And they heard the voice of the Lord God...(Gen. 3:8)
Says Maimonides: Adam hears a breeze through the trees, a common enough occurrence, and he imagines God has come.
Adam’s epiphany results from his mind being under stress.
In Adam's witnessing God in his troubled state, we see man's fall in full effect. When a complete thing wishes to better himself, he cuts off a part of himself and adds to himself in the part he feels lacking; say, cutting off a leg to make three hands. Henceforth, though, he must learn afresh the management of his reconfigured limbs.
Before eating the fruit, man lived as completely as possible, and as a complete work of God, an on-going glory to God (see Isaiah 43:7). The second blessing of the Grace After Meals alludes to circumcision as "the covenant He [God] has sealed in our flesh", but can also be read as the “codes” of life written into our nature. In some sense, Adam perceived God naturally, as an ever-present, matter-of-fact factor in the world, in the way all other nature is said to give glory to God by their mere being. Man lived directly before the fall and thus did not need an expressed manifestation of God.
The main implication of the serpent's seduction, his assertion, is that Adam could break out of God's control.
Having broken out of the native mold he was conceived with, his optimized be-ing, man tries to find his way back. With a hyped-up imagination, he conjures up an image of God to give him fresh instructions, modified to make way for a return. His epiphany is a result of a desperate, “Which way now?"
What is prayer, our primary mode of communicating with God, after all, but man expressing his deepest desires and his direst needs, for direction among others . He sits still so that he can hear a response to his intense innermost request, even if it is only a small voice, as long as it speaks directly, constructively, compatibly to his need. Who does he direct this to? The Master of the Universe, the house of all, and the Master of he, man, who is housed in the universe. Prayer is, in a nutshell, a search for existential harmony.
I imagine that it is from here that we get the urge to mention the ineffable.
Evolution is the response to a disturbance that closes off all hitherto viable courses open to a life type. Man's imaginative disturbance, brought about by eating the fruit, sets man's mind in turmoil. He finds, or rather, forces a calm upon his troubled mind. Following this forced stillness is a single-minded focus to find new direction, stability, balance. As the disturbance from eating the fruit ran counter to his former nature, so is the corrective stillness he imposed on himself, but through it he catches a hazy vision of a new rooting, orienting pillar to replace the one lost sight of. He then queries in order to find a new way.
The fate of man is like that of animals...All have the same breath. Humans have no advantage over animals; all is in vain (Ecc. 3:19).
The elevation of man is hardly an elevation. In fact, to think in the terms of elevation is a product of the acquired deficiency of man's intellect, this tendency to running comparisons, if I may continue borrowing Maimonides' imagery; using metaphor to put together two unlike items and for failing to conceive one perfectly, we define it relative to the other! (Calls to mind simultaneous equations in algebra) We make comparative evaluations as a result of our decadence, a prejudice deep-rooted in our new nature and essential for our continued survival. Our new perception cannot represent accurately the relationship between man and his environment. We consider ourselves as the center of all things, man becomes a universal yardstick.
We read our altered state as better because what other options do we have? We initiated the change of our own volition, to gain advantage for ourselves, and whatever the outcome, we cannot go back. We define our new reality as best we can, as the best there can be, and thus we (gain new courage to) move. In the truest sense, however, this talking stage is only a corrective one, addressing a truly sensing, sensitive state, once and for all damaged.