, and it is this condition towards which all terrestrial people are heading. They do not experience the acts of the fate-drama at the same time. Some experience a section of the play which is already the past for others, and others experience something in the 'now' which, for many of the fellow-beings, is still the future. But they all live their daily lives in the middle of eternity and of infinity, and, even if their experience at present is not the same, no being will experience more light, love and happiness than any other being.

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Original Danish title: Livets skæbnespil. The manuscript of a lecture given at the Martinus Institute on 14^th March 1948. Published in book no. 18 entitled Livets skæbnespil in 1969. Manuscript for the lecture edited by Mogens Møller and approved by Martinus Translated by Mary McGovern, 1982.

Article ID: M1400
Published in the English edition of Kosmos no. 1, 1983

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