Episode 51: Martinus and Western esotericism
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
Release Date: 10/17/2023
Episode 54: Working at the Martinus Institute
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
In this episode Mary McGovern interviews Torben Husum, the current manager of the Martinus Institute in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen. After finding an article by Martinus and not least a captivating photo of him in the Danish magazine Gralen (The Grail), Torben embarked on a private, intensive study of Livets Bog (The Book of Life). Only many years later did he begin to attend lectures and courses on Martinus Cosmology. Today he works at the Martinus Institute with various tasks including coordinating volunteers, looking after the fabric of the building, live-streaming lectures, and maintaining...
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Episode 53: Near-death experiences and reincarnation
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
Is consciousness a product of the brain, or is the brain a tool for consciousness? What do people typically experience during near-death experiences and what effect does it have on them? What, if anything, do near-death experiences have in common with other spiritual experiences? Can reincarnation solve the mystery of the apparent injustice of the one-life theory? These are some of the questions taken up in this episode in which Mary McGovern interviews Tobias Anker Stripp and Sören Grind about near-death experiences and reincarnation from the perspective of research into near-death...
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Episode 52: The World Situation and the Future
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
In this lecture Ole Therkelsen describes how the atrocities of war and the enormous amount of suffering they cause gradually bring about the evolution of the Earth as a living individual and of the mankind that inhabits it. The Earth and its human beings are sphynx beings with a consciousness that is partly dominated by the killing principle and partly by the desire to love and serve everyone. Eventually the loving aspect will take over completely, leading to the creation of a completely loving, empathic and just world society. Ole Therkelsen (born in 1948) is a chemical engineer and a...
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Episode 51: Martinus and Western esotericism
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
In this episode Mary McGovern talks to Mikael Krall about his master’s dissertation Martinus’ Spiritual Science: An Original Contribution to Western Esotericism?, which was published as a book in 2019. Krall compares Martinus’ world picture with the worldviews of three other Western esoteric philosophers: Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Rudolf Steiner. His aim was to see if Martinus contributes anything new to Western esotericism, and if so, what. Krall found that Martinus did indeed make unique and original contributions to Western esotericism. On the structural level, his finding...
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Episode 50: Martinus Cosmology, logic and the problems of consciousness
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
This episode is produced in collaboration with the Swedish podcast Kosmologipodden. Hosts Micael Söderberg and Mary McGovern interview Nikolaj Pilgaard Petersen about logic, the easy and hard problems of consciousness and about how Martinus’s world picture informs Nikolaj’s views of philosophy, science, materialism and the experience of life. How does Martinus define logic? What does logic have to do with love? Why does consciousness exist at all? Why do we experience anything? Is our brain even necessary? These are some of the questions we take up in this episode. Nikolaj Pilgaard...
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Episode 49: Martinus: His Life and World Picture
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
In this episode Mary McGovern interviews Lennart Pasborg, the Danish film director who has recently made a documentary film about the Danish spiritual writer Martinus (1890-1981). His film is entitled “Martinus: His Life and World Picture” (42 mins.) and portrays both Martinus’s ordinary, everyday life and his extraordinary spiritual cosmology. In 1921, at the age of 30, Martinus underwent a series of profound spiritual experiences that — as he himself explains — left him with extraordinary, intuitive sensory abilities. With his 10,000 pages of writing and 100 symbols he...
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Episode 48: The Rise of Internationalism
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
“Internationalism is the unselfishness of a nation, and nationalism is the selfishness or egoism of a nation.” Martinus: The Fate of Mankind, chap. 45 In this lecture Ole Therkelsen points to the inevitability of the development of internationalism, despite all current attempts to hang on to nationalism. He looks at the anatomy of war and the anatomy of peace and asks, “What can we each do to contribute to world peace?” He quotes Martinus as saying that the best thing we can do is to change ourselves – not the others – and turn ourselves into “cells of peace” in the body of...
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Episode 47: Economics – present and future
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
Martinus’s spiritual world view includes an analysis of the evolution of our current economic system towards a future situation in which the “false business principle” – getting as much as possible as possible for as little as possible – will be replaced by the “true business principle” based on the equal exchange of assets. He envisions a time-based economy to which everyone – with the exception of children, the elderly and the sick – will gladly contribute. With the inevitable growth of neighbourly love and selflessness, no one will want to be a burden on society or earn...
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Episode 46: Evidence for the survival of consciousness after bodily death
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
In 2021 Else Byskov submitted an essay entitled “The Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death” to an essay competition set up by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (). In this interview with Mary McGovern and Micael Söderberg, she presents some of this evidence and covers such topics as near-death experiences, past-life memories in children, regression therapy, the process of rebirth and multiple personality disorder. Else mentions Martinus’s symbol no. 34 about the process of rebirth. See the symbol and its explanation ...
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Episode 45: Sleep, dreams and death
The Martinus Cosmology Podcast
Why do we have to sleep? What is sleep? What are dreams? And what is death? These are some of the questions Ole Therkelsen takes up in this lecture. He explains that during sleep our nervous system is repaired. The traffic of our thoughts, which sends electrical currents through our nerves, is temporarily stopped to allow essential repair work to be done. In the meantime our consciousness is moved onto a spiritual plane, where we also experience life. This move to a spiritual plane can be achieved in six different ways: through death, sleep, anesthesia, fainting, deep trance and hypnosis. He...
info_outlineIn this episode Mary McGovern talks to Mikael Krall about his master’s dissertation Martinus’ Spiritual Science: An Original Contribution to Western Esotericism?, which was published as a book in 2019. Krall compares Martinus’ world picture with the worldviews of three other Western esoteric philosophers: Helena Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and Rudolf Steiner. His aim was to see if Martinus contributes anything new to Western esotericism, and if so, what.
Krall found that Martinus did indeed make unique and original contributions to Western esotericism. On the structural level, his finding was that Martinus uses logical reasoning to a far greater extent when presenting his worldview than Blavatsky, Steiner and Bailey do in their accounts. This can perhaps fulfil the needs of secularised seekers of truth. On the content level, Martinus’ most important contribution is, according to Krall, a clear, logical and consistent theory of how experience comes about and is eternally maintained. Martinus also describes why memory is an important function of consciousness and how it is related to the body of memory, one of Martinus’ six basic energy bodies, a body not presented by the other three authors. Krall describes this function and body as being of key importance in Martinus’ worldview when he logically explains the process of involution and thereby the eternal renewal and maintenance of consciousness through spiral cycles of evolution. Another important contribution, according to Krall, is Martinus’ analysis of a living microcosmos within us and even within the food we eat. Martinus points to our moral responsibility for the well-being of these microbeings, thus widening the sphere in need of our compassion. Martinus’ analysis of sexual evolution and the transformation of the sexual poles is also seen to contribute to the understanding of consciousness and its developmental levels. Krall’s final conclusion is that Martinus’ spiritual science and world picture is an original contribution to Western esotericism.
Mikael Krall is a psychologist and psychotherapist in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is a private researcher and scholar in the field of Western esotericism.
Mikael Krall’s book is currently out of print but will be reprinted in 2024.
This podcast was recorded by Mary McGovern at The Martinus Institute, Copenhagen on 8th October 2023.
Photo: Mary McGovern
Music composed and performed by Lars Palerius.
Martinus’s literature is available online on the Martinus Institute’s website: www.martinus.dk/en. Here you can also find information about the international summer courses at the Martinus Centre in Klint, Denmark.