1433. We have already mentioned in Livets Bog the first "Eden-event", that is, the event mentioned in "The Bible". We have seen that it was due solely to the fact that living beings had lived for such a long time in light's highest zones of existence, where, for an immense period of time, the law of neighbourly love had been "C-knowledge", that is, an automatic function or something the beings did as a matter of course because they actually could not do anything else. At the same time as the beings had turned love into "C-knowledge" over previous spiral cycles, their experience-based, awake, day-conscious knowledge of hatred and its effects and their knowledge of the reactions of darkness became quite superfluous. The wisdom that is so necessary for the terrestrial human being today and that enables him to logically motivate and thereby stimulate his will to ignore the hatred and anger at any supposed injustice inflicted upon him by his neighbour, and ultimately to animate forgiveness of this neighbour, gradually became completely superfluous. In a zone where neighbourly love is an automatic function in the behaviour of all beings, there can never be any need to take protective or "defensive measures". When one cannot be persecuted or attacked by any fellow being, since they love one just as much as they love themselves, one has no need of knowledge about what one should do to protect oneself against a destructive strike or assault on one's person and property by one's neighbour. In the regions of light, or more precisely the "divine world" and the "kingdom of bliss", which, so to speak, extends into the "plant kingdom" in the spiral cycle, where the biblical "Fall" began to take place, one thus did not need to speculate about how one should protect oneself from "robbers", "enemies" or aggressive powers, or how one could scrape together a living. There was no professional jealousy, there was no envy or covetousness, there was no need for the study of either intellectual or unintellectual ways of elbowing one's way forward at the expense of one's neighbour. Here all beings lived absolutely only in order to serve all others. Thus we see here in the spiral cycle precisely the way of life, the region of light, that terrestrial mankind of today is evolving more and more to desire with all its heart; it already expresses this desire through its cry for a "lasting peace". This expression conceals merely people's dreams and innermost longings for the great light or the "lost Paradise". But in this "Paradise" any use of abilities for protection against "evil" or "darkness" must degenerate and die. Organic functions that are not used and are therefore not maintained, must ultimately cease to exist. If living beings were shut up for years inside a subterranean grotto where there is no daylight, they would lose their sight, just as if one were to tie one's arm tightly to the rest of one's body, so that one could not move it at all and were to keep it bound in this way for years, one would invariably also lose the ability to move it. All organs that become superfluous or are not used die spontaneously. Such is the law of life. And it is not so surprising that the beings towards the end of the "divine world" and the "kingdom of bliss" have almost completely lost their knowledge of how to orientate themselves in the world of "darkness" and their ability to do so. Here they have thus no idea at all that there is anything "evil". They know nothing of sufferings of any kind whatsoever. They constitute living automatons manifesting light. This manifestation of light is thus no longer an awake day-conscious exercise of the will, but occurs quite automatically. It is this mental automatism that we know as "instinct". And the beings whose mentality is controlled by pure "instinct" appear in the spiral cycle as "plants".
 
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* Translator's note: Misprint in original Danish title corrected. The Danish word "og", meaning "and", was missing.