The "Original Sin" was not the gaining of general knowledge, nor was it the knowledge that sexual intercourse feels good and that sex can be fun as some have claimed throughout the ages.

No, the Original Sin was exactly what the ancient texts called it, the gaining of "the knowledge of good and evil," or in terms that are perhaps more relevant to people in this day and age, the adoption of the concept of absolute universal morality that all humans are required to follow. It is this evil through which empires rise and independent nations are crushed. It is this evil through which world religions gain dominance and individual spirituality is criminalized and violently punished as "demonic." And most importantly, it is this evil by which individual human beings seek to dominate other human beings and force them to serve them.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the science fiction television series, "Star Trek," used this very concept to define the monstrous cybernetic species known as the Borg, who live in their cube-shaped ships and assimilate all other species in an attempt to make them "perfect" as the word is defined by the Borg Queen. As terrifying as Roddenberry's vision is, it is also the defacto order in which the world we live in today is operated.

Though the world as it is, is filled with individuals and individualism, it is also inundated with constant threats to the very fabric of what makes humanity sentient, in self-proclaimed "saviors," people who seek to "help" people by destroying their very souls and re-making them in the image that they choose on their behalf. People who claim that the Government is the People's parent, or that all men and women must bow down before a god or a goddess, or a prophet, or an ancestor.

Humans have a natural desire to dominate. This is simply a part of human nature, as humans are herdlike in their behavior. Like a pack of wolves or a pride of lions, humans gather together in communities and have a leader who decides where the rest will go. This is the nature of the beast, but it is not the Original Sin. The nature of the beast allows for other beasts to challenge the leader's rule, but the Original Sin labels such challenges as "immoral" and "evil." The Original Sin claims that whomever is the leader at a given time is there by divine command and that only a god or a goddess, or some other heroic or revered figure has any right to challenge their authority.

The foundation of a civilized society is a group of individual sovereign souls banding together to work toward a common cause. They might choose a leader, but the leader is still only another mortal being with similar desires, lusts, needs, and emotions to all the other members of that civilized society.

But the Original Sin dismisses such a cooperative society and replaces it instead with a hive mind in which there is no individuality, no uniqueness, and where the leader is set up on a pedestal and revered like a deity or a prophet who alone has a direct line of communication with "Truth."

The Original Sin is a sin precisely because it elevates one or two individual human beings to a place where they are deemed untouchable, where their word is incontrovertible and everything they do is perfect and blessed in the eyes of their faithful flock. Nothing they do, however heinous or atrocious it may be, is ever deemed to be wrong by the faithful. The Original Sin is the greatest sin of all because it takes away the uniqueness that makes humanity intelligent and sentient, and instead punishes uniqueness and enforces absolute conformity to the desires of the herd's Alpha.

The means to break free of the effects of this Original Sin is actually quite simple. Jesus Christ actually mentioned it point blank when his disciples asked him how they will know when the kingdom of God is among them. He said (in the Gospel of Thomas, an Apocryphal or "Gnostic" Gospel) that when you throw all your clothes on the ground without shame and walk on them the way little children do, then you will know that the kingdom of God is among you. The means to break free is quite simply to be true to yourself without shame, without fear, and without remorse. It is your personal choices and beliefs that make you who you are, not an authority or leader figure's desires.

In closing, the Original Sin is the adoption of an absolute, universal moral code. Through this universal moral code, certain individuals have convinced you and much of the rest of Humanity as well as other sentient species throughout all of existence that you have no choice in who you are, or what you are, or what you are capable of. The means of breaking the bonds of the Original Sin is to simply come to the realization that you are the only one who gets to decide who and what you are. Your worth is not measured by some external entity. It is your own soul that chooses who you are, what you are, and what you will be capable of in life. Neither Karma, nor God, nor anything else that human beings have propped up and chosen to revere, has any right to make that decision for you.