Our Spiritual Destiny

As humans have been sent into this body in order to fulfill a purpose, so this universe and the whole of life on this Earth has a purpose to fulfill. On this Earth, we are destined to create one single awareness of the cosmic purpose and be able to respond to it. For that, who knows, a million years may be needed. But this destiny is also not in time at all. The more people who have a burning need to find their own reality, to find and fulfill their destiny utterly, the more this purpose will be fulfilled. (J.G. Bennett; from Talk at Beshara on Cosmic Consciousness, November 20, 1972)

Life on this Earth took billions of years to evolve to the stage of giving us these magnificent bodies to inhabit. That evolution points the way forward: the way of harmony. For most of nature, this harmony is an outer, material concord, notwithstanding the cutthroat competition for survival and the involuntary sacrifice of prey animals to predators. Perhaps further evolution will see animal life on this Earth transcend predator-prey relationships. Indeed, nature's way is already a cooperative, collective, symbiotic action, conferring enhanced fitness for survival. One overarching example: without green vegetation and the oxygen it produces, animal life, at least as we know it, would not survive.

Perhaps human competition will evolve into striving to be of service. We are coming to an era of enough, of material adequacy for all. For example, extreme poverty worldwide continues to decrease. Although it does not seem that way at times, human life is based on cooperative, collective, symbiotic action. Another overarching example: in the amazing worldwide economy, each nation, each community, and each person has their own role, their own contribution to the whole, which makes all of us so much better off than we could possibly be on our own. Yes, there is tremendous and sometimes violent discord among us, arising mainly from greed, from wanting to take more than we give. This is not really a problem of material scarcity, but rather a problem of spiritual blindness. Yet despite all that discord and underneath it, this vast, cooperative economy keeps producing.

We absolutely need each other and the rest of life on this planet. Yet we can see the social cancers that could doom humanity. To prevent that, to enhance the state of our society, to move toward the collective destiny that Bennett shows us, we need to change, we need to prepare ourselves and seek that spiritual transformation that is our destiny, personal as well as collective. Along the way, we may come to a stage where everything is measured by the standards of excellence in action, selfless service, and unconditional love. Collectively, we are very far from that, but individually perhaps not as far: we are kinder person-to-person in-person, even with strangers, than we are identity-group to identity-group.

The spiritual nature of this transformation brings some unexpected features into play. First, because that destiny is in the realm of the spirit, which has access to all of time, what we do now matters, even for that far future society. The spiritual practice we engage with today prepares us to join those people, past and future, who take their place in the timeless light of the spirit.

Second, because in the realm of the spirit, in the domain of will, we humans are not separate, what we each do affects all of us. If one person comes to an awareness of the purpose of this universe, then that purpose, which is also in the domain of will, communicates itself throughout the will of humanity, albeit weakly. After some quantitative threshold, some critical mass of people in contact with the great purpose, is reached, that understanding, that realization may make itself more obvious to all of us. In that process, each person matters.

Third, the non-separateness in the domain of will, is not the only way we affect each other: there is also the domain of energies. The energies we produce creates the psychospiritual atmosphere around us. When we collaborate on inner work, the quality and quantity of energies multiplies and changes the atmosphere we all experience. The operant scale of these effects is not bounded. The higher the energy involved, the more evident our non-separateness. Yet the effects, though unbounded, will stay diluted and weak until some unknown critical mass is reached.

Fourth, ordinary, external communication among us certainly affects us all. When the equivalent of social media in the future comes to be all about how we each can develop and use our individual talents to serve better, outwardly and inwardly, that will diminish the obstacles between our society and its overarching, collective, spiritual destiny. For each of us, the door of our heart can open to that burning need to find the reality and fulfill ourselves utterly, and thereby contribute to the planetary transformation.

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