The Two Nature Orders

The drawing above attempts to describe the universe that humanity believes it "lives" and "dies" in. Unbelievable as it may appear, difficult as it may be to grasp, it is nonetheless the truth. Outside of the perception of most humans is another universe, an eternal, divine order of existence. Humanity currently lives in exile, cut off from the divine kingdom.

The following is posted as a service to all who seek.

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Our nature order -- the world of 'duality'

The evidence of our senses tells us that everything which comes into existence in the world we see around us will someday turn into its opposite. This constant interchanging of opposites is the fundamental essence of our world. In our yearning for absolute values -- for lasting peace, love, and truth -- we often tend to overlook that inescapable fact. Nevertheless, logic alone is enough to tell us that everything which comes into existence is going to disappear someday; it is only transitory, never absolute.

Think about this for a moment. Nothing we are, nothing we do, nothing we can create is going to last; sooner or later, it will all decay and return to where it came from. We are transitory creatures of an ever changing world. We begin to age and decay even before we leave our mother's womb. Nothing is perfect in our world.Nothing can last in our world. Change and death are the only two laws we can absolutely rely upon. They surround us inexorably, like prison walls. This fact is confirmed by Lao Tzu, Buddha, and all the world's great religious teachers.

So hasn't it ever struck you as strange that, in spite of the inescapability of imperfection, change, and decay, we still yearn for a perfect life? Haven't you ever wondered how it is possible, in view of the facts of life, that human beings can even have any notion of absolute values? How did the idea of the absolute, of perfection, even enter our heads? Where did it come from? Certainly not from the world we see around us.

Look. Someday, every one of us is going to die, and yet we maintain a kind of conspiracy of silence, a shared fantasy, in which we live our lives as if death did not exist! And if you have ever experienced the loss of someone close to you, you may have observed that there is a part of you that will never accept that this person has gone, no matter what beliefs you may or may not have about an afterlife. Wherever do we get these passionate longings for the everlasting, for the absolute, when all the evidence of our senses tells us that they do not exist?

Well, the concept of the 'two nature orders' offers an answer to this question. … we often refer to the nature order in which we live as the world of 'duality.' We use the word 'duality' because our world is characterized by constantly interchanging opposites. This 'dualistic world' includes not only the material, visible world we see around us, but also the realm our subtle bodies inhabit when we are asleep, and even in the after-death state.

The original, divine nature order

Apart from, separate from this 'dualistic world,' but occupying the same space, is another, quite different nature order. This second nature order is characterised by perfection, absoluteness, eternity. [We] call this second nature order the 'immovable kingdom,' because in it, duality and the interchanging of opposites do not exist. There is only an eternal growth and development, from glory to glory, and from power to power.

So you see, the eternal values, the absolute truth, freedom and love we long for really do exist, but not in our world, not in the world we belong to, the dualistic world.

Why does the dualistic nature order exist?

To understand why this dualistic world exists, it helps to remember that there is a plan underlying creation. [It is known as] 'the divine plan.' You could imagine the divine plan flowing like a stream, with a certain direction, momentum, and destination. Every creation is free to move in and out of the stream at will, gathering experiences along the way. However, as long as the creation always returns to the stream and remains, overall, in harmony with it, it will be carried along by the current, and all will be well. But if, in free will, a creation wishes to maintain itself permanently in a state not in harmony with the stream of the divine idea, what happens then? Let us try to see the logical answer to that question.

We can imagine what happens if we continue with our analogy of a stream of flowing water. If a creation seeks to exclude itself from the flow of the divine current, because it wants to hold onto some aspect of it, and make it permanent rather than allowing it to flow, it can only do so by becoming crystallized, like a heavy stone in the water. Then, because it is crystallized, heavy, it can no longer experience the helping, carrying effects of the current, but will experience its flow as a series of buffetings, just as any obstruction does when placed in flowing water.

This is a much simplified image of how the two nature orders have come into existence: the divine nature order -- where the helping, carrying, continuously developing effects of the divine stream are experienced; and the dualistic nature order -- the world we know -- in which the correcting effects of the divine stream are experienced, so that nothing is allowed to last and everything is constantly brought back to its starting point.

The Fall

Now can you see that becoming subject to the second system of laws -- the correcting system -- effectively isolates the creature from the world in which the first system of laws -- the divine system -- operates? And can you see that such a creature, that has deviated from its underlying plan, will remain isolated from the order of nature to which it originally belonged until such time as it chooses to return to the divine plan?

The Universal Philosophy teaches that, in the distant past, a large group belonging to the human lifewave did indeed decide, in free will, to deviate from the plan underlying their existence. In this way, they isolated themselves from the divine nature order and became confined to the dualistic order of existence. The result was that, eventually, all the faculties they had been able to use while still subject to the first, divine system of laws, atrophied, and they fell into a dormant state, in which they could not die, because they were eternal, but in which they were inactive, asleep.

The Task of Humankind

If you have followed us so far, you will be able to see in your mind's eye the dormant sparks of fallen, divine humanity, like seeds, unable to live, but unable -- either – to die. What could be done to rescue these dormant creatures? To bring them back to a state of true life again?

Consciousness and will are needed for this task, but the fallen divine creatures no longer have any, in their dormant state. Where can that consciousness, that willingness, come from? Well, [we are taught] that the human race as we know it was created for precisely that one purpose -- to act, consciously and willingly, as servants, for the restoration of the original, divine creature. That is the task, the calling, of every human being, and if we succeed in it, we too will be able to share in the life of eternity.

We, mortals, are not that divine creature, but we bear it within us, as a dormant spark. And it is within our power to allow that dormant spark to come alive again, and to return from its state of exile to the divine world, its home, the 'House of the Father.'

LRC

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