Editing Meher Baba (section)

===''God Speaks''===
{{Main|God Speaks}}

''God Speaks'' describes the journey of the soul from its original state of unconscious divinity to the ultimate attainment of conscious divinity. The whole journey is a journey of imagination, in which the original indivisible state of God imagines becoming countless individualised souls which he likens to bubbles within an infinite ocean.<ref>''God Speaks'', Revised 2nd edition, 1997, p. 7</ref> Each soul, powered by the desire to become conscious, starts its journey in the most rudimentary form of consciousness. This limitation brings the need of a more developed form to advance it towards an increasingly conscious state. Consciousness grows in relation to the impressions each form is capable of gathering.<ref>''God Speaks'', Revised 2nd edition, 1997, pp. 8–27.</ref>

According to Meher Baba, each soul pursues conscious divinity by evolving; that is, experiencing itself in a succession of imagined forms through seven "kingdoms" of stone/metal, vegetable, worm, fish, bird, animal, and human.<ref>''God Speaks'', Revised 2nd edition, 1997, pp. 28–30</ref> The soul identifies itself with each successive form, becoming thus tied to illusion. During this evolution of forms, the power of thought increases, until in human form thought becomes infinite. Although in human form, the soul is capable of conscious divinity, all the impressions that it has gathered during evolution are illusory ones that create a barrier against the soul knowing itself. For this barrier to be overcome, further births in human form are needed in a process known as [[reincarnation]].<ref>''God Speaks'', Revised 2nd edition, 1997, pp. 31-40</ref>

The soul will reach a stage where its previously gathered impressions grow thin or weak enough that it enters a final stage called [[Involution (Meher Baba)|involution]]. This stage also requires a series of human births, during which the soul begins an inner journey, by which it realises its true identity as God. Baba breaks this inner journey into seven stages he called "planes". The process culminates, at the seventh plane, with God-realisation, at which the goal of life for the soul is reached.<ref>''God Speaks'', Revised 2nd edition, 1997, pp. 41–54</ref>