© 2005 Santiago Rodríguez
© 2005 Urantia Association of Spain
Many of us conceive of life as a system planned by Deity so that, after living experiences, we may journey, learn, and evolve. This constant and continuous journey awakens within us first an awareness of spiritual reality, and then an impulse toward the will of Deity, the will of the Universal Father. In other words, a continuous journey that will progressively bring us closer to perfection, toward communion with that Father, who is the origin and destiny of everything and everyone.
Unlike the material aspect of reality, in which we can advance through reason and observation, it is not clear that in the case of the spiritual aspect of reality, reason – logical reasoning – is precisely the most powerful tool for its development and for its actualization in ourselves, so we must depend largely on another mechanism established by the Deity to help us in our progress: Revelation.
Revelation, regardless of the form in which it has manifested itself throughout history, has always been characterized by being and always having been progressive; it has always adapted to the evolutionary state of the society and culture in which it manifested itself, with the aim of gradually penetrating the minds of the mortals of the time, and being sufficiently progressive to broaden consciousness and allow for an advance in ideas, which would undoubtedly lead us toward an enrichment of ideals, but at the same time not being so novel as to shatter the ideals achieved and attained by the culture, by the society in which it appears.
It is the mortal man of each era who must find a way to correlate - to unify - his knowledge and understanding of the physical-material environment, with the novel ideas that revelation provides him, thus constructing a theory that in its philosophical, physical and theological aspects is consistent with the knowledge and ideas of the time and trying to resolve the conflicting issues in which contradictions appear, since reality is unique, and must be integrated simultaneously by its two constituent aspects: the energetic-material or physical and the spiritual.
From ancient times it was revealed to us that man had an ultimate destiny, which we can summarize as the act of spiritualizing himself and encountering the Deity and becoming one with Him.
From ancient times, it was revealed to us that the path was long and difficult to travel in a single lifetime; therefore, the Deity had planned numerous lifetimes and numerous bodies as receptacles for the essence of the human being, allowing him to experience, learn, and progress in his task of perfection.
We had a revealed idea: it is true that there is life after death, we must live numerous lives to learn, to evolve and grow spiritually and as the process of spiritualization cannot happen in a single stage, we will be provided with successive bodies for this purpose.
In our daily lives, we are aware of the phenomenological experience of causality; that is, we recognize that every action inevitably carries with it an effect or consequence; it is also revealed to us that our actions will be judged and will bring with them the consequences that arise from them, the actions, and from the judgment about them.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of our ancestors hundreds or thousands of years ago, if we try to apply logic and reasoning in light of the knowledge of the time, we will find ourselves having to correlate revealed truth with what they observed and knew about the environment. That causes led to consequences was an undeniable fact.
It was and is an undeniable fact that achieving something through one’s own effort is a great satisfaction, so we would observe that the more effort we put into it and even if it was accompanied by some sacrifice, the emotional reward of achieving the goal was greater.
Therefore, it would seem logical to us to “offer” to the Deity that which was of greatest value to us, so the idea of “sacrifice” to satisfy the Deity was an inevitable consequence of our thought process. In return, the Deity would provide us with rewards commensurate with our sacrifice and our actions.
On the other hand, our perception of the energetic-material world was limited to observing the world as our immediate environment (what we would call our planet today) and we would reserve the world of the stars (ethereal and distant) for the spiritual world.
Conceptually, we were incapable of even questioning the possibility of the existence of other Earths or other inhabited or habitable worlds. Therefore, our logic had to lead us to a single possible scenario for successive lives to be lived, which would be our own planet, and the only observable bodies of a non-spiritual nature would be our own bodies or those of the living beings around us. Hence the logic of the idea of the transmigration of souls.
We also observed that most human beings were unaware of having lived other previous lives, and if they did, it was in a vague and imprecise way.
It must be recognized that with these revealed elements and those derived from observation to be integrated and correlated, they give as a more coherent philosophical-theological theory the idea of Reincarnation and the value of Karma as an element exchanged with the Deity as compensation for our actions, as well as the idea of Sacrifice as an element that exalts our merits and values.
I believe it’s important to state that both Karma and the idea of Reincarnation are coherent and logical in light of the knowledge of the time. Even today, they are completely valid; until now, they have served, and still do, as answers to many questions that bring us closer to the ideal of Deity, of divinity. Perhaps it’s worth taking some observations into account; we need to go a little further; it would be worth considering a small change in the interpretation of the concepts and in the understanding of the universe.
“Reincarnation” is understood as the process by which we live in a system of consecutive cycles in which, after being born and living a life that, on the other hand, will be marked by the alleged previous experiences of previous lives, also lived in the flesh, as human beings of other times, or even as animals or other beings, depending on and as a consequence of our karma, we could modify our approach or point of view.
We could advance in its conception, giving way to other possibilities that would not invalidate our old beliefs at all, but rather we are contemplating the possibility of updating them in light of new revelations, and in light of new scientific and technological knowledge.
Concepts that will allow us to correlate and unify our dual reality more effectively. It will allow us to acquire the idea of a Universal Father of Love and become aware of our divine filiation, setting aside unnecessary fears and the constant dread of divine punishment, and transcending the concept of sacrifice as the highest we are capable of offering to the Deity. We can admit that the conception of a system of evolution that is not only cyclical, but in an ascending spiral toward the Universal Father, which includes the concepts of successive lives that always improve upon previous ones, as well as successive bodies that align with the new places where we will live out our different lives, is more edifying and elevated. Ultimately, the body remains a means of expression and realization of the divine essence that dwells within us.
Of course, we will have to be consistent with our actions and suffer or enjoy the choices we freely make, but perhaps not from the perspective of a repetitive cyclical system, but rather from that of a progressively ascending spiral that will be more edifying for the personality, in which actions will not be dictated by fear or the idea of sacrifice, but by the sincere desire to do the Father’s will and the altruistic desire to surrender, to serve the entire cosmos, both personal and non-personal, around us.
Well, ultimately what we seek is to find ourselves or, depending on how you look at it, to reconnect with the Creator.