eyes

76:4.1Adam and Eve were the found­ers of the vi­o­let race of men, the ninth hu­man race to ap­pear on Uran­tia. Adam and his off­spring had blue eyes, and the vi­o­let peo­ples were char­ac­ter­ized by fair com­plex­ions and light hair color—yel­low, red, and brown.

76:2.8Cain’s life in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had not been ex­actly happy since he was in such a pe­cu­liar way sym­bolic of the de­fault. It was not that his as­so­ciates were un­kind to him, but he had not been un­aware of their sub­con­scious re­sent­ment of his pres­ence. But Cain knew that, since he bore no tribal mark, he would be killed by the first neigh­bor­ing tribes­men who might chance to meet him. Fear, and some re­morse, led him to re­pent. Cain had never been in­dwelt by an Ad­juster, had al­ways been de­fi­ant of the fam­ily dis­ci­pline and dis­dain­ful of his fa­ther’s re­li­gion. But he now went to Eve, his mother, and asked for spir­i­tual help and guid­ance, and when he hon­estly sought di­vine as­sis­tance, an Ad­juster in­dwelt him. And this Ad­juster, dwell­ing within and look­ing out, gave Cain a dis­tinct ad­van­tage of su­pe­ri­or­ity which classed him with the greatly feared tribe of Adam.

70:10.9So­ci­ety early adopted the pay­ing-back at­ti­tude of re­tal­i­a­tion: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolv­ing tribes all rec­og­nized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance be­came the aim of prim­i­tive life, but re­li­gion has since greatly mod­i­fied these early tribal prac­tices. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion have al­ways pro­claimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not al­to­gether un­like pres­ent-day mur­ders un­der the pre­tense of the un­writ­ten law.

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

140:8.5He never ceased to warn his dis­ci­ples against the evil prac­tice of re­tal­i­a­tion; he made no al­low­ance for re­venge, the idea of get­ting even. He de­plored the hold­ing of grudges. He dis­al­lowed the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He dis­coun­te­nanced the whole con­cept of pri­vate and per­sonal re­venge, as­sign­ing these mat­ters to civil gov­ern­ment, on the one hand, and to the judg­ment of God, on the other. He made it clear to the three that his teach­ings ap­plied to the in­di­vid­ual, not the state. He sum­ma­rized his in­struc­tions up to that time re­gard­ing these mat­ters, as:

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

163:3.1By the time Je­sus had fin­ished talk­ing with Mata­dor­mus, Pe­ter and a num­ber of the apos­tles had gath­ered about him, and as the rich young man was de­part­ing, Je­sus turned around to face the apos­tles and said: “You see how dif­fi­cult it is for those who have riches to en­ter fully into the king­dom of God! Spir­i­tual wor­ship can­not be shared with ma­te­rial de­vo­tions; no man can serve two mas­ters. You have a say­ing that it is ‘eas­ier for a camel to go through the eye of a nee­dle than for the hea­then to in­herit eter­nal life.’ And I de­clare that it is as easy for this camel to go through the nee­dle’s eye as for these self-sat­is­fied rich ones to en­ter the king­dom of heaven.”

11:4.5But a fur­ther at­tempt to vi­su­al­ize to you the glo­ries of Par­a­dise would be fu­tile. You must wait, and as­cend while you wait, for truly, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nei­ther has it en­tered into the mind of mor­tal man, the things which the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has pre­pared for those who sur­vive the life in the flesh on the worlds of time and space.”

24:6.2I am not for­bid­den to un­der­take to tell you of the work of these Grad­u­ate Guides, but it is so ul­tra­spir­i­tual that I de­spair of be­ing able to ad­e­quately por­tray to the ma­te­rial mind a con­cept of their man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties. On the man­sion worlds, af­ter your vi­sion range is ex­tended and you are freed from the fet­ters of ma­te­rial com­par­isons, you can be­gin to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those re­al­i­ties which “eye can­not see nor ear hear, and which have never en­tered the con­cept of hu­man minds,” even those things which “God has pre­pared for those who love such eter­nal ver­i­ties.” You are not al­ways to be so lim­ited in the range of your vi­sion and spir­i­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

43:6.8If you en­joy the flow­ers, shrubs, and trees of Uran­tia, then will you feast your eyes upon the botan­i­cal beauty and the flo­ral grandeur of the su­per­nal gar­dens of Eden­tia. But it is be­yond my pow­ers of de­scrip­tion to un­der­take to con­vey to the mor­tal mind an ad­e­quate con­cept of these beau­ties of the heav­enly worlds. Truly, eye has not seen such glo­ries as await your ar­rival on these worlds of the mor­tal-as­cen­sion ad­ven­ture.

44:2.1Mor­tal man can hardly hope for more than a mea­ger and dis­torted con­cept of the func­tions of the heav­enly re­pro­duc­ers, which I must at­tempt to il­lus­trate through the gross and lim­ited sym­bol­ism of your ma­te­rial lan­guage. The spirit-mor­ontia world has a thou­sand and one things of su­preme value, things wor­thy of re­pro­duc­tion but un­known on Uran­tia, ex­pe­ri­ences that be­long in the cat­e­gory of the ac­tiv­i­ties which have hardly “en­tered into the mind of man,” those re­al­i­ties which God has in wait­ing for those who sur­vive the life in the flesh.

158:8.1En­ter­ing Ca­per­naum at twi­light, they went by un­fre­quented thor­ough­fares di­rectly to the home of Si­mon Pe­ter for their evening meal. While David Zeb­e­dee made ready to take them across the lake, they lin­gered at Si­mon’s house, and Je­sus, look­ing up at Pe­ter and the other apos­tles, asked: “As you walked along to­gether this af­ter­noon, what was it that you talked about so earnestly among your­selves?” The apos­tles held their peace be­cause many of them had con­tin­ued the dis­cus­sion be­gun at Mount Her­mon as to what po­si­tions they were to have in the com­ing king­dom; who should be the great­est, and so on. Je­sus, know­ing what it was that oc­cu­pied their thoughts that day, beck­oned to one of Pe­ter’s lit­tle ones and, set­ting the child down among them, said: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ex­cept you turn about and be­come more like this child, you will make lit­tle prog­ress in the king­dom of heaven. Whoso­ever shall hum­ble him­self and be­come as this lit­tle one, the same shall be­come great­est in the king­dom of heaven. And whoso re­ceives such a lit­tle one re­ceives me. And they who re­ceive me re­ceive also Him who sent me. If you would be first in the king­dom, seek to min­is­ter these good truths to your breth­ren in the flesh. But whoso­ever causes one of these lit­tle ones to stum­ble, it would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea. If the things you do with your hands, or the things you see with your eyes give of­fense in the prog­ress of the king­dom, sac­ri­fice these cher­ished idols, for it is bet­ter to en­ter the king­dom mi­nus many of the beloved things of life rather than to cling to these idols and find your­self shut out of the king­dom. But most of all, see that you de­spise not one of these lit­tle ones, for their an­gels do al­ways be­hold the faces of the heav­enly hosts.”

42:5.13Of all these ten phases of wave­like en­ergy ac­tiv­ity, the hu­man eye can re­act to just one oc­tave, the whole light of or­di­nary sun­light.

42:12.12On a ma­te­rial world you think of a body as hav­ing a spirit, but we re­gard the spirit as hav­ing a body. The ma­te­rial eyes are truly the win­dows of the spirit-born soul. The spirit is the ar­chi­tect, the mind is the builder, the body is the ma­te­rial build­ing.

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.

111:0.7Ev­ery race of evolv­ing Uran­tia mor­tals has a word equiv­a­lent to the con­cept of soul. Many prim­i­tive peo­ples be­lieved the soul looked out upon the world through hu­man eyes; there­fore did they so cravenly fear the malev­o­lence of the evil eye. They have long be­lieved that “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” The Rig-Veda says: “My mind speaks to my heart.”

140:6.12“The lamp of the body is the eye; if, there­fore, your eye is gen­er­ous, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is self­ish, the whole body will be filled with dark­ness. If the very light which is in you is turned to dark­ness, how great is that dark­ness!”