SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

1 86 TREE OF KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL.
yet this is the mystery of mysteries, the original mystery by
which we came to be born and to die. If we can here get a
clue to our birth and death, can we not thereby unravel secrets
by which we can surely prevent our death and rebirth, and
gain everlasting And life. surely there must be an explanation
for the words, Tree of life, and Tree of knowledge of good and
evil, cannot be mistaken in their real import, and these cannot
be identified with any earthly tree actually in existence. The
Tree here is clearly a metaphor signifying the soul s Ljrue
Being in freedom (mokshaj and its false life in Bhanda, the light
and shadow of our human existence. As bound up in the world
the sum of our existence consists in our knowledge of likes and
dislikes, of what conduces to our pleasure and what gives us
pain, and our memory of both, and as Doctor Bain would define
it, the sense of similarity and of difference and retentiveness.
That is to say, our human knowledge is built up from our very
birth, of a series of -acts and experiences which give us pleasure
or pain, or make us indifferent, and our sense of them, and
Desire and Will are also slowly built up. The greater the
pleasure we fancy a certain act or experience gives us, the
more do we desire its repetition or continuance; the greater the
pain we apprehend from an act, the more do we hate its
repetition or continuance. But it happens also the greater the
pleasure or the pain, the more prolonged its continuance,
oftener it is repeated, the pleasure itself palls and we grow
callous to the pain. Life may therefore be divided into a Aeries
of acts, or a sequence of them, one flowing from another, and
close on each, each yielding a certain result or experience or
fruit, be it
pleasure or pain, good or evil. And God s injunction
was that we should not eat the fruit of the knowledge of
good and evil or experience the pleasure or pain which will flow
from our acts of good and evil, in this tree of wordly life.
And one can ask, why
it is we shonld not seek the bent of
our inclination, why we should not secure the good in life, and
the pleasure and happiness thereof, and avoid the evil, and the
pain and suffering thereof, and the best knowledge that will