Being Mothers of God

Here's a short and sweet post for you. And no, it is not the one I said I was working on in my announcement. That one's still in the works.

Meister Eckhart was a German theologian, philosopher and mystic from the 13th and 14th centuries. His views were quite unorthodox (much like mine), and he was subsequently brought up on charges of heresy against the [Catholic] church by the local Franciscan-led inquisition and was tried before Pope John XXII. He published his famous Defense as a challenge to his accused crimes. However, he died before his verdict was received. However, today he is considered "a good and orthodox theologian" by the Catholic Church.

Anyway, there is a quote of his that I really like. It is as follows:

"We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born."

I had my own understanding of what this means, but it was enhanced by something I heard today in my English class.

We are reading Ceremony, a book by Leslie Marmon Silko about a Native-American man trying to retain his cultural identity in a white world. In an introductory poem, it says the following:

"He [it is not stated who] rubbed his belly./I keep them here (he said)/Here, put your hand on it/See, it is moving./ There is life here/for the people. And in the belly of this story the rituals and the ceremony are still growing."

When he read this, my teacher made a connection. He pointed out the obvious, that it was talking about pregnancy, or at least some form of it. But, interestingly enough, it is a man who is pregnant. To explain this, my teacher pointed out that many religions (Mormonism in particular) emphasize a very physical, spiritual sensation in the belly. In Mormonism, it is called the burning of the bosom. So perhaps that is what Ms. Silko meant,

But I made an even bigger connection. To me, this meant that when we are filled with the Holy Ghost, we are figuratively becoming pregnant with God. We are filled to the brim with God's goodness, love and light. At least to me, this means that God is born in you. It also means that everything that is good about God (his love, his light and his happiness) grows out of you and spreads into the world like grass, improving and permeating everything that you come into contact with.

Right here, I could make a connection with the idea of the hierarchy of Gods, but I trust that you can see the connection for yourselves. Plus, it is late, and I am tired. Here's hoping that you learned something when reading this post. I certainly did while writing it.

Things to Come

Hello all!

If any of you are fervent readers of my blog (which I doubt you are), you've probably been disappointed with my lack of posting over the last two years. But I have good news! I'm working on a post that will be uploaded shortly. Hopefully it will go well.

And there is yet more good news! After that, I intend to publish much shorter posts, mostly centering on a single thought I had that day. Hopefully that should lead to more frequent posting.

And I have even more good news! I changed the title of the blog (but not the URL, unfortunately) to Journals of a Mormon Mystics, as opposed to Diaries. I realized that the latter seems way too effeminate.

Anyway, love to you all! You should expect a lot more from this blog in the future.

Lessons from the Aitareya Upanishad

I had known about the Upanishads for a while now, but I only recently decided to sit down and read them. They are the core scriptures of the Hindu school of Vedanta, which teaches primarily the doctrine that humanity is divine. When I did read them, I was astounded. I had never read a text so densely pumped full of meaning in every verse. I highly recommend them.

I've been reading them in order, and so it is natural that my first blog post about them should be about an excerpt from the first one, namely the Aitareya Upanishad. This short book of scripture describes the creation of the universe in terms of the creation of an individual soul, or Atman. However, there is something in the second chapter which I find particularly applicable in helping to understand Mormon scripture. Here is an excerpt from it:

1. In the male first the unborn child becometh. This which is seed is the force and heat of him that from all parts of the creature draweth together for becoming ; therefore he beareth himself in himself, and when he casteth it into the woman, `tis himself he begetteth. And this is the first birth of the Spirit.
2. It becometh one Self with the woman, therefore it doeth her no hurt and she cherisheth this self of her husband that hath got into her womb.
3. She the cherisher must be cherished. So the woman beareth the unborn child and the man cherisheth the boy even from the beginning ere it is born. And whereas he cherisheth the boy ere it is born, `tis verily himself that he cherisheth for the continuance of these worlds and these peoples; for `tis even thus the thread of these worlds spinneth on unbroken. And this is the second birth of the Spirit.

In short, this says that the father is the son. Or, in less profound language, the son is an extension of the father. When the father begets his son, he takes the concentrated essence of his self (like his DNA) to make him. As the son grows and learns, the father grows and learns with him. Any triumph or failure of the son is the father's triumph and failure as well. And any good father will tell you that they care more about their children's success than their own. So, you could even say that the father is born again through his child. And you could even go farther and say that when the father gets his first grandchild, his lives through him as well. And it could continue for eternity, insuring that, at least in one way, you are immortal. And so, as it says, "the thread of these worlds spinneth on unbroken".

Now, I'm not saying that this doesn't apply to mothers and daughters as well. You have to understand that this was written in a male-dominated society. Plus, this is only partially a literal story; it is also a grand metaphor for the creation and workings of the universe. In this conception, you would consider the father to be the great Self, or Brahman. Brahman divides itself up to become different parts of the universe or people (the son), which aren't really creations of Brahman, but extensions of Brahman itself.

And so I would say it is with our Father in heaven as understood in LDS theology. He is a perfected being. According to D&C 88, "All things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things". So, what else is there for him to do? Not denying that the Father has a body (see my previous post about Light), he essentially is the universe and experiences everything. He seems to have reached the end of the road. There's nothing else left for him to learn or experience. And so, he does the only thing a person in that state could do: create. Thus we come into the picture. We are not creations of God in the sense that he makes us out of something external to him. Just like the son is made from the father's body, we were made from our Father in heaven's body.

But I would challenge the notion that once we were created, we became separate from our Father. Just like it says in the above quote from the Aitareya Upanishad, we are a part of him still. He lives through us. He experiences everything we experience. And when we get to the point where we have all that the Father has, and are also "in all things and through all things" we can do the same thing he did: have children. Then we live and grow through them just as our Father lives and grows through us. And we would also live and experience through our children's children, and our children's children's children, and so on forever and ever. We would never stop progressing and learning. I would say that this is one way the LDS church does believe in reincarnation: through the creation of spirit children.

So that's my take on the LDS doctrine of eternal progression through the eyes of a mystical school of Hinduism. I hope you have enjoyed this post. You can look forward to a much more frequent posting schedule in the future. Happy summer!

Water

Water is an incredibly important symbol, used throughout the scriptures, but it is almost always forgotten. Because of that, I feel like I should bring to light again some things about the symbolism of water that often pass us by.

In the opening verses of Genesis, it says

"[...] and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. "

The word firmament comes from the Hebrew word "raqiya", (called Raukeeyang in the Book of Abraham's facsimile #2) which comes from the root "raqa", which means to stamp, beat out or stretch. The firmament was perceived as a giant hemisphere above the ground, likened to a bowl, which is beaten and stretched out of metal (see Job 37:18).

The deep refers to an enormous ocean that originally made up the entirety of existence. As the above verse demonstrates, the Hebrews believed that great primordial deep was separated into the waters below the firmament (the sea), and the waters above the firmament, perceived as a literal ocean above their heads. In fact, the Hebrews believed that "windows" in the firmament were what caused rain (Genesis 7:11). It was the rising of the deep that caused the flood, and the receding of the deep that allowed Moses and the Israelites to pass on dry land.

[See the picture at the bottom of the blog for an illustration of the above concepts]

Basically, it's saying that everything in the world originally came from water, and that water was there before anything else. The Qu'ran, also stemming from a proud Hebrew heritage, seems to agree:

"Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?" (21:30)

It says much the same thing in the New Testament (The New International Version, FYI. I've checked the Greek, and it makes more sense):

"But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. " (2 Peter 3:5)

Obviously, the Hebrews believed that the universe was created out of something, and not nothing as many other Christian churches would say. I think Joseph Smith recognized that fact when he said that the world was made out of "unorganized matter". But I don't literally believe that the entire universe, or even the earth, came from an actual ocean. If modern science is anything to go by, the earth began in fire, and not in water. But I won't deny that there is an incredible symbolic truth being expressed here.

The Hebrews are not the only ones who believe the world came out of a primordial ocean. According to that wonderful website Wikipedia, many cultures have a creation myth where water was the original substance. The creation myths of the Hindus, the Finns, the ancient Egyptians, the Cherokees, the Bakuba and the Hmong all involve a primordial ocean of some sort that the world was made out of.

But why would they all use water, of all things? Well, I can imagine that a person who saw the ocean for the first time would see that it goes out to the horizon, as far as they can see. Perhaps they suppose it goes on forever. It makes them feel small. And so, they suppose that everything he knows on the land must be mere blotches on the infinite ocean of existence. As a result, they would come to think of water as the blank canvas of existence that everything is painted on.

In other creation myths, other "blank" substances were used. For example, the Shinto think the world was created from a cloud, which separated into the sea and the sky. In Greek mythology, according to Hesiod's Theogeny, the primordial substance Chaos gave birth to the first deities representing the earth, the underworld, darkness and desire.

The Chinese creation myth, although it is much more philosophical and mystical, also has a blank original "substance"

"There was something featureless yet complete, born before heaven and earth; Silent – amorphous – it stood alone and unchanging. We may regard it as the mother of heaven and earth. Not knowing its name, I style it the Tao [Way]"

In modern science we don't see the world very differently. Space (and energy, as well) seem as "blank" and as "empty" as any ocean. So we today see ourselves much like the ancient Hebrews, as an island in the middle of an ocean of space.

Additionally, in nearly all of these myths this original substance “gives life” in some way. In the case of the Tao, it is actually called the mother of heaven and earth. But the use of water as this substance makes this more explicit. Water gives life, more than anything else on earth. We need to drink it, and so do the animals which we eat. It waters our crops and we were actually born from water in the womb. Appropriately, the Hebrew word for the Deep, "Tehom", comes from the Sumerian word/deity Tiamat, also associated with a primordial ocean, which literally means "the mother of all life".

In other areas of scripture, water is also seen as life-giving and therefore divine. In 1 Nephi 11, Nephi speaks of a "Fountain of Living Waters" next to the Tree of Life (which I assume is the same one as the Garden of Eden), which is also a title later applied to Christ. Before the animals of land were created, the animals who live in the lower ocean (the sea) and the upper ocean (the sky) were created. The four rivers coming out of the Garden of Eden in Genesis seem to water the entire known world. Multiple times throughout the Qur'an Paradise is described as being filled with water of different types. God is described as speaking with the "voice of many waters" and in D&C 133, Joseph Smith speaks of barren deserts that shall bring forth living water after the Second Coming.

So, in that context I will liken the previously mentioned function of water: the life-filled original material of creation, to the other more well known function of water in the Gospel: as a purifier. The best example of this function is the ritual of baptism, performed to "wash away the sins" of the person being baptized.

Baptism has its roots in the Jewish ritual of mikveh. The Mikveh is ceremonial bath for Orthodox Jews to regain purity after encountering "unclean" things or activities, like childbirth, menstruation, touching a dead animal, etc.. Purifying by mikveh would be a common activity to Jews at the time of Christ, and baptism would be seen in its context. But according to the Orthodox Jewish author Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, that too has its origins in the conception of water as the source of all life. In his work Waters of Life, he says that the types of uncleanness that a mikveh purifies most often have something to do with death. And so, by ritually washing you are connecting with water, which he says come from the Garden of Eden, the source of all life.

And so I believe it is for baptism. As I mentioned before, water is inseparably associated with its life-giving qualities. By being baptized, we are coming into contact with the original source of all life and creation, and it repels unclean materials causing sin and death. It also has the added symbolism of going back into the waters of the beginning of life, the womb, to be symbolically reborn.

And as many have said before, the Great Flood (the other great water-related thing in the scriptures) was the Earth's baptism. It was filthy with sin and death, so the waters of life rose to cover it and purge it of evil. It wasn't merely being washed; it was going back to the world's original state of creation and remaking the undivided primordial ocean. It was returning to its womb: the Great Deep.

I hope you enjoyed this entry after a Christmas and early January hiatus. Thanks for reading!

Light

The last time I went home teaching, I read the First Presidency message out of the December Ensign. I have to say that while I thought that post-Joseph Smith prophets weren't really very mystical, I had to change my mind when I read the message. Here's a link to it:

http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?locale=0&sourceId=59df875a62c25210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

It's called Home for Christmas, written by Henry B. Eyring. It's about how, as many people go home to their families for Christmas, we will eventually go to our original home and our great family, in our Father's house. There's a good deal of mystical truth in that idea, but I'm not going to go into that right now. What really got me, though, was the section Blessed with his Light. It talked about how a big part of what heaven is is light, and how light is present in our heavenly home.

Now, the way Eyring uses the word "light" in the article is not typical. For one, he uses it to refer to actual instances where there was bright light, like the star of Christmas or Joseph Smith's first vision. He also uses it in a more symbolic sense, referencing abstract concepts and ideas. I can tell by the way that he uses both of these senses in the same article that he is referring to something entirely more than either of them.

So, why is light so important? Well, references to light can be found littered throughout the scriptures. These references are ubiquitous. The very first thing that God says in the entire standard works is "Let there be light!". 1 John says that God is light. When Christ was born, a bright star appeared in the eastern sky. At that same time, there were three days of light in the Americas. The three kingdoms of glory are ranked in order of how bright they are. Whenever God or his angels appears, it is with great brightness. All of these things hint at some grand principle of the universe being expressed here.

What are some aspects of light? Light is how we see things. If there were no light, we couldn't know where anything is, except by blindly stumbling around. As we do not use echolocation, light is how we can sense our environment that isn't right in front of us. And so, light is what enables us to be sure that the universe exists out of our arm's reach. And if you take it as symbolic for the other senses as well, light is what connects us from the rest of the universe. It's what enables us to be anything other than solipsistic islands.

Think of it this way: in physics, observing something is defined by measuring the trajectories of particles (or waves, they're really the same thing) that are bounced back from hitting the object being observed. That's what happens when you look at something. Light particles/waves bounce off of the object that you're looking at and go back to your eyes, and you see it. The same is true for sound as well. It also holds true for smell, as your nose detects chemical particles that come off of the object that you're smelling. Taste and touch do the same thing as well, only in extremely close quarters. And so light in this sense are those particles/waves, whatever they may be. They're what enables you to know that anything else exists, and allows you to function and participate in existence.

It is, in that sense, much the same thing as faith, as explained by Joseph Smith in his Lectures on Faith: "If men were duly to consider themselves, and turn their thoughts and reflections to the operations of their own minds, they would readily discover that it is faith, and faith only, which is the moving cause of all action in them; that without it, both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity, and all their exertions would cease, both physical and mental." And aren't they much the same thing? They're what enables you to know that anything you can't immediately experience exists.

But imagine an existence full of light. Everything was able be observed and could be seen, and all things were connected in a giant web of knowledge and glory. An entity who experiences that would be like God is described in D&C 88: "He comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever" It is like how Joseph Smith described the Celestial Kingdom: a giant lens through which all existence throughout time can be observed.

But when you look at that kind of existence, I am struck by how similar it is to a universe that is just one thing (where there is no complexity or duality, only existence) Everything is connected with everything else and nothing could be described without referencing everything else. The universe would indeed be one, for it lacks divisions between different things. It is sort of like how a sphere (which has one side) is practically the same thing as a 1,000,000-sided solid. They both describe the same object.

So, I suppose the universe could be likened to beam of light. In the beginning, that's all it was: light. But then, the light was broken up into a spectrum of colors. They all represent the diversity and opposition in the universe. But as we step back, we'll begin to see that the rainbow really IS the white light, but in a different form. It is like how your computer screen, while it appears white, is really thousands of pixels of red, green and blue all shining at once.

And so, we are never really divorced from the light of heaven. It just takes a different form: a spectrum of colors. Perhaps that's why God sent us the rainbow after the flood: to give us a constant reminder that we never really leave it. It is like the primary song says: "some say that heaven is far away, but I feel it close around me as I pray". To me, the grand truth of the metaphor of light is that the Kingdom of God is here, but we just can't see it yet.

I hope you have enjoyed my blog so far. Have a merry and enlightened Christmas!

Mormon Trekkies

Today I was told by a friend of mine that my blog was "less controversial" than he expected when reading the title. While I am flattered by the acceptance of my ideas that I thought would be met with resistance, I'm afraid the need for this entry to be as clear as possible trumps the need for it to be complaisant, at least this once.

The English wiki with the most entries besides Wikipedia is website called Memory Alpha (I'm not completely sure; tell me if I'm wrong) Here's a link to it: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Portal:Main. It is the Star Trek wiki. Thousands of Star Trek nerds and nerdesses have devoted their free-time to recording every fact about the Star Trek universe in an easily accessible encyclopedia. They have detailed entries for everything, from big things like the article on Klingons, to tiny ones like the article about the SS Lakul, the Whorfin-class transport in Star Trek: Generations. Every meticulous little detail has been plotted and recorded in the wiki's vast database. But any attempt to make a database of a fictional universe is plagued by the same problem: what is canon and what is not? For something to be canon, it means that it is part of the accepted universe of that fictional work. For example, Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes would be canon, while fan-fiction would not be. It is very stereotypical of trekkies to be concerned about canon to a ridiculous degree. They will pour over a TNG (The Next Generation) episode and look for any contradictions with TOS (The Original Series) episodes. If they find one, they demand an explanation from the makers of the episode. A good example of this was seen in the hype leading up to the recently released Star Trek movie. There were rumors of things happening in it that were not canonical. J. J. Abrams, in order to avoid the entire mess, smartly set the movie in an alternate universe.

But that's beside the point. I go on this elaborate non-spiritual tangent to make a metaphor. The LDS community is a great deal like the Star Trek community. There are many Mormons who hold desperately onto their own kind of canon. It is based on the scriptures and the words of the prophets. If it is in the scriptures, it is right. If it is not in the scriptures, it is wrong. Now, there's nothing wrong with the scriptures in and of themselves. They are the prime way for mankind to learn about the things of the gospel. But this point of view takes the scriptures for what they were never meant to be: historical and scientific texts. And so the feeling is that the Garden of Eden was an actual garden in what is now Missouri (something I don't think Joseph Smith ever said), that an actual world-wide flood covered the entire earth, that all people are literally descended from Adam and Noah, and that the Earth is a mere 6,000 years old.

But, some of the adherents of this widespread opinion look at the world of science, and see that it does not match up with the world of the scriptures, if everything is explained simply by divine power. And so they begin a massive crusade of reconciliation, developing odd and complicated scientific explanations for the literal happenings in the scriptures. For example, my mom used to tell me that the reason people lived so long in biblical times was because their genes weren't "corrupted" yet. I've heard other people say how the city of Enoch must have been where the gulf of Mexico is today, because it's the only thing that doesn't fit if you put the continents together. And I've heard other people say that God did indeed create the world in 7 days, but "aged" it so that it appeared to go through billions of years of development.

And so, these Mormon Trekkies go through all kinds of elaborate and inefficient trouble to keep firm their belief that the scriptures are literally true. The canon is above all else in importance. It is irrefutable, and it trumps all debate and discussion. And in this mad pursuit of reconciliation and defense, I would say that the scriptures are divorced from their original purpose: to lead men to truth.

What is truth? Or, should I say, what is Truth? Various religions across the world, calling it Brahman, the Tao, the Monad, or God, all seem to say that there is some greater reality behind all things. Christianity and Mormonism are no different. Paul says that "we see the world through a glass darkly" in 1 Corinthians 13, and Joseph Smith describes the Celestial Kingdom in D&C 130 as a great glass globe, a Urim and Thummim, through which everything can be seen in the past,the present and the future.

I, calling again on the wisdom of Humpty Dumpty, will call the belief systems that acknowledge that the Truth exists and actively pursue it mystical traditions. Now, one of the most notable elements about the Truth is that it cannot be described, as words by their nature cannot completely describe anything, let alone the reality of the universe. As the Tao Te Ching says, "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao". And so, people who have experienced the Truth must necessarily use metaphor, simile, symbolism and stories, tuned to the experience of people's everyday life, in order to help other people understand it. However, as these stories get passed on from person to person, the delicious taste of the fruit of Truth is forgotten, and people begin to think that the stories themselves are the Truth. I will dub these story-based belief systems mythologies. A religion can have stories and not be a mythology, so long as they realize that their stories are just that: stories, used to help people understand the Truth, and aren't actually the Truth itself. As Alan Watts once said: "The menu is not the meal." A prevailing trait throughout mythologies is that their universe looks a lot like their culture, lives and immediate area. The early Mesopotamian deities were as wild and unpredictable as the Tigris and the Euphrates, while the gods of Egypt were as stable, timeless and predictable as the Nile. Most of them had a supreme deity who was king or emperor over the universe in much the same way a king or emperor on earth rules their kingdom.

I think that this is the problem we have today with Mormonism as it is commonly perceived and practiced: we treat stories that are obviously metaphors for the Truth as the Truth itself. We believe that every other belief system in the world is a corrupted version of ours. We think that the universe and reality are just bigger versions of our day-to-day lives and institutions. Many people within the church believe that in the Celestial Kingdom we will have shops and theaters and arenas and streets. We would all have our own house, and we could go visit anyone we want in their celestial house. Nothing could be further from the Truth, to make a pun. It is true that Joseph Smith sees the Celestial Kingdom as a city in D&C 137, but the actual description of the place is in passing, and is not the point of the chapter. I believe it is there to conjure up images of the divine City of God descending out of heaven in Revelation 21 (meant to contrast with the corrupt city of Babylon) and the city of Enoch, which ascended to heaven. As I mentioned earlier, Joseph Smith describes the Celestial Kingdom as a glass ball. Do we really think the celestial kingdom will be a ball made out of glass? I hope not. I'd never be able to stand up for fear of slipping. And besides, do we really think that the Celestial Kingdom is a city, or even a planet? In the eternity that we're there, we'll have more than enough time to explore ever nook and cranny to the point where there would be nothing new. The fact is, any finite representation of the Truth is bound to fail at describing it purely because of the fact that it is finite.

I suppose the Celestial Kingdom could be a giant, shiny city where we'd all go from place to place to place for eternity. I'd think it a very poorly-designed universe, but it's possible nevertheless. I feel very strongly that it is not, though. I have faith, all-pervasive and beyond my faith in anything else, that the Truth, the ultimate Truth at the heart of all things, is simple. It is not sculpted with the molding and friezes of any particular culture or religion. It is not lined with the frills and lace of theology or dogma. It is smooth. It is white. But within that whiteness is the spectrum of infinity. Everything from the tiniest cell and atom to the largest galaxy or plane to the brick on the wall at school to the idea you had yesterday is contained in its surface. But it, in its infinite grandeur, is still simple in its all-encompassing infinity. It is the screen on which the entirety of existence is projected. It is the diaphragm of the radio on which the music of the universe is played. It applies to all races, creeds and tongues. It is the common denominator of all things. Of course it is simple. It has to be.

And so, this blog will not try to do what so many other LDS scholarly works have done: cling to the canon. It will not regard stories, parables or doctrines as truth, but instead as the rod that one clings to to reach the Truth. It won't treat anything as authoritative simply because it is in the scriptures, but will try to see why the things in the scriptures are there in the first place, and try to understand what we can learn from them. To not do that, and treat the stories as literal, scientific truth, whether it actually is or not, destroys the entire purpose of stories: to help people understand great truths. So, if you seek to find a detailed almanac connecting various obscure gospel theories and doctrines to each other by coming up with yet more theories and doctrines, pick up a copy of Mormon Doctrine; don't look here. I try to keep it simple.

Alternate Genesis Translation

I was using StumbleUpon for philosophy today and I came across an interesting article. Here it is:

http://www.dailyglobal.com/2009/10/god-is-not-the-creator-claims-academic/

It says that the opening verses of Genesis should not read "God created the heavens and the earth" but that "God separated the heavens from the earth". You can read it for yourself. The translator is probably not even aware how perfectly that fits with Mormon cosmology. Don't we say that God organized the world out of unorganized matter instead of creating it?

I really like the whole separating the heaven from the earth idea. It seems to imply that the spiritual and the worldly were originally one thing (all spirit is matter, isn't it?). Going further, it also seems to imply that to be 'complete' and to return to that original state of onneness (something very mystical), we must have part of both worlds, part heavenly and part earthly (something very Mormon).