The Symbolic Story of Adam and Eve

According to the esoteric teachings, the human race began eighteen and a half million years ago. At that time, early animal-man had reached a relatively high state of development. He had a powerful, co-ordinated physical body, a sentient feeling or astral body, and the germ of mind which could later form the nucleus of a mental body. The energy of mind, the fifth principle, was brought to this planet from Venus by the ‘Lords of the Flame’, and an enormous stimulus to evolution resulted. The human egos (souls), waiting on their own soul plane for just such an opportunity, then took incarnation in animal-man for the first time. The individualization of animal-man became a fact and the human story began. The biblical story of Adam and Eve is a symbolic presentation of this historical event.

This related to the biblical ‘fall’ of man from ‘paradise’. Essentially, each of us is a soul in incarnation, a solar angel. On the soul plane, each soul is an individualized part of one Oversoul; the separation we experience on the personality level is an illusion – the great heresy. Nevertheless, each one of us is uniquely individual and contributes that individuality to the Whole. The ‘fall’ refers to the decision of the human souls to come into incarnation for the first time, eighteen and a half million years ago, to leave ‘paradise’ – the soul’s natural state of perfection – for the experience of ‘the fruit of the tree of knowledge’. This is a great sacrifice for the human soul, for it involves severe limitation of its sphere of expression. The sacrifice is willingly undertaken, however, to carry further the Plan of Evolution of the Logos of the planet. Thus the ‘fall’ is really symbolic.

Without such a ‘fall’ there would be no evolution. The soul knows no suffering. Suffering is the result of the inability of the personality to correctly or fully express the nature of the soul, which is entirely self-less, knowing no sense of separation. Evolution (as it pertains to man) is the process whereby the personality, functioning under the principle of desire, is gradually brought through suffering to renounce the blocks or impediments to the soul’s expression on the physical plane. The way to end all suffering, the Buddha taught, is to end desire. This is the path of renunciation, which takes one to liberation from desire – the pull of matter – and to total at-one-ment with the divine source.

Excerpts: MAITREYA’S MISSION ~ Volume One… by Benjamin Creme.

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