Does anybody know whether the apple from the Tree of Knowledge the serpent gave to Eve and the apple Newton saw fall, were not one and the same?
"The Tree of Knowledge," Mother said to Satprem, "symbolizes this kind of knowledge -- no longer divine, you follow; the material knowledge that resulted from the sense of division is what began to spoil everything. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed with this. He used to tell me the same thing: that the mental evolutionary power is what led man to knowledge, a knowledge of division. Besides, it's a fact that with the sense of Good and Evil, man became conscious of himself. Naturally this spoiled everything and he couldn't stay; it was his own consciousness that exiled him from Paradise. He could no longer stay."
As Satprem sat listening to her, spellbound, Mother went on. "As for the serpent -- Theon always said that it was irised, meaning that it had all the colours of the prism -- it was not at all the spirit of evil; it was the power of evolution, evolution's force and power. And naturally enough, it's this evolutionary power that made them taste the fruit of knowledge." Which infuriated Jehovah. "Because it enabled man to become godlike
"Was man then banished by Jehovah or by his own consciousness?" asked a perplexed Satprem.
"Beg pardon! Theon always maintained that the 'Serpent' wasn't at all Satan, but the symbol of evolution -- Theon was wholly pro-evolution -- evolution in a spiral; and the earthly Paradise, on the contrary, was under the domination of Jehovah, the great Asura who claimed to be unique -- who wanted to be the only God. For Theon, there is no one and only God, there is the Unthinkable. It's not a 'God'.".....
Then Mother said in a slow thoughtful voice, "But this stems from his Jewish background, it seems to me.
"And for the Jews, it's the Unthinkable, whose name must not be uttered. It is uttered only once a year, on the Day of Atonement -- I think that's what it's called. The word is Yahveh, and should not be uttered. The prayers speak of 'Elohim,' and the Hebrew word Elohim is plural, meaning 'the invisible lords.' So, for Theon, there was no one and only God, but solely the Unthinkable Formless; and all the invisible beings who claimed to be one and only gods were Asuras."
"asuras/asura means titan,the dark lords of falsehood,demon"
The Hebrew word of four consonants, YHWH (HE IS THAT HE IS), representing the incommunicable name of God, is termed Tetragrammaton. The name is uttered by the Jews "only once a year," said Mother, "on the Day of Atonement." Called Yom Kippur, it winds up the ten days of Penitence which begin with the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah -- which can mean 'the birthday of the world' or "when mankind passes in judgment before the heavenly throne."
It is therefore not surprising that the Hebrew race excelled as a law-giver -- take Moses and his Ten 'Thou Shalt Nots'! Although for the Cabala the role of man on earth is "to renew the unimpeded flow of Divine Love," the watchword of exoteric Judaism is rather Justice. God, in it, is basically depicted as the Judge of mankind, and not its Lover as in Hinduism. Perhaps it was also against this sense of severity that Christ rebelled?
Christ? He brings us back to Mother and Theon. She said in a laughing voice, "He used to call Christ, 'that young man'!"
Vast as was Max Theon's reservoir of knowledge yet he knew God only as the Master of man; I doubt he had any conception of God as man's 'infinite Lover' as said Sri Aurobindo. "Theon had no idea of the path of bhakti(devotion), none whatsoever," said Mother. "The idea of surrender to the Divine was absolutely alien to him. Yet he did have the idea of the Divine Presence, here in the heart centre, of the immanent Divine, and of union with That. And he said that it was by uniting with That and letting That transform the being that one could attain this divine creation and the earth's transformation
"If thy heart is troubled within thee, if for long seasons thou makest no progress, if thy strength faint and repine, remember always the eternal word of our Lover and Master, "I will free thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve"
SRI AUROBINDO
