Your Soul is the Crown of Creation

Bodleian Library MS Douce 322

THE more we understand the grandeur and beauty of the human soul (of our own soul), the more we will love and praise God.

Would you like to know how great the human soul is? It is more beautiful than all the beautiful works of nature combined. How can one say that?  Because beauty itself is not in works of nature, but in their perception.  Just as a tree falling in the forest, unwitnessed, makes no sound, nothing in nature is beautiful unless seen.

Beauty occurs within the human soul, when the higher mind combines with sense perceptions. The beauty we see in nature is a projection of our own inner beauty. If there were no sentient beings to appreciate them, the flowers, sea, mountains, sunsets, star-strewn skies would not be beautiful. (It would be a terrible waste!)

Now consider that there is no limit to how much and how many kinds of beauty a soul can experience. No two beautiful sunsets are the same; there is endless variation, each one uniquely beautiful. And this is only one form of natural beauty. There is no beautiful experience anyone in the history of the human race has ever had or ever will have that you could not experience and find beautiful. Every glorious spectacle of the natural world can be experienced by any human being.  And we may experience greater beauty than any person ever has before.

❧

All the above concern the realm of aesthetics.  In addition we may consider the divine grandeur of human intellectual and moral powers.

Concerning intellect, here is a revealing example.  Even now, with today’s technology, the human race could easily prevent a killer asteroid from destroying the planet by diverting its course.  What power and responsibility!  Moreover, a single human being — virtually any one of us — could learn the mathematics and perform the calculations necessary to predict the course of such an asteroid, determine how to divert it, etc. In the future doubtless our powers will increase. We could, say, prevent two suns from colliding and wiping out entire planetary systems.

In morality, human nature is such that at least the finest examples of our species have a desire to become bodhisattvas — dedicating their existence to the ultimate enlightenment of all sentient beings.  To love all human beings and all things is consistent with our nature.  This again is a moral power worthy of a divinity.

❧

For this much we ought to be profoundly grateful to God.  But there is more.  We have observed that a single soul is greater than the whole world. Yet the painful reality is that we live in a fallen condition.  Not only do we fall short of our divine potential, but in many ways, through sin, error, selfishness, vice and egoism, we operate at a level worse than all the rest of creation.  Only we, because of our free choice, can choose to deviate from the natural order.

But precisely because of the divine grandeur of the human soul, it must be the case that God cannot accept our fallen condition as final.  So much is at stake — the very integrity, completeness, and harmony of all Creation — that the human soul must be redeemable.  A logical inference from all we have said is that the restoration or realization of the human soul is as important as the soul’s creation.  Salvation of a even one soul is more important than all material creation in its entirety.  God must wish for our salvation as intently as he wished for the creation of the Universe and the human soul, and must, it follows, providentially supply for it.

Our conclusion — one stated not for the sake of theory or argument, but in order to bolster our confidence: our salvation is possible and readily available.  Immense powers must be operating to provide for it.  It is something in which we should have utmost confidence.

Last, the greater and more divine our nature is, the more humility is due. First, because gratitude should be in proportion to gifts received.  And second, because without God’s guidance we cannot possibility know how or hope to conduct ourselves in a matter commensurate with our divine status, powers and dignity.

❧ ❧