FIRESIDE #1: What is the Purpose of Life?
Without a basic understanding of why we are alive, life has no particular meaning – life is meaningless. Little children want to know why they are here, but this question doesn’t get answered, except perhaps it is put off by saying, “The stork brought you;” Or, “We wanted a little child.” Of course these answers aren’t really answers. The child wants to know the real reason why he or she is alive. But throughout a person’s life, this question is never answered, not in church, not in the streets, not in school.
So because life is meaningless to people, we have wars and pillage and carnage, and a lot of suffering. All this suffering exists because people don’t have an understanding of the role they play in the scheme of the universe. We know that nothing creates itself; therefore everything has to have a Creator, including us. As we can see the genius of the artist in a masterpiece of art, so too in observing the world can we see the genius of the Creator of everything.
God is a Hidden Essence and He will never be known. At the top of my chart, I put the words “Infinite Essence.” I don’t put the word “God” at the top, because then automatically we would have all the different conceptions of what the people think God is. We would have the images the people create in their minds. So I write “Infinite Essence” because God is unknowable - beyond the comprehension of our finite minds. God is infinite and we are finite, and the finite can never comprehend the infinite.
I don’t put the word “Infinite Essence” in a circle because then God would be surrounded. God surrounds all, but He Himself is not surrounded. What we are talking about is the Infinite Essence that pervades the universe — that pervades all space. It is All-Powerful, and All-Knowing, and Ever-Present. God is the Invisible, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent Creator Who is responsible for the ordered design of the natural world and the ingenious perfections of all living and non-living things. We can’t know God in His essence. We can only know God in manifestation. Baha’u’llah says the way is barred and the road is impassable to knowledge of the Divine Essence, for how can the finite comprehend the Infinite?
Yet, the whole universe is eloquent of God. The scientist can penetrate into the nature of matter. But at every step the difficulties of the research increase until the most profound intellect can penetrate no further. Everything we know about God is known by that which manifests God. A stone tells us something of divine attributes, the flower tells us more, the animal with its senses and instincts and power of movement tells us more still. In the poet, the saint, the genius, we find a higher revelation still. But the great Prophets and Founders of religions are the perfect mirrors by which the love and wisdom of God are reflected to the rest of mankind. Other men’s mirrors are dulled by the stains and the dust of selfishness and prejudice, but these are pure and without blemish, wholly devoted to the Will of God.
In the physical world, everything gets its life from the sun. Everything reflects the sun to its own capacity. The coal reflects the sun very little. The grass reflects the green rays. The white cloth reflects the whole spectrum of light. But if you take a mirror and put it in the sun, it reflects all the attributes of the sun. The warmth, the light, the rays, and the disc are all reflected in the mirror. But the question of this discussion is, why would God bring you into existence? Why did God create you? In order to understand why we were created, we need to understand the creation in general.
There are four kingdoms in creation. The first is mineral, and this is comprised of the elements. The next is vegetable. The next is the animal, and the next is human. The Mineral Kingdom(On the chart, draw a circle and the words “Mineral Kingdom,” on the right below the words “Infinite Essence”).
The first form known to man is the mineral kingdom. The minerals are the building blocks from which everything else is built. This includes all the elements such as iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus and so on. The elements have a life, an existence, but it is a static existence. They change form according to the heat and power of the sun, but they don’t grow and reproduce or things like that. And they have no type of consciousness of themselves. For instance, water flows because that is the nature of water. Fire burns because it’s the nature of fire to burn. It has no will of its own.
On the chart, the mineral kingdom is placed closest to the Infinite Essence because it doesn’t have much freedom. It’s under the control of the Almighty. No matter how far the mineral progresses, it won’t be able to grow, move or reproduce. Minerals come into contact and form compounds, but they don’t have organic organization as do the other kingdoms. They can evolve within their own kingdom. For example, a piece of coal or carbon, under the influence of heat and pressure, can be perfected into a diamond. But no matter how perfect a mineral may become, it can’t become a vegetable.
It is lacking something that the vegetable has, and that is the vegetable spirit. The Vegetable Kingdom (On the chart, draw a circle and the words “Vegetable Kingdom” below the words “Mineral Kingdom.”)
The vegetable has something that the mineral doesn’t have. Do you know what that is? It is the ability to grow and reproduce. It has this ability due to the vegetable spirit. Because a seed has the vegetable spirit, it sends its roots into the minerals and absorbs the minerals up into itself, making vegetables. We call this organized or organic chemistry. The mineral is unorganized. Dirt falls however you happen to throw it and cannot change. Whereas the vegetable changes the organization of the mineral, and the vegetable grows and reproduces. Do you understand the “spirit” part? Let’s look at a poem by Tennyson:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies.
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower - but if I could understand what you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
(A poem by Tennyson — Baha’u'llah and the New Era, p. 202)
He takes a plant out of the crannied wall. It’s growing out between the stones. He holds it in his hand and says, “If I could tell what you are, root and all, and all and all, I could tell what God and man is.” What he is saying here, is if I could take you and dissect you into the smallest, minutest particles, and if I could find all the elements and all the things that go to compose you, there would be only one thing that escapes me and that is your invisible life essence. I couldn’t find that. Tennyson is saying, if I can’t even know the essence of a flower, how can I know the essence of God and man?
God is invisible. He pervades the entire universe. Yet He’s closer to us than our own jugular vein and our own breath. But we can’t just grab hold of God and say, “Sit down here in this chair, God, I want to talk to you.” God pervades the entire universe. Everything is known by its Manifestation. We know that’s a lamp because it produces light. The manifestation of a lamp is the light it produces, whether it’s a candle or a flashlight. So everything is known by its manifestation.
The life of the vegetable is the spirit of the vegetable. That is the elusive thing. We know it has a life or it wouldn’t be organized like it is. It’s alive. The vegetable is alive. Abdu’l-Baha explains that this is because of the vegetable spirit. There are five aspects of spirit: vegetable spirit, animal spirit, human spirit, the spirit of faith and the Holy Spirit. The spirit of faith is just a branch of the Holy Spirit, which we will explain to you. These are the five spirits.
Vegetables grow and reproduce because of this spirit - this life - and they absorb the minerals and make them into vegetables. When these elements in the vegetables decompose or separate, the calcium still remains calcium and the phosphorous still remains phosphorous. What is gone when the elements separate is the life - the life of that vegetable is gone. This life remains in the seed however, and thus the vegetable reproduces itself. But the arrangement is gone. The calcium and the iron and the potassium, these all remain. It’s the organic arrangement that ceases to exist. This is what we call the death of the vegetable.
When we eat the vegetable and we have the salad, these are live foods. When we cook them they’re dead food. So, when we eat live food we’re alive. No matter how far the mineral may evolve, it cannot become a vegetable of its own volition. But the vegetable sends its roots into the mineral, absorbs the mineral and the mineral becomes a vegetable. The mineral doesn’t cease to exist by becoming vegetable. The iron still remains iron, the phosphorous remains phosphorous, and calcium remains calcium. What has happened is the arrangement of the molecules has changed. Thus, we say the vegetable has an organic arrangement and the mineral is organic. The mineral is not organized by anything. What we say organizes the vegetable is the vegetable spirit.
The Animal Kingdom
(On the chart, draw a circle and the words “Animal Kingdom” below the words “Vegetable Kingdom.”) Is there a difference between the vegetable and the animal? What is it?
Instinct? The vegetable has instinct too. All vegetables grow as all vegetables grow. All birds make nests as all birds of their species make nests. For instance, the beaver will make dams, as all beavers make dams. With vegetables it’s the same thing. They grow up straight. Trees grow on the mountainside. Do they grow straight out of the side of the mountain, or do they grow straight up? Instinct is a reaction. The trees grow straight up because it’s a response, a reaction to gravity: in opposition to gravity. For instance, the vegetables on the opposite side of the earth are growing the opposite way from the vegetables on this side of the earth. They grow out away from the earth.
What the animal has that the vegetable doesn’t have is the five senses. The animal grows and reproduces like the vegetable, it’s composed out of minerals, but in addition it has the five senses. So the difference between the vegetable and the animal is the five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. These five senses are the attributes of the animal spirit, and they give the animal consciousness of its particular existence – the animal can hear it, see it, smell it, taste it, and feel it.
The vegetable does not have the central nervous system to record this information, so it is unconscious of its existence. If you didn’t have these five senses they used to say you were a vegetable. You would not be conscious of your existence without the senses. The nervous system brings impulses to the brain so it can interpret the stimuli, and it gives us the conclusion that we exist and that other things exist. If we didn’t have these senses, we wouldn’t know that we exist. Therefore, the vegetable doesn’t know of its existence.
Because the vegetable doesn’t recognize its own existence, no matter how far the plant may evolve, no matter how sweet the orange, no matter how fragrant the rose, of its own volition it cannot know of its own sweetness or fragrance. Of its own volition, a vegetable cannot become an animal that perceives its own existence. As well, no matter how far the mineral may evolve it couldn’t become a vegetable. Take for example carbon. The carbon can become perfected within its state. When it becomes pure it’s the diamond. It can become perfected in its state, but it can’t become vegetable.
But the vegetable can absorb the elements and they become the vegetable. A vegetable cannot become an animal, but the animal can eat the vegetable and the vegetable can be absorbed by the animal. This is due to the animal spirit and the five senses.
The purpose of the mineral is known. They are the basis of all existence. The minerals are the building blocks from which everything else is made. Without the minerals, we wouldn’t have anything else in existence, including vegetables. The minerals from the soil like iron, phosphorus, and calcium go into the plant, and then on into the animal kingdom. Without these minerals, the vegetable and the animal couldn’t exist. The purpose of the vegetable is also known. Without the vegetable, the animal couldn’t exist. The animal eats the vegetables and they become the animal.
The Human Kingdom
(At center of the bottom of the chart, draw a circle and the word “Human” below the words “Animal Kingdom.”)
Now we’re coming to another kingdom: mankind. Is there any difference between man and animal? Man has the five senses of the animal, he has the growth and reproduction of the vegetable, and he’s composed out of minerals, but he has something more than these kingdoms. Man is able to think in the abstract.
The animal’s reason is limited to the five senses. You couldn’t go up to a cow and prove that the earth is round. In million years you wouldn’t be able to do this. No matter how you tried to explain that the earth is round, the cow could not comprehend this because the cow cannot think in the abstract. It cannot think beyond its five senses. The vegetable doesn’t have the five senses, and it can’t get them no matter how far it advances. The mineral cannot become vegetable. But the vegetable can absorb it through growth and reproduction can turn the mineral into a vegetable. The vegetable cannot become an animal, but the animal can absorb the vegetable by eating it and using it for energy.
When the life force of an animal is withdrawn, the elements decompose and go back to the earth. When the vegetable spirit is withdrawn from the vegetable, it decomposes and goes back to the elements. There is no such thing as complete annihilation. The elements are for the most part stable. There is only composition and decomposition.
It is through the vegetable and animal spirits that higher and higher organizations are achieved. Man’s capacity to think in the abstract makes him different than all the other kingdoms. The existence of man answers the question of why the other kingdoms exist. Without the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, man couldn’t exist. But the reason for going through this is to find the reason for the existence of man. If the lowest kingdom, such as the mineral, has a reason to exist, then could we say that the highest of creation does not have a reason for existence? We see no greater being in creation than man. Therefore, we cannot come to the conclusion that man has no purpose for existence.
We can see that without the vegetable there would be no animal, and we see that the animal supports man. So we know the purpose of the lower kingdoms. Therefore, the highest of all kingdoms must have a purpose for it existence. Have you any concept of why mankind exists?
The Purpose of Man
(On our chart, we cut the circle labeled “Human” in half, showing that man has two parts: physical and spiritual. We draw a smaller circle at the top, dissecting the first circle. We label it “Mind.”)
We put the mind up here. The mind is the window to the soul. It is both physical - connected with the brain and the body - and spiritual. It is connected with the soul. The part that is connected with the soul thinks in the abstract.
Man is the highest development in this contingent world. There may be a higher being but if there is we don’t know of it. Man is a composite of the kingdoms before him. We are the crowning point of existence in this contingent world. We see nothing higher in this contingent world than man. Mankind is the highest of God’s creation in this world, but the beginning of another world which is spiritual. If you were the only person in this world, how would you feel? Lonely. There is only one invisible God that pervades the entire universe. There’s not another God for Him to associate with.
Without man, He would be lonely, because the rock can’t comprehend God, the plant doesn’t have the intellect and can’t comprehend God, and the animal doesn’t have the intellect and it can’t comprehend God. Only mankind has the capacity to comprehend the intangible. As God is intangible, God had to make man in order that He might be known. He had a need to have man. Otherwise the greatness of God would only be known to God alone. And he would be awfully lonely in this whole universe that has no end without a being that has the capacity to comprehend the intangible.
Therefore God created the lower kingdoms so that man could exist, and He created man so that He Himself might be known. But man has one more thing. Do you know what? The reason man has the capacity to comprehend the intangible, the reason man has the intellect, is because He possesses a soul. We call the intellectual capacity in man the soul. The body is tangible, but the soul is intangible. The intellect is intangible, the next life is intangible. God is intangible.
So the thing that man has that the animal doesn’t have is a breath from God, which is the soul. The window of the soul is the mind. Part of the mind belongs to the five senses. But the intellectual part of the mind belongs to the soul. The part of the mind that can comprehend the intangible is the soul, and it can do so because it is an intangible. The five senses alone can’t comprehend the intangible. What makes man different is that he has the intellect and the intangible soul. The intangible soul can comprehend the intangible God.
Man’s physical body is the same as the animal’s body. But the soul, a breath of God, enters in at the time of conception, making him different from the animal. Because of his ability to think in the abstract, man can understand what the eye doesn’t see or what the ears don’t hear. What make us different from the animal is we can think in the abstract. And we think in the abstract because we have a soul. The animals have a mind that is limited to the five senses. We have a mind that includes the five senses, but it can also think in the abstract. We can comprehend things that we don’t see. This is the soul. The soul can only be known through a body. It can’t be known otherwise.
Surrounding the body is an aura. The plant has an aura. If you take a leaf and photograph its aura, and then break off a part of the leaf and photograph it again, you will still see the aura of the whole leaf, even though part of the leaf is gone. The animal also has an aura. Man also has an aura: a physical aura. As we evolve spiritually, our aura takes on a whiter appearance.
If you take a prism and you let the sun shine through it, you get a rainbow. If you take the base of that prism and put it to the base of another prism, the rainbow will come back as white light again. All the colors are in white light. When man takes on all the spiritual qualities, then the soul produces an aura around it. When the body dies, it goes back to the elements because it is composed of elements. The soul is not composed.
Anything that is composed must decompose. The soul is not an organization, and it is eternal. Man, unless he is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, has no spiritual body for his soul.
Man can know God through His Manifestations, Who are Adam, Moses, Krisna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and today, the Bab and Baha’u'llah. God cannot be known in His Essence, but only through His Manifestations. Without the Manifestations, man would know nothing of God.
It’s like man is in a dark cave, and God is likened to the sun. The sun cannot reach man in his dark cave. The Manifestation comes and is like a mirror that reflects the light of God into the cave. The person in the cave can thus know the sun. He can feel its warmth and see its light in the mirror.
If the mirror should say, “I am in the sun,” it speaks the truth. If the mirror should say, “The sun is in me,” it also speaks the truth. If the mirror should say, “I have the rays of the sun,” it also speaks the truth because it is reflecting the rays of the sun. If the mirror says, “I am merely the mirror,” it also speaks the truth because the sun didn’t become the mirror and mirror didn’t become the sun.
This is what Jesus said:
“If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” (John 8:19) “I and the Father are one.” (John 10: 30)
“My Father…is greater than all,” (John 10:29)
“I go to the Father.” (John 16:10)
“Know that I am in my Father.” (John 14:20)
“I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:25)
Jesus is the Manifestation of God that reflects the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended upon all the Manifestations. With Jesus, it descended upon Him as a dove.
“And behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him.” (Matt. 3:16)
When the Holy Spirit descends upon the Manifestation, then it is reflected to all mankind, to the minds of men, and men can turn to the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation and reflect the same spiritual qualities, and attain the white aura. God saw man in the image of the animal: a barbarian, a cannibal. But He knew man had the soul. Therefore, He decided to create man in His own image.
God had the Holy Spirit descend upon Adam. Adam became a mirror, reflecting the Holy Spirit. Adam reflected this light to His descendents. The rest of the people were in the image of the animal. They had no written language and they couldn’t talk. They were educable, however, because they had the soul.
What comes to man, apart from the Manifestations, is a branch of the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation. This is the light that is reflected into the cave. We call this the secondary rays of the Holy Spirit. The direct rays are focused on the Manifestation when the Holy Spirit descends upon Him. The teachings taught by the Manifestations, give man an understanding of this spirit. Man thus receives the secondary rays of the Holy Spirit, by understanding and believing the teachings of the Manifestation.
Eventually, as man progresses in his physical body, his soul is likened to a man riding a horse. When the rider gets to his destination, his horse goes into the barn and the man goes on into the house.
There’s eventually a separation of the soul from the body when man goes into the next life, which is intangible. But God starts out with man first being able to recognize that He is intangible. The purpose of the creation of man is so that God would be known.
But God wanted something more than to be known. What do you think that is? God left a defect or an imperfection in man. It’s our freedom of choice. Why do you think God left this horrible imperfection?
If God only created man in order to be known, he wouldn’t have left that defect in man. Everyone would have to know God. But He took a chance on man. He gave him the freedom to turn towards Him or away from Him. After God preaches to know Him and worship Him, why would He leave that imperfection? Why didn’t He make it so everybody would have to worship Him?
He did this because He wanted something more than to the known. Do you know what that is? He wanted to be loved. In other words, we don’t have to accept God.
All this existence without love is meaningless. God had a love to be loved. He loves us. That’s why He called us into being. But in order for His love to reach us, we have to love Him. And in order for us to love Him, we have to have the freedom not to love Him. If you were to go to your lover, pull out a gun, hold it to her head and say, “Damn you, love me!” She would say, “Yes! Yes! I love you!”
Would that be love? No. That wouldn’t be love. That would be fear. What a guy does is bring her posies or candy or an apple. He woos her.
So too, God places us on this earth and He spreads out this beautiful world with its mountains, its prairies, its trees, its birds, its flowers, its fruits and vegetables. Plainly, He has created it. Everything that’s here, all this is for man.
What is He doing? He’s wooing man. Just like a lover might woo you by bringing you flowers, or inviting you out on a picnic. As you love your lover, your lover would love you. This is the relationship that God wants. He wants to be loved. He made man so he could love God. But True love comes from the heart. And since man has the freedom of love, he may turn away from God.
And God gets awful jealous when people start worshiping an idol. If you pray to this piece of chalk, your prayer goes to that piece of chalk. When you pray to the cat scratcher, your prayer goes to that… or to that picture up there, or that cross with that man on the cross, your prayer goes to that. If you pray to that idol, which is created by man, your prayer goes to that, and not to God. If you create an image of God in your mind, then your prayer returns to you, because you are the creator of that image, and your prayer doesn’t go to God. Thus, when people pray to things that are created by themselves, these prayers go back to themselves and do not go to God.
Therefore, men are still in their sins. They have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation. This pen writes. If it didn’t write, what do you think I would do with it? I’d throw it in the garbage. We are created to know God and to worship Him. If we fail to fulfill the reason of our creation, it’s off into the nethermost gloom. Who was the cause of your creation?
If you don’t want to accept the God that created you, go to the god of your own creation, which is in everyone’s dream. You have your choice. You have two different choices. You can have hell or heaven. All the religions of God have come, just like that pen. If it doesn’t write, you throw the thing away. Anything that doesn’t fulfill the reason of its creation is inert, and man is created for one purpose: to know and love God.
The minerals can’t know God. The vegetables and the animals can’t know God. Only man has this capacity. Therefore, he that has the intellect is held responsible for his actions. If God didn’t leave the imperfection of freedom of choice in man, man would be perfect. If he had to worship God and turn toward Him, then he wouldn’t have to do it of his own volition. God wanted a being to love Him and to worship Him of his own volition, just like we want our spouses to be in love with us of their own volition. We don’t want our spouses to love us because they are forced to do so.
You wouldn’t want anyone to respect you because you forced them to do so. But, you would expect respect for what you know and what you helped them to know. God is the same way, and He creates the whole universe.
The first gift from God
When God created you, did He ask you if it was OK that He create you? No! He didn’t ask you or take you into His confidence. He just went ahead and created you without asking your permission. Would you sell your life for a million dollars? No! Here God has given you something you wouldn’t sell for a million dollars, free without any reservation or even asking you. The most precious thing you have is life.
The second gift from God
God gave you another gift, probably as great or even greater, your intellect. Without the intellect, you’d be like the cow not knowing if the earth is round. He didn’t ask you if it was OK if He gave you the intellect. He gave it to you as a gift, for free. Would you sell your intellect for a million dollars? No! Imagine if you were out in the desert, with nothing but sand. No vegetation, no water, and it was 120 degrees with no shade.
You were trudging along, looking for an oasis, a well, a river, a stream, a lake, or any type of water. Any water you saw would turn out to be a mirage. The whole day went by like this, and then the second day the same thing.
The third day you were ready to take your last breath. Then someone came along and said, “Would you like to have a glass of water?” Would you thank that person?
Yes! Every time you saw that person, you would say, “You wonderful person, you wonderful person, you gave me a glass of water!”
God has given you two gifts, life and the intellect, which you wouldn’t sell for a million dollars each. He spread out this beautiful world before you, and all the other gifts that he gives you. Would you thank him? Yes! The thanking of God is that you’re turning to Him and worshiping Him. You’re saying, “Thank you, Oh Lord, for this life that I have!”
The third gift from God
God wants to give you another gift, a greater one, but for this particular gift He’s going to take you into His confidence. He says, “I want to give you a third gift, it’s greater than the other two, but this gift depends upon you. That is, in order to have this gift, eternal life, you’ll need to come into an agreement with Me, enter into My Covenant, and turn to Me and worship Me. And then I will bring you into My Kingdom, in this life and the next. And you will live with Me in My felicity.”
But God makes this gift contingent. That is, you can turn away from it or you can accept it. This third gift is the gift that comes to us from the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t speak to us from a great voice in the sky. But from time to time God speaks to us through the mouth of the Holy Prophets, and through these Prophets the Thought of God becomes manifest to the world.
Thus these Prophets are called Manifestations of God. The only knowledge we have of God comes from the Manifestations. God in His essence is unknown. The only way we can know God is through His Spirit contacting us. In order for that Spirit to contact us, from time to time there is a person born with what we call the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is able to receive the logos.
The logos is the thought of God. This person who has the Holy Spirit expresses God’s thoughts in words, in a Revelation. These people that are able to receive the thought of God have been created with something we don’t have.
We have the soul and the animal doesn’t, the animal has the five senses and the plant doesn’t, and the plant has growth and reproduction that the minerals don’t have. Likewise, the Manifestation of God has a soul, he has the five senses, he grows and reproduces, and He’s composed of minerals. But He also has the Holy Spirit. Therefore He is capable of receiving the Thought of God, which is the Logos. He gives us a Revelation revealing God to us. And thus God becomes Manifest.
The only thing we can ever know of God is this Logos, this thought of God expressed in a Revelation, because God is closer to us than our own breath, and our own jugular vein, but we don’t know Him. At the time of Adam, God revealed Himself to Adam as the One Invisible God. Before Adam, people didn’t know about the One Invisible God. There were great civilizations before Adam. There is no recorded history of this, but there is evidence of it. We know that there was a civilization called Atlantis, another called Lemuria, another called Mu, and there was another one besides that. Some people think it was called Titan.
There were four universal Manifestations of God, one for each of these four civilizations. Each of these civilizations came to an end with a great catastrophe. These civilizations had not evolved to the point that we have.
Mankind came out of the sea as an ameba, just like the animals did. Over millions of years, man evolved; just as at one time, a sperm and ovum came together inside your mother and you became a primal cell. At one time you were a primal cell so small it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye – the primal cell can only be seen under the microscope. Yet everything that you were going to be like was in that primal cell: the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, how tall you were going to be, everything was in that cell. All your characteristics, your hereditary traits and your hereditary character going all the way back to the ameba, was in that cell.
The experience of the human race all the way back to its origin in the sea is transferred to your soul when it comes into contact with the primal cell at the instant the sperm and the ovum come together.
Inside of an elephant, when the sperm and ovum come together, no soul is joined to that primal cell. In the womb of an elephant that cell is another elephant, in the womb of a lion it’s another lion, in the womb of a giraffe it’s another giraffe, but in the womb of a woman, it’s another person.
That person differs from the animal in that it possesses the soul. The soul is a breath of God that comes in contact with the primal cell at the time of conception. The body is composed of elements. These elements are universal and continue to exist.
That is, these elements existed before they came into the formation of your body. In the body these elements exist in a formation we call organic chemistry. After the body separates from the soul it goes back into the elements. These elements continue to exist, the only thing that dies is the form and shape of this combination. The single elements are indestructible – they continue forever.
It is only the combination of the elements that has a beginning and has an ending. Your soul is like a single element. The soul is an emanation of God. An emanation of God is different from the Manifestation of God – we’ve already seen what the Manifestation of God is.
The emanation of God can be understood like this: speech is the emanation of the speaker, art is the emanation of the artist, and music is the emanation of the composer. But the music is not the composer, the art is not the artist, and the speech is not the speaker. Your soul is an emanation from God, but it is not God. It emanates from God, just like speech, art or music emanates from a person. And this emanation of God is a single element therefore it is eternal.
When we were talking about eternal life, this eternal life is in the spiritual world, in the kingdom of God. Outside this Jesus said the people weep and gnash their teeth. Outside of this, the people aren’t living in harmony and unity. We call one condition heaven and the other condition is hell. Heaven is evolving towards God by turning to Him. You love Him, therefore His love reaches you and you evolve spiritually.
But if you don’t love God, this love doesn’t reach you and you don’t evolve spiritually. This is hell. Heaven is evolving to God hell is going the other way. So God offers eternal life to you – to your soul, which is your individuality.
You have three personalities. The first personality is inherited from the chromosomes and genes in the sperm and ovum, going all the way back to the ameba. This is an inherited personality. The second personality is the acquired personality, the chances of this world. Your parents educate you, you go to school, you have tests, trials and tribulations that you undergo, which are educational. In school, the teacher purposely gives you tests for your evolvement. God does the same thing – you have tests and trials in this life.
These tests and difficulties are actually for your benefit and are educational. Baha’u'llah says, “When calamity exists in the greatest degree, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for these are the gifts and favors of God.”
These tests that you have ultimately lead you to God. They lead you to ask, “God, where are you? I need your help.” or “God, you created me, why am I here?” These tests lead you to the third personality, which is the spiritual development acquired through turning to God. The Bible calls this becoming “created in the image of God” – God gives you His spiritual qualities and attributes such as mercy, compassion, generosity, love, wisdom, justice, and so on.
At the time of Adam, man was in the image of the animal – he had two eyes, two ears, mouth, nose, arms, and legs. But through the Revelation of Adam and the succeeding Manifestations, man takes on spiritual qualities. These spiritual qualities prepare man for the next life.
When we separate from the body, we lose the inherited personality and the acquired personality to a certain extent. The first pages of the Bible mention Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They are told, “If you eat of the knowledge of good and evil you’re going to die.” Our second type of personality comes from eating of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the opposites of this life.
Everything in this life is in the opposites. We have light and dark – dark is the absence of light, cold is the absence of heat, vacuum is the absence of atmospheric pressure, bad is the absence of good, evil is the absence of spiritual qualities. All of the negative is replaced by the positive – dark is replaced by light, cold is replaced by heat – light, heat, and knowledge are the positive qualities.
Without these opposites, we wouldn’t be able to know the positive qualities. If it wasn’t for cold, we wouldn’t know what heat is, if it wasn’t for darkness, we wouldn’t know what light is, and if it wasn’t for ignorance, we wouldn’t know what knowledge is.
The purpose of being in this world of opposites is for us to evolve far enough so that we can think in the abstract, turn to the Manifestation of God, and take on the spiritual qualities. Taking on the spiritual qualities prepares our soul for the next life. To the grave goes the physical body, but the soul, your individuality, continues on into the next life.
Although in the next life we lose to some extent our inherited and acquired personality characteristics, we will have our individuality. You will always be you throughout eternity. You won’t become Jesus, or Joan of Arc, or someone else. We get our individuality when the sperm and the ovum come together, when the soul comes in contact with the primal cell and we receive our identity as an individual.
In the analogy of the horse and the rider, the horse or body finally goes on into the barn, and the rider goes on into the house, or into heaven. When you make your choice to turn to God, then you go into His house, which is what we call heaven. And hell is going the other way.
The only way, however, that we can know God, is through the Holy Spirit that comes to us through the Manifestations, that is the Prophets of God. They give you this spiritual education in order for you to evolve towards God.
But in order to evolve towards God, you first have to love God, turn towards Him and supplicate to Him in order that you may receive these spiritual qualities. We can receive a branch of the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation of our day.
The Manifestations are like pure and polished mirrors which reflects the light of God to us. Each man receives a branch of the Holy Spirit, according to his capacity, just as each color reflects a certain part of the sun’s rays that shine upon it.
The first part is the spiritual message, through which we attain the spiritual qualities of love, mercy, justice, generosity, fidelity, concord, etc. Civilization is impossible without these qualities. The second part is the laws, ordinances and teachings for an ever-advancing civilization. In school, we go to first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way up to a University education. Through the Manifestations, we learn more and more about the same great revelation of God, through each Manifestation.
Like I said, there are two parts to a Manifestation’s message. The first part has to do with this life.
The other part is the part that changes man from a savage to an angelic state. Spirituality does not consist of all the observances that they have you do in the Church such as baptism or confirmation. These things don’t have anything at all to do with spirituality. Spirituality consists of taking on the spiritual qualities of knowing God and worshipping Him, and evolving towards Him.
But the only way you can do this is through the Manifestation which receives the logos – the Revelation of God. Now, the mineral doesn’t become vegetable, but the vegetable absorbs the mineral. The vegetable doesn’t become animal, but the animal eats the vegetable and it becomes part of the animal. The animal, no matter how far it may advance, it will never have the intellect as man does. When an animal dies it goes back to the elements. But man can eat the animal and the animal becomes part of man. Man, no matter how perfect his body becomes, no matter how far he evolves, unless he comes in contact with the Holy Spirit through the divine Manifestations, he is mortal. Only man has the capacity to know God. He alone has the intellect.
By knowing God and by turning to God through His manifestations — because God can’t be known in His essence, in His pure essence — as we turn to God through His Spirit that comes down through the manifestations of God, we turn to God. And then we start our pathway back to God.
He created us in order that He Himself might be known. It’s just like if you were a beautiful and tremendous artist and you lived in the kingdom of the blind…. Or a great musician and you lived in the kingdom of the deaf…. What would you do? God is not heard in His kingdom. He doesn’t have to be touched. He’s an intangible. God is an intangible, not a tangible. Therefore, He can only be known by an intangible, and man has this intangible self.