tree of life

What is meant by “the tree of life,” what by “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” and what by “eating” of them?

Lastchurch - The Eternal PurposeFrom Conjugial Love ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

A tree signifies man; and its fruit signifies the good of life. By the tree of life, therefore, is meant man living from God, or God living in man. And as love and wisdom, and charity and faith, or good and truth, make the life of God in man, these are meant by the tree of life, and from these man has life eternal. The like is signified by the tree of life of which it is given to eat, in Revelation 2:7:-  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.

And Revelation 22:2 & 14:-  In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.  Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

By the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is signified the man who believes that he lives of himself, and not from God; thus, that love and wisdom, charity and faith, that is, good and truth, are in man, his own, and not of God, believing this, because he thinks and wills, and speaks and acts in all similitude and appearance as if from himself. And because from this belief man persuades himself that God has imparted Himself or infused His Divine into him, therefore the serpent said:- God doth know that in the day that ye eat of the fruit of that tree your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5).

By eating of those trees is signified reception and appropriation; by eating of the tree of life, the reception of life eternal; and by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the reception of condemnation, and therefore also both Adam and his wife, together with the serpent, were accursed.

By the serpent is meant the devil as to the love of self and the pride of one’s own intelligence. This love is the possessor of that tree; and men who are in pride from this love are such trees. They therefore are in a monstrous error who believe that Adam was wise and did good from himself, and that this was his state of integrity; when in fact Adam was himself accursed on account of that belief, for this is signified by his eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Therefore he then fell from the state of integrity, in which he was by virtue of believing that he was wise and did good from God, and not at all from himself; for this is meant by eating of the tree of life.

The Lord alone when He was in the world was wise of Himself and did good from Himself; because the Divine Itself was in Him and was His by nativity. And therefore also by His own power He became the Redeemer and Saviour.

From all that had been said they formed this conclusion: That by the tree of life, and by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and by eating of them, is signified that life with man is God in him; and that then it is heaven to him and eternal life. And that death to man is the persuasion and belief that the life he has is not God, but himself; from which belief comes hell to him and eternal death, which is damnation.

(Conjugial Love 135)
March 23, 2017

Wishing To Be Wise From Self-intelligence

 Lastchurch - The Eternal PurposeFrom Apocalypse Explained ~ Emanuel Swedenborg
As “to eat” signifies to appropriate to oneself, it can be seen what is signified by:
Eating of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise (Rev. 2:7);
namely, to appropriate to oneself celestial life; also what is signified by “eating of the tree of knowledge” in Genesis:

Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden eating thou shalt eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of this thou shalt not eat, for in the day that thou shalt eat of it dying thou shalt die (2:16, 17).

The “tree of the knowledge (scientia) of good and evil” signifies the knowledge of natural things, through which it is not permitted to enter into the celestial and spiritual things which belong to heaven and the church, thus to enter from the natural man into the spiritual, which is the inverse way, and therefore does not lead to wisdom, but destroys it.

“Adam and his wife” mean the Most Ancient Church, which was a celestial church. Because the men of that church were in love to the Lord, they had Divine truths inscribed on them, and thence they knew from influx the corresponding things in the natural man, which are called knowledges [scientifica]; in a word, there was with them spiritual influx, that is, influx from the spiritual mind into the natural, and thus into the things that are in it, and what these were they saw by correspondence as in a mirror.

With them spiritual things were entirely distinct from natural things; spiritual things had their seat in their spiritual mind, and natural things in their natural mind, and thus they did not immerse what is spiritual in their natural mind, as spiritual-natural men are wont to do. For this reason, if they had consigned spiritual things to the natural memory, and had appropriated them to themselves in that way, that which was implanted with them would have perished, and they would have begun to reason about spiritual things from the natural man, and thus to form conclusions, which celestial men never do. This, moreover, would have been wishing to be wise from self-intelligence, and not from Divine intelligence, as before, and by this they would have extinguished all their celestial life, and they would have entertained natural ideas even about spiritual things. This, therefore, is what is signified by their “not eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and if they did eat, “dying they should die.”

The like is true of those who are in the Lord’s celestial kingdom as of these most ancient people meant by “Adam.” If these were to imbue the natural man and its memory with knowledges of spiritual truth and good, and should wish to be wise from these, they would become stupid, while yet they are the wisest of all in heaven.

(Apocalypse Explained 617:15,16)
March 27, 2017
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Do spiritual symbols mean anything today?

One example of a spiritual symbol is the image of a tree of life.  This is a universal symbol – appearing in ancient wisdom. We find it across cultures, religions and mythology. It turns up as the Yggdrasil (the world tree) of Norse religion, as part of the Jewish Kabbalah and as an Armenian religious symbol, to mention just a few examples.

What does the Tree of life mean to us now?

The Tree of Life appears in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, and also the last – the book of Revelation. At the beginning and the end. It’s almost as if it’s the framework into which the rest of the Bible fits.

We find the Tree of Life at the beginning at the centre of a garden and at the end at the centre of a holy city that descends from heaven. Swedenborg’s interpretation of this spiritual symbolism helps me relate to this; it reflects my changing relationship with the Divine; it is different at the beginning from what it becomes or grows into at the end.

For me, the bits in-between are a depiction of my spiritual wanderings and challenges to reach a spiritual maturity; a deeper connection with my experience of what is spiritual and a living relationship with the Divine Creator.

What is the beginning of our life like?

God has no beginning but we as his finite creations definitely do begin at a point in time. Our beginnings start in an experience of unity and connection, in the oneness of the Divine, yet it is necessary for us to develop into conscious independent individuals in order to choose to return to the forgotten, lost unity and connection of the One Life that creates, loves and sustains us.

This wonderful unity and connection with all that is living, I see in the beautiful Garden of Eden. This undoubtedly idyllic and innocent picture relates to what we experience in the infancy of our spiritual life. It is in the centre of this Garden where we discover or experience the Tree of Life.

Trees are powerful symbols of enduring, substantial mental and spiritual attitudes.
For me, the Tree of Life symbolises the perception that we are all united and connected by the Creative Love that gives life to all. To have this at the centre of one’s life is to perceive that the One Life can be experienced in many facets in other people and the world of nature; the One in the many.

What is the journey through life like?

Another tree appears in the Garden – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and this is very attractive to us. What sort of perception do we gain from eating its fruit? Its presence gives us a choice; do we decide what is good and true for ourselves or depend purely on it being revealed to us by God? We have minds of our own; surely we can decide for ourselves what we should do?

It is almost inevitable that we turn away from dependence on the Divine to choose and develop our own sense of identity, our ego. Life is then identified as being in the separate individual, myself, because that is what I experience. Therefore I no longer wish to be a part of the Garden of Eden experience which is about being receptive and dependant on Divine revelation.

So I embark on a long spiritual journey passing thought many trials and challenges in order to learn about myself and be self-sufficient.

A part of this quest for enlightenment is expressed in the following quotation from an article in Chrysalis magazine entitled Odyssey by David Garrett:

The loneliness of “coming to oneself” is acutely painful. At some point, in a mysterious way, the seeker dares to consider the possibility that the loneliness and the failure are because the quest was attempted entirely by his own efforts….For the first time, the seeker becomes experientially aware of an inner source that is deeper and more resourceful than the ego. As he/she turns to it, the feeling of being stuck recedes. The cold and barren world tingles and warms. The inner earth sprouts green shoots. Each time she/he consciously relates to the inner wise one, life quickens. When he /she ignores it, vitality ceases.

What is the end of my life like?

There is the possibility of discovering afresh the ‘tree of life’ perception in one’s spiritual maturity – but not in a garden. Now it is at the centre of a city. The Holy City at the end of the Bible is always descending from heaven, therefore I am once again open to Divine revelation coming from a God-given rationality, structured yet full of vitality and dynamism. This is an integration of all that has previously taken place in my experience and comes from heart, mind and service to others.

At the end of the journey one can re-discover what had been lost, and make one’s way back to the beginning to the Tree of Life – but it is different yet paradoxically the same. Perhaps what is to be discovered is always the same, eternal and enduring, but the change has taken place in oneself. This reminds me of the T.S. Eliot poem, Four Quartets, as follows;

We shall not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of the earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well….

Copyright 2010 Helen Brown