nice concept... i like the way you draw conclusions... let me put a little twist onto it for you... adam and eve ate from the tree and were given the power to access universal conciousness... so as a human species we already have the ability to be gods because we can (if we try hard enough and have the right drive) access this and all knowledge from the very begining of the universe is automatically filed in your memory... it is once a god truly accepts his/her role as a god that they would then have the power of a god because they would have full knowledge how... as for the fruit of immortality.... there are many fruits... and they are all known and sacred... any shaman, any voodoo priestess any spiritual guide of the old traditions will tell you what they are... they are tools that we as humans can use to elongate life, raise our power and understanding levels... they are the key to ultimate being. however if you use them with bad intentions or if your soul is tainted the guardians of these fruits punishes your audacity for disrespecting their sacred flesh
Balance is correct here, they are enthoegens, various ones for each different use, but the one most commenly called the food of the gods is Soma, each tradition olds true that their specific enthoegen of choice is Soma, In siberia it was Amanita Muscaria, in Mexico it was San Pedro, Salvia and psibolin amongst others, each culture has them, even in Jewish beliefs "Manna" fell from the heavesn, this was Soma. But also, as Balance mentioned the spirits that resides in each plant judges each who approaches it in regards to their intentions towards it, it can either be an amazing tool for growth, or a tool for your own destruction of used foolishly.
The thing is, all of these events mentioned are nothing but myths. That's about it. There was no Tree of Life, there is no Food of the Gods, it's all ancient myths.
The only reason for their association with the divine is because of their uses as a tool to reach higher states of conciousness, in a time where societies were forming anyone who could access higher levels of conciousness than the average person was considered a shaman or a medicine man, or even a deity or god, now these entheogens helped and still to this day help people enter into the shamanic state which is necessary for inward journeying, as well as access to higher levels of your being. Often we need to dumb down facts for people to understand, but i would have expected that one or two of you would have been able to see the forrest for the trees. If you doubt in their powers ask any true shaman within any culture, if you believe that no conciousness or spirit resides within the plant consume it with disrespect and see the result, if there is no conciousness within why can it discriminate on who to help and how to help according to their spiritual needs at that point in time? Anything that has life has conciousness, plants that were used for centuries and have been given praise for their powers can very much have been formed into a earth based servitor or thought form which serves as a memory bank for the memories of all travels which have occured while under it's influence, but hey, what do i know, i'm a crazy old man who talks to plants, scary thing is if you listen closely enough on the right level, they talk back..
hey guys i just found out that the Babylonian sacred texts also mention of a certain apple which grants you imortality
don't you all just see the connection betwen all them? you just don't see the point!
Balance - i agree with most of what you said
i thinck it just depends on understanding what a god or a goddes is
for me a deity is an astral divine being which on some lever or another control this realm
even thou their [spirtual] image is close to ours
they are much more suprior then us at almost EVERYTHING
and they are all so immortal (but they will come mortal at the day of the great Ragnarok which is VERY soon to come and bring deadly fear and horror upon all the sons of Adam and the sons of Enoch)
but of course that immortality is not the only thing that they have and we don't
Kao - mana by the way is all so suspected to be an Entheogen
but the pplace that we are different in this dusscusion is that you say that all Enteogens are actually the food of gods
while i see it in a literal way - something which makes you a god (well all most...)
modern sceptics like to see Enteogens as nothing but "junkie drugs" the vissions of which the "dumb-and-crazy" shamans thought are bringed by the "twisted-imaginary" gods
oh if only they knew how "dumb-and-crazy" they are for claiming this
just as dreams are usualy imaes created by you subcunsious even thou sometimes they are messeges from spirit or divine beings so are Enteogens when used ritualy sometimes being to visions which are sended by gods
and even if you will not receive such a messege when you under the psychoactive effects of the Enteogen stil it allows you to bring yourself to a higher spirtual level
i even see the possibility that what modern science claim about them is just another plan of the secret sociaty (the one waiting for the new world order) which don't want people to know the truth before the new world order comes as part of their plan
Jahbulon - yes i knew that this is what you would say as i all ready noticed your strong atheistic beliefs
but thanck you anyway for bringing up this possibility for us
