From lecture 20, GOD: THE CREATION:

Particularly for a human being, it is impossible to sense, to perceive, let alone to know what God is. I want only to say this much about the Creator: God is person as well as principle. Human religions and human philosophies have always debated this question. One opinion holds that God is person: the other holds that God is not of substance, being solely principle and force. As I have already said, both views are true. God in His male aspect is Creator and, as such, is a person.

The male aspect is the creative one, not only with God, but, originating from Him, it is the creative principle in the universe with all beings. In this capacity, God makes decisions, dispositions, and determinations. In this capacity, God as Creator and person created the universe with all its laws and other beings, although the creation of the latter was in conjunction with the divine female aspect. When it is said that God created His children in His image, it is meant that all divine aspects reoccur in lesser degree within these created beings. Thus, the creative ability exists also to some extent in every being.

This divine substance which God possesses to a maximum degree, and which Christ possesses to a lesser degree, but to a degree greater than all other creatures, can best be described as a fluid substance of the most radiant matter. It is the life force. God, as well as all creatures in their highest form of development, can dissolve this fluid substance so that the compact personality becomes a flow, a principle, or a divine stream. This does not mean the annihilation of individuality as a thinking being capable of making decisions. In this flowing state, the divine female aspect is prevalent. It is the state of being and the state of slow growth and organic building. Whenever God wills it so, the fluids may be retracted so that His male aspect becomes prevalent again. The same holds true for all created beings in their highest state of development. If their female aspect is prevalent, they merge with God in a state of being. With their male aspect prevalent, they help in the Creation according to the will of God and in accordance with divine law. I realize that all this is impossible for you to understand fully. It may be just a beginning for more profound insight which is yet to come. Even the highest spirits cannot fully grasp the love, wisdom, and perfection of God and the infinite variety of His creation.

As I said in my last lecture, God put forth as His first creation the spirit of Jesus Christ and most of this divine substance is in Christ. Therefore, some religions refer to God the Father and God the Son. You can see that there is truth in this statement, although it is erroneous to consider them one and the same person. After the spirit of Christ, many other creatures came into existence; so many that you could not count them with the numbers you have available in your world. Once I was asked, “Why did God create these beings? Being all-knowing, He must have realized that misery could result from it.” This is indeed an important question which I would now like to touch on briefly.

God is love and love must share: this is the nature of love. Of course God realized that because He created beings with free will, they could so decide with this free will that misery could come into existence, either permanently or temporarily. Nevertheless, as an indication of His greatness, God created beings who could choose freely with the power given them. They either would have the wisdom of not abusing their power and thus living within the perfection of divine law in a state of eternal bliss or, if they decided otherwise, they would finally come to comprehend all the more the perfection of divine law, after having gone through the valley of death. Thus, they would be more godlike than ever before. The temporary misery for those who might decide wrongly is nothing compared to the bliss and happiness of eternity after the self-inflicted misery has been experienced. The scales show this so clearly that a spirit does not even have to be very high in development to recognize this fact.

Thus, God created many beings and many worlds, long before a material world existed: worlds of harmony, happiness, infinite beauty, and infinite possibilities which unfolded creative divine aspects for all beings. Here, the divine substance of each created being was freely active, and not covered by foreign and un-godlike matter. I have often said that it is your task to uncover this divine substance within you and to free it of these God-opposed layers which rob you of your unity with yourself and with God. This divine substance is also referred to as a human being’s higher self or divine spark. It is also referred to, at times, as the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is not one being, nor is it part of a threefold God in the sense it is often interpreted: it is simply the divine substance that every living creature possesses to some degree whether freed to some extent of other substances or still covered up by them. So you can see that the idea of the Trinity has been often misunderstood; yet there is also a great amount of truth within the misunderstanding.

Now you will want to know how these foreign layers came to cover the divine substance that each being originally was. This is the subject of the fall of the angels, for another name for these pure, Godlike beings or Holy Ghosts is angels. First, however, I would like to mention that it is a great mistake to assume that this divine substance which exists in everyone is God Himself, or identical with God the Creator. God is a being and what you possess within you is of divine substance and has many of the divine attributes, although not to the same extent as the substance of God Himself. The divine spark within you is Godlike. Only this purified and freed substance within you is capable of uniting with God and therefore of being one with God. No substance that is unlike God can unite with Him. It is erroneous to confuse the Godlike substance in each created being with that of the Creator Himself.

People often advance the idea that God should not have endowed His creatures with free will for then the fall could never have happened; or, they claim, God at least should have interfered when the fall started. However, this view is so shortsighted and so blind. Happiness can only exist for any created being through union with God. And to be in union with God, you must be of the same substance and endowed with the same aspects and qualities; otherwise, you would be unlike God and thus incapable of being in union with Him. Free will and free choice entails the possibility of directing free will contrary to divine law. In choosing freely and correctly and in abstaining from abuse of power lies divinity, love, wisdom, and a number of further divine attributes. It is of utmost importance for all of you to grasp this idea, for then you will be able to answer many questions that so far you may not have understood.

God has also put into Creation an infinite number of laws. These laws provided beforehand for the possibility of a return to God if and when any of the created beings should misuse their power and freedom given to them by God. These laws work in cycles which have to close; whatever happens, these cycles follow their course and the laws work in such a way that ultimately everything having once turned away from God and divine law will eventually come back. The greater the distance from God, the more the misery, for only in God and with God lies happiness. But through this misery arises a stronger incentive to return to God. This thought also lends itself very well to deep meditations. By grasping some of this truth, you may come to understand many things which have so far remained hidden from you. If your eyes and your inner senses become purified enough, you will recognize this law even in your daily lives, even in small incidents.

So, spiritual worlds did exist for a very, very long time where all created beings lived in a state of bliss, in a way that is unimaginable. The possibility existed for all creatures, ever since they came into existence, to choose freely either to live within divine law or to act against it. At one time, one spirit fell under the temptation to act against it. You can find the symbolic explanation of this in the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise. Actually this happened in a very different way, although the idea of temptation was there. Perhaps you are able to comprehend some of this when you imagine that you may possess great power. You may know that to use this power in a certain way might prove to be dangerous for you, yet as long as this power is not exploited, you may feel a curiosity concerning what would actually happen if you did use it. This temptation becomes stronger and stronger. The stronger it becomes, the less you can think of the means to counteract this temptation. You will not even have the intention of continuing the use of this dangerous power, but you feel you must try it out a little bit, just to see. All the theoretical knowledge you may possess, that having once tried it you may not find it possible anymore to resist being swept away by it, dissolves under the growing weight of the temptation.

Once the first spirit succumbed to the temptation, it set something in motion that could not be changed any more. This spirit once knew that this would be so, but did not wish to remember after he had succumbed. The result was not an immediate change, but a gradual one. The change from harmony to disharmony took place just as gradually and as slowly as your personal change occurs from disharmony to harmony. The latter is evolution; the former could be called a backward evolution or devolution, and neither can ever happen suddenly. Here I would like to give you another example of this process that may help you to understand it by trying to feel into it. Let us suppose you are tempted to take an addictive drug, having the intention not to succumb to it entirely, knowing, as everybody does, that this would mean your ruin in every respect. But you think you can try it just once, just to see what it is like. After this one time, you cannot escape any more, for you are caught. The same principle holds true to everything opposing divine law.

This one spirit who succumbed first generated a power running in the opposite direction to divine law, but it was still the same power, only used differently. With this power the spirit could affect and influence many other spirits, little by little. But not all spirits were affected. There was a division between those who succumbed and those who did not. With the former, the “fall of the angels” began. In this process, every divine aspect turned into its opposite nature: harmony turned to disharmony, beauty to ugliness, light to darkness, wisdom to blindness, love to hatred, fear, or egotism, and union became separateness. Then wholeness split even further the more this pull of temptation proceeded. Thus evil came into existence.

Once I explained that the spiritual worlds, are psychological worlds, which does not mean that they are unsubstantial and formless. Only in your material world are thoughts and feelings abstract: in other worlds spirits create their own worlds wherein they live according to their states of mind. Each state of mind creates as a reflex-action a sphere consisting of landscapes, houses, objects, and so on. Thus only spirits of equal development can share a world, which, in certain states of development, facilitates life in general but by the same token slows down individual development. When you keep in mind that your attitudes, your thoughts, your feelings, your opinions, and your goals create your world, you will understand that the world of the highest spirits is beautiful and light, while the world of the fallen spirits has become dark and ugly. Since the great plan was put in operation, many in-between worlds came to exist in various degrees of harmony and disharmony, according to the state of development which the once fallen spirits had reached. Your material world is one of these in-between worlds.

Most of you know that the individual spirit in its highest degree of development combines the male and the female aspects of divinity. There is no inner division or disunity at that point. The existence on earth of man and woman as separate entities is a result of this splitting, as you understand it now. Therefore, each human being has its counterpart. The human urge to find the right partner is nothing less than the deep longing for reunion with one’s separated other part. Every being passes certain incarnations with its true double or counterpart, because through the happiness which such reunion entails lies a duty to fulfill something. Certain other incarnations have to be gone through without this counterpart: in that lies fulfillment of a different sort. However, this latter kind of incarnation without meeting one’s true counterpart does not mean that it is necessary to lead a life of celibacy. There may be other partners with whom not only great happiness can be built, but also with whom other duties may be fulfilled, karma paid off, and so on. So if you pass an incarnation without your true counterpart, but instead have another partner with whom you have something to fulfill, do not think that your counterpart in the spirit world will be hurt or jealous because of the love you may give to your present partner. This is not so. Things do not work out this way in Absolute Reality. No matter how you learn it, if you learn to give love, you come a step nearer to God, to your fulfillment, and to your liberation — and thus also to your counterpart. The urge for this kind of love in sex is the longing for union with your counterpart so as to become whole again. That fulfillment, however, depends upon how you direct this force.

Lower developed beings, like animals and plants and minerals, are still in a state of further splitting or division. The human condition, the state of being split in half, so to speak, is the last form before reunion with one’s original state can take place. The disharmonious worlds which came into existence through the division from God and through the so-called fall of the angels are also called hell. These worlds simply reflect the state of mind of the creatures living there; these spheres came into existence as a direct result of the state of mind of these beings. But hell is not just one sphere: there are many spheres there, just as there are many spheres in the divine world, or so-called heaven. When the fall took place, not all who participated came into an equal state of disharmony and evil. The degree was very individual and different. Thus, different spheres came into being within the world of darkness, always corresponding to the individual’s state of mind. However, on the whole, one can say that every divine aspect turned more or less into its opposite.

As long as complete purification has not been achieved, some of the characteristics of the fall are still going on within a person to some degree. It would be extremely useful for each one of you to delve into your soul and clearly come to feel this process, thus making it conscious. When you consider your individual faults, try to find the original divine aspect of them. For no fault could come into existence by itself; it is only a distortion of something that was once divine. You can find this divine aspect in all your faults. Then it will be so much easier to purify your faults and at the same time lose your sense of hopelessness about yourself. You will lose your sense of inferiority. Yet in order to do so, you must first find out what your faults are and face them courageously.