Genesis

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Shankaram Siva Shankaram

 

Here is an excellant conversation on meaning of Genesis by Paramahamsa

Yogananda and his Guru.

 

Regards

 

-mani 6.28.2000

 

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Autobiography of a Yogi

(The Original 1946 First Edition)

 

by Paramhansa Yogananda

 

CHAPTER: 16

 

" The Adam and Eve story is incomprehensible to me! " I observed with

considerable heat one day in my early struggles with the allegory. " Why did

God punish not only the guilty pair, but also the innocent unborn

generations? "

 

Master was more amused by my vehemence than my ignorance. " Genesis is deeply

symbolic, and cannot be grasped by a literal interpretation, " he explained.

" Its 'tree of life' is the human body. The spinal cord is like an upturned

tree, with man's hair as its roots, and afferent and efferent nerves as

branches. The tree of the nervous system bears many enjoyable fruits, or

sensations of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. In these, man may

rightfully indulge; but he was forbidden the experience of sex, the 'apple'

at the center of the bodily garden.14

 

" The 'serpent' represents the coiled-up spinal energy which stimulates the

sex nerves. 'Adam' is reason, and 'Eve' is feeling. When the emotion or

Eve-consciousness in any human being is overpowered by the sex impulse, his

reason or Adam also succumbs.15

 

" God created the human species by materializing the bodies of man and woman

through the force of His will; He endowed the new species with the power to

create children in a similar 'immaculate' or divine manner.16 Because His

manifestation in the individualized soul had hitherto been limited to

animals, instinct-bound and lacking the potentialities of full reason, God

made the first human bodies, symbolically called Adam and Eve. To these, for

advantageous upward evolution, He transferred the souls or divine essence of

two animals.17 In Adam or man, reason predominated; in Eve or woman, feeling

was ascendant. Thus was expressed the duality or polarity which underlies

the phenomenal worlds. Reason and feeling remain in a heaven of cooperative

joy so long as the human mind is not tricked by the serpentine energy of

animal propensities.

 

" The human body was therefore not solely a result of evolution from beasts,

but was produced by an act of special creation by God. The animal forms were

too crude to express full divinity; the human being was uniquely given a

tremendous mental capacity—the 'thousand-petaled lotus' of the brain—as well

as acutely awakened occult centers in the spine.

 

" God, or the Divine Consciousness present within the first created pair,

counseled them to enjoy all human sensibilities, but not to put their

concentration on touch sensations.18 These were banned in order to avoid the

development of the sex organs, which would enmesh humanity in the inferior

animal method of propagation. The warning not to revive

subconsciously-present bestial memories was not heeded. Resuming the way of

brute procreation, Adam and Eve fell from the state of heavenly joy natural

to the original perfect man.

 

" Knowledge of 'good and evil' refers to the cosmic dualistic compulsion.

Falling under the sway of maya through misuse of his feeling and reason, or

Eve—and Adam—consciousness, man relinquishes his right to enter the heavenly

garden of divine self-sufficiency.19 The personal responsibility of every

human being is to restore his 'parents' or dual nature to a unified harmony

or Eden. "

 

As Sri Yukteswar ended his discourse, I glanced with new respect at the

pages of Genesis.

 

" Dear Master,' I said, " for the first time I feel a proper filial obligation

toward Adam and Eve! "

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