id eat." For this the
serpent was cursed, and enmity was put between the serpent and Eve, and
between their descendants. And God said: "The man is become like unto Us,
knowing good and evil, and perhaps He will eat of the tree of life and
live forever." So God guarded the tree of life.(104)

If we take this story in its apparent meaning, according to the
interpretation of the masses, it is indeed extraordinary. The intelligence
cannot accept it, affirm it, or imagine it; for such arrangements, such
details, such speeches and reproaches are far from being those of an
intelligent man, how much less of the Divinity--that Divinity Who has
organized this infinite universe in the most perfect form, and its
innumerable inhabitants with absolute system, strength and perfection.

We must reflect a little: if the literal meaning of this story were
attributed to a wise man, certainly all would logically deny that this
arrangement, this invention, could have emanated from an intelligent
being. Therefore, this story of Adam and Eve who ate from the tree, and
their expulsion from Paradise, must be thought of simply as a symbol. It
contains divine mysteries and universal meanings, and it is capable of
marvelous explanations. Only those who are initiated into mysteries, and
those who are near the Court of the All-Powerful, are aware of these
secrets. Hence these verses of the Bible have numerous meanings.

We will explain one of them, and we will say: Adam signifies the heavenly
spirit of Adam, and Eve His human soul. For in some passages in the Holy
Books where women are mentioned, they represent the soul of man. The tree
of good and evil signifies the human world; for the spiritual and divine
world is purely good and absolutely luminous, but in the human world light
and darkness, good and evil, exist as opposite conditions.

The meaning of the serpent is attachment to the human world. This
attachment of the spirit to the human world led the soul and spirit of
Adam from the world of freedom to the world of bondage and caused Him to
turn from the Kingdom of Unity to the human world. When the soul and
spirit of Adam entered the human world, He came out from the paradise of
freedom and fell into the world of bondage. From the height of purity and
absolute goodness, He entered into the world of good and evil.

The tree of life is the highest degree of the world of existence: the
position of the Word of God, and the supreme Manifestatio