Any discussion of devolution or evolution has to start with devolution or evolution towards what? To what end?

As many of you know, in 1987, I was shown a vision of the purpose of life. (1) I was shown an individual soul, birthed from the Father, entering the realm of matter (mater, Mother), going through lifetimes in matter, its light dimmed to just an outline, gradually coming to know its true identity.

And when it did, its light flashed back on and it left the Mother’s realm of matter and returned to the Father kersplash!

As I looked at all this in amazement, I heard the words: “The purpose of life is enlightenment.”  (2)

After researching the scriptures and commentaries of several major religions for ten years, looking for similar accounts, I felt myself able to say: The purpose of life is that God should meet God in a moment of our enlightenment.

The river flows towards our enlightenment. All sincere books on spirituality are tributaries of that river.

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With that discussion as background, spiritual evolution can be defined as increasing spiritual awareness of our true identity. Devolution can be defined as decreasing spiritual awareness of our true identity.

Rumi once compared us to servants of a master who asked us to go into a foreign country and get a specific thing. If we got 100 other things and not that one thing, we will have done nothing! Enlightenment is that thing. It’s our one required mission in life; all else is optional and in the end does not matter. Only the one thing does! (1)

If we want to know our true identity and take as an assumption that that true identity is God, then we might like to start by being like God. What is God like?

Easy to know, not so easy to actualize. Mother/Father One is infinite so let me not say anything that sounds like I’m limiting them.

However they have lain down various ways of being – ways that they are like – that help us approach them. We call those ways the “divine qualities.” They’ll come as no surprise to us: love, bliss, ecstasy, joy, peace, courage, compassion – and the list goes on.

Most people have a back-of-the-mind, commonsense appreciation of what they are and what they’re not. We learned it in kindergarten, we may remember. (2)

Spiritual evolution can be thought of as going closer and closer to God and the evidence of our closeness that is usually accepted in our society is how much we manifest the divine qualities in thought, word, and deed.

Spiritual devolution can be thought of as going farther and farther away from God (if such were possible) and the evidence of our distance that is usually accepted in our society is how much we spurn and depart from the divine qualities in thought, word, and deed.

Of course I’m jumping from our everyday life in which we don’t know who we are all the way to the end of individuated life, at which point we do know and re-unite with the God we are.

There’s a lot to unpack between the one point and the other. And what we unpack (a task beyond my means) will be a history of spiritual evolution – and devolution.

Footnotes

(1) Rumi: There is one thing in this world which must never be forgotten. If you were to forget everything else, but did not forget that, then there would be no cause for worry; whereas if you performed and remembered and did not forget every single thing, but forgot that one thing, then you would have done nothing whatsoever. It is just as if a king had sent you to the country to carry out a specified task. You go and perform a hundred other tasks; but if you have not performed that particular task on account of which you had gone to the country, it is as if you have performed nothing at all. So man has come into this world for a particular task, (1) and that is his purpose; if he does not perform it, then he will have done nothing. (Rumi in A.J. Arberry, trans., Discourses of Rumi. New York; Samuel Weiser, 1977; c1961, 26.)

(2) See https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/56955/all-i-really-need-to-know-i-learned-in-kindergarten-by-robert-fulghum/9780345466396/excerpt.