The Garden of Eden

73:6.1In the cen­ter of the Gar­den tem­ple Van planted the long-guarded tree of life, whose leaves were for the “heal­ing of the na­tions,” and whose fruit had so long sus­tained him on earth. Van well knew that Adam and Eve would also be de­pen­dent on this gift of Eden­tia for their life main­te­nance af­ter they once ap­peared on Uran­tia in ma­te­rial form.

73:6.2The Ma­te­rial Sons on the sys­tem cap­i­tals do not re­quire the tree of life for sus­te­nance. Only in the plan­e­tary reper­son­al­iza­tion are they de­pen­dent on this ad­junct to phys­i­cal im­mor­tal­ity.

73:6.3The “tree of the knowl­edge of good and evil” may be a fig­ure of speech, a sym­bolic des­ig­na­tion cov­er­ing a mul­ti­tude of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences, but the “tree of life” was not a myth; it was real and for a long time was pres­ent on Uran­tia. When the Most Highs of Eden­tia ap­proved the com­mis­sion of Cali­gas­tia as Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia and those of the one hun­dred Je­ru­sem cit­i­zens as his ad­min­is­tra­tive staff, they sent to the planet, by the Mel­chiz­e­deks, a shrub of Eden­tia, and this plant grew to be the tree of life on Uran­tia. This form of non­in­tel­li­gent life is na­tive to the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters spheres, be­ing also found on the head­quar­ters worlds of the lo­cal and super­uni­verses as well as on the Ha­vona spheres, but not on the sys­tem cap­i­tals.

73:6.4This super­plant stored up cer­tain space-en­er­gies which were an­ti­do­tal to the age-pro­duc­ing el­e­ments of an­i­mal ex­is­tence. The fruit of the tree of life was like a super­chem­i­cal stor­age bat­tery, mys­te­ri­ously re­leas­ing the life-ex­ten­sion force of the uni­verse when eaten. This form of sus­te­nance was wholly use­less to the or­di­nary evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings on Uran­tia, but specif­i­cally it was ser­vice­able to the one hun­dred ma­te­ri­al­ized mem­bers of Cali­gas­tia’s staff and to the one hun­dred mod­i­fied An­don­ites who had con­tributed of their life plasm to the Prince’s staff, and who, in re­turn, were made pos­ses­sors of that com­ple­ment of life which made it pos­si­ble for them to uti­lize the fruit of the tree of life for an in­def­i­nite ex­ten­sion of their oth­er­wise mor­tal ex­is­tence.

73:6.5Dur­ing the days of the Prince’s rule the tree was grow­ing from the earth in the cen­tral and cir­cu­lar court­yard of the Fa­ther’s tem­ple. Upon the out­break of the re­bel­lion it was re­grown from the cen­tral core by Van and his as­so­ciates in their tem­po­rary camp. This Eden­tia shrub was sub­se­quently taken to their high­land re­treat, where it served both Van and Amadon for more than one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years.

73:6.6When Van and his as­so­ciates made ready the Gar­den for Adam and Eve, they trans­planted the Eden­tia tree to the Gar­den of Eden, where, once again, it grew in a cen­tral, cir­cu­lar court­yard of an­other tem­ple to the Fa­ther. And Adam and Eve pe­ri­od­i­cally par­took of its fruit for the main­te­nance of their dual form of phys­i­cal life.

73:6.7When the plans of the Ma­te­rial Son went astray, Adam and his fam­ily were not per­mit­ted to carry the core of the tree away from the Gar­den. When the Nod­ites in­vaded Eden, they were told that they would be­come as “gods if they par­took of the fruit of the tree.” Much to their sur­prise they found it un­guarded. They ate freely of the fruit for years, but it did noth­ing for them; they were all ma­te­rial mor­tals of the realm; they lacked that en­dow­ment which acted as a com­ple­ment to the fruit of the tree. They be­came en­raged at their in­abil­ity to ben­e­fit from the tree of life, and in con­nec­tion with one of their in­ter­nal wars, the tem­ple and the tree were both de­stroyed by fire; only the stone wall stood un­til the Gar­den was sub­se­quently sub­merged. This was the sec­ond tem­ple of the Fa­ther to per­ish.

73:6.8And now must all flesh on Uran­tia take the nat­u­ral course of life and death. Adam, Eve, their chil­dren, and their chil­dren’s chil­dren, to­gether with their as­so­ciates, all per­ished in the course of time, thus be­com­ing sub­ject to the as­cen­sion scheme of the lo­cal uni­verse wherein man­sion world res­ur­rec­tion fol­lows ma­te­rial death.