—It will now be apparent, in spite of such an interpretation by religious hierophants
who wished to place and keep woman in servility, that woman was not the cause of
the fall. That man fell from a state of Edenic purity into grosser conditions through
yielding to temptation is a tradition held by widely disseminated peoples. Eve
yielded, and partook of the Apple of the Tree of Good and Evil, because she was
promised it would bestow wisdom. This apple is the fruit of incarnated experience.
The soul, therefore, descended from its spiritual state to enter physical form, where it
must gain its daily bread by the sweat of its brow, because it was tempted by the
desire for wisdom, which could only be attained by experiences in form.
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and
live forever.
What is the tree of life? Immortality is life without end. Life and consciousness are
only possible in association with form. Therefore, immortal life depends upon the
ability of the soul to attract to itself such forms as will enable it successfully to adapt
itself to its environment; for life only expresses through form so long as there is
successful adaptation to the environment. Continuous adaptation to environment is
continuous life. And while the life of the physical body may undoubtedly be greatly
prolonged, the earth in time will reach a state when it will no longer support physical
life. Man can hope for lengthy life, but not for immortality, in the flesh. He must,
therefore, if self-conscious immortality is to be attained, develop the power to attract
about his soul a form of the substance of the plane whither the tides of the
evolutionary life wave carry him.
Nor will he tarry indefinitely in the astral; for the astral, like the physical, is subject to
changes that in time will make it unfit as his abode. Ultimately, he will be swept
along by forces that are as certain as is physical death, to realms above the astral, to
the spiritual realm; yes, later, to regions even above this.
But if he is to survive on the spiritual plane; that is, if he is to retain consciousness, he
must have the power to build himself a form of spiritual substance. Such a form can
retain, as modes of motion, all the past experiences of the soul, if points of contact are
provided by which the slower velocities of astral substances can transform their
energy into spiritual velocities. To carry the consciousness into spiritual realms,
vibratory rates must be set up of sufficient frequency that they will organize spiritual
substance into a form which will receive from the astral body, and retain, the states of
consciousness recorded there.
The rates of motion of common worldly thoughts, those of base desires, and those of
selfish interest, have too low a frequency to influence spiritual substance. The person
who has no higher thoughts and aspirations than these does not build a spiritual body.
If he ever gets a spiritual body, which he probably will, he will have to organize it by
noble aspirations, unselfish endeavor, and devoted love on the astral plane, after
physical death.
Individual survival depends upon the ability of the entity to adapt itself to
ever-changing environment. There is no such thing as rest in nature; there is an
eternal procession of creation and destruction of form. Continuous consciousness,
therefore, depends upon the ability continuously to adjust the internal relations to the
external relations. Conscious life consists of this adjustment, and if it is to be without
end, there is Immortality.
To accomplish such a progressive adaptation the soul is concerned with but two
factors: Love and Wisdom. These are the tools with which it works. They are equally
important and essential, and the successful performance of its task depends upon
their continuous application to an increasing range of material. And in this
application, quality is important as well as quantity.
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