Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1189

1189. When one is a being that automatically, and quite without day-conscious thought and will, promotes the above-mentioned fulfilment of the laws of life and has no idea that a nature contrary to this can exist, how then could one manifest such a nature or "sin"? Indeed, do we not have before us the state expressed in the "Bible" as the "deep sleep" that God allowed "Adam" to fall into when He was to create "Eve" from his "rib"? What other kind of "sleep" could it be? There was of course no question of an anaesthetic here, just as there was no question of the removal of one of "Adam's ribs" being a physical, surgical operation on "Adam's" body. The "deep sleep" appears clearly enough to constitute the section of the spiral cycle where the being's sensory perception and mentality are at their least developed or most feeble. What mental state can more justifiably be expressed as, or symbolised by, "deep sleep" than the mental state that is really or absolutely the being's least developed one in the spiral cycle? We find this least developed state in the "plant being". This being's mental display on the physical plane consists of course absolutely only of the "faculty to have an inkling". None of the other mental faculties that we find in the other beings on the physical plane have as yet emerged in the "plant". If they did so, it would of course no longer be a "plant", but, on the contrary, a higher form of life. So here "Adam" constitutes the "human being" at its "plant stage". This stage is "Adam's deep sleep".