Everywhere in nature are metaphors that hint at the Divine Plan for life.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the conception and embryonic development of the human being.
Consider first the Divine Plan itself for there is a plan, Krishnamurti tells us.
“The really important thing is … the knowledge of God’s plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution. When once a man has seen that and really knows it, he cannot help working for it and making himself one with it, because it is so glorious, so beautiful.” (1)
The Divine Plan sees the Father send a spark of itself, called in the Bible the fire ever burning on the altar (2) and a firebrand plucked from the burning, (3) out into the world of matter, mater, Mother.
There, the Mother ensconces the spark in a body: “Wisdom [Sophia, the Mother] hath builded her house, she hath hewn her seven pillars.”(4) The seven pillars are the seven chakras and the spiritual house or temple is the body.
The spark is nurtured by the Mother who creates, preserves and transforms everything in her lawful domain. With the law as its teacher, she raises all her children from the most elementary stages of consciousness to a superconscious being.
Under the Mother’s perpetual guidance and always in her world – or womb – of matter, the spark evolves, traversing all the kingdoms – mineral, plant, animal, human, and so on – and grows in consciousness through one enlightenment after another, to full maturity as a God-conscious being.
As Rumi has said:
“I died as mineral and became a plant.
I died as plant and rose to animal.
I died as animal and I was man. …
Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar
With angels blest; but even from angelhood
I must pass on: all except God doth perish.
When I have sacrificed my angel soul,
I shall become what no mind e’er conceived.
Oh, let me not exist! For Non-existence
Proclaims in organ tones, ‘To Him we shall return.’” (5)
The journey leads from God to God. Once the divine spark begins, through enlightenment, to know who it really is, to know that it’s no other than God, as is everything that is and is not, it begins the return journey to God which culminates in divine mergence.
Now consider that the male in the reproductive cycle of many species, not just the human, introduces the sperm into the female’s womb. There it penetrates the mother’s egg. The mother immediately begins to build the body. The foetus gestates and develops, growing in consciousness until it reaches full term, at which time the mother delivers the child into the “real” world, where waits the father.
The reproductive cycle of father and mother captures in its major features the divine cycle of life, from the spark being released into the womb of the Mother’s world of experience, there to learn through a law-governed round of life first who its Mother is, then who its Father is, and then who it is itself, to be born into divine life.
When it learns who it is, truly, at essence, it’s said to have completed the journey of life and a new journey begins, about which we know nothing. As Hilarion tells us:
“When after ages of struggle and many victories the final battle is won, the final secret demanded, then you are prepared for a further path. When the final secret of this great lesson is told, in it is opened the mystery of the new way — a path which leads out of all human experience, and which is utterly beyond human perception or imagination.” (6)
Thus, embryonic development is a metaphor always available to us of the spiritual journey of life.
In the same way, every element of nature bespeaks some aspect of the Divine Plan. The life of a tree also repeats the divine journey. The seed takes root in the ground of Mother Earth and grows into a great tree.
It draws its sustenance from Mother Earth and carries it as sap up from the roots to the trunk and out into the branches and leaves, where the seed is produced for the next generation. So we draw our sustenance from the Mother of all life through the heart and up into our trunk and branches to produce the seed of new life.
The leaves fall off but the tree never dies. Our bodies fall off but the soul never dies.
Like the tree launching seeds, the Father continuously launches new life out into the world.
The tree raises its branches to the sky, seeking the warmth of the sun and seemingly praising the Mother/Father God. It can be seen as a metaphor of us seeking the warmth of God’s love and raising our arms to the sky seeking God’s Light.
All of life is a metaphor, bespeaking its divine origins and destination. Many of life’s processes recapitulate the spiritual journey.
Footnotes
(1) J. Krishnamurti, At the Feet of the Master. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974; c1910, 17.
(2) Leviticus 6:13.
(3) Amos 4:1.
(5) Rumi in Anne Fremantle and Christopher. In Love with Love. 100 of the Greatest Mystical Poems. New York, etc.: Paulist Press, 1978, 58.
(6) Hilarion, channelling through Mabel Collins, channel. Light on the Path and an Essay on Karma. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1974, 11-2.