According to Gnostic cosmology, the Fall was not instigated by humans. It was most definitely not when Eve handed Adam an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Fall occurred way before that. Way before humans. Way before the creation of heaven and earth.

In fact, according to Gnostic cosmology, the Fall is what kicked off our material instantiation and set the stage for this universe to come into being. Here's what happened.

When the Son arose from the ground state of the Father's consciousness, the Son immediately differentiated itself into all of its infinite variety. Here is how I put it in my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated:

"The Son that arose is perfect, even as His Father is perfect, and He carries within His perfect form every quality of the Father.

"And yet, although it began as the singular manifestation of the Father, the moment the Son was formed, he was no longer alone. For not only the Son, but the All arose at once. Being the perfect image of the Father, the Son's inherent creativity spread itself out into the All, like rays shining from a star.

The All shines forth from the singularity of the Sun

"With the birth of the All, the Son became a Father. The originating Father, that consciousness so lonely and still for eternity, now had a child who had also borne fruit from his glory. In this way, the One begat the All. And the Father loved them All, as He loved His Son.

"The All, like the Father and Son, is infinite and limitless in scope and capability. Each individual ray emerges from the central seed of the Son, shining forth as one shared body. The Son intimately knows each facet of the All, for the All are all facets of Himself.

"They are concurrently one and many, One and All; a selfless diversity giving glory to their Father with a single song of praise."

So we see that the flow of consciousness and Selfhood from the Father to the Son to the All is seamless and perfect. The perfection of the All at this stage of awakening implies that the All is nothing but the Father's love and the infinite potential embodied in the Son, parceled out among the All.

Again, reading from my book, "The All glorified their Father with one mind, for only in the totality of their union could they reflect and exalt the Father's greatness. However, this state of perfect communion did not last, for the members of the All soon became self-aware, and "it" became a "they."

"The moment "it" became "they," identities arose, and the Son's rays fruited into individuals, each one distinct and self-aware. No longer a single seed singing the same song in unison, the All became aware of its plurality, and now they sang in harmony."

So what we are seeing is the progression of consciousness from the undifferentiated Father, through the Father's fractal differentiation of the Son, and then the Son's fractal differentiation into the All. And at first, the All was a single entity. I want to call it a single organism, but that is not accurate, because there were no creatures yet; no organs, no organisms. If you go back and listen to the Gnostic Insights episode called "Slime Mold Pleroma" that you can find under the "Complete Episodes" tab at Gnostic Insights dot com, you can listen to a detailed description of the All and the Pleroma and how they function.

Quoting again from The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated, "The Aeons of the All awakened to themselves in fulfilment of the Father's desire for innumerable points of view. In this manner,