The Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil
The Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil
Acacia, The Immortal Soul, & Re-Inheriting Eden
What if I told you that humanity was never truly banished from the Garden of Eden? That Eden was always ours, that we are the true inheritors of all its fruits, and that what Moses wrote in Genesis regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil is perhaps the oldest recorded story of humanity’s introduction to psychedelics, and the original basis from which they were first withheld from us? If so, then perhaps the manipulative use of religious texts to control the masses has far deeper roots and farther-reaching ramifications than previously even considered…ramifications that reach heights of disenfranchising us from our own inherent divinity?
Going on a “Trip” to Mt. Sinai & Learning How to Live and Love
In Exodus – the first book of the Bible – recounting his journey up Mt. Sinai, Moses describes a bush ablaze with fire. In its presence, he hears a voice emanating from the fiery wonder of nature telling him that the ground upon which he stood was holy and to remove his sandals out of respect. The account goes on to describe a glorious vision of the Divine and eventually results in Moses’ recording of The Ten Commandments. To paraphrase this section of Exodus, Moses has a divine experience in the presence of this burning bush and when he comes back down from this mountaintop, he has a message for his people: “Hey, guys, our way of life needs to change! We need to stop killing and raping each other, stop stealing from one another and start respecting each other; we need to find harmony among us!”
What Moses wrote in Genesis regarding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil is perhaps the oldest recorded story of humanity’s introduction to psychedelics.
For the longest time I always considered this story to be pure fiction and during my tenure at Melbourne School of Theology, I learned that theologians categorize this section of the Bible as a combination of anecdote and allegory, only confirming what I had previously thought. However, my perception began to radically shift after reading an article referencing and quoting the book The Miracles of Exodus by Colin Humphreys, a Cambridge University physicist.
He [Humphreys] then set out to explain another well-known miracle — the burning bush — that the Bible reports “did not burn up” as Moses heard God talking to him through it. While hiking in Israel, Humphreys happened to step on a volcanic vent.
“It nearly burned my shoe,” he said.
The part of the story that I had considered merely allegorical started to sound more like an intense psychedelic trip!
One of the most common bushes in the region is the acacia bush, says Humphreys, a bramble [a rough, tangled and/or prickly shrub] that is known for making good charcoal. If a vent happened to spew hot gasses under an acacia bush, he argues, it could have alighted and appeared to have burned without end.”
Having already learned that the Acacia Bush is enriched with the powerful psychedelic compound known as DMT (Dimethyltryptamine), upon discovering that this bush spoken of by Moses was most likely a shrub of Acacia, the part of the story that I had considered merely allegorical, started to sound more like an intense psychedelic trip! Furthermore, both the ancient Hebrews and the Egyptians considered the tree to be a symbol of the immortality of the soul.
As most anyone who has experienced a positive psychedelic experience – especially those of us who continue to use psychedelics for more than mere recreation – can attest, after a particularly potent psychedelic trip you walk away from the experience with a sense of heightened well-being. Often borne from this experience is a higher perspective along with a desire to find meaning in the art of cultivating joy. The concept of love becomes enriched with a previously unknown depth. They seek harmony within themselves, with other human beings, and with the Earth. In essence, they walk away from these experiences feeling as though we, as a people, need to stop harming and killing one another, and start respecting each other more and discovering a more harmonious way of doing life with one another. Sound familiar?
Photo of Collin Humpreys
“Spirit & Energy”
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be transferred/transformed from one form to another but can be neither created nor destroyed.
Our bodies are huge masses of atoms, and we can generate electricity. When the nervous system sends “signals” to the brain, that is electrical energy.
Researchers are becoming increasingly convinced that DMT is released in small amounts during REM sleep and in massive quantities at the point of death by the Pineal Gland.
If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, then the energy generated by our nervous systems must go on existing in a new form after the point of physical death, and it’s at this point that “spirituality” and “science” begin to appear as though they are opposite sides of the same coin!
DMT and The Pineal Gland
Researchers, though divided on the subject, are becoming increasingly convinced that DMT is released in small amounts during REM sleep and in massive quantities at the point of death by the Pineal Gland – considered to be the source of all ethereal and out-of-body experiences associated with those who survive a near-death experience. This, in conjunction with ever-growing anecdotal evidence from those in the psychedelic community, seems to be emerging as a “tapestry” of perhaps why ancient civilizations associated Acacia with the Immortality of the Soul!
Eden: Banished? Or Then, Now, and Always its True Inheritors?
In the book of Genesis, God said to Adam and Eve “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For when you eat from it, you will certainly die”. After being told that all other vegetation is free for them to consume, and not long after this, the Devil, it is written, tells Eve “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
In eating the fruit from the tree, Eve makes a decision that exposes her lack of belief in her true Divine nature. This is perhaps the very moment when humanity began to believe that mortality was their true nature, lending way to fear of death, an inability to conceive of any kind of ongoing existence after death, and finally, the core of the separation wound that still lives on to disconnect us from the divine, each other, and ourselves– and the falling away from symbiosis with nature – in other words, our “banishment” from Eden, or simply, the Earth itself!
Reclaiming Our Divinity
Where does this leave us? Gaining traction among experts and psychedelic users is an understanding that a deliberate approach to psychedelic use in expanding our consciousness seems to be allowing us to rediscover a long-lost truth: that we are Divine Beings merely experiencing humanity as just one form of our energetic evolution – the journey of the immortal soul towards perfection!
In returning to a symbiotic relationship with nature, is it so far beyond the realm of possibility to think that we might discover we never truly left Eden? That we just forsook her as we laboured under the deception that we were cut off because we ate the fruit that kept us connected to Divinity Itself and became condemned by this deception that eating that fruit would obtain us a piece of divinity rather than keep us aware of our being extensions of Divine Source itself? That we were always miraculous, always powerful, always gods, and never merely mortal at all?
Related: Learning Love and Acceptance through the Spirit Molecule
Akiane
Gallery
Recent Articles
