Universal Unity

56:10.1As the worlds set­tled in life and light pro­gress from the ini­tial stage to the sev­enth epoch, they suc­ces­sively grasp for the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of God the Sev­en­fold, rang­ing from the ado­ra­tion of the Cre­ator Son to the wor­ship of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Through­out the con­tin­u­ing sev­enth stage of such a world’s his­tory the ever-pro­gress­ing mor­tals grow in the knowl­edge of God the Su­preme, while they vaguely dis­cern the re­al­ity of the over­shad­ow­ing min­istry of God the Ul­ti­mate.

56:10.2Through­out this glo­ri­ous age the chief pur­suit of the ever-ad­vanc­ing mor­tals is the quest for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and a fuller re­al­iza­tion of the com­pre­hen­si­ble el­e­ments of De­ity—truth, beauty, and good­ness. This rep­re­sents man’s ef­fort to dis­cern God in mind, mat­ter, and spirit. And as the mor­tal pur­sues this quest, he finds him­self in­creas­ingly ab­sorbed in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial study of phi­los­o­phy, cos­mol­ogy, and di­vin­ity.

56:10.3Phi­los­o­phy you some­what grasp, and di­vin­ity you com­pre­hend in wor­ship, so­cial ser­vice, and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but the pur­suit of beauty—cos­mol­ogy—you all too of­ten limit to the study of man’s crude artis­tic en­deav­ors. Beauty, art, is largely a mat­ter of the uni­fi­ca­tion of con­trasts. Va­ri­ety is es­sen­tial to the con­cept of beauty. The su­preme beauty, the height of fi­nite art, is the drama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vast­ness of the cos­mic ex­tremes of Cre­ator and crea­ture. Man find­ing God and God find­ing man—the crea­ture be­com­ing per­fect as is the Cre­ator—that is the su­per­nal achieve­ment of the su­premely beau­ti­ful, the at­tain­ment of the apex of cos­mic art.

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

56:10.5The at­tain­ment of cos­mo­logic lev­els of thought in­cludes:

56:10.61. Cu­rios­ity. Hunger for har­mony and thirst for beauty. Per­sis­tent at­tempts to dis­cover new lev­els of har­mo­nious cos­mic re­la­tion­ships.

56:10.72. Aes­thetic ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Love of the beau­ti­ful and ever-ad­vanc­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the artis­tic touch of all cre­ative man­i­fes­ta­tions on all lev­els of re­al­ity.

56:10.83. Ethic sen­si­tiv­ity. Through the re­al­iza­tion of truth the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty leads to the sense of the eter­nal fit­ness of those things which im­pinge upon the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine good­ness in De­ity re­la­tions with all be­ings; and thus even cos­mol­ogy leads to the pur­suit of di­vine re­al­ity val­ues—to God-con­scious­ness.

56:10.9The worlds set­tled in light and life are so fully con­cerned with the com­pre­hen­sion of truth, beauty, and good­ness be­cause these qual­ity val­ues em­brace the rev­e­la­tion of De­ity to the realms of time and space. The mean­ings of eter­nal truth make a com­bined ap­peal to the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual na­tures of mor­tal man. Uni­ver­sal beauty em­braces the har­mo­nious re­la­tions and rhythms of the cos­mic cre­ation; this is more dis­tinctly the in­tel­lec­tual ap­peal and leads to­wards uni­fied and syn­chronous com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Di­vine good­ness rep­re­sents the rev­e­la­tion of in­fi­nite val­ues to the fi­nite mind, therein to be per­ceived and el­e­vated to the very thresh­old of the spir­i­tual level of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion.

56:10.10Truth is the ba­sis of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, pre­sent­ing the in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of re­li­gion. Beauty spon­sors art, mu­sic, and the mean­ing­ful rhythms of all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Good­ness em­braces the sense of ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gion—ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion-hunger.

56:10.11The ex­is­tence of beauty im­plies the pres­ence of ap­pre­cia­tive crea­ture mind just as cer­tainly as the fact of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion in­di­cates the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Beauty is the in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of the har­mo­nious time-space syn­the­sis of the far-flung di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­e­nal re­al­ity, all of which stems from pre-ex­is­tent and eter­nal one­ness.

56:10.12Good­ness is the men­tal rec­og­ni­tion of the rel­a­tive val­ues of the di­verse lev­els of di­vine per­fec­tion. The rec­og­ni­tion of good­ness im­plies a mind of moral sta­tus, a per­sonal mind with abil­ity to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween good and evil. But the pos­ses­sion of good­ness, great­ness, is the mea­sure of real di­vin­ity at­tain­ment.

56:10.13The rec­og­ni­tion of true re­la­tions im­plies a mind com­pe­tent to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween truth and er­ror. The be­stowal Spirit of Truth which in­vests the hu­man minds of Uran­tia is unerringly re­spon­sive to truth—the liv­ing spirit re­la­tion­ship of all things and all be­ings as they are co-or­di­nated in the eter­nal as­cent God­ward.

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

56:10.15Even truth, beauty, and good­ness—man’s in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to the uni­verse of mind, mat­ter, and spirit—must be com­bined into one uni­fied con­cept of a di­vine and su­preme ideal. As mor­tal per­son­al­ity uni­fies the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence with mat­ter, mind, and spirit, so does this di­vine and su­preme ideal be­come power-uni­fied in Su­prem­acy and then per­son­al­ized as a God of fa­therly love.

56:10.16All in­sight into the re­la­tions of the parts to any given whole re­quires an un­der­stand­ing grasp of the re­la­tion of all parts to that whole; and in the uni­verse this means the re­la­tion of cre­ated parts to the Cre­ative Whole. De­ity thus be­comes the tran­scen­den­tal, even the in­fi­nite, goal of uni­ver­sal and eter­nal at­tain­ment.

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

56:10.18Phys­i­cal mat­ter is the time-space shadow of the Par­a­dise en­ergy-shin­ing of the ab­so­lute De­i­ties. Truth mean­ings are the mor­tal-in­tel­lect reper­cus­sions of the eter­nal word of De­ity—the time-space com­pre­hen­sion of su­preme con­cepts. The good­ness val­ues of di­vin­ity are the mer­ci­ful min­istries of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the Uni­ver­sal, the Eter­nal, and the In­fi­nite to the time-space fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres.

56:10.19These mean­ing­ful re­al­ity val­ues of di­vin­ity are blended in the Fa­ther’s re­la­tion with each per­sonal crea­ture as di­vine love. They are co-or­di­nated in the Son and his Sons as di­vine mercy. They man­i­fest their qual­i­ties through the Spirit and his spirit chil­dren as di­vine min­istry, the por­trayal of lov­ing mercy to the chil­dren of time. These three di­vini­ties are pri­mar­ily man­i­fested by the Su­preme Be­ing as power-per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis. They are var­i­ously shown forth by God the Sev­en­fold in seven dif­fer­ing as­so­ci­a­tions of di­vine mean­ings and val­ues on seven as­cend­ing lev­els.

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

56:10.21Love is the de­sire to do good to oth­ers.

56:10.22[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger vis­it­ing on Uran­tia, by re­quest of the Neb­a­don Rev­e­la­tory Corps and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a cer­tain Mel­chiz­e­dek, the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia.]

56:10.23This pa­per on Uni­ver­sal Unity is the twenty-fifth of a se­ries of pre­sen­ta­tions by var­i­ous au­thors, hav­ing been spon­sored as a group by a com­mis­sion of Neb­a­don per­son­al­i­ties num­ber­ing twelve and act­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of Man­tu­tia Mel­chiz­e­dek. We in­dited these nar­ra­tives and put them in the En­glish lan­guage, by a tech­nique au­tho­rized by our su­pe­ri­ors, in the year 1934 of Uran­tia time.