Label: Martinus Thomsen

Farewell to the esoteric

Farewell to the esoteric

The title was a bit dramatic. And by the way, I've been resigning gradually over several decades. Up to twenty-five I was inside the world of thought, but after that I have distanced myself more and more. Ten years when I was less and in opposition. When it was time for master thesis on my education and I couldn't come up with anything better, so I chose to write about "new spirituality" of the kind represented by the likes of Rudolf Steiner, Madame Blavatsky, etc. For me, this work also became a kind of reconciliation work.

The title also does not imply that I have come to a conclusion about the truth content of the esoteric basic ideas, which I am now trying to impress upon others. Reincarnation, karma and the individual's gradual development towards perfection, to sum it up briefly. I still know nothing about this.

I dared to express my feelings on a forum around the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) the other day and the conversation that developed from this convinced me even more that - and why - I put the commitment behind me.

But I think I'll start a little earlier! Came into contact with "new spirituality" through a man in the town where I grew up, the yoga and meditation teacher, etc. Sture Emby. Moved to Stockholm in the middle of high school, had various such jobs that one had at that age. Went to all the lectures and courses about Martinus Thomsen that I had time for. Lived in Denmark for six months, attended the so-called "Winter School", at the Martinus Center on Zealand.

Started working at the new spiritual establishment Cafe Pan in Götgatsbacken, Stockholm. Did unarmed service, wrote a book. Continued working at Cafe Pan... Almost every summer I spent 1-2 weeks down at that Martinus Center. In the beginning I participated in study groups and lectures with a good appetite, but gradually it became more and more regular (lovely) holiday stays by the sea.

For the past perhaps twenty years, the Martinus movement has been marked by a bitter conflict over copyright, how the founder's writings should be presented to the outside world.

A more orthodox phalanx who claim that the only right thing is to continue printing the books in facsimile, with any obvious spelling errors and the Danish as it looked before the spelling reform in 1948. A more modern phalanx, who are also those who hold the copyright (Martinus Institute in Copenhagen, with its board which is traditionally called "The Council"), which has been for a gentle update. Those who are familiar with the conflict can fill in what I missed or don't know at all, the rest of you probably don't need to worry about the details. I wouldn't post this post if I didn't perceive the content to be more general.

I reason around a concept that deals with how everything goes in cycles. The seasons are one cycle, the human life course from birth to death, another. But in this author's model of existence, the cycle idea is absolutely central, all-encompassing. So maybe it can then be applied to Martinu's work and the movement that has formed around this for a hundred years, too?

“Council vs… who is it?

Have to say I stopped caring about this conflict because, what is it, how long has it been going on? Fifteen, twenty years? Personally, I think it has less to do with the Council or those who are dissatisfied. I think that Martinu's big project has reached some kind of phase of decay, old age, decay. The last push as well. Sad in a way, but... It's the "circulation principle" as well. I think his ideas will live on and be able to inspire one or another in the future, but then more in a molten form, via secondary literature and free thinkers.

I have the warmest feelings for Martinus as a person, and the history of the cause.”

Based on the response I received, both support and rebuttal, I thought further, and wrote:

"Does not take a position on whether Martinu's world view will have a renaissance and great importance. But in any case, it is ONE cycle that is now coming to an end. You don't even have to think metaphysically to see it that way, I think.

First, there is a founder with talent, enthusiasm, confidence (whether this is justified or not, whether he really has the abilities he claims to have, or not). In a period when such things are also 'in time'. A movement arises around him. What is written and said is in step with the spiritual currents of the period, feels relevant and fresh, can interest relatively many people.

Envy is aroused, to some extent phalanxes arise. Some are provoked by and challenge the founder himself, some are content to position themselves in relation to other interested parties, the 'crowd' who have not really understood him as well as themselves.

Eventually the creator disappears. The field is now open for battle, polarization is growing. The building weathers and collapses. Those around you wonder what the hell is going on with that little inspired circle? As one did not understand what they were really interested in, but they seem to have had something exciting going on for themselves in any case.

Then if someone digs the books out of the rubble in a hundred years and finds something of value there, that remains to be seen. But clearly what has been going on now means that many who could potentially be interested in this Danish mystic's world of thought do not want to approach. It gives a little too much of an impression of old-fashioned religious warfare, something that seems to be on its way out, a phenomenon that has entered its 'autumn'. At least that's what I think,"

I think that Martinu's texts, whether they are in facsimile, in Old Danish or carefully revised, have in some sense become irrelevant. So both sides are wrong. I've been trying to come up with an analogy.

The old large Swedish company Facit was successful with its typewriters and calculators. (Didn't they even fly in the Brazilian national team to kick a ball with Åtvidaberg FK?) I got a picture of how towards the end rival product teams were bickering about whether the typewriters should be green-grey like before, the "original", or spruced up a bit, to attract new , younger buyers.

While the truth was that the world outside Åtvidaberg had turned half a turn and no one wanted a typewriter anymore. At all.

By the way, when I think about it, there are several reasons why I distanced myself from the esoteric world explanation. What I bring up above in the post is not even the most important.

Another side of it all, which I am reminded of in the exchange I refer to, is the view of the esoteric foreground figures. Their perfection. Within the movement around Martinus Thomsen, this has been an existing, although I would hardly call it a living, discussion. "Could Martinus be wrong?"

This is something that rubbed off over the years. But it hasn't been the most decisive either. Or it's kind of baked in, a facet, of what probably had the most importance because I wanted to keep esotericism/new spirituality at arm's length.

But what is the most important reason then? It's a bit tricky to describe. But is the theme of many other posts here on the website. It's about "mental hygiene", for lack of better words.

A basic thought for me today is that the esoteric/neo-spiritual understanding of life can both pressure and attract the individual to function at a lower, "simpler" developmental level than what is actually hers. And that this has nothing to do with whether the fantasy world is true or not. It might sound strange.

If I were to venture to formulate the basic problem/basic challenge, it would be that esoteric neo-spirituality is working with "absolute greatness" (complete love, perfect knowledge, perfect people, total responsibility for one's own destiny via the "law of karma", etc.), as it the human psyche in the vast majority of cases is not equipped to handle. It risks doing something to one, so to speak.

Fifteen years ago I did a dozen interviews with people who embraced the esoteric-neo-spiritual notions of reincarnation, karma and the individual's gradual development towards emotional and cognitive perfection. I then put the answers and statements I received against the human "existential conditions" as these had been formulated by an experienced psychoanalyst, Adrzej Werbart:

Werbart (2000) writes that we humans are "irretrievably doomed to live as separate 'in-dividuals', dependent on each other, divided into two sexes and several generations, vulnerable and mortal...". Elsewhere, the same author writes that we have to "accept the existential conditions of man: our separateness as separate individuals, our division into two sexes and the impossibility of being both, the division into the parent and child generations, our aging and our mortality" (Werbart, 1996 ).

In conclusion: We humans are separate, alone. We are divided into two genders (in which case we cannot be "everything"). Furthermore, we are included and arranged in parent and child generations. We are dependent on others and each other throughout life in various ways. We are all limited in terms of talent, abilities, strength, etc. Subjected to aging, we become weaker and eventually die.

The result? My impression was that the group actually denied all the existential conditions. The esoteric-neo-spiritual worldview seemed to offer reasoning or answers that invalidated them all. However, the interviewees still seemed to be able to be divided into three groups, which I once formulated roughly like this:

  1. Those who are very disoriented (“deny the existential conditions”) even before the encounter with the neo-spirituality and the neo-spirituality allow them to remain in this state.
  2. Those who are normally healthy/normally ill ("wrestling with the existential conditions") and the new spirituality may be tempted to avoid continuing to wrestle.
  3. Those who are psychologically more mature (“have come to terms with the existential conditions”) and can find a healthy balance between theory and practice, between belief and emotional reality.

My conclusions can be read in more detail in the discussion section to the study, whoever wants to.

This may seem academic and distant. Who do I think I really am (who have I been)? Group 2 I would say. Incidentally, the very largest of the groups. That is my assessment. But Group 3 exists (Group 1 included for that matter). These psycho-spiritual unicorns!

To wake up

To wake up

Each spiritual tradition seems to have or advocate its own version of that "wake up". Saved or Enlightened. With great similarities, it seems to a layman. A transformative, pervasive experience.

The model I myself am most familiar with is the one presented by and passed on by followers of the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen. It is a process in several stages, with enlightening experiences of increasing strength. First it comes as "cosmic glimpses", ultimately as a permanent "cosmic consciousness".

True or not, you can read more about that elsewhere. Rather, I am thinking about how skeptical or playful one can be in admitting such experiences when someone testifies about them. Will be a bit of an inquisition over the whole thing.

I don't have too many examples to base my reconnaissance on. But Sture Emby is at least one. This was already in the 50s. Twenty, twenty-five years ago another.

But then a few weeks ago a guy appeared who was open about what he experienced and experienced.

We have had little contact in recent weeks. Not that I intend to vouch for the accuracy of what he claims, or pull any metaphysical gears a la Martinus or some other Enlightenment model on the whole thing. But I think it looks genuine and nice actually. Hard to dismiss.

Here are some clips from other forums, what I thought and thought:

"You can have crazy, rash projects when enthusiasm is high, call it mania, pseudo-mania, or something else. One thing I've come to understand is that this kind of breakthrough experience—whatever it is, metaphysics or just a radical restructuring of the psyche? – is not always a smooth ride.”

“As I said, I do not mix possible metaphysical aspects, steps towards emotional and cognitive perfection, etc., into this. It might be needed, to judge correctly, what do I know. But anyhow. I am well familiar with Martinus Thomsen's 'stepwise' model. At the same time, there are testimonies from everywhere about strong mental experiences that for the individual feel like 'waking up'. So one can experience it in a more pure mania or psychosis, too. But then there are those who believe that it is possible to differentiate in this, as a scale. That some are closer to the psychiatric end, others on the other edge, may appear similar but have a different course, a different prognosis.

The Martinus model seems a bit simplistic, puritanical, I think. Because the originator saw it that way, or because that is how the model has been traded or solidified? You need to be humble in the face of things like this, I think. Everything like that is stirred up, releasing energy, emotions and thoughts, then you get to see where it lands."

"What I wanted to highlight was mostly that the phenomenon of 'awakening' is something that has been researched and thought about even far outside of metaphysical contexts with a clearly established development model. Really new to this, but is there such a thing as Transpersonal psychology? Which, as I have understood it, partly arose because some psychologists and others thought that there seemed to be a difference between 'psychosis' and 'psychosis'.

I think that fundamentally it is a radical internal restructuring. That it is mainly this. How to feel about yourself and the world and yourself in the world.

I keep it open that, for example, drugs can in some cases have the same function as a powerful catalyst for such a 'restructuring'. Sometimes in combination with psychotherapy. Was reminded of that when watching this documentary and trailer.

Maybe it does not fit well both in the usual psychiatric system and in the Martinus doctrine as it is sold?”

Who is independent?

Who is independent?

“Still waiting for a qualified, independent socio-religio-philo-psychological etc clarification of this movement & its history. Independent in the sense of non-affiliated. That is, by people who are not beforehand invested or too happy in their subject of study.”

When I posted this post on my private page a couple of years ago (which I reposted today as a "memory", with the text above) I met objections.

At that time I had written:

"130 years ago today, this man, Martinus Thomsen, was born in a village in Jutland. Poor, not much for schooling. He eventually trained as a dairyman.

In his thirties, he had a strong religious experience that would shape the rest of his life. He began to write, lecture, and paint. A couple of hundred outlandish images (like the one he's working on here). A Scandinavian "mystic", one must call him.

Still, quite a bit of a doldis. Only now is an independent academic mapping of what he actually accomplished, I've heard, and the movement that grew up around him underway. Congratulations, Martinus!”

It was this thing about "independence". Because academic essays have been written about Martinus and his "cosmology", which have been approved, at various academic levels. A-, B-, C-, Master's level. Yes, recently there was even a doctoral thesis. However, as far as I know, exclusively by followers. But aren't these works independent, after all? At least at a higher level, there are rigorous requirements for the reasoning to be of good quality?

And I still feel that it is something I am missing because I think it could be really interesting.

It has something to do with Martinus Thomsen's claim - and how he is thus perceived within the movement - to be a perfect individual with infallible knowledge, which I have difficulty seeing that it does not risk setting it up.

Someone objected that time, that, for example, psychoanalysts write about Sigmund Freud, is that background also disqualifying? Isn't their in-depth knowledge of history, theories, etc. rather an asset?

But I find it hard to buy it. No one, or at least very few, and they probably enjoy no greater respect, would claim that Freud was infallible, irreproachable, a perfect human being who recorded only the truth in his books.

Spiritual Elitism (again)

Spiritual Elitism (again)

Today 17/2 is 100 years since the Institute of Racial Biology in Uppsala was founded, they say on TV.

What was the esoteric-neo-spiritual scene like at the time? 1922... Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Theosophists' mainstay calf, has his "enlightenment experience". (The Dane Martinus Thomsen had had his the year before.)

It will take until 1929 before Krishnamurti turns his back on Theosophy. Theosophy with its doctrine of "root races", the evolution of souls and cultures, ascent towards light and sovereignty, peaks in the years leading up to that, as I understand it. Attracts masses, thousands and thousands, of educated people. Seems to be well in time.

Hitler takes full control of the Nazi party in 1922, too, I google.

Don't know what I'm looking for really. Has the world changed more than parts of (new) spirituality have?

Honor those who should be honored

Honor those who should be honored

“Ojai”… Seeing an ad from the Krishnamurti Center on the American West Coast. I have probably mentioned that my two main inspirations - not only for what they actually said and wrote, but as individuals, almost as "archetypes" for different kinds of spirituality - have been the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen & the Theosophical apostate Jiddu Krishnamurti.

And I've had the Universe on my side, it seems 🙂

The first time I was going to visit the Martinus Center on Zealand, in the early summer of '84, I started hitchhiking in Stockholm in the morning. And managed to get to that center out on the bonnavischan already that evening. A combination of strange circumstances, like a wave of helpfulness.

In the spring of '90, I was sitting on a Greyhound bus along the coast of California, squinting out the window. Suddenly saw a sign for an exit that had such a familiar name: “Ojai.” I knew Krishnamurti stayed at a place called that. But I thought it was in India? But, I guess I took a turning bus to check it out. And so I ended up at that center, too.

In both cases, however, I arrived three or four years too late to meet the founders themselves.

It's like every type of spirituality has its possible varieties. Esotericism, like Martinus, then one becomes far too fond of the answers, the "system", that one has seen and been initiated into this. Such systems that there are several similar, but that one has found what is superior to the others, etc... And that other type of spirituality then, of which Krishnamurti is a representative? The downside there is that you can become too aggressive, cross-confident in that way, I feel. Followers of Krishnamurti can sometimes appear as the spiritual equivalent of "Science and Public Education" or "The Humanists".

Still don't know how to get their respective teachings together properly. When I was into it more, I fantasized about how the two could perhaps be seen as a kind of "epoxy" solution. As a two-component glue, then. They each had an angle. Which could hardly be expressed by one and the same individual. Together, they were a guarantor that one would not become too cocky, one-sided, fundamentalist.

Am I a follower of any of these gentlemen? It is a question of definition. Krishnamurti for example? If someone were to scan my brain - if it were possible - and see which individuals made a big impression, whose words and quotes sort of built up my inner world, then it would say "Jiddu Krishnamurti" on quite a lot... (Others may have the same nourishment of other philosophers, then their names are certainly on the mind.)

So then I gladly honor him by calling me a follower. (Since I hardly read a line of his since I was twenty-five, I think it matters less.) Honor to whom honor is due.

Then I don't know if maybe Krishnamurti got a little grumpy towards the end, "VoFfig", he too? A long life and having to answer a lot of questions that didn't reflect what really interested him, together with age, maybe made him tired... That he was a bit routine.

But still his story about the devil and a friend of his who was out for a walk, which he included in the speech when he dissolved the Star in the East, is a clear shining light. As a psychospiritual equation, a spell:

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket . The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"

Better late than never

Better late than never

This is so internal that I hesitate to post it. But do it anyway! It's part of my story. Perhaps some general message is even built in.

The movement around the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) has had its fair share of dissatisfaction, differences of opinion, position wars. Of course. Why would it be any different.

But such an old lock-in now seems to have released in any case. Earlier this week, a bid entered the Martinus Institute in Copenhagen, which they inform about in an email. With him he had - for those with an interest in the history of this movement at least - absolutely invaluable material. Many boxes of original manuscripts, films, hand-painted hundred-year-old glass plates (like the ones in the picture! this was before the slide projectors, that is), personal possessions, etc. As a close colleague and friend of Martinus Thomsen brooded over since his death & did not want to let go.

The message? That with age can come more sense, wider views, a greater ability for self-examination, to want to put things behind & try to reconcile while there is time, maybe.

And maybe because it's almost Christmas 🙂 🎁

(Photos: Jens Christian Hermansen)

Martinus meets resistance

Martinus meets resistance

Always refreshing, but only happens so rarely, when the Danish Martinus Thomsen's (1890-1981) esoteric system receives some qualified, interested, reasonably benevolent, resistance like this! (The episode becomes a kind of variant, with the same qualities, as The Nexus article from -82, I think.)

"Martinus Thomsen had a transformative spiritual experience in his thirties. He perceived strong divine light, and met a Christ figure. This led to him gaining something he called cosmic consciousness. He spent the rest of his life writing down what was revealed to him. The life work was named the Book of Life. The term Third Testament also appears.

We talk to Mikael Krall and Olav Johansson about the man and the work."

"Magical Thinking - about the greater reality" # 075 MARTINUS THOMSEN (2 hours 2 minutes)

Link to the podcast episode: https://bit.ly/3xk4VRL

An interview that stirs up thoughts in both the interviewers, it seems, and in me as the listener.

Of course, it's about faith, for me (even if I'm a coward? and barely deal with metaphysics anymore) and most people. But with the addition that maybe there are others for which the beliefs in this field (reincarnation, for example) are actually knowing, I don't know what is possible, but I feel I need to keep this open in any case.

Otherwise I became some sort of... I don't know what?... philosopher of dissatisfaction who takes every chance to cause trouble just because... Or who would be trapped in some belief of his own (either this that something metaphysical doesn't exist, or that in any case it's not possible to have self-experienced knowledge of this) ... And it would be a kind of prison, that with, o waste of energy.

Feel a great deal of sympathy for the approach that the big questions, which Martinus et al posted the text about, would in fact lack answers. At the same time, can't one's attitude accommodate that one also keeps life open, maybe it actually works in a certain way, and that others may have gained knowledge about this? It doesn't cost anything to keep this open, I think.

But what would it take? Must be a balancing act in the higher school that. Some kind of wonder yoga 😃

Spirituality's counterpart to physics' wave-particle duality

Spirituality's counterpart to physics' wave-particle duality

Someone wondered if it is at all possible to get together "Western esotericism", with its detailed maps of levels, degrees, basic energies, in the soul evolution. With a more here-and-now spirituality of, like, think it was Vivekananda.

For me, it has always been the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen, on the one hand, and the Theosophical apostate Jiddu Krishnamurti, on the other, who have given me a headache. It FELT like they were fishing in the same lake, but the fish they pulled up and put forward looked so different, didn't they?

Possibly there is a mystery laid down here. Spirituality's equivalent to physics' wave-particle duality...

Martinus Thomsen and his movement

Martinus Thomsen and his movement

It has probably loomed up here and there that I became interested in the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (d. 1981) and his visions. Here is a post I posted elsewhere this spring for the centenary of what he himself said was the starting point for his work. What makes me think of him right now? Yes, this week a verdict was reached in a protracted dispute over copyright that had been going on for ten years and which had split and divided the Martinus movement. Isn't that strange in and of itself, that kind of thing happens in most spiritual contexts.

This is not a debate post. No recruitment attempt either. A bit of new-spirited monitoring of the world and a VDN marking of me, you can probably see it as. And my opinion of right and wrong in the dispute does not belong here. Let the dead bury their dead, I'm just saying. Life goes on.
- - -

Behind this window, in the days a hundred years ago, something strange happened. The young dairyman Martinus Thomsen came home one evening, sat down in his wicker chair and immediately had some kind of prophetic experience that sent him in an unexpected direction for the rest of his life.

Well, it's actually remarkable no matter how you look at it. Philosophical of life, because of what he later shared, if you are inclined in that direction. Religious studies. A mystic in our local area with a large production of texts, lectures and "symbolic images" over half a century which - until now - hardly received any attention at all from the academic world.

Or psychologically. I never met him myself. I became familiar with Martinus Thomsen and his dizzying "cosmology" only the year after he died. But I have met many who knew him. And he seems to have behaved himself, no strangeness, no major scandals or extravagances. The picture you get is of a simple, friendly and fun-loving man. Indeed, over time he became a kind of cult leader, with a few thousand faithful followers. But there was never very much money involved, no missionary work, there was absolutely nothing you could become a member of.

So psychologically, he is not easy to understand, or explain away, either. That is, to bring the person together with the work. A psychotic, or at least disturbed, someone driven by a desire to impress and gain power over others, etc. He actually seems to have been a rather different neo-spiritual foreground figure. I often say that this movement is like my spiritual home. Nowadays hardly more than this. But I always think of Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) with warmth.

(The chair is preserved at the Martinus Institute in Copenhagen. The house at Jagtvej 52 still stands and looks much like it did then. He himself rests in a small mausoleum in Frederiksberg's old cemetery.)

Martinus in practice (Nexus 4/1982)

Martinus in practice (Nexus 4/1982)

"Martinus friends usually don't trumpet themselves or Martinus. However, one usually cannot fail to notice those who are very much into Martinus' teaching when discussing a deeper aspect of life in some context. Then they can suddenly start talking as if they have the answers to all of life's mysteries. Not infrequently they speak as if they really knew how it was. Because if you've read your Martinus, you know."

This article has been in my memory, sometimes chafed, sometimes inspired, since I read it almost forty years ago. A while ago I found the magazine in a box. And today took the opportunity to scan it in.

I don't believe the opinions in the article only, or even extra much?, concerns the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) and his followers. You can probably read it more generally. As an angle on this with doubt and wonder, e.g.

(Tip: If you're reading on a mobile phone, it's easiest to enlarge the text in the article with "two fingers", instead of using the buttons.)

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