Swedenborgian Community Interfaith Podcast

Many scriptural reflections on “the fall of humanity” tend to point to Genesis’ serpent and Adam and Eve’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but interestingly, the Christian-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg pointed to a chapter before these events when he describes what he thought was the true beginning of our movement into feelings of separateness and isolation from God. Indeed, living up to his title as the Buddha of the North (given to him by the famous D.T. Suzuki), Swedenborg wrote that it was our desire for autonomy and sense of ownership that drove us further away from being led in deep connection with Divinity, as well as a truly Divine sense of autonomy. I find it further interesting that this start to our “fall” occurs right before Adam starts naming the things in creation: cognitively labeling and dividing things is another key attribute of what many lines of Buddhism describe as part and parcel with our vain need for disconnected self-direction, which keeps us from our Buddhahood and re