In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, Adam and Eve are placed in a paradise. Instructed not to eat the fruit in the middle of the garden from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve disobeyed and ate the fruit and were banished from the garden by God.
How could they have been so dumb?
Imagine you are God. You are very awesome, but you have nothing to do. You are Bliss itself but the very nature of Bliss is expansive and expressive. You don’t have to do anything but … “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
Like a dreamer, you find it easy to imagine a world, indeed, a universe; perhaps multi-verses, who knows? Or, like an author or playwright, you start to pen the great American novel. But guess what starts to happen (ask any great author, dancer, painter or sculptor to verify this): The characters and the story begin to take on a life of their own. Some are “good” and some are “evil.” In fact, of what value or interest would the story be if it was all just tiptoeing through the tulips? A gripping story needs contrast, a plot, adventure and drama.
In creating a universe, a planet, an animal or human, you can’t reach for existing material with which to do it. It’s all “in your head” to begin and to end with! It is therefore, by definition, a dream. But like my dreams at night, I might experience them as real, and I don’t control them. Like the characters in my novel, the characters in my dream have their own purposes and actions.
While I dream at night, I have no conscious awareness that I am dreaming. It’s all very real to me until I wake up. I can feel happy or experience pain every bit as real as I do during the waking state.
Science now confirms that the seeming objectivity and substance of created things is an illusion caused by electromagnetism and energy. The ingredients of this illusion include motion (energy), particles, the opposites and neutral. In an infinity of combinations these produce the basic elements of solid, liquid, fire, gas, space and time.
Since every-thing that comes into creation as an illusion from the mind of God, then everything and every person partakes to some degree in attributes of God. As God made the decision to create, so I too have an impulse to make choices, and to create and expand beyond myself. As the creation oscillates between opposites with neutral in between, so I experience an endless variety of changes in appearance, emotions, thoughts, interests and actions.
Creation thus inherits a procreative impulse residing internally at the heart of each atom and each created thing. Like the entangled electrons who dance simultaneously regardless of their distance from one another, we also inherit an impulse towards perfect stillness, the Being from which we were created. Thus, we have two opposite pulls: one outward into creation, and one away from the creation back to its source in the One (God-consciousness).
These opposite pulls, or energies or forces, exist at the macrocosmic level and at the individual, microscopic level or, which is to say, all-pervading.
Intelligence and intention reside invisibly at the heart of each moving and oscillating particle guiding it in response, alternatingly, to outward or inward pulls.
The more self-awareness emerges in the increasingly complex forms towards the human level, the more consciously one can respond to the influence of the two basic pulls: outward, or, inward.
Did Adam and Eve have a choice? According to the story, yes, they did. They choose to eat the fruit of the knowledge of the opposites. The opposites represent the forms and secrets of the creation, including the attraction of human procreation. We cannot deny, however, that the creation and the opportunity to make the choice came from the mind and through the moving hand of God. We cannot deny, further, that the creation exerts a magnetic and attractive pull, though so also does the Being at its Source.
God IS therefore responsible for the creation, but individuals assent in varying degrees of conscious choosing to the influence of the opposites which are necessary for the creation to exist and be sustained. Up and until the human level, the response is largely instinctual. Stay tuned for the installment wherein we describe why the “dice are loaded” towards the return to Spirit. We will discuss the personal aspects of human suffering.