On the Way to Rome

130:4.1The night be­fore they left Alexan­dria Ga­nid and Je­sus had a long visit with one of the gov­ern­ment pro­fes­sors at the uni­ver­sity who lec­tured on the teach­ings of Plato. Je­sus in­ter­preted for the learned Greek teacher but in­jected no teach­ing of his own in refu­ta­tion of the Greek phi­los­o­phy. Gonod was away on busi­ness that evening; so, af­ter the pro­fes­sor had de­parted, the teacher and his pupil had a long and heart-to-heart talk about Plato’s doc­trines. While Je­sus gave qual­i­fied ap­proval of some of the Greek teach­ings which had to do with the the­ory that the ma­te­rial things of the world are shad­owy re­flec­tions of in­vis­i­ble but more sub­stan­tial spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, he sought to lay a more trust­wor­thy foun­da­tion for the lad’s think­ing; so he be­gan a long dis­ser­ta­tion con­cern­ing the na­ture of re­al­ity in the uni­verse. In sub­stance and in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy Je­sus said to Ga­nid:

130:4.2The source of uni­verse re­al­ity is the In­fi­nite. The ma­te­rial things of fi­nite cre­ation are the time-space reper­cus­sions of the Par­a­dise Pat­tern and the Uni­ver­sal Mind of the eter­nal God. Cau­sa­tion in the phys­i­cal world, self-con­scious­ness in the in­tel­lec­tual world, and pro­gress­ing self­hood in the spirit world—these re­al­i­ties, pro­jected on a uni­ver­sal scale, com­bined in eter­nal re­lat­ed­ness, and ex­pe­ri­enced with per­fec­tion of qual­ity and di­vin­ity of value—con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of the Su­preme. But in an ever-chang­ing uni­verse the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity of cau­sa­tion, in­tel­li­gence, and spirit ex­pe­ri­ence is change­less, ab­so­lute. All things, even in an eter­nal uni­verse of lim­it­less val­ues and di­vine qual­i­ties, may, and of­ten­times do, change ex­cept the Ab­so­lutes and that which has at­tained the phys­i­cal sta­tus, in­tel­lec­tual em­brace, or spir­i­tual iden­tity which is ab­so­lute.

130:4.3The high­est level to which a fi­nite crea­ture can pro­gress is the rec­og­ni­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the know­ing of the Su­preme. And even then such be­ings of fi­nal­ity des­tiny go on ex­pe­ri­enc­ing change in the mo­tions of the phys­i­cal world and in its ma­te­rial phe­nom­ena. Like­wise do they re­main aware of self­hood pro­gres­sion in their con­tin­u­ing as­cen­sion of the spir­i­tual uni­verse and of grow­ing con­scious­ness in their deep­en­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of, and re­sponse to, the in­tel­lec­tual cos­mos. Only in the per­fec­tion, har­mony, and una­nim­ity of will can the crea­ture be­come as one with the Cre­ator; and such a state of di­vin­ity is at­tained and main­tained only by the crea­ture’s con­tin­u­ing to live in time and eter­nity by con­sis­tently con­form­ing his fi­nite per­sonal will to the di­vine will of the Cre­ator. Al­ways must the de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will be su­preme in the soul and dom­i­nant over the mind of an as­cend­ing son of God.

130:4.4A one-eyed per­son can never hope to vi­su­al­ize depth of per­spec­tive. Nei­ther can sin­gle-eyed ma­te­rial sci­en­tists nor sin­gle-eyed spir­i­tual mys­tics and al­le­gorists cor­rectly vi­su­al­ize and ad­e­quately com­pre­hend the true depths of uni­verse re­al­ity. All true val­ues of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence are con­cealed in depth of rec­og­ni­tion.

130:4.5Mind­less cau­sa­tion can­not evolve the re­fined and com­plex from the crude and the sim­ple, nei­ther can spir­it­less ex­pe­ri­ence evolve the di­vine char­ac­ters of eter­nal sur­vival from the ma­te­rial minds of the mor­tals of time. The one at­tri­bute of the uni­verse which so ex­clu­sively char­ac­ter­izes the in­fi­nite De­ity is this un­end­ing cre­ative be­stowal of per­son­al­ity which can sur­vive in pro­gres­sive De­ity at­tain­ment.

130:4.6Per­son­al­ity is that cos­mic en­dow­ment, that phase of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity, which can co­ex­ist with un­lim­ited change and at the same time re­tain its iden­tity in the very pres­ence of all such changes, and for­ever af­ter­ward.

130:4.7Life is an adap­ta­tion of the orig­i­nal cos­mic cau­sa­tion to the de­mands and pos­si­bil­i­ties of uni­verse sit­u­a­tions, and it comes into be­ing by the ac­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Mind and the ac­ti­va­tion of the spirit spark of the God who is spirit. The mean­ing of life is its adapt­abil­ity; the value of life is its pro­gress­abil­ity—even to the heights of God-con­scious­ness.

130:4.8Mis­adap­ta­tion of self-con­scious life to the uni­verse re­sults in cos­mic dishar­mony. Fi­nal di­ver­gence of per­son­al­ity will from the trend of the uni­verses ter­mi­nates in in­tel­lec­tual iso­la­tion, per­son­al­ity seg­re­ga­tion. Loss of the in­dwelling spirit pi­lot super­venes in spir­i­tual ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. In­tel­li­gent and pro­gress­ing life be­comes then, in and of it­self, an in­con­tro­vert­ible proof of the ex­is­tence of a pur­pose­ful uni­verse ex­press­ing the will of a di­vine Cre­ator. And this life, in the ag­gre­gate, strug­gles to­ward higher val­ues, hav­ing for its fi­nal goal the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

130:4.9Only in de­gree does man pos­sess mind above the an­i­mal level aside from the higher and quasi-spir­i­tual min­is­tra­tions of in­tel­lect. There­fore an­i­mals (not hav­ing wor­ship and wis­dom) can­not ex­pe­ri­ence super­con­scious­ness, con­scious­ness of con­scious­ness. The an­i­mal mind is only con­scious of the ob­jec­tive uni­verse.

130:4.10Knowl­edge is the sphere of the ma­te­rial or fact-dis­cern­ing mind. Truth is the do­main of the spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed in­tel­lect that is con­scious of know­ing God. Knowl­edge is demon­stra­ble; truth is ex­pe­ri­enced. Knowl­edge is a pos­ses­sion of the mind; truth an ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul, the pro­gress­ing self. Knowl­edge is a func­tion of the non­spir­i­tual level; truth is a phase of the mind-spirit level of the uni­verses. The eye of the ma­te­rial mind per­ceives a world of fac­tual knowl­edge; the eye of the spir­i­tu­al­ized in­tel­lect dis­cerns a world of true val­ues. These two views, syn­chro­nized and har­mo­nized, re­veal the world of re­al­ity, wherein wis­dom in­ter­prets the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verse in terms of pro­gres­sive per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

130:4.11Er­ror (evil) is the penalty of im­per­fec­tion. The qual­i­ties of im­per­fec­tion or facts of mis­adap­ta­tion are dis­closed on the ma­te­rial level by crit­i­cal ob­ser­va­tion and by sci­en­tific anal­y­sis; on the moral level, by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The pres­ence of evil con­sti­tutes proof of the in­ac­cu­ra­cies of mind and the im­ma­tu­rity of the evolv­ing self. Evil is, there­fore, also a mea­sure of im­per­fec­tion in uni­verse in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing mis­takes is in­her­ent in the ac­qui­si­tion of wis­dom, the scheme of pro­gress­ing from the par­tial and tem­po­ral to the com­plete and eter­nal, from the rel­a­tive and im­per­fect to the fi­nal and per­fected. Er­ror is the shadow of rel­a­tive in­com­plete­ness which must of ne­ces­sity fall across man’s as­cend­ing uni­verse path to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion. Er­ror (evil) is not an ac­tual uni­verse qual­ity; it is sim­ply the ob­ser­va­tion of a rel­a­tiv­ity in the re­lat­ed­ness of the im­per­fec­tion of the in­com­plete fi­nite to the as­cend­ing lev­els of the Su­preme and Ul­ti­mate.

130:4.12Al­though Je­sus told all this to the lad in lan­guage best suited to his com­pre­hen­sion, at the end of the dis­cus­sion Ga­nid was heavy of eye and was soon lost in slum­ber. They rose early the next morn­ing to go aboard the boat bound for Lasea on the is­land of Crete. But be­fore they em­barked, the lad had still fur­ther ques­tions to ask about evil, to which Je­sus replied:

130:4.13Evil is a rel­a­tiv­ity con­cept. It arises out of the ob­ser­va­tion of the im­per­fec­tions which ap­pear in the shadow cast by a fi­nite uni­verse of things and be­ings as such a cos­mos ob­scures the liv­ing light of the uni­ver­sal ex­pres­sion of the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite One.

130:4.14Po­ten­tial evil is in­her­ent in the nec­es­sary in­com­plete­ness of the rev­e­la­tion of God as a time-space-lim­ited ex­pres­sion of in­fin­ity and eter­nity. The fact of the par­tial in the pres­ence of the com­plete con­sti­tutes rel­a­tiv­ity of re­al­ity, cre­ates ne­ces­sity for in­tel­lec­tual choos­ing, and es­tab­lishes value lev­els of spirit rec­og­ni­tion and re­sponse. The in­com­plete and fi­nite con­cept of the In­fi­nite which is held by the tem­po­ral and lim­ited crea­ture mind is, in and of it­self, po­ten­tial evil. But the aug­ment­ing er­ror of un­jus­ti­fied de­fi­ciency in rea­son­able spir­i­tual rec­ti­fi­ca­tion of these orig­i­nally in­her­ent in­tel­lec­tual dishar­monies and spir­i­tual in­suf­fi­cien­cies, is equiv­a­lent to the re­al­iza­tion of ac­tual evil.

130:4.15All static, dead, con­cepts are po­ten­tially evil. The fi­nite shadow of rel­a­tive and liv­ing truth is con­tin­u­ally mov­ing. Static con­cepts in­vari­ably re­tard sci­ence, pol­i­tics, so­ci­ety, and re­li­gion. Static con­cepts may rep­re­sent a cer­tain knowl­edge, but they are de­fi­cient in wis­dom and de­void of truth. But do not per­mit the con­cept of rel­a­tiv­ity so to mis­lead you that you fail to rec­og­nize the co-or­di­na­tion of the uni­verse un­der the guid­ance of the cos­mic mind, and its sta­bi­lized con­trol by the en­ergy and spirit of the Su­preme.