Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
All excerpts are from The Urantia Book.
To read The Urantia Book, go to: http://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/read-urantia-book-online
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The Supernatural and Divinity
The supernatural is that which exists above and beyond nature.
The supernatural is regarded as "divine" because the attributes or qualities are superior relative to things of the Earth.
Divine things are regarded as eternal and based in truth, while material things are regarded as ephemeral and based in illusion.
Divinity is comprehensible to humans as truth, beauty, and goodness.
To an individual, truth, beauty, and goodness are perceived as love, mercy, and ministry.
In mortal institutions, love, mercy, and goodness are seen as justice, power, and sovereignty.
The Allure of God
Although mortals may know that God must be much more than the limited human conception of personality, they know as well that the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.
The concept of truth might possibly be entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is recognizable only in personality.
Only a person can love and be loved.
In the physical universe we see the divine beauty in nature. In the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth. The goodness of God is found in personal religious experience.
Science, Truth, and Beauty
The imperfect science of materialism would sentence mortal man to become a derelict in the universe.
The partial knowledge of science is potentially evil since it is knowledge composed of both good and evil.
Truth is beautiful because it is both complete and symmetrical. When man searches for truth, he seeks sublimity.
The discernment of supreme beauty in Time and Space is the exploration and synthesis of reality.
Even the appeal of human art consists in the harmony of its unity.
Misconceptions
The great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its failure to associate the goodness of God with the factual truths of science and the appealing beauty of art.
As civilization progressed, and since religion continued to pursue the same naive course of overemphasizing the goodness of God to the relative exclusion of truth and the slighting of beauty, there developed an increasing tendency for some men to turn away from the supernatural concept of goodness.
Modern organized religion, which fails to hold the devotion and loyalty of many modern men, would rehabilitate itself if, in addition to its moral mandates, it would give equal consideration to the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience, and to the beauties of the physical creation, the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur of genuine character achievement.
The Challenge of This Age
The challenge of this age is to discerning and forward looking men and women of spiritual insight who will construct a new and appealing philosophy of living the expanded and integrated concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness.
Such a new and righteous vision of morality will attract all that is good in the mind of man and challenge that which is best in the human soul.
Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly coordinated and unified in God, who is love.
All truth (material, philosophic, or spiritual) is both beautiful and good. All real beauty (material art or spiritual symmetry) is both true and good. All genuine goodness (whether personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry) is equally true and beautiful.
Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.
Human Experience
Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing.
When these values of what is real are coordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty.
The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better coordination of the isolated children of the worlds with the larger realities of expanding experience.
Reality is limited on the human level, infinite and never-ending on the higher and divine levels.
Differences Between Perfect and Imperfect Beings
The full appreciation of truth, beauty, and goodness is built into in the perfection of the divine universe.
Perfectly created beings do not require the potential of relative value levels of Time and Space as a choice stimulus. Such perfect beings are able to identify and choose the good in the absence of all contrastive and thought-compelling moral situations.
But perfect beings are, in moral nature and spiritual status, what they are by the fact of existence. They have
experientially earned advancement only within their inherent status.
The exalted adoration of the perfect creatures of Havona (the Central Universe surrounding Paradise) satiates the
perfect ideals of divine beauty and truth.
Mortal man earns his status as an ascension candidate by his faith and hope.
Everything divine which the human mind grasps and the human soul acquires is an experimental accomplishment.
The worship of the faith sons of the evolutionary worlds on planets such as Earth gratifies the Universal Father's love.
As mortal man strives to do the will of God, the perfect beings of the central universe (Havoners) live to gratify the ideals of the Paradise Trinity. In their very nature they are the will of God.
Man rejoices in the goodness of God, perfectly created Havoners exult in the divine beauty, while both enjoy the ministry of the liberty and freedom of living truth.
Religious Teachings about Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
The Hebrews based their religion on goodness; the Greeks on beauty. Both religions sought truth.
Jesus revealed a God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness.
The Zoroastrians had a religion of morals; the Hindus a religion of metaphysics; the Confucianists a religion of ethics.
Jesus lived a religion of service. All these religions are of value in that they are valid approaches to the religion of Jesus.
Religion is destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience.
Symmetry
Truth, fact, and relationship are intellectually inseparable and are associated with the philosophic concepts of beauty.
Beauty, rhythm, and harmony are intellectually associated and spiritually analogous.
Goodness, righteousness, and justice are philosophically interrelated and spiritually bound together with living truth and divine beauty.
Fusion
Cosmic concepts of true philosophy or the mortal attempt to depict the human recognition of divine beauty can never be truly satisfying if such attempted creature progression is not brought together as one (unified).
These expressions of the divine urge within the evolving creature may be intellectually true, emotionally beautiful, and spiritually good; but the real soul of expression is absent unless these realities of truth, meanings of beauty, and values
of goodness are not unified in the life experience (actions) of the craftsman, the scientist, or the philosopher.
These divine qualities are perfectly and absolutely brought together as one in God. Every God-knowing man or angel
possesses the potential of unlimited self-expression on ever-progressive levels of unified self-realization by the
technique of the never-ending achievement of God-likeness - the experiential melding in the evolutionary experience
of eternal truth, universal beauty, and divine goodness.
Education of Youth
On advanced worlds, the childbearing period is not greatly prolonged. It is not best for too many years to intervene between the ages of children in a family. When close together in age, children are able to contribute much more to their mutual training.
On the advanced worlds, young people are trained in competitive systems of striving in the domains of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness.
But even such glorified spheres present plenty of evil, real and potential, which is stimulative for choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness.
Universal Unity
God is unity, and Deity is universally coordinated.
The universe of universes is a vast integrated mechanism that is absolutely controlled by one infinite mind.
The physical, intellectual, and spiritual domains of universal creation are divinely correlated.
The perfect and imperfect are truly interrelated, and therefore may the finite evolutionary creature ascend to Paradise in obedience to the Universal Father’s mandate: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.”
To the circumscribed minds of time-space mortals the universe may present many problems and situations that apparently portray disharmony and indicate absence of effective coordination; but beings capable of observing wider stretches of universal phenomena perceive the divine and single purpose exhibited in all these manifold manifestations of universal creative energy.
Levels of Mortal Understanding
The material-minded creatures of the evolutionary worlds of the seven super universes can comprehend Deity unity (oneness) only as it is evolving in the power-personality synthesis of the Supreme Being (the God of Time and Space).
On any level of existence, the idea of God cannot exceed the conceptual capacity of the beings who live on such a level.
Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love and then progress through ascending deity levels to the comprehension of the Supreme.
Through the continuing seventh stage of a world’s history the ever-progressing mortals grow in the knowledge of God the Supreme, while vaguely discerning the reality of the overshadowing ministry of God the Ultimate (the God of Transcendency) who heralds God the Absolute.
Throughout the seventh stage of world history, the chief pursuit of the ever-advancing mortals is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity (truth, beauty, and goodness), which represent man's effort to discern God in mind, matter, and spirit. As man pursues this quest, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity.
The Coming Ages of Light and Life
Worlds settled in light and life are fully concerned with the comprehension of truth, beauty, and goodness because these quality values embrace the revelation of Deity to the realms of time and space.
The meanings of eternal truth make a combined appeal to the intellectual and spiritual natures of mortal man.
Universal beauty embraces the harmonious relations and rhythms of the cosmic creation. This is more distinctly the intellectual appeal and leads to a unified and synchronous comprehension of the material universe.
Divine goodness represents the revelation of infinite values to the finite mind, there to be perceived and elevated to the very threshold of the spiritual level of human comprehension.
The Spine of Truth
Truth is the substructure of science and philosophy, presenting the intellectual foundation of religion.
Beauty sponsors art, music, and the meaningful rhythms of all human experience. Goodness embraces the sense of ethics, morality, and religion - experiential perfection-hunger.
Unification
Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe.
The universe is a whole. No thing or being exists or lives in isolation. Self-realization is potentially evil if it is antisocial. As the poet Donne said, it is literally true: “No man is an island.”
Cosmic socializing constitutes the highest form of personality unification. That is why Jesus said: “He who would be greatest among you, let him become server of all.”
Truth, beauty, and goodness (man's intellectual approach to the universe of mind, matter, and spirit) must be combined into one unified concept of a divine and supreme ideal.
As mortal personality unifies the human experience with matter, mind, and spirit, so does this divine and supreme ideal
become power unified in Supremacy (Time and Space) and then personalized as a God of fatherly love.
Paradise and the Creator Sons and Divine Ministers
Universal beauty is the recognition of the reflection of the Isle of Paradise in the material creation.
Eternal truth is the special ministry of the Paradise Creator Sons (the Michaels, the creators of local universes) who not only bestow themselves upon the mortal races but even pour out their Spirit of truth (the union of Master Creator Sons) upon all peoples.
Divine goodness is more fully shown forth in the loving ministry of the manifold personalities of the Infinite Spirit (the Divine Ministers - creative mates of the Creator Sons). But love, the sum total of three qualities (truth, beauty, and goodness), is man's perception of God as his spirit Father.
Complete Revelation
To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality.
As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom.
Unequivocal Brotherhood
The appearance of genuine brotherhood signifies that a social order has arrived in which all men delight in bearing one another's burdens. They actually desire to practice the golden rule.
Such an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness.
In such a situation only one course is practical: The "golden rule culture" may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their backward fellows who might seek either to exploit their peace-loving predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization.
Home
No society can endure and contribute to the progress of social civilization and individual spiritual attainment unless it is based on the biologic, sociological, and religious significance of the home.
A surviving group must symbolize that which is permanent in the presence of unceasing change. It must glorify that which unifies the stream of ever-changing social metamorphosis.
It must recognize true meanings, exalt beautiful relations, and glorify the good values of real nobility.
But the minds of greater spiritual illumination should be patient with, and tolerant of, those less endowed intellects that crave symbolism for the mobilization of their faint spiritual insight.
The strong must not look with disdain upon the weak. Those who are God-conscious without symbolism must not deny the grace ministry of the symbol to those who find it difficult to worship Deity and to revere truth, beauty, and goodness without form and ritual. In prayerful worship, most mortals envision some symbol of the object-goal of their devotions.
Religious Ecstacy
Unrestrained mystical enthusiasm and rampant religious ecstasy are not the aura of inspiration or evidence of divine credentials.
The practical test of all the strange religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:
1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health.
2. To function more efficiently and practically in one's mental life.
3. More fully and joyfully to socialize one's religious experience.
4. More completely to spiritualize day-by-day living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence.
5. To enhance one's love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness.
6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
7. To increase spiritual insight, i.e. God-consciousness.
Efficacy of Prayer
God answers man's prayers by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness.
Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience.
As a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values, it is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus.
Evolutionary Religion Link
The Hebrew religion encompasses the philosophic transition from polytheism to monotheism. It is an evolutionary link between the religions of evolution and the religions of revelation.
The Hebrews were the only western people to follow their early evolutionary gods straight through to the God of revelation.
At one time the hope of the survival of Occidental civilization lay in the sublime Hebraic concepts of goodness and the advanced Hellenic concepts of beauty.
Value of Individual Religion
No matter what upheavals may attend the social and economic growth of civilization, religion is genuine and worth while if it fosters in the individual an experience in which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails.
This becomes manifest as fellowship with man and sonship with God through love and worship.
Religious Group Activities
There is a real purpose in the socialization of religion.
It is the purpose of group religious activities to dramatize the loyalties of religion; to magnify the lures of truth, beauty, and goodness; to foster the attractions of supreme values; to enhance the service of unselfish fellowship; to glorify the potentials of family life; to promote religious education; to provide wise counsel and spiritual guidance; and to encourage group worship.
All live religions encourage human friendship, conserve morality, promote neighborhood welfare, and facilitate the spread of the essential gospel of their respective messages of eternal salvation.
Spirituality (Sincerity)
Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one's nearness to God and the measure of one's usefulness to fellow beings.
Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in
values.
Spiritual development is determined by one's capacity therefore, and is directly proportional to the elimination of selfish qualities.
The Level of Faith
The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Certainty or conviction is not faith either.
A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living.
One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more.
The Process of Personal Growth
When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits wisdom. When wisdom chooses between right and wrong, truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading.
With spiritual ministering, the functions of mind, soul, and spirit become more closely united and functionally inter-associated.
Reason deals with factual knowledge; wisdom, with philosophy and revelation; faith, with living spiritual experience. Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love ascends to goodness.
The Spiritual Web
No matter how remote from Paradise or how deep in space a material survival personality may take origin, Deity personality functioning in time and space are there engaged in the loving and merciful ministry of truth, beauty, and goodness to such an incomplete, struggling, and evolutionary creature.
This divinity ministry reaches inward through the barriers of time in the evolutionary universes of space through the Eternal Son to the Paradise Father and outward through the Ancients of Days to the universe Fathers (the Creator Sons).
Living the Father's Will - Family Harmony
To material, evolutionary, finite creatures (humans), a life predicated on the living of the Father's will leads directly to the attainment of spirit supremacy in the personality arena and brings such creatures one step nearer the comprehension of the Father-Infinite.
A life of living in the Father's will is one predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, and dominated by goodness.
This God-knowing person is inwardly illuminated by worship and outwardly devoted to the wholehearted service of the universal brotherhood of all personalities, a service ministry that is filled with mercy and motivated by love.
Interplanetary Cross-fertilization
In a sense the Thought Adjusters (the fragments of the Universal Father who indwell human minds) foster a certain degree of planetary cross-fertilization in the domains of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Thought Adjusters are seldom given two indwelling experiences on the same planet. There is no Adjuster now serving on Earth who has previously been on this world.
- Relation of Thought Adjusters to Universe Creatures
Just as the personality of the human child expands for the struggles of evolutionary existence, the mind-indwelling Thought Adjusters grow greater in their rehearsals for the mortal's next stage of ascending life.
As the child acquires adaptive versatility for his adult activities through the social and play life of early childhood, so the indwelling Adjuster achieves skill for the next stage of cosmic life by virtue of prior mortal planning and rehearsing of those activities that have to do with the stage of life between flesh and spirit in the mansion worlds.
Cooperation with the Thought Adjuster
Men must not regard cooperation with the Adjuster as a conscious process, for it is not.
One's motives and decisions, determinations made through faith and supreme desires, do constitute real and effective cooperation.
A person can consciously augment Adjuster harmony by:
Choosing to respond to divine leading; sincerely basing the human life on the highest consciousness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and then coordinating these qualities of divinity through wisdom, worship, faith, and love.
Loving God and desiring to be like him.
Loving man and sincerely desiring to serve him.
Joyful acceptance of cosmic citizenship - honest recognition of the progressive obligations to the Supreme Being (the God of Time and Space), and awareness of the interdependence of evolving man and the evolving Hierarchy of Deity in time and space. - This is the birth of cosmic morality and the dawning realization of man's universal duty to strive for truth, beauty, and goodness.
Relating to the Cosmos
The mind of each individual is the cosmic instrument on which the human will can play either discords of destruction, or can bring forth the exquisite melodies of identification with God and consequent eternal survival.
The Adjuster bestowed upon each man is impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can be rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will.
Or, this mind can be made noble, beautiful, true, and good (actually great) in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being.
In so far as man's evolving soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resulting being becomes indestructible.
If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. - Soul Survival
- A soul of survival value faithfully reflects both the quantitative and the qualitative actions and motivations of the material human intellect.
Quantity may be identified as a fact, an amount of materialistic substance. Quality, is a matter of mind interpretation that represents an estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the individual.
Quality is the seat of the identity of self-hood (the personality).
In the choosing of truth, beauty, and goodness, the mortal mind enters upon its pre-mansion world universe career under the tutelage of the seven adjutant mind-spirits unified under the direction of the spirit of wisdom (the seventh adjutant mind spirit). These circuits represent that function of the mind ministry of the Infinite Spirit extended to the lower orders of intelligent life through the local universe Mother Spirit (the companion of the Creator Son of the local universe).
The human intellect resides in the rhythmic pulsations of the adjutant mind-spirits and effects its decisions within the arena produced by encirclement of this ministry. - Identity of the Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits
- The ministers of the lower levels of experiential mind may be described, in the order of animal and human evolutionary attainment, as follows:
1. The spirit of intuition – This mind spirit pulses the primitive physical and inherent reflex instincts, the self-preservative endowments of all mind creations. This mind spirit is the only one of the adjutants to function so largely in the lower orders of animal life and the only one to make extensive functional contact with the non-teachable levels of mechanical mind.
2. The spirit of understanding - the impulse of coordination, the spontaneous and apparently automatic association of ideas. This is the gift of the coordination of acquired knowledge that enables quick reasoning, rapid judgment, and prompt decision making.
3. The spirit of courage provides in personal beings, the basis of character acquirement and the intellectual root of moral stamina and spiritual bravery. When enlightened by facts and inspired by truth, this gift becomes the secret of the urge of evolutionary ascension by the channels of intelligent and conscientious self-direction.
4. The spirit of knowledge is the curiosity-mother of adventure and discovery, the scientific spirit; the guide and faithful associate of the spirits of courage and counsel; the urge to direct the endowments of courage into useful and progressive paths of growth.
5. The spirit of counsel provides the social urge, the endowment of species cooperation; the ability of will creatures to harmonize with their fellows, and the origin of the gregarious instinct among the more lowly creatures.
6. The spirit of worship - the religious impulse. The spirit of worship forever distinguishes the animal of its association from the soulless creatures of mind endowment. Worship is the badge of candidacy for spiritual-ascension.
7. The spirit of wisdom instills the inherent tendency of all moral creatures towards orderly and progressive evolutionary advancement. This is the highest of the adjutants, the spirit coordinator that articulates the work of all the other mind spirits. Wisdom is the goal of a purely mental and moral existence, truth, beauty, and goodness.
Following Mortal Death
At mortal death the human self is everlastingly divorced from the mind adjutant circuit.
Upon the completion of the seven circles of pre-mansion world attainment, the morontia mind (midway between mortal and spirit) is imposed upon adjutant minds.
Human conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension.
A conceptual framework is an analytical tool with many variations and contexts. It is used to make conceptual distinctions and organize ideas. Strong conceptual frameworks capture something real and do this in a way that is easy to remember and apply.
The understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true. For example, God is much more than a Father, but Father is man's highest concept of God.
Fulfillment in the Supreme (Time and Space)
God The Supreme is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value.
The Supreme is the sweetness of true success and the joy of everlasting achievement.
He is the over-soul of the grand universe, the consciousness of the finite cosmos, the completion of finite reality, and the personification of Creator-creature experience.
Throughout all future eternity God the Supreme will voice the reality of volitional experience in the trinity relationships of Deity.
Culmination in the Supreme
God the Supreme is truth, beauty, and goodness, for these concepts of divinity represent finite maximums of ideational experience.
The infinite sources of these triune qualities of divinity are on super-finite levels, but a creature could only conceive of such sources as super-truth, super-beauty, and super-goodness.
The Far Future of Time and Space
The perfected grand universe of universes (all spirit) will be vastly different from what exists today.
Gone will be the thrilling adventures of the organization of the galaxies of space, the planting of life on the uncertain worlds of time, and the evolving of harmony out of chaos, beauty out of potentials, truth out of meanings, and goodness out of values.
The time universes will have achieved the fulfillment of finite destiny. Briefly, there will be rest and relaxation from the age-long struggle for evolutionary perfection.
But inexorably the enigma of the emerging Deity of God the Ultimate will challenge the perfected citizens of the settled universes just as their struggling evolutionary forebears were once challenged by the quest for God the Supreme. The curtain of cosmic destiny will draw back to reveal the transcendent grandeur of the alluring absonite quest for the attainment of the Universal Father on new and higher levels revealed in the ultimate of creature experience.
Beyond Truth, Beauty, and Goodness - AbsonityThe final penetration of the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Supreme Being in Time and Space will open up to the progressing creature those absonite qualities of ultimate divinity that lie beyond the concept levels of truth, beauty, and goodness. (Absonite deity are over-controllers and upholders of the master universe.)
Absonite (ab'sun ite). Level of reality between the finite and the absolute which is characterized by things and beings without beginning or ending and by time/space transcendence.
Absonity (ab sahn i tee). The absonite level of reality.
Existential and Experiential Life
God must always act to balance the unity inherent in existential infinity, the spirit of qualified deity in contrast to the non-deified experiential mass of energy that fills the evolutionary universes.
Always must Deity provide the pattern universe, the perfect personalities, the original truth, beauty, and goodness for which all sub deity creations strive.
Always must God first “find” man that man may later find God. Always must there be a Universal Father before there can ever be universal son-ship with the consequent universal brotherhood.
Evolutionary Growth
In the beginnings on an evolutionary world the natural occurrences of the material order and the personal desires of human beings appear to be antagonistic.
Much that takes place on an evolving world is difficult for mortal man to understand.
Man first accumulates information that evolves into understanding and eventually wisdom. This is true of individuals and of men collectively.
Civilizing the Savage
Natural law often appears cruel, heartless, and indifferent to all that is true, beautiful, and good in human comprehension.
As humanity progresses in planetary development, this viewpoint is modified by the following factors:
1. Expanding vision - man's increased understanding of the world in which he lives; his enlarging capacity for the comprehension of the material facts of time, the meaningful ideas of thought, and the valuable ideals of spiritual insight. As long as men measure only by the yardstick of the things of a physical nature, they can never hope to find unity in time and space.
2. Man's increasing control - the gradual accumulation of the knowledge of the laws of the material world, the purposes of spiritual existence, and the philosophic coordination of these two realities.
Man, the savage, was helpless before the onslaughts of natural forces, and was slavish before the cruel mastery of his own inner fears.
Today's semi-civilized man is beginning to unlock the storehouse of the secrets of the natural realms. His science is slowly but effectively destroying his superstitions while at the same time providing a new and enlarged factual basis for the comprehension of the meanings of philosophy and the values of true spiritual experience.
Civilized man will someday achieve relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be poured out as love for his fellow men, while the values of human existence will be nearing the limits of mortal capacity.
Universal Integration
Man's universe integration (the increase of human insight plus the increase of human achievement through experience) brings him into closer harmony with the unifying presences of the Paradise Trinity and the Supreme Being.
This is what establishes the sovereignty of the Supreme on the worlds long settled in light and life.
Such advanced planets are poems of harmony, portraits of the beauty of achieved goodness attained through the pursuit of cosmic truth.
If such things can happen to a planet, then even greater things can happen to a star system and the larger units of the grand universe.
Good and Evil
It was still believed by many during the time of Jesus' life on Earth that God creates both good and evil, but Jesus never taught such error. In answer to a question, Jesus said: "My brother, God is love; therefore he must be good, and his goodness is so great and real that it cannot contain the small and unreal things of evil."
God is so positively good that there is absolutely no place in him for negative evil.
Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth.
Evil is the misadaptation of immaturity or the distorting influence of ignorance.
Evil is that which is dark and untrue, and which, when consciously embraced and willfully endorsed, becomes sin.
God's Will and Human Will
Jesus was requested to explain the difference between the will of God and that act of the human mind's choosing of what is also called will.
In substance Jesus said: The will of God is the way of God, in partnership with the human choice of God or alternatives.
- To do the will of God is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God, who is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true.
- The will of man is the way of man, the sum and substance of that which the mortal chooses to be and do.
- Will is the deliberate choice of a self-conscious being that leads to decision and conduct based on intelligent reflection.
Goodness
An experience is good when it:
Heightens the appreciation of beauty;
Augments the moral will;
Enhances the discernment of truth;
Enlarges the capacity to love and serve one's fellows;
Exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling
fragment of the Universal Father (the Thought Adjuster).
Individual Level of Light and Life
By the time of the pilgrim's attainment of Paradise the ascending mortal's capacity for identifying the self with true spirit values has become so expanded that it attains the perfection of possessing the light of life.
Such a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly, divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise.
In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually replete. It approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme (the God of Time and Space).
Planetary Levels of Light and Life
During the ages of light and life a world increasingly prospers under the fatherly rule of the Planetary Sovereign (originally Caligastia, the deposed Planetary Prince of Earth).
There are seven stages in the unfoldment of the era of light and life on an evolutionary world. These seven stages of light and life are:
1. The first or planetary stage.
2. The second or star system stage (on all the planets orbiting about a sun).
3. The third or constellation stage (on all the stars and planets within a constellation).
4. The fourth or local universe stage (on all constellations within a local universe).
5. The fifth or minor sector stage (on all universes within a minor sector of a major sector).
6. The sixth or major sector stage (all major sector universes within the super universe).
7. The seventh or super universe stage (all major sectors within a super universe).
Growth Characteristics in Light and Life
In the first stage of human achievement in the quest for goodness, the worlds are progressing under the momentum of one language, one religion, and, on normal spheres, one race.
But this age is far from perfect. These worlds still have well-appointed hospitals, homes for the care of the sick, but there still remain the problems of caring for accidental injuries and the infirmities attendant upon the decrepitude of old age and the disorders of senility.
Disease has not been entirely vanquished, neither have the earth animals been subdued in perfection; but such worlds are like Paradise in comparison with the early times of primitive man. A planet in the first stage of development could be described as heaven on earth.
Natural, physical death is not a mortal inevitability. The majority of advanced evolutionary beings, citizens on worlds existing in the seventh era of light and life, do not die; they are translated directly from the life in the flesh to the mansion world existence.
Personally Discovered Truth
Personally discovered truth (this is revealed truth), is the supreme delight of the human soul. This form of revealed truth is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit of the Universal Father (the Thought Adjuster).
The eternal salvation of the truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads a mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father's will, to find God and to become like him.
There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth.
There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.
The Choice of Goodness
Spiritual evolution (transformation) is an experience of the increasing and voluntary choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive decrease in the possibility of evil.
With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there manifests a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally suppresses the possibility of even the concept of potential evil.
Surmounting Temptation
Jesus warned his followers against the folly of undertaking to surmount temptation by the effort of supplanting one desire by another supposedly superior desire through the mere force of the human will. He said:
"If you would be truly triumphant over the temptations of the lesser and lower nature, you must come to that place of spiritual advantage where you have really and truly developed an actual interest in, and love for, those higher and more idealistic forms of conduct which your mind is desirous of substituting for these lower and less idealistic habits of behavior that you recognize as temptation.
You will in this way be delivered through spiritual transformation....
Beauty is always triumphant over ugliness in the hearts of all who are illuminated by the love of truth...be not overcome by evil but rather overcome evil with good."
- The Spirit of Truth Is Love
Jesus promised to send into the world, as his replacement, another teacher, the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth arrived on the day of Pentecost (the seventh Sunday after Easter).
This divine endowment of truth is not the law of truth, neither does it function as the form or expression of truth.
The Spirit of Truth is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels.
The Spirit of Truth is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptive truth.
Nonresistance to Evil
Nonresistance is generally defined as the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised.
At its core, nonresistance is the discouragement of or opposition to physical resistance of an enemy.
- The principle of nonresistance rejects all physical violence, whether exercised on individual, group, state or international levels.
- Practitioners of nonresistance refuse to retaliate against an opponent or offer any form of self-defense.
- The material implications of the philosophy of nonresistance cannot be effectively understood apart from its spiritual correlations. Spirits do not harm other entities.
- The tenor of the Master's instruction consists in the absence of all selfish reaction to the universe. This absence of greed must be coupled with an aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit values, i.e., divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth - to know God and to become increasingly like him.
- Nonresistance can only be comprehended by living it, by realizing the meaning in the living interpretation of the Spirit of Truth, who directs the loving contact of one human being with another.
The Virtue of Meekness
The Christian Apostle Paul gave an example of meek behavior when writing to Timothy: "The servant of the Lord must be gentle, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose " (2 Tim. 2:24–25).
A meek behavior is presented as being opposite to "the natural man" (i.e. one who acts strictly according to desires of the body): "Put off the natural man and become meek" (Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19).
Meekness allows a person to overlook or forgive perceived insults or offenses.
Jesus preached, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (In the future, all men will practice meekness.)
Meekness has no relation to fear. It is rather an attitude of man cooperating with God: “Your will be done.”
Meekness embraces patience and forbearance and is motivated by an unshakable faith in a lawful and friendly universe. It masters all temptations to rebel against the divine leading.
Loving Service - the Apogee of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
In an appearance to his apostles after his resurrection, the Master said:
“The Jews have extolled goodness; the Greeks have exalted beauty; the Hindus preach devotion; the ascetics teach reverence; the Romans demand loyalty; but I require of my disciples life, even a life of loving service for your brothers in the flesh."
Jesus' Words to John
"Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the world. It is the love of God that impels men to seek salvation. Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful."
Insight to God and Soul
Just as modern science pursues the technique of experiment, Jesus advocated the method of experience in religion.
We find God through the leading of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness.
Of all these values, love is the truest guide to real insight.
Mind Is Not Matter
To say that mind "emerged" from matter does not explain anything.
If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were not distinct from matter, we could not have different interpretations of observed phenomenon (hypotheses).
The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in physics or chemistry.
A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.
The sincere pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness leads to God not scientific discovery.
Searching for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Paradise values of eternity and infinity (truth, beauty, and goodness), are concealed within the facts of material phenomena (experienced through the senses) in the universes of time and space. Nonetheless, it requires the eye of faith in a spiritually reborn mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values.
At some point, the modern age will refuse to accept a religion that is inconsistent with facts and at variance with the highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness.
The time is ripe for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of the distorted and compromised Christianity - the actual life and teachings of Jesus.
The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. He focused all these attributes of divinity as the "will of the Father in heaven."
Spiritual Reality
The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience, i.e., spiritual reality.
Humanism, culture, psychology, and idealism are not analogous to religious reality.
The projections of the human intellect may originate these false gods (gods in man's image), but true God-consciousness does not originate in these man made concepts.
Many of the religious systems of man come from formulations of the human intellect, but God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these aberrant forms of religious slavery.
True God-consciousness is resident in the mind-indwelling spirit of the Father (the immanent Father fragment, the Thought Adjuster).
God is not the invention of man's idealism. God is the very source of all such super animal insights and values.
The evolutionary mind is able to discover law, morals, and ethics; but the bestowed spirit, the indwelling Thought Adjuster, reveals the lawgiver to the evolving human mind, the Father-source of all that is true, beautiful, and good. And such an illuminated man has a religion and is spiritually equipped to begin the long and adventurous search for God.
The Power of Love
Religious insight possesses the power to turn defeat into higher desires and new determinations.
Love is the highest motivation that man may utilize in his universe ascent.
But love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception.
Love must always be redefined on successive levels of morontia (the medium between flesh and spirit) and spirit progression.
Super Animal Effort
Animal man must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through the insight of divine love.
This concept of love generates in the soul of man the super animal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness.
When man does find truth, beauty, and goodness, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.
God Consciousness
God-consciousness is the main cause determining better human conduct.
God-consciousness, as it is experienced by an evolving mortal, must consist of three varying factors:
- The mind consciousness - the comprehension of the idea of God.
- The soul consciousness - the realization of the ideal of God.
- Last, dawns spirit consciousness - the realization of the spirit reality of God.
When the mortal mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all desire God, survival is assured.
Conclusion
God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe at the highest levels of spiritual reality.
Matter perishes. Only the spirit content of any value does not perish.
That which is true, beautiful, and good will not perish in human experience.
If man does not elect to survive, the surviving Thought Adjuster conserves those realities born of love and nurtured in service.
All these realities are a part of the Universal Father.
The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons.
And, the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons (mortal men in the mind dwelling fragment of the Father – the Thought Adjuster).
The idea of the Father is the highest human concept of God.
The secret of life is to love God with all your heart, mind, and body. This love earns you Supreme Justice.
Love everyone else as yourself. People generally tend to treat others the way that they have been treated rather than in the way that they would prefer to be treated themselves. Treating others as yourself, is the essence of this principle. This love earns Supreme Mercy. - Finis
Just as the personality of the human child expands for the struggles of evolutionary existence, the mind-indwelling Thought Adjusters grow greater in their rehearsals for the mortal's next stage of ascending life.
As the child acquires adaptive versatility for his adult activities through the social and play life of early childhood, so the indwelling Adjuster achieves skill for the next stage of cosmic life by virtue of prior mortal planning and rehearsing of those activities that have to do with the stage of life between flesh and spirit in the mansion worlds.
Cooperation with the Thought Adjuster
Men must not regard cooperation with the Adjuster as a conscious process, for it is not.
One's motives and decisions, determinations made through faith and supreme desires, do constitute real and effective cooperation.
A person can consciously augment Adjuster harmony by:
Choosing to respond to divine leading; sincerely basing the human life on the highest consciousness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and then coordinating these qualities of divinity through wisdom, worship, faith, and love.
Loving God and desiring to be like him.
Loving man and sincerely desiring to serve him.
Joyful acceptance of cosmic citizenship - honest recognition of the progressive obligations to the Supreme Being (the God of Time and Space), and awareness of the interdependence of evolving man and the evolving Hierarchy of Deity in time and space.
Relating to the Cosmos
The mind of each individual is the cosmic instrument on which the human will can play either discords of destruction, or can bring forth the exquisite melodies of identification with God and consequent eternal survival.
The Adjuster bestowed upon each man is impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can be rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will.
Or, this mind can be made noble, beautiful, true, and good (actually great) in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being.
In so far as man's evolving soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of God-consciousness, such a resulting being becomes indestructible.
If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion.
- A soul of survival value faithfully reflects both the quantitative and the qualitative actions and motivations of the material human intellect.
Quantity may be identified as a fact, an amount of materialistic substance. Quality, is a matter of mind interpretation that represents an estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the individual.
Quality is the seat of the identity of self-hood (the personality).
In the choosing of truth, beauty, and goodness, the mortal mind enters upon its pre-mansion world universe career under the tutelage of the seven adjutant mind-spirits unified under the direction of the spirit of wisdom (the seventh adjutant mind spirit). These circuits represent that function of the mind ministry of the Infinite Spirit extended to the lower orders of intelligent life through the local universe Mother Spirit (the companion of the Creator Son of the local universe).
The human intellect resides in the rhythmic pulsations of the adjutant mind-spirits and effects its decisions within the arena produced by encirclement of this ministry. - Identity of the Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits
- The ministers of the lower levels of experiential mind may be described, in the order of animal and human evolutionary attainment, as follows:
1. The spirit of intuition – This mind spirit pulses the primitive physical and inherent reflex instincts, the self-preservative endowments of all mind creations. This mind spirit is the only one of the adjutants to function so largely in the lower orders of animal life and the only one to make extensive functional contact with the non-teachable levels of mechanical mind.
2. The spirit of understanding - the impulse of coordination, the spontaneous and apparently automatic association of ideas. This is the gift of the coordination of acquired knowledge that enables quick reasoning, rapid judgment, and prompt decision making.
3. The spirit of courage provides in personal beings, the basis of character acquirement and the intellectual root of moral stamina and spiritual bravery. When enlightened by facts and inspired by truth, this gift becomes the secret of the urge of evolutionary ascension by the channels of intelligent and conscientious self-direction.
4. The spirit of knowledge is the curiosity-mother of adventure and discovery, the scientific spirit; the guide and faithful associate of the spirits of courage and counsel; the urge to direct the endowments of courage into useful and progressive paths of growth.
5. The spirit of counsel provides the social urge, the endowment of species cooperation; the ability of will creatures to harmonize with their fellows, and the origin of the gregarious instinct among the more lowly creatures.
6. The spirit of worship - the religious impulse. The spirit of worship forever distinguishes the animal of its association from the soulless creatures of mind endowment. Worship is the badge of candidacy for spiritual-ascension.
7. The spirit of wisdom instills the inherent tendency of all moral creatures towards orderly and progressive evolutionary advancement. This is the highest of the adjutants, the spirit coordinator that articulates the work of all the other mind spirits. Wisdom is the goal of a purely mental and moral existence, truth, beauty, and goodness. Following Mortal Death
At mortal death the human self is everlastingly divorced from the mind adjutant circuit.
Upon the completion of the seven circles of pre-mansion world attainment, the morontia mind (midway between mortal and spirit) is imposed upon adjutant minds.
Human conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension.
A conceptual framework is an analytical tool with many variations and contexts. It is used to make conceptual distinctions and organize ideas. Strong conceptual frameworks capture something real and do this in a way that is easy to remember and apply.
The understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true. For example, God is much more than a Father, but Father is man's highest concept of God.
- Fulfillment in the Supreme (Time and Space)
God The Supreme is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value.
The Supreme is the sweetness of true success and the joy of everlasting achievement.
He is the over-soul of the grand universe, the consciousness of the finite cosmos, the completion of finite reality, and the personification of Creator-creature experience.
Throughout all future eternity God the Supreme will voice the reality of volitional experience in the trinity relationships of Deity.
Culmination in the Supreme
God the Supreme is truth, beauty, and goodness, for these concepts of divinity represent finite maximums of ideational experience.
The infinite sources of these triune qualities of divinity are on super-finite levels, but a creature could only conceive of such sources as super-truth, super-beauty, and super-goodness.
- The Far Future of Time and Space
The perfected grand universe of universes (all spirit) will be vastly different from what exists today.
Gone will be the thrilling adventures of the organization of the galaxies of space, the planting of life on the uncertain worlds of time, and the evolving of harmony out of chaos, beauty out of potentials, truth out of meanings, and goodness out of values.
The time universes will have achieved the fulfillment of finite destiny. Briefly, there will be rest and relaxation from the age-long struggle for evolutionary perfection.
But inexorably the enigma of the emerging Deity of God the Ultimate will challenge the perfected citizens of the settled universes just as their struggling evolutionary forebears were once challenged by the quest for God the Supreme. The curtain of cosmic destiny will draw back to reveal the transcendent grandeur of the alluring absonite quest for the attainment of the Universal Father on new and higher levels revealed in the ultimate of creature experience.
- Beyond Truth, Beauty, and Goodness - Absonity
- The final penetration of the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Supreme Being in Time and Space will open up to the progressing creature those absonite qualities of ultimate divinity that lie beyond the concept levels of truth, beauty, and goodness. (Absonite deity are over-controllers and upholders of the master universe.)
Absonite (ab'sun ite). Level of reality between the finite and the absolute which is characterized by things and beings without beginning or ending and by time/space transcendence.
Absonity (ab sahn i tee). The absonite level of reality.
Jesus promised to send into the world, as his replacement, another teacher, the Spirit of Truth. The Spirit of Truth arrived on the day of Pentecost (the seventh Sunday after Easter).
This divine endowment of truth is not the law of truth, neither does it function as the form or expression of truth.
The Spirit of Truth is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels.
The Spirit of Truth is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptive truth.
Nonresistance to Evil
Nonresistance is generally defined as the practice or principle of not resisting authority, even when it is unjustly exercised.
At its core, nonresistance is the discouragement of or opposition to physical resistance of an enemy.
- The principle of nonresistance rejects all physical violence, whether exercised on individual, group, state or international levels.
- Practitioners of nonresistance refuse to retaliate against an opponent or offer any form of self-defense.
- The material implications of the philosophy of nonresistance cannot be effectively understood apart from its spiritual correlations. Spirits do not harm other entities.
- The tenor of the Master's instruction consists in the absence of all selfish reaction to the universe. This absence of greed must be coupled with an aggressive and progressive attainment of righteous levels of true spirit values, i.e., divine beauty, infinite goodness, and eternal truth - to know God and to become increasingly like him.
- Nonresistance can only be comprehended by living it, by realizing the meaning in the living interpretation of the Spirit of Truth, who directs the loving contact of one human being with another.
The Virtue of Meekness
The Christian Apostle Paul gave an example of meek behavior when writing to Timothy: "The servant of the Lord must be gentle, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose " (2 Tim. 2:24–25).
A meek behavior is presented as being opposite to "the natural man" (i.e. one who acts strictly according to desires of the body): "Put off the natural man and become meek" (Book of Mormon, Mosiah 3:19).
Meekness allows a person to overlook or forgive perceived insults or offenses.
Jesus preached, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (In the future, all men will practice meekness.)
Meekness has no relation to fear. It is rather an attitude of man cooperating with God: “Your will be done.”
Meekness embraces patience and forbearance and is motivated by an unshakable faith in a lawful and friendly universe. It masters all temptations to rebel against the divine leading.
Loving Service - the Apogee of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
In an appearance to his apostles after his resurrection, the Master said:
“The Jews have extolled goodness; the Greeks have exalted beauty; the Hindus preach devotion; the ascetics teach reverence; the Romans demand loyalty; but I require of my disciples life, even a life of loving service for your brothers in the flesh."
Jesus' Words to John
"Devote your life to proving that love is the greatest thing in the world. It is the love of God that impels men to seek salvation. Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful."
Insight to God and Soul
Just as modern science pursues the technique of experiment, Jesus advocated the method of experience in religion.
We find God through the leading of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness.
Of all these values, love is the truest guide to real insight.
Mind Is Not Matter
To say that mind "emerged" from matter does not explain anything.
If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were not distinct from matter, we could not have different interpretations of observed phenomenon (hypotheses).
The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in physics or chemistry.
A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.
The sincere pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness leads to God not scientific discovery.
Searching for Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Paradise values of eternity and infinity (truth, beauty, and goodness), are concealed within the facts of material phenomena (experienced through the senses) in the universes of time and space. Nonetheless, it requires the eye of faith in a spiritually reborn mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values.
At some point, the modern age will refuse to accept a religion that is inconsistent with facts and at variance with the highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness.
The time is ripe for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of the distorted and compromised Christianity - the actual life and teachings of Jesus.
The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. He focused all these attributes of divinity as the "will of the Father in heaven."
Spiritual Reality
The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience, i.e., spiritual reality.
Humanism, culture, psychology, and idealism are not analogous to religious reality.
The projections of the human intellect may originate these false gods (gods in man's image), but true God-consciousness does not originate in these man made concepts.
Many of the religious systems of man come from formulations of the human intellect, but God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these aberrant forms of religious slavery.
True God-consciousness is resident in the mind-indwelling spirit of the Father (the immanent Father fragment, the Thought Adjuster).
God is not the invention of man's idealism. God is the very source of all such super animal insights and values.
The evolutionary mind is able to discover law, morals, and ethics; but the bestowed spirit, the indwelling Thought Adjuster, reveals the lawgiver to the evolving human mind, the Father-source of all that is true, beautiful, and good. And such an illuminated man has a religion and is spiritually equipped to begin the long and adventurous search for God.
The Power of Love
Religious insight possesses the power to turn defeat into higher desires and new determinations.
Love is the highest motivation that man may utilize in his universe ascent.
But love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception.
Love must always be redefined on successive levels of morontia (the medium between flesh and spirit) and spirit progression.
Super Animal Effort
Animal man must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through the insight of divine love.
This concept of love generates in the soul of man the super animal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness.
When man does find truth, beauty, and goodness, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.
God Consciousness
God-consciousness is the main cause determining better human conduct.
God-consciousness, as it is experienced by an evolving mortal, must consist of three varying factors:
- The mind consciousness - the comprehension of the idea of God.
- The soul consciousness - the realization of the ideal of God.
- Last, dawns spirit consciousness - the realization of the spirit reality of God.
Conclusion
God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe at the highest levels of spiritual reality.
Matter perishes. Only the spirit content of any value does not perish.
That which is true, beautiful, and good will not perish in human experience.
If man does not elect to survive, the surviving Thought Adjuster conserves those realities born of love and nurtured in service.
All these realities are a part of the Universal Father.
The Father is living love, and this life of the Father is in his Sons.
And, the spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons (mortal men in the mind dwelling fragment of the Father – the Thought Adjuster).
The idea of the Father is the highest human concept of God.
The secret of life is to love God with all your heart, mind, and body. This love earns you Supreme Justice.
Love everyone else as yourself. People generally tend to treat others the way that they have been treated rather than in the way that they would prefer to be treated themselves. Treating others as yourself, is the essence of this principle. This love earns Supreme Mercy. - The mind consciousness - the comprehension of the idea of God.
- Finis