(3) God's Creation of the Universe
(3) God's Creation of the Universe
1) Purpose of Creation
The universe was created by God who wanted to experience His own divinity.
"All That Is" (God) is an absolute being that is independent of others.
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Mine is the Realm of the Absolute, where One Thing does not exist in the relationship to Another, but quite independent of anything.
(pdfCWG2-P36)
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Thus, God knew Himself conceptually, but could not know Him experientially.
God longed to know Himself and His divinity experientially.
As an absolute being, God could only know Himself experientially in a relative world.
Therefore, God created the universe, a relative world in which He could be experientially known.
This is why God created the universe.
For example, if there is a person in a pitch-black room with no information about his or her appearance, that person cannot know himself or herself there.
Then, a point of light appears.
Then, he can know his position based on the distance between himself and the light and other relative relationships.
Furthermore, when that light becomes brighter, he can see himself more clearly and see his own shape and form.
In this way, in a relative world, everything can be known by its relative relationship to others.
The universe consists of the physical world and the spiritual world.
In the spiritual world, there is no "lapse of time" between thought and its realization. Therefore, thoughts are immediately realized.
Only in the physical world can divinity be experientially known.
In summary, "All That Is" (God), who knew Himself conceptually, created the universe in order to know Himself experientially.
2) Creation of the Soul
During the creation of the universe, God created the soul and gave it the same nature and the power to create as God.
Therefore, the soul can be said to be God's other-self.
The number of souls created was fixed.
The following is written in the CWG series about the number of souls.
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Given that there is only Now, the number of souls is always constant. But given that you like to think of Now in terms of now and then, it is always changing.
So the number is finite and infinite, changing and unchanged, depending on how you look at it.
(pdfCWG3-P135)
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Each soul has its own individuality, but they are all connected.
In the CWG series, the soul is compared to the air in a house and explained as follows.
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Now the air in the house is the same air. There is no "separate air" in the dining room. Yet the air in the dining room sure seems like "other air." For one thing, it smells different!
So because the air has taken on different characteristics, it seems as though it is different air. But it is not. It is all the same air, seeming different. In the living room you smell the fireplace, in the dining room you smell dinner.
(pdfCWG3-P121)
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The CWG series also uses the example of the ocean and waves to explain the relationship between God and the soul as follows.
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Without the ocean, the wave does not have the power to be a wave.
Whether minuscule or monstrous, there is always a wave.
While every wave is different, not a single one is divided from the ocean itself.
The wave lands on the beach, but it does not cease to be. It merely changes form, receding back into the ocean.
The presence of the wave is evidence of the existence of the ocean.
Your presence is evidence of the existence of God.
(Home with God) (abbreviated）
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The ocean is connected to the waves.
Both are made up of the same elements.
Waves are part of the ocean, and they manifest the various properties of the ocean.
When a wave lands on the beach, it doesn't disappear. It just changes its shape and retreats into the sea.
In the same way, God and the soul are connected.
Human beings are three-fold beings consisting of body, mind, and spirit.
The soul that dwells in the human being tries to know God through various experiences in the physical world. At the same time, God knows Himself experientially.
The purpose of the soul apart from God is to experience His divinity and to return to Him.
3) Creation of Human beings
God created human beings, in whom the souls dwell.
The physical form of the human being is the vehicle through which the soul experiences reality.
Human beings are three-fold beings consisting of body, mind, and spirit.
In the book, the relationship between the soul and the body is described as follows.
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The soul is larger than the body. It is not carried within the body, but carries the body within it.
Have you ever heard of an "aura"?
It is as close as we can come in your language, in your understanding, to giving you a picture of an enormous and complex reality.
(pdfCWG3-P121)
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