PHYSICAL WORLDS AND SPIRITUAL WORLDS

The term world is loaded with many different meanings. It can be used to refer to a physical world, such as the planet Earth, which is located at a particular place within the universe.

The ancients were of the opinion that the universe is filled with many different types of worlds—some corresponding to mundane planets such as Earth, and others corresponding to vast, celestial worlds, such as the solar system or galaxy taken as a whole. In addition to these physical worlds, which are tied to specific locations within the universe, the ancients also held that there is a spectrum of spiritual worlds tied to specific scales of consciousness.

Whereas the physical worlds are manifested by real particles and waves, the spiritual worlds are manifested by virtual particles and waves, which, for all empirical purposes, are unobservable. These virtual spiritual worlds may be compared to universal dream worlds that exist and appear on the level of consciousness even though they cannot be perceived by the physical organs of sense. The ancients referred to these spiritual worlds commonly as the heavens above and the hells below, and believed they represented the worlds inhabited by disembodied souls. These souls, which correspond to point values of consciousness, may not possess a physical body, but they nevertheless possess a conscious point of view, as we do in the dreaming state. Everything revolves around our conscious point of view in this state, and we may perceive ourselves as possessing a dreamlike body or as being little more than a disembodied point of view on various dreamlike events. The images may change from one moment to the next, but our point of view remains constant. This is precisely the type of reality experienced by disembodied souls within a spiritual world.

Unlike those things that exist in the physical world, which appears to possess an objective character so that it seems to exist independently from our individual mind, the things that exist in a spiritual world appear to possess a subjective character. Disembodied souls have the potential to conceive an entire, dreamlike world populated by tangible objects, sights, sounds, sensations, and even other conscious beings. Yet all of these are subject to change at a moment’s notice by the slightest alteration in the soul’s subjective state of mind. In this way, we may compare a spiritual world to a virtual world, a world within the mind.

Unlike our individual dreaming worlds experienced when we go to sleep at night, however, the universal dreaming worlds appear not as transient realities within the individual mind, but as permanent realities within the universal mind. The virtual phenomena within these worlds may change from moment to moment, but the spiritual worlds themselves are persistent and are tied directly to the imperishable layers of consciousness that constitute collectively the metaphysical Logos.