Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1172

1172. This loss of "independence" is "Adam's" and "Eve's" or the living being's very first feeble experience of being "naked". This form of "nakedness" is thus the same as "helplessness". "Helplessness" is in turn in principle the same as "childishness". Every form of "fall" (desire for the opposite of the form of life one is culminating in) must thus inevitably give rise to the experience of "childishness" or ineptitude in the new form of existence that one's desire caused one to begin to enter. "Adam" and "Eve" are thus the spiral cycle's true "children" or "immature" beings, beings that, from a cosmic point of view, cannot be "independent" or fend for themselves. For this reason during the stages of these two beings there must be a "parent principle" in the form of a "godhead" or "eternal father", who, with his "principle of world redemption", can "guide", "bring up" and "perfect" the "childlike Adam" and "Eve", the "living being" or the "son of God". In order to be a "living being" that can live up to its elevated identity and rank as a "son of God", it must naturally be an "independent" being, a being that knows the difference between "good" and "evil", a being that is "one" with its divine Father. But in order for the dependent and childlike being to be able to attain this high-intellectual, perfect state, it must of course "learn from experience", "see" and "experience" at close quarters and therefore acquire "first-hand" knowledge. And is it not precisely because of this absolutely essential circumstance that a "serpent" had to exist in order to tell the being who was almost totally devoid of knowledge of "good" and "evil" that all it had to do was eat of the "tree of knowledge" and it would become like God Himself knowing the difference between "good" and "evil"?