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With consciousness and eternal life mankind's potential for uncontrolled growth, change and creativity could run roughshod over any moral boundaries. God is Life and the tree of life is a kind of reference to God, who is real.
God's capacity to make a physical appearing Universe with people of limited intelligence within it may be a consequence of the removal of God's absolute Persona from finite areas. In the intervals or space-times without direct actualization as full awareness of God it becomes possible to bring into being independent yet contingent Universes.
The key seems to be in the beginning, even with quantum cosmological theories describing the pre-big bang era we logically arrive at simply pluralism pre-existing to begin a concatenation. The fundamental primordial virtual particle pluralism may be one of the space-times where the spirit has withdrawn it's full nature and allowed an array of emanated virtual zero-dimensional membranes to exist. The dialectic of being and nothing, presence and absence, particle-ways and quantum entanglement could well be a phenomena of reciprocals of allowable emanations of virtual particles from a universal monistic waveform of all possible dimensions and quantities. Thought the limited form of spiritual 'windowless monads' allowed to arise in a vacuum were sufficient to form at least one Universe with sentient beings within it, it is yet a tree of life. Jesus described the kingdom of heaven as a great tree in which all thee creatures of the air might dwell. That is our present Universe as it moves through its thermodynamic history predetermined in accord with the will of the Creator.
God reduced the number of dimensions available to mankind qualitatively and quantitatively in order to spare them of what might be considered to be 'the Satan virus'.
I will quote the relevant passages from Genesis in the King James Version of the Bible.
Genesis 2:8-9
" 8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9And 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."
Adam and eve ate of the tree in the midst of the garden that God had forbidden them to. The persuasion of Satan, appearing as a reptile with obvious vestigial legs of evolution downward from a lizard, induced Adam and Eve to violate all moral strictures they were provided. In just a couple thousand years evolution theory would arise and mankind would speculate that they shared ancient origins with reptiles from 'the garden of evolution'.
Genesis 3:
" 22And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
23Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
24So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
Adam and Eve may either symbolize mankind's evolution, or they may be literally human spiritual ancestors created by God spiritually or otherwise in an altered physical ontology in the garden of special purpose. A garden is a cultivated rather than a wild place. Adam and Eve were in a special ecotopia created by God perhaps. the intellectual and moral capabilities of Adam and Eve were examined in a divine laboratory setting.
The
nature of God and His purpose for mankind in creating mankind is an implicit aspect of the consideration of the context of the garden and it's relationship to the Universe. We know that the Universe physically is subject to entropy and change. Emanations from God of any given Universe from a perturbative, pre-big bang vacuum is a rather vague present realm of conjecture for physicists and philosopher-theologi ans considering what sort of a habitation or temporary home God had for mankind before he reduced their existence as physical beings to about 120 years maximum. Obviously some might contemplate a Universe home for longer lived people that were relocated to the Earth where they had shorter lives because of the oxygen content and oxidation. Such considerations, or assumptions that the Tree of life had some bio-pharmaceutical natural antidote to aging on some other planet may be other speculations for why humanity was demoted to short, brutish lives on Earth with other primates.
The 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was given to scientists working on end sections of chromosomes called teleomeres that keep cells from unravelling by producing a particular enzyme. Some enzymes such as are in ferns cause tumors to when the plants are eaten over-much. Ferns are a billion year old plus plant species. Some could speculate that the tree of life was some particular type of enzyme-bearing fruit tree able to stop cellular aging. Imagine if Einstein had lived for a thousand years, or Gauss, Wolfgang Pauli, Socrates, Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, Os Bin Ladin etc.?
http://news.bbc.co.u k/2/hi/health/835973 5.stm
Mankind is the sole survivor of all the other near-human primates that once lived on the Earth-were Adam and Eve not killers after they reached the Earth, or at least their son Cain was? Did Cain kill the Neanderthals and other species that might have evolved to be rivals?
If the tree of life is some sort of better physical structure key or symbol that follows the eating of the tree of knowledge-perhaps an invention of how to manipulate not only the D.N.A. towards longevity but an ability to stimulate the creation of entire Universes through a comprehension of the physics of space-time mass and energy, then it is reasonable that God downloaded mankind into the Universe correction facility wherein just those of faith and obedience would be saved and delivered unto heaven and eternity.
God is a spiritual being and the foundation of all physical force may paradoxically be spiritual. The appearance of material reality is a concatenation of relationships structured by God with various protocols within it. Maybe disobedient ,individual ,created spirits such as those of Adam and Eve might be compared to computer viruses that would destroy an entire computer operating system after first deforming their own programs as existing and temporal beings. God is omniscient and humanity is not. God is all and humanity isn't. Perhaps eating of the tree of life by incorrigibly wicked souls would conflict with God's divine economy. Maybe God isn't cable of running a deficit or any other sort of evil indefinitely, but Adam, Eve and secular governments are.
Learn more about this author, Gary C. Gibson.
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No
The tree of life is symbolic. Metaphysically trees represent nerves and nerves represent expressions of thoughts. The nerves connect the thought centers. The tree is also seen as the connecting life or link between heaven and earth, between body and mind. There was no actual "tree of life" nor was there a garden of Eden. The writer of these passages in the Bible was using symbolism.
If one turns to the metaphysical interpretation of the Tree of Life and it's existence in a garden one may see that such a tree in a garden did not really exist. We see that the writer of the first book of the Bible used this metaphor to represent an absolute life principle that is established in human consciousness by Divine mind.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil as it is sometimes referred to is symbolic of the discerning capacity of mind. Unity co-founder Charles Filmore explains "the tree is closely related to individual free will, which is in direct touch with the serpent or self-hood." In that state of consciousness one perceives himself as separate from God and therefore by "eating of the fruit of the tree" he will "surely die." The tree then is our free will which is in direct touch with the serpent. The death the great I AM is referring to is separation. Until man eats from the tree of knowledge, he is pure and in complete understanding of his unity with all that is, and with God. Once the "forbidden" fruit is consumed, man cannot remain in the absolute. A separation occurs in mind and man begins to see himself apart from the creator, no longer one. Man looses consciousness of his Divine Spirit and so must begin again to lay hold of the potential ideas.
If we understand that this can not be a literal translation of an actual tree we can look deeper to see that the tree of life is the inherent life of an organism, symbolized in the physical by the nerves and the spinal column. The Spinal column represents the tree, the nerves are the branches and the leaves. When we are able to step aside and release our sense of self and ego (Edging God Out) we are able to eat if the fruit without fear of death as we recognize, we are one with God and there is no separation.
The "tree of life" exists in Divine Mind. We partake of the fruit when we appropriate ideas of divine life, and stop focusing on life as something that comes and goes. The "tree" becomes our ability to see life as everlasting, beyond birth and death.
Learn more about this author, Christine Sandor.
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