"The Rose and the Lily have been successfully engrafted. Let us now
begin the process of bearing the fruit thereof."

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 22 Jan 2004 13:19 PST

What is your question?

I suspect, from the subject line, that the question is 'what is the
fruit of the tree of life?'.  The answer would be difficult to figure
out for the following reasons, the primary being that there are
several 'tree of life' myths, from around the world.

In Judeo-descendent myths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), there were
two forbidden trees in Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
(which Adam and Eve ate from) and the Tree of Life (which they
didn't).  The fruit of the latter tree would likely have given
immortality (although that is a confusing concept, since there was no
Death in Eden before Adam and Eve 'knew' Death through consuming of
hte fruit of The Tree of Knowledge).  In the Kabalistic (i.e. mystic)
forms of Judaism, The Tree of Life is a diagramatic construct which
hides mysteries of the universe, and provides a pathway to the divine.

In the Norse myth of Yggdrasil, the World Tree (which is not precisley
a tree of life, but nonetheless connects and contains all the worlds
of the Norse universe, and binds in it the power of life) does not
bear fruit (its a Yew tree) and as such bears nuts.

In Buddhism, the Bodi tree beneath which the Buddha sat during his
acheivement of Englightment is occasionally dubbed the Tree of Life,
for it is there that what it means to 'live' became clear.

There are others, but I see no point in continuing without more
explanation of the question...

The modern western Christian doctrine tells us (in Revelations) that
the fruit of the tree of life bears itself as a thing that maintains
the soul in Heaven.  It is a common misconception that life is eternal
in heaven, or death in hell eternal.  Without something to maintain
the souls existence in heaven or hell, the soul would pass into
oblivion and die the second death.  In hell, oblivion is eventual and
automatic, with the exception of Satan and a select few.  In heaven,
the fruit is what God gives to souls, in the form of Love and energy
and what not, until they too eventually fall asleep forever.  In a
Christians, the works of the Christian are the tree.  When the tree
and the Christians are moved into heaven, they reap the fruit directly
from God.  Mainly, the tree, like most of the bible, is a metaphor for
describing the reward of a Christian life.

Warthan gives a bit of a convoluted answer, but if you state anything
re christianity, you should use their book. The Bible. Ecclesiastes
9;5 says " For the living are conscious that they will die, but as for
the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they
anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been
forgotten. Also their love and their hate and their jealousy have
already perished. and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite
in anything that has to be done under the sun. This simple scripture,
if believed, puts paid to the idea that there are any such things as
ghosts or so called saints looking after our interests. Thats hard on
the catholics who would wish the scripture did not exist. The fruitage
of the treet of life is simply those people who follow the teachings
of the whole Bible, by reading and applying all the scriptures. We
will never know EVERYTHING that GOD has done but we do know WHY.
Second Peter 3;9. If we dont learn [ change] we WILL be destroyed.

I believe it's just a metaphor for the creation of life.

The fruit of the tree of life? Obviously, life itself!