Man described in Genesis was like an infant. An infant can’t tell where he/she ends and his/her mother begins. There is no sense of separation because there is no sense of self yet.

If a baby stayed like this all his life, we would surely say that he had something seriously wrong with him. In a like manner, it was absolutely necessary that man and woman as described in Genesis begin to develop a sense of self. And the result of developing an awareness of having a separate self and being an individual is inevitably a sense of separation and aloneness.  Our spiritual journey then is not to return to that unconscious, infantile state of unity with God, or even with our mothers, but to achieve a conscious unity with God and with each other as fully conscious beings.

God can also be thought of as the Creative Life Force that dwells in everything. God created us out of the Substance and Spirit of Itself; so in a sense, we are parts of God becoming increasingly aware of the whole of God.

My other thought on the so-called “fall of man” and “original sin” is that the original sin was to see ourselves as bad, guilty, inferior, or lacking in some way. In Genesis 3:10, it says, “I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.” This is an account of the formation of the human ego. The ego sees itself as alone and tiny in a vast universe with only itself to depend on, so it’s only natural for it to make us feel afraid. Then, being afraid, it does its best to try to protect us from the perceived danger.

The undifferentiated state in the Garden of Eden reminds me of Jill Bolte-Taylor’s account of when her left brain shut down during her stroke. She seemed to float out of her body and she felt expansive. She no longer felt separate from everything around her and, in fact, couldn’t even tell where she began and ended. She had no idea at the time how she would ever fit this enormity back into her tiny, little body again. (I once read a similar account of not knowing where one began and ended in the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.)

This sounds like a great experience, and certainly a very important one, but I think even Jill agrees that we also need our left brain if we are going to function. It seems to me that goal then is integration—an awareness of ourselves as finite beings in unity with the infinite from which we all came and will ultimately return.

This is the awareness Jesus had. In John 8:14, he says, “I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going.”