Martinus visited Kosmos Feriehem in Varhem, Sweden several times between 1965-68 where he gave lectures and answered questions. These question times were taped and later transcribed. The following is a translation of some of the questions and answers from Whitsun 1967

Question: Are the spiritual excercises that are described in the old Hindu writings and which are called "Yoga" of any particular value for us today? Can the sexual drive, for example, through yoga excercises be transformed to a force that causes or makes us succeptible for cosmic glimpses? Do these excercises accelerate our evolution towards cosmic consciousness? Do they lead us closer to God?

Answer: No, one cannot attain cosmic consciousness by stopping the sexual drive. If that were the case one could, for example, stop eating and then perhaps attain quite another ability. This does not happen. It is a very great superstition that one, by stopping the sexual drive, can get new spiritual powers. One does not. But I can well understand that the Indian gurus encourage their pupils to avoid falling in love while they are receiving tuition, because it destroys the tuition totally. Falling in love goes against the faculty of intuition. If one is very much in love the faculty of intuition is paralysed, and then one cannot continue in the cosmic development. One should preferably have outlived the ability to fall in love. Imagine if an Indian guru begins to teach some disciples, and a pupil falls head over heels. in love when the teaching is well under way. The whole thing falls to pieces and the teaching is wasted. For this reason the disciples should abstain while they are receiving cosmic teaching.

One should not believe that one gets higher abilities by abstaining; one doesn't. And one should not believe either that the sexual drive decreases; that is not what is wrong. On the contrary it is that which will be developed, but of course in the right way. It is true that there are many yoga excercises that are excellent for the structure of the organism, but there is also much that is imagination. I do not recommend any excercises over and above this one: to love one's neighbour and practise being good and loving. That is the very finest exercise, and if one does it everything will straighten itself out.

Question: Why are even so called "believers" so keen on continuing life on earth when they, according to their own conviction, will get a much better life in their heavenly home after death?

Answer: It emphasizes that fact that don't believe it after all, for if they did, they couldn't be afraid of it.

Question: Can praying for another person have any effect, even if the person in question does not pray himself?

Answer: Yes, one certainly can. One can pray for other people and one can pray for animals one can in fact pray for everyone. Prayer is an occult force, the largest occult force in existence. With prayer one can do both black magic and white magic; it is that which is present in, so to speak, all magic. But it is a matter of reaching so far that one does white magic and not black; praying for someone else is at any rate not black magic and it can help. Those beings who are to hear the beings' prayer are spiritual beings whose job it is to hear all the prayers that are manifested and to step in. But the problem is then if one can have one's wishes fulfilled. One cannot always. There is no point in praying to be free of some karma or another, to be free of some illness or another. We can pray about it but the primary purpose of prayer is not to free the beings from illness; the primary purpose is, on the contrary, that one can, through prayer, get enormous power and strength to take one's karma. If one has a very dark karma and is melancholic and downhearted, one can through one's prayer get help to maintain one's general condition and get an extremely clear feeling that the present suffering is something one has to go through, something that will change something within us for the better.

One can also pray for others, and these others are perhaps beings who cannot pray themselves; but it helps them when we others pray for them. They cannot help the fact that they cannot pray for not all people can pray, they cannot concentrate but God is not so small-minded that he says "Away with you!" when you cannot pray. It is precisely they who need to pray, and then it is good that those who are spiritually stronger can help those who are weaker. So what we should pray for is for help to take our karma, to go though our karma and to become conscious of why we have to experience this karma, and what the purpose of it is. We can get this with the help of prayer; that is what prayer was created for. When people come to me I ask them, "Do you pray to God?". "Pray to God? No in the thin air? I don't believe God is a man sitting up in heaven." "You don't have to believe either. God does not sit up in heaven, he is everywhere. But you should pray anyway, even if you don't believe in it, and it doesn't matter if you can't concentrate. They also say that they cannot pray the Lord's Prayer, but they don't have to. God does not demand a long string of words, but one has always something one needs to pray about. One just needs to concentrate on that. Even if one doesn't form it in words one has it in one's thoughts anyway, and one just has to think of getting help. Not believing in it does have any effect at all!" The person in question cannot help the fact that he cannot pray. One cannot do anything about which abilities one has and which one doesn't have; that's why I always say to people that, even if they don't believe, they should pray anyway and see what happens. They will then come to discover that prayer is not in vain, neither when one prays for oneself nor when one prays for others. It wan't take long before one realises completely that prayer is a force.

© Martinus Institut 1981

Published with permission from Martinus Institute