On the Way to Rome

130:7.1Most of the time en route to Carthage Je­sus talked with his fel­low trav­el­ers about things so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and com­mer­cial; hardly a word was said about re­li­gion. For the first time Gonod and Ga­nid dis­cov­ered that Je­sus was a good sto­ry­teller, and they kept him busy telling tales about his early life in Gal­i­lee. They also learned that he was reared in Gal­i­lee and not in ei­ther Je­ru­sa­lem or Da­mas­cus.

130:7.2When Ga­nid in­quired what one could do to make friends, hav­ing no­ticed that the ma­jor­ity of per­sons whom they chanced to meet were at­tracted to Je­sus, his teacher said: “Be­come in­ter­ested in your fel­lows; learn how to love them and watch for the op­por­tu­nity to do some­thing for them which you are sure they want done,” and then he quoted the olden Jew­ish proverb—“A man who would have friends must show him­self friendly.”

130:7.3At Carthage Je­sus had a long and mem­o­rable talk with a Mith­raic priest about im­mor­tal­ity, about time and eter­nity. This Per­sian had been ed­u­cated at Alexan­dria, and he re­ally de­sired to learn from Je­sus. Put into the words of to­day, in sub­stance Je­sus said in an­swer to his many ques­tions:

130:7.4Time is the stream of flow­ing tem­po­ral events per­ceived by crea­ture con­scious­ness. Time is a name given to the suc­ces­sion-ar­range­ment whereby events are rec­og­nized and seg­re­gated. The uni­verse of space is a time-re­lated phe­nom­e­non as it is viewed from any in­te­rior po­si­tion out­side of the fixed abode of Par­a­dise. The mo­tion of time is only re­vealed in re­la­tion to some­thing which does not move in space as a time phe­nom­e­non. In the uni­verse of uni­verses Par­a­dise and its De­i­ties tran­scend both time and space. On the in­hab­ited worlds, hu­man per­son­al­ity (in­dwelt and ori­ented by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s spirit) is the only phys­i­cally re­lated re­al­ity which can tran­scend the ma­te­rial se­quence of tem­po­ral events.

130:7.5An­i­mals do not sense time as does man, and even to man, be­cause of his sec­tional and cir­cum­scribed view, time ap­pears as a suc­ces­sion of events; but as man as­cends, as he pro­gresses in­ward, the en­larg­ing view of this event pro­ces­sion is such that it is dis­cerned more and more in its whole­ness. That which for­merly ap­peared as a suc­ces­sion of events then will be viewed as a whole and per­fectly re­lated cy­cle; in this way will cir­cu­lar si­mul­tane­ity in­creas­ingly dis­place the one­time con­scious­ness of the lin­ear se­quence of events.

130:7.6There are seven dif­fer­ent con­cep­tions of space as it is con­di­tioned by time. Space is mea­sured by time, not time by space. The con­fu­sion of the sci­en­tist grows out of fail­ure to rec­og­nize the re­al­ity of space. Space is not merely an in­tel­lec­tual con­cept of the vari­a­tion in re­lat­ed­ness of uni­verse ob­jects. Space is not empty, and the only thing man knows which can even par­tially tran­scend space is mind. Mind can func­tion in­de­pen­dently of the con­cept of the space-re­lat­ed­ness of ma­te­rial ob­jects. Space is rel­a­tively and com­par­a­tively fi­nite to all be­ings of crea­ture sta­tus. The nearer con­scious­ness ap­proaches the aware­ness of seven cos­mic di­men­sions, the more does the con­cept of po­ten­tial space ap­proach ul­ti­macy. But the space po­ten­tial is truly ul­ti­mate only on the ab­so­lute level.

130:7.7It must be ap­par­ent that uni­ver­sal re­al­ity has an ex­pand­ing and al­ways rel­a­tive mean­ing on the as­cend­ing and per­fect­ing lev­els of the cos­mos. Ul­ti­mately, sur­viv­ing mor­tals achieve iden­tity in a seven-di­men­sional uni­verse.

130:7.8The time-space con­cept of a mind of ma­te­rial ori­gin is des­tined to un­dergo suc­ces­sive en­large­ments as the con­scious and con­ceiv­ing per­son­al­ity as­cends the lev­els of the uni­verses. When man at­tains the mind in­ter­ven­ing be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual planes of ex­is­tence, his ideas of time-space will be enor­mously ex­panded both as to qual­ity of per­cep­tion and quan­tity of ex­pe­ri­ence. The en­larg­ing cos­mic con­cep­tions of an ad­vanc­ing spirit per­son­al­ity are due to aug­men­ta­tions of both depth of in­sight and scope of con­scious­ness. And as per­son­al­ity passes on, up­ward and in­ward, to the tran­scen­den­tal lev­els of De­ity-like­ness, the time-space con­cept will in­creas­ingly ap­prox­i­mate the time­less and space­less con­cepts of the Ab­so­lutes. Rel­a­tively, and in ac­cor­dance with tran­scen­den­tal at­tain­ment, these con­cepts of the ab­so­lute level are to be en­vi­sioned by the chil­dren of ul­ti­mate des­tiny.