Ministry of the Primary Supernaphim

27:4.1Hav­ing al­ready been fully in­structed in the ethics of Par­a­dise re­la­tion­ships—nei­ther mean­ing­less for­mal­i­ties nor the dic­ta­tions of ar­ti­fi­cial castes but rather the in­her­ent pro­pri­eties—the as­cen­dant mor­tals find it help­ful to re­ceive the coun­sel of the super­aphic di­rec­tors of con­duct, who in­struct the new mem­bers of Par­a­dise so­ci­ety in the us­ages of the per­fect con­duct of the high be­ings who so­journ on the cen­tral Isle of Light and Life.

27:4.2Har­mony is the keynote of the cen­tral uni­verse, and de­tectable or­der pre­vails on Par­a­dise. Proper con­duct is es­sen­tial to prog­ress by way of knowl­edge, through phi­los­o­phy, to the spir­i­tual heights of spon­ta­neous wor­ship. There is a di­vine tech­nique in the ap­proach to Di­vin­ity; and the ac­quire­ment of this tech­nique must await the pil­grims’ ar­rival on Par­a­dise. The spirit of it has been im­parted on the cir­cles of Ha­vona, but the fi­nal touches of the train­ing of the pil­grims of time can be ap­plied only af­ter they ac­tu­ally at­tain the Isle of Light.

27:4.3All Par­a­dise con­duct is wholly spon­ta­neous, in ev­ery sense nat­u­ral and free. But there still is a proper and per­fect way of do­ing things on the eter­nal Isle, and the di­rec­tors of con­duct are ever by the side of the “strangers within the gates” to in­struct them and so guide their steps as to put them at per­fect ease and at the same time to en­able the pil­grims to avoid that con­fu­sion and un­cer­tainty which would oth­er­wise be in­ev­i­ta­ble. Only by such an ar­range­ment could end­less con­fu­sion be avoided; and con­fu­sion never ap­pears on Par­a­dise.

27:4.4These di­rec­tors of con­duct re­ally serve as glo­ri­fied teach­ers and guides. They are chiefly con­cerned with in­struct­ing the new mor­tal res­i­dents re­gard­ing the al­most end­less ar­ray of new sit­u­a­tions and un­fa­mil­iar us­ages. Not­with­stand­ing all the long prepa­ra­tion there­for and the long jour­ney thereto, Par­a­dise is still in­ex­press­ibly strange and un­ex­pect­edly new to those who fi­nally at­tain res­i­den­tial sta­tus.