The Morontia Life

48:7.1The lower planes of mor­ontia mota join di­rectly with the higher lev­els of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. On the first man­sion world it is the prac­tice to teach the less ad­vanced stu­dents by the par­al­lel tech­nique; that is, in one col­umn are pre­sented the more sim­ple con­cepts of mota mean­ings, and in the op­po­site col­umn ci­ta­tion is made of anal­o­gous state­ments of mor­tal phi­los­o­phy.

48:7.2Not long since, while ex­e­cut­ing an as­sign­ment on the first man­sion world of Sa­ta­nia, I had oc­ca­sion to ob­serve this method of teach­ing; and though I may not un­der­take to pre­sent the mota con­tent of the les­son, I am per­mit­ted to re­cord the twenty-eight state­ments of hu­man phi­los­o­phy which this mor­ontia in­struc­tor was uti­liz­ing as il­lus­tra­tive ma­te­rial de­signed to as­sist these new man­sion world so­journ­ers in their early ef­forts to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance and mean­ing of mota. These il­lus­tra­tions of hu­man phi­los­o­phy were:

48:7.31. A dis­play of spe­cial­ized skill does not sig­nify pos­ses­sion of spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity. Clev­er­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for true char­ac­ter.

48:7.42. Few per­sons live up to the faith which they re­ally have. Un­rea­soned fear is a mas­ter in­tel­lec­tual fraud prac­ticed upon the evolv­ing mor­tal soul.

48:7.53. In­her­ent ca­pac­i­ties can­not be ex­ceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit con­cept can­not be me­chan­i­cally forced into the ma­te­rial mem­ory mold.

48:7.64. Few mor­tals ever dare to draw any­thing like the sum of per­son­al­ity cred­its es­tab­lished by the com­bined min­istries of na­ture and grace. The ma­jor­ity of im­pov­er­ished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to be­lieve it.

48:7.75. Dif­fi­cul­ties may chal­lenge medi­ocrity and de­feat the fear­ful, but they only stim­u­late the true chil­dren of the Most Highs.

48:7.86. To en­joy priv­i­lege with­out abuse, to have lib­erty with­out li­cense, to pos­sess power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for self-ag­gran­dize­ment—these are the marks of high civ­i­liza­tion.

48:7.97. Blind and un­fore­seen ac­ci­dents do not oc­cur in the cos­mos. Nei­ther do the ce­les­tial be­ings as­sist the lower be­ing who re­fuses to act upon his light of truth.

48:7.108. Ef­fort does not al­ways pro­duce joy, but there is no hap­pi­ness with­out in­tel­li­gent ef­fort.

48:7.119. Ac­tion achieves strength; mod­er­a­tion even­tu­ates in charm.

48:7.1210. Righ­teous­ness strikes the har­mony chords of truth, and the mel­ody vi­brates through­out the cos­mos, even to the rec­og­ni­tion of the In­fi­nite.

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

48:7.1412. The great­est af­flic­tion of the cos­mos is never to have been af­flicted. Mor­tals only learn wis­dom by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing tribu­la­tion.

48:7.1513. Stars are best dis­cerned from the lonely iso­la­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial depths, not from the il­lu­mi­nated and ec­static moun­tain tops.

48:7.1614. Whet the ap­petites of your as­so­ciates for truth; give ad­vice only when it is asked for.

48:7.1715. Af­fec­ta­tion is the ridicu­lous ef­fort of the ig­no­rant to ap­pear wise, the at­tempt of the bar­ren soul to ap­pear rich.

48:7.1816. You can­not per­ceive spir­i­tual truth un­til you feel­ingly ex­pe­ri­ence it, and many truths are not re­ally felt ex­cept in ad­ver­sity.

48:7.1917. Am­bi­tion is dan­ger­ous un­til it is fully so­cial­ized. You have not truly ac­quired any virtue un­til your acts make you wor­thy of it.

48:7.2018. Im­pa­tience is a spirit poi­son; anger is like a stone hurled into a hor­net’s nest.

48:7.2119. Anx­i­ety must be aban­doned. The dis­ap­point­ments hard­est to bear are those which never come.

48:7.2220. Only a poet can dis­cern po­etry in the com­mon­place prose of rou­tine ex­is­tence.

48:7.2321. The high mis­sion of any art is, by its il­lu­sions, to fore­shadow a higher uni­verse re­al­ity, to crys­tal­lize the emo­tions of time into the thought of eter­nity.

48:7.2422. The evolv­ing soul is not made di­vine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

48:7.2523. Death added noth­ing to the in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sion or to the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, but it did add to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial sta­tus the con­scious­ness of sur­vival.

48:7.2624. The des­tiny of eter­nity is de­ter­mined mo­ment by mo­ment by the achieve­ments of the day by day liv­ing. The acts of to­day are the des­tiny of to­mor­row.

48:7.2725. Great­ness lies not so much in pos­sess­ing strength as in mak­ing a wise and di­vine use of such strength.

48:7.2826. Knowl­edge is pos­sessed only by shar­ing; it is safe­guarded by wis­dom and so­cial­ized by love.

48:7.2927. Prog­ress de­mands de­vel­op­ment of in­di­vid­u­al­ity; medi­ocrity seeks per­pet­u­a­tion in stan­dard­iza­tion.

48:7.3028. The ar­gu­men­ta­tive de­fense of any propo­si­tion is in­versely pro­por­tional to the truth con­tained.

48:7.31Such is the work of the be­gin­ners on the first man­sion world while the more ad­vanced pupils on the later worlds are mas­ter­ing the higher lev­els of cos­mic in­sight and mor­ontia mota.