My Journey Through the Heart of Darkness (2025)

The crucifixion of Jesus can be understood as a mystery drama, depicting humanity's reunion with divinity after experiencing the greatest possible forsakenness by God. This is a personal account of my journey through the spiritual darkness of Godforsakenness.

"My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?" Thus Jesus cried out loudly at the ninth hour of his crucifixion (Matt 27:46; Mark 15:34). The danish spiritual scientist, Martinus explains this statement as follows: "Since the World Redeemer was already awake day-consciously in the spiritual world on the physical plane, there was no death for him. It was only a question of bodily pain. And as he died in an unnatural way by crucifixion, we hear him cry out: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' – It was therefore the moment of separation of consciousness." (Martinus, The Mystery of Prayer, Chapter 14).

In my understanding and experience, this statement also serves as a guide on the path through the spiritual darkness that is the ordinary state of the modern cultural person. Among others, the psychoanalyst Erich Fromm (1900-1980) has pointed out that Jesus, with this statement, quotes the beginning of Psalm 22 from the Book of Psalms. The psalm depicts various forms of despair but culminates in a hymn to the one God with words like: "The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever."

The Magic of the Crucifixion

I grew up in a home where the word God was rarely mentioned. At the age of 15, I asked my mother one day, "Do you believe in God?" "God is a hypothesis I do not need," she replied resolutely, and that answer immediately made sense to my youthful mind. Four years later, I read a pamphlet by the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), "Existentialism is a Humanism." In the book, Sartre compared humans to a paper knife, which has an essence or idea because it is created with a purpose. The same, according to Sartre, cannot be said about humans. Humans exist without a purpose, and it is up to humans to set goals for themselves. Humans are "condemned to be free," says Sartre. Such a message can be disheartening but in my 19-year-old consciousness, it was exhilarating.

I felt liberated from society's norms, which in my view were just the framework for an absurd play. However, I was no more liberated than moving in with a girlfriend and becoming a father to a son at the age of 23. A year before that, I came across the book “Det absurde teater og Jesu forkyndelse ("The Absurd Theatre and the Preaching of Jesus") by the Danish theologian Johannes Sløk (1916-2001), which began with these words: "No one has ever understood Jesus, and no one will ever understand him. He is therefore an enigma and a challenge." This line of thought sparked my curiosity, and the book inspired me to start studying theology.

During my theological studies, I delved into the history of philosophy and found spiritual nourishment in Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) and Friedrich Nietzsche, with their analysis of themes like anxiety, despair, and the death of God. It was then that I first felt a strong connection to Jesus through his words on the cross. "It is I, the modern Godforsaken man, who hangs there," I thought, and for the first time, I felt that the story of the crucifixion held something magical.

The Ship of Fools

On the surface, my life was harmonious. I had a family, studied theology, wrote poetry, and was active in an experimental theater group as a writer. But within me, strong, incomprehensible forces began to stir. It manifested as an inexplicable yearning, and at the age of 25, despite my girlfriend's reluctance, I decided to leave the family and travel out of the country indefinitely. The journey had no specific goal, but I felt the need to travel.

After weeks of roaming in Turkey and Greece, my journey led me to the small fishing village of Armenistis on the northern side of the island of Ikaria in the Aegean Sea, where I stayed for a couple of months. I settled on the roof of a hotel, where I slept under the open sky at night. Soon after my arrival, I experienced an unusual spiritual atmosphere in the place. This was evident from the deep existential conversations I often engaged in with other travelers, almost all of whom carried with them more or less tragic life stories. A young woman had just experienced her mother's suicide; a very handsome Italian man suffered from an incurable cancer and prepared for death; a young Israeli soldier had gone into exile because he no longer wanted to participate in Israel's war efforts, just to give a few examples.

The tale of fate that made the strongest impression on me belonged to a Frenchman whose partner had taken the life of their newborn child. Over the course of several weeks, we spent many hours together, engaging in elaborate discussions about life's big questions. He introduced himself as a "humorous nihilist" and liked to come up with nicknames for the rest of us. He called me "Gaston Lagaffe," which is the French name for the comic book character "Gomer Goof." He had renamed the town Armenistis, meaning "small boat," to "La Nef des fous" (English: "The Ship of Fools"), which among other things is the title of a famous painting by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450-1516).

My Journey Through the Heart of Darkness (1)

In the Frenchman's view, we were all part of a story "told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing," as Shakespeare expresses through one of his characters. Initially, this surrender to meaninglessness was in line with my own view of life, but the radicality in how my new-found like-minded companion expressed it surprisingly sparked a protest in me, and I found myself increasingly arguing that we should be open to the idea that life has meaning. One evening, I brought up the crucifixion of Jesus and argued that this story might contain a mystery that we simply were not able to grasp.

The Frenchman looked at me with a condescending look. "Now I know what you are," he said in English, then switched to French: "Vous êtes séminariste." I immediately understood what he meant and cast my eyes down in embarrassment. My reflections were theoretical and speculative. They weighed nothing compared to the life experience and authority that, in my eyes, his tragic life bestowed upon him. I now realized that I had never fully emotionally embraced the absurdist worldview, which until then had been nothing more than a clever intellectual idea I could entertain myself and others with. But on that warm Greek summer evening, under the Frenchman's strong influence on my being, I let go and, for the first time, fully immersed myself in the darkness of absurdity and meaninglessness.

"No, no, no! I am dying, I am dying!"

It was in this state that I lay down to rest on the hotel's rooftop terrace and fell into a deep sleep. Towards morning, I slipped into a dream. I found myself at the top of a skyscraper for a celebration of a little girl's birth, when a person in the dream said, "Aren't you going outside to see the fireworks?" I went outside and found myself alone, eagerly looking at the night sky, where an airplane approached the skyscraper. In the next instant, the airplane dropped a bomb, which exploded below the skyscraper, creating a heart-shaped smoke cloud that slowly rose towards the sky. At the same time, the skyscraper collapsed, and I fell towards the abyss in a state of panic and dread.

My Journey Through the Heart of Darkness (2)

"No, no, no! I am dying, I am dying!" I shouted in panic. "It's okay! This is how it’s supposed to be!" I heard a voice say with such authority that I surrendered to the fall into the dark abyss opening before me. In the next moment, I experienced an explosion of light and indescribable bliss. I was a boundless being, without beginning or end, infinitely liberated and infinitely happy. I do not know how long I stayed in that state, but after some time, I slowly slipped back into my daily consciousness, opened my eyes, and looked up at the starry sky, gradually turning pale blue, heralding the imminent arrival of daylight. As I lay there, watching the fading stars in the dawn, a new thought and certainty slowly took shape in my consciousness: "I am immortal."

A couple of weeks later, bewildered, I returned to Denmark, puzzled by what I had experienced. I was uplifted, but soon realized that the experience, quoting from the Bible, was "sweet as honey in the mouth but bitter in the stomach" (Revelation of John, chapter 10). The life I had lived no longer seemed to fit me. My girlfriend and I parted ways and a couple of years later I lived alone in a secluded forest cabin in the heart of Jutland, and had almost lost contact with my friends, my family, my ex-girlfriend, and even my 3-year-old son. At the same time, I constantly suffered from intense, incomprehensible mental pain.

Seek First the Kingdom of God

I frequently read the Bible, where three statements, in particular, resonated with my heart. The first two came from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, where Jesus says, "...seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well," and also introduces the Lord's Prayer. The recitation of the latter had a surprisingly soothing effect on my mental pain, and the first statement gave me a focus in my life, although I did not fully understand what it meant to seek "the kingdom of God". Additionally, I was strongly inspired by the Gethsemane narrative, where Jesus says: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matt. 26:39). About 3 years after my experience of immortality, I heard myself say aloud for the first time, "Not my will, but yours be done," and from that day on, my mental pain vanished as if by magic.

At the same time, my fate took an almost inexplicable turn. Just 5 months after I first surrendered to God's will, I had a new life. The contact with my family and some of my friends was restored, including my former girlfriend and my son, whom I now saw regularly. I experienced tremendous support from those around me and felt strongly that my life had entered a new path. In this state, one day, I became aware of a seven-volume work titled “Livets Bog” ("The Book of Life") at the library. I had barely read a few lines in the first volume before I strongly felt that this was the nourishment I needed to better understand what it meant to seek the kingdom of God and let His will be done.

And I was not disappointed. I found an explanation that clarified for me that the journey through the heart of darkness, in my case through the experience of existence as meaningless and absurd, is part of an initiation that all humans, each in their own way, must experience to connect with the true light in existence through the understanding of our immortal existence and identity with the divinity that dwells omnipresent at the core of our being.

Or as Martinus expresses it in Livets Bog 3, section 854: "When humanity on Earth has left all murder behind and the last choking smoke clouds of the battlefield have disappeared from the horizon, and the death rattles of the wounded have gone silent, then a new paradise, the "new heaven" and "new earth," or the kingdom of heaven, will be very near. With the last fading remnants of the atmosphere of war or the killing principle, Adam and Eve will again be placed before the Allmighty's countenance. After the long journey through the world, through space, through time, and through darkness, they will each, as the lost sons, find their eternal Father, not here or there, but in – their own hearts."

My Journey Through the Heart of Darkness (2025)
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