The Nature of God

2:7.1All fi­nite knowl­edge and crea­ture un­der­stand­ing are rel­a­tive. In­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence, gleaned from even high sources, is only rel­a­tively com­plete, lo­cally ac­cu­rate, and per­son­ally true.

2:7.2Phys­i­cal facts are fairly uni­form, but truth is a liv­ing and flex­i­ble fac­tor in the phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. Evolv­ing per­son­al­i­ties are only par­tially wise and rel­a­tively true in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions. They can be cer­tain only as far as their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tends. That which ap­par­ently may be wholly true in one place may be only rel­a­tively true in an­other seg­ment of cre­ation.

2:7.3Di­vine truth, fi­nal truth, is uni­form and uni­ver­sal, but the story of things spir­i­tual, as it is told by nu­mer­ous in­di­vid­u­als hail­ing from var­i­ous spheres, may some­times vary in de­tails ow­ing to this rel­a­tiv­ity in the com­plete­ness of knowl­edge and in the re­plete­ness of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence as well as in the length and ex­tent of that ex­pe­ri­ence. While the laws and de­crees, the thoughts and at­ti­tudes, of the First Great Source and Cen­ter are eter­nally, in­finitely, and uni­ver­sally true; at the same time, their ap­pli­ca­tion to, and ad­just­ment for, ev­ery uni­verse, sys­tem, world, and cre­ated in­tel­li­gence, are in ac­cor­dance with the plans and tech­nique of the Cre­ator Sons as they func­tion in their re­spec­tive uni­verses, as well as in har­mony with the lo­cal plans and pro­ce­dures of the In­fi­nite Spirit and of all other as­so­ci­ated ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties.

2:7.4The false sci­ence of ma­te­ri­al­ism would sen­tence mor­tal man to be­come an out­cast in the uni­verse. Such par­tial knowl­edge is po­ten­tially evil; it is knowl­edge com­posed of both good and evil. Truth is beau­ti­ful be­cause it is both re­plete and sym­met­ri­cal. When man searches for truth, he pur­sues the di­vinely real.

2:7.5Philoso­phers com­mit their gravest er­ror when they are mis­led into the fal­lacy of ab­strac­tion, the prac­tice of fo­cus­ing the at­ten­tion upon one as­pect of re­al­ity and then of pro­nounc­ing such an iso­lated as­pect to be the whole truth. The wise philoso­pher will al­ways look for the cre­ative de­sign which is be­hind, and pre-ex­is­tent to, all uni­verse phe­nom­ena. The cre­ator thought in­vari­ably pre­cedes cre­ative ac­tion.

2:7.6In­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness can dis­cover the beauty of truth, its spir­i­tual qual­ity, not only by the philo­sophic con­sis­tency of its con­cepts, but more cer­tainly and surely by the unerring re­sponse of the ever-pres­ent Spirit of Truth. Hap­pi­ness en­sues from the rec­og­ni­tion of truth be­cause it can be acted out; it can be lived. Dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row at­tend upon er­ror be­cause, not be­ing a re­al­ity, it can­not be re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence. Di­vine truth is best known by its spir­i­tual fla­vor.

2:7.7The eter­nal quest is for uni­fi­ca­tion, for di­vine co­her­ence. The far-flung phys­i­cal uni­verse co­heres in the Isle of Par­a­dise; the in­tel­lec­tual uni­verse co­heres in the God of mind, the Con­joint Ac­tor; the spir­i­tual uni­verse is co­her­ent in the per­son­al­ity of the Eter­nal Son. But the iso­lated mor­tal of time and space co­heres in God the Fa­ther through the di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster and the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s Ad­juster is a frag­ment of God and ev­er­last­ingly seeks for di­vine uni­fi­ca­tion; it co­heres with, and in, the Par­a­dise De­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter.

2:7.8The dis­cern­ment of su­preme beauty is the dis­cov­ery and in­te­gra­tion of re­al­ity: The dis­cern­ment of the di­vine good­ness in the eter­nal truth, that is ul­ti­mate beauty. Even the charm of hu­man art con­sists in the har­mony of its unity.

2:7.9The great mis­take of the He­brew re­li­gion was its fail­ure to as­so­ciate the good­ness of God with the fac­tual truths of sci­ence and the ap­peal­ing beauty of art. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed, and since re­li­gion con­tin­ued to pur­sue the same un­wise course of overem­pha­siz­ing the good­ness of God to the rel­a­tive ex­clu­sion of truth and ne­glect of beauty, there de­vel­oped an in­creas­ing ten­dency for cer­tain types of men to turn away from the ab­stract and dis­so­ci­ated con­cept of iso­lated good­ness. The over­stressed and iso­lated moral­ity of mod­ern re­li­gion, which fails to hold the de­vo­tion and loy­alty of many twen­ti­eth-cen­tury men, would re­ha­bil­i­tate it­self if, in ad­di­tion to its moral man­dates, it would give equal con­sid­er­a­tion to the truths of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, and to the beau­ties of the phys­i­cal cre­ation, the charm of in­tel­lec­tual art, and the grandeur of gen­uine char­ac­ter achieve­ment.

2:7.10The re­li­gious chal­lenge of this age is to those farsee­ing and for­ward-look­ing men and women of spir­i­tual in­sight who will dare to con­struct a new and ap­peal­ing phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing out of the en­larged and ex­qui­sitely in­te­grated mod­ern con­cepts of cos­mic truth, uni­verse beauty, and di­vine good­ness. Such a new and righ­teous vi­sion of moral­ity will at­tract all that is good in the mind of man and chal­lenge that which is best in the hu­man soul. Truth, beauty, and good­ness are di­vine re­al­i­ties, and as man as­cends the scale of spir­i­tual liv­ing, these su­preme qual­i­ties of the Eter­nal be­come in­creas­ingly co-or­di­nated and uni­fied in God, who is love.

2:7.11All truth—ma­te­rial, philo­sophic, or spir­i­tual—is both beau­ti­ful and good. All real beauty—ma­te­rial art or spir­i­tual sym­me­try—is both true and good. All gen­uine good­ness—whether per­sonal moral­ity, so­cial eq­uity, or di­vine min­istry—is equally true and beau­ti­ful. Health, san­ity, and hap­pi­ness are in­te­gra­tions of truth, beauty, and good­ness as they are blended in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Such lev­els of ef­fi­cient liv­ing come about through the uni­fi­ca­tion of en­ergy sys­tems, idea sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems.

2:7.12Truth is co­her­ent, beauty at­trac­tive, good­ness sta­bi­liz­ing. And when these val­ues of that which is real are co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, the re­sult is a high or­der of love con­di­tioned by wis­dom and qual­i­fied by loy­alty. The real pur­pose of all uni­verse ed­u­ca­tion is to ef­fect the bet­ter co-or­di­na­tion of the iso­lated child of the worlds with the larger re­al­i­ties of his ex­pand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­al­ity is fi­nite on the hu­man level, in­fi­nite and eter­nal on the higher and di­vine lev­els.

2:7.13[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor act­ing by au­thor­ity of the An­cients of Days on Uversa.]