'Yes,' they said, 'we shall tell you this. But since man takes nothing from himself, but only from the Lord, our words will come from Him, but still from us as if they were our own.' Then they said: 'A tree stands for a person, and its fruit for the goodness of his life. So the tree of life means a person living from God, that is, God living in a person. Since love and wisdom, and charity and faith, or good and truth, make up God's life in a person, these are meant by the tree of life, and this is the source of his everlasting life. The tree of life from which it was granted to eat (Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14) has a similar meaning.

[2] 'The tree of the knowledge of good and evil means a person believing that he owes his life to himself and not to God, and so the love and wisdom, charity and faith, that is, good and truth, a person has are his own and not God's. This belief is because he thinks and wills, speaks and acts, in all likeness and to all appearance as if from himself. It is because a person is persuaded by this belief that God has put Himself in him, or poured His Divinity into him, that the serpent said:

God knows that on the day when you have eaten of the fruit of that tree, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Gen. 3:5.

[3] 'Eating of those trees means receiving and making one's own. Eating of the tree of life means receiving everlasting life, and eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means receiving damnation. That too is why both of them, Adam and his wife, together with the serpent, were cursed. The serpent means the devil as regards self-love and pride in one's own intelligence. This love is the owner of that tree, and people who are proud as the result of that love are those trees.

'Those, therefore, who believe that Adam was wise and did good of himself, and that this was his pristine state, are making a gross error, since in fact Adam himself was cursed for this belief. For this is what eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means. It was then that he fell from his pristine state, which he owed to believing that he was wise and did good from God, and not at all from himself; for this is what eating of the tree of life means. It was only the Lord who, while He was in the world, was wise from Himself and did good from Himself, because from birth Divinity itself was in Him and was His. So by His own power He became the Redeemer and Saviour.'

[4] From both these points they drew the conclusion that the tree of life, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and eating of them mean that life for a person is having God in him, and then he enjoys heaven and everlasting life; but it is death for a person to be persuaded and believe that life for a person is not God, but himself, and he then finds hell and everlasting death, in other words, damnation.