The Farewell Discourse

180:5.1The new helper which Je­sus prom­ised to send into the hearts of be­liev­ers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This di­vine en­dow­ment is not the let­ter or law of truth, nei­ther is it to func­tion as the form or ex­pres­sion of truth. The new teacher is the con­vic­tion of truth, the con­scious­ness and as­sur­ance of true mean­ings on real spirit lev­els. And this new teacher is the spirit of liv­ing and grow­ing truth, ex­pand­ing, un­fold­ing, and adap­ta­tive truth.

180:5.2Di­vine truth is a spirit-dis­cerned and liv­ing re­al­ity. Truth ex­ists only on high spir­i­tual lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity and the con­scious­ness of com­mu­nion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can ex­pe­ri­ence the growth of truth in the soul and en­joy the lib­erty of its en­light­en­ment in the mind, but you can­not im­prison truth in for­mu­las, codes, creeds, or in­tel­lec­tual pat­terns of hu­man con­duct. When you un­der­take the hu­man for­mu­la­tion of di­vine truth, it speed­ily dies. The post-mortem sal­vage of im­pris­oned truth, even at best, can even­tu­ate only in the re­al­iza­tion of a pe­cu­liar form of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ized glo­ri­fied wis­dom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a the­ory. Liv­ing truth is dy­namic and can en­joy only an ex­pe­ri­en­tial ex­is­tence in the hu­man mind.

180:5.3In­tel­li­gence grows out of a ma­te­rial ex­is­tence which is il­lu­mi­nated by the pres­ence of the cos­mic mind. Wis­dom com­prises the con­scious­ness of knowl­edge el­e­vated to new lev­els of mean­ing and ac­ti­vated by the pres­ence of the uni­verse en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant of wis­dom. Truth is a spir­i­tual re­al­ity value ex­pe­ri­enced only by spirit-en­dowed be­ings who func­tion upon super­ma­te­rial lev­els of uni­verse con­scious­ness, and who, af­ter the re­al­iza­tion of truth, per­mit its spirit of ac­ti­va­tion to live and reign within their souls.

180:5.4The true child of uni­verse in­sight looks for the liv­ing Spirit of Truth in ev­ery wise say­ing. The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is con­stantly el­e­vat­ing wis­dom to the liv­ing-truth lev­els of di­vine at­tain­ment; the spir­i­tu­ally un­pro­gres­sive soul is all the while drag­ging the liv­ing truth down to the dead lev­els of wis­dom and to the do­main of mere ex­alted knowl­edge.

180:5.5The golden rule, when di­vested of the super­hu­man in­sight of the Spirit of Truth, be­comes noth­ing more than a rule of high eth­i­cal con­duct. The golden rule, when lit­er­ally in­ter­preted, may be­come the in­stru­ment of great of­fense to one’s fel­lows. With­out a spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment of the golden rule of wis­dom you might rea­son that, since you are de­sirous that all men speak the full and frank truth of their minds to you, you should there­fore fully and frankly speak the full thought of your mind to your fel­low be­ings. Such an un­spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule might re­sult in un­told un­hap­pi­ness and no end of sor­row.

180:5.6Some per­sons dis­cern and in­ter­pret the golden rule as a purely in­tel­lec­tual af­fir­ma­tion of hu­man fra­ter­nity. Oth­ers ex­pe­ri­ence this ex­pres­sion of hu­man re­la­tion­ship as an emo­tional grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the ten­der feel­ings of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. An­other mor­tal rec­og­nizes this same golden rule as the yard­stick for mea­sur­ing all so­cial re­la­tions, the stan­dard of so­cial con­duct. Still oth­ers look upon it as be­ing the pos­i­tive in­junc­tion of a great moral teacher who em­bod­ied in this state­ment the high­est con­cept of moral obli­ga­tion as re­gards all fra­ter­nal re­la­tion­ships. In the lives of such moral be­ings the golden rule be­comes the wise cen­ter and cir­cum­fer­ence of all their phi­los­o­phy.

180:5.7In the king­dom of the be­liev­ing broth­er­hood of God-know­ing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on liv­ing qual­i­ties of spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion on those higher lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion which cause the mor­tal sons of God to view this in­junc­tion of the Mas­ter as re­quir­ing them so to re­late them­selves to their fel­lows that they will re­ceive the high­est pos­si­ble good as a re­sult of the be­liever’s con­tact with them. This is the essence of true re­li­gion: that you love your neigh­bor as your­self.

180:5.8But the high­est re­al­iza­tion and the truest in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule con­sists in the con­scious­ness of the spirit of the truth of the en­dur­ing and liv­ing re­al­ity of such a di­vine dec­la­ra­tion. The true cos­mic mean­ing of this rule of uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­ship is re­vealed only in its spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion, in the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the law of con­duct by the spirit of the Son to the spirit of the Fa­ther that in­dwells the soul of mor­tal man. And when such spirit-led mor­tals re­al­ize the true mean­ing of this golden rule, they are filled to over­flow­ing with the as­sur­ance of cit­i­zen­ship in a friendly uni­verse, and their ide­als of spirit re­al­ity are sat­is­fied only when they love their fel­lows as Je­sus loved us all, and that is the re­al­ity of the re­al­iza­tion of the love of God.

180:5.9This same phi­los­o­phy of the liv­ing flex­i­bil­ity and cos­mic adapt­abil­ity of di­vine truth to the in­di­vid­ual re­quire­ments and ca­pac­ity of ev­ery son of God, must be per­ceived be­fore you can hope ad­e­quately to un­der­stand the Mas­ter’s teach­ing and prac­tice of non­re­sis­tance to evil. The Mas­ter’s teach­ing is ba­si­cally a spir­i­tual pro­nounce­ment. Even the ma­te­rial im­pli­ca­tions of his phi­los­o­phy can­not be help­fully con­sid­ered apart from their spir­i­tual cor­re­la­tions. The spirit of the Mas­ter’s in­junc­tion con­sists in the non­re­sis­tance of all self­ish re­ac­tion to the uni­verse, cou­pled with the ag­gres­sive and pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of righ­teous lev­els of true spirit val­ues: di­vine beauty, in­fi­nite good­ness, and eter­nal truth—to know God and to be­come in­creas­ingly like him.

180:5.10Love, un­selfish­ness, must un­dergo a con­stant and liv­ing readap­ta­tive in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­la­tion­ships in ac­cor­dance with the lead­ing of the Spirit of Truth. Love must thereby grasp the ever-chang­ing and en­larg­ing con­cepts of the high­est cos­mic good of the in­di­vid­ual who is loved. And then love goes on to strike this same at­ti­tude con­cern­ing all other in­di­vid­u­als who could pos­si­bly be in­flu­enced by the grow­ing and liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of one spirit-led mor­tal’s love for other cit­i­zens of the uni­verse. And this en­tire liv­ing adap­ta­tion of love must be ef­fected in the light of both the en­vi­ron­ment of pres­ent evil and the eter­nal goal of the per­fec­tion of di­vine des­tiny.

180:5.11And so must we clearly rec­og­nize that nei­ther the golden rule nor the teach­ing of non­re­sis­tance can ever be prop­erly un­der­stood as dog­mas or pre­cepts. They can only be com­pre­hended by liv­ing them, by re­al­iz­ing their mean­ings in the liv­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Spirit of Truth, who di­rects the lov­ing con­tact of one hu­man be­ing with an­other.

180:5.12And all this clearly in­di­cates the dif­fer­ence be­tween the old re­li­gion and the new. The old re­li­gion taught self-sac­ri­fice; the new re­li­gion teaches only self-for­get­ful­ness, en­hanced self-re­al­iza­tion in con­joined so­cial ser­vice and uni­verse com­pre­hen­sion. The old re­li­gion was mo­ti­vated by fear-con­scious­ness; the new gospel of the king­dom is dom­i­nated by truth-con­vic­tion, the spirit of eter­nal and uni­ver­sal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal loy­alty can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of king­dom be­liev­ers of that spon­ta­neous, gen­er­ous, and sin­cere friend­li­ness which char­ac­ter­izes the spirit-born sons of the liv­ing God. Nei­ther tra­di­tion nor a cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of for­mal wor­ship can atone for the lack of gen­uine com­pas­sion for one’s fel­lows.