A father preventing his children from being wise, from living forever, is certainly insane. Even the worst father would like his children to be wise, intelligent. Even the cruelest father would like his children to live forever.
But God prevents man from eating of two trees – the tree of knowledge and the tree of eternal life.
This seems to be a strange kind of God; it is not in any way possible to conceive Him as fatherly.
He seems to be the enemy of man. Who needs saving? Your God is jealous: that’s what was the argument of the devil who came in the form of a serpent and seduced the mind of Eve.
To me, there are many significant things to be understood. Why did he choose Eve and not Adam?
He could have chosen Adam directly, but men by nature are less sensitive, less vulnerable, more arrogant, egoistic. Adam may not even have liked to have a conversation with a serpent, may have thought it was below his dignity. And to be persuaded by a serpent’s argument would have been impossible for man. He would have argued against him; he would have struggled, fought – because to agree with someone seems to the ego as if you are defeated.
The ego knows only disagreement, struggle, victory or defeat – as if there is no other way, as if there are only two ways: victory and defeat. For the ego certainly there are only two ways.
But for a sensitive soul there is only one way – to understand whatever is true. It is not a question of me and you, it is not a question of somebody being defeated or victorious. The question is: What is the truth?
The woman was not interested in arguing. She listened and she found that it was perfectly right.
Wisdom was prohibited because, the serpent said, ”God does not want man to become godlike, and if you are wise you will be godlike. And once you are wise it will not be very difficult for you to find the tree of eternal life.”
It is really the other side of wisdom – eternity. And if you are wise and you have eternal life, then who bothers about God? What has He got that you have not got? Just to keep you a slave, eternally dependent – never allowing you to become a knowing being, never allowing you to taste something of the eternal – in this vast garden of Eden He has prohibited only two trees. The argument was simply a statement of the fact.
Now, the person who brings the truth to humanity is condemned as the devil; and the person who was preventing humanity from knowing the truth, from knowing life, is praised as God. But the priests can live only with this kind of God; the devil will destroy them completely.
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