The spiritual is not just impersonal energy
- This page is part of an ERW course: Spiritual exercises, section Articles.
- By John Eagles, November 18, 2006.
The spiritual world is a world of energy, or more correctly, it is a world of energy expressions that are less condensed than the energy expressions of the physical world. All energy has an origin, just like everything that is created has an origin. The origin of energy is love, more precisely the love of the Creator, or the origin of all that is.
When energy would exist just by itself, like people with a materialist look on life think that physical things exist just by itself, then life would not have any meaning. Love is the motivator or the motor of all that exists. Love is the force that makes all things to develop and expand into more complicated and elevated levels of existence, in that we can experience increased joy. Is it not so that the more people unite in love and friendship, the more happiness and fulfillment are spawned, the more we we feel in jubilation and joy? When you are all by yourself you feel lonely and unrecognized. Everyone wants someone to give love to and to receive love from.
From love energy comes and from energy all things of creation come that have form. Things exist in several dimensions. A comparison can make us understand that. Water exists in solid, fluid and gaseous form. It always is the same water with the same molecules but when a certain energy is added, in this case energy of warmth, the solid ice becomes water and eventually gas. When we fall on ice, we may hurt ourselves. When we fall on the same water that is in fluid form, we may enjoy the experience and not get injured. We can see ice and water, but we see water vapor only when the concentration is high enough.
Imagine that certain energies are taken out from a human being, just like you extract the opposite of coldness from water. The analogy is not perfect all the way but it will do to make my point. When you take out from a human being living in a physical body certain energies of life, the physical body will die. The physical body needs life energy to live. The life energy needs to flow through a healthy and organized body. If the body breaks down, the life energy cannot anymore flow and the body dies. Compare this to a car that runs on energy. As long as the car is in order the energy makes the car run. If essential elements of the motor are broken, you can put in as much energy as you want but nothing happens. When the body's organization breaks down, because of an illness or an injury, the life energy that runs through the body cannot flow anymore and the body dies.
The person goes into another state of being, that is life in the spiritual world. You are you. You think that you leave behind you all that you felt and desired? What you do leave behind you when you die are the sensations of your body, but much of what you experience is not just a body sensation. Your mind expresses into emotions and actions of the body, but it does also exist on a higher level. A computer program can be made visible in the actions of a computer, but when the computer is down, the program is still there.
What is then the nature of the spiritual world? Everything that exists is inspired and originated by the love of the Creator. This love inhabits everything that is created. Love steers certain energies to create an existence on the spiritual level. When still other energies are added we get the reality of the physical world, the world we are familiar with.
Love exists on all levels. It doesn't exist any less in the spiritual world than it does in the physical world. Love is connected to identity. You don't just love a person because he is one of the human race. You love a person with a very particular identity. In the same way, love in the spiritual world is only possible because all beings there have a very particular identity. They have feelings and emotions, desires and frustrations, ideals and moods just like we have in the physical reality. Actually, in our physical bodies we are already spiritual beings essentially. All our higher feelings and thoughts, our desire for an eternal life, are actually expressions of ourselves as spiritual beings. Why would such manifestations disappear when we only lose the condensed physical body that exists in the specific reality that we know as physical world?
And why would it be wrong to also attribute such characteristics to God? We can speak about God as eternal or as universal consciousness, as the Great Spirit, but just like our feelings come from love, why would God not have feelings and an identity? It may be hard to grasp the identity of the Creator, but the fact that we find it difficult to understand God does not mean that God is just something neutral or very abstract.
