A Spiritual Perspective
God is!
Thank God Jesus saved us.
Spirituality is the beginning of everything. Spirituality is the cause, natural history is the effect. Natural history is like the shadow of spirituality.
Almighty God says that He created us, because He loves us:
“3. Oh Son of Man!
“Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty…
“5. Oh Son of Being!
“Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.”
(Baha’u’llah, The Hidden Words, p. 4)
Speis is voluntary submission to God. It is your faith, your reason, your Chi, Qi and Prana. Its your soul and your spirit, the life force animating your body. Pay attention to it. Cultivate it. Seek God. Love and obey God.
Faith is an essential, central and voluntary feature of human consciousness. We all have the capacity to believe. What we believe is completely voluntary. While the people around us influence our faith, we are all personally responsible and accountable for our own thoughts, words and deeds.
There is no direct evidence proving the existence or non-existence of God and there never will be. I believe there is an invisible, all powerful Creator, Who is completely detached from and independent of His creation. The first thing God creates is the Manifestation of God, a perfect reflection of Hisself.
Then there is one unified field. At first it is not doing anything, it is just being. Then, God causes it to move. The movement causes an equal and opposite reaction. Motion is a change of position during time. That is the beginning of time. The spinning and vibrating spheres of power are yin and yang. The frequency and dimensions the spheres vibrate and spin in, determine what kind of quark, lepton, force or particle the sphere is.
The material universe that we can see is like foam, floating on an ocean of power. E=MC2 means the universe is made out of energy, power. God is the Source of that power.
Perhaps the all powerful Supreme Being is creating natural history out of His Self. Like Hazrat Inayat Khan describes in The Awakening of the Human Spirit. There is a pure spiritual aspect of Brahman, which is completely detached from any material existence. Brahman creates the material universe by expanding Himself.
Atman is the Supreme Being within each and every human being. Like the Bible says, we are created in the image of God. Human souls are like mirrors, reflecting the light, the truth, the way, however imperfectly. Happiness and peace are inherent attributes of the human soul. We don’t need to seek happiness, we are happiness, we are peace.
The HomoSpeis Hypothesis is addressed to every single human being alive on earth, who wants to improve yourself and human nature and civilization. It is definitely offered in service to Baha’u’llah. I am a servant of Baha’u’llah.
This is a true story, at least from my perspective, uniting science, history, philosophy and religion, which I’ve been thinking about writing for, ever since I can remember.
I just want to make it clear that I endorse the Baha’i point of view; they may or may not necessarily endorse mine. I mean no disrespect to anyone and I am very thankful for the education I’ve attained by reading thousands of stories.
I did ask the Baha’i Publishing Trust if I could publish an earlier version of this story as a book. They said I could not publish it as a book, not even an ebook, but that I could publish it as separate web pages, just like I’ve done here.
My ideas and opinions are most likely not perfectly accurate. I am not a perfect person. I am not more or less important than anyone else, other than the Manifestation of God, Who is far more important than me.
I do not think I am a prophet. I do not want to found a religion or a sect of a religion. I do want to be a wizard, a wise man. I am a 21 century shaman, writing this story to help as many people as possible, recover from whatever ails them and to thrive in the universal and divine civilization founded by Baha’u’llah.
This is just a story about recovery and human nature and civilization, to help me improve myself, by helping you improve yourself and to help make the world a better place. It is just my own personal understanding of the truth, a holistic synthesis of all the stories that I’ve read during my whole life, up until now. It’s just a story.
The Manifestation of God is the embodiment of the Word of God. He is God’s Avatar, God’s Apostle. He appears on earth every thousand years or so. Baha’u’llah is the Manifestation of God for now and forever. He has already founded the Kingdom of God on earth.
The human kingdom of life on earth has the capacity to know and love God. In fact, knowing and loving God is the purpose of life on earth. God is creating the entire universe, so that human beings can know and love God.
Our executive decision making faculty, our free agency, is a feature of human nature, which is caused by that voluntary quality of Islam. Voluntary submission to God.
As far as this issue of some so called Muslims torturing and killing people because of their faith or lack of faith, they’re the same as the people who persecuted the Muslims in the days of Muhammad, peace be upon Him.
Muhammad taught His followers the ethics of war, in order for them to be able to defend themselves from the pagans, who were trying to exterminate Muslims for teaching people there is only one God, not so they could impose their faith on anyone by force. Forcing anyone to believe anything is the exact opposite of the one true, universal, unchanging, eternal Faith of God, taught in every true religion on earth.
Christians are just as guilty of this man made perversion of faith. Burning witches and routinely violating the universal human rights of some of the people they interact with, such as the Native American people, is just as bad as what the Muslim terrorists are doing today or the Sadducee and Pharisees did when they prosecuted and crucified the Lord Jesus Christ and the Romans did when they fed Christians to wild animals for entertainment.
All these bullies are giving religion a bad name and many people today are becoming increasingly hostile to the very idea of religion because of it. Secular humanism is a half-truth, which is taught in most of the world’s public schools. It is the misunderstanding that Jesus referred to when He warned us to, “beware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing,” “building our castles on sand,” and “leaving out the chief cornerstone.”
The Manifestation of God is the Chief Cornerstone of real spirituality. All this “spiritual, not religious” idea and culture that is so popular these days, is exactly what Jesus, the Lord and Savior of every human being, past present and future, is talking about when he warns us about leaving the chief cornerstone out of our spiritual castle.
Baha’u’llah is that perfect Mirror, reflecting the Light, the Truth, the spiritual Way of life. To tell you the truth, I’m not all that worried about the exact details about the relationship of all these facets of spiritual reality. What I am interested in is that there is a God, Who has sent the Manifestation of God to teach us the truth.
The Will of God, spirituality, flows in around and through everyone and everything. The animal, plant and mineral kingdoms are all more primitive, less advanced expressions of the Will of God.
Describing God is not really possible. Describing His creation is not very easy either. It’s like trying to describe a house of mirrors. The universe is actually a hologram. It’s a super-symmetrical flash of heat and light that science describes as the big bang.
Or maybe its like a tree and the planets like earth, on which life is evolving, are like the fruit of the tree. Dark energy is the trunk, dark matter is the branches, galaxies are the leaves and stars are the flowers. Life, and especially intelligent life, is the fruit of the great, growing cosmic tree.
Imagination
I think that God is imagining natural history. Its all a dream in the consciousness of the Central Orb of the universe. Perhaps consciousness is the dark energy that scientists have recently discovered. The ocean of power upon which our material universe is floating, like foam on the ocean.
We have a fairly accurate, although definitely incomplete, understanding of natural history. The structure of reality is both simple and complex at the same time. It is simple in that there is only one reality. It is complex in that it has structure.
One thing that we can be sure about any intelligent alien life, is that they have the same God we do. I believe there is only one All Powerful, Supreme Being, God, Ahura Mazda, Brahman, Atman or Allah, the Most Great Spirit, Who is always generating natural and spiritual reality.
I believe in God and I believe that faith is probably the most significant difference between the animal kingdom of life on earth and the human kingdom of life on earth.
Faith
Faith is a feature of consciousness that is unique to the human kingdom of life on earth. The question of whether faith or language is the cause or the effect, is like the question of which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The Apostle John wrote that, “In the beginning there was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Word is both language and faith at the same time. Our ability to communicate with each other by voice is generated by a cluster of clusters of neurons. The A1 Auditory cortex, Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area generates language.
The language cortexes, located in the left hemisphere of our Cerebral Cortex, and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, located between the Prefrontal Cortex and the Limbic System, are part of our executive decision making cortex. Our executive decision making cortex enables us to respond to our instincts and emotions voluntarily.
Learning How to be civilized
Human beings are not born civilized. We learn how to be civilized. We have the capacity to speak. We must learn a particular language. We learn our language, culture and even our faith through education. The divine education, revealed in all true religion, transforms troops of home sapiens into tribes of civilized human beings.
Spiritual reality, natural history, the universe and life on earth are all results of the action of the one true God. And I suspect that it takes far less effort, for God to create spiritual reality and natural history, than it takes for us to think and dream.
Another perspective of natural history is that, the universe and life on earth are like a womb, in which rational souls are conceived and developed, and then, are born into the real world, the pure spiritual reality beyond space and time, which we are all (at least those of us who are right with God) born into when we pass away, ie., Paradise, the Abha (All Glorious) Kingdom. It’s a condition, a state of being, rather than a time or place. Heaven is near God. Hell is far away from God.
I’ve heard that there are four levels of reality:
- The incomprehensible level of God, the Supreme Being, which no human being will ever understand.
- The level of the Manifestation of God, which is far above the comprehension of regular human beings. This is our only connection to that pure spiritual Reality, the one and only Supreme Being, God.
- The Abha Kingdom, into which we are born, after our life on earth.
- Natural history
I want to be near God, not far away from Him. I want to be a high performance servant of Baha’u’llah. These ideas, this whole story, is just my finite and imperfect understanding and description of the incomprehensible and indescribably infinite Glory of God.
God is the Creator. He has always been, is and always will be the Creator. His creation has always existed and always will exist. Time is a feature of natural history. God is not limited by time or any other dimension of natural reality. The way that God is creating His creation, obviously involves natural history.
Perhaps there was a big bang, or maybe God is like the sun and the universe is like the sunshine, and has always been radiating out from the Central Orb of the universe. It just appears to have a beginning, because of our finite perspective of an infinite reality.
While we humans can investigate, learn and understand natural laws and manipulate natural reality to create our technology, we cannot create the universe out of nothing. We cannot make any natural law.
We can build airplanes and submarines, because we’ve explored and discovered the natural laws of pressure and aerodynamics and use that knowledge to create machines that fly through the air and the sea.
God makes the rules. We prosper when we seek the truth and follow God’s rules. That includes both, natural laws and spiritual laws. We suffer when we try to make our own rules. Its a form of sedition against the sovereignty of Almighty God, over His Kingdom that He is creating.
Submission to God is voluntary, but there is a penalty for not loving God. Its not like God wants to punish us, its just the way He created us. We are a mirror God created to reflect an image of God. When we seek God and reflect spirituality, rather than the animal passions we inherited from the animal kingdom, we fulfill our human nature, our speis. We reflect whatever we pay attention to.
The Manifestation of God
The first thing God does is create the Manifestation of God. The Manifestation of God is a perfect reflection of God. The relationship between God and the Manifestation of God is perfect faith, hope and love. The Avatar, the Manifestation of God, appears on earth as an individual human being every once in a while, to reveal the Word of God.
The Avatars are all individual human beings and they are all one divine Teacher. The station of the Manifestation of God is far above that of normal human beings. That is why Jesus says that, He is the only way that human beings can approach the one true God.
The purpose of the universe and of life on earth, is so that human beings can, “know and love God” (Baha’u’llah, 1853-1892). The Manifestations of God, ie., the Avatars, the Apostles, the Prophets of God, such as Adam, Noah and Abraham, the Lord Krishna, Moses, Buddha and Jesus Christ, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah, say that God is creating natural reality on purpose.
God makes the rules in our lives. We prosper when we follow the divine rule of law, revealed by the Manifestation of God, we suffer whenever we try to make our own rules. Human beings are created to submit to God, not any man made … anything.
Human beings are not designed to make our own rules. We’re intentionally designed to recognize the Manifestation of God, to study the Word of God and to voluntarily submit to that divine rule of law, revealed in the Word of God.
Devine education fits into our executive decision making cortex, like neurotransmitters fit into receptor molecules, and teaches us how to be civilized. That is the true nature of the Kingdom of God.
The Manifestation of God is like the Apical Meristem of the tree of life on earth. He is leading the way, teaching us the truth about spirituality, causing waves of progress in the evolution of human consciousness and human civilization.
Here’s an interesting Hindu perspective of the Avatar that I read about in Anupam Premanand’s story, presented at the Lights of Irfan Colloquia. Paraphrasing:
Dashavatara means ten and the One Who descends, ie., the descent of divinity. The first Avatar was a fish [Matsya], the second a tortoise [Kurma], representing our origin, as life in the ocean and then our amphibian stage of evolution.
Varaha [Boar] represents our evolution as mammals. Narasimha [half man, half lion] probably represents the Australopithicines. Vamana [dwarf man], Parashurama [Rama with an axe][Adam?] and Rama [Noah?][the embodiment of righteousness] represent different phases in the evolution of Home Sapien.
Our Lord Krishna [the Supreme Teacher] and Gautama Buddha [the Enlightened One] are the most recent Avatars in Hindu cosmology. Kalki [time, the Eternal or the destroyer of foulness, quarrel] the anticipated Tenth Avatar, does describe Baha’u’llah fairly accurately.
(Premanand, Lights of Irfan Colloquia, p223)
Baha’u’llah strictly forbids all conflict and contention. He teaches us detailed instructions about spirituality and moral values and He has founded a civilization that will last for at least 500,000 years, according to His son, Abdu’l Baha, the only person Baha’u’llah authorized to interpret His Sacred Instructions.
The Revelation of Baha’u’llah is the beginning of a whole new era in human history and the evolution of life on earth. The people of Baha are an entirely new race of mankind. The Baha’i Faith is an entirely new form of human consciousness.
John E. Esselmont’s Baha’u’llah and the New Era (Esselmont, 1937), and Tarikh-i-Nabil’s Dawnbreakers (Nabil, 1888), are both excellent introductions to the Baha’i Faith and its history. William Sears’ A Thief in the Night (Sears, 1961), tells the story from the perspective of Biblical prophecy.
I’ve read about Baha’u’llah’s station as the Fifth Buddha described in two different ways. First, according to the Dalai Lama, Gautama Buddha is recognized as the Fourth Buddha. Baha’u’llah would be the Fifth, the Maitreya Buddha.
I’ve also heard a Baha’i describe it as the Buddha is the first Buddha, then Jesus Christ, Muhammad and the Bab are the second, third and fourth Buddhas. Baha’u’llah is the Fifth Manifestation of God to appear on earth, beginning with the Buddha.
See what I mean, by reality is like a multi-dimensional hologram, a house of mirrors. The term Maitreya [Friend] Buddha can have several different accurate meanings.
Another interesting facet of this, is the way all the religions describe the same reality with different stories. They all fit together seamlessly, in the light of the Revelation of Baha’u’llah.
According to Wikipedia, Maitreya is a Sanskrit word meaning loving kindness, which is in turn, derived from the noun Mitra, which means friend.
“One mention of the prophecy of Maitreya is in the Sanskrit text, the Maitreyavyākaraṇa (The Prophecy of Maitreya). It implies that he is a teacher of meditative trance sadhana and states that gods, men and other beings:
“will lose their doubts, and the torrents of their cravings will be cut off: free from all misery they will manage to cross the ocean of becoming; and, as a result of Maitreya’s teachings, they will lead a holy life. No longer will they regard anything as their own, they will have no possession, no gold or silver, no home, no relatives! But they will lead the holy life of oneness under Maitreya’s guidance. They will have torn the net of the passions, they will manage to enter into trances, and theirs will be an abundance of joy and happiness, for they will lead a holy life under Maitreya’s guidance
(Trans. in Conze 1959:241).” (wiki/Maitreya_Buddha)
That’s a pretty good description of Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith! It obviously brings up the issue of private property, which will be discussed later in another chapter of this story. Baha’u’llah teaches us to respect private property (Aqdas, v. 20, p. 28) and to be detached from everything except God and independent of everyone except God.
I think that God owns everything in the universe and rules every human heart. Ubuntu is the brotherhood of all mankind.
Jesus says to love and obey Almighty God. And love and respect everyone, exactly like you love and respect yourself. You don’t love your own family, any more than you love every single human being. In fact, every single human being is your own family.
The Old Testament refers to the Messiah, coming in the Glory of God, leading the Israelites back to Israel and ruling the world according to the laws of Moses. And now Baha’u’llah, which means Glory of God in Arabic, has founded that universal and divine civilization promised in every religion, the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God on earth.
After reading the Bible at least 3 times before I became a Baha’i, when I read the description of the World Order of Baha’u’llah, I recognized that same divine Kingdom of God that Moses set up in Israel.
The most significant difference is that the World Order of Baha’u’llah applies to the entire human race, not just Israel. There is no they in the Baha’i Faith. Only we, the people of earth.
And while Moses and Muhammad both taught Their followers to defend themselves, Baha’u’llah teaches us to stop fighting. He teaches us to cooperate with each other and to be loyal citizens of the countries we live in.
43:1 Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east:
(King James Bible, Ezekiel) (Ocean)
43:2 And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory.
43:3 And it was according to the appearance of the vision which I saw, even according to the vision that I saw when I came to destroy the city: and the visions were like the vision that I saw by the river Chebar; and I fell upon my face.
43:4 And the glory of the LORD came into the house by the way of the gate whose prospect is toward the east.
43:5 So the spirit took me up, and brought me into the inner court; and, behold, the glory of the LORD filled the house.
43:6 And I heard him speaking unto me out of the house; and the man stood by me.
43:7 And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, neither they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places.
43:8 In their setting of their threshold by my thresholds, and their post by my posts, and the wall between me and them, they have even defiled my holy name by their abominations that they have committed: wherefore I have consumed them in mine anger.
43:9 Now let them put away their whoredom, and the carcases of their kings, far from me, and I will dwell in the midst of them for ever.
43:10 Thou son of man, shew the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern.
43:11 And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, shew them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.
43:12 This is the law of the house; Upon the top of the mountain the whole limit thereof round about shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the house.
Baha’u’llah is the Glory of the Lord. The Bab is the Gate through which Baha’u’llah entered the world. Iran is east of the Holy Land of Israel. The World Order of Baha’u’llah is the law of the house, human civilization is the house. Earth is “the mountain the whole limit thereof round about.” And of course, this is all just my own personal perspective of that story.
The Bab, which means the Gate in Persian, Mirza Muhammad Ali, was born at Shiraz, Iran, on the 20th of October, 1819 AD. He is a descendant of Muhammad, the Apostle of God, and grew up in the Zoroastrian and Islamic culture of Persia. The Bab first told Mulla Hussein on May 23, 1844, that,
“he was the channel of grace from some great Person still behind the veil of glory, who was the possessor of countless and boundless perfections, by whose will he moved, and to the bond of whose love he clung”
(Esselmont, p 14, 1937)
The Bab is the Hidden Imam of Shia Islam. He revealed a new revelation of the Word of God and founded a new religion, the Babi Faith. He was also the Herald of Baha’u’llah. The Bab and one of His followers, Aqa Muhammad Ali, were executed by firing squad on July 9th, 1850, for teaching the Babi Faith.
One of The Bab’s most prominent followers, Mirza Hussayn Ali, Who assumed the title of Baha’u’llah, which means Glory of God in Arabic, was born in Teheran Iran, between dawn and sunrise on the 17th of November, 1817. He was born and raised in a wealthy and prominent Persian family. He never attended any school, however, even as a child He demonstrated great knowledge and wisdom.
After the Bab was martyred, one of the Babis attacked the Shah of Iran, in a misguided attempt at revenge. Consequently, the Babis were subjected to relentless persecution.
Baha’u’llah was imprisoned in the Siyah Chal dungeon in Teheran for four months in 1852. During His imprisonment, Baha’u’llah says that He had a vision of an angel, who told Baha’u’llah that He was safe and would be, “victorious by Thyself and by Thy pen.” (Esselmont, 1937).
He was subsequently released from the dungeon and while America was suffering the convulsion of the Civil War during 1863, Baha’u’llah publicly announced, in Baghdad Iraq, that He is the Promised One of every religion.
Baha’u’llah has revealed a new Revelation of the Word of God. He has founded a new religion, and a universal and divine civilization, which will last for at least 500,000 years.
The world unity that Baha’u’llah is teaching us is the spiritual solution to the corruption so prevalent in our present human civilization. It is not only the best medicine, it is the only medicine, that will finally, truly heal the human race from all the fighting and neglect and abuse that we inflict on each other. All the other efforts we make to heal human nature and civilization will be futile, without this spiritual core of human nature and civilization.
I want Baha’u’llah to be Who He says He is. I want to be a citizen of that one universal and divine civilization. Thank God Jesus saved us. There is only one Almighty God and Muhammad is His Apostle. Baha’u’llah is the Manifestation of God for now.
“Say: O peoples of the earth! Destroy the abodes of negligence with the hands of power and assurance, and raise up the mansions of true knowledge within your hearts, that the All-Merciful may shed the radiance of His light upon them. Better is this for you than all whereon the sun shineth, and unto this beareth witness He Who holdeth within His grasp the ultimate decree. The Breeze of God hath been wafted over the world at the advent of the Desired One in His great glory, whereupon every stone and clod of earth hath cried out: “The Promised One is come! The Kingdom is God’s, the Mighty, the Gracious, the Forgiving.”
(Baha’u’llah, Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p55, pp104)
Baha’u’llah was born in the east, in Teheran Iran. He was eventually imprisoned for teaching the Baha’i Faith, in the fortress of Akka Palestine, a Syrian province of the Ottoman Empire, from 1870 or so, until His Ascension in 1892.
The Israelites began returning to Israel about the same time or shortly after Baha’u’llah arrived. I believe that Baha’u’llah has already fulfilled all the prophecies of every religion and that He is the Manifestation of God, for the present stage of the evolution of human nature and civilization.
Baha’u’llah founded the Baha’i Faith. It is a faith. It is not anything that can be measured, proven or disproved. I suppose that we will recognize the people of Baha, because of our attitude of unity in diversity. It is rational and reasonable. That, “meditative trance,” is the Faith that Baha’u’llah teaches anyone who is genuinely seeking the truth.
The human race is an interdependent, super-organism, which is part of an even larger super-organism, Earth’s biosphere, which is part of an even larger super-organism, the Milky Way Galaxy. The universe itself is another, universal super-organism, which is insignificant in comparison to its Creator, Almighty God.
The Spirit of Nature
Nature is a feature of spirituality. Kind of like our bodies are inside of our souls. Our souls are always in intimate contact with one another. Our bodies are a temporary facet of human nature, like a caterpillar and cocoon are stages in the life of a butterfly. Passing on to the Abha Kingdom is very much like a butterfly getting out of the cocoon.
According to my limited human understanding of all the stories I’ve read about this, God’s first priority is to create the Manifestation of God. The Manifestation of God then creates the Abha Kingdom, which we are all born into after we pass on from this life on earth; and which no one alive on earth, other than the Manifestation of God, knows very much about.
How He’s accomplishing all this, is by creating this vast universe and natural history, and the universal and divine civilization founded by Baha’u’llah.
The Baha’i Faith and the civilization it is creating, is the very purpose of life on earth. Earth has finally reached the young adult stage of its life cycle. It’s like cause and effect. Almighty God, Baha’u’llah and the Baha’i Faith are the cause; natural history and the evolution life on earth are the effect. Baha’u’llah says that the purpose of God’s creation, is so that people can know and love God (Baha’i Prayers, p.4).
The human body is like a womb, growing a rational soul that will eventually be born into the real world: the Abha Kingdom. The universe itself is like a bee hive, in which many of these planets naturally generate life, which inherently evolves into individual beings with a rational soul and eventually a universal and divine civilization of rational souls, which are then born into the real world, which is the pure spiritual realm beyond space and time, the Kingdom of Heaven.
There is the possibility that human nature and civilization has been planted here by aliens. I doubt it. The Bible says that God created man out of clay. I suppose it could have been clay from another planet. I believe that human nature and civilization are home grown. I could be wrong.
Human nature is a feature of the chemistry of the universe. In fact, according to Baha’u’llah, human nature is the primary purpose of the universe.
Spiritual reality, the Abha Kingdom, is the cause. All this natural history is the effect. The Kingdom of God is causing the evolution of life on earth. It is not a result of natural history or the evolution of life on earth or human psychology or human imagination.
We do imagine God. Divine education teaches us to imagine the Kingdom of God, however, that imagination is like the music playing on a radio receiver, its a subjective experience of one objective reality. Our bodies, including our brains, are the radio receivers. Our minds, which are facets of our souls, are the music playing on the receiver.
Baha’u’llah says that the human soul is like a mirror. It reflects whatever it is turned toward. Turn towards God and the Word of God and reflect that divine civilization onto human nature and civilization.
Progressive Revelation and Evolution
Compared to an animal, the eternal human soul is a completely different class of being. The Human Kingdom of life on earth is separate and distinct from, and superior to, the Animal Kingdom of life on earth. A human being is as different from an animal, as an animal is different from a plant.
I really like Abdu’l Baha’s description of these classes of life, paraphrasing:
The mineral Kingdom is characterized by the attribute of attraction [chemistry, love]. The plant Kingdom is characterized by attraction and growth. The animal Kingdom is characterized by attraction, growth, sensation and motion. The human Kingdom is characterized by all these attributes, plus our intellectual and spiritual perception.
(Abdu’l Baha, Promulgation of Universal Peace, 1912)
Note that love is characterized by both, attraction and radiance. Attraction and radiance are the yin and yang of creation.
Human beings comprehend that the sun is stationary and earth is rotating and revolving around the sun, an animal does not. The idea God, is a uniquely human idea. No animal ever wonders if there is a God. We know this because, human beings are the only creatures with a prefrontal cortex, which is where our spiritual perception, our morality and our executive decision making capacity is centered.
Natural history, human nature and civilization are happening on purpose. They are not an accident of evolution. God created this universe in order to create these planets like earth, of which there are surely many, that naturally generate life. Human Consciousness is the apex of the evolution of life on earth.
Like a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly, rational souls are supernaturally born into the pure spiritual reality after their natural life on earth, or on whichever planet they’re evolving on. That pure spiritual reality is what the Manifestation of God is creating. Natural history is one facet of how He is creating it.
So, there is only one true God, Who is infinitely exalted above His creation, approachable only through the Manifestation of God. The Manifestation of God is the First Creature. The Manifestation of God then creates the Kingdom of Heaven, which is the pure spiritual reality we are all born into after our life on earth. He creates the Kingdom of God on earth, including man, in the process of creating the Kingdom of Heaven. He’s creating natural history, in the process of creating the Kingdom of God in heaven and on earth.
Time is an attribute of natural reality. Jesus often says, “The first will be last and the last will be first.” The main thing that means is that, He taught His Apostles to serve the people, not rule over us. Another understanding of that saying is that, when the Manifestation of God appears on earth, the weak and feeble will often be exalted above the rich and powerful, primarily because they will be more receptive to the Message delivered by the Divine Teacher.
Perhaps one of the many meanings of that principle of the Word of God is that from a material perspective, it seems like the natural world appears first and that spiritual reality arises from it. From a spiritual perspective, spirituality is the cause, natural history is one of its effects.
The mechanical, materialistic description of reality, which is so popular in our modern academic education, is an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the truth. Speis is the spirituality, the Chi, the Prana, the life force, the divine Rule of Law, animating all of natural reality.
The Baha’i Faith is as much a facet of the one and only reality, as attraction and radiance, physics and chemistry, gravity and the speed of light. In fact, it is that all powerful Word of God, that produces everything else. It produces natural history and it always causes natural history to produce universal and divine civilization.
Speis
Happiness, peace and love is who we are. We do need to cultivate ourselves in order to grow into peaceful and prosperous earthlings. We are all citizens of one universal and divine civilization, created by God.
The human soul is like a mirror that reflects whatever it’s turned toward. Turn toward God, and all of His Apostles. Seek the truth. Completely and permanently submit to God; give yourself to God, and His Word and His Laws. The divine education, revealed by the Manifestation of God, is how God is cultivating human nature and civilization.
Talk to God often. At least every morning and evening. God is powerful enough to create the universe and everything in it. He is powerful enough to forgive you and heal you and to help you thrive during your adventure of life on earth and after your life on earth.
The universe and everyone and everything in it, belongs to God. Spirituality flows in, around and through everyone and everything. Spirituality corresponds to language, religion corresponds to English or Farsi, etc.
Speis is spirituality, religion, attitude, culture, individuality, citizenship and civilization. Its the life force animating all creatures. Its the language of your personal story and of all human history.
Religion is very much like language. It is an inherent attribute of human consciousness. Like language, it is an inherent potential, which must be activated by assimilation and divine education.
“Know thou, moreover, that the Word of God—exalted be His glory—is higher and far superior to that which the senses can perceive, for it is sanctified from any property or substance. It transcendeth the limitations of known elements and is exalted above all the essential and recognized substances. It became manifest without any syllable or sound and is none but the Command of God which pervadeth all created things. It hath never been withheld from the world of being. It is God’s all-pervasive grace, from which all grace doth emanate. It is an entity far removed above all that hath been and shall be.”
(Baha’u’llah, Tablets of Baha’u’llah, p240)