Tree, fruit-bearing: Known process.
Tree, fruit-bearing: Known process.
A change in the world that can be known through our experiences, from which the fundamental conditions of the process can also be understood, which we are able to consciously bring about again so that the process may take place again. The result of the process is useful for us in life; we create value through the use of the knowledge acquired.
Genesis 1:11–13
The fruit-bearing tree is also a process, like every plant. The tree is a special process that reveals a specific law through its recurring appearances, but the fruit-bearing tree is even more special.
The law that the fruit-bearing tree reveals through recurring experiences is a law that we can use and turn to our advantage.
The benefit represented by the fruit is not a benefit defined in material terms, but a benefit understood from the perspective of the development of consciousness. From the perspective of the development of consciousness, the benefit is knowledge, so the fruit means that we acquire knowledge that also makes it possible to acquire further knowledge.
For example, if we learn to read, a vast amount of knowledge becomes accessible to us through it.
The fruit-bearing tree is therefore of particular importance; in reality, it enables us to acquire skills and qualities that we need in order to know and understand the world.
The fruit-bearing tree is also a finite process, so life does not cease at the end of the process, and coming to know the process becomes immediately possible as soon as the conditions are suitable for the process to begin.
The fruit-bearing tree does not represent value in itself, only when we achieve the goal, the fruit.
Trees are processes that help us understand laws, which appear again and again in our lives, and these experiences inevitably bring us closer to understanding.
The fruit-bearing tree, however, is not useful in itself. We are able to obtain the fruit only if we consciously use the process available to us to learn the skill that the experiences appearing are intended to teach us.
We can sit in foreign-language classes for years if we are not interested in the language being taught. We may perhaps learn to say hello in the given language, but even this requires some attention on our part. The process is present; we could even learn a foreign language, but if we do not pay attention and do not want to, we will not learn it.
A tree that teaches through its mere presence is like learning to ride a bicycle: the process begins when we get on the bicycle, and if we get on it again and again, we learn to ride a bicycle; there is no other possibility. But we can attend a course that teaches a foreign language for years and, if we do not pay attention, the fruit will never become ours.
The knowledge taught by the fruit-bearing tree requires both our attention and our will; the fruit-bearing tree will not bear fruit on its own.