consecration of choice

111:5.1The do­ing of the will of God is noth­ing more or less than an ex­hi­bi­tion of crea­ture will­ing­ness to share the in­ner life with God—with the very God who has made such a crea­ture life of in­ner mean­ing-value pos­si­ble. Shar­ing is God­like—di­vine. God shares all with the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the di­vine Sons and spirit Daugh­ters of the uni­verses.

111:5.2The im­i­ta­tion of God is the key to per­fec­tion; the do­ing of his will is the se­cret of sur­vival and of per­fec­tion in sur­vival.

111:5.3Mor­tals live in God, and so God has willed to live in mor­tals. As men trust them­selves to him, so has he—and first—trusted a part of him­self to be with men; has con­sented to live in men and to in­dwell men sub­ject to the hu­man will.

111:5.4Peace in this life, sur­vival in death, per­fec­tion in the next life, ser­vice in eter­nity—all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the crea­ture per­son­al­ity con­sents—chooses—to sub­ject the crea­ture will to the Fa­ther’s will. And al­ready has the Fa­ther cho­sen to make a frag­ment of him­self sub­ject to the will of the crea­ture per­son­al­ity.

111:5.5Such a crea­ture choice is not a sur­ren­der of will. It is a con­se­cra­tion of will, an ex­pan­sion of will, a glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of will, a per­fect­ing of will; and such choos­ing raises the crea­ture will from the level of tem­po­ral sig­nif­i­cance to that higher es­tate wherein the per­son­al­ity of the crea­ture son com­munes with the per­son­al­ity of the spirit Fa­ther.

111:5.6This choos­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is the spir­i­tual find­ing of the spirit Fa­ther by mor­tal man, even though an age must pass be­fore the crea­ture son may ac­tu­ally stand in the fac­tual pres­ence of God on Par­a­dise. This choos­ing does not so much con­sist in the nega­tion of crea­ture will—“Not my will but yours be done”—as it con­sists in the crea­ture’s pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tion: “It is my will that your will be done.” And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choos­ing son find in­ner union (fu­sion) with the in­dwelling God frag­ment, while this same per­fect­ing son will find su­preme per­son­al­ity sat­is­fac­tion in the wor­ship com­mu­nion of the per­son­al­ity of man and the per­son­al­ity of his Maker, two per­son­al­i­ties whose cre­ative at­tri­butes have eter­nally joined in self-willed mu­tu­al­ity of ex­pres­sion—the birth of an­other eter­nal part­ner­ship of the will of man and the will of God.

118:6.7Vo­li­tion, the act of choos­ing, must func­tion within the uni­verse frame which has ac­tu­al­ized in re­sponse to higher and prior choos­ing. The en­tire range of hu­man will is strictly fi­nite-lim­ited ex­cept in one par­tic­u­lar: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is super­fi­nite; only eter­nity can dis­close whether this choice is also super­ab­so­nite.

118:1.10On the ab­so­lute and eter­nal level, po­ten­tial re­al­ity is just as mean­ing­ful as ac­tual re­al­ity. Only on the fi­nite level and to time-bound crea­tures does there ap­pear to be such a vast dif­fer­ence. To God, as ab­so­lute, an as­cend­ing mor­tal who has made the eter­nal de­ci­sion is al­ready a Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter. But the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, through the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, is not thus lim­ited in aware­ness but can also know of, and par­tic­i­pate in, ev­ery tem­po­ral strug­gle with the prob­lems of the crea­ture as­cent from an­i­mallike to God­like lev­els of ex­is­tence.

111:4.9Since this in­ner life of man is truly cre­ative, there rests upon each per­son the re­spon­si­bil­ity of choos­ing as to whether this cre­ativ­ity shall be spon­ta­neous and wholly hap­haz­ard or con­trolled, di­rected, and con­struc­tive. How can a cre­ative imag­i­na­tion pro­duce wor­thy chil­dren when the stage whereon it func­tions is al­ready pre­oc­cu­pied by prej­u­dice, hate, fears, re­sent­ments, re­venge, and big­otries?

• identification of self with universe, dedication to service of universe family

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

• Spirit domination of energy phase of existence

34:6.7Those who have re­ceived and rec­og­nized the in­dwelling of God have been born of the Spirit. “You are the tem­ple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you.” It is not enough that this spirit be poured out upon you; the di­vine Spirit must dom­i­nate and con­trol ev­ery phase of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• highest consecration is to do will of God

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

• degree of devotion to divine values

92:7.93. Con­se­cra­tion in­ten­sity—the de­gree of de­vo­tion to these di­vine val­ues.

• passport to divine attainment

109:6.5This Ad­juster did in­deed tri­umph in Je­sus’ hu­man mind—that mind which in each of life’s re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions main­tained a con­se­crated ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, say­ing, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” Such de­ci­sive con­se­cra­tion con­sti­tutes the true pass­port from the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man na­ture to the fi­nal­ity of di­vine at­tain­ment.

• not passive or slavish surrender to Adjuster

111:1.8But man does not pas­sively, slav­ishly, sur­ren­der his will to the Ad­juster. Rather does he ac­tively, pos­i­tively, and co-op­er­a­tively choose to fol­low the Ad­juster’s lead­ing when and as such lead­ing con­sciously dif­fers from the de­sires and im­pulses of the nat­u­ral mor­tal mind. The Ad­justers ma­nip­u­late but never dom­i­nate man’s mind against his will; to the Ad­justers the hu­man will is su­preme. And they so re­gard and re­spect it while they strive to achieve the spir­i­tual goals of thought ad­just­ment and char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tion in the al­most lim­it­less arena of the evolv­ing hu­man in­tel­lect.

• realization of eternity-reality of purpose

118:1.2The per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal crea­ture may eter­nal­ize by self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the in­dwelling spirit through the tech­nique of choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther. Such a con­se­cra­tion of will is tan­ta­mount to the re­al­iza­tion of eter­nity-re­al­ity of pur­pose. This means that the pur­pose of the crea­ture has be­come fixed with re­gard to the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments; stated oth­er­wise, that the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments will wit­ness no change in crea­ture pur­pose. A mil­lion or a bil­lion mo­ments makes no dif­fer­ence. Num­ber has ceased to have mean­ing with re­gard to the crea­ture’s pur­pose. Thus does crea­ture choice plus God’s choice even­tu­ate in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the never-end­ing union of the spirit of God and the na­ture of man in the ev­er­last­ing ser­vice of the chil­dren of God and of their Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• subordination to spiritual urges of Adjuster

118:8.2Mor­tal man is a ma­chine, a liv­ing mech­a­nism; his roots are truly in the phys­i­cal world of en­ergy. Many hu­man re­ac­tions are me­chan­i­cal in na­ture; much of life is ma­chine­like. But man, a mech­a­nism, is much more than a ma­chine; he is mind en­dowed and spirit in­dwelt; and though he can never through­out his ma­te­rial life es­cape the chem­i­cal and elec­tri­cal me­chan­ics of his ex­is­tence, he can in­creas­ingly learn how to sub­or­di­nate this phys­i­cal-life ma­chine to the di­rec­tive wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence by the pro­cess of con­se­crat­ing the hu­man mind to the ex­e­cu­tion of the spir­i­tual urges of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

• Andon and Fonta’s decision to live with, for each other

62:5.8When about nine years of age, they jour­neyed off down the river one bright day and held a mo­men­tous con­fer­ence. Ev­ery ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gence sta­tioned on Uran­tia, in­clud­ing my­self, was pres­ent as an ob­server of the trans­ac­tions of this noon­tide tryst. On this event­ful day they ar­rived at an un­der­stand­ing to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a se­ries of such agree­ments which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the de­ci­sion to flee from their in­fe­rior an­i­mal as­so­ciates and to jour­ney north­ward, lit­tle know­ing that they were thus to found the hu­man race.

62:5.9While we were all greatly con­cerned with what these two lit­tle sav­ages were plan­ning, we were pow­er­less to con­trol the work­ing of their minds; we did not—could not—ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence their de­ci­sions. But within the per­mis­si­ble lim­its of plan­e­tary func­tion, we, the Life Car­ri­ers, to­gether with our as­so­ciates, all con­spired to lead the hu­man twins north­ward and far from their hairy and par­tially tree-dwell­ing peo­ple. And so, by rea­son of their own in­tel­li­gent choice, the twins did mi­grate, and be­cause of our super­vi­sion they mi­grated north­ward to a se­cluded re­gion where they es­caped the pos­si­bil­ity of bi­o­logic degra­da­tion through ad­mix­ture with their in­fe­rior rel­a­tives of the Pri­mates tribes.

• Van’s loyalty resulted from unquestioning dedication

67:3.6Through­out the seven cru­cial years of the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion, Van was wholly de­voted to the work of min­istry to his loyal army of men, mid­way­ers, and an­gels. The spir­i­tual in­sight and moral stead­fast­ness which en­abled Van to main­tain such an un­shak­able at­ti­tude of loy­alty to the uni­verse gov­ern­ment was the prod­uct of clear think­ing, wise rea­son­ing, log­i­cal judg­ment, sin­cere mo­ti­va­tion, un­selfish pur­pose, in­tel­li­gent loy­alty, ex­pe­ri­en­tial mem­ory, dis­ci­plined char­ac­ter, and the un­ques­tion­ing ded­i­ca­tion of his per­son­al­ity to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise.

• Adjuster empowered Amadon’s loyalty

67:3.7This seven years of wait­ing was a time of heart search­ing and soul dis­ci­pline. Such crises in the af­fairs of a uni­verse demon­strate the tremen­dous in­flu­ence of mind as a fac­tor in spir­i­tual choos­ing. Ed­u­ca­tion, train­ing, and ex­pe­ri­ence are fac­tors in most of the vi­tal de­ci­sions of all evo­lu­tion­ary moral crea­tures. But it is en­tirely pos­si­ble for the in­dwelling spirit to make di­rect con­tact with the de­ci­sion-de­ter­min­ing pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity so as to em­power the fully con­se­crated will of the crea­ture to per­form amaz­ing acts of loyal de­vo­tion to the will and the way of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. And this is just what oc­curred in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Amadon, the mod­i­fied hu­man as­so­ciate of Van.

• widow’s mites

172:4.2And now, as the evening drew on and the crowds went in quest of nour­ish­ment, Je­sus and his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers were left alone. What a strange day it had been! The apos­tles were thought­ful, but speech­less. Never, in their years of as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, had they seen such a day. For a mo­ment they sat down by the trea­sury, watch­ing the peo­ple drop in their con­tri­bu­tions: the rich putting much in the re­ceiv­ing box and all giv­ing some­thing in ac­cor­dance with the ex­tent of their pos­ses­sions. At last there came along a poor widow, scant­ily at­tired, and they ob­served as she cast two mites (small cop­pers) into the trum­pet. And then said Je­sus, call­ing the at­ten­tion of the apos­tles to the widow: “Heed well what you have just seen. This poor widow cast in more than all the oth­ers, for all these oth­ers, from their su­per­fluity, cast in some tri­fle as a gift, but this poor woman, even though she is in want, gave all that she had, even her liv­ing.”

• John Mark commanded full attention of God by his supreme desire

177:1.3Je­sus did not re­turn to the camp that evening un­til af­ter sun­set. The Mas­ter spent this last day of quiet on earth vis­it­ing with this truth-hun­gry youth and talk­ing with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. This event has be­come known on high as “the day which a young man spent with God in the hills.” For­ever this oc­ca­sion ex­em­pli­fies the will­ing­ness of the Cre­ator to fel­low­ship the crea­ture. Even a youth, if the de­sire of the heart is re­ally su­preme, can com­mand the at­ten­tion and en­joy the lov­ing com­pan­ion­ship of the God of a uni­verse, ac­tu­ally ex­pe­ri­ence the un­for­get­table ec­stasy of be­ing alone with God in the hills, and for a whole day. And such was the unique ex­pe­ri­ence of John Mark on this Wednes­day in the hills of Judea.

• John Mark commanded full attention of God by his supreme desire

177:3.2It was about midafter­noon when Na­than­iel made his speech on “Su­preme De­sire” to about half a dozen of the apos­tles and as many dis­ci­ples, the end­ing of which was: “What is wrong with most of us is that we are only half­hearted. We fail to love the Mas­ter as he loves us. If we had all wanted to go with him as much as John Mark did, he would surely have taken us all. We stood by while the lad ap­proached the Mas­ter and of­fered him the bas­ket, but when the Mas­ter took hold of it, the lad would not let go. And so the Mas­ter left us here while he went off to the hills with bas­ket, boy, and all.”

53:4.6Ga­briel was per­son­ally pres­ent through­out all these dis­loyal pro­ceed­ings and only an­nounced that he would, in due time, speak for Mi­chael, and that all be­ings would be left free and un­mo­lested in their choice; that the “gov­ern­ment of the Sons for the Fa­ther de­sired only that loy­alty and de­vo­tion which was vol­un­tary, whole­hearted, and soph­istry-proof.”

1:1.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never im­poses any form of ar­bi­trary rec­og­ni­tion, for­mal wor­ship, or slav­ish ser­vice upon the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses. The evo­lu­tion­ary in­hab­i­tants of the worlds of time and space must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. The Cre­ator re­fuses to co­erce or com­pel the sub­mis­sion of the spir­i­tual free wills of his ma­te­rial crea­tures. The af­fec­tion­ate ded­i­ca­tion of the hu­man will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is man’s choic­est gift to God; in fact, such a con­se­cra­tion of crea­ture will con­sti­tutes man’s only pos­si­ble gift of true value to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In God, man lives, moves, and has his be­ing; there is noth­ing which man can give to God ex­cept this choos­ing to abide by the Fa­ther’s will, and such de­ci­sions, ef­fected by the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses, con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of that true wor­ship which is so sat­is­fy­ing to the love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

111:1.1Though the work of Ad­justers is spir­i­tual in na­ture, they must, per­force, do all their work upon an in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion. Mind is the hu­man soil from which the spirit Mon­i­tor must evolve the mor­ontia soul with the co-op­er­a­tion of the in­dwelt per­son­al­ity.

111:1.2There is a cos­mic unity in the sev­eral mind lev­els of the uni­verse of uni­verses. In­tel­lec­tual selves have their ori­gin in the cos­mic mind much as neb­u­lae take ori­gin in the cos­mic en­er­gies of uni­verse space. On the hu­man (hence per­sonal) level of in­tel­lec­tual selves the po­ten­tial of spirit evo­lu­tion be­comes dom­i­nant, with the as­sent of the mor­tal mind, be­cause of the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of the hu­man per­son­al­ity to­gether with the cre­ative pres­ence of an en­tity-point of ab­so­lute value in such hu­man selves. But such a spirit dom­i­nance of the ma­te­rial mind is con­di­tioned upon two ex­pe­ri­ences: This mind must have evolved up through the min­istry of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its, and the ma­te­rial (per­sonal) self must choose to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster in cre­at­ing and fos­ter­ing the mor­ontia self, the evo­lu­tion­ary and po­ten­tially im­mor­tal soul.

111:1.3Ma­te­rial mind is the arena in which hu­man per­son­al­i­ties live, are self-con­scious, make de­ci­sions, choose God or for­sake him, eter­nal­ize or de­stroy them­selves.

111:1.4Ma­te­rial evo­lu­tion has pro­vided you a life ma­chine, your body; the Fa­ther him­self has en­dowed you with the purest spirit re­al­ity known in the uni­verse, your Thought Ad­juster. But into your hands, sub­ject to your own de­ci­sions, has been given mind, and it is by mind that you live or die. It is within this mind and with this mind that you make those moral de­ci­sions which en­able you to achieve Ad­juster­like­ness, and that is God­like­ness.

111:1.5Mor­tal mind is a tem­po­rary in­tel­lect sys­tem loaned to hu­man be­ings for use dur­ing a ma­te­rial life­time, and as they use this mind, they are ei­ther ac­cept­ing or re­ject­ing the po­ten­tial of eter­nal ex­is­tence. Mind is about all you have of uni­verse re­al­ity that is sub­ject to your will, and the soul—the mor­ontia self—will faith­fully por­tray the har­vest of the tem­po­ral de­ci­sions which the mor­tal self is mak­ing. Hu­man con­scious­ness rests gen­tly upon the elec­tro­chem­i­cal mech­a­nism be­low and del­i­cately touches the spirit-mor­ontia en­ergy sys­tem above. Of nei­ther of these two sys­tems is the hu­man be­ing ever com­pletely con­scious in his mor­tal life; there­fore must he work in mind, of which he is con­scious. And it is not so much what mind com­pre­hends as what mind de­sires to com­pre­hend that in­sures sur­vival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striv­ing to be like that con­sti­tutes spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It is not so much that man is con­scious of God as that man yearns for God that re­sults in uni­verse as­cen­sion. What you are to­day is not so im­por­tant as what you are be­com­ing day by day and in eter­nity.

111:1.6Mind is the cos­mic in­stru­ment on which the hu­man will can play the dis­cords of de­struc­tion, or upon which this same hu­man will can bring forth the ex­qui­site mel­o­dies of God iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and con­se­quent eter­nal sur­vival. The Ad­juster be­stowed upon man is, in the last anal­y­sis, im­per­vi­ous to evil and in­ca­pable of sin, but mor­tal mind can ac­tu­ally be twisted, dis­torted, and ren­dered evil and ugly by the sin­ful machi­na­tions of a per­verse and self-seek­ing hu­man will. Like­wise can this mind be made no­ble, beau­ti­ful, true, and good—ac­tu­ally great—in ac­cor­dance with the spirit-il­lu­mi­nated will of a God-know­ing hu­man be­ing.

111:1.7Evo­lu­tion­ary mind is only fully sta­ble and de­pend­able when man­i­fest­ing it­self upon the two ex­tremes of cos­mic in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity—the wholly mech­a­nized and the en­tirely spir­i­tu­al­ized. Be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual ex­tremes of pure me­chan­i­cal con­trol and true spirit na­ture there in­ter­venes that enor­mous group of evolv­ing and as­cend­ing minds whose sta­bil­ity and tran­quil­lity are de­pen­dent upon per­son­al­ity choice and spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

111:1.9Mind is your ship, the Ad­juster is your pi­lot, the hu­man will is cap­tain. The mas­ter of the mor­tal ves­sel should have the wis­dom to trust the di­vine pi­lot to guide the as­cend­ing soul into the mor­ontia har­bors of eter­nal sur­vival. Only by self­ish­ness, sloth­ful­ness, and sin­ful­ness can the will of man re­ject the guid­ance of such a lov­ing pi­lot and even­tu­ally wreck the mor­tal ca­reer upon the evil shoals of re­jected mercy and upon the rocks of em­braced sin. With your con­sent, this faith­ful pi­lot will safely carry you across the bar­ri­ers of time and the hand­i­caps of space to the very source of the di­vine mind and on be­yond, even to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of Ad­justers.

27:7.8Af­ter the at­tain­ment of the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of the full­ness of wor­ship, you are qual­i­fied for ad­mis­sion to the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. The as­cen­dant ca­reer is well-nigh fin­ished, and the sev­enth ju­bilee pre­pares for cel­e­bra­tion. The first ju­bilee marked the mor­tal agree­ment with the Thought Ad­juster when the pur­pose to sur­vive was sealed; the sec­ond was the awak­en­ing in the mor­ontia life; the third was the fu­sion with the Thought Ad­juster; the fourth was the awak­en­ing in Ha­vona; the fifth cel­e­brated the find­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; and the sixth ju­bilee was the oc­ca­sion of the Par­a­dise awak­en­ing from the fi­nal tran­sit slum­ber of time. The sev­enth ju­bilee marks en­trance into the mor­tal fi­nal­i­ter corps and the be­gin­ning of the eter­nity ser­vice. The at­tain­ment of the sev­enth stage of spirit re­al­iza­tion by a fi­nal­i­ter will prob­a­bly sig­nal­ize the cel­e­bra­tion of the first of the ju­bilees of eter­nity.

• pearl of great price

140:8.28The right to en­ter the king­dom is con­di­tioned by faith, per­sonal be­lief. The cost of re­main­ing in the pro­gres­sive as­cent of the king­dom is the pearl of great price, in or­der to pos­sess which a man sells all that he has.

• treasure in field

151:4.4“The king­dom of heaven is also like a trea­sure hid­den in a field, which a man dis­cov­ered. In his joy he went forth to sell all he had that he might have the money to buy the field.”

• pearl of great price

151:4.5“The king­dom of heaven is also like a mer­chant seek­ing goodly pearls; and hav­ing found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold ev­ery­thing he pos­sessed that he might be able to buy the ex­traor­di­nary pearl.”

• halfhearted devotion will be unavailing

1:6.5Some de­gree of moral affin­ity and spir­i­tual har­mony is es­sen­tial to friend­ship be­tween two per­sons; a lov­ing per­son­al­ity can hardly re­veal him­self to a love­less per­son. Even to ap­proach the know­ing of a di­vine per­son­al­ity, all of man’s per­son­al­ity en­dow­ments must be wholly con­se­crated to the ef­fort; half­hearted, par­tial de­vo­tion will be un­avail­ing.

• divine union attained by wholehearted and intelligent conformity to God’s will

1:7.2Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of wa­ter might find unity with the ocean. Man at­tains di­vine union by pro­gres­sive re­cip­ro­cal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, by per­son­al­ity in­ter­course with the per­sonal God, by in­creas­ingly at­tain­ing the di­vine na­ture through whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent con­for­mity to the di­vine will. Such a sub­lime re­la­tion­ship can ex­ist only be­tween per­son­al­i­ties.

• produces consciousness of God; ensures survival

5:1.6If mor­tal man is whole­heart­edly spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, un­re­servedly con­se­crated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, then, since he is so cer­tainly and so ef­fec­tively spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed by the in­dwelling and di­vine Ad­juster, there can­not fail to ma­te­ri­al­ize in that in­di­vid­ual’s ex­pe­ri­ence the sub­lime con­scious­ness of know­ing God and the su­per­nal as­sur­ance of sur­viv­ing for the pur­pose of find­ing God by the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like him.

• determines presence of God

5:2.1The phys­i­cal pres­ence of the In­fi­nite is the re­al­ity of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. The mind pres­ence of De­ity must be de­ter­mined by the depth of in­di­vid­ual in­tel­lec­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and by the evo­lu­tion­ary per­son­al­ity level. The spir­i­tual pres­ence of Di­vin­ity must of ne­ces­sity be dif­fer­en­tial in the uni­verse. It is de­ter­mined by the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity and by the de­gree of the con­se­cra­tion of the crea­ture’s will to the do­ing of the di­vine will.

• Father is destiny of all who wholeheartedly choose his will

5:6.1The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the God of per­son­al­i­ties. The do­main of uni­verse per­son­al­ity, from the low­est mor­tal and ma­te­rial crea­ture of per­son­al­ity sta­tus to the high­est per­sons of cre­ator dig­nity and di­vine sta­tus, has its cen­ter and cir­cum­fer­ence in the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God the Fa­ther is the be­stower and the con­ser­va­tor of ev­ery per­son­al­ity. And the Par­a­dise Fa­ther is like­wise the des­tiny of all those fi­nite per­son­al­i­ties who whole­heart­edly choose to do the di­vine will, those who love God and long to be like him.

• determines presence of God

13:4.4Phys­i­cal au­thor­ity, pres­ence, and func­tion are un­vary­ing in all the uni­verses, small or great. The dif­fer­ing fac­tor in spir­i­tual pres­ence, or re­ac­tion, is the fluc­tu­at­ing dif­fer­en­tial in its rec­og­ni­tion and re­cep­tion by will crea­tures. Whereas the spir­i­tual pres­ence of ab­so­lute and ex­is­ten­tial De­ity is in no man­ner what­ever in­flu­enced by at­ti­tudes of loy­alty or dis­loy­alty on the part of cre­ated be­ings, at the same time it is true that the func­tion­ing pres­ence of sub­ab­so­lute and ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity is def­i­nitely and di­rectly in­flu­enced by the de­ci­sions, choices, and will-at­ti­tudes of such fi­nite crea­ture be­ings—by the loy­alty and de­vo­tion of the in­di­vid­ual be­ing, planet, sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, or uni­verse. But this spir­i­tual pres­ence of di­vin­ity is not whim­si­cal nor ar­bi­trary; its ex­pe­ri­en­tial vari­ance is in­her­ent in the free­will en­dow­ment of per­sonal crea­tures.

13:4.5The de­ter­miner of the dif­fer­en­tial of spir­i­tual pres­ence ex­ists in your own hearts and minds and con­sists in the man­ner of your own choos­ing, in the de­ci­sions of your minds, and in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of your own wills. This dif­fer­en­tial is in­her­ent in the free­will re­ac­tions of in­tel­li­gent per­sonal be­ings, be­ings whom the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has or­dained shall ex­er­cise this lib­erty of choos­ing. And the De­i­ties are ever true to the ebb and flow of their spir­its in meet­ing and sat­is­fy­ing the con­di­tions and de­mands of this dif­fer­en­tial of crea­ture choice, now be­stow­ing more of their pres­ence in re­sponse to a sin­cere de­sire for the same and again with­draw­ing them­selves from the scene as their crea­tures de­cide ad­versely in the ex­er­cise of their di­vinely be­stowed free­dom of choice. And thus does the spirit of di­vin­ity be­come humbly obe­di­ent to the choos­ing of the crea­tures of the realms.

• brought Adjuster prior to Spirit of Truth

108:2.83. Upon the mak­ing of a su­preme de­ci­sion of un­usual spir­i­tual im­port. Such hu­man be­hav­ior in a per­sonal plan­e­tary cri­sis usu­ally is at­tended by the im­me­di­ate ar­rival of the wait­ing Ad­juster.

• joins spiritual faith to material decisions; supplies spiritual fulcrum

110:6.17The mo­ti­va­tion of faith makes ex­pe­ri­en­tial the full re­al­iza­tion of man’s son­ship with God, but ac­tion, com­ple­tion of de­ci­sions, is es­sen­tial to the evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment of con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sive kin­ship with the cos­mic ac­tu­al­ity of the Su­preme Be­ing. Faith trans­mutes po­ten­tials to ac­tu­als in the spir­i­tual world, but po­ten­tials be­come ac­tu­als in the fi­nite realms of the Su­preme only by and through the re­al­iza­tion of choice-ex­pe­ri­ence. But choos­ing to do the will of God joins spir­i­tual faith to ma­te­rial de­ci­sions in per­son­al­ity ac­tion and thus sup­plies a di­vine and spir­i­tual ful­crum for the more ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the hu­man and ma­te­rial lever­age of God-hunger. Such a wise co-or­di­na­tion of ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual forces greatly aug­ments both cos­mic re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme and mor­ontia com­pre­hen­sion of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• leads to assignment of guardian of destiny

113:1.53. The super­nor­mal minded—those of great de­ci­sion and un­doubted po­ten­tial of spir­i­tual achieve­ment; men and women who en­joy more or less con­tact with their in­dwelling Ad­justers; mem­bers of the var­i­ous re­serve corps of des­tiny. No mat­ter in what cir­cle a hu­man hap­pens to be, if such an in­di­vid­ual be­comes en­rolled in any of the sev­eral re­serve corps of des­tiny, right then and there, per­sonal ser­a­phim are as­signed, and from that time un­til the earthly ca­reer is fin­ished, that mor­tal will en­joy the con­tin­u­ous min­istry and un­ceas­ing watch­care of a guard­ian an­gel. Also, when any hu­man be­ing makes the su­preme de­ci­sion, when there is a real be­trothal with the Ad­juster, a per­sonal guard­ian is im­me­di­ately as­signed to that soul.

• leads to assignment of guardian of destiny

113:2.1Ser­a­phim are not known as guard­i­ans of des­tiny un­til such time as they are as­signed to the as­so­ci­a­tion of a hu­man soul who has re­al­ized one or more of three achieve­ments: has made a su­preme de­ci­sion to be­come God­like, has en­tered the third cir­cle, or has been mus­tered into one of the re­serve corps of des­tiny.

• when man gives God all he has, God makes him more than he is

117:4.14God’s gifts—his be­stowal of re­al­ity—are not di­vorce­ments from him­self; he does not alien­ate cre­ation from him­self, but he has set up ten­sions in the cre­ations cir­cling Par­a­dise. God first loves man and con­fers upon him the po­ten­tial of im­mor­tal­ity—eter­nal re­al­ity. And as man loves God, so does man be­come eter­nal in ac­tu­al­ity. And here is mys­tery: The more closely man ap­proaches God through love, the greater the re­al­ity—ac­tu­al­ity—of that man. The more man with­draws from God, the more nearly he ap­proaches non­re­al­ity—ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. When man con­se­crates his will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.

• immediately reacted to by the Supreme

117:6.4The act of the crea­ture’s choos­ing to do the will of the Cre­ator is a cos­mic value and has a uni­verse mean­ing which is im­me­di­ately re­acted to by some un­re­vealed but ubiq­ui­tous force of co-or­di­na­tion, prob­a­bly the func­tion­ing of the ever-en­larg­ing ac­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing.

• divine stability produced by universe insight

118:8.3The spirit lib­er­ates, and the mech­a­nism lim­its, the func­tion of will. Im­per­fect choice, un­con­trolled by mech­a­nism, uniden­ti­fied with spirit, is dan­ger­ous and un­sta­ble. Me­chan­i­cal dom­i­nance in­sures sta­bil­ity at the ex­pense of prog­ress; spirit al­liance lib­er­ates choice from the phys­i­cal level and at the same time as­sures the di­vine sta­bil­ity pro­duced by aug­mented uni­verse in­sight and in­creased cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion.

110:4.5There ex­ists a vast gulf be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine, be­tween man and God. The Uran­tia races are so largely elec­tri­cally and chem­i­cally con­trolled, so highly an­i­mallike in their com­mon be­hav­ior, so emo­tional in their or­di­nary re­ac­tions, that it be­comes ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the Mon­i­tors to guide and di­rect them. You are so de­void of coura­geous de­ci­sions and con­se­crated co-op­er­a­tion that your in­dwelling Ad­justers find it next to im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with the hu­man mind. Even when they do find it pos­si­ble to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolv­ing mor­tal soul, this spir­i­tual rev­e­la­tion of­ten so blinds the crea­ture as to pre­cip­i­tate a con­vul­sion of fa­nati­cism or to ini­ti­ate some other in­tel­lec­tual up­heaval which re­sults dis­as­trously. Many a new re­li­gion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, im­per­fect, mis­un­der­stood, and gar­bled com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Thought Ad­justers.

180:2.4But great sor­row later at­tended the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s in­fer­ences re­gard­ing prayer. There would have been lit­tle dif­fi­culty about these teach­ings if his ex­act words had been re­mem­bered and sub­se­quently truth­fully re­corded. But as the rec­ord was made, be­liev­ers even­tu­ally re­garded prayer in Je­sus’ name as a sort of su­preme magic, think­ing that they would re­ceive from the Fa­ther any­thing they asked for. For cen­turies hon­est souls have con­tin­ued to wreck their faith against this stum­bling block. How long will it take the world of be­liev­ers to un­der­stand that prayer is not a pro­cess of get­ting your way but rather a pro­gram of tak­ing God’s way, an ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to rec­og­nize and ex­e­cute the Fa­ther’s will? It is en­tirely true that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask any­thing con­ceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is ef­fected by and through Je­sus even as the life of the vine flows into and through the liv­ing branches.

133:8.3Ga­nid had a very in­ter­est­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in An­ti­och. This young man had proved him­self an apt pupil and al­ready had be­gun to make prac­ti­cal use of some of Je­sus’ teach­ings. There was a cer­tain In­dian con­nected with his fa­ther’s busi­ness in An­ti­och who had be­come so un­pleas­ant and dis­grun­tled that his dis­missal had been con­sid­ered. When Ga­nid heard this, he be­took him­self to his fa­ther’s place of busi­ness and held a long con­fer­ence with his fel­low coun­try­man. This man felt he had been put at the wrong job. Ga­nid told him about the Fa­ther in heaven and in many ways ex­panded his views of re­li­gion. But of all that Ga­nid said, the quo­ta­tion of a He­brew proverb did the most good, and that word of wis­dom was: “What­so­ever your hand finds to do, do that with all your might.”