decisions

• result of decisions › presence of God determined by

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.

• influenced by morality, ignorance, immaturity, delusion

16:7.7Man’s choos­ing be­tween good and evil is in­flu­enced, not only by the keen­ness of his moral na­ture, but also by such in­flu­ences as ig­no­rance, im­ma­tu­rity, and delu­sion. A sense of pro­por­tion is also con­cerned in the ex­er­cise of virtue be­cause evil may be per­pe­trated when the lesser is cho­sen in the place of the greater as a re­sult of dis­tor­tion or de­cep­tion. The art of rel­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion or com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment en­ters into the prac­tice of the virtues of the moral realm.

• moral nature impotent without discriminating meanings

16:7.8Man’s moral na­ture would be im­po­tent with­out the art of mea­sure­ment, the dis­crim­i­na­tion em­bod­ied in his abil­ity to scru­ti­nize mean­ings. Like­wise would moral choos­ing be fu­tile with­out that cos­mic in­sight which yields the con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual val­ues. From the stand­point of in­tel­li­gence, man as­cends to the level of a moral be­ing be­cause he is en­dowed with per­son­al­ity.

• mortals › advance in spirit status by strength, power, and persistency of their d.

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.

• of morontia progressors respected if not detrimental to self or others

48:6.6You are not given un­re­stricted choice as to your fu­ture course; but you may choose within the lim­its of that which the tran­si­tion min­is­ters and their su­pe­ri­ors wisely de­ter­mine to be most suit­able for your fu­ture spirit at­tain­ment. The spirit world is gov­erned on the prin­ci­ple of re­spect­ing your free­will choice pro­vided the course you may choose is not detri­men­tal to you or in­ju­ri­ous to your fel­lows.

• essential to acquirement of survival values

50:6.3Be­cause of your plan­e­tary mis­for­tunes, Uran­tians are pre­vented from un­der­stand­ing very much about the cul­ture of nor­mal worlds. But you should not en­vis­age the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flow­ery bed of ease. The ini­tial life of the mor­tal races is al­ways at­tended by strug­gle. Ef­fort and de­ci­sion are an es­sen­tial part of the ac­quire­ment of sur­vival val­ues.

• consummated in action

101:7.1An idea is only a the­o­ret­i­cal plan for ac­tion, while a pos­i­tive de­ci­sion is a val­i­dated plan of ac­tion. A stereo­type is a plan of ac­tion ac­cepted with­out val­i­da­tion. The ma­te­ri­als out of which to build a per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion are de­rived from both the in­ner and the en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual. The so­cial sta­tus, eco­nomic con­di­tions, ed­u­ca­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties, moral trends, in­sti­tu­tional in­flu­ences, po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments, racial ten­den­cies, and the re­li­gious teach­ings of one’s time and place all be­come fac­tors in the for­mu­la­tion of a per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion. Even the in­her­ent tem­per­a­ment and in­tel­lec­tual bent markedly de­ter­mine the pat­tern of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy. Vo­ca­tion, mar­riage, and kin­dred all in­flu­ence the evo­lu­tion of one’s per­sonal stan­dards of life.

• Adjusters make life difficult to stimulate and multiply

108:5.5The Mys­tery Mon­i­tors are not thought helpers; they are thought ad­justers. They la­bor with the ma­te­rial mind for the pur­pose of con­struct­ing, by ad­just­ment and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion, a new mind for the new worlds and the new name of your fu­ture ca­reer. Their mis­sion chiefly con­cerns the fu­ture life, not this life. They are called heav­enly helpers, not earthly helpers. They are not in­ter­ested in mak­ing the mor­tal ca­reer easy; rather are they con­cerned in mak­ing your life rea­son­ably dif­fi­cult and rugged, so that de­ci­sions will be stim­u­lated and mul­ti­plied. The pres­ence of a great Thought Ad­juster does not be­stow ease of liv­ing and free­dom from stren­u­ous think­ing, but such a di­vine gift should con­fer a sub­lime peace of mind and a su­perb tran­quil­lity of spirit.

• supply psychic fulcrum for Adjusters

108:5.8The Thought Ad­justers would like to change your feel­ings of fear to con­vic­tions of love and con­fi­dence; but they can­not me­chan­i­cally and ar­bi­trar­ily do such things; that is your task. In ex­e­cut­ing those de­ci­sions which de­liver you from the fet­ters of fear, you lit­er­ally sup­ply the psy­chic ful­crum on which the Ad­juster may sub­se­quently ap­ply a spir­i­tual lever of up­lift­ing and ad­vanc­ing il­lu­mi­na­tion.

• mortals › are so devoid of courageous d.

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.

• result of decisions › crisis relationship of d. has much to do with circle-making influence
• result of decisions › persistent repetitions of d. essential to psychic circle achievement

110:6.6Ev­ery de­ci­sion you make ei­ther im­pedes or fa­cil­i­tates the func­tion of the Ad­juster; like­wise do these very de­ci­sions de­ter­mine your ad­vance­ment in the cir­cles of hu­man achieve­ment. It is true that the su­prem­acy of a de­ci­sion, its cri­sis re­la­tion­ship, has a great deal to do with its cir­cle-mak­ing in­flu­ence; nev­er­the­less, num­bers of de­ci­sions, fre­quent rep­e­ti­tions, per­sis­tent rep­e­ti­tions, are also es­sen­tial to the habit-form­ing cer­tainty of such re­ac­tions.

• mortals › sometimes hear Adjuster’s direct voice upon supreme d.

110:7.9While the voice of the Ad­juster is ever within you, most of you will hear it sel­dom dur­ing a life­time. Hu­man be­ings be­low the third and sec­ond cir­cles of at­tain­ment rarely hear the Ad­juster’s di­rect voice ex­cept in mo­ments of su­preme de­sire, in a su­preme sit­u­a­tion, and con­se­quent upon a su­preme de­ci­sion.

• power of choice is insignia of freewill creaturehood
• Supreme Being depends for actuality on mortals’ d.

112:5.5And it is this very power of choice, the uni­verse in­signia of free­will crea­ture­hood, that con­sti­tutes man’s great­est op­por­tu­nity and his su­preme cos­mic re­spon­si­bil­ity. Upon the in­tegrity of the hu­man vo­li­tion de­pends the eter­nal des­tiny of the fu­ture fi­nal­i­ter; upon the sin­cer­ity of the mor­tal free will the di­vine Ad­juster de­pends for eter­nal per­son­al­ity; upon the faith­ful­ness of mor­tal choice the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther de­pends for the re­al­iza­tion of a new as­cend­ing son; upon the stead­fast­ness and wis­dom of de­ci­sion-ac­tions the Su­preme Be­ing de­pends for the ac­tu­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­en­tial evo­lu­tion.

• we chart our own course; angels make best possible use of that course

113:5.4In the life of the flesh the in­tel­li­gence of an­gels is not di­rectly avail­able to mor­tal men. They are not over­lords or di­rec­tors; they are sim­ply guard­i­ans. The ser­a­phim guard you; they do not seek di­rectly to in­flu­ence you; you must chart your own course, but these an­gels then act to make the best pos­si­ble use of the course you have cho­sen. They do not (or­di­nar­ily) ar­bi­trar­ily in­ter­vene in the rou­tine af­fairs of hu­man life. But when they re­ceive in­struc­tions from their su­pe­ri­ors to per­form some un­usual ex­ploit, you may rest as­sured that these guard­i­ans will find some means of car­ry­ing out these man­dates. They do not, there­fore, in­trude into the pic­ture of hu­man drama ex­cept in emer­gen­cies and then usu­ally on the di­rect or­ders of their su­pe­ri­ors. They are the be­ings who are go­ing to fol­low you for many an age, and they are thus re­ceiv­ing an in­tro­duc­tion to their fu­ture work and per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion.

• result of decisions › d. open up new capacity for growth

115:3.16The fi­nal dy­nam­ics of the cos­mos have to do with the con­tin­ual trans­fer of re­al­ity from po­ten­tial­ity to ac­tu­al­ity. In the­ory, there may be an end to this meta­mor­pho­sis, but in fact, such is im­pos­si­ble since the Po­ten­tial and the Ac­tual are both en­cir­cuited in the Orig­i­nal (the I AM), and this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble to place a limit on the de­vel­op­men­tal pro­gres­sion of the uni­verse. What­so­ever is iden­ti­fied with the I AM can never find an end to pro­gres­sion since the ac­tu­al­ity of the po­ten­tials of the I AM is ab­so­lute, and the po­ten­tial­ity of the ac­tu­als of the I AM is also ab­so­lute. Al­ways will ac­tu­als be open­ing up new av­enues of the re­al­iza­tion of hith­erto im­pos­si­ble po­ten­tials—ev­ery hu­man de­ci­sion not only ac­tu­al­izes a new re­al­ity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence but also opens up a new ca­pac­ity for hu­man growth. The man lives in ev­ery child, and the mor­ontia pro­gres­sor is res­i­dent in the ma­ture God-know­ing man.

• mortals › advance in spirit status by strength, power, and persistency of their d.

117:3.6Mor­tal man, be­ing a crea­ture, is not ex­actly like the Su­preme Be­ing, who is de­ity, but man’s evo­lu­tion does in some ways re­sem­ble the growth of the Su­preme. Man con­sciously grows from the ma­te­rial to­ward the spir­i­tual by the strength, power, and per­sis­tency of his own de­ci­sions; he also grows as his Thought Ad­juster de­vel­ops new tech­niques for reach­ing down from the spir­i­tual to the mor­ontial soul lev­els; and once the soul comes into be­ing, it be­gins to grow in and of it­self.

• consummated in action

117:5.13What man him­self takes with him as a per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion are the char­ac­ter con­se­quences of the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing used the mind and spirit cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse in his Par­a­dise as­cent. When man de­cides, and when he con­sum­mates this de­ci­sion in ac­tion, man ex­pe­ri­ences, and the mean­ings and the val­ues of this ex­pe­ri­ence are for­ever a part of his eter­nal char­ac­ter on all lev­els, from the fi­nite to the fi­nal. Cos­mi­cally moral and di­vinely spir­i­tual char­ac­ter rep­re­sents the crea­ture’s cap­i­tal ac­cu­mu­la­tion of per­sonal de­ci­sions which have been il­lu­mi­nated by sin­cere wor­ship, glo­ri­fied by in­tel­li­gent love, and con­sum­mated in broth­erly ser­vice.

• mortals › advance in spirit status by strength, power, and persistency of their d.

127:2.12This year Je­sus made great prog­ress in the or­ga­ni­za­tion of his mind. Grad­u­ally he had brought his di­vine and hu­man na­tures to­gether, and he ac­com­plished all this or­ga­ni­za­tion of in­tel­lect by the force of his own de­ci­sions and with only the aid of his in­dwelling Mon­i­tor, just such a Mon­i­tor as all nor­mal mor­tals on all postbestowal-Son worlds have within their minds. So far, noth­ing super­nat­u­ral had hap­pened in this young man’s ca­reer ex­cept the visit of a mes­sen­ger, dis­patched by his el­der brother Im­manuel, who once ap­peared to him dur­ing the night at Je­ru­sa­lem.

• facing serious d., Jesus withdrew for communion

136:4.10The forty days in the moun­tain wilder­ness were not a pe­riod of great temp­ta­tion but rather the pe­riod of the Mas­ter’s great de­ci­sions. Dur­ing these days of lone com­mu­nion with him­self and his Fa­ther’s im­me­di­ate pres­ence—the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster (he no longer had a per­sonal se­raphic guard­ian)—he ar­rived, one by one, at the great de­ci­sions which were to con­trol his poli­cies and con­duct for the re­main­der of his earth ca­reer. Sub­se­quently the tra­di­tion of a great temp­ta­tion be­came at­tached to this pe­riod of iso­la­tion through con­fu­sion with the frag­men­tary nar­ra­tives of the Mount Her­mon strug­gles, and fur­ther be­cause it was the cus­tom to have all great proph­ets and hu­man lead­ers be­gin their pub­lic ca­reers by un­der­go­ing these sup­posed sea­sons of fast­ing and prayer. It had al­ways been Je­sus’ prac­tice, when fac­ing any new or se­ri­ous de­ci­sions, to with­draw for com­mu­nion with his own spirit that he might seek to know the will of God.

136:5.1On the third day af­ter be­gin­ning this con­fer­ence with him­self and his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, Je­sus was pre­sented with the vi­sion of the as­sem­bled ce­les­tial hosts of Neb­a­don sent by their com­man­ders to wait upon the will of their beloved Sov­er­eign. This mighty host em­braced twelve le­gions of ser­a­phim and pro­por­tion­ate num­bers of ev­ery or­der of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence. And the first great de­ci­sion of Je­sus’ iso­la­tion had to do with whether or not he would make use of these mighty per­son­al­i­ties in con­nec­tion with the en­su­ing pro­gram of his pub­lic work on Uran­tia.

136:5.2Je­sus de­cided that he would not uti­lize a sin­gle per­son­al­ity of this vast as­sem­blage un­less it should be­come ev­i­dent that this was his Fa­ther’s will. Not­with­stand­ing this gen­eral de­ci­sion, this vast host re­mained with him through­out the bal­ance of his earth life, al­ways in readi­ness to obey the least ex­pres­sion of their Sov­er­eign’s will. Al­though Je­sus did not con­stantly be­hold these at­ten­dant per­son­al­i­ties with his hu­man eyes, his as­so­ci­ated Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster did con­stantly be­hold, and could com­mu­ni­cate with, all of them.

136:5.3Be­fore com­ing down from the forty days’ re­treat in the hills, Je­sus as­signed the im­me­di­ate com­mand of this at­ten­dant host of uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties to his re­cently Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, and for more than four years of Uran­tia time did these se­lected per­son­al­i­ties from ev­ery di­vi­sion of uni­verse in­tel­li­gences obe­di­ently and re­spect­fully func­tion un­der the wise guid­ance of this ex­alted and ex­pe­ri­enced Per­son­al­ized Mys­tery Mon­i­tor. In as­sum­ing com­mand of this mighty as­sem­bly, the Ad­juster, be­ing a one­time part and essence of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, as­sured Je­sus that in no case would these super­hu­man agen­cies be per­mit­ted to serve, or man­i­fest them­selves in con­nec­tion with, or in be­half of, his earth ca­reer un­less it should de­velop that the Fa­ther willed such in­ter­ven­tion. Thus by one great de­ci­sion Je­sus vol­un­tar­ily de­prived him­self of all super­hu­man co-op­er­a­tion in all mat­ters hav­ing to do with the re­main­der of his mor­tal ca­reer un­less the Fa­ther might in­de­pen­dently choose to par­tic­i­pate in some cer­tain act or episode of the Son’s earth labors.

136:5.4In ac­cept­ing this com­mand of the uni­verse hosts in at­ten­dance upon Christ Mi­chael, the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster took great pains to point out to Je­sus that, while such an as­sem­bly of uni­verse crea­tures could be lim­ited in their space ac­tiv­i­ties by the del­e­gated au­thor­ity of their Cre­ator, such lim­i­ta­tions were not op­er­a­tive in con­nec­tion with their func­tion in time. And this lim­i­ta­tion was de­pen­dent on the fact that Ad­justers are non­time be­ings when once they are per­son­al­ized. Ac­cord­ingly was Je­sus ad­mon­ished that, while the Ad­juster’s con­trol of the liv­ing in­tel­li­gences placed un­der his com­mand would be com­plete and per­fect as to all mat­ters in­volv­ing space, there could be no such per­fect lim­i­ta­tions im­posed re­gard­ing time. Said the Ad­juster: “I will, as you have di­rected, en­join the em­ploy­ment of this at­ten­dant host of uni­verse in­tel­li­gences in any man­ner in con­nec­tion with your earth ca­reer ex­cept in those cases where the Par­a­dise Fa­ther di­rects me to re­lease such agen­cies in or­der that his di­vine will of your choos­ing may be ac­com­plished, and in those in­stances where you may en­gage in any choice or act of your di­vine-hu­man will which shall only in­volve de­par­tures from the nat­u­ral earth or­der as to time. In all such events I am pow­er­less, and your crea­tures here as­sem­bled in per­fec­tion and unity of power are like­wise help­less. If your united na­tures once en­ter­tain such de­sires, these man­dates of your choice will be forth­with ex­e­cuted. Your wish in all such mat­ters will con­sti­tute the abridg­ment of time, and the thing pro­jected is ex­is­tent. Un­der my com­mand this con­sti­tutes the fullest pos­si­ble lim­i­ta­tion which can be im­posed upon your po­ten­tial sov­er­eignty. In my self-con­scious­ness time is nonex­is­tent, and there­fore I can­not limit your crea­tures in any­thing re­lated thereto.”

136:5.5Thus did Je­sus be­come ap­prised of the work­ing out of his de­ci­sion to go on liv­ing as a man among men. He had by a sin­gle de­ci­sion ex­cluded all of his at­ten­dant uni­verse hosts of var­ied in­tel­li­gences from par­tic­i­pat­ing in his en­su­ing pub­lic min­istry ex­cept in such mat­ters as con­cerned time only. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that any pos­si­ble super­nat­u­ral or sup­pos­edly super­hu­man ac­com­pa­ni­ments of Je­sus’ min­istry per­tained wholly to the elim­i­na­tion of time un­less the Fa­ther in heaven specif­i­cally ruled oth­er­wise. No mir­a­cle, min­istry of mercy, or any other pos­si­ble event oc­cur­ring in con­nec­tion with Je­sus’ re­main­ing earth labors could pos­si­bly be of the na­ture or char­ac­ter of an act tran­scend­ing the nat­u­ral laws es­tab­lished and reg­u­larly work­ing in the af­fairs of man as he lives on Uran­tia ex­cept in this ex­pressly stated mat­ter of time. No lim­its, of course, could be placed upon the man­i­fes­ta­tions of “the Fa­ther’s will.” The elim­i­na­tion of time in con­nec­tion with the ex­pressed de­sire of this po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of a uni­verse could only be avoided by the di­rect and ex­plicit act of the will of this God-man to the ef­fect that time, as re­lated to the act or event in ques­tion, should not be short­ened or elim­i­nated. In or­der to pre­vent the ap­pear­ance of ap­par­ent time mir­a­cles, it was nec­es­sary for Je­sus to re­main con­stantly time con­scious. Any lapse of time con­scious­ness on his part, in con­nec­tion with the en­ter­tain­ment of def­i­nite de­sire, was equiv­a­lent to the en­act­ment of the thing con­ceived in the mind of this Cre­ator Son, and with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of time.

136:5.6Through the super­vis­ing con­trol of his as­so­ci­ated and Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster it was pos­si­ble for Mi­chael per­fectly to limit his per­sonal earth ac­tiv­i­ties with ref­er­ence to space, but it was not pos­si­ble for the Son of Man thus to limit his new earth sta­tus as po­ten­tial Sov­er­eign of Neb­a­don as re­gards time. And this was the ac­tual sta­tus of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth as he went forth to be­gin his pub­lic min­istry on Uran­tia.

136:6.1Hav­ing set­tled his pol­icy con­cern­ing all per­son­al­i­ties of all classes of his cre­ated in­tel­li­gences, so far as this could be de­ter­mined in view of the in­her­ent po­ten­tial of his new sta­tus of di­vin­ity, Je­sus now turned his thoughts to­ward him­self. What would he, now the fully self-con­scious cre­ator of all things and be­ings ex­is­tent in this uni­verse, do with these cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives in the re­cur­ring life sit­u­a­tions which would im­me­di­ately con­front him when he re­turned to Gal­i­lee to re­sume his work among men? In fact, al­ready, and right where he was in these lonely hills, had this prob­lem forcibly pre­sented it­self in the mat­ter of ob­tain­ing food. By the third day of his soli­tary med­i­ta­tions the hu­man body grew hun­gry. Should he go in quest of food as any or­di­nary man would, or should he merely ex­er­cise his nor­mal cre­ative pow­ers and pro­duce suit­able bod­ily nour­ish­ment ready at hand? And this great de­ci­sion of the Mas­ter has been por­trayed to you as a temp­ta­tion—as a chal­lenge by sup­posed en­e­mies that he “com­mand that these stones be­come loaves of bread.”

136:6.2Je­sus thus set­tled upon an­other and con­sis­tent pol­icy for the re­main­der of his earth labors. As far as his per­sonal ne­ces­si­ties were con­cerned, and in gen­eral even in his re­la­tions with other per­son­al­i­ties, he now de­lib­er­ately chose to pur­sue the path of nor­mal earthly ex­is­tence; he def­i­nitely de­cided against a pol­icy which would tran­scend, vi­o­late, or out­rage his own es­tab­lished nat­u­ral laws. But he could not prom­ise him­self, as he had al­ready been warned by his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, that these nat­u­ral laws might not, in cer­tain con­ceiv­able cir­cum­stances, be greatly ac­cel­er­ated. In prin­ci­ple, Je­sus de­cided that his life­work should be or­ga­nized and pros­e­cuted in ac­cor­dance with nat­u­ral law and in har­mony with the ex­ist­ing so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. The Mas­ter thereby chose a pro­gram of liv­ing which was the equiv­a­lent of de­cid­ing against mir­a­cles and won­ders. Again he de­cided in fa­vor of “the Fa­ther’s will”; again he sur­ren­dered ev­ery­thing into the hands of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

136:6.3Je­sus’ hu­man na­ture dic­tated that the first duty was self-preser­va­tion; that is the nor­mal at­ti­tude of the nat­u­ral man on the worlds of time and space, and it is, there­fore, a le­git­i­mate re­ac­tion of a Uran­tia mor­tal. But Je­sus was not con­cerned merely with this world and its crea­tures; he was liv­ing a life de­signed to in­struct and in­spire the man­i­fold crea­tures of a far-flung uni­verse.

136:6.4Be­fore his bap­tismal il­lu­mi­na­tion he had lived in per­fect sub­mis­sion to the will and guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther. He em­phat­i­cally de­cided to con­tinue on in just such im­plicit mor­tal de­pen­dence on the Fa­ther’s will. He pur­posed to fol­low the un­nat­u­ral course—he de­cided not to seek self-preser­va­tion. He chose to go on pur­su­ing the pol­icy of re­fus­ing to de­fend him­self. He for­mu­lated his con­clu­sions in the words of Scrip­ture fa­mil­iar to his hu­man mind: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by ev­ery word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.” In reach­ing this con­clu­sion in re­gard to the ap­petite of the phys­i­cal na­ture as ex­pressed in hunger for food, the Son of Man made his fi­nal dec­la­ra­tion con­cern­ing all other urges of the flesh and the nat­u­ral im­pulses of hu­man na­ture.

136:6.5His super­hu­man power he might pos­si­bly use for oth­ers, but for him­self, never. And he pur­sued this pol­icy con­sis­tently to the very end, when it was jeer­ingly said of him: “He saved oth­ers; him­self he can­not save”—be­cause he would not.

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

136:6.7Je­sus sor­rowed for his peo­ple; he fully un­der­stood how they had been led up to the ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing Mes­siah, the time when “the earth will yield its fruits ten thou­sand­fold, and on one vine there will be a thou­sand branches, and each branch will pro­duce a thou­sand clus­ters, and each clus­ter will pro­duce a thou­sand grapes, and each grape will pro­duce a gal­lon of wine.” The Jews be­lieved the Mes­siah would usher in an era of mirac­u­lous plenty. The He­brews had long been nur­tured on tra­di­tions of mir­a­cles and leg­ends of won­ders.

136:6.8He was not a Mes­siah com­ing to mul­ti­ply bread and wine. He came not to min­is­ter to tem­po­ral needs only; he came to re­veal his Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth, while he sought to lead his earth chil­dren to join him in a sin­cere ef­fort so to live as to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

136:6.9In this de­ci­sion Je­sus of Naz­a­reth por­trayed to an on­look­ing uni­verse the folly and sin of pros­ti­tut­ing di­vine tal­ents and God-given abil­i­ties for per­sonal ag­gran­dize­ment or for purely self­ish gain and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. That was the sin of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia.

136:6.10This great de­ci­sion of Je­sus por­trays dra­mat­i­cally the truth that self­ish sat­is­fac­tion and sen­su­ous grat­i­fi­ca­tion, alone and of them­selves, are not able to con­fer hap­pi­ness upon evolv­ing hu­man be­ings. There are higher val­ues in mor­tal ex­is­tence—in­tel­lec­tual mas­tery and spir­i­tual achieve­ment—which far tran­scend the nec­es­sary grat­i­fi­ca­tion of man’s purely phys­i­cal ap­petites and urges. Man’s nat­u­ral en­dow­ment of tal­ent and abil­ity should be chiefly de­voted to the de­vel­op­ment and en­no­ble­ment of his higher pow­ers of mind and spirit.

136:6.11Je­sus thus re­vealed to the crea­tures of his uni­verse the tech­nique of the new and bet­ter way, the higher moral val­ues of liv­ing and the deeper spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary hu­man ex­is­tence on the worlds of space.

136:7.1Hav­ing made his de­ci­sions re­gard­ing such mat­ters as food and phys­i­cal min­is­tra­tion to the needs of his ma­te­rial body, the care of the health of him­self and his as­so­ciates, there re­mained yet other prob­lems to solve. What would be his at­ti­tude when con­fronted by per­sonal dan­ger? He de­cided to ex­er­cise nor­mal watch­care over his hu­man safety and to take rea­son­able pre­cau­tion to pre­vent the un­timely ter­mi­na­tion of his ca­reer in the flesh but to re­frain from all super­hu­man in­ter­ven­tion when the cri­sis of his life in the flesh should come. As he was for­mu­lat­ing this de­ci­sion, Je­sus was seated un­der the shade of a tree on an over­hang­ing ledge of rock with a precipice right there be­fore him. He fully re­al­ized that he could cast him­self off the ledge and out into space, and that noth­ing could hap­pen to harm him pro­vided he would re­scind his first great de­ci­sion not to in­voke the in­ter­po­si­tion of his ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences in the pros­e­cu­tion of his life­work on Uran­tia, and pro­vided he would ab­ro­gate his sec­ond de­ci­sion con­cern­ing his at­ti­tude to­ward self-preser­va­tion.

136:7.2Je­sus knew his fel­low coun­try­men were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would be above nat­u­ral law. Well had he been taught that Scrip­ture: “There shall no evil be­fall you, nei­ther shall any plague come near your dwell­ing. For he shall give his an­gels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands lest you dash your foot against a stone.” Would this sort of pre­sump­tion, this de­fi­ance of his Fa­ther’s laws of grav­ity, be jus­ti­fied in or­der to pro­tect him­self from pos­si­ble harm or, per­chance, to win the con­fi­dence of his mis­taught and dis­tracted peo­ple? But such a course, how­ever grat­i­fy­ing to the sign-seek­ing Jews, would be, not a rev­e­la­tion of his Fa­ther, but a ques­tion­able tri­fling with the es­tab­lished laws of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:7.3Un­der­stand­ing all of this and know­ing that the Mas­ter re­fused to work in de­fi­ance of his es­tab­lished laws of na­ture in so far as his per­sonal con­duct was con­cerned, you know of a cer­tainty that he never walked on the wa­ter nor did any­thing else which was an out­rage to his ma­te­rial or­der of ad­min­is­ter­ing the world; al­ways, of course, bear­ing in mind that there had, as yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly de­liv­ered from the lack of con­trol over the el­e­ment of time in con­nec­tion with those mat­ters put un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

136:7.4Through­out his en­tire earth life Je­sus was con­sis­tently loyal to this de­ci­sion. No mat­ter whether the Phar­isees taunted him for a sign, or the watch­ers at Cal­vary dared him to come down from the cross, he stead­fastly ad­hered to the de­ci­sion of this hour on the hill­side.

136:8.1The next great prob­lem with which this God-man wres­tled and which he pres­ently de­cided in ac­cor­dance with the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, con­cerned the ques­tion as to whether or not any of his super­hu­man pow­ers should be em­ployed for the pur­pose of at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion and win­ning the ad­her­ence of his fel­low men. Should he in any man­ner lend his uni­verse pow­ers to the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Jew­ish han­ker­ing for the spec­tac­u­lar and the mar­velous? He de­cided that he should not. He set­tled upon a pol­icy of pro­ce­dure which elim­i­nated all such prac­tices as the method of bring­ing his mis­sion to the no­tice of men. And he con­sis­tently lived up to this great de­ci­sion. Even when he per­mit­ted the man­i­fes­ta­tion of nu­mer­ous time-short­en­ing min­is­tra­tions of mercy, he al­most in­vari­ably ad­mon­ished the re­cip­i­ents of his heal­ing min­istry to tell no man about the ben­e­fits they had re­ceived. And al­ways did he refuse the taunt­ing chal­lenge of his en­e­mies to “show us a sign” in proof and dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity.

136:8.2Je­sus very wisely fore­saw that the work­ing of mir­a­cles and the ex­e­cu­tion of won­ders would call forth only out­ward al­le­giance by over­aw­ing the ma­te­rial mind; such per­for­mances would not re­veal God nor save men. He re­fused to be­come a mere won­der-worker. He re­solved to be­come oc­cu­pied with but a sin­gle task—the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of heaven.

136:8.3Through­out all this mo­men­tous di­a­logue of Je­sus’ com­muning with him­self, there was pres­ent the hu­man el­e­ment of ques­tion­ing and near-doubt­ing, for Je­sus was man as well as God. It was ev­i­dent he would never be re­ceived by the Jews as the Mes­siah if he did not work won­ders. Be­sides, if he would con­sent to do just one un­nat­u­ral thing, the hu­man mind would know of a cer­tainty that it was in sub­servience to a truly di­vine mind. Would it be con­sis­tent with “the Fa­ther’s will” for the di­vine mind to make this con­ces­sion to the doubt­ing na­ture of the hu­man mind? Je­sus de­cided that it would not and cited the pres­ence of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster as suf­fi­cient proof of di­vin­ity in part­ner­ship with hu­man­ity.

136:8.4Je­sus had trav­eled much; he re­called Rome, Alexan­dria, and Da­mas­cus. He knew the meth­ods of the world—how peo­ple gained their ends in pol­i­tics and com­merce by com­pro­mise and diplo­macy. Would he uti­lize this knowl­edge in the fur­ther­ance of his mis­sion on earth? No! He like­wise de­cided against all com­pro­mise with the wis­dom of the world and the in­flu­ence of riches in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom. He again chose to de­pend ex­clu­sively on the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.5Je­sus was fully aware of the short cuts open to one of his pow­ers. He knew many ways in which the at­ten­tion of the na­tion, and the whole world, could be im­me­di­ately fo­cused upon him­self. Soon the Pass­over would be cel­e­brated at Je­ru­sa­lem; the city would be thronged with vis­i­tors. He could as­cend the pin­na­cle of the tem­ple and be­fore the be­wil­dered mul­ti­tude walk out on the air; that would be the kind of a Mes­siah they were look­ing for. But he would sub­se­quently dis­ap­point them since he had not come to re-es­tab­lish David’s throne. And he knew the fu­til­ity of the Cali­gas­tia method of try­ing to get ahead of the nat­u­ral, slow, and sure way of ac­com­plish­ing the di­vine pur­pose. Again the Son of Man bowed obe­di­ently to the Fa­ther’s way, the Fa­ther’s will.

136:8.6Je­sus chose to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of man­kind by nat­u­ral, or­di­nary, dif­fi­cult, and try­ing meth­ods, just such pro­ce­dures as his earth chil­dren must sub­se­quently fol­low in their work of en­larg­ing and ex­tend­ing that heav­enly king­dom. For well did the Son of Man know that it would be “through much tribu­la­tion that many of the chil­dren of all ages would en­ter into the king­dom.” Je­sus was now pass­ing through the great test of civ­i­lized man, to have power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for purely self­ish or per­sonal pur­poses.

136:8.7In your con­sid­er­a­tion of the life and ex­pe­ri­ence of the Son of Man, it should be ever borne in mind that the Son of God was in­car­nate in the mind of a first-cen­tury hu­man be­ing, not in the mind of a twen­ti­eth-cen­tury or other-cen­tury mor­tal. By this we mean to con­vey the idea that the hu­man en­dow­ments of Je­sus were of nat­u­ral ac­quire­ment. He was the prod­uct of the hered­i­tary and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors of his time, plus the in­flu­ence of his train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion. His hu­man­ity was gen­uine, nat­u­ral, wholly de­rived from the an­tecedents of, and fos­tered by, the ac­tual in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and so­cial and eco­nomic con­di­tions of that day and gen­er­a­tion. While in the ex­pe­ri­ence of this God-man there was al­ways the pos­si­bil­ity that the di­vine mind would tran­scend the hu­man in­tel­lect, nonethe­less, when, and as, his hu­man mind func­tioned, it did per­form as would a true mor­tal mind un­der the con­di­tions of the hu­man en­vi­ron­ment of that day.

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

136:9.1Hav­ing set­tled such ques­tions of pol­icy as per­tained to his in­di­vid­ual re­la­tions to nat­u­ral law and spir­i­tual power, he turned his at­ten­tion to the choice of meth­ods to be em­ployed in the procla­ma­tion and es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God. John had al­ready be­gun this work; how might he con­tinue the mes­sage? How should he take over John’s mis­sion? How should he or­ga­nize his fol­low­ers for ef­fec­tive ef­fort and in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion? Je­sus was now reach­ing the fi­nal de­ci­sion which would for­bid that he fur­ther re­gard him­self as the Jew­ish Mes­siah, at least as the Mes­siah was pop­u­larly con­ceived in that day.

136:9.2The Jews en­vis­aged a de­liv­erer who would come in mirac­u­lous power to cast down Is­rael’s en­e­mies and es­tab­lish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and op­pres­sion. Je­sus knew that this hope would never be re­al­ized. He knew that the king­dom of heaven had to do with the over­throw of evil in the hearts of men, and that it was purely a mat­ter of spir­i­tual con­cern. He thought out the ad­vis­abil­ity of in­au­gu­rat­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom with a bril­liant and daz­zling dis­play of power—and such a course would have been per­mis­si­ble and wholly within the ju­ris­dic­tion of Mi­chael—but he fully de­cided against such a plan. He would not com­pro­mise with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques of Cali­gas­tia. He had won the world in po­ten­tial by sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will, and he pro­posed to fin­ish his work as he had be­gun it, and as the Son of Man.

136:9.3You can hardly imag­ine what would have hap­pened on Uran­tia had this God-man, now in po­ten­tial pos­ses­sion of all power in heaven and on earth, once de­cided to un­furl the ban­ner of sov­er­eignty, to mar­shal his won­der-work­ing bat­tal­ions in mil­i­tant ar­ray! But he would not com­pro­mise. He would not serve evil that the wor­ship of God might pre­sum­ably be de­rived there­from. He would abide by the Fa­ther’s will. He would pro­claim to an on­look­ing uni­verse, “You shall wor­ship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

136:9.4As the days passed, with ever-in­creas­ing clear­ness Je­sus per­ceived what kind of a truth-re­vealer he was to be­come. He dis­cerned that God’s way was not go­ing to be the easy way. He be­gan to re­al­ize that the cup of the re­main­der of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence might pos­si­bly be bit­ter, but he de­cided to drink it.

136:9.5Even his hu­man mind is say­ing good-bye to the throne of David. Step by step this hu­man mind fol­lows in the path of the di­vine. The hu­man mind still asks ques­tions but un­fail­ingly ac­cepts the di­vine an­swers as fi­nal rul­ings in this com­bined life of liv­ing as a man in the world while all the time sub­mit­ting un­qual­i­fiedly to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal and di­vine will.

136:9.6Rome was mis­tress of the West­ern world. The Son of Man, now in iso­la­tion and achiev­ing these mo­men­tous de­ci­sions, with the hosts of heaven at his com­mand, rep­re­sented the last chance of the Jews to at­tain world do­min­ion; but this earth­born Jew, who pos­sessed such tremen­dous wis­dom and power, de­clined to use his uni­verse en­dow­ments ei­ther for the ag­gran­dize­ment of him­self or for the en­throne­ment of his peo­ple. He saw, as it were, “the king­doms of this world,” and he pos­sessed the power to take them. The Most Highs of Eden­tia had re­signed all these pow­ers into his hands, but he did not want them. The king­doms of earth were pal­try things to in­ter­est the Cre­ator and Ruler of a uni­verse. He had only one ob­jec­tive, the fur­ther rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, the rule of the heav­enly Fa­ther in the hearts of man­kind.

136:9.7The idea of bat­tle, con­tention, and slaugh­ter was re­pug­nant to Je­sus; he would have none of it. He would ap­pear on earth as the Prince of Peace to re­veal a God of love. Be­fore his bap­tism he had again re­fused the of­fer of the Zealots to lead them in re­bel­lion against the Ro­man op­pres­sors. And now he made his fi­nal de­ci­sion re­gard­ing those Scrip­tures which his mother had taught him, such as: “The Lord has said to me, ‘You are my Son; this day have I be­got­ten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the hea­then for your in­her­i­tance and the ut­ter­most parts of the earth for your pos­ses­sion. You shall break them with a rod of iron; you shall dash them in pieces like a pot­ter’s ves­sel.’”

136:9.8Je­sus of Naz­a­reth reached the con­clu­sion that such ut­ter­ances did not re­fer to him. At last, and fi­nally, the hu­man mind of the Son of Man made a clean sweep of all these Mes­sianic dif­fi­cul­ties and con­tra­dic­tions—He­brew scrip­tures, pa­ren­tal train­ing, chazan teach­ing, Jew­ish ex­pec­ta­tions, and hu­man am­bi­tious long­ings; once and for all he de­cided upon his course. He would re­turn to Gal­i­lee and qui­etly be­gin the procla­ma­tion of the king­dom and trust his Fa­ther (the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster) to work out the de­tails of pro­ce­dure day by day.

136:9.9By these de­ci­sions Je­sus set a wor­thy ex­am­ple for ev­ery per­son on ev­ery world through­out a vast uni­verse when he re­fused to ap­ply ma­te­rial tests to prove spir­i­tual prob­lems, when he re­fused pre­sump­tu­ously to defy nat­u­ral laws. And he set an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of uni­verse loy­alty and moral no­bil­ity when he re­fused to grasp tem­po­ral power as the pre­lude to spir­i­tual glory.

136:9.10If the Son of Man had any doubts about his mis­sion and its na­ture when he went up in the hills af­ter his bap­tism, he had none when he came back to his fel­lows fol­low­ing the forty days of iso­la­tion and de­ci­sions.

136:9.11Je­sus has for­mu­lated a pro­gram for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. He will not cater to the phys­i­cal grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the peo­ple. He will not deal out bread to the mul­ti­tudes as he has so re­cently seen it be­ing done in Rome. He will not at­tract at­ten­tion to him­self by won­der-work­ing, even though the Jews are ex­pect­ing just that sort of a de­liv­erer. Nei­ther will he seek to win ac­cep­tance of a spir­i­tual mes­sage by a show of po­lit­i­cal au­thor­ity or tem­po­ral power.

136:9.12In re­ject­ing these meth­ods of en­hanc­ing the com­ing king­dom in the eyes of the ex­pec­tant Jews, Je­sus made sure that these same Jews would cer­tainly and fi­nally re­ject all of his claims to au­thor­ity and di­vin­ity. Know­ing all this, Je­sus long sought to pre­vent his early fol­low­ers al­lud­ing to him as the Mes­siah.

136:9.13Through­out his pub­lic min­istry he was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of deal­ing with three con­stantly re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions: the clamor to be fed, the in­sis­tence on mir­a­cles, and the fi­nal re­quest that he al­low his fol­low­ers to make him king. But Je­sus never de­parted from the de­ci­sions which he made dur­ing these days of his iso­la­tion in the Perean hills.

136:10.1On the last day of this mem­o­rable iso­la­tion, be­fore start­ing down the moun­tain to join John and his dis­ci­ples, the Son of Man made his fi­nal de­ci­sion. And this de­ci­sion he com­mu­ni­cated to the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster in these words, “And in all other mat­ters, as in these now of de­ci­sion-rec­ord, I pledge you I will be sub­ject to the will of my Fa­ther.” And when he had thus spo­ken, he jour­neyed down the moun­tain. And his face shone with the glory of spir­i­tual vic­tory and moral achieve­ment.

• Philip faced with question of lifetime

137:2.4Pe­ter took Philip to one side and pro­ceeded to ex­plain that they, re­fer­ring to him­self, An­drew, James, and John, had all be­come as­so­ciates of Je­sus in the new king­dom and strongly urged Philip to vol­un­teer for ser­vice. Philip was in a quandary. What should he do? Here, with­out a mo­ment’s warn­ing—on the road­side near the Jor­dan—there had come up for im­me­di­ate de­ci­sion the most mo­men­tous ques­tion of a life­time. By this time he was in earnest con­verse with Pe­ter, An­drew, and John while Je­sus was out­lin­ing to James the trip through Gal­i­lee and on to Ca­per­naum. Fi­nally, An­drew sug­gested to Philip, “Why not ask the Teacher?”

• mortals › must arrive at their own d.

163:2.8Thus al­ways it was and for­ever will be: Men must ar­rive at their own de­ci­sions. There is a cer­tain range of the free­dom of choice which mor­tals may ex­er­cise. The forces of the spir­i­tual world will not co­erce man; they al­low him to go the way of his own choos­ing.

• tarrying in valley of d.

165:3.8“How long will you tarry in the val­ley of de­ci­sion? Why do you halt be­tween two opin­ions? Why should Jew or gen­tile hes­i­tate to ac­cept the good news that he is a son of the eter­nal God? How long will it take us to per­suade you to en­ter joy­fully into your spir­i­tual in­her­i­tance? I came into this world to re­veal the Fa­ther to you and to lead you to the Fa­ther. The first I have done, but the last I may not do with­out your con­sent; the Fa­ther never com­pels any man to en­ter the king­dom. The in­vi­ta­tion ever has been and al­ways will be: Whoso­ever will, let him come and freely par­take of the wa­ter of life.”

• result of decisions › moral d. causes divine invasion of soul

196:3.20Ev­ery time man makes a re­flec­tive moral choice, he im­me­di­ately ex­pe­ri­ences a new di­vine in­va­sion of his soul. Moral choos­ing con­sti­tutes re­li­gion as the mo­tive of in­ner re­sponse to outer con­di­tions. But such a real re­li­gion is not a purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. It sig­ni­fies the whole of the sub­jec­tiv­ity of the in­di­vid­ual en­gaged in a mean­ing­ful and in­tel­li­gent re­sponse to to­tal ob­jec­tiv­ity—the uni­verse and its Maker.