This may seem a strange question to ask, especially given Jesus's words that there will be no marrying in heaven, but it would be a remarkable thing if one of the most important of earthly experiences had no correspondence in the spiritual world.
Our earthly parents give birth to our bodies but they do not give birth to our souls. If, like me, you assume that the soul exists before it takes birth in this world and is not formed along with the body at conception or whenever then it must either come directly from God or through a spiritual medium of some sort. You could also say it has always existed and, given that there is a piece of God in all of us (expressing a profound truth very simplistically), that is certainly true. But the creation of an individual soul is something that takes place in time, or at that point where time and eternity intersect, so though we have always existed in eternity, we have not always existed in time. The birth of the soul is the entry into time.
We all have a spark of the divine in us. Everything that lives must get its life from God and that life is the ground of all we are. But this spark of spirit is individualised and has its own quality right from its spiritual conception. I would speculate that this spiritual quality derives from its spiritual parents, higher beings who give the soul life, though in and through God who is obviously behind everything but not necessarily directly involved in everything. God works through intermediaries. This is what the chain of being means.
The doctrine of group souls, souls bound by the spiritual equivalent of blood (for everything earthly has its counterpart in the heavens), is quite well established in modern esoteric thought. I believe that my contact with the Masters reflects something of this truth. To go from group souls to spiritual parents is not a great leap for what are group souls if not spiritual families, and families are not just brothers and sisters and cousins. There is the horizontal family but there is also the family extended vertically through parents, grandparents and so on. If we think that the family is the reflection on earth of a great spiritual truth, and this is surely implied in the idea of God the Father and Jesus the son not to mention many instances of Mother goddesses in pagan religions, perhaps a somewhat confused intuition of a reality, then the notion of spiritual parents is not so far-fetched as at first sight it might appear.
And, of course, if we do have spiritual parents then we may also have, or may one day have, spiritual children. Truly creation is an unending process. It bursts forth from God, Father Spirit expressing himself through Mother Matter, but then spreads out through all things, the creation becoming creator in its own right though co- or sub-creator would perhaps be a better term since there is only one Creator, everything else being dependent on him.
3 comments:
William, thanks for this. I've found your recent posts very enlightening.
I think there is a profound mystery embedded in the creation of Adam and Eve as shown in Genesis. Eve came out of Adam, as if prior, they were merged (perhaps unconsciously) and then separated so that they could then merge again consciously through free choice. My gosh, are moderns actually on to something real with this whole soul mate concept?? Anyway, just some speculation.
-Andrew E.
Thanks Andrew. I agree with you about Genesis which I'm sure does contain profound truths disguised as story. Your speculation rings very true to me.
William, this is all very close to Steiner's vision of the spiritual hierarchies all having a hand in bringing us along on our path of evolution so that we, too, will one day be creative spirits with children of our own, so to speak. It makes sense to me and offers the most comprehensive explanation of why we are here and what life on Earth is about for human beings. If we meditate on the opening of St. John's Gospel: In the beginning was the Word" and the statement that all things came from the Word, and apply it to ourselves, we can realize that we, too, have the power of the Word, in some incipient way. We do create by what we say and do; we are not relegated to passivity, to the merely given, but affect the world, shaping its future and our own. This gives us great power and great responsibility: our words and actions become consequential. We start to see that we must act out of love if we are to make a world worth living in, now and in the future.
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