Macrocosmos

It can easily be observed that the living being's experience of life cannot exist without being a result of its relation to its surroundings. It must first and foremost eat and drink. It gets the nourishment that it must have from its surroundings. The physical organism in which it lives is also built up from, and must be maintained by, matter from its surroundings. The evolution of its ability to think and thereby its state of consciousness is also determined by its relation to the ability to think and the state of consciousness of other living beings. That these other living beings, and thereby also itself, can exist is determined exclusively by their existence in a world of energy that gives rise to all the conditions that must be fulfilled in order for living beings to exist in this. But in order that living beings can exist in this world of energy, it must be living. If it were not living, it would have to be a dead world. But a dead world can exist only as absolute stillness, absolute immobility and thereby as absolute unalterability; indeed, from a cosmic point of view such a world could not possibly exist at all. But since such a world cannot exist, any manifestation of life or experience of life would likewise be a total impossibility. The living being thus lives in a world of energy that is alive. But a world of energy that is living can exist only as an ... organism. However, since an organism can exist only as an instrument for an I's experience and manifestation of life, the living world of energy that constitutes the living beings' surroundings can thus also exist only as an instrument for an I's manifestation and experience of life. All things in our surroundings - minerals, plants, animals, human beings and so on - are situated in the organism of a living being. As this organism constitutes the earth it becomes evident that the earth is a living being. We see that this being is also situated in a logical and living world of energy, which constitutes an organism for an even larger living being, and so on continuously up into larger and larger organisms. It is these organisms we know by the terms "solar systems" and "galaxies", and they constitute what we call the "macrocosmos". So "macrocosmos" is in no way whatsoever an expression for something dead and lifeless. It constitutes a culmination of energy and movement, which, as known, is not death's but life's most noble and unshakable characteristic.

Microcosmos

There is an old saying, "As in the small, so in the large." This is strongly confirmed by the above. We live, as just mentioned, in the organism of a living being. For the great majority of the earth's population this view has not yet become generally acceptable and is therefore almost mystical or incredible. But in reality the same order of life occurs in our own organism. It is no longer an unknown phenomenon that our organism is the residence for myriads of living beings, such as organs, cells, molecules, atoms and so on, and that all these forms of micro-life are a vital necessity for the survival of our organism, just as the survival of this organism is an equally vital necessity for the existence of these small beings. So it becomes evident that we exist as macro-beings for these, our own micro-beings. Our own interiors thus form for each of these small beings outer life-determining surroundings for their manifestation and experience of life, precisely in the same way as our macro-being's interiors form outer life-determining surroundings for our manifestation and experience of life.

Mesocosmos

This, the living beings' macrocosmic and microcosmic order of life, thus constitutes a life-determining foundation for every living being's manifestation and experience of life. How could we have such a perfect organism, such a perfect instrument for the manifestation and experience of life as is the case, if this instrument did not consist of living beings? How could we manifest and experience life at all if our macro-being did not exist and was not a living being?

But what are we then? We each constitute not merely a micro-being in our own macro-being, just as we each constitute not merely a macro-being for our own micro-beings. Each and every one of us also constitutes something between microcosmos and macrocosmos. As we have seen, we are of vital necessity connected to the macrocosmos above us and to the microcosmos below us. We thus constitute, in addition to the above-mentioned two cosmoses, a third cosmos. This we have termed "mesocosmos". We see here how high-intellectually, justly, lovingly and thereby divinely founded the living beings' cosmic order of life in the universe is. In order to be able to manifest and experience life at all the living beings must mutually serve one another. In order to manifest and experience life they have been given a macrocosmic organism and thereby a universe or a world in which to live, move and have their being. But in return their own organism must in the same way be a macrocosmos for micro-beings. And just as they get micro-beings in their own organism, so they themselves must be micro-beings in their macro-being's organism. So wisely is the structure of the universe put together that the living beings in order to be the same must contribute the same. In order to obtain conditions for the experience and creation of life they must, in their organism, give the micro-beings conditions for the experience and creation of life.

Mesocosmic fate

As a being's experience of life and manifestation is determined by its relation to these three mentioned cosmoses the nature of this relation is not unimportant. It can be of such a nature that the being finds himself in the most beautiful harmony with all three cosmoses. It finds itself both bodily and mentally, or physically and psychically, healthy, and has a loving way of behaving that is warming and life-giving for itself and other beings. It thus constitutes the completely evolved human being in God's image after his likeness. But the people of the earth are not completed human beings. On the contrary, they live in war and unrest, they murder and kill, torture and mutilate each other to a great extent. The mesocosmic area seethes and boils like a volcano that can erupt at any moment. By the mesocosmic area is to be understood all the forms of life we know as people, animals and plants. We see that the plant forms of life evolve towards the killing principle and gradually become animals. And here it becomes to a great extent a vital necessity for the beings to kill in order to live. The highest points of light in the beings' fate here are mating urge, the mate and the offspring. It's consciousness is led to a great extent by instinct. We will not enter this area of the mesocosmic condition of fate, but point out merely that this area can be expressed as the budding, perfect human being's embryo-area. From this area the being will develop itself further towards the great final result that is the goal for this evolution, namely "the human being in God's image after his likeness". And here, in the last part of the animal kingdom, the being appears as the unfinished terrestrial human being. It is now so far advanced in evolution that it has become a being that is subject to the law "Thou shalt love thy God above all things and thy neighbour as thyself." To the degree that it cannot fulfil this law it is imperfect. Compared with behaviour that totally fulfils the aforesaid law of love the behaviour of the average terrestrial human being is still very imperfect. And to the same extent as this is imperfect, that is unloving, to that extent will its fate be based on lack of love on the part of its fellow beings. This mesocosmic fate is thus determined by its relation to its mesocosmic fellow beings, which means fellow human beings and animals. We have already mentioned that the beings here live in war and that they murder and kill each other. Newspapers, television and radio every day bring word of the manifestation of the killing principle in many different ways between man and man, and likewise between peoples. As the law of fate "One reaps what one sows" results in a being getting only the fate that it, through its behaviour, has inflicted on its neighbour or other beings, and thus comes to experience itself the evil or the suffering that it has inflicted on other beings, it cannot avoid being changed. It comes to feel an increasing disgust with its evil behaviour until eventually it no longer has the heart to do evil. It becomes humane and peace-loving. And from this stage in evolution the beings are led further towards perfection by virtue of the guidance and directions of the world redemption that reveal humaneness or neighbourly love as the absolutely only unshakable road to the light.

Microcosmic fate

But the beings' area of fate is not based only on their behaviour towards their fellow human beings and other mesocosmic fellow beings. It is to an equally great extent based on their behaviour towards the micro-beings in their own organism. These small beings are also part of this "neighbour" that one should love as one loves oneself. If this has not been mentioned so much up to now in the guidance and direction of the world redemption and thereby not in the commandments of the religions either, it is because people had not yet acquired sufficient experience or development to understand guidance or information in this microfield. And it is actually only now, from the twentieth century and on, that people will come to acknowledge that the commandment of love holds true not only for loving one's fellow human beings but also for creating a blessed and healthy way of living for the micro-beings on which the entire existence of our organism depends. This is just as important a karmic condition of life as loving one's fellow human beings. But here terrestrial human beings are still to an overwhelming degree sleeping beings, which is evident from the ocean of illnesses and bodily sufferings we witness in the hospitals of the world overfilled with sick people. Here there are by the million more or less destroyed organisms, which doctors and nurses with all their might try to remedy. That these illnesses in the worst cases are nothing less than hell for the sources of the organisms in question is also evident.

How can it be that people can inflict upon themselves such terrible suffering or karma? It is because the people in question have given no significant thought to, or shown interest in, their organism. They do not think that it constitutes a residence, a living space or a world for living beings. They do not think either that they themselves have full responsibility for the health and well-being of this organism. One can overburden it with more work than it is built to bear; it must then be weakened and finally succumb. One can also accumulate substances in it that constitute neither food nor drink. One can undermine it with the smoking of tobacco, one can undermine it with alcohol and drugs, and the beings come to go round as absolute wrecks and weaklings, finally succumbing to a far too premature death. One can likewise undermine the organism with incorrect food, which can also lead to illness and weakness. And here must mankind's greatest error, the eating of animals as food, be mentioned. Gradually, as the human being evolves to fulfil the law of love, to love his neighbour, that is the living beings, as himself, it is clear that he cannot at the same time be a creature that absolutely must slaughter and eat the beings mentioned. This is further confirmed by the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill". When God had created the human beings he blessed them and said, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food" (Gen. 1: 28-29). There is nothing here saying that one should kill and slaughter the animals for food. The more people evolve in the human or humane direction the less suited they become for tolerating rough, animal food. Man's killing of millions of animals creates a corresponding death-karma for those people involved in the killing of the animals and in meat-eating. This in turn means that to the same extent as they are involved in this killing of animals and meat-eating they are unprotected against unnatural death, whether it be in war, through assault, in any sort of traffic accident, or through other unfortunate or dangerous situations in daily life.

As we can see here, the killing of animals and the eating of meat create two kinds of fate. As the animals constitute mesocosmic beings, the retribution for the killing of these belongs to the mesocosmic fate. As the reaction of the meat-eating occurs in the organism's microworld or internal organs, these reactions or the effects of meat-eating are to be expressed as microcosmic fate.

Macrocosmic fate

In addition to the fact that we have two kinds of fate - the mesocosmic, which constitutes the effects of or the retribution for our relation to our mesocosmic beings, that is our fellow human beings and the animals, and the microcosmic fate, which constitutes the effects of or retribution for our relation to the micro-beings inside our own organism - we also have a third kind of fate, our macrocosmic fate. As we with our organism form a universe or residence for the micro-beings in the interior of this organism, we constitute the macrocosmos for these micro-beings. As it lies within our scope to be able to do good as well as evil towards these micro-beings, we here too get fate or retribution according to the behaviour or the consideration we manifest towards these beings. We already know that, with unsuitable food and the enjoyment of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, dissipation, lack of sleep and other circumstances destructive of the organism's health and normality, we more or less destroy the life-conditions for its micro-beings. With this behaviour we create a miserable macrocosmos for these vitally necessary micro-beings within us. Certain groups of the normal micro-beings cannot possibly live in such destroyed areas of their macrocosmos. And in certain cases there then incarnate less evolved micro-beings in these areas. But this does not prevent the being here, to a corresponding degree, from being an invalid and from appearing as a wreck, as a degenerating and slowly dying object. This fate constitutes the effects of the being not having fulfilled its duty as a macro-being. Instead of making its organism a healthy and good universe, a shining and warming living-space, a divine residence for the life-determining living beings in its own interior, it has for these beings turned this organism into a universe of darkness, an eldorado of suffering whose flames of hell in the form of pain possess the organism's nervous system, consciousness and psyche, and destroy the being's general condition until death liberates it. Thousands upon thousands of people the world over suffer this terrible fate because in their capacity as macrocosmos for their micro-beings, they have not fulfilled the law of love, but through their neglect and unnatural enjoyment have destroyed their organisms. But destroyed organisms cannot possibly be a perfect macrocosmos for micro-beings; indeed, they are if anything more or less a hell for them. But a being that has turned its organism into a destroyed macrocosmos or hell for its micro-beings cannot expect its coming fate to be a place in the sun, a sphere of happiness and love in the macrocosmos in which it shall itself experience life. It here comes to live in surroundings in which it can get dark experiences of fate corresponding to those that it, with its defective organism, created for its vitally necessary micro-beings. The being's abuse and neglect of its organism thus create not only illness and suffering in it but also have a voice in the being's relation to its macrocosmos, that is Nature or its surroundings. It is this condition of fate we must term "macrocosmic fate". To the degree that the being is unfinished it creates a brutal and dark fate through the three cosmoses mentioned here, which in the worst cases must be expressed as hell itself or the culmination of suffering.

But the spirit of God, which is the same as universal love, still moves upon the face of the waters. The unhappy being is not forsaken by God. In the darkness it slowly begins to get the humane faculty engrafted, and it begins to wander on the road of love. And through new lives it gradually begins to be a shining and warming sun of love for its surroundings and constitutes God's image after his likeness in all three cosmoses. And before this divine flood of rays all dark fate must retreat.

(Original Danish title: "Tre slags skæbne", 1965. Translated by Mary McGovern, 1992.) 
© Martinus Institut 1981
Published with permission from Martinus Institute