Daily Meditation: Thursday, October 14, 1999

The myth of the original sin cannot be correctly …

10/14/1999

The myth of the original sin cannot be correctly interpreted unless we first understand that Adam and Eve represent not a man and a woman, but the masculine principle and the feminine principle, in other words spirit and matter. It is said that God made Adam, the masculine principle, in His own image. So God represented an ideal for Adam, which he had to try to attain. Then God took one of Adam's ribs to make Eve, the feminine principle. This means that Adam was an intermediary between Eve and God; he transmitted light and energy which she was not able to capture directly herself. But Eve sought so hard to attract Adam to her that he forgot the other centre - God; and so, by turning away from God, they both fell. And this is how this should be interpreted: all the misfortunes of humankind stem from their refusal to accept the hierarchy in the universe - God, the spirit, matter. When the spirit turns away from God to turn towards matter, the order in which one principle succeeds another is not respected, and downfall follows. The story of the original sin is therefore not the story of a woman called Eve, who seduced some poor man, Adam, with her scheming and plotting – and hard luck to those who find this story convenient because it allows them to claim that women are the root of all evil! It is a symbolic representation of the problems produced in every human being by an inversion of the order of the two principles.