LOVERS.
I saw a blooming garden in a green valley, surrounded
by soft blue hills.
In the garden I saw a Man and a Woman naked and
beautiful. They loved each other and their Love was their
service to the Great Conception, a prayer and a sacrifice;
through It they communed with God, through It they
received the highest revelations; in Its light the deepest
truths came to them; the magic world opened its gate;
elves, undines, sylphs and gnomes came openly to them;
the three kingdoms of nature, the mineral, plant and
animal, and the four elements—fire, water, air and
earth—served them.
Through their Love they saw the mystery of the
world's equilibrium, and that they themselves were a
symbol and expression of this balance. Two triangles
united in them into a six-pointed star. Two magnets
melted into an ellipsis. They were two. The third was the
Unknown Future. The three made One.
I saw the woman looking out upon the world as
though enraptured with its beauty. And from the tree on
which ripened golden fruit I saw a serpent creep.
It whispered in the woman's ear, and I saw her
listening, smiling at first suspiciously, then with curiosity
which merged into joy. Then I saw her speak to the man. I
noticed that he seemed to admire only her and smiled
with an expression of joy and sympathy at all she told
him.
"This picture you see, is a picture of temptation and
fall", said the voice. "What constitutes the Fall? Do you
understand its nature?
"Life is so good", I said, "and the world so beautiful, and
this man and woman wanted to believe in the reality of
the world and of themselves. They wanted to forget
service and take from the world what it can give. So they
made a distinction between themselves and the world.
They said, "We are here, the world is there." And the
world separated from them and became hostile.
"Yes", said the Voice, this is true. "The everlasting
mistake with men is that they see the fall in love. But
Love is not a fall, it is a soaring above an abyss. And the
higher the flight, the more beautiful and alluring appears
the earth. But that wisdom, which crawls on earth, advises
belief in the earth and in the present. This is the
Temptation. And the man and woman yielded to it. They
dropped from the eternal realms and submitted to time
and death. The balance was disturbed. The fairyland was
closed upon them. The elves, undines, sylphs and gnomes
became invisible.
The Face of God ceased to reveal Itself to them, and all
things appeared upside down.
"This Fall, this first sin of man, repeats itself
perpetually, because man continues to believe in his
separateness and in the Present. And only by means of
great suffering can he liberate himself from the control of
time and return to Eternity—leave darkness and return to
Light."
