In the Genesis it is told that once Adam ate the forbidden fruit God said: “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever “. How do you interpret this passage?
Love,
Paulo
with a “Pink Lady”
If an authority figure placed me in that garden and told me not to eat from that fruit or i’d die, i may resist for a long time but one day (it may take a thousand years) i’ll go ahead and do it.
If that authority figure then kicked me out of the garden b/c I’ve started to become like them, and eating of the tree of life would only complete my transformation into an authority figure, i’d devise a way to get back in that garden and eat of that second tree, and that would be in keeping with my character.
What would i have to lose? I’m going to die and i’ve been cursed.
If anything, I probably stand to gain my own redemption and the respect of the authority figure. Maybe that’s what’s expected of me from the beginning.
Thousands of years after the downfall of the golden age someone started writing a holy book. The warlords that caused matriarchy to fall were evil but they were not stupid. They pondered long and hard upon the mysteries of existence to make themselves even more powerful, working with the priets, they discovered the inherent coding in the very essence of people, which we today call DNA. They symbolised it with the image of the serpent. Thus the story woven around the Garden of Eden refers to a female rebellion and an attempt to reclaim the secret of feminine redemption, for which of course women are punished even more by the new male god, and the rulers realised that this essence, the essencial coding of people, was fluid and could be altered (quantum physics). So, they wrote into a so called holy book that man has but three score years and ten upon this Earth and then he dies and returns to dust. People had become uneducated and mostly illiterate under the patriarchal system, and anyone who wasn´t – and who wasn´t also corrupt and evil – was killed, so gradually people began to believe the lie. Mind controls matter (science). Believing the lie entered the coded essence of both man and women and everyone began to die around that age because their cells now contained a little coded self-destruct instruction. People have been controlled in this way since the collapse of the matriarchal age.
This is the same story of the fall of Men (different)
1.We are people we see through the filter of our preception.
Someone wrote down the story of creation the way they understood it.
Someone else might have told u something like I will.
God is the omnipotent beeing. We do keep on forgetting that.
2. We are scared of the devil. Putting him as a close to equal force to God.
CONCLuSION: for this story we have to go beyond our preception.
Story:
Look close enough God still manages, for Luzifer to be his servant, after this one officially wants to go against everything God tells him to.
That’s right, he’s playing him, I mean come on he’s God.
In reallity he’s fullfilling Gods will in this little scene with the apple.
Notice he’s not even lying to Eve.
Weren’t Adam and Eve sinning before?
The problem is they did and couldn’t be aware of it.
Illustration:
Imagine your wife prepares the finest most delicate of meals.
Get’s a montone thanks.
Than she does something simpler still good.
-Thanks.
Something better.
-Thanks
Something worse,something horrible.
-Thanks,thanks.
She throws an apple against ur head.
-Thanks.
You see it? God saw that it was good they didn’t.
Nowerdays unthankfulness is considered one of the biggest sins.
We should be thankful to God that he opened our eyes through that simple trick, and freed us from that huge shunk of ignorance.
The real beginnig of the story:
But wait it’s worse! Or even worst?
YOU ARE NOT CAPABLE OF LOVING, IF U ARE NOT CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING.
1.You can not care and be responsible for someone if you do not try to understand them.
2.You can not respect someone if u do not try to unserstand them.
3. You can not know and unedstand someone if u do not try to understand them.
These are the 4 aspects of loving as interoduced by Erich Fromm in the Art of Loving.
He didn’t connect this in any way with the fall from paradise.
I do.
I think that Eve somehow knew, understood of her ignorance and incapacity, facing the truth presented to her by the snake.
She knew she had to risk everything, in order to love God more perfectly.
She did and that shows absolute faith.
After this she was full of love for God,herself and everyone else she wanted to share.
She had taken responsibility for her fate.
Adam saw the faith in her eyes he saw that it was good.
They didn’t really need the chemical effect some kind of magic boom.
They needed to step out of their usual boundairies.
Now God could start to teach them because they were beeings that would risk mistakes in order to understand,the essence of Love.
Eventually after the apple was devoured they realized the dual nature of their decision.
Eve’s intentions were the best, on the other hand God had commanded them differently.
They hadn’t realized anything more after eating, and felt shame, for their failure, for seperating themselfes from all the creatures by beeing able to want something moore.
Did God punish them?
Of course, any child looses respect for you if u tell it don’t, and let him do it anyway.
He’ll never listen to you again unless u provide him with consequences for his actions.
Did he reward them?
Even moore, but like i said we forget about that.
He let them find out how to make clothes, how to plant and chase and Eve how to have children.
He taught them how to be responsible for themselfes
since this had been their decision.
You can not love unless you are responsible for yourself.
He taught them everything and gave Eve what she had so longed for: Understanding and the capacity to Love him moore perfectly.
Dear sir
I’m doing a research on the persian translation of 11minutes.I would appreciate if you could give me your e.mail.Bacause i’m a student in translation studies.I’m looking for good topics for my thesis.sure yoy can help me.
regards
Dear Karthik Jain, why the question whether we can find the real one or whether we find the God in a non abstract form? The scriptures say in James 4:8 “Draw close to God and he will draw close to you.” So step on is making that effort to search for the real one, and not think that the one we were told about with the long white beard sitting on a cloud getting mad when he can’t have his way with humans, is all there ever is or will be.
I’m not “following” a God that I have been told about. I’m “worshiping” God who is Love. That’s pretty much the best thing that ever happened to me in my entire life.
LOVE is my religion.
That’s why I’m happy.
That’s my I feel at peace, with myself and others, even if they don’t share my likes or views.
That’s why I accept others the way they are and help them be a better version of themselves.
And that’s why I trust that everyone who is a lover of truth, honest hearted, and has a great burning desire to know the truth, it will set him free, and he will find God, no abstract concept. S/He find the same God that found me (with my Bible open on my table at one time, and in a small Italian village at a lake side, at another time).
Whatever circumstance, His name sounds good to me…
“he that causes to become”.
So, really, whatever YOUR mind can accept…
whatever your heart can understand…
whatever your thoughts can create…
whatever your efforts will achieve…
whatever your God may convey to you…
whatever book you read…
whatever religion, myth, legends, you want to explore…
whatever you want to believe,
whatever tradition formed you…
whatever form of worship…
whatever rocks your world,
whatever shape or color your world is…
may it bring LOVE and PEACE to YOU, and light!
Maybe then you also reconnect with the God who has made all things and made himself known and has made known his Name to all extremities of the earth so that no one can say s/he didn’t know.
I ask the question about “Which God you mean” BECAUSE I have read Paulo’s books. But I don’t know what you understood from them, and bought greatly that one understands the same exact thing when reading Paulo’s books.
Whatever rings true to you, may it be your bliss. It is your freedom of thought, your perception and you make your connections.
I am an independent thinker and say what I perceive, not a follower who merely repeats what others feed him.
Paulo’s thoughts expressed in his books read beautifully and with some I can connect; some other thoughts are what I would express as “in search of” and those I like a lot because they reveal a lot about who he is and how he thinks.
I connect to the love he has and shares with others.
I connect to the universal spirit that encompasses mankind, not with an abstract kind of concept but with personality, feelings, and an amazing way of communicating, which if not experienced, is something you don’t believe unless you do.
I don’t get mixed up about WHO God is. God is love.
Who God is to you, it’s your choice. Remember, we have FREE will. You can make really anything your God; not all is beneficial. Not all is upbuilding. Not everything is constructive to this world and relationships because it creates bifurcating paths that have met at a point but then went off into the extreme ends of the planet.
That’s why relationships end up in wreckages, because people don’t believe the same thing.
Not everything is leading to the same result, and certainly not everyone will like my name, or the handle I chose to serve up some of my food of thought. Do I mind? I still think it serves the purpose. We are communicating.
With gratitude.
Dear Lydia of Light Serendipitous Adventures( it doesnt sound good, does it?)
U say it depends on which GOD i am referring to?
What i meant to convey to u was that GOD is only one and it resides in each one of us.Some call it Jesus, Some call it Allah,others call it buddha or Mahvira and so on. Each one of us follow the GOD we have been told about but did we really make an effort to search the real one? can we really find the God in some form that is not abstract?
If u really have read Paulo, then u would never say that. I dont say that dont follow a religion, but always remember that humanity is biggest of them all.
Paulo Blog – question of the week – 14 December 2007
On his Blog, Paulo Coelho posed a question relating to Adam eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the subsequent expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the fight between Good and Evil.
Putting into a wider context, I wrote on this some time ago, under the heading ‘Christian Theology and Gaia’.
http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/christ.htm
What is curious, is that when I wrote on this, was when Paulo wrote The Devil and Miss Prym, ie 2000, which also addresses these issues.
My thoughts on The Devil and Miss Prym, go some way to addressing the question posed, these I will publish soon.
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/2007/12/17/this-weeks-question-3/
Keith
Dear Karthik Jain,
It depends on which God you’re referring to.
1 John 5:19 tells you the reason why terrorists continue to live: “We know we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” This refers to Satan the Devil, the arch enemy and opposer of the creator whom he taunted in the garden of Eden by luring his creation into following his ways. He often likes to be worshiped as God also. So, here’s the dilemma…and I come to your second question about a scheme to control creation, which perhaps is just a rescue back-up plan for mankind to not be destroyed completely. But again, which God do YOU refer to?
Sorry, I keep refering to GOD as he,him(male). I believe GOD,if at all exists, has to be a female.
Once Adam had a bite of non-dualism and understood that good and evil were one, God scratched his chin and realized it would be pretty easy for Adam to then understand that life and death were one also and that we are eternal beings. There goes his leverage!
Lydia of Light Serendipitous Adventures says:
“He only goes after the wicked and those who have decided to follow him and assist him in his scheming”.
Then How come Osamas,Bush’s and terrorists like them continue to live a full life?
Does it take so much time for THE GOD to find them when even a human being(in their right senses) can see that they are wicked.Does THE GOD require a scheme to control his own creation?
I read ur novels “The Alchemist” and “The Zahir”.
They were very nice. Thanks for writing such inspiring books.
If anyone wants to attain Nirvana(Moksha…) then ur books are a good beginning.
So isnt God US?
He is very human in his thinking.
The tree of life holds the fruit which will make the man immortal. And he or probably “they” will have to be one among us rather then being superior to us. They dont want that to happen?
One can become immortal if he follows the path to Nirvana(easily said then done).The soul becomes free and the Man comes out of the cycle of life and death. And the soul becomes one of “US”.
Dear Paulo,
What does God mean When he said, “THE MAN HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US”? Is there more than one God? Then which of those really created this World?
When the God says “and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” and expels the couple from Eden, and the gate of Eden is sealed by a cherub and a flaming sword “to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Is God being Selfish? Did he intend to make man similar to other animals who dont have the power to think and distinguish between good and bad?
And what such things the Tree of life holds that he expelled them and sealed the gate of eden?
Was God successful in doing so?
If we look at humankind’s evolution, it has always been about a search for something greater–some knowledge, meaning, and purpose.
At first it was about survival. The earliest human beings did what they did because they had to fight off predators and find ways of beating the odds.
Then, humans learned how to fashion tools for themselves, and science and technology were born. As the centuries passed, we learned more and more to control our environment to make it comfortable for us. Once the prey struggling for survival, we now became the predators–searching for conquest and control. This is what the great wars were all about. Until now, we seem stuck in this “mode” of conquering and controlling.
The tree of knowledge taught us truths that we learned to understand and use. Now we want the tree of life to ultimately control everything and make ourselves masters of the Universe, of creation.
However, this is not our true purpose here. Humankind was made to be STEWARDS of creation, and not its lords or masters. Interpreted in a negative way, we human beings have become so used to control and power that we now are using technology to achieve the impossible: immortality. This is not wrong or bad, per se, but it leads to a way of thinking that is unhealthy–because we are not the Ultimate, our lives are not the Ultimate. We are just threads in the greater fabric of creation.
Looking at this in a positive way, human beings can “take from the tree of life” and use this to make life better for everyone else. Just as we are finding ways to live healthier, grow stronger, and look younger, we are also now realizing the mistakes of our past actions and are trying to somehow reverse the ecological damages brought upon by past generations. We are trying to reduce carbon emissions, we are trying to save endangered species, we are trying to right the wrongs that ignorance has caused our forefathers to do.
So, yes, we once acquired knowledge and learned how to use it. Now we want Life, and it is up to us to decide how this will be done–and, ultimately, what kind of Life we do want to have for humankind as a whole.
Dear Tom Caylor,
I agree!
I like the way you express it.
Best regards,
Liany
Dear all,
as i spoke about this topic to my friend on the phone, my friend’s 5 years old son suddenly gave his cmment. “If God didn’t send Adam and Eve outside the Eden, there could be three Gods at this moment.”
:-)
Love to all
Liany (Indonesia)
Dear Eric,
Everyone can quote the Bible and it has been quoted in many contexts, which is OK, I won’t insist on being “right” or you being “wrong”. It essentially is just a matter on what fence you’re standing. I have my views, shaped by diligent study of the Bible. What I wrote is, and you can test and research, what is written in this inspired book that man wrote on God’s command.
No, I don’t think MAN = GOD.
You can take the matter up with God who, also according to the Bible, is love but by far not perfected in the individual being. His great love was perfected in that he sent Jesus. He was the only perfect man to live after Adam. Why did he die for us? WHY in the world would a LOVING father send his son to die?
Because Adam, another son, betrayed his trust and ignored his warning about the tree of knowledge of good and bad, and that way lost perfect life. Anyone that would succeed him in his line would have to die.
I respect your views, Eric. At one point, I might have even had similar thoughts. Now since I did “change my mind” according to the teachings of the Bible I made the changes in my life that had to happen. It all made sense to me.
I don’t share your views and still love you, respect you and won’t argue this fact.
Keep searching for God, because he’s merciful and kind. For you to say he doesn’t exist is hurting him, I would suppose, but he is used to hearing it. He never lashes out to anyone, especially not the one who sincerely wants to search for him. He only goes after the wicked and those who have decided to follow him and assist him in his scheming.
I have no intention to convince you of how I see things. It is essentially the way the Bible tells it. Love is only then unconditional when you are able to feel it for all human beings, despite the many stabs and pains they cause you, and only Jesus has perfected this, and God’s love for man was personified in Jesus.
I also do not share the convictions of God and Jesus being a part of a trinity.
Peace, love and light to all.
Lydia
ha ha ! eric !
u have started the rock scene here ! the whole place is rocking ! i wonder how Paulo is able ro hold himself in writing something here, despite so many requests !! i bet it is one of the ‘policy’ decisions !! sadly all good things start dying as soon as ‘institutions’ take over their upkeep ! ‘institutions’ a necessary evil !! hope Paulo would prove an excption on this one too..
God is infinite in his variety and glory. There are many ways in which we can be like God. In fact, man/woman was made “in the image of God”. This does not mean that we are like God in every way. It is impossible for anything/anyone to be like God in every way, except for God Himself. But we do reflect his glory, each of us reflecting God in a unique way, like the colors of the rainbow, so that each one of us has a crucial role to play in the adventurous story that goes on forever.
We can actually deduce a lot by using reason and what other Scripture passages say. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they became like God in one additional way in which they were not like God previously, “knowing good and evil”. We have to assume that for Adam/Eve “knowing good and evil” means essentially the same thing as God “knowing good and evil”, since by taking on this trait Adam and Eve became “like God”. So, what does it mean that God/Adam/Eve knew good and evil? It must not be referring to the act of disobedience itself, since how could God disobey himself? God knew good and evil without ever doing evil. “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” The very definition of evil/sin is that which is against God. But ever since Adam and Eve sinned we have this truth for every human being, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We have lost something. We find do not reflect God’s glory. The mirror has become dirtied. We find we do not fulfill the original intent and crucial role that was meant for us in God’s heart before the foundations of the world.
To “know good and evil” is to be aware of this rift which has been made between God and anything/anyone else. God is One and He cannot be divided, but He can be aware of the division between good and evil. It makes sense that if there is evil, God certainly is aware of it, since evil is what is against God! This is the difference between our knowledge of good and evil and God’s knowledge of good and evil. We are on the other side of the rift. At least this is how it was for Adam and Eve at the moment that God said these words under discussion. And yes this is how it is for all of us, “All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way…” that is, this is how it is for all of us until… “But the Lord has laid on Him (the Messiah), the iniquity of us all.” This is how God brings us back to Him, by bridging the rift Himself, by sending His Son Jesus. This was the only way to bring us True Life, by becoming a human Himself. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” There’s the word “glory” again! In order to rescue us from across the rift, God had to cross the rift Himself by sending His Son. In order to clean the reflecting mirror of His glory, His image, he had to get dirty Himself. Not by sinning (gosh how would that help?) but by taking the rift/death on Himself. His only Son was emptied (kenosis) of his *glory* (!), and God was separated from His Son, so that the separation would no longer have to be between us and God. “He (God) made him who know no sin (Jesus) to become sin for us (on the cross), that we could become the righteousness of God in him.” That is, if we want to be with God, and thus accept God’s love. Across the rift, we say, “God doesn’t love me.” And yes that is what it seems like on the other side of the rift. Love is not just a statement. It needs an action. That is why the news that God did something is called the Gospel, which means Good News. It is the news that God actually did something to love us, so that we can actually respond, take His hand reaching out across the rift.
Yes, by eating of the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve would have become like God in yet one additional way, living forever. Again this does not mean that they would then be fully like God, just as being made in his image or knowing good and evil did not make them fully like God either. What it would have done is this: Adam and Eve would have “lived forever” in the state that they were in at that moment, on the other side of the rift from God, on the other side of the rift between good and evil. So I see God’s keeping them from living forever at that point as an act of mercy. I don’t see this “living forever” as being the same as the True Life, the Life Abundantly that has been Brought To Us through Jesus, “I have come that you may have life, and that you may have life abundantly, life to the full.” How could Adam and Eve have Life Abundantly on the other side of the rift from God? God is the Source/Author of Life. God is Love. He came to us. He is wildly in love with us. He made us! He is bringing us back to Him, growing us, for a life of adventurous infinitely many-faceted glorious love forever, which can be lived in even now.
Aditya rocks!
Mike gets it.
WE are GOD
GOD is US
WE live forever in HIS heart
as HE does in OURS