Eating of the tree of knowledge represents using our own logic and reason to try to figure out and understand the Lord, something which is beyond us and which, ultimately, we have to simply accept. This was forbidden to the people at this stage of the Most Ancient Church because the Lord knew that if they did, they would lose their innocent acceptance of the Lord's love and leading, and would question it instead. This is represented by the idea that they would "die."

(References: Arcana Coelestia 198, 200, 201, 202, 203)

6845. 'For the place which you are standing on is holy ground' means that otherwise the Divine cannot come in. This is clear from the meaning of 'place' as a state, dealt with in 2625, 2837, 3356, 3387, 4321, 4882, 5605, and therefore 'the place which you are standing on' is the state in which he is up to this point; and from the meaning of 'holy ground' as the holiness which goes forth from the Lord. Thus a state of the holy influence from the Lord's Divine Human is what these words are used to mean. This meaning - that otherwise the Divine cannot come in - follows from what is said immediately before, namely that if a person were not removed from the powers of the senses, which form the external levels of the natural, that is, if he were not raised from them to more internal levels, the Divine could not flow in. The reason why the Divine cannot flow in as long as the person's thought remains on the level of the senses is that influx from the Divine extends right through to things that are last in order, thus right through to the powers of the senses which form the external levels of a person's natural. If those levels consist solely of bodily and earthly interests the Divine influences coming in are reduced to nothing since they are incompatible with what is there. Consequently when a person is about to receive the Divine, that is, matters of faith and love, he is raised from the powers of the senses; and once he has been raised from them, the Divine no longer flows in there, into the external level of the senses, but into the more internal level to which the person has been raised. I have been allowed to know from a considerable amount of experience that this is so.