God’s Relation to the Individual

5:3.1Though the Par­a­dise De­i­ties, from the uni­verse stand­point, are as one, in their spir­i­tual re­la­tions with such be­ings as in­habit Uran­tia they are also three dis­tinct and sep­a­rate per­sons. There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween the God­heads in the mat­ter of per­sonal ap­peals, com­mu­nion, and other in­ti­mate re­la­tions. In the high­est sense, we wor­ship the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and him only. True, we can and do wor­ship the Fa­ther as he is man­i­fested in his Cre­ator Sons, but it is the Fa­ther, di­rectly or in­di­rectly, who is wor­shiped and adored.

5:3.2Sup­pli­ca­tions of all kinds be­long to the realm of the Eter­nal Son and the Son’s spir­i­tual or­ga­ni­za­tion. Prayers, all for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ev­ery­thing ex­cept ado­ra­tion and wor­ship of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, are mat­ters that con­cern a lo­cal uni­verse; they do not or­di­nar­ily pro­ceed out of the realm of the ju­ris­dic­tion of a Cre­ator Son. But wor­ship is un­doubt­edly en­cir­cuited and dis­patched to the per­son of the Cre­ator by the func­tion of the Fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We fur­ther be­lieve that such reg­istry of the homage of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt crea­ture is fa­cil­i­tated by the Fa­ther’s spirit pres­ence. There ex­ists a tremen­dous amount of ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate such a be­lief, and I know that all or­ders of Fa­ther frag­ments are em­pow­ered to reg­is­ter the bona fide ado­ra­tion of their sub­jects ac­cept­ably in the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Ad­justers un­doubt­edly also uti­lize di­rect preper­sonal chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God, and they are like­wise able to uti­lize the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuits of the Eter­nal Son.

5:3.3Wor­ship is for its own sake; prayer em­bod­ies a self- or crea­ture-in­ter­est el­e­ment; that is the great dif­fer­ence be­tween wor­ship and prayer. There is ab­so­lutely no self-re­quest or other el­e­ment of per­sonal in­ter­est in true wor­ship; we sim­ply wor­ship God for what we com­pre­hend him to be. Wor­ship asks noth­ing and ex­pects noth­ing for the wor­shiper. We do not wor­ship the Fa­ther be­cause of any­thing we may de­rive from such ven­er­a­tion; we ren­der such de­vo­tion and en­gage in such wor­ship as a nat­u­ral and spon­ta­neous re­ac­tion to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s match­less per­son­al­ity and be­cause of his lov­able na­ture and adorable at­tri­butes.

5:3.4The mo­ment the el­e­ment of self-in­ter­est in­trudes upon wor­ship, that in­stant de­vo­tion trans­lates from wor­ship to prayer and more ap­pro­pri­ately should be di­rected to the per­son of the Eter­nal Son or the Cre­ator Son. But in prac­ti­cal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence there ex­ists no rea­son why prayer should not be ad­dressed to God the Fa­ther as a part of true wor­ship.

5:3.5When you deal with the prac­ti­cal af­fairs of your daily life, you are in the hands of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties hav­ing ori­gin in the Third Source and Cen­ter; you are co-op­er­at­ing with the agen­cies of the Con­joint Ac­tor. And so it is: You wor­ship God; pray to, and com­mune with, the Son; and work out the de­tails of your earthly so­journ in con­nec­tion with the in­tel­li­gences of the In­fi­nite Spirit op­er­at­ing on your world and through­out your uni­verse.

5:3.6The Cre­ator or Sov­er­eign Sons who pre­side over the des­tinies of the lo­cal uni­verses stand in the place of both the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise. These Uni­verse Sons re­ceive, in the name of the Fa­ther, the ado­ra­tion of wor­ship and give ear to the pleas of their pe­ti­tion­ing sub­jects through­out their re­spec­tive cre­ations. To the chil­dren of a lo­cal uni­verse a Mi­chael Son is, to all prac­ti­cal in­tents and pur­poses, God. He is the lo­cal uni­verse per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son. The In­fi­nite Spirit main­tains per­sonal con­tact with the chil­dren of these realms through the Uni­verse Spir­its, the ad­min­is­tra­tive and cre­ative as­so­ciates of the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons.

5:3.7Sin­cere wor­ship con­notes the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity un­der the dom­i­nance of the evolv­ing soul and sub­ject to the di­vine di­rec­tion­iza­tion of the as­so­ci­ated Thought Ad­juster. The mind of ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions can never be­come highly con­scious of the real sig­nif­i­cance of true wor­ship. Man’s re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence is chiefly de­ter­mined by the de­vel­op­men­tal sta­tus of his evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. The spir­i­tual growth of the soul takes place wholly in­de­pen­dently of the in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

5:3.8The wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in the sub­lime at­tempt of the be­trothed Ad­juster to com­mu­ni­cate to the di­vine Fa­ther the in­ex­press­ible long­ings and the un­ut­ter­able as­pi­ra­tions of the hu­man soul—the con­joint cre­ation of the God-seek­ing mor­tal mind and the God-re­veal­ing im­mor­tal Ad­juster. Wor­ship is, there­fore, the act of the ma­te­rial mind’s as­sent­ing to the at­tempt of its spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing self, un­der the guid­ance of the as­so­ci­ated spirit, to com­mu­ni­cate with God as a faith son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The mor­tal mind con­sents to wor­ship; the im­mor­tal soul craves and ini­ti­ates wor­ship; the di­vine Ad­juster pres­ence con­ducts such wor­ship in be­half of the mor­tal mind and the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. True wor­ship, in the last anal­y­sis, be­comes an ex­pe­ri­ence re­al­ized on four cos­mic lev­els: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, the spir­i­tual, and the per­sonal—the con­scious­ness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their uni­fi­ca­tion in per­son­al­ity.