Original Sin, the “curse” that God put upon Adam and Eve for disobeying his command not to eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The early Church and reformed Churches, Christianity all, tied the curse or sin to concupiscence, an ardent, usually sensual, longing. In Catholic theology, concupiscence has the name "Fomes peccati", as the selfish human desire for an object, person, or experience. For Christians, concupiscence is what they understand as the orientation, inclination or innate tendency of human beings to long for fleshly appetites, often associated with a desire to do things which are proscribed. [Wikipedia]
Despite the theological niceties, Christianity has ascribed sexual desire to the sin, even though Thomas Aquinas “distinguished the supernatural gifts of Adam before the Fall from what was merely natural, and said that it was the former that were lost, privileges that enabled man to keep his inferior powers in submission to reason and directed to his supernatural end. Even after the fall, man thus kept his natural abilities of reason, will and passions.” [Wikipedia]
Aquinas’ hints at what the sin really was: A loss of supernatural gifts only.
Mankind was relegated to dealing with existence by reason, will, and human passion(s), devoid of the ability to see things in their totality, their actual reality, or the real reality suggested by Plato (among others).
This loss of supernatural insight, however, seems to appear on occasion, as in the cases enumerated by Richard Maurice Bucke in his masterpiece, Cosmic Consciousness and in the studies by Carl Jung (archetypal forms).
The occasional views of the “real reality” are evidenced by such instances as Socrates’ encounter with an evanescent Greek warrior, George Washington’s mysterious advisor during the Revolutionary War, or Malcolm X’s apparition, while in prison.
UFO witnesses seem to have obtained that snatch of “real reality” or “other reality” also, especially those who’ve reported extensive episodes of a bizarre kind, many of those reports delineated by Jose Antonio Caravaca for us, here (in previous postings).
That is, the supernatural reality, on occasion, intrudes on human consciousness, poking forth from the (Jungian) Collective Unconsciousness that is part of the human psyche.
It doesn’t take a rarefied human to have such momentary epiphanies, as Bucke shows and UFO reports show; even the least intellectual human can have such experiences.
The loss of the cloak of Original Sin dissipates by virtue of a neurological glitch or something less tangible, perhaps: a moral sin-free, persona.
UFOs are seen when the intrinsic barrier of Original Sin is masked or disappears.
This means that God’s command or dictum falters, and I posit that to the Death of God, but that for another time.
Original Sin was (and is) a “curse” that no longer exists, and UFO spotting is an example of that non-existence.
RR
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