Spiritual Meaning of

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Gen 2:8-9

The people of the Golden Age, who formed the Most Ancient Church, were celestial. They were open in their heart life to all the influences that came to them from their Heavenly Father. They had no memory of the truth apart from their life. Their life was really their memory. Their life of love and faith came to them as a constant inflowing from above, and as their external mind acted in complete harmony with their internal mind, there was nothing in them to resist or act against the Divine in-flow of life. They were the love - people of long ago.

The state of love in which they lived - love to the Lord and to each other - is meant by Eden. The Eden of the Golden Age was therefore not a natural territory or tract of land, but a heavenly state of love, with the tranquillity and blessedness of soul that belong to and result from it. Of course the people who formed this church of the childhood of the race, had a local habitation in the world, and that natural place was what we know as the land of Canaan; but Eden was not a natural place, but a state of love. It was the kingdom of heaven in men's hearts - the church, as to love, in human lives. It was within and not outside.

There is no difficulty attending this thought of Eden if we keep in mind that the Lord in this story is telling us, not of the natural life of an individual, but of the spiritual life of a race. It is the history of the church - of the celestial church - that we are reading about in this story; of the church, not as an ecclesiastical organization, but as a state of love and faith in human hearts. This is the key to the right understanding of the subject. The church was in the most ancient people, and Eden was the love-side of it - the love that filled and animated their will. We have seen that in the man of the celestial church, the will and understanding were united. The man of that church had no memory knowledge - no understanding - no faith - no intelligence apart from the great love life of his will. He thought as he loved, and his thought life or intelligence was the form his love assumed in his understanding. Here we see the spiritual meaning of the garden planted eastward in Eden. The garden in Eden was the heavenly intelligence that was from and in the heavenly state of love denoted by Eden. Eden is one thing and the garden is quite another thing. We are told in the church writings that the celestial man, because he is in a state of supreme love to the Lord - a love that is from the Lord and directed to the Lord - comes into a state en rapport with the angels and is, as if he were one among them. " In this state all his thoughts and ideas of thoughts, and even his words and actions are open even from the Lord, and contain within them what is celestial and spiritual. "Such was the celestial man of the Edenic age. He was open to the Lord. His intelligence was from love. He was in the true order of his life. His intelligence came from within. It was the form of his love. This was the garden planted in Eden.

It is true that this intelligence was not of the external character that belongs to our idea of intelligence. It was not an intelligence formed from knowledge of external science; for the people of the Golden Age did not study matters of mere science. Their intelligence was the intelligence of love. They understood the deep things of the Divine life.

Remnants of this intelligence may be found today in the simple good people of the world. Their hearts are right; their love is pure and single; and while they lack much, and in many instances all the knowledge of external matters of science and philosophy, so highly prized by the man of the world, yet they have an inward intelligence that opens them to see and comprehend the very deepest things of the church. They are the babes of the kingdom of heaven to whom the Lord reveals the things that are hidden from the wise and prudent of the world. Such, only in a deeper sense, was the heavenly intelligence of the people of the Most Ancient Church. Their garden was planted in Eden.

Think of what is meant by the statement that the garden was planted eastward.

The east, as a spiritual quarter, stands, in the supreme sense, for the Lord. In Ezekiel we read: "He brought me to the gate, even the gate that looked the way of the east, and behold the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east." We are told in the church writings that it was because of this correspondence of the east to the Lord that there prevailed, in the representative Jewish Church, before the building of the temple, the holy custom of turning the face to the east when praying.

But the east not only represented the Lord; it also represented the reception of intelligence from Him. Here lies its meaning. The minds of the Adamic people were turned toward the Lord. He was in their love; and their love of Him formed and turned their thoughts toward Him. This is the true origin of orientation. Largely the internal has been lost and only the physical act remains; but among the people of the celestial church there was a real turning of their minds to the Lord and a real reception of intelligence from Him. He was the east they turned to; and light from Him was the intelligence that made their beautiful garden.

But this was not all. There were beautiful fruit-bearing spiritual trees in the garden. "And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree desirable to behold and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

The garden eastward in Eden being the heavenly intelligence of the man of the celestial church, the trees of the garden are the perceptions from that intelligence - perceptions of truth and good. Every tree desirable to behold! Don't we see that they were the perceptions of truth? The eye of the mind is the faculty of understanding - the intellectual seeing of the truth.

We must not think of these most ancient people as being without intellectual guidance. They possessed the very highest form of intelligence; and from it, in an internal way, saw the very deepest truths. But truth with them was not a spiritual plaything. It was a vital thing of life. They beheld it as a desirable tree to look upon because it was from good and led to good. "A tree good for food!" How easy to see that it was the perception of good!

Truth and goodness, as matters of perception, formed the very life of these people. They did not reason about truth; they perceived it. They did not reason about good; they perceive it. Open to the Lord and the heavenly influxes, they spiritually sensed what was true and good as we sense naturally the odors of flowers. They had no system of doctrine - all things came to them from within.

And the tree of life in the midst of the garden, was the highest of all their perceptions, the perception of the Lord as very Being, their very inmost life. They ate of the fruit of this tree - lived from the Lord's life - had a sensation of His life in the midst of all their intelligence. For this tree was in the midst of the garden. The Lord's life which is His love, they made central in all their willing, thinking and doing. This was the tree of life.

But while all this is true, yet in order that man may have freedom, he must be in the appearance that life is in him. He must never confirm that appearance as if it were true; but he must be held in it. This is what is meant by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was there in the garden, but to turn to it and seek to enter into heavenly things from self would result in spiritual death. Thus it was said: "In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die."