Eden
“And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
-Genesis 2:8-9
In the book of Genesis from the Old Testament, Eden is the paradisiacal garden created by God as the dwelling place for all life, including the first humans Adam and Eve. This garden is fed by a river and has abundant plants, trees, and animals, all existing harmoniously.
According to Kabbalistic teachings, Eden exists in a heavenly realm called Yesod, the fourth dimension.
Adam and Eve
The name Adam means “man” in Hebrew, and the name Eve means “woman. These names are symbols that represent the humanity which dwelled in a state of harmony and innocence in Eden. This was a humanity that had not fallen from the spiritual realm into the material.
Adam as the masculine aspect of humanity and Eve as the feminine aspect together have the power to create as gods. This sexual power and the responsibility thereof is symbolized in the two trees in Eden.
Tree of Life
“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
-Genesis 2:16-17
Adam and Eve were told by God that they may eat freely of the fruit of the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is the internal structure of our soul and Being, the multifaceted unfoldment of spiritual manifestation.
The fruit of life is the divine source of spiritual life. The humans of Eden were instructed to be always in communion with this source, and thereby rule the newborn Earth in wisdom and harmony.
Before the Edenic fall, humans innately knew their inner Being and their Tree of Life was fully illuminated.
Tree of Knowledge
While God said that humans may eat the fruits of the Tree of Life, He warned about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was meant to be enjoyed but not eaten.
The fruit of knowledge (daath in Hebrew, gnosis in Greek) is sex. Sexuality is true experiential knowledge of life and death, physically and spiritually.
Sexual, creative energy is divine, but when it enters into matter it multiplies material density and suffering. Sexual energy when returned to its source, multiplies spiritual life and an elevated consciousness.
Waters of Life
The word Eden in ancient Aramaic means “the well-watered place”. Eden is the interior, superior dimension that is well-watered with the transmuted creative, sexual force.
To enjoy the fruits of knowledge (gnosis) is to love the sexual energy and to conserve, circulate, and transmute it. To eat the fruits of knowledge is to consume the sexual energy for strong sensations, causing the energy to fall.
The fall of Adam and Eve (humanity) was a sexual fall. From Yesod to Malkuth, from Heaven to Earth.
“Eden is the Ethereal World. Eden is sex itself. The Ethereal World is the abode of the sexual forces. The Ethereal World is Eden. We were driven out of Eden through the doors of sex, thus we can return to Eden only through the doors of sex. We cannot enter into Eden through false doors; we must enter into Eden through the doors out of which we were driven.”
-Samael Aun Weor, The Major Mysteries
The Fall
“The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
-Genesis, 3:2-6
The story goes that the serpent tempted Eve into eating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge. After sharing the fruits with her husband Adam, they both became self-conscious of their nakedness. Humanity was for the first time experiencing conflict and shame about sexuality.
Ultimately Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise because energetically they were more attached to matter and sensation.
While Adam and Eve represent humanity as a whole, they also represent the internal masculine and feminine forces. It was not the feminine sex that succumbed to temptation, but the feminine energy within the human body of both sexes.
Before the fall, masculine and feminine (positive and negative, yin and yang) energies were in balance. With the loss of the sexual energy, the feminine aspect within both men and women was exaggerated and became attached to the material, losing the spiritual.
The result was the consciousness falling asleep into matter. The sexual energy moving outward to generate sensual pleasure instead of inward to generate love.
The fall is used to explain the tragedy of our suffering existence in this world. Humanity lost paradise when we traded obedience to God for selfish indulgence. When we broke the cosmic laws.
The Christ
Yet there is also a force that operates outside of the cosmic laws known as the Christ. Christ is not a person, Christ is a cosmic inhabitant of the Absolute. Christ offers radical mercy, compassion, and love.
When incarnated within a person properly prepared such as Jesus, Buddha, Mary, Moses, Quetzalcoatl, Mohammad, and many more, these Christic qualities are born on Earth.
The Christ force is pure sacrifice because it enters into and spiritualizes matter.
Christ as Serpent
There is an esoteric teaching that it was the Christ intelligence in the form of the tempting serpent in Eden.
At the cosmic scale of creation it was necessary to eventually enter into matter. To stay in Eden forever as innocence was going against the divine plan.
Creation needed to reach a material crystallization in order for the Christ to be able to truly sacrifice. It is also true that the material crystallization went too far and now we have forgotten our inner Being and the divine power of sex completely.
Yet the Christ force works tirelessly on Earth to guide us in our efforts to awaken our consciousness and water our Tree of Life. And in this way there is hope of returning to Eden.