The Purpose of Life

(Granger): Some one is sure to say, "Well, would we not be better off if we died as children and avoided this earth's problems?" That is not such a bad question, and it deserves some consideration and an answer.

There are very real and specific reasons why personalities need to enter the physical earth-cycle as persons, living out physical lives on earth. One of these reasons is that the personality needs to encounter struggle and make real personal effort if it is to gain personal awareness of itself as an entity in its own right. There is no better place than the earth in which to encounter this experience. We have that difficulty on this side, to get each personality to be aware of his or her own entity and being, as independent from all others. The contributions made by teachers who have lived in the earth are of great value in this accomplishment. Teachers here who have never lived in the earth have vast knowledge of other planes, but do not feel the same sense of individualized awareness as those who have entered the physical earth life.

We need to clarify the nature of the need to live in the earth. It is a valuable experience in the long chain of personal development; however, it is not a great obstruction for those who die without having lived out the full-life experience. Having inherited a physical body, with all it inheritance from ancestry on earth, the personality now carries that inheritance in its being and person for all time. This physical inheritance, although short lived, is of value as material from which the personality may continue to build and grow. The personality you meet in this plane many years later will be similar to the personality that would have developed in the earth. Of course the experience through which this personality has developed is very different from what would have been the physical experience of a full lifetime.

The idea that all people in the earth are somehow equal is not a good concept. We mentioned this earlier in the book. Insects may or may not be equal; stones and bricks may be equal. But certainly people as individuals are not equal. We were never intended to be equal. Each and every individual is unique; is intended to be unique, and has a life-pattern to be followed that will make him or her unique. No two personalities ever have the same life-pattern.