The
ultimate goal of life does not mean that we shall ever arrive at a
spiritual destination where everything remains static and inactive.
That which to our present understanding seems an ultimate goal, will,
when attained, be but the starting point for a new and further evolution.
We believe in an eternal upward spiral of existence. This is what
Jesus meant when he said, "In my Father's house are many mansions."
The
Koran tells us that God has made many heavens, one
on top of another, which means that evolution is eternal. The Hermetic
philosophy taught an infinite variation of the manifestation
of life on an ever-ascending scale. All evolution proves the transition
of the lesser into the greater.
The
original sources of spiritual thought, from which the great religious
conceptions of the ages have been drawn, have taught that evolution
is an eternal manifestation of life on an ascending scale. As we ascend
from a lower to a higher level, the limitations of the previous experience
must drop away from us. Since the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of
Reality is already established in Spirit, our transition from one
plane to another is a matter of consciousness, and since all persons
are incarnations of the Divine Spirit, every soul will ultimately
find complete emancipation, not through losing itself in God, but,
rather, through finding God in itself.
Tagore tells
us that Nirvana
is not absorption but immersion. Browning
said that we are all Gods though in the germ. Jesus proclaimed that
the Kingdom of Heaven is within, and that we shall attain this kingdom
in such a degree as we become consciously aware of, and unified with,
it. This does not mean that there is any finality to evolution, for
every apparent ultimate is but the beginning of a new experience.
