The Purpose of Life, the Universe and all the Rest

According to the original design, everything goes through a three stage process before reaching maturity. The three stages are called formation, growth and completion. Also the human spirit has to mature through these three stages. At the end of the completion stage stands perfection – an eternal stability in goodness and love based on continuous experience of God’s heart.

Unlike the rest of the world, humans have a responsibility that they can fulfill or not. Like the creator they have free will. They need to go through the growing process by exercising their free will within the boundaries of the laws of the universe. But they can also violate the laws and God will not stop them.

At the end of the growing process they reach maturity and inherit God’s right of ownership, thus becoming owners themselves. In that state they share the heart of God towards the creation and each other. They leave the realm where they are governed by God’s law and enter the realm where they live in the experience of God’s direct love. Here they will live without effort according to the design of the cosmos. The Principle calls this realm the direct dominion of God. It is the realm of true freedom. The other realm is called indirect dominion.

The book spells out the essence of what humans have to accomplish during the growing period. It is to develop their full potential, which the Principle describes as Three Blessings.

The first blessing is the ability of the individual to perfect his/her individual character to the degree that his/her heart resembles God’s heart and where they can communicate with him constantly and without effort.

The second blessing is the capacity to experience all aspects of God’s love. God being a parent – with both male and female aspects – cannot be experienced totally as an individual man or woman. Only by developing a God centered relationship with the other sex and then establishing a family – the experience becomes complete.

The family thus is one of the cornerstones of the original world, according to the Principle. It is not a casual arrangement between individuals that decide to throw their things together. For the movement it is an eternal relationship as essential as life itself.

The third blessing is to be the owner of the external universe, standing in the same position as God over the created world – without having created it. According to the Principle, the design of the universe is based on a perfect man and woman – in God’s mind. Based on this couple, God designed the rest of the universe as their environment and for them to inherit. But humans then were actually created last.

Until now the conclusions are easy to follow. They are not the only possible way to interpret reality, but they have a lot going for them.

A problem arises when religion comes into the picture. Concepts that include a transcendent origin are susceptible to the temptation to slide all kind of stuff in through the back door and justify it with shaky references to ‘God’s will’.

The Principle does nothing like that. Neither has has it been the old man’s intention to start a religion. He actually says that the end of religion has come and even officially closed down his own church almost a decade ago.

The essence of the teaching is not religious. It is spiritual, encouraging a spirituality that is based on mind-body unity. It does not propagate a set of other-worldly concepts that can only with great sacrifice – intellectual and else – be reconciled with everyday reality.

But you will also notice areas of fundamental disagreement with current trains of thought that cannot be resolved easily. There is, for example, the issue of homosexuality. If you follow the explanations above, you see, that the dual characteristics of male and female are so fundamental, that there is no ground for compromise. The understanding of the family, growth and life itself directly grows out of it.

Another consequence is the movement’s uncompromising stand on sexual purity. Sexual relationships are considered holy, a celebration of God’s love. They can only occur between a couple that is eternally committed to each other. Another key word here is ‘eternal’. “Until death does you part” is entirely obsolete in the movement. The marriages are forever.