About “The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”
(lecture)

The scheme for studying the structure of the Absolute* shows, among other things, as if windows, doors, gates leading to “other worlds”; the main one of them leads to the Abode of the Creator. It is this “door” that Jesus called the Sun of God^* because of its most tender and subtlest shining, which resembles the light of a giant morning sun. Through it we can enter the Abode of the Creator if we have learned and mastered everything required for this.

Also on this scheme one can see that the souls are conceived by the Creator in paradise, though they cannot be called human souls yet but rather a kind of embryos which will be incarnated first in vegetal and animal bodies. (This truth is reflected in the biblical story about Eden).

Some souls, incarnating and evolving in the world of matter thanks to the freedom of will that they were given (for the purpose of better development of the Evolutionary Process) — preserve their purity from the filth of negative emotions.

Others get “attached” to material objects including their own bodies. These attachments give rise to egocentrism and hostility toward other creatures, considering them rivals with whom one has to compete for possession of food, luxury, and objects of sexual lust. Some people even assume the right to kill animals for the sake of satisfaction of their gluttony.

Such a choice between good and evil can be represented schematically as a fork, like that on a branch of a tree. The choice of the way of evil is what Bible calls the Fall of Man.

God continues offering each soul an opportunity to make a choice in ethically important situations: to act for the sake of oneself and detriment of others — or to sacrifice something of oneself for the sake of others. That is, to do evil — or good.

In this way each soul draws a graph of its development — many branchings where one always has to choose only one direction. It is from this picture that the image of tree originates.

As a result of moving along these trajectories of choice, some souls come to the Abode of the Creator, others — to hell, which they have chosen.

… There is another interpretation of the story about the tree of knowledge of good and evil — it is also correct and supplements the first one.

The error of people consisted in forgetting that God controls everything that enters our lives; and in that respect good and evil that come to us are equal. For they both are manifestations of pedagogical measures of our loving and wise Parent. Therefore, we should regard everything as a blessing coming from Him.

So, when evil comes to us we should try to see the intention of God behind it. And having realized it, having discovered its reason in ourselves, we have to strive to improve.

One can react in a wrong way by trying, for example, to revenge oneself upon the offender having forgotten about the Master of our destinies — God.

Or sometimes in some originally primitive or degraded religious movements in order to explain the roots of evil, people create a “rival” to God who is almost equal to Him. They call him Satan, Lucifer, and by other names. Such primitive religious conceptions can appear when people reduce Boundless Universal God to a flying old man riding a cloud…

… Correct understanding in the situations of encounters with evil is extremely important! There is a mechanism of self-transformation that consists in the ATTUNEMENT of the consciousness to the state of a certain object.

If we attune to the beauty of the rising sun in the quiet tender morning or to the singing of morning birds, then we fill ourselves with subtlety and harmony of nature!

If we seek the Creator and try to attune to Him — we approach Him. And He helps us in this!

If we fix our indriyas of the consciousness at some embodied or unembodied filth, we automatically attune to its hellish state and become similar to it by our emotional status. And if we leave the body before we have improved, then we will go to hell along with it…

This is why Jesus Christ taught not to revenge oneself, not to damn the offenders, but to forgive them sincerely and feel compassion for them. And not to demand back what we were bereft of — it is better to give to the robber even more than he wants to take from us — but not to exit from the state of love!

I was deceived and betrayed many times. I was even killed by such human filth and was painfully dying for many months. But I remained a Christian — I neither revenged myself, nor I attuned to them. I continued to seek the Union with God — and I won! Also I have helped many others in this and will help more!

You can do the same — and win as well!