#thechristmessage

Hence, in order to induce the soul to enter fully into its body consciousness—that the soul might learn to master the body consciousness and later to lift it up into the consciousness of its Father in Heaven, and at the same time give opportunity for the Love side of the soul’s nature to unfold and for it 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 the soul in the physical form to taste of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil that grew in the middle of its body—that is, in its feeling or love nature, the outer reflection of the soul state or Garden of Eden.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

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

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

Thus the outer mind of the soul and the intuitional side of the soul dwelt together after that in separate human forms in the Garden of Eden, or in their purified soul consciousness, and they were naked and unashamed; for they were pure and “knew” not each other as yet in their bodies, their consciousness still being largely centered in the Soul realm.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

Thus was Eve (meaning life-giving, enlivened, quickened) or Love born into the world, and manifested as womb-man—as separate from Adam (the earth or ground from which all are born)-man, the basis or original type of the soul. In other words, woman became the quickened phase of the awakened human soul, and afterward, being the sensitive, intuitional side of human nature, she represented the soul in human form; while man, being only the reasoning and practical side of human nature, represented the mind in human form.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

But the love side of its soul nature was not yet among these qualities, for it had not yet been quickened, and it was now necessary that it come forth and manifest in order that the Sons of God might continue Their work of the soul’s redemption. So Jehovah God caused to be born in the soul’s heart (opened the heart—symbolized by taking out a rib—so love could come forth) a new realization of its relation both to its fellow souls as a brother and to its Father in Heaven; a realization that its Father’s Love within its heart was its true life, and that that life was sacred and must be fostered and lifted up within it and within all His creations, thus cooperating with the Sons of God in Their Divine mission.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

Also remember that in an unawakened soul the Higher Self does not dwell in the soul, and is not known to the mind, but overshadows both; while in a reborn and purified soul It dwells in the soul, and from there directs all the activities of and is consciously served by the human mind.

You know that today a purified or regenerate soul is risen in consciousness above sex, and thereby again becomes as the Gods, even though its outer organism is of male or female gender. But a purified soul has won to its regenerate state only by learning that sin does not have in it the light of Truth, and only after tasting of all the fruits of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and thereby learning through much suffering what sin and evil are NOT. It is then and then only that the world, the flesh, and the devil no longer interest or can hold such a soul; for after gaining such knowledge, it longs to become One with the source of Light and Truth, One with its Creator—God, the Impersonal Life.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

We have now seen the newly created “living souls” established in the garden of Eden and given the command of the fruits of what trees they may eat. We must remember that reborn man (the new Adamic race), though now a living soul, still had a physical body, even as man has today; but sin not yet having entered its consciousness, the soul in its new soul state was only too happy to stay in its newly won home, and now concerned itself with the physical body only when necessary to satisfy its human needs—even as do all true disciples of Christ today.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)

And Jehovah God put man into the garden of Eden to dress and keep it. And he commanded man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shall not eat, for on the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

From this, Jehovah God evidently intended to show man—the soul’s physical expression—that knowledge of things not of god would lead only to separation from Him and to the death of his Spiritual knowing. But at the same time, He permitted him his free will. For He knew that the soul’s physical expression could learn only from experience; yet He told him in advance to what the way of experience—eating the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—would lead.

Joseph S. Benner The Impersonal Life Vol. 3: The Soul (The Garden of Eden)