© 2005 Antonio Moya
© 2005 Eduardo Altuzarra, gráficos
© 2005 Urantia Association of Spain
¶ Introduction
“You cannot force men to love the truth.” (Jesus of Nazareth)
We human beings wander through this world somewhat lost, disoriented. We drift, groping in the dark, because we don’t know a description of Reality. Often, we act the way we do, and live the way we do, out of ignorance. We have invented a certain type of life, a way of living, because we don’t know any better. Human beings don’t know for sure what they are doing here, how and why they emerged in the Cosmos, what the purpose of this existence is, what is expected of them, and, in any case, what their destiny is (if there is one).
Throughout the centuries, we humans have sought answers to the reasons for our existence and the Universe. This short work is an attempt to suggest a possible explanation to the questions we ask ourselves: “What place do we occupy in the Universe? And ultimately, what is the structure of Reality really like?”
¶ 1. What is the Reality we know made of?
We live in a material world, and we ourselves are material. We all agree that the Reality we know is made of matter. We live in a Universe of matter. But what is matter? Well, a bunch of atoms. And what are atoms made of? Well, energy. When you smash an atom, you release a bunch of energy. So, the real essence of matter is not matter itself, but energy. Matter is a visible manifestation of energy, which is, in fact, what is truly real. But energy itself is invisible; we don’t know what it is, and we don’t know where it comes from.
Another reality we’re immersed in is space. We move in space, there’s space between you and me, I move through space, my body itself is filled with space, and there’s space between the atoms that make me up. Space is real, but it’s also invisible; we don’t know what it is, nor where it comes from.
As living beings, we know another reality: life. But what is life? No one knows. We know there’s a big difference between a living body and a dead body. Life is evident, and we are proof of that, but it’s something invisible; we don’t know what it is or where it comes from.
Another reality we know is the intellect, the mind. We don’t know what the mind is, but you and I think, we are aware of existing, and we live in our minds. But it’s also something that is invisible; we don’t know what it is, nor where it comes from.
And another reality is personality. It’s the highest thing we know on this planet. There is nothing superior to a personal being: no animal, no plant, no rock. Personal beings enjoy the consciousness of existence and free will. And yet, personality is also something invisible; we don’t know what it is, nor where it comes from.
Thus, the various essences of our Reality (i.e., energy-matter, space, life, mind, and personality) are all invisible, we do not know what they are, nor what their origins are.
When we observe Reality, it presents itself to us in two extreme aspects: energy-matter on the one hand, and personality on the other. The impersonal and the personal. The external environment and my inner world.
The two extremes of Reality
| Energy-matter | Personality |
|---|---|
| the mathematical | the volitional |
| the facts | the values |
| the inanimate | the animate |
| the deterministic | the creative |
| the rationalist | the idealist |
| Science | Religion |
| reason | faith |
| the law | love |
Furthermore, our brain has two hemispheres, the left and the right. It is designed to grasp Reality as it appears to us, under its two aspects:
| Left H. | Right H. |
|---|---|
| analytical | imaginative |
| rational | intuitive |
| sequential | responsive |
| planner | creative |
| scientist | spiritual |
Our brain is therefore capable of synthesizing facts on the one hand and values on the other, which gives rise to science and religion, disciplines that are the result of our way of perceiving the universe. Philosophy, for its part, is an attempt to bridge the gap between these two opposing ways of perceiving reality.
¶ 2. The origin of Reality
You and I shouldn’t be here. And here, there simply shouldn’t be nothing. There should be no universe, no suns, no planets, no life, nothing. If you really think about it, all there should be is NOTHING. So why is there SOMETHING?
Man, by himself, with his limited mind and means, can know almost nothing about the structure of Reality, much less about its origin. Our Science does not know for certain what is the true origin of the Cosmos, of energy, of space, of life, or of intelligence. Science also does not know what exactly is space, energy, life, or intelligence. Science has no definitive answers. And human religions, like philosophy, do not offer us a plausible and coherent vision of Reality. Their cosmogonies are usually very poor, sometimes they are downright infantile, and at other times they simply have none at all.
If we are the product of the Big Bang, that is, of chance, of an inanimate universe, then “no one” is ever going to come and tell us the reason for our existence. Simply because there is no “no one”, and because there is no reason.
But if we are Someone’s project, then we should reasonably deduce that Someone must have informed us at some point, in some way, about the reason for our existence, what is expected of us, what our origin and destiny are. In short, why we are here, and where we are going next.
Evolutionary and human science, philosophy, and religion have no answers, because man, on his own, can hardly find them. These answers must be revealed to him from “Above,” from the “Control Room.” To date, only Revelation is capable of providing answers to these human questions. But these answers are always beyond our power of demonstration. Hence the need for faith, faith that the statements of Revelation are true.
What does Revelation tell us about the origin of Reality?
Revelation begins its description from the beginning of beginnings, from the beginning of things, when there was absolutely NOTHING in the Universe except the Infinite I AM. The Infinite I AM is the ONLY being in the Universe that has existed by itself from all eternity. It has no ancestors. It has existed by itself from eternity. And all other beings of creation, whether Creators or creatures, come from or are derived directly or indirectly from the one uncreated Being in the Universe, the Infinite and Absolute I AM.
In the eternity of the past, the Infinite I AM was totally alone, occupying all infinity. He was both Infinity and Infinity. No differentiation had yet occurred in Him. Nothing that now exists had yet been differentiated. Everything we know was still contained in Him. He was at once person and non-person, energy and spirit, potency and manifestation, action and reaction. All Reality was contained in Him.
To escape from this state, he used the technique of diversifying, of dividing himself.
Using his free will, he separated his personal aspect from his impersonal aspect (Figure 1), thus dividing Reality into two opposing phases: the volitional (the person) and the reactive (the thing, which reacts to the person’s actions). At the same time, he also separated his potential aspect from his manifested aspect; he separated possibilities on the one hand and realities on the other.
Finally, he correlated the two opposing phases of Reality (the personal and the impersonal), which are difficult to connect with each other, through an intermediate reality: the Mind. Thus, a personal being, through the mind, can manipulate and master energy-matter.
To give an example, we could compare this differentiation of Reality with a 7-room house: On the left we would have 3 plots pending construction (the potential Absolutes), in the center a living room that would connect both sides of the house (the I AM), and on the right 3 fully finished rooms (the manifested Absolutes):
| Potential Absolutes | I AM | Manifested Absolutes |
|---|---|---|
| 1) of physical energies | 1) the absolute thing | |
| 2) of minds | 2) the absolute mind | |
| 3) of personalities | 3) the absolute personality |
These are the seven Absolutes of infinity, the seven different functions exercised by the same and only I AM.
The ultimate dynamic of the cosmos consists in the continuous transfer of Reality from the potential state to the manifested state — everything that has not been expressed until now is trying to manifest itself.
The three manifested Absolutes are those that give rise to all Reality as we know it. For a long time, our Western and Catholic culture has given these three Absolutes their own names: Paradise (the absolute thing), the Infinite Spirit (the absolute mind), and the Eternal Son (the absolute personality).
Paradise is the center of infinity, the divine residence, and, consequently, the center of the material universe. All physical creation revolves around Paradise. It is the center of universal gravity and the origin of all the energies that circulate throughout the cosmos. But Paradise is outside of space and time. It is an Absolute. It is the absolute machine, the machine that gives rise to, controls, and maintains all material universes.
Revelation tells us that all things originate in the I AM, a single, unfathomable, and infinite Entity. This is not the bearded God we have been told about and represented in the image of man. This infinite Entity is everything, and is all there is. It is potential and manifest, energy and personality, static and dynamic, action and reaction… Reality originates in infinity and moves toward infinity. In the Infinite I AM, all things and all beings have their beginning, their existence, and their destiny. The origins of Reality are therefore absolute, and destinies are infinite.
The total Universe in which we are immersed is composed, roughly speaking, of three descending levels of Reality:
- the existential or absolute level.
- the transcendental level.
- the finite level.
The existential or absolute level corresponds to the level on which the I AM and its coordinated Absolutes move. It is the level of the self-existent Deity.
The transcendental level corresponds to the level of subabsolute personalities that are more than finite, that are above the finite, and that transcend both time and space. It is the level of the architects who design and build universes.
The finite level is the level of the experiential creatures of space-time, of the mortal creatures of the worlds.
The Universe is the cosmic stage where the drama of personality activities and the metamorphoses of energies are currently being played out.
The transcendental level is both prior to and posterior to the finite level; it is both its cause and its culmination. Starting from the existential level, one descends to the transcendental level and then to the finite level. And ascending the scale of the finite, one ascends to the transcendental level and then to the absolute level.
Transcendentals are prior to finite beings in the sense that they are the architects and designers of all things finite. And the transcendental level is posterior to the finite level in the sense that finite beings will one day reach that level experientially, in their eternal ascent toward the absolute level. (Figure 2)
¶ 3. The origin of the finite.
The possibility of the finite is inherent in the Infinite. But the transmutation of possibility into probability and inevitability can only be attributed to the free will of the Absolute I AM.
The volitional act, on the part of the I AM, of promulgating finite reality entailed a attenuation of absoluteness, and implied the appearance of relativities.
With the emergence of relative and attenuated Reality (of finite reality), a new cycle of Reality came into existence—the cycle of growth, of progressive evolution toward perfection through experience. Achieving perfection implies having as a starting point something other than perfection. This is how imperfection appears in evolutionary creations.
For a creature, the beginning of the finite is the true genesis of Reality. As perceived by the creature’s mind, there is no imaginable reality that is prior to the finite.
The finite level, bound as it is to time, is a continuous transfer from the potential to the manifested. Yesterday, you were potentially what you are today, and today you are potentially what you will become tomorrow. This continuous transfer from the potential to the manifested takes place at both the physical level of energy-matter and the mental level, and also at the level of personality.
We live in an experiential Universe that is perfecting. Perfection is not our origin, it is our destiny. And this evolution toward perfection takes place both in energy-matter and in personalities. For example, millions of years ago, our planet was a chaos of earthquakes and erupting volcanoes. As time has passed, it has stabilized, and in the future, it will continue to stabilize even more. And the same thing happens with people. As we live, we know more, we have more experience and more maturity, which allows us to act in life with more wisdom than when we were younger.
The finite level (space-time) is nothing more than a system of slow-motion creation, in which the personal being is aware of existing from the very beginning, even before acquiring capacities and abilities. Thanks to this slow-motion creation system, man can participate in his own creation; he co-creates himself. He is not a being born fully developed with all his capacities already completed, but a being that is created progressively, through experience, as he transforms his potentials into manifestations. (Figure 3)
What is the reason for the finite level?
Revelation tells us that the goal of existence for all personalities is spirit. Consequently, from “Above” they have envisioned a gigantic plan for the ascension of mortal beings throughout the universe, which is nothing less than an immense school of experiential education. Throughout this long cycle of formation, beings gradually elevate themselves and participate in every stage of this ascension.
These various formative stages are experienced in semi-material worlds—in the first of which we are repersonalized after death—and later in other, increasingly spiritual worlds. The semi-material worlds of the Universe are “dematerializing” worlds, where progressing beings become less and less material and a little more spiritual.
The ultimate destiny of all personalities is to finally know the Author of these same personalities. The quest for eternity is the endless exploration of infinity, the never-ending journey of discovery within the absoluteness of the Source of all things, the Absolute and Infinite I AM.
¶ 4. What place do we occupy within the Universe?
Today we know that we live in an immense Universe, of gigantic proportions. Galaxies number in the millions, and the stars within galaxies number in the hundreds of billions. Each star may have one or more planets, as does our Sun. Given this obvious fact, it is a little absurd to think that the Earth is the only inhabited planet in the Universe, being as it is a tiny grain of sand on an endless beach. This idea is a notion passed down by our ancestors, who ignorantly believed that we were the center of the universe. Therefore, it would be logical to deduce that what has happened in our world, that is, the birth of life, must be the norm rather than the exception.
Our Earth has other neighbors, other planets and satellites that revolve around the Sun, and all together they form what we call our Solar System.
According to Revelation, the Universe is organized into administrative divisions, and our solar family is part of an even larger astronomical group, called the System, which consists of 619 worlds inhabited by human beings like us, with their corresponding suns, satellites, and comets.
Our system, with its 619 inhabited worlds, is part of a larger group called a Constellation, which contains 100 systems like ours, with a total of 100,000 habitable or inhabited planets.
Our Constellation belongs in turn to a Local Universe that is made up of 100 Constellations, with a total of 10,000,000 habitable or inhabited worlds.
Our Local Universe is part of an even larger grouping called the Minor Sector, which has 100 Local Universes and encompasses 1,000,000,000 habitable or inhabited worlds.
Our Minor Sector is one of the 100 Minor Sectors that make up our Major Sector, with its 100,000,000,000 habitable or inhabited worlds.
And our Major Sector is one of the 10 Major Sectors that make up our Superuniverse, which contains a total of 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) habitable or inhabited worlds.
But our Superuniverse isn’t alone in space. It’s joined by six similar Superuniverses, and all seven orbit a common center called the Central Universe. (Figure 4)
Beyond the seven superuniverses, new universes are forming in the first, second, third, and fourth levels of outer space. These are four gigantic concentric rings, each larger than the one before it, surrounding it. Millions of galaxies, suns, and planets are currently forming there. (Figure 5)
The seven superuniverses are inhabited by mortal, experiential beings like ourselves. This is a finite, space-time creation. All are subject to the restrictions of time and the limitations of space.
Earth, our planet, is located somewhere on the outer edge of our Superuniverse, facing the first ring of outer space.
The current universe as a whole could be compared to a Maltese Cross. The horizontal arms would be occupied by the space penetrated by energies, that is, by all the galaxy clusters with their stars and planets. And the vertical arms, which counterbalance the immense gravity of the horizontal universes, would be occupied by the space not penetrated by energies. (Figure 6)
On the other hand, the universe as a whole has a cycle of expansion and a contraction. During the first, penetrated space (galaxy clusters) expands and unpenetrated space contracts, and during the second, the universes we know contract (appear to be drawing closer together) while the “pockets” of unpenetrated space expand. This is what is known as “the breathing of space.”
Considering that a world as small as ours requires the administration of human governments, a creation as gigantic as the Universe could not function well without proper administration.
Apart from the suns and planets that make up the “physical” universe we perceive, there are a number of “semi-material” worlds that have a wide variety of uses, including serving as headquarters for the Rulers of the various sections of each Superuniverse (System, Constellation, Local Universe, etc.). The Universe is thus meticulously organized and administered, and its Rulers are usually personalities of high origin with abilities far beyond human beings.
In addition to the mortal and evolving beings of the physical worlds of space, the Universe is populated by a multitude of orders of spiritual and semi-spiritual beings. There are basically two orders of beings in the Cosmos: the ascending orders and the descending orders. Both orders are complementary to each other.
We mortal beings are part of the ascending order, along with other semi-material and angelic beings. The descending orders are composed of beings of high origin, who descend from Paradise or the Central Universe to the worlds of space to serve as educators and instructors of the ascending orders.
Space worlds like ours are endowed with a superhuman administration, with their orders of non-material beings who live on the planet itself and try to favorably influence (respecting the free will of human beings) the progress of humanity in all fields: social, moral, cultural, ethical and religious.
¶ 5. History of man on Earth.
The history of man on this planet has been, and continues to be, in part, an endless bloody war. Animals are warlike by nature, and man, who is descended from animals, is also warlike, which has caused much suffering to humanity.
Looking at the history of humanity, a history filled with wars between tribes, conquerors seizing foreign countries, and conflicts between modern nations, one cannot help but wonder how it can be that the leadership of an entire planet, with all the responsibility that entails, is left in the hands of such immature beings? Something doesn’t add up here. It cannot be that a world should be led and governed by such unwise and, at times, unpresentable beings.
Since our entire history has been filled with destruction, it is not surprising that we have lost forever most of the records of our past history, and today we only have, from very distant events in the past, some traditions and written quotations that refer to important events that occurred thousands of years ago. One of the missions of Revelation is to restore those lost pieces of our history that serve to explain and better understand our current state.
Throughout its history, an inhabited world receives visits from various orders of beings from Above who are charged with guiding and guiding human beings toward the ultimate goal of evolution: perfection. These Rulers are destined to remain on the planet, educating and guiding humanity for thousands of years, until it reaches the pinnacle of evolutionary development—maximum technical, social, moral, and spiritual progress.
The planetary Rulers bring the mission not only of teaching man the arts of civilization, but also of teaching brotherhood to semi-savage men dominated by selfishness and ignorance. That is, to reveal Goodness to humanity. These planetary missions aim to elevate the level of human civilization and, on this basis, bring about spiritual revelation. For it is much easier to teach the concept of brotherhood to cultured, ethical, moral, and civilized beings than to primitive cavemen.
Humans emerged on this world from animals 1,000,000 years ago. They did not emerge by chance. They were the result of a project carried out by spiritual entities many millions of years before, when they established life on this planet.
For administrative and other reasons, the one who was to be the first Supreme Ruler of this world arrived on the planet 500,000 years after the appearance of man. He came accompanied by a large retinue of specialized figures, including 100 materialized men and women who would be responsible for elevating the culture of the primitive humans of that time in areas as diverse as health, crops, hygiene, education, the home, animal domestication, and so on. They also carried the mission of gradually revealing to man the reason for his existence, as well as giving him the first notions of cosmogony, specifically up to the level of the Local System. These planetary educators established their headquarters in ancient Mesopotamia.
This very long-range plan was carried out over some 300,000 years, when the Supreme Ruler, for personal reasons, rebelled against the Universe government, plunging the planet into unprecedented chaos and confusion. The educational system of human beings was interrupted and collapsed, so that within a few hundred years the men of that era had practically returned to their previous primitive state. The teachings of those times were almost completely lost to humanity.
About 37,000 years ago, the next Rulers of this planet arrived, with the mission of biologically improving the human races and advancing industry, commerce, tribal relations, technology, and civilization. They also brought with them the mission of revealing to humanity the administration of the universe down to the Constellation level.
They worked hard to achieve these goals for more than a hundred years. But due to the situation the planet had suffered over the last 150,000 years, they observed that progress was very slow, so they grew impatient and added their own personal project to the general long-term plan they had brought from “above.” The result was the overall failure of the mission, although human beings were able to benefit to some extent from a part of those efforts. But the world lost the possibility of knowing, to this day, an adequate description of Reality, because those who were supposed to do so failed in their trusted mission.
That is why man knows so little about the meaning of existence.
Imagine what it would mean for our world if, somewhere in the Levant, there existed a world center of civilization, a great planetary university of culture, which had functioned uninterruptedly for 37,000 years. And imagine, furthermore, how the moral authority of this ancient center would be reinforced if, not far away, there were another, even more ancient seat of extrahuman ministry, whose traditions exerted the cumulative force of 500,000 years of integrated evolutionary influence…
The next two missions to come to this planet were individual, one-person missions, and therefore these individuals were limited to making spiritual revelation, without dedicating themselves to trying to change the social, political, or economic affairs of their time in the course of a single human lifetime.
The first of these exclusively spiritual missions took place some 4,000 years ago, when Melchizedek of Salem suddenly appeared in Palestine to proclaim that “faith, and faith alone, is sufficient to obtain God’s favor (salvation),” thus indicating to the people of the time that neither sacrifices nor holocausts were necessary to obtain divine favor. This was a very advanced teaching for those times, since man had a deeply rooted belief that he had been born with his rights lost before the gods, and therefore had to make all kinds of offerings, gifts, and sacrifices to the priests to earn God’s favor.
The work of Melchizedek, a Local Universe Son incarnated for this emergency mission, thus prepared the way for the world’s monotheistic trend. His disciples spread throughout the East, the Levant, and the West, always preaching the Salem gospel of “man’s faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price to be paid for divine favor,” without any ritualistic practices or sacrificial ceremonies.
The second of these missions was carried out by Jesus of Nazareth 2,000 years ago. The personality incarnated in the physical body of Jesus was not that of the Eternal Son, but that of the Creator Son of our Local Universe. Jesus chose to incarnate on this planet, rather than any other, because of the lamentable situation of this world, darkened by the failure of the earlier missions from “Above” and isolated by rebellion. In undertaking this mission, Jesus had a twofold purpose: First, to complete the obligatory experience required of all Creator Sons of intimately understanding their creatures by living out their experiences in the likeness of one of them; and second, to achieve full sovereignty over this Local Universe. Furthermore, he intended to convey to us a new and enlarged revelation concerning the Universal Father.
Palestine was chosen as the setting for this mission because the Jewish people, at that time, had the highest monotheistic concept of God.
Jesus based his teaching on love, mercy, and service. His central message was, “Man is a son of God. God is the spiritual Father of every individual, and man is his son, so all men are brothers.” Consequently, “Go and preach throughout the world, to all races and all nations, this good news of the fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men.” The Master chose the father-son relationship as the cornerstone of his new gospel. The worship of God and service to men became the sum and substance of his religion.
Jesus likened the “kingdom of heaven” to a family, in which God is the Father and all beings in the universe are his children. We are all members of this universal family, of which the Infinite and Unfathomable I AM is the Author. And our behavior must conform accordingly. This is the whole of religion.
We all know how the simple gospel of the fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men was modified and transformed into a series of dogmas, rites, and beliefs that have come down to us today. As the original teachings of Jesus penetrated the West, they were Westernized, and as they were Westernized, they lost their potentially universal appeal to all races and peoples of the Earth. The gospel of Jesus was thus turned into a religion about Jesus, so this planet has never seriously put its original teachings into practice. (Figure 7)
WORLD REVELATIONS
| Num. | YEARS | PERSONALITIES | TYPE | MISSION | RESULTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | - 500,000 | Planetary Ruler | Cultural-spiritual | Cultural elevation | Failed |
| 2nd | - 37,000 | Planetary Rulers | Cultural-Spiritual | Biological and Cultural Elevation | Failed |
| 3rd | -4,000 | Melchizedek of Salem | Spiritual | Revealing God | Partial Success |
| 4th | - 2,000 | Jesus of Nazareth | Spiritual | Revealing God | Partial success |
Figure 7
¶ 6. The destiny of man
Revelation indicates that God the Father (the personality of the Infinite I AM), through his Sons, sends a message to all beings on all the inhabited worlds of space, saying: “Be you perfect, even as I myself am perfect.” This is what God expects of us, and this is what we have been created for.
This divine mandate entails a series of actions and reactions, which we will see below.
Man cannot achieve perfection in a single life, far from it. Passing through death does not magically transform him into a perfect being. Consequently, God has planned an entire Plan of Ascension throughout the Universe so that human beings can gradually achieve this destiny from life to life. The objective of this immense space-time creation is to make us perfect, through experience, as God is perfect. Man travels from world to world, from life to life, always inward and toward the center of all things, in his search for God and perfection. (The ancients, who believed that Earth was the only inhabited planet in the Universe, considered that we lived all these lives here; hence the belief in reincarnation.)
You and I exist because God has willed it so. But our personal participation in this divine Plan of Ascension is entirely optional. No one forces us, not even God Himself, to be perfect or to follow this Plan. That is why He has endowed us with free will, so that we may freely choose our destiny. And to be able to do so, God has provided us with all the necessary elements: a body or form to interact with the environment; a medium in which to live (the planet, society, family); a mind with which to think and make decisions; a personality to have self-awareness and free will; and a particle of Himself (His own spirit) to guide us on the long road to Him.
God could have created us perfect in one fell swoop. In that case, none of the credit would be ours; all the credit would be His. But God “invented” a new way of creating, “slow-motion” creation, by which He gives humankind the opportunity and privilege of participating in the process of being created. That’s why we start from scratch: zero awareness of existence and zero knowledge. That’s how we are born into this world. And we have to learn everything, through our own efforts and on our own.
The meaning of life, the reason for our existence, is to learn (remember, we’re starting from scratch), to acquire values, to grow in consciousness, and to strive for perfection—always with God as our model. For Deity, who has foreseen everything, always provides the model universe, the perfect personalities, the original truth, beauty, and truth, which all subdivine creations strive to achieve.
Man thus discovers that the planetary environment is nothing more than a medium, a medium purposely created for the purpose of acquiring values. Therefore, the only thing you take with you from each world you pass through are the values and experience you have acquired, integrated into your personality.
Man can only fulfill his selfish will during the short period of his earthly life. But to continue living in the Universe after dying here, he must align himself with the universal altruistic tendency. Jesus came precisely to teach us how to achieve this eternal life.
Human life continues—it survives death—because it has a function in the universe: the task of finding God. Physical death is a technique for escaping material life in the flesh, for removing ourselves from the planet so we can continue progressing, world after world, on the long journey toward God.
Thus, the destiny of this finite universe is to perfect itself through experience, both in matter (which will become increasingly stable) and in personalities (which will become increasingly perfect).
The ascending career of humankind begins in this world and extends through many thousands of worlds successively situated in the System, the Constellation, the Local Universe, the Minor Sector, the Major Sector, the Superuniverse, and the Central Universe. The journey through the Universe is always inward and toward the center of all things. (Figure 8)
The ultimate goal of this long journey of ascension is to become perfect as God is perfect, to personally know the Creator, and to attain God’s presence in Paradise. This is the goal of humankind in the present age of the Universe.
After death—the dissolution of the physical form—the being who has chosen to survive is repersonalized, with a new form (“body”), in the first “semi-material” world of the System to which our planet belongs. There, it awakens at exactly the same point of progress it achieved here. And it begins to receive an education designed to compensate for all the deficiencies of terrestrial life. A human being dies only once, on the world of its birth. After being repersonalized, it will retain its “semi-material” form from world to world, and in it, the necessary adjustments will be made to adapt it to each new planetary environment, which becomes less and less material.
After completing the instruction given in this first world, one is transferred to the second world of progressive education, and thus ascends successively, from world to world, becoming increasingly spiritual and less material. The being retains the memories of all his previous lives, and upon this foundation he will build all his subsequent development. In each of these worlds, he will receive adjustments to his form (“body”) to adapt it to the new environment. All spiritual beings in the Universe have a form for the manifestation of their personality.
What happens to the part, happens to the whole. Just as it happens to the individual, it happens to all of humanity. Just as the individual can achieve a high state of development, humanity as a whole will one day reach a state of progress in which love, mutual respect, goodwill, and selfless service will be a social and global reality. Human beings will then live in the best of all possible worlds.
The brotherhood of men is the most advanced state a society and a world can achieve. It is the goal of the entire long evolutionary struggle. The fatherhood of God and sonship with Him is what saves individuals. Brotherhood among men is what saves worlds.
In order to fully understand the universe around us, man must simultaneously avail himself of Science (which deals with the facts of matter), Philosophy (which deals with the meanings of the mind), and true Religion (which deals with spiritual values). Truth, beauty, and goodness represent man’s intellectual approach to the mental, material, and spiritual universe.
In the physical universe, the law that governs harmony is the deterministic law of gravity. In the volitional universe, the law that governs harmony among intelligent beings is the freely chosen law of love.
Love is the desire to do good to others.
This article is merely an extremely concise summary of what Revelation says about the structure of Reality. For more information and additional details, we invite the reader to go directly to that source.