Sorting the world into things that are alive and things that are not feels effortless. Producing the rule you used is much harder, and the rules people reach for first — it moves, it grows, it reacts — all fail on cases you can think of in a few seconds.
This video works through Martinus' answer, which is the same three-part analysis that runs through the rest of his work, used here specifically as a test.
The three parts
The I is the one who experiences: not a thought or a sensation, but whatever it is that has them. The ability to create and perceive is the apparatus through which anything can be done or registered at all. The created is everything that ability has produced — bodies, actions, thoughts, the visible output.
Something is alive when all three are present. It is a thing when they are not.
Applying it
The examples are where the analysis earns its keep, because they show what the test does that the everyday rules do not.
A car moves, responds to input, and consumes fuel, and none of that makes it alive; there is no I whose car it is from the inside. A crystal grows without anything growing. The output of a living being — a building, a sentence, a painting — is created, and carries obvious traces of intention, but the intention belonged to its maker, not to it.
The rule also cuts the other way, which is the uncomfortable direction. Applied honestly it admits things we do not habitually count, which is where the principle of life units takes it.
Why it is hard
The video closes by asking why an analysis this simple is difficult to hold on to, and the answer is worth the time.
Two of the three parts cannot be observed. The created is right there in front of you. The ability shows itself in what it produces. But the I is never an object of perception — not for you looking at someone else, and not even for you looking at yourself. You can notice a thought. You cannot see the one noticing.
So the analysis asks you to accept as fundamental precisely the component that no instrument will ever return a reading on. That is not a flaw in the argument; it is a description of the situation. But it explains why the analysis keeps sliding out of view and has to be rebuilt each time.
Key ideas
- The ordinary tests for life — movement, growth, reaction — all fail on obvious counter-examples.
- Martinus' test asks for three things at once: the I, the ability to create and perceive, and the created.
- A car or a crystal has some of the signs and none of the I, which is why neither is alive.
- The products of a living being carry intention, but the intention belonged to the maker.
- The analysis is hard to hold because the I, unlike the other two, can never be observed — including by you, in yourself.
Chapters
About this article. It summarises the video above from The Eternal World Picture. The writings of Martinus Thomsen are published by the Martinus Institute.
