We go from life to life and all the prophets talk to us, including Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, and they all teach the people of their day.  But the clergy class invents a theology. In the Mauritius Islands in the Indian Ocean, there were 100,000 different Hindu cults, and no two of them had reincarnation the same.  All of them had different versions.  Just like the Christian nations have 10,000 different Christian denominations and each one of them has their own theology, each claiming to be right, each one teaching something different

When the Manifestation of God comes He finds that the priestcraft gets into the religion and makes changes in it. Their interpretations come into it and they add gods and paganism to it. So, when the next Manifestation of God comes, He takes His hand and wipes all of this rubbish into the garbage. The pathway to God becomes cluttered up with all of these rituals, all these dogmas, all these observances and all this rhetoric, and it’s no longer able to be traversed.  The priestcraft don’t even make it onto the pathway. They miss the pathway. They miss the Manifestation of the day in which they are living by holding onto some ancient Manifestation whose message has become corrupted by the priestcraft.  They miss the boat, so-to-speak. They dart into space and some of them reach the nethermost gloom. The further they get away from the Manifestation, the further they are from God.

Now we get back to the reason for this discussion. The question is, “Why did God create us?”  Only man has the capacity to know God. He alone has the intellect. By knowing God and by turning to God through His Manifestations — because God can’t be known in His essence, in His pure essence — as we turn to God through His Spirit that comes down through the Manifestations of God, we turn to God. And then we start our pathway back to God. He created us in order that He Himself might be known.

t’s just like if you were a beautiful and tremendous artist and you lived in the kingdom of the blind. …Or a great musician and you lived in the kingdom of the deaf; What would you do? God is not heard in His kingdom.  He doesn’t have to be touched.  He’s an intangible. God is an intangible, not a tangible.  Therefore, He can only be known by an intangible, and man has this intangible self.

God left an imperfection in us.  It’s our freedom of choice.  Why do you think God left this horrible imperfection?  In other words, we don’t have to accept God.  After He preaches to know Him and worship Him, why would He leave that imperfection? Why didn’t He make it so everybody would have to worship him?  It’s because He wanted something more than to be known.  He wanted to be loved.

If you were to go to your lover, pull out a gun, hold it to her head and say “Damn you, love me!”, she would say “Yes! Yes! I love you!”  Would that be love?  No, it wouldn’t.  What a guy does is bring her posies or candy or an apple.  He woos her.  God spreads out this beautiful world with its mountains, its trees, its birds, its flowers, its fruits and vegetables — everything here, ALL THIS FOR MAN.  Plainly, He has created it.  But He wants to be loved.  And He gets awful jealous when people start worshiping an idol.

If you pray to this piece of chalk, your prayer goes to that piece of chalk.  When you pray to that cat scratcher, your prayer goes to that — or to that picture up there — or that cross with that man on the cross, your prayer goes to that.  If you pray to that idol, which is created by man, your prayer goes to that, and not  to God.  If you create an image of God in your mind, then your prayer returns to you, because you are the creator of that image, and doesn’t go to God.  Thus, when people pray to things that are created by themselves, these prayers go back to themselves and do not go to God.  Therefore, men are still in their sins.  They have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation.

This pen writes.  If it didn’t write, what do you think I would do with it?  I’d throw it in the garbage.  We are created to know God and to worship Him.  If we fail to fulfill the reason of our creation, it’s off into the nethermost gloom.

Who was the cause of your own creation?  If you don’t want to accept the God that created you, go to the god of your own creation, which is in everyone’s dream.   You have your choice.  You have two different choices.  You can have hell or heaven.  All the religions of God have come, just like that pen.  If it doesn’t write, you throw the thing away.  Anything that doesn’t fulfill the reason of its creation is inert, and man is created for one thing.

The minerals can’t know God.  The vegetables and the animals can’t know God.  Only man has this capacity.  Therefore, he that has the intellect is held responsible for his actions.  If God didn’t leave the imperfection of freedom of choice in man, man would be perfect.  If he had to worship God and turn toward Him, then he wouldn’t do it of his own volition.  God wanted a being to love Him and to worship Him of his own volition, just like we want our spouses to be in love with us of their own volition.  We don’t want our spouses to love us because they are forced to do so.

I wouldn’t want anyone to respect me because I forced them to do so.  But, I would expect respect for what I know and what I helped them to know. God is the same way, and He creates the whole universe.

No so long ago, scientists showed a sun that is not too far away with planets around it.  They didn’t show if there are people on it, but they suspect that there are planets and people.  We can’t see the whole universe because it’s too large, but undoubtedly this vast universe pervades all space.  There is no end to space, no matter how far you may travel in any one direction or in all directions.  You could travel at the speed of light:  at 186,000 feet per second, and if you traveled for a billion, billion years you wouldn’t come to the end of space because the second you come to the end of space, what’s on the other side?  More space.  And this is endless.  The universe of God is endless. God is omnipotent and omniscient.  He pervades the whole space, and in that vast space He has creatures that worship Him.  He gives His creatures eternal life and evolution from kingdom to kingdom, station to station, worlds beyond worlds for eternity.

If you should happen to reach God, Who is infinite, then it would become boring.  Or, you could take God off His throne and you could sit down, and God wouldn’t let that happen.  So, the journey to God never ends.  This is what makes heaven in the next life beautiful.  Who would want to come back here?

The Garden of Eden

Abdu’l-Baha’ says being born is like falling into a mud puddle.  You get dirty.  So if we reincarnated back here to fall in the mud puddle again, that wouldn’t get us clean.  The thing that gets us clean is to turn to the Manifestation, but we have the freedom of choice as to whether we will do this.

Now it’s only in this life that we have the freedom of choice.  In the womb of the mother we don’t have that freedom of choice.  God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden.  He says, You can eat of all the fruit of this garden.

The sperm and the ovum came together in the Fallopian tubes.  The sperm swam up the vagina into the uterus and into the Fallopian tube and there it met the ovum, impregnated it and became the primal cell.  At the minute that this primal cell was made, the soul dropped in.  Then the cilia of the Fallopian tubes carried the primal cell into the uterus which is the Garden of Eden.  God said you can eat all the fruit of this garden which is the mother’s blood which comes from this world.  But, He says, you shall not know good from evil.

In the womb you can’t know good from evil because it’s just one condition.  It’s dark, there’s one temperature and no movement.  It’s just one condition.  After nine months of development, the brain evolves and it reaches a certain state of perfection where it is ready to comprehend good from evil.  Then it emits an enzyme into the amniotic fluid in the amniotic sac.   This enzyme causes the uterus to contract, creating the birth contractions, and we are born into the knowledge of good and evil in this world.

In this world everything is in opposites.  We have light and dark, hot and cold, vacuum and pressure.  We have fast and slow.  We have knowledge and ignorance, riches and poverty, good and bad.  We have spirituality and a pagan theology.  All of these conditions exist in this world.  Before one eats of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that is, before they are born into this world, there are no opposites.  In the womb there is no light and dark, fast and slow,  good and bad, or anything like that;  whereas, when we are born into this world, we gradually become cognizant of what is good and bad.

The serpent is the intellect.  The intellect is the window of the soul.  If a man uses his intellect, the serpent, to turn to the Tree of Life, he becomes spiritual.  Otherwise, if the serpent gets attached to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it crawls on its belly.  This is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.  We are eating of this fruit, and it says the day that you eat of it you die (spiritually–Gen. 3:3).  This all pertains to this world.

But in the story of the Garden of Eden there is another tree.  This is the tree of life, and it ways if anyone should eat of this tree, he will live forever and ever.  It is in the midst of the garden and the Bible says that God placed cherubim around the Tree of Life to guard the way of the Tree of Life.  These cherubim are the spiritual qualities.  One is love:  love God that He may love thee.  Another is justice, the other is knowledge, and so forth.  These are the things that are essential in order to know God.

We have to be true to ourselves.  We can’t love the lie, or believe the lie, or create an image of God in deference to God, or any of these things, and still expect to complete the reason for our creation.

In order for an animal to become human it has to be eaten by the human.  In order for the vegetable to become animal it has to be eaten by the animal.  In order for the mineral to become vegetable it has to be absorbed by the vegetable.  In order for man to become spiritual he has to be absorbed by this Tree of Life.  Unless he is absorbed by this Tree of Life, he does not become spiritual.  This story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is very figurative.  If it isn’t figurative, if it isn’t like 2 + 2 = 4, then it’s nonsense.  If it isn’t factual, it’s nonsense.  Back to top: https://rockymountainbahai.com/the-purpose-of-life

 The first form known to man is the mineral kingdom. The minerals are the building blocks from  [Mineral Kingdom] which everything else is built. This includes all the elements such as iron, calcium, potassium, phosphorus and so on. The elements have a life, an existence, but it is a static existence. They change form according to the heat and power of the sun, but they don’t grow and reproduce or things like that. And they have no type of consciousness of themselves. For instance, water flows because that is the nature of water. Fire burns because it’s the nature of fire to burn. It has no will of its own.
 

On the chart, the mineral kingdom is placed closest to the Infinite Essence because it doesn’t have much freedom. It’s under the control of the Almighty. No matter how far the mineral progresses, it won’t be able to grow, move or reproduce. Minerals come into contact and form compounds, but they don’t have organic organization as do the other kingdoms. They can evolve within their own kingdom. For example, a piece of coal or carbon, under the influence of heat and pressure, can be perfected into a diamond. But no matter how perfect a mineral may become, it can’t become a vegetable.
 

It is lacking something that the vegetable has, and that is: the vegetable spirit. Back to top: https://rockymountainbahai.com/the-purpose-of-life 

 What is the difference between the animal and the vegetable?
 

Instinct?
 

The vegetable has instinct too. All vegetables grow as all vegetables grow. All birds make nests as all birds of their species make nests. For instance, the beaver will make dams, as all beavers make dams. With vegetables it’s the same thing. They grow up straight. Trees grow on the mountainside. Do they grow straight out of the side of the mountain, or do they grow straight up? Instinct is a reaction. The trees grow straight up because it’s a response, a reaction to gravity: in opposition to gravity. For instance, the vegetables on the opposite side of the earth are growing the opposite way from the vegetables on this side of the earth. They grow out away from the earth.
 

What the animal has that the vegetable doesn’t have is the five senses. The animal grows and reproduces like the vegetable, it’s composed out of minerals, but in addition it has the five senses. So the difference between the vegetable and the animal is the five senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste and touch. These five senses are the attributes of the animal spirit, and they give the animal consciousness of its particular existence – the animal can hear it, see it, smell it, taste it, and feel it.
 

The vegetable does not have the central nervous system to record this information, so it is unconscious of its existence. If you didn’t have these five senses they used to say you were a vegetable. You would not be conscious of your existence without the senses. The nervous system brings impulses to the brain so it can interpret the stimuli, and it gives us the conclusion that we exist and that other things exist. If we didn’t have these senses, we wouldn’t know that we exist. Therefore, the vegetable doesn’t know of its existence.
 

Because the vegetable doesn’t recognize its own existence, no matter how far the plant may evolve, no matter how sweet the orange, no matter how fragrant the rose, of its own volition it cannot know of its own sweetness or fragrance. Of its own volition, a vegetable cannot become an animal that perceives its own existence. As well, no matter how far the mineral may evolve it couldn’t become a vegetable. Take for example carbon. The carbon can become perfected within its state. When it becomes pure it’s the diamond. It can become perfected in its state, but it can’t become vegetable.
 

But the vegetable can absorb the elements and they become the vegetable. A vegetable cannot become an animal, but the animal can eat the vegetable and the vegetable can be absorbed by the animal. This is due to the animal spirit and the five senses.
 

The purpose of the mineral is known. They are the basis of all existence. The minerals are the building blocks from which everything else is made. Without the minerals, we wouldn’t have anything else in existence, including vegetables. The minerals from the soil like iron, phosphorus, and calcium go into the plant, and then on into the animal kingdom. Without these minerals, the vegetable and the animal couldn’t exist. The purpose of the vegetable is also known. Without the vegetable, the animal couldn’t exist. The animal eats the vegetables and they become the animal.   Back to top: https://rockymountainbahai.com/the-purpose-of-life 

  On our chart, the circle labeled “Human” should be cut in half, showing that man has two parts: physical and spiritual. The smaller circle at the top dissects the first circle. It represents the mind of man.
 

We put the mind up at the top. The mind is the window to the soul. It is both physical – connected with the brain and the body – and spiritual. It is connected with the soul. The part that is connected with the soul thinks in the abstract.
 

Man is the highest development in this contingent world. There may be a higher being but if there is we don’t know of it. Man is a composite of the kingdoms before him. We are the crowning point of existence in this contingent world. We see nothing higher in this contingent world than man. Mankind is the highest of God’s creation in this world, but the beginning of another world which is spiritual. If you were the only person in this world, how would you feel? Lonely. There is only One Invisible God that pervades the entire universe. There’s not another God for Him to associate with.
 

Without man, He would be lonely, because the rock can’t comprehend God, the plant doesn’t have the intellect and can’t comprehend God, and the animal doesn’t have the intellect and it can’t comprehend God. Only mankind has the capacity to comprehend the intangible. As God is intangible, God had to make man in order that He might be known. He had a need to have man. Otherwise the greatness of God would only be known to God alone. And he would be awfully lonely in this whole universe that has no end without a being that has the capacity to comprehend the intangible.
 

Therefore God created the lower kingdoms so that man could exist, and He created man so that He Himself might be known. But man has one more thing. Do you know what? The reason man has the capacity to comprehend the intangible, the reason man has the intellect, is because He possesses a soul. We call the intellectual capacity in man the soul. The body is tangible, but the soul is intangible. The intellect is intangible, the next life is intangible. God is intangible.
 

So the thing that man has that the animal doesn’t have is a breath from God, which is the soul. The window of the soul is the mind. Part of the mind belongs to the five senses. But the intellectual part of the mind belongs to the soul. The part of the mind that can comprehend the intangible is the soul, and it can do so because it is an intangible. The five senses alone can’t comprehend the intangible. What makes man different is that he has the intellect and the intangible soul. The intangible soul can comprehend the intangible God.
 

Man’s physical body is the same as the animal’s body. But the soul, a breath of God, enters in at the time of conception, making him different from the animal. Because of his ability to think in the abstract, man can understand what the eye doesn’t see or what the ears don’t hear. What make us different from the animal is we can think in the abstract. And we think in the abstract because we have a soul. The animals have a mind that is limited to the five senses. We have a mind that includes the five senses, but it can also think in the abstract. We can comprehend things that we don’t see. This is the soul. The soul can only be known through a body. It can’t be known otherwise.
 

Surrounding the body is an aura. The plant has an aura. If you take a leaf and photograph its aura, and then break off a part of the leaf and photograph it again, you will still see the aura of the whole leaf, even though part of the leaf is gone. The animal also has an aura. Man also has an aura: a physical aura. As we evolve spiritually, our aura takes on a whiter appearance.
 

If you take a prism and you let the sun shine through it, you get a rainbow. If you take the base of that prism and put it to the base of another prism, the rainbow will come back as white light again. All the colors are in white light. When man takes on all the spiritual qualities, then the soul produces an aura around it. When the body dies, it goes back to the elements because it is composed of elements. The soul is not composed.
 

Anything that is composed must decompose. The soul is not an organization, and it is eternal. Man, unless he is enlightened by the Holy Spirit, has no spiritual body for his soul.
 

Man can know God through His Manifestations, Who are Adam, Moses, Krisna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and today, the Bab and Baha’u’llah. God cannot be known in His Essence, but only through His Manifestations. Without the Manifestations, man would know nothing of God.
 

It’s like man is in a dark cave, and God is likened to the sun. The sun cannot reach man in his dark cave. The Manifestation comes and is like a mirror that reflects the light of God into the cave. The person in the cave can thus know the sun. He can feel its warmth and see its light in the mirror.
 

If the mirror should say, “I am in the sun,” it speaks the truth. If the mirror should say, “The sun is in me,” it also speaks the truth. If the mirror should say, “I have the rays of the sun,” it also speaks the truth because it is reflecting the rays of the sun. If the mirror says, “I am merely the mirror,” it also speaks the truth because the sun didn’t become the mirror and mirror didn’t become the sun.
 

This is what Jesus said:
 

“If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” (John 8:19) “I and the Father are one.” (John 10: 30)
 

“My Father…is greater than all,” (John 10:29)
 

“I go to the Father.” (John 16:10)
 

“Know that I am in my Father.” (John 14:20)
 

“I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:25)
 

Jesus is the Manifestation of God that reflects the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended upon all the Manifestations. With Jesus, it descended upon Him as a dove.
 

“And behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him.” (Matt. 3:16)
 

When the Holy Spirit descends upon the Manifestation, then it is reflected to all mankind, to the minds of men, and men can turn to the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation and reflect the same spiritual qualities, and attain the white aura. God saw man in the image of the animal: a barbarian, a cannibal. But He knew man had the soul. Therefore, He decided to create man in His own image.
 

God had the Holy Spirit descend upon Adam. Adam became a mirror, reflecting the Holy Spirit. Adam reflected this light to His descendents. The rest of the people were in the image of the animal. They had no written language and they couldn’t talk. They were educable, however, because they had the soul.
 

What comes to man, apart from the Manifestations, is a branch of the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation. This is the light that is reflected into the cave. We call this the secondary rays of the Holy Spirit. The direct rays are focused on the Manifestation when the Holy Spirit descends upon Him. The teachings taught by the Manifestations, give man an understanding of this spirit. Man thus receives the secondary rays of the Holy Spirit, by understanding and believing the teachings of the Manifestation.
 

Eventually, as man progresses in his physical body, his soul is likened to a man riding a horse. When the rider gets to his destination, his horse goes into the barn and the man goes on into the house.
 

There’s eventually a separation of the soul from the body when man goes into the next life, which is intangible. But God starts out with man first being able to recognize that He is intangible. The purpose of the creation of man is so that God would be known.
 

But God wanted something more than to be known. What do you think that is? God left a defect or an imperfection in man. It’s our freedom of choice. Why do you think God left this horrible imperfection?
 

If God only created man in order to be known, he wouldn’t have left that defect in man. Everyone would have to know God. But He took a chance on man. He gave him the freedom to turn towards Him or away from Him. After God preaches to know Him and worship Him, why would He leave that imperfection? Why didn’t He make it so everybody would have to worship Him?
 

He did this because He wanted something more than to the known. Do you know what that is? He wanted to be loved. In other words, we don’t have to accept God.
 

All this existence without love is meaningless. God had a love to be loved. He loves us. That’s why He called us into being. But in order for His love to reach us, we have to love Him. And in order for us to love Him, we have to have the freedom not to love Him. If you were to go to your lover, pull out a gun, hold it to her head and say, “Damn you, love me!” She would say, “Yes! Yes! I love you!”
 

Would that be love? No. That wouldn’t be love. That would be fear. What a guy does is bring her posies or candy or an apple. He woos her.
 

So too, God places us on this earth and He spreads out this beautiful world with its mountains, its prairies, its trees, its birds, its flowers, its fruits and vegetables. Plainly, He has created it. Everything that’s here, all this is for man.
 

What is He doing? He’s wooing man. Just like a lover might woo you by bringing you flowers, or inviting you out on a picnic. As you love your lover, your lover would love you. This is the relationship that God wants. He wants to be loved. He made man so he could love God. But True love comes from the heart. And since man has the freedom of love, he may turn away from God.
 

And God gets awful jealous when people start worshiping an idol. If you pray to this piece of chalk, your prayer goes to that piece of chalk. When you pray to the cat scratcher, your prayer goes to that… or to that picture up there, or that cross with that man on the cross, your prayer goes to that. If you pray to that idol, which is created by man, your prayer goes to that, and not to God. If you create an image of God in your mind, then your prayer returns to you, because you are the creator of that image, and your prayer doesn’t go to God. Thus, when people pray to things that are created by themselves, these prayers go back to themselves and do not go to God.
 

Therefore, men are still in their sins. They have not fulfilled the purpose of their creation. This pen writes. If it didn’t write, what do you think I would do with it? I’d throw it in the garbage. We are created to know God and to worship Him. If we fail to fulfill the reason of our creation, it’s off into the nethermost gloom. Who was the cause of your creation?
 

If you don’t want to accept the God that created you, go to the god of your own creation, which is in everyone’s dream. You have your choice. You have two different choices. You can have hell or heaven. All the religions of God have come, just like that pen. If it doesn’t write, you throw the thing away. Anything that doesn’t fulfill the reason of its creation is inert, and man is created for one purpose: to know and love God.
 

The minerals can’t know God. The vegetables and the animals can’t know God. Only man has this capacity. Therefore, he that has the intellect is held responsible for his actions. If God didn’t leave the imperfection of freedom of choice in man, man would be perfect. If he had to worship God and turn toward Him, then he wouldn’t have to do it of his own volition. God wanted a being to love Him and to worship Him of his own volition, just like we want our spouses to be in love with us of their own volition. We don’t want our spouses to love us because they are forced to do so.
 

You wouldn’t want anyone to respect you because you forced them to do so. But, you would expect respect for what you know and what you helped them to know. God is the same way, and He creates the whole universe.
 

The First Gift from God
 

[Arc of Ascent Descent 8x10]
 

When God created you, did He ask you if it was OK that He create you? No! He didn’t ask you or take you into His confidence. He just went ahead and created you without asking your permission. Would you sell your life for a million dollars? No! Here God has given you something you wouldn’t sell for a million dollars, free without any reservation or even asking you. The most precious thing you have is life.
 

The Second Gift from God
 

God gave you another gift, probably as great or even greater, your intellect. Without the intellect, you’d be like the cow not knowing if the earth is round. He didn’t ask you if it was OK if He gave you the intellect. He gave it to you as a gift, for free. Would you sell your intellect for a million dollars? No! Imagine if you were out in the desert, with nothing but sand. No vegetation, no water, and it was 120 degrees with no shade.
 

You were trudging along, looking for an oasis, a well, a river, a stream, a lake, or any type of water. Any water you saw would turn out to be a mirage. The whole day went by like this, and then the second day the same thing.
 

The third day you were ready to take your last breath. Then someone came along and said, “Would you like to have a glass of water?” Would you thank that person?
Yes! Every time you saw that person, you would say, “You wonderful person, you wonderful person, you gave me a glass of water!”
 

God has given you two gifts, life and the intellect, which you wouldn’t sell for a million dollars each. He spread out this beautiful world before you, and all the other gifts that he gives you. Would you thank him? Yes! The thanking of God is that you’re turning to Him and worshiping Him. You’re saying, “Thank you, Oh Lord, for this life that I have!”
 

The Third Gift from God
 

God wants to give you another gift, a greater one, but for this particular gift He’s going to take you into His confidence. He says, “I want to give you a third gift, it’s greater than the other two, but this gift depends upon you. That is, in order to have this gift, eternal life, you’ll need to come into an agreement with Me, enter into My Covenant, and turn to Me and worship Me. And then I will bring you into My Kingdom, in this life and the next. And you will live with Me in My felicity.”
 

But God makes this gift contingent. That is, you can turn away from it or you can accept it. This third gift is the gift that comes to us from the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t speak to us from a great voice in the sky. But from time to time God speaks to us through the mouth of the Holy Prophets, and through these Prophets the Thought of God becomes manifest to the world.
 

Thus these Prophets are called Manifestations of God. The only knowledge we have of God comes from the Manifestations. God in His essence is unknown. The only way we can know God is through His Spirit contacting us. In order for that Spirit to contact us, from time to time there is a person born with what we call the Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is able to receive the logos.
 

The logos is the thought of God. This person who has the Holy Spirit expresses God’s thoughts in words, in a Revelation. These people that are able to receive the thought of God have been created with something we don’t have.
 

We have the soul and the animal doesn’t, the animal has the five senses and the plant doesn’t, and the plant has growth and reproduction that the minerals don’t have. Likewise, the Manifestation of God has a soul, he has the five senses, he grows and reproduces, and He’s composed of minerals. But He also has the Holy Spirit. Therefore He is capable of receiving the Thought of God, which is the Logos. He gives us a Revelation revealing God to us. And thus God becomes Manifest.
 

The only thing we can ever know of God is this Logos, this thought of God expressed in a Revelation, because God is closer to us than our own breath, and our own jugular vein, but we don’t know Him. At the time of Adam, God revealed Himself to Adam as the One Invisible God. Before Adam, people didn’t know about the One Invisible God. There were great civilizations before Adam. There is no recorded history of this, but there is evidence of it. We know that there was a civilization called Atlantis, another called Lemuria, another called Mu, and there was another one besides that. Some people think it was called Titan.
 

There were four universal Manifestations of God, one for each of these four civilizations. Each of these civilizations came to an end with a great catastrophe. These civilizations had not evolved to the point that we have.
 

Mankind came out of the sea as an ameba, just like the animals did. Over millions of years, man evolved; just as at one time, a sperm and ovum came together inside your mother and you became a primal cell. At one time you were a primal cell so small it couldn’t be seen by the naked eye – the primal cell can only be seen under the microscope. Yet everything that you were going to be like was in that primal cell: the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, how tall you were going to be, everything was in that cell. All your characteristics, your hereditary traits and your hereditary character going all the way back to the ameba, was in that cell.
 

The experience of the human race all the way back to its origin in the sea is transferred to your soul when it comes into contact with the primal cell at the instant the sperm and the ovum come together.
 

Inside of an elephant, when the sperm and ovum come together, no soul is joined to that primal cell. In the womb of an elephant that cell is another elephant, in the womb of a lion it’s another lion, in the womb of a giraffe it’s another giraffe, but in the womb of a woman, it’s another person.
 

That person differs from the animal in that it possesses the soul. The soul is a breath of God that comes in contact with the primal cell at the time of conception. The body is composed of elements. These elements are universal and continue to exist.
 

That is, these elements existed before they came into the formation of your body. In the body these elements exist in a formation we call organic chemistry. After the body separates from the soul it goes back into the elements. These elements continue to exist, the only thing that dies is the form and shape of this combination. The single elements are indestructible – they continue forever.
 

It is only the combination of the elements that has a beginning and has an ending. Your soul is like a single element. The soul is an emanation of God. An emanation of God is different from the Manifestation of God – we’ve already seen what the Manifestation of God is.
 

The emanation of God can be understood like this: speech is the emanation of the speaker, art is the emanation of the artist, and music is the emanation of the composer. But the music is not the composer, the art is not the artist, and the speech is not the speaker. Your soul is an emanation from God, but it is not God. It emanates from God, just like speech, art or music emanates from a person. And this emanation of God is a single element therefore it is eternal.
 

When we were talking about eternal life, this eternal life is in the spiritual world, in the kingdom of God. Outside this Jesus said the people weep and gnash their teeth. Outside of this, the people aren’t living in harmony and unity. We call one condition heaven and the other condition is hell. Heaven is evolving towards God by turning to Him. You love Him, therefore His love reaches you and you evolve spiritually.
 

But if you don’t love God, this love doesn’t reach you and you don’t evolve spiritually. This is hell. Heaven is evolving to God hell is going the other way. So God offers eternal life to you – to your soul, which is your individuality.
 

You have three personalities. The first personality is inherited from the chromosomes and genes in the sperm and ovum, going all the way back to the ameba. This is an inherited personality. The second personality is the acquired personality, the chances of this world. Your parents educate you, you go to school, you have tests, trials and tribulations that you undergo, which are educational. In school, the teacher purposely gives you tests for your evolvement. God does the same thing – you have tests and trials in this life.
 

These tests and difficulties are actually for your benefit and are educational. Baha’u’llah says, “When calamity exists in the greatest degree, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for these are the gifts and favors of God.”
 

These tests that you have ultimately lead you to God. They lead you to ask, “God, where are you? I need your help.” or “God, you created me, why am I here?” These tests lead you to the third personality, which is the spiritual development acquired through turning to God. The Bible calls this becoming “created in the image of God” – God gives you His spiritual qualities and attributes such as mercy, compassion, generosity, love, wisdom, justice, and so on.
 

At the time of Adam, man was in the image of the animal – he had two eyes, two ears, mouth, nose, arms, and legs. But through the Revelation of Adam and the succeeding Manifestations, man takes on spiritual qualities. These spiritual qualities prepare man for the next life.
 

When we separate from the body, we lose the inherited personality and the acquired personality to a certain extent. The first pages of the Bible mention Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They are told, “If you eat of the knowledge of good and evil you’re going to die.” Our second type of personality comes from eating of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, the opposites of this life.
 

Everything in this life is in the opposites. We have light and dark – dark is the absence of light, cold is the absence of heat, vacuum is the absence of atmospheric pressure, bad is the absence of good, evil is the absence of spiritual qualities. All of the negative is replaced by the positive – dark is replaced by light, cold is replaced by heat – light, heat, and knowledge are the positive qualities.
 

Without these opposites, we wouldn’t be able to know the positive qualities. If it wasn’t for cold, we wouldn’t know what heat is, if it wasn’t for darkness, we wouldn’t know what light is, and if it wasn’t for ignorance, we wouldn’t know what knowledge is.
 

The purpose of being in this world of opposites is for us to evolve far enough so that we can think in the abstract, turn to the Manifestation of God, and take on the spiritual qualities. Taking on the spiritual qualities prepares our soul for the next life. To the grave goes the physical body, but the soul, your individuality, continues on into the next life.
 

Although in the next life we lose to some extent our inherited and acquired personality characteristics, we will have our individuality. You will always be you throughout eternity. You won’t become Jesus, or Joan of Arc, or someone else. We get our individuality when the sperm and the ovum come together, when the soul comes in contact with the primal cell and we receive our identity as an individual.
 

In the analogy of the horse and the rider, the horse or body finally goes on into the barn, and the rider goes on into the house, or into heaven. When you make your choice to turn to God, then you go into His house, which is what we call heaven. And hell is going the other way.
 

The only way, however, that we can know God, is through the Holy Spirit that comes to us through the Manifestations, that is the Prophets of God. They give you this spiritual education in order for you to evolve towards God.
 

But in order to evolve towards God, you first have to love God, turn towards Him and supplicate to Him in order that you may receive these spiritual qualities. We can receive a branch of the Holy Spirit through the Manifestation of our day.
 

The Manifestations are like pure and polished mirrors which reflect the light of God to us. Each man receives a branch of the Holy Spirit, according to his capacity, just as each color reflects a certain part of the sun’s rays that shine upon it.
 

The first part is the spiritual message, through which we attain the spiritual qualities of love, mercy, justice, generosity, fidelity, concord, etc. Civilization is impossible without these qualities. The second part is the laws, ordinances and teachings for an ever-advancing civilization. In school, we go to first grade, second grade, third grade, all the way up to a University education. Through the Manifestations, we learn more and more about the same great revelation of God, through each Manifestation.
 

Like I said, there are two parts to a Manifestation’s message. The first part has to do with this life.
 

The other part is the part that changes man from a savage to an angelic state. Spirituality does not consist of all the observances that they have you do in the Church such as baptism or confirmation. These things don’t have anything at all to do with spirituality. Spirituality consists of taking on the spiritual qualities of knowing God and worshipping Him, and evolving towards Him.

 
But the only way you can do this is through the Manifestation which receives the logos – the Revelation of God. Now, the mineral doesn’t become vegetable, but the vegetable absorbs the mineral. The vegetable doesn’t become animal, but the animal eats the vegetable and it becomes part of the animal. The animal, no matter how far it may advance, it will never have the intellect as man does. When an animal dies it goes back to the elements. But man can eat the animal and the animal becomes part of man. Man, no matter how perfect his body becomes, no matter how far he evolves, unless he comes in contact with the Holy Spirit through the divine Manifestations, he is mortal. Only man has the capacity to know God. He alone has the intellect.
 

By knowing God and by turning to God through His manifestations — because God can’t be known in His essence, in His pure essence — as we turn to God through His Spirit that comes down through the manifestations of God, we turn to God. And then we start our pathway back to God.
 

He created us in order that He Himself might be known. It’s just like if you were a beautiful and tremendous artist and you lived in the kingdom of the blind…. Or a great musician and you lived in the kingdom of the deaf…. What would you do? God is not heard in His kingdom. He doesn’t have to be touched. He’s an intangible. God is an intangible, not a tangible. Therefore, He can only be known by an intangible, and man has this intangible self.   Back to top: https://rockymountainbahai.com/the-purpose-of-life 

  Reincarnation is the belief that the soul, upon the death of the body, comes back to earth in another body or form. This belief comes out of the imagination of people, but it also comes from the teachings. Krishna taught that we go from body to body. However, He meant that we go from a physical body, to a spiritual body. Once we have a spiritual body, we go from being like a two-winged angelic body, to a four-winged angelic body, to a six-winged angelic body, and so on. There are many dimensions in creation. On this earth, we dwell in the first three dimensions, but in the next life, there are an infinite number of dimensions. Jesus alluded to this when He said, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.”  Jesus also said, “I go to prepare a place for you.”  What is meant here is that we come from God. Our souls came from God.
 

When we talk about God, people have all different concepts. In different people, different concepts enter the mind. The word “God” doesn’t mean the same thing to any two people. They either go by their own imagination about what God is, or they accept one of the imaginary concepts that someone else put forth about Him. So some of them think God is Jesus and some think He’s a big man sitting on a throne up in the sky with a long beard and a wand in His hand.
 

God is invisible. We don’t see Him, taste Him, touch Him, feel Him, or hear Him. He pervades the universe. He is always present. In His essence He is unknowable.
 

Abdu’l-Baha’ says being born is like falling into a mud puddle. You get dirty. So if we reincarnated back here to fall in the mud puddle again, that wouldn’t get us clean. The thing that gets us clean is to turn to the manifestation, but we have the freedom of choice as to whether we will do this.
 

Where did the thought of reincarnation come from? It came from the Hindus. It started even before that. Abraham had three wives:  Sarah was the first wife. From Sarah’s offspring came the Israelites. Abraham’s second wife was Hagar, and from her offspring came the Arabs and Muhammad. The third wife, Keturah, had six sons and from them came the Aryans – the Indo-European civilization. From Keturah came Krishna, Zoroaster and Buddha.
 

Before these manifestations of Krishna, Zoroaster and Buddha, the Israelites went down into Egypt and they became pagans under the Egyptians. Likewise, the descendants of Abraham and Hagar went down into Arabia and became pagan. When Muhammad came they had 360 gods in the Kabah. All the descendants of Abraham became pagan. Those of the third wife also became pagan, and they invaded India.
 

Now the people of India had dark skin and curly hair. The Aryans had light skin and straight hair. These Aryans who invaded India, you can see because of the sun they have gotten darker. But they have the same features as any other Aryan – as the Germans and so forth. “Indo-European,” they are called. The Indo-European languages are all one. When they got to India the people there were still in the sub-races yet. They hadn’t yet been able to think in the abstract, so the sons of Abraham took over the country.
 

It was just like when people came to America and took it away from the Indians. The black man in India outnumbered the Aryans 1000 to one, and the Aryans didn’t want these people to take over their religion because they hadn’t evolved to a point of thinking in the abstract. So they took Adam and they said He was Manu. In Hindu mythology, Manu was descended from Brahma or Brahm, who was God.
 

Adam and Manu both mean “man.” Since “man” has body, they divided man, or Manu, up into four groups – the head, the arms and chest, the legs, and the feet. The head represents the upper class and the feet were the lower class. In other words, they set up the caste system. The upper castes were those who came down and conquered, and the lower caste was the mass of the Indian people, who did all the dirty work. They had to clean the spittoons, sweep the floors, etc.
 

They said the upper caste were the Brahmans, which was the clergy class and the head of Manu, or man. They said the arms and chest were the second caste, and they were the government officials – the mayors, policemen, the jailers, and also the king. The third case were the artisans – the people that made the tables and the houses – they were the carpenters and the blacksmiths. The fourth caste were the laborers, or slave caste, which was the mass of the Indian people.
 

The upper castes didn’t want the people to intermarry out of their caste because they were setting up a structure for a civilization. They wanted this lower caste to always remain the labor caste. If they intermarried, this would do away with the laborers, who would eventually marry up to the king and the priesthood and take it. The upper caste said they couldn’t do that. But they said if the lower caste performed their services and their labor with perfection, then they would come back reincarnate into an upper caste. Then, if they performed in that caste in proper function, they would come back in the next caste, which is the ruling caste. If those in the ruling caste performed their function properly, they would come back in the upper caste, which is the priestly caste. Then, those in the priestly caste, if they performed their function perfectly, they would go to nirvana and they wouldn’t incarnate again. Nirvana is their term for heaven.
 

This caste system was made in order to keep the people enslaved, just like when the white people brought the black man from Africa. They didn’t allow the black people to marry into the white race. It was forbidden in all the southern states. Up until just a few years ago, it was even forbidden in this area and other places. They weren’t allowed to intermarry. They had to sit in the back of the bus and everything else. They thought that by not having them intermarry they could always spot a slave, because he’d be black. But, it wasn’t long until they got their rights.
 

In India, in order to keep the people from getting their rights, they told them the only way they could get their rights was to reincarnate. Be a perfect slave and you’ll be rewarded in an upper caste.
 

But none of the manifestations of God have taught this. All Krishna said was you will have another body and another body and another body. He was referring to spiritual bodies, like all the manifestations of God have taught.
 

Now probably the only real way of accepting this is to find out if this person who’s telling us this is the manifestation of God or not, because Baha’u’llah taught the infallibility of the manifestation. That is, God is speaking in the manifestation. They are the mirrors and the mouthpieces. It’s the thought of God expressed in a Word. So, as it’s God speaking, He is perfect. These revelations come from God, and if someone proves He is a manifestation, then when we accept Him we’re accepting the Word that comes from God. And this is the truth of the matter.
 

The Soul and the Body
 

To further dispel the reincarnation tripe, do you know about positive and negative – in regard to how two magnets attract and repel one another? If you have two magnets and you put the two positive ends together, they won’t come together – they’ll repel. Turn them around and they’ll come together. Positive and negative will come together and negative and positive will come together.
 

All right now, let’s talk about when a human is conceived in the womb. At conception, which is positive:  the physical body or the soul? The physical body is, because the physical body comes into existence in the animal spirit and then we have the five senses. This all came about through evolution. We all came out of the sea as an amoeba. All life on this planet came out of the sea as an amoeba. When you were in the womb of your mother you were an amoeba, a primal cell. But in that prima cell, or the amoeba, was everything that you were going to be in this life:  the color of your eyes, the color of your hair, your shape, your height, and your sex. All of what you were going to be was concealed in that primal cell.
 

But it goes through various stages. At one time, in the womb of your mother, you had a tail and gills – just like the amoeba of the human coming out of the sea. At one time it had gills and a tail. But it evolved and it lost its tail and gills. It came out of the sea and it started walking on all fours, and then on two fee, and it evolved to what it is today. Everything of what it was going to be was in the amoeba of the sea.
 

It’s just like when you plant an orange seed and you get an orange tree, or when you plant an apple seed and you get an apple tree. The difference between apples and oranges was determined in their seeds. The seeds determined what trees they would be. There was a seed for man and there was a seed for elephants, and a seed for dogs, and another one for a cat. Each species came from a specific amoeba in which the chromosomes and the DNA were arranged so it would reproduce. But each would evolve until it got to a certain state. With the coming of Adam, man entered into the state where he could think in the abstract and he became able to receive this knowledge that we have here.
 

Now if the physical body is positive, then the soul is like a white sheet of paper. A white sheet of paper has nothing written on it. A beautiful picture can be put on it or you can write a poem, or you can write a whole book. Or, we could take a piece of paper and print a 10 in the corner and make it worth $10, and on another one we could put a 1 in the corner and make it worth $1. They’re both a piece of paper, but one is worth 10 times more than the other. Or, you could put a 50, or 100, or 1000, or 10,000 on it. But it all started out as a white sheet of paper with nothing on it at all.
 

Your soul, when it came in contact with your body, was a white sheet of paper. It was negative. Nothing was on it. The physical body, which is positive, attracted it. When the sperm and the ovum came together, the soul was attracted to this physical body – to the chromosomes. God took a rib – a chromosome – and made Eve – the soul. The soul was attracted to the body, which is Adam. Adam means “red earth.” The physical body was made from the minerals, or from the earth. Adam is the physical body, Eve is the soul.
 

If the soul was positive, if it had something written on it, then two positives wouldn’t have attracted together. One had to be negative and the other one had to be positive. So the soul was a white sheet of paper. Everything that you know started from the moment of conception. During the nine month period when you were in the womb, millions of years of evolution of the chromosomes were transferred to your soul from the genes of your parentage, which go all the way back to the amoeba.
 

There are three types of personalities or three types of characters in every person. One is the inherited personality, coming from the amoeba – from the evolution of the primal cell. That is your inherited character. The second is your acquired personality, that is derived from the eating of the apple, or from eating of the knowledge of good and evil:  that is, from learning the opposites of this world. But neither one is going to make you spiritual or make you an angel. The third character is that which is derived from receiving a branch of the Holy Spirit, by turning to the manifestation. Then, your soul starts to take on value like the dollar bill. It becomes a 10 dollar bill, a 1000 dollar bill, or a million dollar bill. It keeps evolving, but it always has to turn to the manifestation for its source, just like in the physical life we have to turn to the sun for energy.
 

Now this light that we have coming from this lamp here, and from the lamp on the wall there, where did that come from? It came from the sun. All energy on this planet came from the sun. It’s stored energy. Coal is stored energy. It was plant life, it absorbed the energy from the sun, the plant life was buried in the ground and it became coal and oil. Electricity is from the sun. All this energy came from the sun. We owe our physical life to the sun. If the sun goes out of business, we go out of business. Our physical body goes out of business.
 

We owe our spiritual life to the manifestation. That’s the spiritual sun. If we separate ourselves from the manifestation, we die spiritually. We are spiritually dead. This is what happened to Lazarus when Jesus came and said “Come back. Come out, Lazarus.”  He came back from being spiritually dead. If we turn from the physical sun, we’ll die because we have to receive that energy. If we turn from the spiritual sun, we die spiritually.
 

Reincarnation is a farce to enslave a people. Now they have outlawed the caste system in India, but a lot of them still practice it. They try to keep part of them as slaves.
 

They keep teaching them – if you do right, you’ll evolve up in the next incarnation. Reincarnation was invented by the priestcraft who invaded India in order to enslave a people. We don’t need to be gullible and give it any credence. None of the prophets of God taught reincarnation. It is all a priestcraft. It’s all pagan. It’s all something to keep man in slavery, chains.
 

You seek the truth and the truth will make you free. The only way you get the truth is to find the manifestation. This is why we give you the proofs of the manifestations. Now, I’m not leading you to me. I’m leading you to the manifestation. Just the same as the manifestation is your source of the Word of God, it is my source. What I give to you, I got from the manifestation. It’s from turning, over a lifetime, a long time, to the manifestation.
 

What are the souls like before conception?
 

Like a white sheet of paper. To further explain it, let’s take a piece of paper. Where does a piece of paper come from? It comes off of a great big roll. It comes out of the mill and they put it on rolls. Then the roll runs through a machine and it cuts it into sheets. Then these sheets are cut into smaller sheets. I buy sheets of paper this big, but they come off of bigger sheets, as big as this table. But I buy them about this big, then I cut them down on my cutter in the shop into the size that I want them, so I can print on them. I can cut them down to little pieces or big pieces – whatever I want.
 

Just as the paper, the soul comes off of the roll when it comes in contact with the human cell, the primal cell. At that point it starts to become individualized. It’s like a sheet of paper. All souls come from God, like paper comes out of the mill. That is, the soul comes in contact with the physical body and gets an inherited personality, and as your inheritance is different from mine and from hers, our inherited personalities differ. Also, what we acquire through our experiences is different. Each individual is different in what character traits he acquires. With the coming of the manifestation, He sends out the energy from the Holy Spirit to all people. This book written by the manifestation is for all people to read. Some people will spend their time in reading His books and studying them and evolving, and going out teaching – things that they’re supposed to do. And they evolve to high stations of spirituality. And that’s the purpose of this life.
 

When you get to a certain state of evolvement in this life – the seraphim – this life has nothing more to offer you. You go on and you keep on evolving. A person who doesn’t attain to that during this life, attains to it later on in the next life. But, it is always upward, never going back to where you come from. It is as hard to reincarnate as it is for you to get back into the womb of your mother. You can try to crawl back into it, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t do it.
 

Now certain people who regress mentally, they finally end up entering into their mother’s womb mentally. They get so they have to be fed and they mess their pants and things like this. They just keep regressing but they can’t get back into the mother’s womb. And you can’t come into another womb by reincarnation. This is all priestcraft stuff. It’s not from the manifestations.
 

Is there a finite number of souls?
 

No.
 

Is God creating new souls?
 

God has always been creating souls. And He always will be creating souls. He had no beginning and no ending. Creation had no beginning and no ending. This globe had a beginning and this globe will have an ending. Before this globe was created there were other globes. And before those globes, there were others. This physical universe has gone on forever, and it will go on forever. And, as there is no end to space, it will never become overcrowded. This earth may become overcrowded, but we aren’t going to stay on this earth. The soul is not limited to space or time.
 

Through the evolution of man, has man always had a soul? And when did man start to evolve to what man is?
 

When the sperm and the ovum come together, the soul becomes connected to it. his is at the moment of conception. The amoeba, the seed of man had a soul. The soul was there as long as there was sex, whenever that started – whenever there was the male and the female. We go way back to bacterium, but we still had soul.
 

But man has not always been in the form that we are now?
 

We had gills and we had a tail when we were in our mother, and also when we came out of the sea. The evolution of Darwin is not the evolution that we believe in. He believes that all beings came from a single amoeba and each different species broke off. What do they call it? Mutation. He calls it the mutation of species. In this way he connects us up with the monkey, by saying that we all come from a single amoeba. Abdu’l-Baha said, Baloney. He said each species had its own amoeba, just like an apple tree came from an apple seed and an orange tree came from an orange seed.
 

We were human when we were in the amoeba in the sea, and when we were in the primal cell of our mother – we were still human. You were you at the moment that the sperm of your father and the ovum of your mother came together. At that second, your soul was present. Your soul had a beginning, but it will have no ending. The body has a beginning and an ending. The elements have no beginning and no ending. They exist forever. But we are finite and the finite never becomes infinite. But we don’t remain as finite as we are, as limited as we are.
 

Abdu’l-Baha explains it, saying it’s like a bird in a cage. You have a bird in a cage. He is confined to the cage. You open the cage and he is confined to the room.
 

Just the other day they showed a sun that is not too far away with planets around it. They didn’t show if there are people on it, but they suspect that there are planets and people. We can’t see the whole universe because it’s too large, but undoubtedly this vast universe pervades all space. There is no end to space, no matter how far you may travel in any one direction or in all directions. You could travel at the speed of light:  at 186,000 feet per second, and if you traveled for a billion, billion years you wouldn’t come to the end of space because the second you come to the end of space, what’s on the other side? More space. And this is endless. The universe of God is endless. God is omnipotent and omniscient. He pervades the whole space, and in that vast space He has creatures that worship Him. He gives His creatures eternal life and evolvement from kingdom to kingdom, station to station, worlds beyond worlds for eternity.
 

If you should happen to reach God, Who is infinite, then it would become boring. Or, you could take God off His throne and you could sit down, and God wouldn’t let that happen. So, the journey to God never ends. This is what makes heaven in the next life beautiful. Who would want to come back here? Back to top: https://rockymountainbahai.com/the-purpose-of-life