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by God to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and from the Tree of Eternal Life. To prohibit anything is to provoke -- it is a simple psychology. God could have learned much from Sigmund Freud.
In the Garden of Eden where God lived, there were millions of trees. If he had not prohibited those two trees, I don't think that even by now we would have found them ... millions of trees with beautiful fruits. We would have still been chewing grass in the Garden of Eden just like the buffaloes. If anybody committed the sin it was God himself.
And why did he prohibit his own children from eating from the Tree of Knowledge? No father would do it. Every father wants his children to be as wise as possible. And why should a father prevent his own children from eating the fruit which will make them eternal, immortal. Every father would love -- even ordinary fathers on the earth would love their children to be immortals.
What kind of God was this? And if this is God -- who prevents his children from becoming wise, from becoming Socrates, and Gautam Buddha, and Lao Tzu, this is not a god worth having. If he has not died by himself, then somebody has to murder him. He has tortured humanity enough.
And strange is the fact that it was the Devil who persuaded Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge. He showed her why God was preventing them. He does not want anybody to be equal to him -- and you call this God compassionate? And you call this God love? The Devil was far more loving, far more compassionate! In fact, he showed man the way of wisdom, the way of immortality.
God is preventing his own children because he does not want them to be wise, he does not want them to be immortal. If they are immortal and wise then they will be equal to God, and he is afraid of their equality -- a very jealous God. In fact, the Old Testament declares it through God himself. God says, "I am a very jealous God." He certainly is. He was jealous of his own children. He is not even worthy to be called a father. If the Devil had not told Eve, "You have to eat these fruits, only then will you know in your innermost being that you are also gods ..."
As the story is, it
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