Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1197

1197. This "expulsion from paradise" was thus not a "punishment" from a vindictive and angry God, but a process of creation, which in turn here means "movement" in the spiral cycle. This "movement" is not a "movement" in "distance" but in "state", which in turn means simply a "process of transformation". The passage of the living being through the cycle is thus nothing but a "transformation" of its identity from one particular form of life to another. Without this "process of transformation" life itself would be quite impossible, for does not every single thought that comes into existence, or every single experience that can form part of our consciousness constitute "movement" and thereby "transformation"? And what is life other than "thoughts" and "experiences"? Since new experience can in turn take place only on the basis of it forming a greater or lesser contrast to that which has already previously been experienced – if the opposite were the case the experience would provide no "new life" since it would then have to be a copy or repetition of experiences that had already occurred and could not thereby provide the awake day-consciousness with new nourishment but would end up as automatic functioning originating quite outside this day-consciousness – one thus understands here that the opposite of the experience of "Adam's" life in the light or the "Garden of Eden", which we call the "expulsion from paradise", was not only an absolutely unavoidable necessity for the continuation and creation of an awake, day-conscious life for "Adam" but was also a radiant, divine blessing. How could "Adam" (the living being) otherwise have been raised from its primitive "sleeping" form of life or existence based merely on "inkling" to the mastery of the elements engendered by its mental state and material knowledge that today makes it constitute the intellectual terrestrial human being? What terrestrial human being of today of average intelligence and in full contact with the laws of life for its step would like to belong to a stage that as regards primitivity and mental poverty lies below its own? Is it conceivable that a normal terrestrial human being would rather be an ape, a wild boar, a crocodile or a snake? And yet the stages of these beings lie much closer to the "lost paradise" than the stage that the terrestrial human being represents. The terrestrial human being is of course further ahead in its "expulsion from paradise" than these beings. But even though we draw attention to the state within the walls of "paradise" itself and refer to the original existence of "Adam" there as a "being of instinct", no normal terrestrial human being of today would change places with this being either. Is it conceivable that the most outstanding representatives or greatest thinkers of terrestrial mankind would rather be ferns, equisetum (horsetails), lepidodendrons (scale trees) or the like? No, only unhappy beings oppressed by fate can have such regressive desires and wishes in a fit of despondency, and want to be entirely or partially obliterated or to regress to a dumb, primitive or sleeping existence.