One interesting idea that comes out of the Vaishnava religion and its metaphysics can shed light on the rudimentary Christian notion of a Fall. Any religion, all religions, must have a Story about origin: how we got here and why we got here.
In Vaishnavism they base their cosmology — both physical and material and psychic-psychological — on the notion of our being “caught in the material entanglement”. It is a world among many possible worlds. They presuppose an infinite quantity of worlds (lokas)
The concept of a loka or lokas develops in the Vedic literature. Influenced by the special connotations that a word for space might have for a nomadic people, loka in the Veda did not simply mean place or world, but had a positive valuation: it was a place or position of religious or psychological interest with a special value of function of its own.
Hence, inherent in the 'loka' concept in the earliest literature was a double aspect; that is, coexistent with spatiality was a religious or soteriological meaning, which could exist independent of a spatial notion, an 'immaterial' significance.
The most common cosmological conception of lokas in the Veda was that of the trailokya or triple world: three worlds consisting of earth, atmosphere or sky, and heaven, making up the universe."
So, they say, we are in a specific loka or world, and we are here
for reasons. The moral and ethical substructure is part-and-parcel of the cosmological definitions. It is not random but, ultimately, is controlled (administered) by intelligence. According to this view, (they say) we should be very thankful that we have our birth and our existence in this particular “world” because, for one, it is certainly not one of lowest Lokas, but is an intermediate one.
But here is the ethical crux: we are said to live in an “exterior manifestation of the Supreme Being”. Yet it is implied 1) that there are “interior manifestations” of the Supreme Being: zones or areas of greater affiliation. But 2) there are areas and zones of far more “exterior” manifestation. I.e. more mechanics, more brutal, more mindless perhaps, than our own world is.
Religion, therefore, has a specific function: it is activity, or avoidance of action, that brings us into greater closeness and relationship to “God’s interior being (“energy”).
This illustrates in a finer manner the Christian metaphysical notion of Heaven and Hell — and as well an intermediate space. The notion of hell is always an amplification of what is horrible, random, merciless and terrifying (demoralizing) in our own experience here. (Heaven is naturally an amplification of what we like so much about Life when it behaves and is beneficent.)
The notion of The Avatar who descends from a higher plane to provide information to those stuck in “the material entanglement” can best be illustrated if a complexity of worlds is understood to be a cosmological reality.
. No answer comes. And there, there the Final Wave rolls in …
My wider metaphysical sense detects the Rogerian in enlightened self interest. If that's abstract enough. Whatever I want I must give. First. Beyond it is the sense of beauty. And evil. Social injustice. Physics does metaphysics. In minds. I value the structure. Suspiciously.