Heaven Hell Or??

By N. SABIR

I will concentrate on telling the story of how poets, playwrights, religious zealots, thinkers, philosophers, and theologians, among others, have tried to describe something that religions hold it ultimately ineffable, very secretive, beyond words, and that non-believers prefer to see as a collective delusion that has prevented us facing up to the finality of death.

It leads us to so apt thought and concentration and perplexes ordinary human being endeavoring to meet ends meet that he gives up the thinking process.

You will see discussions about God and belief. To discuss about heaven and hell, one cant keep away from God and religion. They are intertwined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453550120

N. SABIR

N. Sabir is a free thinker and an ardent student of comparative religions for a long time. He is an engineer by profession. He is a freelance writer on subjects of religion, politics and history.

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Copyright © 2010 by N. SABIR.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010911394

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4535-5011-3

ISBN: Softcover 978-1-4535-5010-6

ISBN: Ebook 978-1-4535-5012-0

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Contents

Introduction

1       In This Life

2       Near-death Experience (NDE)

3       In the Afterlife

4       Ancient Religions

       Egypt

       Roman

       Greek

       Norse and Celtics

       Indus Valley civilization

5       Hinduism and Vedic Beliefs on this

6       What is in Jainism?

7       Buddhism Beliefs, Taoism and Confucianism

8       Zoroastrian Views

9       What is in Old Testaments ?

10       What are Christians Beliefs ?

11       What Islam Stands For On This

12       Sikhism’ Views

13       How Science explains it ?

14       Contributions from Philosophers and Thinkers

15       Atheists’ Views

16       Conclusion and My Views

References

To

my

darling, darling

granddaughter and grandson,

Rukuma and Adam

Acknowledgments

To all who tolerated quietly due to my concentration and efforts to complete this task, mainly my wife and my grandchildren.

Introduction

I will concentrate on telling the story of how poets, playwrights, religious zealots, thinkers, philosophers, and theologians, among others, have tried to describe something that religions hold is ultimately ineffable, very secretive, and beyond words, and that nonbelievers prefer to see as a collective delusion that has prevented us facing up to the finality of death.

It leads us to so apt thought and concentration and perplexes ordinary human beings endeavoring to meet ends meet that he gives up the thinking process.

And of course, what is tantalizing about the whole subject of the afterlife, as it has come down to us, is that we can never reach a definitive answer on whether it is true or false. It remains the ultimate delectable but untested promise. Despite the efforts of the Spiritualists, no one has ever come back from the dead to tell us whether all or any of what is predicted actually happened.

You will see discussion about God and belief. To discuss about heaven and hell, one can’t keep away from God and religion. They are intertwined.

We realize that it is an unresolved subject with no apparent solution. Still, it is discussed in the light of intelligent quest.

I have discussed the beliefs of all major and ancient religions about heaven and hell, afterlife, death, soul, migration of soul, the dwelling of the soul, temporary as well as forever.

In the southern part of Arabia, an immense body of sand known as Rub’ Al-Khali, also known as Empty Quarters, plateau behind the coastal escarpment. Dunes may be star-shaped, dome-shaped, or crescent-shaped masses of sand, forming long single or parallel veins or ridges—uruq in Arabic. And these sand mountains attain heights of nearly five to eight hundred feet.

Most of the Rub’ al-Khali is uninhabited except during the infrequent rains. There are isolated water sources, wells or ponds, and Bedouins inhabit nearby, and these are termed as oases. This is also satisfactory to water camels. Bedouins call this area as al-Ramlah or al-Rimal.

Here in this lonely place, Salman, our inquisitive human, is in pursuit of knowledge, looking for a never-dying Khidr, a sage of all time, in a vast desert of Rub’ al-Khali on some oasis. Khidr, disguised in the garb of Danyal, is there resting, and meets him.

The conversation between the two begins most of our chapters.

My views and concluding remarks bring forth that whatever exists in afterlife for humans, what is important is now and how to live this life. It will be interesting to read the conclusion, and I hope this will give to many of hopeless human souls to live a happy life here on.

Chapter 1

In This Life

Salman:       Why do we believe in hereafter, heaven, and hell?

Danyal:       To simply put it, the human needs to control his faculties; otherwise he will go astray. He needs some beliefs to rest on, to live his life in peace. Thus believing in God, hereafter, heaven, and hell provides him that. Then why question while living? A wise man will not do it.

Salman:       How do we experience heaven and hell here in this life on Earth?

Danyal:       Yes, we can. Many are in that state of experience and thus get near God. To be content is the key of happiness; when one achieves that, he enjoys heaven on this Earth. To indulge and crave for desires leads to most unhappy situations. It makes the human run after materialistic objectives and takes away his own happiness, of his family’s and of his community’s. This becomes hell here on this earth.

Life is full of joy, smiles, love, hopes, desires, and pleasures. You rise in the morning and see the sun shining on the world, the streams flowing and murmuring. The birds are chanting, the flowers enticing the surroundings with pleasant flavors, and humans having all positive attitudes and rejoicing. Life is a gift of nature with a purposeful meaning. Life is an eventful journey with a number of pleasant surprises at every point.

Look at life with different perspectives and find your own meaning to solve your purpose, because life is a wonder. That is why after being here for so many years, we are still uncertain about what the meaning of life is. Life is itself a question and an answer. I call life a state of awareness. We live and enjoy till we are aware of our existence, and the day we lose this sense and understanding of life, we move outside that state.

The meaning of life is deeply mixed with the philosophical and religious conceptions of existence, consciousness, and happiness, and touches on many other issues, such as symbolic meaning, ontology, value, purpose, ethics, good and evil, free will, conceptions of God, the existence of God, the soul, and the afterlife. Scientific contributions are more indirect; by describing the empirical facts about the universe, science provides some context and sets parameters for conversations on related subjects.

Life is full of struggle too—hunger, disease, war, terror, rich and poor classes.

Life is full of sadness and pain. Politicians and religions rule the world. Most wars are fought for them. Poor human beings have no peace in their lives.

Here we are discussing what is happening in this life.

The testing of good men by calamities and evil men by leaving them in the enjoyment of good things is part of the trials of God, in which some freedom of choice is left to man.

He will disclose to you the secrets of the unseen. Man in his weak state would be most miserable if he could see the secrets of the future or the secrets of the unseen. But things are revealed to him from time to time as may be expedient for him, by messengers chosen for the purpose.

Our duty is to hold fast by faith and lead a good life.

The gifts are of all kinds: material gifts such as wealth, property, strength of limbs, etc.; or intangible gifts such as influence, birth in a given set, intellect, skill, insight, etc.; or spiritual gifts of the highest kind.

By an apt metaphor, the miser is told that his wealth or the other gifts which he hoarded will cling round his neck and do him no good. He will wish he can get rid of them, but he will not be able to do so. According to the Biblical phrase, in another connection they will hang like a millstone round his neck.

The metaphor here is fuller. He hugged his wealth or his gifts about him. They will become like a heavy collar, the badge of slavery, round his neck. They will be tied tightly and twisted, and they will give him pain and anguish instead of pleasure.

To him belongs the heritage of the heavens and the earth; material wealth or property is only called ours during our short life here. Thus all gifts are ours here in trust only; they ultimately revert to the Almighty, to whom belongs all that is in the heavens and on earth.

The big question: Who made us?

At some point in our lives, everybody asks the big questions, Who made us? and Why are we here?

So who did make us? In these days and age, most of us have been brought up more on science than religion, and we believe in the big bang and evolution more than God. But which makes more sense? And is there any reason why the theories of science and creationism cannot coexist?

The big bang may explain the origin of the universe, but it doesn’t explain the origin of the primordial dust cloud. This dust cloud (which, according to the theory, drew together, compacted, and then exploded) had to come from somewhere. After all, it contained enough matter to form not just our galaxy but the billion other galaxies in the known universe. So where did that come from? Who, or what, created the primordial dust cloud?

Similarly, evolution may explain the fossil record, but it falls far short of explaining the quintessential essence of human life—the soul. We all have one. We feel its presence, we speak of its existence and at times pray for its salvation. But only the religious can explain where it came from. The theory of natural selection can explain many of the material aspects of living things, but it fails to explain the human soul.

Furthermore, anyone who studies the complexities of life and the universe cannot help but witness the signature of the Creator. Whether or not people recognize these signs is another matter. The point is that if we see a painting, we know there is a painter. If we see a sculpture, we know there’s a sculptor; a pot, a potter. So when we view creation, shouldn’t we know there’s a Creator?

If there is one thing we know for certain, it is that without a controlling influence, all systems degenerate into chaos. The theories of the big bang and evolution propose the exact opposite, however—that chaos fostered perfection. Would it not be more reasonable to conclude that the big bang and evolution were controlled events? Controlled, that is, by the Creator?

We can just as easily propose that God did not design life on earth to be paradise, but rather a test, the punishment or rewards of which are to be had in the next life, which is where God establishes his ultimate justice. In support of this concept, we can well ask who suffered more injustices in their worldly lives than God’s favorites, which is to say, the prophets? And who do we expect to occupy the highest stations in paradise, if not those who maintain true faith in the face of worldly adversity? So suffering in this worldly life does not necessarily translate into God’s disfavor, and a blissful worldly life does not necessarily translate into beatitude in the hereafter.

I would hope that by this line of reasoning, we can agree upon the answer to the first big question. Who made us? Can we agree that if we are creation, God is the Creator?

Another big question: The purpose of life

Since we are a creation, God is the Creator.

Now let us turn to the second big question, which is Why are we here?

Well, why are we here? To amass fame and fortune? To make music and babies? To be the richest man or woman in the world?

No, there must be more to life than that, so let’s think about this. To begin with, look around you. Unless you live in a cave, you are surrounded by things we humans have made with our own hands. Now why did we make those things? The answer of course is that we make things to perform some specific function for us. In short, we make things to serve us. So by extension, why did God make us, if not to serve him?

If we acknowledge our Creator, and that he created humankind to serve him, the next question is, How? How do we serve him? No doubt this question is best answered by the One who made us. If he created us to serve him, then he expects us to function in a particular manner if we are to achieve our purpose. But how can we know what that manner is? How can we know what God expects from us?

Well, consider this: God gave us light by which we can find our way. Even at night, we have the moon for light and the stars for navigation. God gave animals guidance systems best suited for their conditions and needs. Migrating birds can navigate, even on overcast days, by how light is polarized as it passes through the clouds. Whales migrate by reading Earth’s magnetic fields. Salmon return from the open ocean to spawn at the exact spot of their birth by smell.

Certain marine organisms (the electric eel being a high-voltage example) generate and read magnetic fields, allowing them to see in muddy waters or in the blackness of ocean depths. Insects communicate by pheromones. Plants sense sunlight and grow toward it (phototropism); their roots sense gravity and grow into the earth (geotropism). In short, God has gifted every element of his creation with guidance. Can we seriously believe he would not give us guidance on the one most important aspect of our existence, namely, our reason for being? That he would not give us the tools by which to achieve salvation?

And would this guidance not be revelation?

Think of it this way: every product has specifications and rules. For more complex products whose specifications and rules are not intuitive, we rely upon the owner’s manuals. These manuals are written by the one who knows the product best, which is to say, the manufacturer. A typical owner’s manual begins with warnings about improper use and the hazardous consequences thereof, moves on to a description of how to use the product properly and the benefits to be gained thereby, and provides product specifications and a troubleshooting guide whereby we can correct product malfunctions.

Now how is that different from revelation?

Revelation/product manual tells us what to do, what not to do, and why, tells us what God expects of us, and shows us how to correct our deficiencies. Revelation is the ultimate user’s manual, provided as guidance to the one who will use us this—ourselves.

In the world we know, products that meet or exceed specifications are considered successes, whereas those that don’t are useless. Any product that fails to meet factory specifications is either repaired or if hopeless, recycled. In other words, destroyed. We are the product of creation.

But let’s pause for a moment and consider how we interact with the various items that fill our lives. As long as they do what we want, we’re happy with them. But when they fail us, we get rid of them. Some are returned to the store, some donated to charity, but eventually they all end up in the garbage, which gets buried or burned.

Where did that euphemism for the punishment due to an underperformer come from? The person who believes the lessons of this life translate into lessons about religion. In his mercy, he gives us restitution to recover and also forgiveness.

The need for revelation

If our Creator made us to serve and worship him, how do we do that? As suggested earlier, the only way we can serve our Creator is through obeying his mandates as conveyed through revelation.

But many people would question this assertion: Why does mankind need revelation? Isn’t it enough just to be good and righteous? Isn’t it enough for each of us to worship God in our own way?

Regarding the need for revelation, I would make the following points. In the first article of this series, I pointed out that life is full of injustices, but our Creator is fair and just, and he establishes justice not in this life but in the afterlife. However, justice cannot be established without four things—a court (i.e., the Day of Judgment); a judge (i.e., the Creator); witnesses (i.e., men and women, angels, elements of creation); and a book of laws upon which to judge (i.e., revelation). Now how can our Creator establish justice if he did not hold mankind to certain laws during their lifetimes? It’s not possible. In that scenario, instead of justice, God would be dealing out injustice, for he would be punishing people for transgressions they had no way of knowing were crimes.

Why else do we need revelation? To begin with, without guidance, mankind cannot even agree on social and economic issues, politics, laws, etc. So how can we ever agree on God? Second, nobody writes the owner’s manual better than the one who made the product. God is the Creator, we are creation, and nobody knows the overall scheme of creation better than the Creator. Are employees allowed to design their own job descriptions and duties? Are we citizens allowed to write our own laws? No? Well then, why should we be allowed to write our own religions? If history has taught us anything, it is the tragedies that result when mankind follows its caprice. How many who have claimed to banner of free thought have designed religions that committed themselves and their followers to nightmares on Earth and damnation in the hereafter?

All revelation given by God are exemplary and complete. They are misspelled and corrupted by humans in their own selfishness and greed. Humans are never excused for that. Only God will forgive them.

How the soul enters the body

Is the union between the spirit and the body final from the moment of conception? Could the spirit, during the early stages of union, suddenly refuse to animate the body?

       Answer: The union is definitive in one sense no other spirit can replace the one who has been chosen to inhabit that particular body. But since the link that holds the two together is weak at first, it is easily broken and may be severed if the spirit wills it; that is, if it draws back from the trial. In that case, the child dies.

       Souls join their assigned hosts in the womb of the baby’s mother sometime after the third month of pregnancy, so they will have a sufficiently evolved brain to work with before term. After birth, an amnesiac memory block sets in, and souls meld their immortal character with the temporary human mind to produce a combination of traits for a new personality.

       I have never had a single case where a soul joined the fetus in the first trimester. The reason that souls do not begin their complex merger with a fetus under three months is quite simply because there is not enough brain tissue for them to work with at this stage.

       All things are a part of God and an expression of God’s thought. The Mind of God is the force which propels and perpetuates these thoughts. All minds, as thoughts of God, do everything God imagined. Everything that came into being is an aspect of the One Mind.

The souls of individuals were created for companionship with God (the Whole). The pattern that God used to create souls was the pattern of God’s own Spirit. The spirit is life. From the spirit, the mind builds patterns. From the mind, the physical creation is the result. This is how the spirit, the mind, and individuality became the pattern for souls. This is how cause, action, and effect became the pattern for everything. First, there was the spirit (the first cause); then there was the action which withdrew spirit into itself; then there was the resulting individuality of God.

The spirit of the individual existed before their soul was created. The spirit keeps the knowledge of its identity with God. The soul has the ability to experience the activities of the mind in a manner separate from God.

Thus new individuals are issued from God and remain dependent upon God, but individuals are also aware of an existence apart from God. Individuals are given the power to choose and direct their own activity. Without free will, it will only remain a part of the individuality of God. The mind, issuing as a force from God, will naturally fulfill God’s thoughts, unless directed otherwise. The power to do this—to direct the force of mind individually from God—is free will. And the record or memory of this freedom is the soul. The soul begins with its first expression of free will through the force of mind. The first thought that the spirit generates of free will (i.e., the first diversion of the force of mind from its normal path of unity with God) is the beginning of the soul.

The nucleus of the soul is the balance of positive and negative forces that are equal in power. These forces produce harmonious activities: the positive initiating, impregnating, and thrusting forward; the negative receiving, nourishing, and ejecting. The steps of this evolutionary process are also the stages of the thought process: perception, reflection, and opinion.

Thus the soul consists of two states of consciousness: (1) the spirit, which bears a knowledge of its identity with God; and (2) the soul, which bears a knowledge of everything it experienced.

The plan for the soul is a cycle of experience that is unlimited in scope and duration. Through this evolutionary cycle, the soul will come to know the creation in all its aspects at the discretion of the will. The cycle will be completed when the desire of the will is no longer different from the thought of God. The consciousness of the soul will then merge with its spiritual consciousness of its identity with God. Then the soul will return to its source as the companion it was intended to be.

As a companion, the soul will remain conscious of its separate individuality and will be aware of its own free will as it now acts as a part of God, but not diverting its mind because it is in agreement with God’s influence on the mind of the soul. Until this state of oneness is reached, the soul will not be a companion in the true sense of the word.

The idea that returning to God means a loss of individuality is paradoxical, since God is aware of everything that happens and must therefore be aware of the consciousness of each individual. The return of the soul is the return of the image to that which imagined it. The consciousness of the individual—its soul record—could not be destroyed without destroying a part of God. When a soul returns to God, it becomes aware of itself not only as a part of God but as a part of every other soul and everything.

What is lost is the ego—the desire to do other than the desire of God. When the soul returns to God, the ego is voluntarily relinquished. This is the symbology behind the crucifixion of Christ.

The plan for the soul includes experiencing of all creation, but it does not necessarily mean participating in all forms and substance. Nor does it mean that souls can interfere with the creation. Nor does it mean that souls are to spin their own little worlds, twisting and bending laws to make images of their dreams.

But these things can happen. The soul is the greatest thing that God had made because it has free will. Once free will was given, God did nothing to curb it. However it acts, it has to act within God’s reality. By whatever route, the soul will return to God.

The fact that the human body is a speck of dust on a small planet in a universe of galaxies can lead to the illusion that humans are a small creation. But the soul is the unlimited activity of the mind and the grandeur of imagination.

Consciousness

At first, there was little difference between the consciousness of the new individual (i.e., soul) and its consciousness of identity with God (i.e., spirit). Souls merely watched the flow of the Mind, somewhat as people daydreaming, marveling at its power and versatility. Then souls began to act themselves, imitating and paralleling what Mind was doing. Gradually souls acquired experience, becoming a complementary rather than an imitative force. It helped to extend, modify, and regulate creation.

Certain souls became aggressive with their own power and began to experiment with it. They mingled with the dust of the stars and the winds of the spheres, feeling them and becoming part of them. One result of this was an imbalance between the positive and negative forces. To feel things demanded the negative force. To express through things (and directing and managing them) required the positive force. Another result of souls becoming aggressive with their own power was the gradual weakening of the link between the two states of consciousness (i.e., spirit and the soul). Some souls became more concerned with and aware of their own creations rather than God’s. This resulted in the fall of certain souls to an even lower consciousness. The Bible allegorically refers to this event as the Fall in the Garden of Eden and the revolt of the angels in the book of Revelation. This event is also the basis for the cosmology of Christian Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism.

To enter into another level of creation and become part of it, the soul had to assume a new, or third consciousness—a physical form. Assuming a physical form is a way of experiencing that level of creation by means of a conscious mind (i.e., the third consciousness). Through the conscious mind, an individual can experience physical consciousness: the physical body, the five senses, the glandular and nervous systems. This transformation of consciousness does not apply everywhere at this level of creation. In other worlds and solar systems, the transformation may differ. One can only imagine the number of these other worlds and the aspects of divine Mind, which they represent.

When a soul enters into another level of creation and its consciousness, it separates itself temporarily from the consciousness of its own soul and becomes even further removed from the consciousness of its spirit. Thus, instead of helping to direct the flow of creation and contributing to it, the soul found itself in the stream and drifting along with it. The farther the soul traveled from the shore, the more it succumbed to the pull of the current and the more difficult was the task of getting back to land.

Planets and solar systems became a temptation to souls. Each solar system had its own course and its own plan. Souls moved toward them through the activity of a constant stream of mind. When a soul leaped into the stream (by immersing itself in the system through which the stream was flowing), it had the force of the current to contend with, and its free will was hampered. It was very easy, under these circumstances, to drift with the current.

Each solar system also represents an opportunity for development, advancement, and growth toward the ideal of complete companionship with God—the position of cocreator in the vast system of universal mind.

Our solar system also attracted souls. Since each solar system is a single expression of the divine, with its planets as integral parts, Earth came into the path of souls.

Each solar system in the universe is like an atom in a universe of worlds. Atoms have quantum levels for electrons to travel around. The sun has quantum levels for planets to travel around. The planets of our solar system are physical representations of heavenly dimensions. These levels as a whole are the consciousness of our solar system. There are nine planetary/heavenly dimensions to the consciousness of our solar system. The planet Earth represents the third dimension. Earth represents three-dimensional life in our solar system.

Earth is an expression of divine Mind with its own laws, its own plan, and its own evolution. Souls, longing to feel the beauty of the seas, the winds, the forest, and the flowers, mixed with them and expressed themselves through them. They also mingled with the animals and made thought-forms in imitation of them. Souls played at creating and imitated God. But this interfered with the evolutionary plan of Earth. Thus, the stream of Mind that was carrying out this plan for Earth gradually drew souls into its current. Souls had to evolve into the bodies they had themselves created.

This entanglement of souls into physical form was a probability from the beginning. But God did not know when it would happen until the souls of their own free will had caused it to happen.

All souls that exist were created by God in the very beginning. None has been made since. This means all souls on this planet preexisted before birth. Of the souls which God created, only a comparative few have entered into the experience of our solar system. Many other souls have gone through or are going through a similar entanglement in other solar systems in the universe.

A way to liberate the souls that were entangled in matter was created. A physical form became available as a vehicle for the soul on Earth. A way became available for souls to enter Earth and experience it as part of their evolutionary/reincarnation cycle. Of the physical forms already existing on Earth, a species of anthropoid ape most nearly approached the necessary pattern. Souls descended on these apes, hovering above and about them rather than inhabiting them, and influenced them to move toward a different goal from the simple one they had been pursuing. They came down out of the trees, built fires, made tools, lived in communities, and began to communicate with each other. Eventually they lost their animal look, shed bodily hair, and took on refinements of manner and habit.

The evolution of the human body occurred partly through the soul’s influence on the endocrine glands until the ape-man was a three-dimensional objectification of the soul that hovered above it. Then the soul fully descended into the body, and Earth had a new inhabitant: the Homo sapien.

Homo sapiens appeared in five different places on Earth at the same time, as the five races. This evolved human is what the Bible refers to as Adam. When souls incarnated into physical form, it would bring the divine consciousness (i.e., the spirit) in with it. Cayce referred to this divine consciousness as the Christ consciousness or Buddhahood or the superconsciousness. Christ consciousness has little to do with the personality known as Jesus. It means that a person has attained a complete human-divine unity. This human-divine unity has been attained by many people thus far; one such person was Jesus.

The problem for the soul entangled in flesh was to overcome the attractions of Earth to the extent that the soul would be as free in the body as out of it. Only when the body was no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the soul would the cycle of Earth be finished. This is the condition of having a perfect unity of the human with the divine.

In a smaller field, this is the evolutionary drama of free will and creation. In a still smaller field, each atom of the physical body is a world in itself where a drama of free will and creation is occurring. The soul brings life into each atom, and each atom is a physical reflection of the soul’s pattern.

With the advent of consciousness, humans became aware that sex meant something more to them than to the animals. Sex is the door through which new souls enter Earth, a door unnecessary in other heavenly planetary/realms. Sex is the only means which trapped souls have of being liberated from their predicament, through the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

The plan for the Earth cycle of souls was a limited series of incarnations with periods in-between of dwelling in other heavenly dimensions of consciousness. Reincarnation would continue until a soul’s every thought and action of the physical body was in accord with the plan originally laid out for the soul (i.e., a human-divine unity, Christ consciousness). When the body was no longer a hindrance to the free expression of the soul, when the conscious mind had merged with the subconscious, the Earth cycle was finished; and the soul was liberated to move on to new adventures. This conquest of the physical body could not be attained until there was perfection in the other dimensions of consciousness that is a physical representation of our solar system.

Astrologically, the goal for the soul is to attain a level of consciousness that represents the total expression of the sun and its planets. Whichever level of consciousness that the soul assumes, it becomes the focal point of activity. The other states of consciousness receded to the position of urges and influences.

The human race was fostered by a soul who had completed his experience of creation, attained Christhood, returned to God, and became a companion to God. This is the soul known as Jesus. The first evolutionary transformation of ape-men to Homo sapiens is who the Bible refers to as Adam. This was the beginning of the divine consciousness into flesh on Earth. The soul known as Jesus was one of the first souls to enter into one of the Adamic races.

Finally, humans were left with a conscious mind that was separated from their own individuality as souls. This individual identity as a soul became the subconscious mind. The individual identity or awareness of the physical world became the conscious mind. The subconscious mind (i.e., the soul) influenced the conscious mind and gave it its stature and quality. The subconscious mind dwelt in the suit of clothes that is the physical body, and only in sleep is it disrobed.

Conscious minds, left to its own influence, will work out the plans and desires of God. Humans eventually developed theories for what they felt was true but no longer knew to be true. The result was the creation of philosophy and theology. Humans searched and discovered higher knowledge, which they carried within themselves but could no longer reach with the conscious mind. This resulted in the creation of science.

Humans evolved from having an awareness of higher spirit knowledge to having only mystical dreams, revealed religions, philosophy, and theology. This evolution of consciousness ultimately reached a plateau, and humans generally only believed what they could see and feel and prove in terms of their conscious minds. Then humanity began the struggle of regaining this higher knowledge.

Meanwhile, the Christ soul continued to teach and lead humanity by incarnating as the biblical characters named Adam, Enoch, and Melchizedek. Enoch and Melchizedek experienced neither birth nor death. The Christ soul realized after these incarnations that it was necessary to give humanity a pattern by which they could follow in order to return to God. The Christ soul achieved this goal by incarnating as the personality known as Jesus, who became victorious over the death of the physical body by laying aside the ego and accepting the crucifixion of the body in order to return to God. Jesus created a pattern for humans to follow. Through the acts of leading a perfect life and becoming unjustly killed, this reversed the negative karma (i.e., the law of God, an eye for an eye) which came from Jesus’s first incarnation as Adam.

At present, humanity is in a state of great spiritual darkness—the darkness which precedes dawn. Humanity had developed a level of skepticism that reached a point