M0410
Freedom, Liberation and Peace
by Martinus

1. Freedom and peace
Freedom in its many forms and nuances is the goal that all human beings are striving towards and longing for. Through politics, science, religion, art and much more, people are seeking liberation. But at the same time as longing for freedom, people are also longing for peace, and again and again they find that when they seek to free themselves from outer ties it is at the expense of peace. If there is a period of time that to the world seems outwardly more at peace, there are large groups of people that are to some extent oppressed by dictators or those in power. This naturally causes rebelliousness and the urge for liberation to arise in the minds of the oppressed, so that it is just a question of time before peace is no more. What is the cause of these changeable states in which neither real peace nor real freedom exists among people?
No person can be entirely free as long as they are out of contact with the forces of Nature and the universe. They are in fact often in downright disharmony with these forces, which leads them to experience distressing fates, illnesses and suffering. In order to be free, people must first and foremost know what kind of ties are binding them. Only then will they be able to break free and experience real freedom – and they will then also experience peace.
2. Human desires are satisfied according to the principles of the animal kingdom
Human beings are generally of the opinion that it is the outer ties that prevent them from being liberated, and they are very often full of criticism of the outer state of affairs, of other people and of the surroundings as a whole. They do not know that as soon as a person levels a criticism he is bound. For human beings to be free they have to reach the point of raising themselves above all desires and all criticism. Human beings are in a certain kind of unnatural state as long as they nourish desires. An exception to this is of course the primordial desire, that is to say the desire for life. The desire for freedom and peace are natural nuances in the desire for life or the primordial desire, but because people do not know life and its laws they attempt to reach freedom and peace by roads that again and again lead them into new ties and fetters, into the many varieties of war and discord. In this way though they gain experience, and by travelling the road of experience they also arrive at freedom and peace, because they will have been liberated from all human and, from a cosmic perspective, unnatural desires.
The dark conditions that there are at present in the world are the result of such unnatural desires, that is to say, desires that are natural in the animal kingdom but not in the human kingdom. These desires are the desire to possess and the desire to exert power. It is written that Man should subjugate the Earth, but as long as Man is the slave of his own desires this cannot come about. In response to this, one could raise the objection that the terrestrial human being belongs to the animal kingdom, and so it must also be quite natural for him to have the same kinds of desires as animals, the only difference being that he possesses a certain degree of intelligence that he can use to satisfy his desires, whereas animals have only instincts. But paradoxically enough it is precisely human beings' intelligence that leads them away from their contact with Nature and life, and that can cause them to come off the rails, whereas animals, through their instincts, do have such a contact, even though it is unconscious. The conflict lying behind the fate of terrestrial mankind as it is at the moment is that terrestrial human beings have begun to nourish a natural human desire for freedom and peace, but they are seeking to satisfy this natural human desire according to the principles of the animal kingdom, and they are doing this because in evolutionary terms they represent a transitional state between the true animal kingdom and the true human kingdom.
3. Intuition and freedom
Divine almightiness leads human beings on towards eternal peace. But what about freedom? If human beings are led by divine might, they have no freedom. But what mankind is being led towards is precisely freedom. This seems to be a paradox, but it is really only how it seems. Human beings are being led by them gaining experience, and experience liberates them because it is through these experiences that they develop not only their intelligence but also their feeling and their intuition. To the extent that terrestrial human beings have still not developed their intuition, through which they would be consciously in contact with the eternal laws and principles of the universe, they lock themselves up into mental prisons. But intuition will set them free, and through it peace will also become a fact, because it would radiate out from the human mind as an inner peace, sowing peace and love around itself. One has to sow peace in order to reap peace, and as long as people sow war they will be unable to reap anything other than war. The effects of actions and the ensuing causes will certainly come about, but through the experiences that they create, human compassion will liberate people from the killing principle and its effects. No one can achieve true liberation until their sole wish is to be a joy and a blessing for their surroundings, and until they would rather suffer themselves than cause others suffering. This is normally difficult to understand for terrestrial human beings who believe that freedom is gained by freeing one-self from outer ties. Of course the outer state of affairs does also have a part to play in existence, but it is through one's future karma, through what one sows, that one creates the best possible outer conditions for the future, and one does not do that by sowing unrest and war. But as long as people want unrest and war, they are gaining the experiences that are necessary to make them gradually want something else. Blessed is true liberation for it is based on human beings' contact with the holy spirit.
4. The holy spirit is a state of consciousness
Present-day human beings, who are usually rather wary of expressions to do with "God" or "that which is holy", will claim that they do not have any contact with "the holy spirit". The truth of the matter is, however, that every time a person feels joy at being able to make another person happy, what that person is experiencing is a little glimpse of "the holy spirit". The holy spirit is not a person or a thing, it is a state of consciousness. When a human being is filled with this state of consciousness, totally and not just in glimpses, that being is liberated and has become like God. The holy spirit is the highest knowledge of life, and with this knowledge existence ceases to be a mystery. Through this state of consciousness one knows that freedom is not something one takes or demands, as by doing that one would just bind oneself with new ties. Freedom is something one gives in the form of a loving way of thinking and living. One could therefore presume that if people all at once on a certain day were to give freedom to all beings, the ultimate great peace would come about. But this could not happen. One cannot miss out a period of evolution; the great peace cannot come about all at once. Just as an apple has to go through a sour stage before it reaches its ripe stage, mankind also has to go through its sour stage before it is ripe or ready for greater peace and freedom. Of course this does not mean that an individual who may have advanced a bit further than the average human being (and if anyone has, it is only as a result of suffering in previous incarnations) has to wait until all the others gain similar experience. There is a definite need for human beings who can point the way for the others, not through fanatical attempts at "conversion", or intolerant behaviour based on the belief that one knows more than other people, but through the power of example. A terrestrial human being begins to be mature as a human being when he realises that he has the freedom to forgive and to avoid thinking about revenge or being bitter, disappointed, depressed or irritated over the behaviour of others. One should give other beings freedom and that has to be learnt from life because one cannot demand that people are loving. Great preparation is needed in order to arrive at a loving disposition. The most essential part of this preparation is experiences of sufferings or dark karma. A second part of the preparation is spiritual science; this can be an enormous help and support in everyday life for anyone who through sufferings and difficulties has arrived at a certain evolutionary level. But a third, also essential, part of the preparation for the state of love, and thereby for liberation and peace, is the example of other human beings, their loving behaviour, understanding and ability to be obliging and helpful. One wants to be just like they are, and this is a tremendous incentive and inspiration on the road towards the light.
5. Religion and science will not continue to be opposites
Over the last two thousand years powerful forces have been acting to help mankind out of the animal zone and on towards the human kingdom. It is proclaimed the whole world over that one should guard against doing evil and strive to do good. Sacraments and baptism were introduced in order to lead people into a more positive state of belief and hope. And similarly it has been necessary to offer people the hope of their "sins being forgiven" through believing, just as the church ceremonies have been able to get people – for a short time after the ceremony - to live in a kind of elevated state or atmosphere. But by these means people have not become wiser; world redemption must now make use of new forces. Millions of people can no longer be guided forwards by churches and religions, whose dogmas do not speak to their sense of logic. They have gained greater consciousness and new knowledge and can no longer believe. Believing is not something one can learn to do, it is a faculty that fades away as the faculty to think logically is developed.
It is the task of science to show people what pays and what does not pay. That may sound cynical, but is not as long as one understands that it is not a question of money but a question of what is positive and what is negative for human beings. Science and technology are the beginnings of a new area of thought for terrestrial mankind, who is learning to think in new thought pathways. These new thoughts seem to be in opposition to the old religious point of view. It is world redemption's present task to show people that it is only an apparent difference of opinion and that religion and science are equally necessary for people and that there is absolutely no need for them to be at variance with each other. So the task of world redemption is, through spiritual science, to show people what pays and this includes the idea that one has the freedom to turn the right cheek when one has been struck on the left. Civilisation has nothing to do with weapons and wielding power. It is a vital necessity for animals to kill, but it makes absolutely no sense for humans to kill in order to live. It does not pay. Of course one cannot teach this to people who cannot understand it, because they still have not gained the necessary experience, and it is precisely this that they have to gain through their future actions returning as waves of karma. One therefore has to try to understand that what these people need is to have the freedom to sow the seed that will give them the experiences that they are lacking and that are holding back their development. Seen in the cosmic perspective it is loving that they get those experiences, even though it can be difficult to understand when looked at from the small, local perspective of one single life.
6. The beginnings of peace
For those people who are wholeheartedly longing for peace, it can often be difficult at a time such as this to see where to intervene in order to act in the right direction, and out of confusion many people give up. But one should not give up, one should not sit back and think that one cannot do anything. Each individual must work to create peace in his own consciousness, and only then will he be able to infect his surroundings and thereby help to create peace and harmony around himself. But what is needed beforehand, as an absolute necessity, is to have peace within one-self, so that one does not feel antipathy towards anyone or anything. But how can one break free from the stranglehold of antipathy? By understanding that everything is a link in a divine plan leading the living beings on towards the light, towards peace and freedom, and that every single living being at any given moment is on that step in its evolution that it has reached as a result of past experiences and can neither think nor act differently than its experience gives it the freedom to. When others behave in an evil or negative way towards us they are instruments or messengers of our own negativity from the past. So how do we respond to them, how do we react to their negative thoughts and actions? By stepping up the war and expressing our hurt feelings in anger? We have the freedom to do that, but if we are liberated from anger, vanity and such inhumane types of thinking, we have the freedom to do something even better, to sow a seed of peace, a seed that, like the mustard seed in the parable, will grow to a great size and cover the whole earth.
7. Truth and the many different ways of looking at it
To a very large extent unrest in the world is based on the fact that terrestrial human beings want to change each other. People have one particular view, a kind of recipe of how life and people should be, and those people who do not fit into the recipe are thought to be "wrong" and therefore must be changed. People can even be seized by so-called holy wrath and righteous anger over the fact that there are people who have completely different religious or political thinking than their own. And as there are many kinds of recipes among people, that all contain one or another small element of truth, it is very easy to come to blows over how one should create peace in the world. It sounds senseless, but that is how it is, and that is how it has to be, because people have to have the freedom to gain the experience that will really liberate them.
Liberate them from what? From everything in their world of conceptions and ideas that is not in accordance with the truth, that is, with the eternal laws of life. Life itself corrects people's thoughts and ideas through the process we call fate, and to make this correction, life, which is the same as the Godhead or Providence uses the tool or instrument that is closest at hand, namely our neighbour or all other living beings. By binding others, one becomes bound oneself. By letting others be free, one becomes free oneself. The whole of existence is one great loving process and it is my task to try to show you this through my analyses. I do not want you to believe in me and in what I say but it can be of very great importance to you if you can understand how I have come to these truths through my experience of Nature itself and life itself. The Bible, with its great answers, is truth, but it is in life or Nature itself that one has to search for the calculations that lead to these conclusive answers. These kind of calculations will become a new form of science, one that is a natural continuation and extension of physical science.
8. Theory and practice
As it makes no sense for you to believe in me or my analyses, how can you arrive at the knowledge that the analyses are correct? You can do so by using your sense of logic and your faculty for loving. And to the extent that you possess these powers of the consciousness, you will gradually, under your own power, arrive at a real understanding and experience of the great conclusive answer, "Everything is very good"! Many people think that I have gained my knowledge through reading, but I haven't. My life is a living demonstration that one can arrive at knowledge by other means than through books and education. All knowledge has to arise somewhere; it has to pour forth like water from a spring. I am my own spring; everything I am telling you I have experienced in life itself. This is the kind of freedom every one of you will arrive at one day. Your faculty to believe is degenerating and your sense of logic is waking up, as is your faculty for loving, and where you are missing something, the Godhead will help you gain the experiences you need through your karma. But how can my analyses be of use?
In the state in which you find your-self at the moment, it is possible for cosmology to be of great use to you because it is neither a sectarian religious movement, through which you will be "saved", nor is it a political party that wants to impress on you an opinion that is intolerant of other opinions. Working with the cosmology places certain demands on the student, not only purely intellectually; that aspect of the work is not the most difficult. If one acquires the material, gradually as one needs it, little by little the brain cells that are still lying latent in one's brain will develop and one will notice how the ability to understand things will gradually grow in the same way as the ability to explain the analyses to others who are really hungry for such knowledge and insight. But even though one concentrates on theoretical study, one must not forget one's practical behaviour. It is even more important because it is entirely one's own. And it is really a matter of practical exercises, because just as no one can become a genius in a branch of art without practise and training, and having the patience to go on and on working, similarly no one can become a genius at expressing life in a loving way so that it is a benefit and a joy to their surroundings, without training and practising and making mistakes; one learns from all of this and gradually develops a really human talent for loving.
9. The human being is at one with God
The student of the cosmic analyses will be able to arrive at the knowledge that they are correct through his faculty for loving and his sense of logic. Both of these forces in the consciousness have to be used, and the more one works with these forces in one's own heart and mind, seeking to bring them into balance with each other, the greater are the possibilities for the energy of intuition to enter into the day consciousness. And through the intuition, one comes into contact with the universal sea of knowledge that is God's consciousness or the holy spirit. The cosmic analyses defend everything; they do not attack anyone or anything. They enable the student to have an overall view of why conditions and living beings are as they are, and they point the way to peace. In studying my analyses you will always arrive at the one and only final conclusion: everything is very good. I have not been told these things by anyone, but through my own power and my own sight I have been able to learn these things from life itself, and it has become my task to show the world that life is not a mystery. Everything that we experience is life's direct speech to us. Human beings are unceasingly in direct contact with God, even though at the moment they are not conscious of it. But they will be. In due course you will experience that you are at one with the Father. I am at one with the Father because I am at one with the laws of life, due to the fact that my thinking faculty goes with the laws and not against them; my words therefore constitute truth. But this is certainly not something I should be praised for; it is not something that makes me of greater worth than anyone else. If I thought so my thoughts would definitely not be on the same wavelength as the laws of life. It is a state that everyone who has been before me has had and everyone coming after me will have. It is a stage of consciousness that every single terrestrial human being will sooner or later reach.
10. Darkness has to be turned into light in the hearts and minds of each individual human being
Your job is to study my analyses. You should explore these things and life will reveal itself to you. But at the same time as studying one has to have the correct attitude. One has to be pure in heart in order to see God. Loving thoughts are pure. Whoever spreads loving thoughts wins the trust of other people. You cannot imagine how much it means that you send loving thoughts towards those people you do not like and who you also sense do not like you. What is it in you that does not like these people? It is not the human being in you. Quite the opposite, the human being in you sometimes speaks through your conscience, when you have been angry or bitter in thought or behaviour. No, it is the animal in you, the jungle consciousness, that does not like the other people and that blames them for a lot of things that on the surface they may seem to be guilty of too. But it is only on the surface. This is where the analyses can help you - as long as you can understand that in no way would it be possible for you to be subjected to other people's gossip, anger, intrigues or other unpleasantness if it had not been something that you yourself had sown at some point in the past and that you are still not completely finished with or liberated from, and as long as you can understand that liberation and therefore the road to freedom and peace is through your consciousness, your ability to forgive, to overcome hatred, anger, bitterness, jealousy and similar ways of thinking in your mind. Some-one has to begin turning darkness into light, and you will never gain peace or freedom until that someone is you. You must not expect people to be different from how they are; neither must you think that you can change them. A person's character cannot suddenly change; it has to evolve. If another person commits an injustice against you, it is an old injustice that you have committed that comes to meet you, but if you can now forgive that other person and think "he knows not what he does", you are then, of your own free will, on the same wavelength as Christ's way of being and thinking; and human beings can be given no greater example than Christ when it comes to a demonstration of love. But at the moment we have to learn that it makes logical sense to forgive and to send loving thoughts also to those who hate and persecute us. Of course one has to use one's common sense and forethought; logic is needed in order to live life and to understand other people. It should pay to act correctly both for the people one would like to help and for oneself. Love is not just caressing, and being "too soft" or foolishly kind is not loving. Parents spoiling their children is not loving, whereas it is loving to bring them up to understand that freedom is not just doing what they want if that is a nuisance or harmful to other people or other living beings. Human freedom is the freedom to send loving thoughts in all situations to all beings, no matter what those beings do to us. There can be situations where one has to be firm with both children and adults, where that is absolutely the most loving thing to do. But in such cases one's attitude has to be based on loving thoughts, not anger or indignation.
11. Terrestrial human beings' present state is a link in a gigantic evolutionary process
It makes no sense to be indignant towards another person because their attitude to things is different from one's own. Every being at any moment is at the top of its evolution and from there it forms its view of life. Life is as perfect as it can be at present; it is not how it will be tomorrow or in the years, centuries or millennia to come. There will come into being "a new heaven and a new Earth", as it is written, which means a new attitude of consciousness in which the meaning of life will no longer be a mystery. There will also come about a new type of economy and administration in the world so that all beings receive the necessities of life without having to work slavishly for them, doing a job that they have no interest in. Instead they will do the work that they want to, where their abilities can be developed freely, benefiting and giving joy to the whole. All human beings will through cosmic clear-sightedness gain insight into the laws of life and the freedom to experience life in a far richer and more beautiful way than at present.
This might sound fantastic to you, but just think what has happened since people were stone-age beings, in fact since they were animals or plants. Millions of years have led terrestrial human beings to their present stage of evolution and in just three thousand years or thereabouts there will be on this Earth a community of highly-evolved beings that will have come so far in freedom and liberation from matter that they will be able to materialise and dematerialise physical bodies, meaning that they will no longer have to incarnate and discarnate in the slightly difficult way we call birth and death. It is senseless to believe that evolution comes to a halt on such a primitive level as the one that terrestrial human beings still represent. Existence will get better and better. The energies will at some point come into balance, which will mean that eternal peace will become a fact. All spiritual forces seek this balance and harmony, in just the same way as all flowing water, great or small, strives towards balance in the vast ocean. Political struggle is also a racing of the energies towards balance, and the experiences that are reaped will bring with them that harmony that is freedom and peace.
12. The individual human being's contribution to the evolution of the world
There are many people that very likely have a certain belief that things can get better for human beings at some point in the future, but they think that it will take such a long time and, knowing nothing about reincarnation, do not believe they will ever experience it themselves. But it is you yourself that has been a plant, an animal and a primitive human being, it is you yourself that will take part in changing the Earth into a human kingdom and it need not necessarily take you 3000 years. The holy spirit can come like a thief in the night, no one knows the day or the time of its coming. My work speeds up this development. Through my analyses you will learn to understand what pays, from a purely human point of view. The correct understanding of and sympathetic attitude towards their surroundings will completely change human beings' existence. But everything depends on human beings' everyday behaviour. It is the task of people who are interested in these things to hasten the growth of goodness on Earth. Human freedom is the freedom to demonstrate a loving attitude to everything and everyone regardless of what one meets from other people. It is the only thing that liberates people from the jungle of the animal kingdom, and it is this force that creates peace first in the minds of human beings and then on Earth. It is the aim of my work to inspire human beings to shine like suns and to radiate divine love to their fellow beings, and the creative forces of the universe - the holy spirit or God's consciousness - are there behind you helping whenever you tune your consciousness onto the wavelength of neighbourly love.
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Original Danish title: Frihed - frigjorthed og fred, a lecture given by Martinus in October 1940, first published in the Danish edition of Kosmos nos. 9-10, 1968. Revised by Mogens Møller, approved by Martinus. Translated by Andrew Brown, 2002.
Article ID: M0410
Published in the English edition of Kosmos no. 3, 2002
© Martinus Institut 1981, www.martinus.dk
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