Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 4, sect. 1423

1423. Through Livets Bog we have long since learnt that the biblical "Fall in the Garden of Eden" was not actually a "Fall", just as the "serpent" in the Garden of Eden was not a real or absolute "devil" but solely an expression of the divine guidance of the living beings through the spiral of evolution by means of the Christ principle or principle of world redemption. But at this time or during the section of living beings' history referred to in "The Bible", the living beings were not to be led into the "light", because they were already in the "light". They thus really knew nothing of so-called "evil". Their most fundamental instinct and habitual functioning was nothing but the fulfilment of the law of love. "Neighbourly love" was a supreme talent in these beings and was thus "C-knowledge" or an automatic function that had long since culminated. They could do nothing other than live in harmony with the highest laws. If the opposite had been the case they could not have been in such a region of light or "Garden of Eden" in which "God wandered" and "spoke" to them personally. And the account in "The Bible" would then have been pure superstition, indeed, simply an absolute untruth.
But we also know from Livets Bog that when something has become "C-knowledge", it has more or less left the day-consciousness and has thereby to a corresponding degree ceased being awake consciousness. And for the living beings (Adam and Eve) in the biblical "Garden of Eden", the laws of love were to such a great extent "C-knowledge" that these highest laws or main details of existence in the light were no longer day-conscious knowledge. From a purely mental point of view, it was, on the contrary, merely a supreme "instinct" in their consciousness. That which previously had been all-dominating, awake day-conscious knowledge was now at the very most merely an "inkling". The being's knowledge of darkness or the infringement of the laws of life and the effects of this still lay very much further back in time, indeed, as far back as the physical sphere of a previous cosmic spiral cycle, and on quite another planet than the Earth. And since this knowledge had culminated there as awake day-conscious knowledge and had already degenerated in favour of existence in the light in the spiritual worlds of the spiral cycle, and the being, in the form of the biblical "Adam" and "Eve", had not yet been in the physical zone of darkness or animal kingdom of a new spiral cycle, it had thus no longer any particular knowledge of this form of existence. And the road to regaining this knowledge of darkness went solely through the animal kingdom or the zone of darkness. That "Adam" and "Eve" had to go down into darkness was thus absolutely inevitable. If the opposite had been the case they would never have been able to regain their "cosmic consciousness".