There really are spiritual forces in play in our lives. We can sometimes get glimpses of them. One of those forces is from God, pulling us towards Him.
This idea runs all through the Bible. In the Gospel of John, there's this:
Jesus said, When I am raised up from the earth, I shall draw all to myself. (John 12:32).
This theme is a keystone of New Christian thought. Here's an interesting passage from Swedenborg's capstone work of theology from 1770, entitled "True Christian Religion":
"In actual fact there is a kind of field that constantly emanates from the Lord, which pulls all toward heaven. It fills the entire spiritual world and the entire physical world. It is like a strong current in the ocean that secretly carries ships along. All people who believe in the Lord and live by His commandments come into that field or current and are lifted up. Those who do not believe, though, are not willing to enter it." (True Christian Religion 652)
We jumped from John's first-century Gospel to the 18th century. Just for fun, let's jump again to 1980, to... Yoda, and what he says about "the force" in "The Empire Strikes Back":
"For my ally is the force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." (Yoda)
The stark good vs. evil struggle in George Lucas's "Star Wars" resonated with a huge audience! Why? Because we see it, again and again, in events large and small.
One more jump, to 2017. Dr. Iain McGilchrist is one of the world's foremost brain researchers. Here is an important excerpt from his magnum opus, "The Matter with Things":
"To be human, in my view, is to feel a deep gravitational pull towards something ineffable, that, if we can just for once get beyond words and reasons, is a matter of experience, and to which we reach out, silently, though not without misgivings; something outside our conceptual grasp, but nonetheless present to us through intimations that come to us from a whole range of unfathomable experiences we call ‘spiritual’. This has been true of humanity the world over and throughout time, and is true now as much as ever...".
For good measure, here's a link to a deeply thoughtful video of a seminar at Heythrop College, University of London, in which Dr. McGilchrist discusses this view at some length. It's ALL interesting, and the section from about 45 minutes in, till the end, is where he focuses on purpose as it might exist in the universe.
Happy thinking!
