Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1224

1224. But the being was still a being that could neither "see" nor "hear". The reactions arising from its contact with its outer surroundings were therefore registered in its consciousness as a particular kind of "displeasurable" or "pleasurable sensation", which it was gradually able to sense as "hunger" and "satiation" respectively. Here in the physical world the "satiation" of this "hunger" or this category of "sensations" had become an unrelenting demand that the being could not fail to meet without it resulting in the "death" of its organism. It was this demand that God prophesised for "Adam" with the words: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread", and that is expressed today as the animal's "drive for self-preservation". Originally this "drive for self-preservation" was promoted and experienced as coarse, undetailed "types of sensation" to which no "visual" or "auditory" sensations were connected. But out of the above-mentioned coarse "types of sensation" there gradually developed "sensations of taste" and "sensations of smell". But the "drive for self-preservation" and the subsequent effort or struggle to develop these vital "sensations" would of course have been totally meaningless if the life that was maintained in this way did not have an even higher level of "sensation" to offer. If the life that the being could maintain or promote only by virtue of efforts that made it "sweat" could offer nothing but a lethargic and sluggish sleeping existence or rest after its efforts, it would have been better that "Adam" or the living being had remained in the "deep sleep" or "sleeping existence" (the plant kingdom) in which it found itself during the creation of "Eve".
It is true that, after exerting itself, "rest" and "sleep" are naturally also a kind of "pleasurable sensation", but "rest" and "sleep" are of no particular advantage for its original existence apart from the significance they have for the maintenance of the organism. The being had of course just had an abundance of that kind of "pleasurable sensation" in its pre-terrestrial or heavenly state in the "kingdom of bliss". The exertions triggered by the "drive for self-preservation" were indeed not merely in order to provide the being with a "sensation of fatigue" and its subsequent demand for sleep and rest. This phenomenon was merely a matter of secondary importance in the being's life. The above-mentioned efforts were intended, on the contrary, to an equally great extent to preserve and maintain the being for a life that could be in continuous contact with the heavenly world, a superterrestrial "type of sensation" on the basis of which the being could continue having a connection with its eternal Father and thus attain realisation of its own heavenly identity as a son of God and experience its eternal, divine originator. It had of course experienced this entire aspect of consciousness, the experience of the culmination of life itself, in its previous spiral; indeed, it had totally outgrown it and transformed it into an automatic function or C-knowledge, so that this cosmic state of consciousness no longer existed in its mentality as "awake day-consciousness". And because of its "cosmically unconscious" state or the loss of its cosmic day-consciousness, it was now a mentally inept being that was to follow a divine vocation through which it could once again become conscious of its heavenly or superterrestrial, eternal nature.