Tag: Martinus

Episode 54: Working at the Martinus Institute

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 the institute’s website: www.martinus.dk.

Already a published author of three books and several short stories, he is currently writing a short introduction to Martinus’s life and world picture. He finds it important to provide a brief biography of Martinus and to convey, among many other aspects of Martinus’s world picture, an explanation of the meaning of darkness and the evolution of sexuality. Inspired by Martinus’s analysis that we are all “wounded refugees between two kingdoms”, meaning that we are no longer pure animals but not yet completely evolved human beings, this episode takes up aspects of mankind’s progression towards the resolution of some of its current challenges.

This podcast was recorded by Mary McGovern at the Martinus Institute on 5th September 2024.

Music composed and performed by Lars Palerius.

Photo: Marie Rosenkrantz Gjedsted

Links and notes:

Live-streamed lectures on Martinus Cosmology in several languages: crowdcast.io/martinusinstitut. Scroll down through the many Scandinavian titles until you find titles in English.

The Martinus Institute’s English You Tube channel for free lectures and interviews:https://www.youtube.com/@TheMartinusInstitute

Opening hours at The Martinus Institute: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays 10am–4pm. Also open on approx. alternate Saturdays, when there are lectures. Check martinus.dk for the calendar of events.

Episode 53: Near-death experiences and reincarnation

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 experiences and from the perspective of spiritual science.

Tobias Anker Stripp is a medical doctor working in Denmark. He is also a Reiki master and a researcher who has done research into near-death experiences and has been the driving force behind the establishing of a Danish network for people who have had near-death experiences.

Sören Grind is a Swedish psychologist, now living in Denmark, and the author of three books based on Martinus’s world picture, the latest of which is entitled “Reincarnation – a loving and logical view of life” (not yet available in English). 

Links for further information:

“Reincarnation gives life meaning”, an article by Sören Grind In: English Kosmos no 1/2024: https://www.martinus.dk/en/english-ko…

Dr. Tobias Anker Stripp’s website: https://tobiasankerstripp.dk

Sören Grind’s books in Swedish and Danish: https://www.adlibris.com/se/sok?q=sör…

“Through the Gates of Death – Sleep and Death”, an article by Martinus describing how it is to die as a child, a youth, an adult and in old age: https://www.martinus.dk/en/martinus-w…

“The Immortality of Living Beings” by Martinus https://www.martinus.dk/en/ttt/index….

International Association for Near-Death Studies, Inc. https://iands.org

Pim van Lommel, cardiologist and author of the bestseller “Consciousness Beyond Life” https://pimvanlommel.nl/en/

Bruce Greyson, psychiatrist and author of “After – A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond” https://www.brucegreyson.com/

Recorded in Denmark via Zoom on 7 th February 2024.

Music composed and performed by Lars Palerius.

Episode 52: The World Situation and the Future

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 biologist with a life-long interest in Martinus Cosmology. He was introduced to Martinus Cosmology by his parents when he was a small boy, and since 1980 he has given about 2000 lectures on Martinus’s world picture in fifteen countries in six different languages. Many of his lectures may be heard on http://www.oletherkelsen.dk and on http://www.youtube.com.

He is the author of Martinus, Darwin and Intelligent Design – A New Theory of Evolution and Martinus and the New World Morality. His books are available from http://amazon.com and http://amazon.co.uk.

This lecture was given by Ole Therkelsen in Zagreb, Croatia on 1st May 2007.

Music composed and performed by Lars Palerius.

Photo: Marie Rosenkrantz Gjedsted

Episode 51: Martinus and Western esotericism

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 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.

Episode 50: Martinus Cosmology, logic and the problems of consciousness

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 Petersen is a teacher with a PhD in Philosophy and an MSc in history and mathematics. In addition to teaching and communication, he does research work in the field of philosophy; he is the author of several books on philosophical topics for a wide, Danish-speaking audience including “Hvad er virkeligheden mon i virkeligheden?” (What is reality in reality?) (2016) as well as a number of scientific articles.

Nikolaj has two YouTube channels: In English: The Nature of Reality and in both English and Danish: Nikolaj Pilgaard Petersen

This podcast was recorded by Micael Söderberg and Mary McGovern at The Martinus Centre, Klint on 3rd August 2023.

Photo: Bo Edvindsson 

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.

Episode 49: Martinus: His Life and World Picture

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 contributes to an understanding of the mystery of life and the individual’s life and fate, and to the development of a new and peaceful world culture based on tolerance, humaneness and love for all living things.

Lennart Pasborg first encountered Martinus’s works in 1984 and immediately wanted to make a film about his world picture. Little did he know at the time that 38 years would pass before he achieved his goal. Lennart’s other works include documentary films on art, music, ballet, spirituality, and on philosophy and children. 

Here is a link to the English version of the film. It has an English voiceover and optional English subtitles. 

And here is a link to the Danish version “Martinus – liv og verdensbillede”.

Spanish and Swedish subtitles are available.

This podcast was recorded by Mary McGovern at The Martinus Institute, Frederiksberg, Copenhagen Denmark on 14thMarch 2023.

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.

Episode 19: Martinus’ Christmas Letters

In this podcast Mary McGovern and Pernilla Rosell reflect on Martinus’ Christmas letters, which he sent out every December from 1933, when the magazine Kosmos began in Danish, until 1980, the Christmas before he left the physical plane. In these letters, he sent his heartfelt thanks to all those who supported his work in various ways. At the same time he provided cosmic analyses of the Christmas mystery and the winter solstice, the latter being a symbol of the culmination of darkness in our minds and hearts and the return of the light in the form of understanding and neighbourly love.

Martinus very often began on a poetic note as in the following example:

“The time of darkness is upon us. We are passing the solstice and are in the midnight hour of the year’s cycle, the domain of coldness and night. The sunlit days, the warmth and life of summer are gone … Just as the Godhead is an eternal light in the darkness, so must every living being come to shine in the night. That is the solution to the mystery of life, that is the beings’ awakening from death to life, that is initiation, the great birth, or the beings’ experiencing of themselves as being one with the Father, the road, the truth and the life.” (Martinus, Christmas letter 1949)

Martinus also wrote many articles about Christmas. In “Light in the Darkness” he writes:

“The joy of Christmas will become joy in living, Christmas presents will become the human being giving himself, that is, his joy in living and his creative ability, for the benefit of the whole, and the peace of Christmas will become peace all the year round, not merely between the different nations but also between the different human beings. There will really be ‘peace on Earth and goodwill to all men’, as is promised in the Christmas gospel.” http://www.martinus.dk/en/articles/index.php?mode=1&artikelnr=1477

And here’s a link to another Christmas article, “Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve”, written in 1969: http://www.martinus.dk/en/articles/index.php?mode=1&artikelnr=920

At the beginning of the episode Martinus’ Symbol No. 2, “The Principle of World Redemption” is mentioned: http://www.martinus.dk/en/martinus-symbols/overview-of-the-symbols/symbol-2

Merry Christmas to all our listeners from the Martinus Cosmology Podcast team!

This podcast was recorded via Skype by Pernilla Rosell in Stockholm and Mary McGovern in Copenhagen on 23rd December 2018.

Historical photo of Martinus from 1963 by courtesy of the Martinus Institute. Online gallery: http://www.martinus.dk/da/fotogalleri/

Music composed and performed by Lars Palerius.

Martinus’ literature is available online on the Martinus Institute’s website: http://www.martinus.dk/en. Here you can also find information about the international summer courses at the Martinus Centre in Klint, Denmark.

 

Episode 11: Martinus’s unique contribution to modern spirituality

Based in London, Anton Jarrod is a writer and researcher, focusing on and specializing in modern spirituality from 1850 onwards. He is the author of Martinus Cosmology and Spiritual Evolution (2017), which looks at Martinus’s ideas about the evolution of the human being in relation to the Gospel narratives of the life of Jesus, the archetypal human being. He is currently working in the field of sociology, exploring the relationship between spirituality and the world of work. (See www.antonjarrod.com)

In this podcast Mary McGovern interviews Anton Jarrod about what he considers Martinus’s unique contribution to modern spirituality.

This podcast was recorded by Mary McGovern at The Martinus Centre, Klint, Denmark on 16th May 2018.

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.