| The
Creation of Man [ from The Holy Bible, The Book of Genesis] |
| "The Creation of Man," as told in the Book of Genesis, is an allegory about the creation and maturation of every human being. Interpreting it like a dream, it describes our development from being a fetus to being a child to being an adolescent to being an adult. Because it is profoundly familiar on an emotional level, people throughout history have believed it to be literally true. |
| "In the beginning...the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters." This passage expresses our pre-cognitive memory of being in the womb. At the dawn of perception all is without form and void. There is only a sense of life and movement as we float in amniotic fluid, the waters of the womb. |
| "And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." From the darkness of the womb we are born into the world of light. |
| "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being." The newborn takes its first breath and begins life as an independent being. |
| "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." Life in the Garden of Eden represents early childhood. All our needs are taken care of. We don't discriminate, dividing everything into what we think is good and what we think is bad. We can even be naked and not be ashamed. |
| "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." Eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil reflects learning about the world and the values of society. The innocence and wonder of early childhood are lost. Guilt and shame enter our lives. |
| Then Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden. She is cursed with the pain of childbirth and he must toil for his bread in the sweat of his brow. The burdens of adulthood are represented as the punishment for offending authority and becoming independent thinkers, typically the traits of human adolescence. |
| The powerful concept of Original Sin reflects our sense of lost innocence caused by the development of our ego and our discriminating intellect. Once we get to the age where we can separate everything into that which is good and that which is evil, that which we like and that which we dislike, that which we are for and that which we are against, the Eden of our childhood is lost and repressed, guarded, in the dream-like imagery of the Old Testament, by "the cherubim, and a flaming sword." |
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