Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth

194:2.1Je­sus lived on earth and taught a gospel which re­deemed man from the su­per­sti­tion that he was a child of the devil and el­e­vated him to the dig­nity of a faith son of God. Je­sus’ mes­sage, as he preached it and lived it in his day, was an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties in that day of its state­ment. And now that he has per­son­ally left the world, he sends in his place his Spirit of Truth, who is de­signed to live in man and, for each new gen­er­a­tion, to re­state the Je­sus mes­sage so that ev­ery new group of mor­tals to ap­pear upon the face of the earth shall have a new and up-to-date ver­sion of the gospel, just such per­sonal en­light­en­ment and group guid­ance as will prove to be an ef­fec­tive sol­vent for man’s ever-new and var­ied spir­i­tual dif­fi­cul­ties.

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.

194:2.3This be­stowal of the Son’s spirit ef­fec­tively pre­pared all nor­mal men’s minds for the sub­se­quent uni­ver­sal be­stowal of the Fa­ther’s spirit (the Ad­juster) upon all man­kind. In a cer­tain sense, this Spirit of Truth is the spirit of both the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Cre­ator Son.

194:2.4Do not make the mis­take of ex­pect­ing to be­come strongly in­tel­lec­tu­ally con­scious of the out­poured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never cre­ates a con­scious­ness of him­self, only a con­scious­ness of Mi­chael, the Son. From the be­gin­ning Je­sus taught that the spirit would not speak of him­self. The proof, there­fore, of your fel­low­ship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in your con­scious­ness of this spirit but rather in your ex­pe­ri­ence of en­hanced fel­low­ship with Mi­chael.

194:2.5The spirit also came to help men re­call and un­der­stand the words of the Mas­ter as well as to il­lu­mi­nate and rein­ter­pret his life on earth.

194:2.6Next, the Spirit of Truth came to help the be­liever to wit­ness to the re­al­i­ties of Je­sus’ teach­ings and his life as he lived it in the flesh, and as he now again lives it anew and afresh in the in­di­vid­ual be­liever of each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion of the spirit-filled sons of God.

194:2.7Thus it ap­pears that the Spirit of Truth comes re­ally to lead all be­liev­ers into all truth, into the ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the liv­ing and grow­ing spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of the re­al­ity of eter­nal and as­cend­ing son­ship with God.

194:2.8Je­sus lived a life which is a rev­e­la­tion of man sub­mit­ted to the Fa­ther’s will, not an ex­am­ple for any man lit­er­ally to at­tempt to fol­low. This life in the flesh, to­gether with his death on the cross and sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion, pres­ently be­came a new gospel of the ran­som which had thus been paid in or­der to pur­chase man back from the clutch of the evil one—from the con­dem­na­tion of an of­fended God. Nev­er­the­less, even though the gospel did be­come greatly dis­torted, it re­mains a fact that this new mes­sage about Je­sus car­ried along with it many of the fun­da­men­tal truths and teach­ings of his ear­lier gospel of the king­dom. And, sooner or later, these con­cealed truths of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men will emerge to ef­fec­tu­ally trans­form the civ­i­liza­tion of all man­kind.

194:2.9But these mis­takes of the in­tel­lect in no way in­ter­fered with the be­liever’s great prog­ress in growth in spirit. In less than a month af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apos­tles made more in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress than dur­ing their al­most four years of per­sonal and lov­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Nei­ther did this sub­sti­tu­tion of the fact of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus for the sav­ing gospel truth of son­ship with God in any way in­ter­fere with the rapid spread of their teach­ings; on the con­trary, this over­shad­ow­ing of Je­sus’ mes­sage by the new teach­ings about his per­son and res­ur­rec­tion seemed greatly to fa­cil­i­tate the preach­ing of the good news.

194:2.10The term “bap­tism of the spirit,” which came into such gen­eral use about this time, merely sig­ni­fied the con­scious re­cep­tion of this gift of the Spirit of Truth and the per­sonal ac­knowl­edg­ment of this new spir­i­tual power as an aug­men­ta­tion of all spir­i­tual in­flu­ences pre­vi­ously ex­pe­ri­enced by God-know­ing souls.

194:2.11Since the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is sub­ject to the teach­ing and guid­ance of a three­fold spirit en­dow­ment: the spirit of the Fa­ther, the Thought Ad­juster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.

194:2.12In a way, man­kind is sub­ject to the dou­ble in­flu­ence of the sev­en­fold ap­peal of the uni­verse spirit in­flu­ences. The early evo­lu­tion­ary races of mor­tals are sub­ject to the pro­gres­sive con­tact of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. As man pro­gresses up­ward in the scale of in­tel­li­gence and spir­i­tual per­cep­tion, there even­tu­ally come to hover over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit in­flu­ences. And these seven spir­its of the ad­vanc­ing worlds are:

194:2.131. The be­stowed spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther—the Thought Ad­justers.

194:2.142. The spirit pres­ence of the Eter­nal Son—the spirit grav­ity of the uni­verse of uni­verses and the cer­tain chan­nel of all spirit com­mu­nion.

194:2.153. The spirit pres­ence of the In­fi­nite Spirit—the uni­ver­sal spirit-mind of all cre­ation, the spir­i­tual source of the in­tel­lec­tual kin­ship of all pro­gres­sive in­tel­li­gences.

194:2.164. The spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Cre­ator Son—the Spirit of Truth, gen­er­ally re­garded as the spirit of the Uni­verse Son.

194:2.175. The spirit of the In­fi­nite Spirit and the Uni­verse Mother Spirit—the Holy Spirit, gen­er­ally re­garded as the spirit of the Uni­verse Spirit.

194:2.186. The mind-spirit of the Uni­verse Mother Spirit—the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its of the lo­cal uni­verse.

194:2.197. The spirit of the Fa­ther, Sons, and Spir­its—the new-name spirit of the as­cend­ing mor­tals of the realms af­ter the fu­sion of the mor­tal spirit-born soul with the Par­a­dise Thought Ad­juster and af­ter the sub­se­quent at­tain­ment of the di­vin­ity and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of the sta­tus of the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

194:2.20And so did the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth bring to the world and its peo­ples the last of the spirit en­dow­ment de­signed to aid in the as­cend­ing search for God.