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"The Bible has been given to the Western World by the Recording Angels, who
give to each and all exactly what they need for their development.
—Max Heindel
Reference: Genesis Chapter 3
In connection with the study of Genesis, let us consider "the Fall," which is the backbone and sinew of popular Christianity. Had there been no "Fall," there would have been no need for the "plan of salvation."
When the Earth came out of chaos, it was at first in the dark red stage known as the Polarian Epoch. There humanity first evolved a dense body, not at all like our present vehicle, of course. When the condition of the Earth became fiery, as in the Hyperborean Epoch, the vital body was added and man became plant-like, that is to say, he had the same vehicles as our plants have today, and also similar consciousness, or, rather, unconsciousness, to that which we have in dreamless sleep when the dense and vital bodies are left upon the bed.
At that time, in the Hyperborean Epoch, the body of man was as an enormous gas bag, floating outside the fiery Earth, and it threw off plantlike spores, which then grew and were used by other incoming entities. At that time man was double-sexed, a hermaphrodite.
In the Lemurian Epoch, when the Earth had somewhat cooled and islands of crust had begun to form amid boiling seas, then also man's body had somewhat solidified and had become more like the body we see today. It was ape-like, a short trunk with enormous arms and limbs, the heels projecting backward and almost no head—at least the upper part of the head was nearly entirely wanting. Man lived in the atmosphere of steam which occultists call fire-fog, and had no lungs, but breathed by means of tubes. He had a bladder-like organ inside, which he inflated with heated air to help him leap enormous chasms when volcanic eruptions destroyed the land upon which he was living. From the back of his head there projected an organ which has now been drawn into the head and is called by anatomists the "pineal gland" or the "third eye," although it was never an eye, but a localized organ of feeling. The body was then devoid of feeling, but when man came too close to a volcanic crater, the heat was registered by this organ to warn him away before his body was destroyed.
At that time the body had already so far solidified that it was impossible for man to continue to propagate by spores, and it was necessary that he should evolve an organ of thought, a brain. The creative force which we now use to build railways, steamships, etc., in the outer world, was then used inwardly for the building of the organs. Like all forces it was positive and negative. One pole was turned upward to build the brain, leaving the other pole available for the creation of another body. Thus man was no longer a complete creative unit. Each possessed only half the creative force, and it was therefore necessary for him to seek his complement outside himself.
Man was not at that time the wide-a-wake conscious being he is at present. He was more awake in the Spiritual World than in the physical; he hardly saw his body and was not conscious of the act of propagation. The Bible statement that Jehovah put man to sleep when he was to bring forth is correct. There was no pain nor trouble connected with childbirth; nor (because of man's exceedingly dim consciousness of his physical surroundings) did he know anything of the loss of his dense body by death, or of his installment in a new dense vehicle at birth.
But at that time, "their eyes had not been opened," and the human beings of that age were unconscious of each other in the Physical World, though well aware and awake in the Spiritual World. Therefore under the guidance of the Angels, who were particularly fitted to help them in respect to propagation, they were herded together in great temples at certain times of the year when the lines of force running between the planets were propitious, and there the creative act was performed as a religious sacrifice. And when this primal man Adam came into the intimate sexual contact with the woman, the spirit for the moment pierced the flesh and "Adam knew (or became aware of) his wife"; he sensed her physically. It is this which the Bible has recorded, using that chaste expression all through its leaves, for we are told that "Elkanah knew his wife Hannah, and she bore Samuel." Even in the New Testament where the angel comes to Mary telling her that she is to be the mother of the Savior, she answers, "How shall that be possible seeing I know not a man?"
Sin is action contrary to law, and while humanity propagated under the guidance of the Angels, who understood the cosmic lines of force, parturition was painless, as it it now among wild animals, which propagate only at the proper time of the year under the guidance of the group spirit. But when man acting on the advice of certain spirits (the Lucifers) half-way between humanity and the Angels, undertook to create at any and all times of the year, regardless of cosmic lines of force, that sin, or "eating of the tree of knowledge," caused the painful parturition which the Lord God proclaimed to Eve. He did not curse her, but simply stated what would be the result of the ignorant and indiscriminate use of the creative function.
The Lucifers were a part of the humanity of the Moon Period; they are the stragglers of the life wave of the Angels, too far advanced to take a dense physical body, yet they needed an "inner" organ for the acquisition of knowledge. Moreover, they could work through a physical brain, which the Angels or Jehovah could not.
These spirits entered the spinal cord and brain and spoke to the woman, whose Imagination had been aroused by the training of the Lemurian Race. As her consciousness was principally internal, a picture-consciousness of them was received by her, and she saw them as serpents, for they had entered her brain by the serpentine spinal cord.
The training of the woman included watching the perilous feats and fights of the men in developing will, in which fights bodies were necessarily often killed. The dim consciousness of something unusual set the imagination of the woman to wondering why she saw these strange things. She was conscious of the spirits of those who had lost their bodies, but her imperfect sense of the Physical World failed to reveal these friends whose dense bodies had been destroyed.
The Lucifers solved the problem for her by "opening her eyes." They revealed to her her own body and that of the man and taught her how, together, they might conquer death by creating new bodies. Thus death could not touch them for they, like Jehovah, could create at will.
Lucifer opened the eyes of woman. She sought the help of man and opened his eyes. Thus, in a real though dim way, they first "knew" or became aware of one another and also of the Physical World. They became conscious of death and pain and by this knowledge, they learned to differentiate between the inner man and the outer garment he wears and renews each time it is necessary to take his next step in evolution. They ceased to be automatons and became free thinking beings at the cost of freedom from pain, sickness, and death.
That the interpretation, of the eating of the fruit as a symbol of the generative act is not a far-fetched idea, is shown by the declaration of Jehovah that they will die and that the woman will bear her children in pain and suffering. He knew that as man's attention had now been called to his physical garment, he would become aware of its loss by death. He also knew that man had not yet wisdom to bridle his passion and regulate sexual intercourse by the positions of the planets, therefore pain in childbirth must follow his ignorant abuse of the function.
It has always been a sore puzzle to Bible commentators what connection there could possibly be between the eating of fruit and the bearing of children, but if we understand that the eating of the fruit is symbolical of the generative act whereby man becomes "like God" inasmuch as he "knows" his kind and is thus able to generate new beings, the solution is easy.
In the latter part of the Lemurian Epoch when man arrogated to himself the prerogative of performing the generative act when he pleased, it was his then- powerful will that enabled him to do so. By "eating of the tree of knowledge" at any and all times he was able to create a new body whenever he lost an old vehicle.
We usually think of death as something to be dreaded. Had man also "eaten of the tree of life," had he learned the secret of how to perpetually vitalize his body, there would have been a worse condition. We know that our bodies are not perfect today and in those ancient days they were exceedingly primitive. Therefore the anxiety of the creative Hierarchies lest man "eat of the tree of life also," and become capable of renewing his vital body, was well founded. Had he done so he would have been immortal indeed, but would never have been able to progress. The evolution of the Ego depends upon its vehicles and if it could not get new and improving ones by death and birth, there would be stagnation. It is an occult maxim that the oftener we die the better we are able to live, for every birth gives us a new chance.
We have seen that brain-knowledge, with its concomitant selfishness, was bought by man at the cost of the power to create from himself alone. He bought his free will at the cost of pain and death; but when man learns to use his intellect for the good of humanity, he will gain spiritual power over life and in addition, will be guided by an innate knowledge as much higher than the present brain-consciousness as that is higher than the lowest animal consciousness.
The fall into generation was necessary to build the brain, but that is, at best, only an indirect way of gaining knowledge and will be superseded by direct touch with the wisdom of Nature which man, without any cooperation, will then be able to use for the generation of new bodies. The larynx will again speak "the lost Word," the "creative Fiat," which, under the guidance of great Teachers, was used in ancient Lemuria in the creation of plants and animals.
Man will then be a creator in very truth. Not in the slow and toilsome manner of the present day, but by the use of the proper word or magical formula, will he be able to create a body.
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