Esoteric Evolution - 24

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life

Allegorical story

The Bible texts

Eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

The deeper connection with the physical, the earthly

The Tree of Life

The intervention of Yahweh-Elohim

The expulsion from Paradise

Sources

The eras of development of the Earth:

In this series about the esoteric aspects of evolution, we have not yet spoken about the two unusual trees in the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.What is their significance?

We have to realize that the story of Paradise gives us an allegorical picture.¹⁾ This means that here, in the form of a story, images and symbols are used, behind which deep secrets and events are hiding that are connected with human evolution.

With the statement that in Paradise, besides the presence of the serpent, there were two trees, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life, the Bible tells us something quite extraordinary. For it tells us that besides the good, the highest creative Godhead from whom the whole creation originated also created evil. And that this evil was placed close to the human being already in the very earliest times, in Paradise.

Read what Isaiah says in the Old Testament of the Bible: "I form light and create darkness; I make weal and create woe."²⁾ This reveals a truth that strikes us, because it clearly tells us that, in addition to light and goodness, God also brought us darkness and evil.

At the same time, the texts explain that this dark side evidently does not exist for nought, and that there has to be a reason why evil plays a role in human evolution.

The two special trees in Paradise are mentioned for the first time in Genesis 2:9. The Lord God created the human being and placed him in the garden He had built in the East, in Eden. The Bible tells us that all kinds of trees grew in that garden that looked attractive with their delicious fruits. Among them stood the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. They stood in the middle of the garden.

The Bible then says that the Lord God told the human being: "You may freely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." (Genesis 2:16-17)

As described in prior chapters,³⁾ in those early times human beings in Paradise still lived completely incorporated in the sphere of unity and proximity with the divine-spiritual world of origin. Everything was alive, harmonious, healthy, as well as immortal. Illness and death did not exist.

And yet, in that paradisal state there stood the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the fruits of which would make human beings mortal if they ate them. Why did that tree stand there, and why did Yahweh-Elohim forbid them to eat of its fruit?

To answer that question we connect with what was said in the previous chapter, The Consequences of the Fall into Sin. Yahweh-Elohim⁴⁾ wanted that human beings would also for a long time in the future remain reflections of divine beings and their cosmic wisdom. He knew that if human beings would eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would fall out of the unity with the divine world of origin, and instead of being immortal, would become mortal. He wanted to prevent that.

What does "eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Eviland its consequences" mean?

It is symbolic language to express that, as a result of the influence of Lucifer, human beings would be taken out of the sphere of immediate influence of the high spiritual world of wisdom and goodness.

In earthly existence they would have to go a way by which they would need to gain knowledge of the forces of good and evil, and learn to deal with them out of their own experience.

This meant that human beings now had to acquire the cosmic wisdom, in which they had formerly lived as a matter of course, by means of their own process of development on earth. Therefore, they had to reestablish the connection with the spiritual world of origin in a new way, but now out of freedom and I-consciousness.

As related in the previous chapter (23), this deeper connection with the physical body, and therefore also with the forces of evil, was necessary because human beings can only in that way become free - free on the one hand from the all-determining influences from the spiritual world of origin and, on the other hand, because the confrontation with, and the victory over the forces of evil, are the only way we can, as human beings, become conscious, free, and loving. That may sound like a contradiction. Yet, it is so.

Only if you develop your own insight into what is good and what is evil, and into what they bring about in yourself and others, do you "wake up;" in other words, you become conscious of how they work and what the consequences are. In this way, it becomes possible to decide for yourself how you want to think, feel, and act in certain situations. Thus, you arrive at your own choices and, through that consciousness and those choices, you develop the possibility to become a free and loving human being. In the divine world of origin, that was not possible.

In order to indicate that for the sake of that task human beings had to make the step to the physical-material world, the author of the Paradise story in Genesis brings up the picture of the seduction by the serpent - the serpent as the symbol for Lucifer. It makes clear that without the workings of Lucifer, human beings would not have been able to enter into that deeper connection with the earthly physical body and, through it, with the confrontation with good and evil. Lucifer's influence in the astral body is essential to become a free and autonomous human being on earth, and to develop there.

Thus, it becomes understandable why the serpent was in the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, why it addressed the woman (Genesis 3), listened to her, and seduced her by saying that by eating the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil she will not die. And through the serpent, Lucifer added that God (Yahweh-Elohim) knew that, when she and her husband ate of it, their eyes would be opened, and they would become equal to God⁵⁾ and would have knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:4-5)

The Bible relates that the woman then plucked fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, ate of them and gave some to her husband. He also ate them. At that moment their eyes were opened, and a lot happened.

God, Yahweh-Elohim, then calls them to account and shows them the consequences of their deed (Genesis 3:16-19). Because of the deeper connection with the physical-material world into which they will enter through Lucifer, they will no longer, just as before, receive everything bestowed on them as gifts from the divine-spiritual world of origin. But they will henceforth have to work hard on earth for their own daily existence.

Also, bringing forth progeny would change radically because, as a result of the fact that from the time of Lemuria, by the influence of Lucifer, physical bodies would become denser and firmer.

This caused giving birth to descendants to become painful and difficult, in contrast to the unconscious, painless generation of descendants in humanity's prior existence, when the androgynous human being was still one with the divine world and corporeality consisted of a much more spiritual, not yet physical substance.

Genesis 3:22 tells us that the Lord God, Yahweh-Elohim, realized that human beings, because they would gain knowledge of good and evil, would in a certain sense become equal to the gods, the high creative hierarchical beings. In order to prevent them from eating also of the fruits of the Tree of Life, he drove them out of Paradise.

Why did the Lord God want to prevent that? What is the story behind that?

We have seen that the intervention of Lucifer into the astral body was necessary so that human beings would be able to develop on earth as intended. What happened was - and it continues to our day - that by the influence of Lucifer the forces of desire and passion were working so strongly that they damaged the astral body which, as a result, declined in quality. This jeopardized also the etheric body. The etheric body, or life body, consists of a variety of life forces and is very closely connected with the astral body.

And also with the physical body. Influences in one body work through into the other body, and vice versa.

The luciferic influence on the forces of desire of the astral body threatened also to affect the etheric body and, through it, the physical body. The reality of this was shown in later times. As a result of this development, in the course of evolution illnesses appeared in humanity that spread more and more. The general state of health therefore declined. In addition, the increasing densification of the physical body resulted not only in illness and suffering, but also in death.

Human beings became mortal, just as God had predicted in Genesis 2:17.

Berthold Furtmeyr - The tree of death and of life, Salzburg Missal (15^th century)

The previous chapter (23) relates that, immediately after Lucifer penetrated into the astral body during Lemuria, Yahweh-Elohim intervened in the etheric body of the becoming human being.

This intervention meant that he loosened part of the etheric body from its strong connection with the astral and physical bodies. That loosened part was a very special part, for it was the part of the etheric body where cosmic wisdom lives. In other words, the highest creative etheric forces, the sound ether and the life ether, lived there.⁶⁾

Yahweh-Elohim now loosened part of these divine creative forces from the still developing etheric body of human beings and brought them into the spiritual world for protection. With this he averted the possibility that Lucifer, and under his influence also the human being, would get these high creative forces in their power and would misuse them for their own profit. That would have had disastrous consequences for the future of humanity.

By his intervention into the etheric body, Yahweh-Elohim saw to it that this high divine wisdom and its extraordinary creative powers were not pulled along in the fall into sin, but remained safe, secure, and pure in "the great mother lodge of humanity" in the spiritual world.

Giovanni di Pablo - Creation of the world and expulsion from Paradise (1445)

The foregoing is described in symbolic language in Genesis 3:22 in the Bible when the Lord God speaks about the Tree of Life. He says there, freely rendered: Now that by eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil the human being has become equal to us, it is necessary that he learns to handle this knowledge by trial and error.

In this uncertain state he has to be prevented from eating also of the fruit of the Tree of Life. If that happened, he would gain access to the cosmic wisdom of origin, and thus to its high creative forces.

As a human being who still has to find his way between good and evil on earth, he is not yet up to that, spiritually and morally.

Hence God, Yahweh-Elohim, denied him access to the Garden of Eden and placed an angel with a flaming sword before the entrance. Thus, the human being was expelled from Paradise while leaving a part of his higher being behind and was forced to go his way on the gradually densifying Earth.⁷⁾

With the secrets of the Tree of Life we have arrived at what we may call the mystery of creative life. The creative etheric life forces that reside in the Tree of Life are used by high divine beings, not only in these early times but also in ongoing processes on earth, to create new forms, and to maintain what was created.

To be able to understand human evolution at a deeper level it is necessary to get insight into how these high creative life forces work, especially because - once we will have further developed spiritually and morally - they will also be at our disposal as human beings.

We are therefore going to make a detour and in the coming five chapters will go more deeply into the properties and the creative working of these extraordinary etheric and life forces.

After Chapter 29 we will continue with the development of the I in the various bodies during Lemuria and Atlantis.

7. Seventh era

2. Hyperborea

6. Sixth era

5. Post-Atlantean era

4. Atlantis

Rudolf Steiner, Esoteric Lessons 1904-1909, GA 266/1, lesson of December 7, 1909; also: Genesis, Secrets of Creation, GA 122.
Isaiah 45:7
18, 19 and subsequent chapters.
As shown in his lectures on Genesis, Secrets of Creation, according to Rudolf Steiner the correct translation of Hebrew Elohim in the Old Testament is not God, but Yahweh-Elohim. This means that Yahweh-Elohim is not God the Father who is part of the Trinity, but that he is one of the Exousiai, the Spirits of Form, the creative beings of the second hierarchy.
"God" here means "the Gods," in other words, the high creative heavenly hierarchies.
Rudolf Steiner, Zur Geschichte und aus den Inhalten der erkenntniskultischen Abteilung der esoterischen Schule 1904-1914, GA 265, lecture of May 21, 1907; and Exoteric Lessons 1904-1909, GA 266/1, lesson of December 7. 1909; and The Gospel of St. Luke, GA 114, lecture of September 21, 1909.
Emil Bock, Genesis. Creation and the Patriarchs.

For English translations of Rudolf Steiner's works see www.rsarchive.org.

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Translated by Philip Mees