The Garden of Eden Legend

“The Garden of Eden legend represents a distorted version of man’s awakening as a physical creature.  He becomes fully operational in his physical body, and while awake can only sense the dream body that had earlier been so real to him.  He now encounters his experience from within a body that must be fed, clothed, protected from the elements – a body that is subject to gravity and to earth’s laws.  He must use physical muscles to walk from place to place.  He sees himself suddenly, in a leap of comprehension, as existing for the first time not only apart from the environment, but apart from all of earth’s other creatures.

“The sense of separation is, in those terms, initially shattering.  Yet [man] is to be the portion of nature that views itself with perspective.  He is to be the part of nature that will specialize, again, in the self-conscious use of concepts.  He will grow the flower of the intellect – a flower that must have its deep roots buried securely within the earth, and yet a flower that will send new psychic seeds outward, not only for itself but for the rest of nature, of which it is a part.”

(Dreams, “Evolution” and Value Fulfillment, Session 899)