“Spiritual worlds existed for a very, very long time where all created beings lived in a state of bliss as you cannot imagine. For all creatures, the possibility existed, ever since their coming into existence, to choose freely to either live within divine law or to act against it. At one time, one spirit fell under this temptation. Symbolically you explain this in the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Actually this happened in a very different way although the idea was there. Perhaps you can comprehend some of this when you imagine that you may have a great power. You may know that to use this power in a certain way might be dangerous for you. As long as this power is not exploited, you may feel a curiosity as to what would actually happen if you did use it. This temptation becomes stronger and stronger. The stronger it becomes, the less you can think of means to counteract this temptation. You will not even have the intention to continue using it, you just want to try a little bit, just to see. And all theoretical knowledge you may have — once tried, you may not find it possible not to be swept away by it — dissolves under the growing weight of the temptation. Once this one spirit succumbed to this temptation, he set something in motion that he could not change anymore, just as he had once known that it would but did not wish to remember when he did give in. The result was not an immediate change, but a gradual one. The change from harmony to disharmony took place just as gradually and slowly as your change from disharmony into harmony. The latter is evolution, the former could be called an evolution backwards — and neither can ever happen suddenly. Here I would like to give you another example that may help you to understand by trying to feel when thinking of this example. Let us suppose a person is tempted to take a drug. He does not have the intention to succumb to it entirely. He, too, knows, as everybody does, that this would mean his ruin in every respect. But he thinks he can try just once, to see what it is like. But after this once, he cannot escape anymore. He is caught. This is a mild example of what I am trying to tell you, but the same principle reigns here. The same principle holds true to everything opposed to divine law. This one spirit who succumbed first, generated a power running in the opposite direction of divine law, but it was still the same power, only used differently. And with this power he could affect and influence many other spirits little by little — but not all spirits. There was a division between those who succumbed and those who did not. With the former, the so-called fall of the angels thus began. In this process, every divine aspect turned into its opposite nature: harmony became disharmony, beauty ugliness, light darkness, wisdom blindness, love hatred and fear and egotism — and union became separateness. Once wholeness split further and further, the more this “pull” proceeded. Thus evil came into existence.” (PL #20)