Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/88

82 were from the Lord. But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was the idea of self as the origin of spiritual life, and that certainly was not from the Lord. They still saw this; it was not entirely obliterated from their consciousness. And God had said that not only should they not eat of it, not only ought they not to conceive of the soul's life as a thing of self, but they must not touch it, they must not even dream of such a thing, they must not for a moment come in contact with such an experience. For the consequence of so doing would be that they would die. All relapsing into self is spiritual death. It is not the decease of the body, nor the annihilation of the soul. It is not ceasing to think, will and act. It is the death of good—the death of genuine disinterested love; the lapsing into evil and falsity; the loss of all power to know, appreciate, live, or even comprehend the spiritual side of life, and God as its giver. This is to die in the spiritual sense.

But the serpent seemed to speak of natural death. He always speaks naturally. And it is of the nature of the sensual principle to lead us away from the true meaning of things, and make us satisfied to rest in mere appearances. So the serpent said to the woman, that is, the sensual element replied to the doubts of the better selfhood, "Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye