Mystic Echoes: The Garden of Eden

The non-dual vision of the biblical story starts in first pages of Genesis with a cosmic creation poem. After God creates heaven and earth, separating day from night and land from sea, and populating each realm with unique lifeforms, God declares it all to be very good. The temporal and spacial distinctions of the first six days become the lived experience of every creature - day vs night, light vs dark, air vs water, physical vs ethereal. These are the experiences of time and physicality. Within the limitations of our senses, this is how we initially see and experience reality. We perceive duality, separation, and divisions. But the story is going to help us see beyond those distinctions.

The creation story concludes on the seventh day, which is much different than the six prior days. The seventh day becomes a holy day of rest in which no distinctions are made. Both time and space become sacred in language that represents God sitting upon the throne of the cosmic temple. Everything made distinct in function is now held together in perfect union through its creator in a sabbath day with no end. This eternal holy temple motif will become the recurring symbol of heaven and earth united together - two realms that overlap and coexist in the same time and space.

"Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place?" - Isaiah 66:1

If we miss the temple symbolism in the first chapter of Genesis, the second chapter presents the temple in another way. The garden of Eden becomes a microcosm of the cosmic temple in which Adam and Eve are invited to live as "one body" in a sacred place where heaven and earth overlap. God tells them to "work and keep" the garden, which are the same Hebrew words used later to describe the role of the priests in the Jewish temple. The tree of life sits in the middle of the garden which is later represented in the temple by the branched lamps of the menorah. The whole garden is theirs to enjoy in the unmediated presence of God. The only thing forbidden is to eat from the tree of duality (good and evil) since God has already declared every created thing good. Who are we to then call anything evil?

In taking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden. Like the cherubim later set atop the ark of the covenant, two cherubim are placed at the entrance of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. In this exile, their awareness of the union of heaven and earth will become like a dream they vaguely remember, a dream which we now share.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." - 1 Cor. 13: 12

The journey back to the tree of life is not so much a quest to conquer evil, but instead a quest to rediscover what is ultimately true and to realize that evil is merely a shadow of reality. Like darkness, evil is a void in the absence of goodness and light. A void that we ourselves manifest into something that brings suffering to ourselves and to others when we fail to see, taste, and embody the goodness available to us in abundance.

In the New Testament, Jesus becomes the new Adam who represents a restored Eden. His primary message is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For those who have “eyes to see”, heaven and earth are reunited. In Jesus we see humanity and divinity existing in perfect union which was the purpose for true humanity all along as those who bear the image and likeness of God.

For the mystics, the return to Eden is not something to be experienced later. Instead, Eden represents the true nature of reality always available to us in the full, undivided experience of the present. In this eternally present moment, like Adam, we awaken to God breathing into our bodies the breath of life as we become more than the dust of the ground. The cherubim grant our return from exile as we ourselves become a microcosm of the temple where God rests and calls us good and holy.

"The world was all before them, where to choose their place of rest, and Providence their guide: they hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, through Eden took their solitary way." - John Milton, Paradise Lost