Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1537

1537. While the first half of the spiral cycle is based upon the being's increasing interest in, and desire for, "matter" at the expense of its neighbour, the latter half of this cycle is based upon the being's increasing interest in its "neighbour" at the expense of matter. Since matter is "death", and one's neighbour is "life", it is not so surprising that in the first half of the cycle the being becomes one with matter, with lifeless things or "death", while in the latter half of the cycle it becomes one with its neighbour, with that which is living or "life". For the same reason it is also a matter of course that the individual in the first half must become "involved" or buried in matter, so that it ultimately can no longer see or sense cosmic light, whereas it becomes "evolved" or liberated from matter and emerges into the cosmic light in the latter half of the same cycle. When it has passed through this last half of the cycle, the first half of a new cycle begins, and so on continuously. Since every cycle is advantageous to the individual, a new variation of its mentality, every new cycle can be see as lying "above" the previous one. The being's experience of cycles is, as previously shown in Livets Bog, not a repetition of the cycle that it has just passed through, but an experience of an entirely new cycle, so that the individual, as previously mentioned, for every cycle that it has passed through, ascends to a cycle that lies above it. And because of this we call this cycle a "spiral cycle".
Eternal life is thus an eternally alternating experience of "life" and "death", of "light" and "darkness", of "wellbeing" and "suffering", of "intellectuality" and "primitivity".

Symbol no. 12

Life and Death