Another startling insight emerges from the paradigm of preexistence. If it is true that “Man was also in the beginning with God,” that “Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be,” then we have an eternal past. And if we have an eternal past, then humans—like God—inhabit a universe that has always existed. The implications of this view are nothing short of shattering, fraught with possibilities that are simultaneously heady and humbling. It would suggest the possibility that “God, angels and men are all of one species.” Our ancestry and potential are rooted in a divine pattern.

“If we have not existed before birth; . . . then there are no grounds for supposition that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased.” Percy Shelle