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Martinus Thomsen, referred to as Martinus, (11 August 1890 – 8 March 1981) was a Danish people author. Born into a poor family and with a limited education, Martinus claimed to have had a profound Spirituality experience in March 1921. This experience, which he called "cosmic consciousness", would be the inspiration for the books he wrote later which are collectively entitled The Third Testament. Some of his works have been translated into twenty languages, and while he is not well known internationally, his work remains popular in Denmark and in other parts of Scandinavia.
His mother was unable to care for him as a young child and as a result, he was taken in by her brother and his wife. They were an elderly couple who had already raised eleven children of their own but despite this, Thomsen always referred to them fondly. He mentioned that despite their meager circumstances, they always made him feel secure. His mother died when he was just eleven and for the most part, his contact with her was very limited.
His education at the local village school was very basic, focusing mainly on verses of hymns, geography, Danish and natural history, arithmetic and the catechism. He spent six hours per week in class in the summer and thirty hours per week in the winter. His foster family could not afford books and Thomsen has stated he inherited old copies of Familie Journalen ( The Family Journal), which became the basis of his reading material.
At the age of sixteen Thomsen became a dairyman, working around various parts of Denmark, he later worked as a watchman, and in 1920 he was an office clerk in at the dairy company Enigheden in Copenhagen.
His books On the Birth of My Mission and Intellectualized Christianity provide a description of these experiences. Martinus called the new state of consciousness which he attained at the age of 30 "cosmic consciousness". He considered the prerequisite for cosmic consciousness to be a highly developed faculty of intuition, which all human beings will develop sooner or later.
After his experiences, he was first financially supported by his friend Lars Nibelvang (1879–1948), and later other friends, allowing Martinus to devote himself to his philosophy full time by the autumn of 1922. Martinus initially found it difficult to express his ideas in writing, drawing symbols instead. It was not until 1928 that he began to compose his major work, the Livets Bog (The Book of Life), which was published in 1932. After his initial experiences, he began doing audiences with small numbers of people, and by 1930 he had begun to lecture to larger audiences. The magazine Kosmos, dedicated to Martinus' thought, was first published in 1933. In 1935 the Martinus Centre (then named the Kosmos Camp) in Klint, Zealand was inaugurated.
Martinus considered himself a religious messenger, along the lines of the Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus, and that he had a pivotal role to spread his message of the world's redemption through wisdom and love. According to Helle Bertelsen, Martinus preached that "God’s spirit or consciousness flows through the entire universe by means of various impulses or streams of energy. This means that all living creatures are embarked on an endless journey in the divine consciousness, and that this unitary consciousness moves forward in an upward spiral movement, thus constituting a progressive evolution of consciousness." Martinus considered that "primitive consciousness" and old religions were fading, to be replaced by a "paradigm shift" in which science will be fused with eastern mysticism. Martinus cosmology contains numerous elements of ultimately Indian religions origin, such as karma, reincarnation, energies, and levels of energy. According to Helle Bertelsen, these elements were "probably mediated by Theosophical, Anthroposophy, and other esoteric sources". According to Helle Bertelsen, Martinus desired that "his person or work should not be made into an object of any association, new religion, sect, or global organisation. He considered his work as a kind of school, college or institution for a science of life.", which contributes to his relative anonymity.
At present 19 of Martinus’ books have been translated into English language and some of Martinus’ books have been translated into 20 other languages.[7], Martinus translations, retrieved on 17 January 2013
Forty-four symbols with associated symbol explanations are published in his books The Eternal World Picture 1–5; a supplement to his main work, Livets Bog ( The Book of Life). Martinus left a number of additional symbols, which the Martinus Institute expects to publish in later volumes of The Eternal World Picture.
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