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attribute of free will was necessary to allow the soul to choose to experience companionship with God. God was well aware that the gift of free will could be used for purposes contrary to His own. Yet a necessary condition of this gift was the fact that once given, He would not interfere with our choices. For God knew that we could not be true heirs and co-creators unless we possessed the same attributes as He.

      As a corollary to the attribute of free will, God also imbued the soul with the faculty of development. This is the quality or ability given to the soul which enables it to learn from experience and to change and grow as it experiences new conditions.

      So the universal stage was set. Born of a desire for companionship and expression, the Creative Spirit, through an act of love, extended His own spiritual pattern to create companions, who were at once individual and yet part of the whole. We are part of the whole of the Creative Spirit, for the spirit of God which extended itself is our life force. The spirit is that part of us which is immutable and never changing. The soul is our individual nature, able to choose, learn, and grow. Each soul can therefore be thought of as an individualized expression of the Creative Spirit, one with the whole and yet the individualized sum of its unique experiences.

       The Error of Separation

      At the time of creation, the soul’s will was one with God’s will. Through the exercise of will, we were to learn from experience and express our co-creative abilities throughout the universe. The soul began to experiment with its creative powers. What a glorious time that must have been, as the individualized expressions of God’s love moved in harmony and oneness throughout the various spheres of existence. Each soul expressed the Divine Will and power of the Creative Force it carried within itself and, by acting in unity with Universal Law, extended divine love ever further into the developing universe.

      At some point, however, the soul began to see itself as an entity separate from God, a separate self, rather than an individualized expression of God. It came to see God as being outside of itself, rather than the motivating force or cause within. This was the first error of perception. The soul also came to see itself as the source of creative power, rather than as a channel for the expression of the creative power of Spirit. Belief in a false image of itself was the second error in perception. Both errors of perception led to a “separation consciousness” whereby the soul lost sight of its true origin and purpose.

      As the soul applied its will for selfish purposes, it did so without regard for the well-being of others. Dissension among groups and between individuals arose, and the perception of separation grew even greater. In addition to the perceived separation from God, souls soon came to perceive themselves as being separate from one another. The soul had turned away from the Creative Force, hereafter symbolized by the light, and had stepped onto the path of error, symbolized by shadow, embarking upon a path which would lead to complete loss of spiritual knowledge, symbolized by darkness.

      These errors in perception and the separation consciousness they induced have been called original sin by some, the fall of man by others. It is represented in the Bible as the time when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden.

      Yet God did not separate Himself from us. We separated ourselves from Him. A Course in Miracles teaches that we thought ourselves to be separate, creating an error in our perception, which we then continued to believe. The Cayce readings also support this view: “Hence the separation, and light and darkness. Darkness, that it had separated—that a soul had separated itself [author’s italics] from the light.” (262-56) We, through free will, made the choice to believe in separation and deny our oneness with God. We chose self over oneness, and through this choice brought sin into existence, for all sin stems from self.

      Yet, while we believed ourselves to be separate from God, God, being love, could either condemn us for our error nor desire that any soul should be lost. So great was His love that, in the moment that we created the separation, God designed a plan to help us remember our true nature and purpose and find our way back to God Consciousness. According to the readings, that plan included the creation of time, space, and patience, to be expressed as three-dimensional materiality, as well as the creation of the Holy Spirit whose purpose would be to awaken us from the “dream” of separation we had created.³

       The Material Dimension

      It was evident by now that the gift of free will proved to be too great a responsibility, or perhaps too much of a temptation, for many souls. This is not to say that all souls had rebelled and used this gift incorrectly. There were still many who had not fallen into the path of error and honored their unity with God. Yet God loves all equally and shows the same concern for the loss of one as for the loss of many. In an attempt to help those souls who had chosen the path of error, God created a means or experience by which they might remember their original purpose. Since God had imbued the soul with the faculty of development, it was possible that the errant souls could learn the error they had made and choose to return to their original state of unity.

      In order to understand the error it had made, however, the soul would need to understand the state of separation consciousness in which it now existed, as opposed to the state of unity consciousness at the time of its creation. The vibrational rate of the soul is one of the highest frequencies in creation. This high rate of vibration made it difficult for the soul to retain the understanding necessary to comprehend the error it had made. Have you ever run through a forest or wooded area so quickly that you never saw the trees alongside the path? It was as if the soul were moving through the universe so fast that it couldn’t take time to “stop and smell the roses” and understand what it was actually doing.

      God, therefore, provided a means to slow down that vibration so the soul might comprehend the error it had made and regain its understanding. To accomplish this, He brought the concepts of time, space, and patience into existence. Since time and space do not exist in spirit, which is energy, these had to be expressed in the physical plane. The dimensions are all expressions of the Creative Force,⁴ created as teaching devices so that, through them, the soul would have the opportunity to recognize its error of separation, understand the nature of itself and God, and remember its original state of unity with God.

      The concept of time provides the opportunity to understand that each experience has a beginning and an end. The dawn of each new day shows that we always have the opportunity to move into a new experience or state of consciousness, if we make the choice to do so. Every moment provides an opportunity to make that new choice. It is never too late to start again. The popular saying, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life,” holds more truth than people realize. The concept of time was designed to help the soul learn that at any moment it could make the choice to see past the erroneous thought of separation and reclaim its oneness with the Creative Spirit.

      The concept of space provides us the opportunity to understand our true relationship with the universe. The vastness of space helps us understand the vastness of God, or the fact that the Creative Force permeates all that exists. Just as the stars are parts of this vastness, so the individual soul is a part of the vastness that is God. The grandeur and immensity of the universe that we see when we gaze at the stars reflect the nature of God, even though it is but a pale reflection of God’s true glory. When we gaze at the heavens, don’t we often marvel at the magnificence of the universe? Don’t we often take that a step further and marvel at the majesty of the God who created it? Somehow, in that humbleness, don’t we, if only for a moment, draw nearer to our Creator?

      While time and space are the teaching devices which provide us the opportunity to recall our nature and relationship with God, patience is the spiritual force through which this learning is assimilated. Through the exercise of patience, the soul is given the opportunity to demonstrate “God-like” qualities and come to realize that these qualities are not only of God, but are the natural attributes of the soul.

      Time, space, and patience, expressed in materiality, thus became the three teaching devices in the spiritual development of the soul. They, along with the Holy Spirit, the “voice of God within,” enable us to remember of the true state of our being. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you