Thomas Troward's The Dore Lectures on Mental Science, Chapter Nine...The Story of Eden

Thomas Troward's The Dore Lectures on Mental Science,

Chapter Nine...The Story of Eden

Chapter 9 of Thomas Troward's The Dore Lectures on Mental Science, 'The Story of Eden,' offers a metaphysical and psychological interpretation of the biblical story, translating it into an allegory for the fall of man's consciousness into limitation and the origin of our limited mode of thinking.

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1. The Allegory of the Fall

Troward interprets the story of Eden as an account of the individual mind misusing its creative power.

• Man's Creation: Man was created to be the conscious, self-recognizing channel for the Divine Life, existing in a state of spontaneous harmony ("Eden").

• The "Fall" (The Inverted Thought): The act of taking the "fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" represents the individual's mind choosing to form a separate judgment about life, apart from the judgment of the Creative Spirit (the Great Affirmative from Chapter 7).

• Eve's Action: This is a metaphor for the subjective/intuitive mind taking precedence over the objective/reasoning mind. The subjective mind accepts a limiting suggestion (fear, doubt, limitation) as truth, which leads to the subsequent creation of undesirable conditions.

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2. The Cause of Death and Limitation

The consequence of this inverted mode of thinking is the introduction of limitation and death—not as a punishment imposed by an external God, but as the natural, deductive consequence of the mind's own action.

• The Creative Spirit's Thought: The Divine thought is always Life, Good, and Expansion.

• Man's Thought (The Inversion): Man's inverted thought introduces a conception of lack, suffering, and decay.

• The Result: Because thought is the only creative power, this difference of opinion—the individual's belief in limitation instead of the Spirit's affirmation of Life—naturally results in the experience of death and suffering.

As Troward notes, the core message is that death is not inherent in the essence of man's creation but supervened as the consequence of an inverted mode of thinking.

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3. The Bible as a Path of Correction

Troward posits that the entire story of the Bible, following the Eden narrative, is a prolonged effort to correct this difference of opinion between the individual and the Spirit of Life.

• The purpose is to lead man to adopt the Spirit's opinion (The Great Affirmative) as his own, thus reversing the inverted thinking that led to the "fall."

• By recognizing that the Creative Spirit's opinion is the truer one and aligning our thoughts accordingly, we begin the process of emancipation from sorrow, sickness, and death.

This chapter shifts the focus of the Eden story from a historical event to a psychological principle demonstrating how the individual mind’s freedom to choose its belief system is the source of its power and the explanation for its current limited experience.

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