Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 5, sect. 1711

1711. When the Bible tells us that "Adam" and "Eve" were expelled from paradise because "Eve" had eaten of the apple from the tree of knowledge and had also given the forbidden fruit to "Adam" to eat of it, it is in actual fact not talking about "Adam" at all, but on the contrary only "Eve", that is to say "man" and "woman", the male being and the female being. It was these two beings who were "expelled" from paradise. But, as we already know, they were not "expelled" at all. They outgrew paradise through their own desire, their own wish and longing. What was called an "expulsion from paradise" was neither a punishment nor revenge from the Godhead, but a loving fulfilment of their desire or longing. It was a divine fulfilment of the laws of life – something that was absolutely essential for "Adam" since he was a being that was dying cosmically, a being who now lived solely on his memories from his experience of a previous spiral cycle, in order, through doing so, to prepare himself to re-emerge into the outer world and there experience the phenomena on which eternal life is based. Adam was thus completely wrapped up in his own zone of memory, that is to say, his inner world, completely cut off from interaction with truly living fellow beings and details in the outer world. If these memories were relived once again, Adam's experiencing of life would have had to stop were it not for eternal laws that determine that Adam's surplus energy of ecstasy from his experiences in his inner world is directed outwards into the outer world, where it begins to firmly establish and prepare the liberation of Adam's I from the kingdom of bliss in favour of the beginnings of a sphere of experience in a new cosmic spiral cycle. The so-called "Fall" was not a "Fall" at all, but an initiation into a new life, just as the serpent's temptation of Eve was not a temptation but an encouragement of the incipient male being and female being with regard to this initiation. The serpent was no "devil" or "evil one" in the absolute sense, since no such being actually exists. The serpent was, on the contrary, the first, initial form of guidance of the living beings through the spheres of death. The concept of the "serpent" expressed the principle of world redemption's first form of manifestation. The serpent was thus, as already pointed out in "Livets Bog", the first world redeemer.