The human soul & the hereafter:


If we are to come to grips with the spiritual concept of the immortality of the human soul and to embrace the belief that it will journey throughout the infinite worlds of God then we must, of necessity, construct a logical framework of reasoning that will support this theory and will, due to its self-evident nature, refute any claim that denies either the existence of God or the presence of a human soul and will also dispel any mistaken impression that God has either a peer or a competitor who vies with Him for possession of the human soul.

Each and every idea that we hold to be true must, by its very nature, express certain implications and lead irresistibly to further ideas. We cannot with any sense of logic and reason hold any idea to be true without also embracing the ideas that it suggests and which reason dictates are the logical consequences of it.

God is an axiom, a self-evident truth, an irresistible postulate advanced by every major religion and philosophy from the dawn of Adam until the present. The existence of God has been a central belief of the most advance civilizations and also of the most primitive tribes because the human mind is endowed with the ability to recognize its own limitations and infer from this fundamental reality that it is neither responsible for its own creation nor can it take credit for anything it discovers. All science is the result of discovery and presupposes that what is discovered preceded our discovery of it and that we are in no way responsible for having created that which we have discovered. God creates and we discover.

The term God, by definition, refers to That which created the entire universe and all it contains and all that operates outside of it. The term does not describe God but simply acknowledges His existence because of all the evidence that attests to it. Humankind is proof of the existence of God. Science is proof of the existence of God. The universe is proof of the existence of God. There is a world of proof of the existence of God but there is not one iota of proof that God does not exist. The atheist, however clever and however persuasive, however articulate and however eloquent is, nonetheless, confounded by this irrefutable fact. God exists and refutes all attempts to disprove His existence.

Proof that God exists, however, cannot be expanded so that it describes the reality of God which is beyond the scope of the human mind to grasp. God is an absolute. God is the only absolute. God possesses all attributes to an absolute degree which is what makes Him God. God cannot be less than God and still remain God. God is always God and His absolute nature will always resist the feeble attempts by the human mind to capture Him. The human mind is limited whereas God is an absolute. How can that which is limited surround that which is absolute? God will forever remain beyond the ken of any human mind to grasp by virtue of His absolute nature. When we assign an attribute to God such as that He is, All-Knowing, All-Powerful, All-Loving, All-Forgiving, All-Compassionate etc., it is not because these descriptions, due to the imperfection and limitation of language, are capable of expressing his attributes but, rather, because they tell us what God is not. We cannot possibly know what it is to be All-Loving but the use of the term indicates that God is incapable of hatred. When we use the term All-Powerful it indicates that God is incapable of weakness. Because we are created in the ‘Image and Likeness’ of God we possess all of God’s qualities but each to a limited degree which is what makes us human. We cannot know what it is to possess even one quality to an absolute degree and, hence, we are forever deprived of the ability to grasp even one attribute of God let alone to embrace His complete essence. God will forever remain alone in His essence and beyond the feeble efforts of the mightiest mind to aspire to know Him. And yet, even the simplest of minds has been endowed with the ability to know that God exists because of the overwhelming evidence that surrounds us and because that mind, simple though it may be when compared against more sophisticated minds is, nonetheless, infinitely beyond the capacity of all other earthly creatures and perfectly capable of comprehending that it did not create itself and that something other than it must be the Author of that creation.

When we call God the Creator it is not that we can understand what it is to be an absolute creator but, rather, to indicate that God is incapable of not creating. Only God can create, that is to say, He can bring something into existence out of nothingness. By this definition humans cannot create but can only be creative with that which they discover and which was created by something other than themselves. God created the material world of nature of which we are a part but according to definition could not have stopped at creating just one world but must have created an infinity of worlds through which our soul, which is not physical, must pass. It follows, therefore, that if our soul must traverse an infinity of worlds that it must also be possessed of an infinity of qualities and attributes that will enable it to function effectively in each of those yet to be experienced worlds and that those qualities and attributes, although hidden and not required in this world of matter, will emerge in accordance with the needs of the world through which it is passing. It further follows that the potential of the human soul is so vast as to be incomprehensible in the same way that an infinity is incomprehensible.

A Prophet has cautioned us that the veil between this world and the next is deliberate and necessary because if any human soul were able to gaze unhindered upon the joys and wonders of the next world it would become so entranced and dazzled by these attractions that waiting to reach that world in the normal course of events would become unbearable and life in this world would become a hindrance to the extent that it would feel compelled to take its own life. Each of the worlds that the soul passes through is by design and is necessary to its spiritual growth and each must be encountered and experienced in its proper sequence in order for the soul to reach its ultimate destiny in that state and condition for which it was designed. Any attempt by the soul to deliberately leap frog from world to world in order to avoid the pitfalls and enjoy the fruits of worlds to come would limit and diminish rather than benefit that soul and so its efforts would be thwarted and its loss would be great.

Accidental death and an abbreviated lifetime are not punishments nor do they retard the progress of the soul for the reason that they are not deliberate or self-imposed and are not an attempt by the soul to subvert the normal course of its progress. Each and every world of God has built in safeguards that not only protect the soul in its journey through it but which also protect that particular world from encroachment by the worlds on either side of it. God works and creates with absolute justice and any appearance to the contrary is simply the inability and ignorance of the observer to perceive that moment or those moments in relation to the overall infinity of the journey. God is incapable of injustice, cruelty, ignorance, or error and the onus is mandatory upon any soul to apply this criteria when appraising any incident or combination of incidents. The surest and most trouble free path that the soul can pursue on its journey through the infinite worlds of God must be predicated upon confidence that God is loving, kind, just, and incapable of mistakes, that all matters occur through the operation of His Will, and that the inherent wisdom of any circumstance will invariably in the inevitable course of time be revealed to us. It is not for the creature to test God but, rather, it is God Who tests His creatures.

When the soul passes from this world into the next it does not come to a sudden stop whereby it is confronted by God, asked of its doings, and is then subjected to the retribution of His judgment. If this were so then there would be no need for an infinity of worlds and since God by his very nature must create an infinity of worlds then it necessarily follows that each world has its own particular set of conditions that are designed to nurture the soul and to cultivate those attributes within that will best fit it for the next world to come so that the continuity of its evolution is unimpaired and its full potential is ultimately attained. It necessarily follows that each soul will arrive in the next world in a state and condition achieved in the previous world and will, whether healthy or crippled by its own corruption, continue in that state and condition from world to world. Its ultimate destiny is predetermined by God and is not subject to alteration, however, the straightness or crookedness of the path to that destiny is a burden that rests squarely upon the shoulders of the soul.