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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
Godhood. This was the condition of Adam till he ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. His confession of ignorance at once threw him down on a lower plane of existence since the Sat-chit-ananda state does not admit ignorance within it. It was truly a fall from Godhood to wretchedness and misery. Adam felt that he was not God, and believed that by eating of the tree he would become intelligent and rise to the status of Gods. He mentally put himself much below the Gods, and, thus, ceased to be their companion. The abode of Gods was not the proper place for the residence of those who did not believe themselves to be Gods, and the genius of Adam's mind consequently threw him down below with the quickness of thought. This is why Adam discovered his nudity for the first time after the eating of the forbidden fruit, and felt afraid. The metamorphosis was not what he had expected it to be. He instinctively felt that some tremendous blunder had been made somewhere, bùt could not see where and in what it lay. Fear, the creature of ignorance and the cause and forerunner of Death, came into existence. Man in one stroke lost his Godhood and immortality, and became mortal.
We now see why it was that man was forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was not a whimsical or capricious order, but one, the disobedience to which, it was known, would have such dire consequences for the race. Why do you want to distinguish between good and evil ? What is there to distinguish at all? The self, or soul, alone is everlasting and eternal ; and it is the self which counts.
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