Your points:

1. Right, not unity, but union (Creator/creature, master/slave, etc.); therefore bhakti, with its bond of love and surrender on the part of the creature – which can lead to a state of unity (advaita) once Knowlege or realization has dawn. No?

2. a) “with us” is not plural, I believe; it is first person singular when the subject is God, a king, or someone in authority, speaking for the law or from a chair of authority, which is impersonal. If you have the K.J. version of the Bible, it reads: “man is become as one of us, to know good and evil” Gen., 3, 22.

b) Peter: “Before Adam was ‘one with’ God, (i.e. before he knew right from wrong), what was he?”. My answer: ‘one of us’ sounds rather sarcastic (No?). Yes, man knew duality by his ‘individualistic act, but was not like God; this cannot be the meaning of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). With the New Testament, things are no longer oppressive, based on fear and ‘the law’: Jesus brings liberation through knowledge, love, and compassion, and man is seen as theomorphic (capable of assuming his divinity in Oneness). Cf. St. John’s Gospel and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

3. a) The serpent “presaging Jesus”? At one time Jesus said: “you must be wise as serpents”, meaning to discriminate between acts (and people), but, other than that, the serpent is a temptress and the representation of evil (egotism?), and henceforth there will be enmity between it and mankind (“it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen., 3,15).

b) Peter: “what’s wrong with having the knowledge of right and wrong?”. Answer: ‘Seeing’ duality everywhere, precisely – the pairs of opposites – and thus becoming judgmental and stuck in that limited, constricted vision, the consequence being the loss of Paradise in union with God (Isvara). “You will be like gods” was the promise of the serpent. Since the world is one of multiplicity, and thus polarity, can God be ignorant of that – duality can be said to be ‘inaugurated’ by Isvara (heavens, hells, etc.)? Right and wrong belong to thinking (vritti/s), as you well know, and it can be a problem (unless you just observe it). Did the couple know that they were immortal? I don’t know, and probably they did not know either.

4. a) Peter: “by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, does Adam know the world outside god or does he know the very mind of god?”

The answer must be, I think, that the Fall is due to that act (of “disobedience”) consisting in the couple desiring to “be like gods”, as the serpent promised, to go rampant in the world and enjoy its fruits for themselves, thus becoming alienated from the ‘mind of God’; clearly, a lover of God does not look outside Him for his/her contentment. So, I think Schuon is correct in his interpretation.

b) Peter: “Schuon says: ‘The worst consequence for them was ‘the closing of the “eye of the Heart” or the loss of the inward Revelation…”

Answer: “realizing their nakedness and vulnerability” is a sign of that loss of innocence and the resultant guilt I referred to above, for they have severed their intimate link with their creator. What you say (realizing one’s helplessness) would be a valid interpretation in a different context, not in that of the Garden. Mundane people, in general, are quite content with the way they are; they don’t feel vulnerable unless they see their jobs threatened… and no one thinks that he/she may have an accident, etc. The Bible says that ‘fear of God is the beginning of wisdom’, but ordinary folk, in the West at least, are the very definition of ‘ego-centredness’; they are nominal believers, if at all.

As regards to making the transition from the secular approach to the spiritual one, this is very easy: of course language, content and relationship with me (from client-service provider to student-teacher) change but people who want to enter a student-teacher relationship know and welcome that. In the second scenario people (my students) know already a lot about the need for a good foundation because they are familiar with the basic concepts introduced in Tattva Bodha. So if we edge in some work on the personality they consider it as karma yoga, i.e. they know that it is not self-serving but is one of the many stepping stones on their way to freedom (moksha).

1. I did not mean to imply that the Garden symbolises a state of unity, so apologies if that was the impression that came across. After all there was God and Adam, there was Adam and Eve, there was Adam and the creatures over which he had ‘dominion’. I wonder, therefore, if the Adam myth of Genesis is primarily to encourage obedience to god, i.e. a bhakti parable.

2. By eating of the tree of knowledge Adam and Eve become like God (and whoever else was with God) because God uses the plural when saying that, by eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, ‘he has become one with US’. Before Adam was ‘one with’ God, (i.e. before he knew right from wrong), what was he? And if he didn’t have eternal life, (something God didn’t want him to have, hence the banishment), then he too was going to die like the rest of the creatures. As you say, this ‘perfect’ Garden life might not have been so perfect after all.

3. The common interpretation of the serpent is of the bad guy. But I have read one view (way back in the mists of time, so I cannot quote the source) that points out that the serpent hanging from a tree presages Jesus hanging from a wooden cross. Jesus said: ‘I am the way and the life’. He seemed to be leading people towards life and not blocking it from them. After all, what’s wrong with having the knowledge of right and wrong, and what is wrong about knowing one’s immortality?

4. And finally I find myself a bit at odds with Shuon. He says: “they wanted to know and to taste outside of God the things of the outward world” and yet God says: “He has become one with us”. So, by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, does Adam know the world outside god or does he know the very mind of god? Also, in the next sentence, Shuon says: “The worst consequence for them was “the closing of the ‘eye of the Heart’ or the loss of the inward Revelation…” I find that difficult to square with their sudden realisation of their nakedness and vulnerability. Surely that is the opening of the eye of the mind. To one who is ignorant of the difference between good and evil, that ignorance is bliss – like the bliss of the ignorance of sleep. But on awakening to one’s helplessness, the only recourse is to ask god’s forgiveness and accept the consequences. (Further evidence that this might be a dvaitin text, reminding readers of their vulnerability, and of the power that god has).

A traditionalist or perennialist author, Frithjof Schuon, has written: “Both trees (of the knowledge of Good and Evil and of life), being in the centre of the earthly Paradise could be the same tree: the first symbolizing cosmogonic projection and the second reintegration and interiorization, along with the participative or unitive knowledge that interiorization demands” (Esoterism as Principle and as Way, p.85).

“The couple yielded to the temptation of ‘cosmic curiosity’; they wanted to know and to taste outside of God the things of the outward world. The worst consequence for them was “the closing of the ‘eye of the Heart’ or the loss of the inward Revelation, and so of the integrity of the Intellect, which brought with it the loss of the ‘state of grace’ and the corruption of the soul … instead of being contented with the simple, synthetic and symbolist vision of things… “

“This is the way of exile, suffering and death; all errors and all sins retrace the first transgression and lead to this same way which is incessantly renewed. Sin of the spirit or the will always reflects the first fault, whereas Religion or Wisdom on the contrary reflects the lost Paradise within that very world of dissonances that issued forth from the forbidden fruit” (pp. 88-89)