tree of life

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.

75:4.4Ev­ery time the Gar­den pair had par­taken of the fruit of the tree of life, they had been warned by the arch­an­gel cus­to­dian to re­frain from yield­ing to the sug­ges­tions of Cali­gas­tia to com­bine good and evil. They had been thus ad­mon­ished: “In the day that you com­min­gle good and evil, you shall surely be­come as the mor­tals of the realm; you shall surely die.”

75:7.62. The Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter of Uran­tia, be­ing also per­son­al­ized in the simil­i­tude of the mor­tal flesh of this world, were fur­ther de­pen­dent on the main­te­nance of a dual cir­cu­la­tory sys­tem, the one de­rived from their phys­i­cal na­tures, the other from the super­en­ergy stored in the fruit of the tree of life. Al­ways had the arch­an­gel cus­to­dian ad­mon­ished Adam and Eve that de­fault of trust would cul­mi­nate in degra­da­tion of sta­tus, and ac­cess to this source of en­ergy was de­nied them sub­se­quent to their de­fault.

66:4.13These an­ti­do­tal com­ple­ments of the Sa­ta­nia life cur­rents were de­rived from the fruit of the tree of life, a shrub of Eden­tia which was sent to Uran­tia by the Most Highs of Nor­la­ti­adek at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival. In the days of Dala­ma­tia this tree grew in the cen­tral court­yard of the tem­ple of the un­seen Fa­ther, and it was the fruit of the tree of life that en­abled the ma­te­rial and oth­er­wise mor­tal be­ings of the Prince’s staff to live on in­def­i­nitely as long as they had ac­cess to it.

66:4.14While of no value to the evo­lu­tion­ary races, this super­sus­te­nance was quite suf­fi­cient to con­fer con­tin­u­ous life upon the Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred and also upon the one hun­dred mod­i­fied An­don­ites who were as­so­ci­ated with them.

77:2.7It will be re­called that the one hun­dred An­don­ite germ plasm con­trib­u­tors were in turn made pos­ses­sors of the or­ganic com­ple­ment of the tree of life so that the Sa­ta­nia life cur­rents like­wise in­vested their bod­ies. The forty-four mod­i­fied An­don­ites who fol­lowed the staff into re­bel­lion also mated among them­selves and made a great con­tri­bu­tion to the bet­ter strains of the Nod­ite peo­ple.

67:3.4Dur­ing the times of this strug­gle the loy­al­ists dwelt in an un­walled and poorly pro­tected set­tle­ment a few miles to the east of Dala­ma­tia, but their dwellings were guarded day and night by the alert and ever-watch­ful loyal mid­way crea­tures, and they had pos­ses­sion of the price­less tree of life.

67:3.5Upon the out­break of re­bel­lion, loyal cheru­bim and ser­a­phim, with the aid of three faith­ful mid­way­ers, as­sumed the cus­tody of the tree of life and per­mit­ted only the forty loy­al­ists of the staff and their as­so­ci­ated mod­i­fied mor­tals to par­take of the fruit and leaves of this en­ergy plant. There were fifty-six of these mod­i­fied An­don­ite as­so­ciates of the staff, six­teen of the An­don­ite at­ten­dants of the dis­loyal staff re­fus­ing to go into re­bel­lion with their mas­ters.

85:2.4Ideas about tree spir­its var­ied greatly among dif­fer­ent tribes and races. Some trees were in­dwelt by kindly spir­its; oth­ers har­bored the de­cep­tive and cruel. The Finns be­lieved that most trees were oc­cu­pied by kind spir­its. The Swiss long mis­trusted the trees, be­liev­ing they con­tained tricky spir­its. The in­hab­i­tants of In­dia and east­ern Rus­sia re­gard the tree spir­its as be­ing cruel. The Patag­o­ni­ans still wor­ship trees, as did the early Semites. Long af­ter the He­brews ceased tree wor­ship, they con­tin­ued to ven­er­ate their var­i­ous de­i­ties in the groves. Ex­cept in China, there once ex­isted a uni­ver­sal cult of the tree of life.

93:2.6Though Ma­chi­venta lived af­ter the man­ner of the men of the realm, he never mar­ried, nor could he have left off­spring on earth. His phys­i­cal body, while re­sem­bling that of the hu­man male, was in re­al­ity on the or­der of those es­pe­cially con­structed bod­ies used by the one hun­dred ma­te­ri­al­ized mem­bers of Prince Cali­gas­tia’s staff ex­cept that it did not carry the life plasm of any hu­man race. Nor was there avail­able on Uran­tia the tree of life. Had Ma­chi­venta re­mained for any long pe­riod on earth, his phys­i­cal mech­a­nism would have grad­u­ally de­te­ri­o­rated; as it was, he ter­mi­nated his be­stowal mis­sion in ninety-four years long be­fore his ma­te­rial body had be­gun to dis­in­te­grate.

73:3.2The com­mit­tee al­most unan­i­mously fa­vored the third se­lec­tion. This site was cho­sen, and two years were oc­cu­pied in trans­fer­ring the world’s cul­tural head­quar­ters, in­clud­ing the tree of life, to this Med­i­ter­ra­nean penin­sula. All but a sin­gle group of the penin­sula dwellers peace­ably va­cated when Van and his com­pany ar­rived.