Jordan Peterson On Self-Consciousness

 On Pages 45 and 46 of his book 12 RULES FOR LIFE AN ANTIDOTE TO CHAOS, Jordan Peterson describes how the first couple in the book of Genesis were awakened; the first couple were with God int he Garden of Eden where fruit trees were planted: "One of these was the Tree of Life; the other; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God then told Adam to have his fill of fruit, as he wished, but added that the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was forbidden. After that he created Eve as a partner to Adam.

Adam and Eve don't seem very conscious, at the beginning, when they are first placed in Paradise, and they are certainly not self-conscious. As the story insists, the original parents were naked, but not ashamed. Such phrasing implies first that it is perfectly natural and normal for people to be ashamed of their nakedness (otherwise nothing would have been said about its absence) and second there was something amiss, for better or worse, with our first parents."

My response: Jordan likely knows what that Tree of Life stands for, but for me it symbolizes heaven, pure goodness and it is the primary tree that grows from the soil of Heaven that they live in, the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve are pure angels, purely good, they are pure children of light, eating from that permitted Tree of Life, and are naked but unaware of it and not embarrassed by their nakedness. They also are obeying God. Heaven is like an unchanging realm of pure Order or Yang, and the followers of God in that Garden of Eden are perfectly good, perfectly loving, pure, of pure good will, but their will are not free wills.

When that Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is made available to them, forbidden but accessible, should they choose to eat that fruit, then they can disobey, sin, become self-conscious, but then they have knowledge, known and experienced as suffering, mortal sinners, of the world beyond the Garden of Eden, of earth, of chaos, of hell, and then they are free and awake.

Jordan goes on to describe the serpent that tempts our first parents as symbolic of chaos, or evil, sneaking into heaven, and introducing corruption and death into what is beautiful but unchanging. Evil may well be evil, but is it ultimately a blessing at least in the sense that it brings change, needed change? I think so but do not know so.