diversity

84:6.5The dif­fer­ences of na­ture, re­ac­tion, view­point, and think­ing be­tween men and women, far from oc­ca­sion­ing con­cern, should be re­garded as highly ben­e­fi­cial to man­kind, both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. Many or­ders of uni­verse crea­tures are cre­ated in dual phases of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion. Among mor­tals, Ma­te­rial Sons, and mid­soniters, this dif­fer­ence is de­scribed as male and fe­male; among ser­a­phim, cheru­bim, and Mor­ontia Com­pan­ions, it has been de­nom­i­nated pos­i­tive or ag­gres­sive and neg­a­tive or re­tir­ing. Such dual as­so­ci­a­tions greatly mul­ti­ply ver­sa­til­ity and over­come in­her­ent lim­i­ta­tions, even as do cer­tain tri­une as­so­ci­a­tions in the Par­a­dise-Ha­vona sys­tem.

84:6.6Men and women need each other in their mor­ontial and spir­i­tual as well as in their mor­tal ca­reers. The dif­fer­ences in view­point be­tween male and fe­male per­sist even be­yond the first life and through­out the lo­cal and super­uni­verse as­cen­sions. And even in Ha­vona, the pil­grims who were once men and women will still be aid­ing each other in the Par­a­dise as­cent. Never, even in the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity, will the crea­ture meta­mor­phose so far as to oblit­er­ate the per­son­al­ity trends that hu­mans call male and fe­male; al­ways will these two ba­sic vari­a­tions of hu­mankind con­tinue to in­trigue, stim­u­late, en­cour­age, and as­sist each other; al­ways will they be mu­tu­ally de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion in the so­lu­tion of per­plex­ing uni­verse prob­lems and in the over­com­ing of man­i­fold cos­mic dif­fi­cul­ties.

104:3.4While rea­son de­mands a mono­the­is­tic unity of cos­mic re­al­ity, fi­nite ex­pe­ri­ence re­quires the pos­tu­late of plu­ral Ab­so­lutes and of their co-or­di­na­tion in cos­mic re­la­tion­ships. With­out co-or­di­nate ex­is­tences there is no pos­si­bil­ity for the ap­pear­ance of di­ver­sity of ab­so­lute re­la­tion­ships, no chance for the op­er­a­tion of dif­fer­en­tials, vari­ables, mod­i­fiers, at­ten­u­a­tors, qual­i­fiers, or di­min­ish­ers.

115:3.4It is only man’s dis­tance from in­fin­ity that causes this con­cept to be ex­pressed as one word. While in­fin­ity is on the one hand UNITY, on the other it is DI­VER­SITY with­out end or limit. In­fin­ity, as it is ob­served by fi­nite in­tel­li­gences, is the max­i­mum para­dox of crea­ture phi­los­o­phy and fi­nite meta­physics. Though man’s spir­i­tual na­ture reaches up in the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence to the Fa­ther who is in­fi­nite, man’s in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity is ex­hausted by the max­i­mum con­cep­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing. Be­yond the Su­preme, con­cepts are in­creas­ingly names; less and less are they true des­ig­na­tions of re­al­ity; more and more do they be­come the crea­ture’s pro­jec­tion of fi­nite un­der­stand­ing to­ward the super­fi­nite.

• provide otherwise unattainable expression of diverse human potentials

51:4.4The evo­lu­tion of six—or of three—col­ored races, while seem­ing to de­te­ri­o­rate the orig­i­nal en­dow­ment of the red man, pro­vides cer­tain very de­sir­able vari­a­tions in mor­tal types and af­fords an oth­er­wise unattain­able ex­pres­sion of di­verse hu­man po­ten­tials. These mod­i­fi­ca­tions are ben­e­fi­cial to the prog­ress of man­kind as a whole pro­vided they are sub­se­quently up­stepped by the im­ported Adamic or vi­o­let race. On Uran­tia this usual plan of amal­ga­ma­tion was not ex­ten­sively car­ried out, and this fail­ure to ex­e­cute the plan of race evo­lu­tion makes it im­pos­si­ble for you to un­der­stand very much about the sta­tus of these peo­ples on an av­er­age in­hab­ited planet by ob­serv­ing the rem­nants of these early races on your world.

• competition healthfully stimulated by d.

64:6.311. Va­ri­ety is in­dis­pens­able to op­por­tu­nity for the wide func­tion­ing of nat­u­ral se­lec­tion, dif­fer­en­tial sur­vival of su­pe­rior strains.

64:6.322. Stronger and bet­ter races are to be had from the in­ter­breed­ing of di­verse peo­ples when these dif­fer­ent races are car­ri­ers of su­pe­rior in­her­i­tance fac­tors. And the Uran­tia races would have ben­e­fited by such an early amal­ga­ma­tion pro­vided such a con­joint peo­ple could have been sub­se­quently ef­fec­tively up­stepped by a thor­ough­go­ing ad­mix­ture with the su­pe­rior Adamic stock. The at­tempt to ex­e­cute such an ex­per­i­ment on Uran­tia un­der pres­ent racial con­di­tions would be highly dis­as­trous.

64:6.333. Com­pe­ti­tion is health­fully stim­u­lated by di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of races.

• unity not uniformity

134:4.6The king­dom of heaven in the hearts of men will cre­ate re­li­gious unity (not nec­es­sar­ily uni­for­mity) be­cause any and all re­li­gious groups com­posed of such re­li­gious be­liev­ers will be free from all no­tions of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity—re­li­gious sov­er­eignty.

• refrain from trying to mold believers according to some set pattern

140:8.26Je­sus knew men were dif­fer­ent, and he so taught his apos­tles. He con­stantly ex­horted them to re­frain from try­ing to mold the dis­ci­ples and be­liev­ers ac­cord­ing to some set pat­tern. He sought to al­low each soul to de­velop in its own way, a per­fect­ing and sep­a­rate in­di­vid­ual be­fore God. In an­swer to one of Pe­ter’s many ques­tions, the Mas­ter said: “I want to set men free so that they can start out afresh as lit­tle chil­dren upon the new and bet­ter life.” Je­sus al­ways in­sisted that true good­ness must be un­con­scious, in be­stow­ing char­ity not al­low­ing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

• religion of spirit permits diversity of belief

141:5.2“In this way you may ex­pe­ri­ence a per­fected unity of spirit pur­pose and spirit un­der­stand­ing grow­ing out of the mu­tual con­scious­ness of the iden­tity of each of your in­dwelling Par­a­dise spir­its; and you may en­joy all of this pro­found spir­i­tual unity in the very face of the ut­most di­ver­sity of your in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes of in­tel­lec­tual think­ing, tem­per­a­men­tal feel­ing, and so­cial con­duct. Your per­son­al­i­ties may be re­fresh­ingly di­verse and markedly dif­fer­ent, while your spir­i­tual na­tures and spirit fruits of di­vine wor­ship and broth­erly love may be so uni­fied that all who be­hold your lives will of a surety take cog­nizance of this spirit iden­tity and soul unity; they will rec­og­nize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and ac­cept­ably, how to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the ser­vice of God even while you ren­der such ser­vice in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique of your own orig­i­nal en­dow­ments of mind, body, and soul.

• each apostle taught his own view of gospel

148:1.2Each of the apos­tolic teach­ers taught his own view of the gospel of the king­dom. They made no ef­fort to teach just alike; there was no stan­dard­ized or dog­matic for­mu­la­tion of the­o­logic doc­trines. Though they all taught the same truth, each apos­tle pre­sented his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s teach­ing. And Je­sus up­held this pre­sen­ta­tion of the di­ver­sity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the things of the king­dom, un­fail­ingly har­mo­niz­ing and co-or­di­nat­ing these many and di­ver­gent views of the gospel at his weekly ques­tion hours. Not­with­stand­ing this great de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in mat­ters of teach­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter tended to dom­i­nate the the­ol­ogy of the school of evan­ge­lists. Next to Pe­ter, James Zeb­e­dee ex­erted the great­est per­sonal in­flu­ence.

• Jesus allowed Kirmeth freedom of action

148:8.3About this time there ar­rived at the Beth­saida en­camp­ment a trance prophet from Bag­dad, one Kirmeth. This sup­posed prophet had pe­cu­liar vi­sions when in trance and dreamed fan­tas­tic dreams when his sleep was dis­turbed. He cre­ated a con­sid­er­able dis­tur­bance at the camp, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes was in fa­vor of deal­ing rather roughly with the self-de­ceived pre­tender, but Je­sus in­ter­vened and al­lowed him en­tire free­dom of ac­tion for a few days. All who heard his preach­ing soon rec­og­nized that his teach­ing was not sound as judged by the gospel of the king­dom. He shortly re­turned to Bag­dad, tak­ing with him only a half dozen un­sta­ble and er­ratic souls. But be­fore Je­sus in­ter­ceded for the Bag­dad prophet, David Zeb­e­dee, with the as­sis­tance of a self-ap­pointed com­mit­tee, had taken Kirmeth out into the lake and, af­ter re­peat­edly plung­ing him into the wa­ter, had ad­vised him to de­part hence—to or­ga­nize and build a camp of his own.

• religion of spirit permits diversity of belief

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.

• forbid not strange preacher

159:2.1Je­sus went over to Gamala to visit John and those who worked with him at that place. That evening, af­ter the ses­sion of ques­tions and an­swers, John said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, yes­ter­day I went over to Ashtaroth to see a man who was teach­ing in your name and even claim­ing to be able to cast out dev­ils. Now this fel­low had never been with us, nei­ther does he fol­low af­ter us; there­fore I for­bade him to do such things.” Then said Je­sus: “For­bid him not. Do you not per­ceive that this gospel of the king­dom shall pres­ently be pro­claimed in all the world? How can you ex­pect that all who will be­lieve the gospel shall be sub­ject to your di­rec­tion? Re­joice that al­ready our teach­ing has be­gun to man­i­fest it­self be­yond the bounds of our per­sonal in­flu­ence. Do you not see, John, that those who pro­fess to do great works in my name must even­tu­ally sup­port our cause? They cer­tainly will not be quick to speak evil of me. My son, in mat­ters of this sort it would be bet­ter for you to reckon that he who is not against us is for us. In the gen­er­a­tions to come many who are not wholly wor­thy will do many strange things in my name, but I will not for­bid them. I tell you that, even when a cup of cold wa­ter is given to a thirsty soul, the Fa­ther’s mes­sen­gers shall ever make rec­ord of such a ser­vice of love.”

• unity not uniformity

182:1.6“And now, my Fa­ther, I would pray not only for these eleven men but also for all oth­ers who now be­lieve, or who may here­after be­lieve the gospel of the king­dom through the word of their fu­ture min­istry. I want them all to be one, even as you and I are one. You are in me and I am in you, and I de­sire that these be­liev­ers like­wise be in us; that both of our spir­its in­dwell them. If my chil­dren are one as we are one, and if they love one an­other as I have loved them, all men will then be­lieve that I came forth from you and be will­ing to re­ceive the rev­e­la­tion of truth and glory which I have made. The glory which you gave me I have re­vealed to these be­liev­ers. As you have lived with me in spirit, so have I lived with them in the flesh. As you have been one with me, so have I been one with them, and so will the new teacher ever be one with them and in them. And all this have I done that my breth­ren in the flesh may know that the Fa­ther loves them even as does the Son, and that you love them even as you love me. Fa­ther, work with me to save these be­liev­ers that they may pres­ently come to be with me in glory and then go on to join you in the Par­a­dise em­brace. Those who serve with me in hu­mil­i­a­tion, I would have with me in glory so that they may see all you have given into my hands as the eter­nal har­vest of the seed sow­ing of time in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh. I long to show my earthly breth­ren the glory I had with you be­fore the found­ing of this world. This world knows very lit­tle of you, righ­teous Fa­ther, but I know you, and I have made you known to these be­liev­ers, and they will make known your name to other gen­er­a­tions. And now I prom­ise them that you will be with them in the world even as you have been with me—even so.”

• unity not uniformity

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

• unity not uniformity

195:10.11Chris­tian­ity is se­ri­ously con­fronted with the doom em­bod­ied in one of its own slo­gans: “A house di­vided against it­self can­not stand.” The non-Chris­tian world will hardly ca­pit­u­late to a sect-di­vided Chris­ten­dom. The liv­ing Je­sus is the only hope of a pos­si­ble uni­fi­ca­tion of Chris­tian­ity. The true church—the Je­sus broth­er­hood—is in­vis­i­ble, spir­i­tual, and is char­ac­ter­ized by unity, not nec­es­sar­ily by uni­for­mity. Uni­for­mity is the ear­mark of the phys­i­cal world of mech­a­nis­tic na­ture. Spir­i­tual unity is the fruit of faith union with the liv­ing Je­sus. The vis­i­ble church should refuse longer to hand­i­cap the prog­ress of the in­vis­i­ble and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the king­dom of God. And this broth­er­hood is des­tined to be­come a liv­ing or­gan­ism in con­trast to an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. It may well uti­lize such so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tions, but it must not be sup­planted by them.

56:0.2The di­verse lev­els of cre­ation are all uni­fied in the plans and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse. To the cir­cum­scribed minds of time-space mor­tals the uni­verse may pre­sent many prob­lems and sit­u­a­tions which ap­par­ently por­tray dishar­mony and in­di­cate ab­sence of ef­fec­tive co-or­di­na­tion; but those of us who are able to ob­serve wider stretches of uni­ver­sal phe­nom­ena, and who are more ex­pe­ri­enced in this art of de­tect­ing the ba­sic unity which un­der­lies cre­ative di­ver­sity and of dis­cov­er­ing the di­vine one­ness which over­spreads all this func­tion­ing of plu­ral­ity, bet­ter per­ceive the di­vine and sin­gle pur­pose ex­hib­ited in all these man­i­fold man­i­fes­ta­tions of uni­ver­sal cre­ative en­ergy.

115:3.2Mind can never hope to grasp the con­cept of an Ab­so­lute with­out at­tempt­ing first to break the unity of such a re­al­ity. Mind is uni­fy­ing of all di­ver­gen­cies, but in the very ab­sence of such di­ver­gen­cies, mind finds no ba­sis upon which to at­tempt to for­mu­late un­der­stand­ing con­cepts.

115:3.3The pri­mor­dial sta­sis of in­fin­ity re­quires seg­men­ta­tion prior to hu­man at­tempts at com­pre­hen­sion. There is a unity in in­fin­ity which has been ex­pressed in these pa­pers as the I AM—the pre­mier pos­tu­late of the crea­ture mind. But never can a crea­ture un­der­stand how it is that this unity be­comes du­al­ity, tri­unity, and di­ver­sity while yet re­main­ing an un­qual­i­fied unity. Man en­coun­ters a sim­i­lar prob­lem when he pauses to con­tem­plate the un­di­vided De­ity of Trin­ity along­side the plu­ral per­son­al­iza­tion of God.