Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 2, sect. 446

446. The difference between a primitive nature-being and a cosmically conscious terrestrial being of Earth is consequently not a question of species but of degree. Both beings possess "cosmic consciousness". However, while for the second being it manifests as "cosmic consciousness" in its first beginning stages of an "upward" trend through which it will reach physical day-consciousness, then with the first being "cosmic consciousness" is present in its last stages of a "downward" course and, as already indicated, has long ago left the being's day-consciousness and therefore all that is left are some weak tendencies in the form of unconscious habitual functions or "C knowledge". These last vestiges of a former "cosmic consciousness" are known in everyday life as "instinct".
Instinct in living beings, therefore, simply constitutes the remains of their former "cosmic consciousness". And that which we describe here in "Livets Bog" as "instinct-energy" – the first supporting basic energy in the spiral – is the reaction of the remains of that consciousness meeting with the external energies or phenomena which characterize the entrance into the material, physical world.