ALLEGORY OF PARADISE
Most of us are familiar with the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. So the story goes, Adam and Eve are living in Paradise ... The Garden of Eden. Everything is provided for them. They have all they need and are living in fantasyland. No worries, no concerns, just good times. Until ... they defied the warning of God/Absolute.
They were told they could eat from among all of the trees in the garden, including the “Tree of Life,” EXCEPT for one ... the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” In fact, so forbidden was it that the day they were to eat of THIS tree, they were told they would DIE. Now, if we were to take this story literally, we would have to wonder why God would place such a tree in Paradise in the first place, and why Adam and Eve didn't die when they ate the forbidden fruit. We would also have to ask “how did they know about death in the first place?” But this story, as is the entire Bible, is allegory and metaphor. The tree is needed to fulfill the deeper message of the myth.
One day, a talking serpent (obviously metaphorical, since snakes don't talk) appears to Eve at the Tree of Knowledge, and says don't worry about the warning from God. On the day you eat of the fruit of the tree, you will NOT die. This ... is a metaphor for Eve having a inner battle with her ego/serpent. Now before we go any further, we must understand that Eve represents the feminine principle of creation both in body and Mind. Eve is our subconscious Mind. Birthing whatever our conscious Mind wishes - and asks no questions or has any determination of right from wrong. It just does. Thought, to form.
Adam, is the masculine principle and the conscious Mind. Whatever our conscious Mind impregnates into our subconscious Mind, will be birthed ... brought forth into reality and manifest form. Conscious Mind, should be implanting good thoughts (thinks/things) into the garden of our subconscious Mind so as to bring forth goodness ... but, as is evident by the present world condition, this is not always the case.
So, Eve now presents Adam with this fruit, and they both eat of it. In doing so, the God(s) are quoted as saying “now that they have eaten the fruit of that tree, they have become as us (yes it says plural Gods).” So they get thrown out of the Garden ... out of Paradise. But wait ... what about the death part? From the pulpits your will hear “well they died spiritually” or you will hear “they committed the original sin and became dead to God”, etc. But let's go a bit deeper on this.
This entire allegorical meaning of this story is designed to speak of the development of consciousness among mankind. And there are multiple labels of consciousness, each having purpose and meaning. In the early formation of man, our subconscious Mind ran everything. Everything was like the Garden. It was provided for mankind with no conscious thought needed. But as mankind developed conscious thought, and reasoning, things began to change ... and things drastically changed. Man became as God, and could now think, create, discern, be led by Ego self, or Divine Self. We had a choice ... we now had free will. We no longer ran solely on our perfect and Divine pre-programmed subconscious and superconscious Mind that runs our entire body without us even knowing about it. We developed the conscious Mind ... and could now cross the line into egotistical sensual fulfillment. In other words, we could now choose from the path that had already been paved, or we could wander off into the desert or wilderness.
Allow me to stray for a second. I learn much from my dogs. They are with me all day every day. One thing that always fascinated me is the freedom they have to live each and every moment without ever knowing they are going to die. One day, I will be left with one, and the other will carry on never knowing what happened to the other. You see, on the day we ate the fruit (developed conscious thought and reasoning) ... we LEARNED about death. We became AWARE of our own mortality. This was a devastating revelation. We knew not death, and now ... we fear it more than anything else.
This is what was meant by “if you eat of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you will surely die.” We DID become as god(s). And, the knowledge of death became not only an inescapable reality, but has ruined our lives ... not so much by witnessing it, but by fearing it. It follows many people as a dark shadow waiting to take away their very last breath. So many people are consumed by worrying and fearing death. When they will die, how they will die, will I suffer, how long will it take. etc. Even though we are eternal Spiritual beings having a physical experience, we still have much we would like to do in this journey. So many things to see and do. No one WANTS to die ... to leave this Life for another. So the knowingness of death came with the expansion and evolution of mankind's conscious awareness.
So when we were earlier ancient base nature man, we had no knowledge of death. We experienced Life every day without ever having a clue that one of those days - would be our last. Not knowing you would die, would have been paradise would it not? But the process of involution and evolution must move forward ... must progress and grow. We now have the option to choose what Adam feeds Eve and so forth. What our conscious Mind feeds our subconscious mind ... will manifest into form. Good, or evil. We now have the knowledge (gnosis), and we have to power to know good ... from evil. Choose rightly.
Just a thought ...
Justin Taylor, ORDM.
