Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise because they’ve eaten from the tree of knowledge, good, and evil. The Renaissance paintings all show lovely, perfect Adams and Eves – with navels – tempted by a snake to eat an apple.
Except, it was never an apple. Apples did not exist in Mesopotamia at the time, and the Hebrew text just mentions “fruit”. We don’t know what they ate, and if you’re a good old Spock-brained atheist like me, you argue there wasn’t even an Adam and Eve to eat a non-existent apple. But let’s stick to the myth, shall we? The snake tempted eve with a fruit, Eve got enlightened, gave some Golden Delicious to Adam, and Adam saw the light. God saw all of this, and boy, was He pissed! Kicked the two original sinners out of paradise because they ate an apple, and Satan, disguised as the snake, sits there giggling like Muttley.
Then we sing a hymn, close off with prayer, please meet at the hall for coffee and cookies after the service, we go back home for Sunday lunch and falling asleep in front of the cricket, safe in the knowledge that the metaphorical tree of knowledge, good, and evil was just a good ol’ fashioned round of recreational sex. Eve masturbated, liked it, and got Adam to lay her like a Christmas table. An explanation we all stumbled upon in our teens and shyly acknowledged by blushing Sunday school teachers.
Life goes on. Work, eat, sleep, shit, repeat. The occasional death in the family to zing your nerves into reminding you that you are mortal. The occasional World Cup win to make you feel something. Sex is joyless, the December holidays stressful, the kids are disrespectful, but the dogs love you, at least. You’ve lost the innocence of childhood. The dreams of “one day” are now just a bond you can’t pay and a car with a blown head gasket. Happiness is a cold beer and watching Lord of the Indiana Bond movies you know by heart. You can’t remember the last time you read a book.
Then, one day, something happens. A friend convinces you to go on a ‘retreat’. At this retreat, a skinny woman in colourful robes and a sigil on her forehead gives you a vile-tasting Amazonian brew to drink. You expect the walls to move and to smell colours for a bit while talking shit while listening to Pink Floyd, going back to that time you dropped acid at a nightclub when you were 23.
Next thing you know, you experience consciousness itself, then you become consciousness, except there is no you. When awareness returns, you are in a dark place with noise and sounds no earthly creature can make, music no human instrument can produce. It’s not just scary, it’s downright terrifying. But then you are on a river-shore, and there’s a boat with a ferryman to take you down the River Styx. You’ve crossed over. And this place feels eerily familiar. You’ve been here before. You’ve been here plenty of times before. Millions of times, actually. But the Hive Mothers tell you “no, it’s not time yet” and through a time dilation which your friends will never understand, you go through a nine-month long rebirthing process and emerge in the other side in a sweat-soaked Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, lying in a puddle of your own puke while a skinny woman with a sigil on her forehead sings Peruvian Icaros.
And now you know. Now you have knowledge. You did not see good and evil; you experienced both sides, and it was you. It was all you. You did not just peek behind the veil; you threw open the curtain, stepped through, explored, and were told to go home when you overstayed your welcome.
Back to work, back to the bond you can’t pay, back to the car with the blown head gasket. Back to the mundane life, but you can never return to paradise again. Paradise was not knowing. Ignorance was tolerable and boring. But you’ve seen the other side. Nobody will ever believe you except the people who were with you when the skinny woman with a sigil on her forehead smiled knowingly and gave you a cup to drink.
Adam and Eve did not eat an apple. They ate a fucking mushroom.
And nothing was ever the same again.
