“She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of both of them were opened—" implying that before that they were closed "—and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."
That’s so interesting. Their eyes are opened, which indicated that they weren’t to begin with. Whatever God created to begin with was kind of blind, but not—blind in some strange way. They weren’t wandering around in the garden and bumping into trees. It was some sort of metaphysical blindness that’s been removed by whatever has just happened. Whatever’s just happened also made them realize that they were naked. Ok, so what sort of eye-opening is that? What does it mean to realize that you’re naked? It means to realize that you’re vulnerable. That’s what people discovered. It’s like, uh oh. We can be hurt.
So you’re a zebra in a herd of zebras, and there’s a bunch of lions around there laying on the grass. You don't care. Those are laying-down lions. Laying-down lions are no problem. It’s standing-up, hunting lions that are the problem. You're not smart enough to figure out that laying-down lions turn into standing-up, hunting lions, so you’re not, like, building a fort to keep the lions out. You’re just mindlessly eating grass. You’re not very awake, but that's not what happens to human beings. Human beings wake up, and they think, we’re vulnerable—permanently. It’s never going away. It’s the recognition of that eternal vulnerability.
What happens? The first thing they do is clothe themselves. Well, what happens when you're naked, and when you need protecting from the world? You're all wearing clothes. Why? Well, we’ve been doing that for a very, very long period of time. It’s tens of thousands of years, at minimum. In fact, you can track, more or less, when clothing developed by doing DNA testing on the kind of lice that cling to clothes rather than hair. We have a pretty good idea of when clothing emerged, and of different types, as well. But the point is that they’re naked, and they think that’s not so good; we’re vulnerable. Their eyes are opened enough so that they become self-conscious, and they recognize their own vulnerability. The first thing they do—the first step of culture—is to protect themselves with something from the world. You protect yourself from the world, and from the prying eyes of other people.
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This is a book by Lynne Isbell: Why We See So Well. "From the temptation of Eve to the venomous murder of the mighty Thor, the serpent appears throughout time and cultures as a figure of mischief and misery. The worldwide prominence of snakes in religion, myth, and folklore underscores our deep connection to the serpent-but why, when so few of us have firsthand experience? The surprising answer, this book suggests, lies in the singular impact of snakes on primate evolution. Predation pressure from snakes, Lynne Isbell tells us, is ultimately responsible for superior vision and large brains of primates-and for a critical aspect of human evolution."
That was tested recently. Psychologists have known for a long time that people can learn to fear snakes, but they discovered in primates a set of neurons—Pulvinar neurons—which are specialized. "Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes." That's from 2013. So the snake definitely woke us up.
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Color vision as an adaptation to fruit eating in primates. It’s not by accident that women make themselves look like ripe fruit to be attractive to men, right? And that’s also not sociocultural in origin.
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"And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden."
That’s interesting. What's the implication? Prior to being woken up—prior to recognizing nakedness and vulnerability—there is no reason for man and woman to hide from God. Why are they hiding from God? They're naked and vulnerable. Ok, so think about this—think about this: Imagine that you have the capacity to live truthfully, courageously, and forthrightly. Just imagine that, and then imagine why you might not do that. How about fear and shame? How would that work? Well, let’s say that the idea of living forthrightly, truthfully, and courageously is analogous—given what we already know about these stories—to walking with God in the garden. What stops people from doing that? What stops people from hiding? Well, it’s their own recognition of their own inadequacies. They look at themselves, and they think, how in the world is a creature such as I, with everything that’s wrong with me, supposed to live properly in this world?
What do you hide from? Well, you go home, and you sit on your bed for five minutes and ask yourself what you have hidden from in your life. Man, you’ll have books of knowledge reveal themselves to you in your imagination. Well, why are you hiding? It’s no bloody wonder you're hiding. It’s no wonder that people hide. That's the thing that's so terrifying about this story. We woke up and we thought, oh my God, look at this place. There is some serious trouble here, and we’re in some serious trouble, and we’re not what we could be. And so we hide, and that's what the story says: people woke up, became self-conscious, recognized their own vulnerability, and that made them hide from manifesting their divine destiny. It’s like, yea. That’s exactly right.
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I love this part of the story. It’s so funny, and we could use a little humor at this point. "And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And Adam said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked." So, in case there was any doubt about that, that's why. "And God said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Did you eat of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that you should not eat?" This is where Adam shows himself in all his post-fall, heroic glory: "And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."
So that's man. Again, there's a modern feminist interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve that makes the claim that Eve was portrayed as the universal bad guy of humanity for disobeying God and eating the apple. It’s like, fair enough. It looks like she slipped up, and then she tempted her husband, and that makes her even worse—although, he was foolish enough to immediately eat, so it just means that she was a little more courageous than him and got there first.
It’s Adam who comes across as really one sad creature in this story, as far as I'm concerned. Look at what he manages in one sentence: First of all, it wasn’t him; it was the woman. Second, he even blames God! It wasn’t just the woman—and you gave her to me! "And she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." It’s like, hey, Adam’s all innocent—except now, not only is he naked, disobedient, cowardly, and ashamed, he’s also a snivelling, backbiting fink. He rats her out like the second he gets the opportunity, and then he blames God. That’s exactly right. You go online, and you read the commentary that men write about women when they're resentful and bitter about women. It’s so interesting. It’s like, it’s not me: it’s those bitches. It’s not me: it’s them—and not only that, but what a bloody world this is in which they exist. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing, and it is absolutely pathetic.
"And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat." Well, at least she has a bloody excuse. First of all, it’s a snake. We already found out that they're subtle. Second, it turns out that the damn snake is Satan himself, and he’s rather treacherous. So the fact that she got tangled up in his mess is, well, problematic, but it’s a hell of a lot better excuse than Adam has.
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"And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life"—and snakes, by the way, are lizards that lost their legs, just so you know—"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
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I love these pictures. They’re so smart. And again, strip the religious context from them and just look at them for a second. What do you see? You see the eternal mother holding her infant away from a snake. See it, down there? Crocodile, snake—everything predatory that's been after us for like 60 million years. The reason we’re here is because of that. That’s why it’s a sacred image.
This one I like even better. Down there there's something like the moon, and then there's a reptile down there that Eve’s stepping on. This is really old, and I showed you this before, but I think it’s so cool. She’s coming out of this thing that’s like a hole in the sky. It indicates the eternal recurrence of this figure. It’s an archetype. The potential out of which she is emerging is all musical instruments, back here. And so what the artist is representing is the great, patterned complexity of being, and the emergence of the protective mother from that background, protecting the infant, eternally, against predation. It’s like, how can that not be a holy image? If you don't think it’s a holy image, then there isn’t something wrong with the image: there's something wrong with the perceiver.
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"Unto the woman he said"—God’s just outlining the consequences of this, right now. It’s like, ok, well, now you’ve gone and done it: you’ve woken up. This is what's going to happen—"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
It doesn’t say he should. It says he will. And why "in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children?" Well, when you develop a brain that big, so that you can see, it’s not that easy to give birth anymore. And then you produce something that’s dependent beyond belief—that’s one of the things that you could say dooms you to precisely this. So that's Eve’s punishment for waking up. And Adam, "Because thou hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." What's that? It’s the invention of work.
"Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to three; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field."
It’s the invention of work. What do people do that animals don't? Work. What does work mean? It means you sacrifice the present for the future. Why do you do that? Because you know that you're vulnerable, and you're awake. From here on in, from this point, there's no return to unconscious paradise. I don't care how many problems you solved so that today’s ok. You’ve got a lot problems coming up, and no bloody matter how much you work, you're never going to work enough to solve them. All you're going to do from here on in is be terrified of the future, and that's the price of waking up. That’s the end of paradise, and that’s the beginning of history, and that’s how that story goes.
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"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living."
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"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them"—that's William Blake, by the way—"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:"
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"Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."
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One more thing, and then we’ll stop. Adam and Eve are tempted by the snake; they eat the fruit; they wake up; they realize they're naked; they realize that they’re vulnerable; they realize the future; they realize they're gonna die; they realize they’re gonna have to work; they realize the difficulty in conception, and the fall of humankind from unconscious paradise. Ok. That makes sense. What about the knowledge of good and evil? What in the world does that mean?
The Mesopotamians believed that human beings were made out of the blood of Kingu, who was the worst monster that Tiamat, the Goddess of chaos, could imagine and then produce. So their idea was that there as something deeply, deeply, deeply, demonically flawed about humanity. That's their conception, and it’s out of that same milieu that these stories emerge.
So what does opening your eyes and realizing your vulnerability have to do with the knowledge of good and evil? I thought about that. I really thought about that. I gotta tell you, I thought about that for like 20 years, because I knew there was something there that I could not put together. At the same time, I was reading things. I'm going to tell you something truly awful, and so if you need a trigger warning, you're getting one. Believe me, I do not give trigger warnings lightly. I'm going to tell you something you’ll never forget.
This is what Unit 731 used to do in China. It’s a Japanese unit during the 2nd World War. As far as I can tell, they did the most horrific things that were done to anyone during World War II, and that's really something. So this is what they did: They took their prisoners and put them in a position so that their arms would freeze solid. Then they would take them outside and pour hot water over their arms. And then they would repeat that until the flesh came off the bones. They were doing that to investigate the treatment of frostbite for soldiers. You can look up Unit 731 if you want to have nightmares. So that's Unit 731. That’s human beings. Someone thought that up, and then people did it. What's knowledge of good and evil? Here’s the key, man: You know you’re vulnerable. No other animal knows that. You know what hurts you, and now that you know what hurts you, you can figure out what hurts someone else. And as soon as you know what hurts someone else, and you can use that, you have the knowledge of good and evil.
Well, it’s a pretty good trick that the snake pulled, because it doesn't look like it’s exactly the sort of thing that we might have wanted if we had known the consequences. But as soon as a human being is self-conscious and aware of his own nakedness, then he has the capacity of evil, and that's introduced into the world right at that point.
Here's the rest of the story: So there's the snake, right, and you’re some tree-dwelling primate. The snake eats primates, and that sucks, so let’s watch out for the damn snakes. Then your brain grows, and you think, wait a minute. There’s not just snakes—there's where snake live. Why don't we just get the hell out of the tree, hunt down the snakes, and get rid of them? Those are sort of like potential snakes, and so the snake becomes potential snake. It’s the same circuit that you're using to do this thinking. You get rid of the damn snakes. It’s like Saint Patrick chasing them out of Ireland. No more snakes. Everything is paradise. It’s like, no, no, no. That’s not how it works, at all.
You’ve got human snakes. You’re a tribe, you’ve got tribal enemies, and you’ve got to defend yourself against the human snakes, right? Maybe your empire expands, and you get rid of all the human snakes. Then what happens? They start to grow and develop inside. You get rid of all the external enemies and make a big city, and all of a sudden there's enemies that pop up inside.
The snake isn’t just the snake in the garden, and the snake isn’t just the possible snake, and the snake isn’t just the snake that's your enemy. The snake is your friend, because your friend can betray you. And then it’s even worse than that, because you can betray you. So even if you get rid of all the outside snakes, you’ve got an inside snake, and God only knows what it’s up to.
That's why the bloody Christians associated the snake in the garden of Eden with Satan. It’s unbelievably brilliant, because you gotta think, what's the enemy? Well, it’s the snake, and fair enough. But, you know, that's good if you're a tree-dwelling primate. If you're a sophisticated human being with six million years of additional evolution, and you're really trying to solve the problem of what it is that's the great enemy of mankind…Well, it’s the human propensity for evil, right? That’s the figure of Satan. That’s what that figure means—just like there's a logos that’s the truth that speaks order out of chaos at the beginning of time, there’s an antithetical spirit—the hostile brother. That’s Cain to Abel, which we’ll talk about next week—that's doing exactly the opposite. It’s motivated by absolutely nothing but malevolence and the willingness to destroy, and it has every reason for doing so. That’s what’s revealed in the next story, in Cain and Abel: the first glimmerings of the antithetical spirit outside of this strange insistence by the Christian mystics, let’s say, on the identity between the snake in the garden of Eden and the author of all evil himself.
