However, because of the sleep of forgetfulness of his divine nature into which Jehovah God caused Adam to fall and which had reflected itself in Eve, and taking their life in Eden now much as a matter of course, they were both becoming more and more conscious of their bodies and their sensations. It can readily be seen that they could not obtain dominion over their animal qualities or over their physical sensations and their resulting thoughts, without their consciousness becoming focused in their bodies and learning to know all of their qualities, sensations and thoughts for just what they were, what their purpose and what their possibilities.

Realize that before man’s birth into his soul consciousness, while he was an ordinary human soul, man’s consciousness was largely that of the backward races of today—if there were no sin in the world, and that therefore man then made little attempt to control his passional nature, but lived much as do the animals, all physical processes functioning without his giving to them more than a passing thought.

Hence in order to induce man to enter fully into his body consciousness, that he might learn to master it and later to lift it up into the consciousness of his Father-in-Heaven, and at the same time give opportunity for the love side of his nature to unfold and for him to learn through suffering the fullest meaning of Love and Life, and thus to aid the will and reasoning side,—Jehovah God caused desire, in the form of the Serpent, to lure man to taste of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that grew in the midst of his body—that is, in his feeling or love nature, the outer reflection of the soul state or Garden of Eden.