“In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say ‘Aha’, that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say ‘Aha’ to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.”

GOD had a garden, and he needed a gardener, so he created Adam. Adam was bored. He was doing the job, but it was no fun. God saw that he needed entertainment, and so he created the animals to entertain him. All Adam could think of to do with the animals was to give them names.

Then God said, “Well, here goes.” So he put Adam to sleep and pulled Eve out of his rib-, she was “the cutletsized consort.” Then the trouble started and we were in the game.

Male and female, life and death, good and evil: problems of opposites.

The trouble that began was the discovery of duality. That was the Fall. There was no real recognition of duality before this. How did duality take place in this garden? There were two trees that were forbidden trees. “You can eat the fruit of any tree in the place but not of this or of that one.” Tree number one was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of duality. Tree num- ber two was the tree of the knowledge of eternal life.

The serpent-who represents lunar consciousness and life in the field of time, where there are pairs of opposites-saw Eve and thought she must be bored, as most wives are when their husbands are working all the time. When that happens, there’s always a friend that appears, and this one was a little serpent.

The serpent said: “Look there’s an interesting thing about this tree. Don’t mind that old buzzard-have a taste and you will really know something.” Well, she had a taste, and when Adam came along, she said, “Look, this is okay.”

So, he had a taste, and then God, who walked in the cool of the evening in the Garden, saw the pair of them wearing fig leaves, and he said, “What’s this? You’ve got leaves on.”

The female activates the male; then he is the action, and she has to take the results.

They told God what happened, and that ran the usual way: the man blamed the woman, and the woman blamed the snake. God then cursed a lot of them in increasing degrees. The man got it fairly easy: all he had to do was to work and sweat. The woman had to bring forth children in pain, and the serpent had to crawl on his belly for the rest of his life. God kicked them out of the Garden and put at the gate two cheru- bim, door guardians, with a flaming sword between them. And that’s the explanation of why we’re out here in the cold and not in the Garden.

Christianity and Judaism are religions of exile: Man was thrown out of the Garden.

It seems impossible today, but people actually believed all that until as recently as half a century or so ago: clergymen, philosophers, government officers and all. Today we know and know right well-that there never was anything of the kind: no Garden of Eden anywhere on this earth, no time when the serpent could talk, no prehistoric “Fall,” no exclusion from the Garden, no universal Flood, no Noah’s Ark. The entire history on which our leading Occidental religions have been founded is an anthology of fictions. But these fictions of a type that have had-curiously enough-a universal vogue as the founding legends of other religions, too. Their counterparts have turned up everywhere and yet, there never was such a garden, serpent, tree, or deluge.

The serpent was the wise one in the Garden. Adam and Eve got thrown into the field of time.

“…in the beginning this universe was but the Self in the form of a man. He looked around and saw nothing but himself….

“He was just as large as a man and a woman embracing. This Self then divided himself in two parts; and with that, there was a master and mistress. -Therefore this body, by itself, as the sage Yajnavalkya declares, is like half of a split pea. And that is why, indeed, this space is filled by a woman.-He united with her, and from that mankind arose….

“She became a cow, he was a bull and united with her; and from that cattle arose. She became a mare, he a stallion; she an ass, he a donkey and united with her; and from that solid-hoofed animals arose. She became a goat, he a buck; she became a sheep, he a ram and united with her; and from that goats and sheep arose. -Thus he poured forth all pairing things, down to the ants.” -Brihadaranyaka Upanishad