isolation

50:7.1On first thought it might ap­pear that Uran­tia and its as­so­ci­ated iso­lated worlds are most un­for­tu­nate in be­ing de­prived of the benef­i­cent pres­ence and in­flu­ence of such super­hu­man per­son­al­i­ties as a Plan­e­tary Prince and a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter. But iso­la­tion of these spheres af­fords their races a unique op­por­tu­nity for the ex­er­cise of faith and for the de­vel­op­ment of a pe­cu­liar qual­ity of con­fi­dence in cos­mic re­li­a­bil­ity which is not de­pen­dent on sight or any other ma­te­rial con­sid­er­a­tion. It may turn out, even­tu­ally, that mor­tal crea­tures hail­ing from the worlds quar­an­tined in con­se­quence of re­bel­lion are ex­tremely for­tu­nate. We have dis­cov­ered that such as­cend­ers are very early in­trusted with nu­mer­ous spe­cial as­sign­ments to cos­mic un­der­tak­ings where un­ques­tioned faith and sub­lime con­fi­dence are es­sen­tial to achieve­ment.

50:7.2On Je­ru­sem the as­cend­ers from these iso­lated worlds oc­cupy a res­i­den­tial sec­tor by them­selves and are known as the agon­don­ters, mean­ing evo­lu­tion­ary will crea­tures who can be­lieve with­out see­ing, per­se­vere when iso­lated, and tri­umph over in­su­per­a­ble dif­fi­cul­ties even when alone. This func­tional group­ing of the agon­don­ters per­sists through­out the as­cen­sion of the lo­cal uni­verse and the traver­sal of the super­uni­verse; it dis­ap­pears dur­ing the so­journ in Ha­vona but promptly reap­pears upon the at­tain­ment of Par­a­dise and def­i­nitely per­sists in the Corps of the Mor­tal Fi­nal­ity. Taba­man­tia is an agon­don­ter of fi­nal­i­ter sta­tus, hav­ing sur­vived from one of the quar­an­tined spheres in­volved in the first re­bel­lion ever to take place in the uni­verses of time and space.

50:7.3All through the Par­a­dise ca­reer, re­ward fol­lows ef­fort as the re­sult of causes. Such re­wards set off the in­di­vid­ual from the av­er­age, pro­vide a dif­fer­en­tial of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence, and con­tribute to the ver­sa­til­ity of ul­ti­mate per­for­mances in the col­lec­tive body of the fi­nal­i­ters.

50:7.4[Pre­sented by a Sec­ondary La­non­an­dek Son of the Re­serve Corps.]

• most undesirable when prolonged

100:5.8There is great dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with the ha­bit­ual prac­tice of re­li­gious day­dream­ing; mys­ti­cism may be­come a tech­nique of re­al­ity avoid­ance, al­beit it has some­times been a means of gen­uine spir­i­tual com­mu­nion. Short sea­sons of re­treat from the busy scenes of life may not be se­ri­ously dan­ger­ous, but pro­longed iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity is most un­de­sir­able. Un­der no cir­cum­stances should the trance­like state of vi­sion­ary con­scious­ness be cul­ti­vated as a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• fatal to happiness

111:4.7Hap­pi­ness and joy take ori­gin in the in­ner life. You can­not ex­pe­ri­ence real joy all by your­self. A soli­tary life is fa­tal to hap­pi­ness. Even fam­i­lies and na­tions will en­joy life more if they share it with oth­ers.

• not good for man to be alone

112:1.16Per­son­al­ity can­not very well per­form in iso­la­tion. Man is in­nately a so­cial crea­ture; he is dom­i­nated by the crav­ing of be­long­ing­ness. It is lit­er­ally true, “No man lives unto him­self.”

• divergence of personality from trend of universe

130:4.8Mis­adap­ta­tion of self-con­scious life to the uni­verse re­sults in cos­mic dishar­mony. Fi­nal di­ver­gence of per­son­al­ity will from the trend of the uni­verses ter­mi­nates in in­tel­lec­tual iso­la­tion, per­son­al­ity seg­re­ga­tion. Loss of the in­dwelling spirit pi­lot super­venes in spir­i­tual ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. In­tel­li­gent and pro­gress­ing life be­comes then, in and of it­self, an in­con­tro­vert­ible proof of the ex­is­tence of a pur­pose­ful uni­verse ex­press­ing the will of a di­vine Cre­ator. And this life, in the ag­gre­gate, strug­gles to­ward higher val­ues, hav­ing for its fi­nal goal the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• not good for man to be alone

160:2.61. Mu­tual self-ex­pres­sion and self-un­der­stand­ing. Many no­ble hu­man im­pulses die be­cause there is no one to hear their ex­pres­sion. Truly, it is not good for man to be alone. Some de­gree of rec­og­ni­tion and a cer­tain amount of ap­pre­ci­a­tion are es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment of hu­man char­ac­ter. With­out the gen­uine love of a home, no child can achieve the full de­vel­op­ment of nor­mal char­ac­ter. Char­ac­ter is some­thing more than mere mind and morals. Of all so­cial re­la­tions cal­cu­lated to de­velop char­ac­ter, the most ef­fec­tive and ideal is the af­fec­tion­ate and un­der­stand­ing friend­ship of man and woman in the mu­tual em­brace of in­tel­li­gent wed­lock. Mar­riage, with its man­i­fold re­la­tions, is best de­signed to draw forth those pre­cious im­pulses and those higher mo­tives which are in­dis­pens­able to the de­vel­op­ment of a strong char­ac­ter. I do not hes­i­tate thus to glo­rify fam­ily life, for your Mas­ter has wisely cho­sen the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship as the very cor­ner­stone of this new gospel of the king­dom. And such a match­less com­mu­nity of re­la­tion­ship, man and woman in the fond em­brace of the high­est ide­als of time, is so valu­able and sat­is­fy­ing an ex­pe­ri­ence that it is worth any price, any sac­ri­fice, req­ui­site for its pos­ses­sion.

• exhausts energy charge of soul

160:2.83. The en­thu­si­asm for liv­ing. Iso­la­tion tends to ex­haust the en­ergy charge of the soul. As­so­ci­a­tion with one’s fel­lows is es­sen­tial to the re­newal of the zest for life and is in­dis­pens­able to the main­te­nance of the cour­age to fight those bat­tles con­se­quent upon the as­cent to the higher lev­els of hu­man liv­ing. Friend­ship en­hances the joys and glo­ri­fies the tri­umphs of life. Lov­ing and in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions tend to rob suf­fer­ing of its sor­row and hard­ship of much of its bit­ter­ness. The pres­ence of a friend en­hances all beauty and ex­alts ev­ery good­ness. By in­tel­li­gent sym­bols man is able to quicken and en­large the ap­pre­cia­tive ca­pac­i­ties of his friends. One of the crown­ing glo­ries of hu­man friend­ship is this power and pos­si­bil­ity of the mu­tual stim­u­la­tion of the imag­i­na­tion. Great spir­i­tual power is in­her­ent in the con­scious­ness of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to a com­mon cause, mu­tual loy­alty to a cos­mic De­ity.

160:2.94. The en­hanced de­fense against all evil. Per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion and mu­tual af­fec­tion is an ef­fi­cient in­sur­ance against evil. Dif­fi­cul­ties, sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, and de­feat are more painful and dis­heart­en­ing when borne alone. As­so­ci­a­tion does not trans­mute evil into righ­teous­ness, but it does aid in greatly less­en­ing the sting. Said your Mas­ter, “Happy are they who mourn”—if a friend is at hand to com­fort. There is pos­i­tive strength in the knowl­edge that you live for the wel­fare of oth­ers, and that these oth­ers like­wise live for your wel­fare and ad­vance­ment. Man lan­guishes in iso­la­tion. Hu­man be­ings un­fail­ingly be­come dis­cour­aged when they view only the tran­si­tory trans­ac­tions of time. The pres­ent, when di­vorced from the past and the fu­ture, be­comes ex­as­per­at­ingly triv­ial. Only a glimpse of the cir­cle of eter­nity can in­spire man to do his best and can chal­lenge the best in him to do its ut­most. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most un­selfishly for the good of oth­ers, his fel­low so­journ­ers in time and eter­nity.

• fatal to happiness
• not good for man to be alone

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

• Adam and Eve painfully aware of planetary isolation

74:3.1And now, af­ter their for­mal in­stal­la­tion, Adam and Eve be­came painfully aware of their plan­e­tary iso­la­tion. Silent were the fa­mil­iar broad­casts, and ab­sent were all the cir­cuits of ex­tra­plan­e­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Their Je­ru­sem fel­lows had gone to worlds run­ning along smoothly with a well-es­tab­lished Plan­e­tary Prince and an ex­pe­ri­enced staff ready to re­ceive them and com­pe­tent to co-op­er­ate with them dur­ing their early ex­pe­ri­ence on such worlds. But on Uran­tia re­bel­lion had changed ev­ery­thing. Here the Plan­e­tary Prince was very much pres­ent, and though shorn of most of his power to work evil, he was still able to make the task of Adam and Eve dif­fi­cult and to some ex­tent haz­ardous. It was a se­ri­ous and dis­il­lu­sioned Son and Daugh­ter of Je­ru­sem who walked that night through the Gar­den un­der the shin­ing of the full moon, dis­cussing plans for the next day.

74:3.2Thus ended the first day of Adam and Eve on iso­lated Uran­tia, the con­fused planet of the Cali­gas­tia be­trayal; and they walked and talked far into the night, their first night on earth—and it was so lonely.

• Adam and Eve painfully aware of planetary isolation

75:0.1Af­ter more than one hun­dred years of ef­fort on Uran­tia, Adam was able to see very lit­tle prog­ress out­side the Gar­den; the world at large did not seem to be im­prov­ing much. The re­al­iza­tion of race bet­ter­ment ap­peared to be a long way off, and the sit­u­a­tion seemed so des­per­ate as to de­mand some­thing for re­lief not em­braced in the orig­i­nal plans. At least that is what of­ten passed through Adam’s mind, and he so ex­pressed him­self many times to Eve. Adam and his mate were loyal, but they were iso­lated from their kind, and they were sorely dis­tressed by the sorry plight of their world.

75:1.1The Adamic mis­sion on ex­per­i­men­tal, re­bel­lion-seared, and iso­lated Uran­tia was a formidable un­der­tak­ing. And the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter early be­came aware of the dif­fi­culty and com­plex­ity of their plan­e­tary as­sign­ment. Nev­er­the­less, they coura­geously set about the task of solv­ing their man­i­fold prob­lems. But when they ad­dressed them­selves to the all-im­por­tant work of elim­i­nat­ing the de­fec­tives and de­gen­er­ates from among the hu­man strains, they were quite dis­mayed. They could see no way out of the dilemma, and they could not take coun­sel with their su­pe­ri­ors on ei­ther Je­ru­sem or Eden­tia. Here they were, iso­lated and day by day con­fronted with some new and com­pli­cated tan­gle, some prob­lem that seemed to be un­solv­able.

75:1.2Un­der nor­mal con­di­tions the first work of a Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve would be the co-or­di­na­tion and blend­ing of the races. But on Uran­tia such a project seemed just about hope­less, for the races, while bi­o­log­i­cally fit, had never been purged of their re­tarded and de­fec­tive strains.

75:1.3Adam and Eve found them­selves on a sphere wholly un­pre­pared for the procla­ma­tion of the broth­er­hood of man, a world grop­ing about in ab­ject spir­i­tual dark­ness and cursed with con­fu­sion worse con­founded by the mis­car­riage of the mis­sion of the pre­ced­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion. Mind and morals were at a low level, and in­stead of be­gin­ning the task of ef­fect­ing re­li­gious unity, they must be­gin all anew the work of con­vert­ing the in­hab­i­tants to the most sim­ple forms of re­li­gious be­lief. In­stead of find­ing one lan­guage ready for adop­tion, they were con­fronted by the world-wide con­fu­sion of hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of lo­cal di­alects. No Adam of the plan­e­tary ser­vice was ever set down on a more dif­fi­cult world; the ob­sta­cles seemed in­su­per­a­ble and the prob­lems be­yond crea­ture so­lu­tion.

75:1.4They were iso­lated, and the tremen­dous sense of lone­li­ness which bore down upon them was all the more height­ened by the early de­par­ture of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers. Only in­di­rectly, by means of the an­gelic or­ders, could they com­mu­ni­cate with any be­ing off the planet. Slowly their cour­age weak­ened, their spir­its drooped, and some­times their faith al­most fal­tered.

75:1.5And this is the true pic­ture of the con­ster­na­tion of these two no­ble souls as they pon­dered the tasks which con­fronted them. They were both keenly aware of the enor­mous un­der­tak­ing in­volved in the ex­e­cu­tion of their plan­e­tary as­sign­ment.

75:1.6Prob­a­bly no Ma­te­rial Sons of Neb­a­don were ever faced with such a dif­fi­cult and seem­ingly hope­less task as con­fronted Adam and Eve in the sorry plight of Uran­tia. But they would have some­time met with suc­cess had they been more farsee­ing and pa­tient. Both of them, es­pe­cially Eve, were al­to­gether too im­pa­tient; they were not will­ing to set­tle down to the long, long en­durance test. They wanted to see some im­me­di­ate re­sults, and they did, but the re­sults thus se­cured proved most dis­as­trous both to them­selves and to their world.

• Buddhism advocated i. from objective reality

94:11.6But a great lim­i­ta­tion in the orig­i­nal gospel of Sid­dhartha, as it was in­ter­preted by his fol­low­ers, was that it at­tempted the com­plete lib­er­a­tion of the hu­man self from all the lim­i­ta­tions of the mor­tal na­ture by the tech­nique of iso­lat­ing the self from ob­jec­tive re­al­ity. True cos­mic self-re­al­iza­tion re­sults from iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with cos­mic re­al­ity and with the fi­nite cos­mos of en­ergy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and con­di­tioned by time.

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

139:8.10Thomas had some very bad days; he was blue and down­cast at times. The loss of his twin sis­ter when he was nine years old had oc­ca­sioned him much youth­ful sor­row and had added to his tem­per­a­men­tal prob­lems of later life. When Thomas would be­come de­spon­dent, some­times it was Na­than­iel who helped him to re­cover, some­times Pe­ter, and not in­fre­quently one of the Al­pheus twins. When he was most de­pressed, un­for­tu­nately he al­ways tried to avoid com­ing in di­rect con­tact with Je­sus. But the Mas­ter knew all about this and had an un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy for his apos­tle when he was thus af­flicted with de­pres­sion and ha­rassed by doubts.

139:8.11Some­times Thomas would get per­mis­sion from An­drew to go off by him­self for a day or two. But he soon learned that such a course was not wise; he early found that it was best, when he was down­hearted, to stick close to his work and to re­main near his as­so­ciates. But no mat­ter what hap­pened in his emo­tional life, he kept right on be­ing an apos­tle. When the time ac­tu­ally came to move for­ward, it was al­ways Thomas who said, “Let’s go!”

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

189:4.1As we ap­proach the time of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus on this early Sun­day morn­ing, it should be re­called that the ten apos­tles were so­journ­ing at the home of Eli­jah and Mary Mark, where they were asleep in the up­per cham­ber, rest­ing on the very couches whereon they re­clined dur­ing the last sup­per with their Mas­ter. This Sun­day morn­ing they were all there as­sem­bled ex­cept Thomas. Thomas was with them for a few min­utes late Sat­ur­day night when they first got to­gether, but the sight of the apos­tles, cou­pled with the thought of what had hap­pened to Je­sus, was too much for him. He looked his as­so­ciates over and im­me­di­ately left the room, go­ing to the home of Si­mon in Beth­page, where he thought to grieve over his trou­bles in soli­tude. The apos­tles all suf­fered, not so much from doubt and de­spair as from fear, grief, and shame.

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

191:0.1Res­ur­rec­tion Sun­day was a ter­ri­ble day in the lives of the apos­tles; ten of them spent the larger part of the day in the up­per cham­ber be­hind barred doors. They might have fled from Je­ru­sa­lem, but they were afraid of be­ing ar­rested by the agents of the San­hedrin if they were found abroad. Thomas was brood­ing over his trou­bles alone at Beth­page. He would have fared bet­ter had he re­mained with his fel­low apos­tles, and he would have aided them to di­rect their dis­cus­sions along more help­ful lines.

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

191:0.3Their iso­la­tion had much to do with their trou­bles. John Mark kept them in touch with de­vel­op­ments about the tem­ple and in­formed them as to the many ru­mors gain­ing head­way in the city, but it did not oc­cur to him to gather up news from the dif­fer­ent groups of be­liev­ers to whom Je­sus had al­ready ap­peared. That was the kind of ser­vice which had here­to­fore been ren­dered by the mes­sen­gers of David, but they were all ab­sent on their last as­sign­ment as her­alds of the res­ur­rec­tion to those groups of be­liev­ers who dwelt re­mote from Je­ru­sa­lem. For the first time in all these years the apos­tles re­al­ized how much they had been de­pen­dent on David’s mes­sen­gers for their daily in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the af­fairs of the king­dom.

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

191:0.12Thomas was in the midst of one of his typ­i­cal spells of de­spair­ing de­pres­sion. He slept a por­tion of the day and walked over the hills the rest of the time. He felt the urge to re­join his fel­low apos­tles, but the de­sire to be by him­self was the stronger.

• Thomas would have fared better with his fellows

191:5.1Thomas spent a lone­some week alone with him­self in the hills around about Oli­vet. Dur­ing this time he saw only those at Si­mon’s house and John Mark. It was about nine o’clock on Sat­ur­day, April 15, when the two apos­tles found him and took him back with them to their ren­dezvous at the Mark home. The next day Thomas lis­tened to the telling of the sto­ries of the Mas­ter’s var­i­ous ap­pear­ances, but he stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve. He main­tained that Pe­ter had en­thused them into think­ing they had seen the Mas­ter. Na­than­iel rea­soned with him, but it did no good. There was an emo­tional stub­born­ness as­so­ci­ated with his cus­tom­ary doubt­ful­ness, and this state of mind, cou­pled with his cha­grin at hav­ing run away from them, con­spired to cre­ate a sit­u­a­tion of iso­la­tion which even Thomas him­self did not fully un­der­stand. He had with­drawn from his fel­lows, he had gone his own way, and now, even when he was back among them, he un­con­sciously tended to as­sume an at­ti­tude of dis­agree­ment. He was slow to sur­ren­der; he dis­liked to give in. With­out in­tend­ing it, he re­ally en­joyed the at­ten­tion paid him; he de­rived un­con­scious sat­is­fac­tion from the ef­forts of all his fel­lows to con­vince and con­vert him. He had missed them for a full week, and he ob­tained con­sid­er­able plea­sure from their per­sis­tent at­ten­tions.

• fate of Judas is solemn warning against

193:4.1It was in the first part of the Mas­ter’s farewell mes­sage to his apos­tles that he al­luded to the loss of Ju­das and held up the tragic fate of their traitorous fel­low worker as a solemn warn­ing against the dan­gers of so­cial and fra­ter­nal iso­la­tion. It may be help­ful to be­liev­ers, in this and in fu­ture ages, briefly to re­view the causes of Ju­das’s down­fall in the light of the Mas­ter’s re­marks and in view of the ac­cu­mu­lated en­light­en­ment of suc­ceed­ing cen­turies.

• fate of Judas is solemn warning against

193:4.12As a re­sult of his per­sis­tent iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity, his griefs mul­ti­plied, his sor­rows in­creased, his anx­i­eties aug­mented, and his de­spair deep­ened al­most be­yond en­durance.

32:3.6The far­ther down the scale of life we go, the more dif­fi­cult it be­comes to lo­cate, with the eye of faith, the in­vis­i­ble Fa­ther. The lower crea­tures—and some­times even the higher per­son­al­i­ties—find it dif­fi­cult al­ways to en­vis­age the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in his Cre­ator Sons. And so, pend­ing the time of their spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion, when per­fec­tion of de­vel­op­ment will en­able them to see God in per­son, they grow weary in pro­gres­sion, en­ter­tain spir­i­tual doubts, stum­ble into con­fu­sion, and thus iso­late them­selves from the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual aims of their time and uni­verse. In this way they lose the abil­ity to see the Fa­ther when be­hold­ing the Cre­ator Son. The surest safe­guard for the crea­ture through­out the long strug­gle to at­tain the Fa­ther, dur­ing this time when in­her­ent con­di­tions make such at­tain­ment im­pos­si­ble, is tena­ciously to hold on to the truth-fact of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence in his Sons. Lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, spir­i­tu­ally and per­son­ally, the Fa­ther and the Sons are one. It is a fact: He who has seen a Cre­ator Son has seen the Fa­ther.

• faith of Jesus provides salvation from

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

• faith of Jesus provides salvation from

101:6.135. Sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the lim­i­ta­tions of self-con­scious­ness through the at­tain­ment of the cos­mic lev­els of the Su­preme Mind and by co-or­di­na­tion with the at­tain­ments of all other self-con­scious be­ings.

• destroyed basis for feelings of i.

103:4.4Je­sus swept away all of the cer­e­mo­ni­als of sac­ri­fice and atone­ment. He de­stroyed the ba­sis of all this fic­ti­tious guilt and sense of iso­la­tion in the uni­verse by declar­ing that man is a child of God; the crea­ture-Cre­ator re­la­tion­ship was placed on a child-par­ent ba­sis. God be­comes a lov­ing Fa­ther to his mor­tal sons and daugh­ters. All cer­e­mo­ni­als not a le­git­i­mate part of such an in­ti­mate fam­ily re­la­tion­ship are for­ever ab­ro­gated.

• times of isolation › on Mount Hermon

134:7.6The in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster now led Je­sus to for­sake the dwell­ing places of men and be­take him­self up to Mount Her­mon that he might fin­ish his work of mas­ter­ing his hu­man mind and com­plete the task of ef­fect­ing his full con­se­cra­tion to the re­main­der of his life­work on earth.

134:7.7This was one of those un­usual and ex­traor­di­nary epochs in the Mas­ter’s earth life on Uran­tia. An­other and very sim­i­lar one was the ex­pe­ri­ence he passed through when alone in the hills near Pella just sub­se­quent to his bap­tism. This pe­riod of iso­la­tion on Mount Her­mon marked the ter­mi­na­tion of his purely hu­man ca­reer, that is, the tech­ni­cal ter­mi­na­tion of the mor­tal be­stowal, while the later iso­la­tion marked the be­gin­ning of the more di­vine phase of the be­stowal. And Je­sus lived alone with God for six weeks on the slopes of Mount Her­mon.

134:8.1Af­ter spend­ing some time in the vicin­ity of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, Je­sus made ready his sup­plies, and se­cur­ing a beast of bur­den and a lad named Tiglath, he pro­ceeded along the Da­mas­cus road to a vil­lage some­time known as Beit Jenn in the foothills of Mount Her­mon. Here, near the mid­dle of Au­gust, A.D. 25, he es­tab­lished his head­quar­ters, and leav­ing his sup­plies in the cus­tody of Tiglath, he as­cended the lonely slopes of the moun­tain. Tiglath ac­com­pa­nied Je­sus this first day up the moun­tain to a des­ig­nated point about 6,000 feet above sea level, where they built a stone con­tainer in which Tiglath was to de­posit food twice a week.

134:8.2The first day, af­ter he had left Tiglath, Je­sus had as­cended the moun­tain only a short way when he paused to pray. Among other things he asked his Fa­ther to send back the guard­ian ser­a­phim to “be with Tiglath.” He re­quested that he be per­mit­ted to go up to his last strug­gle with the re­al­i­ties of mor­tal ex­is­tence alone. And his re­quest was granted. He went into the great test with only his in­dwelling Ad­juster to guide and sus­tain him.

134:8.3Je­sus ate fru­gally while on the moun­tain; he ab­stained from all food only a day or two at a time. The super­hu­man be­ings who con­fronted him on this moun­tain, and with whom he wres­tled in spirit, and whom he de­feated in power, were real; they were his arch­en­e­mies in the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia; they were not phan­tasms of the imag­i­na­tion evolved out of the in­tel­lec­tual va­garies of a weak­ened and starv­ing mor­tal who could not dis­tin­guish re­al­ity from the vi­sions of a dis­or­dered mind.

134:8.4Je­sus spent the last three weeks of Au­gust and the first three weeks of Septem­ber on Mount Her­mon. Dur­ing these weeks he fin­ished the mor­tal task of achiev­ing the cir­cles of mind-un­der­stand­ing and per­son­al­ity-con­trol. Through­out this pe­riod of com­mu­nion with his heav­enly Fa­ther the in­dwelling Ad­juster also com­pleted the as­signed ser­vices. The mor­tal goal of this earth crea­ture was there at­tained. Only the fi­nal phase of mind and Ad­juster at­tune­ment re­mained to be con­sum­mated.

134:8.5Af­ter more than five weeks of un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther, Je­sus be­came ab­so­lutely as­sured of his na­ture and of the cer­tainty of his tri­umph over the ma­te­rial lev­els of time-space per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion. He fully be­lieved in, and did not hes­i­tate to as­sert, the as­cen­dancy of his di­vine na­ture over his hu­man na­ture.

134:8.6Near the end of the moun­tain so­journ Je­sus asked his Fa­ther if he might be per­mit­ted to hold con­fer­ence with his Sa­ta­nia en­e­mies as the Son of Man, as Joshua ben Joseph. This re­quest was granted. Dur­ing the last week on Mount Her­mon the great temp­ta­tion, the uni­verse trial, oc­curred. Sa­tan (rep­re­sent­ing Lu­cifer) and the re­bel­lious Plan­e­tary Prince, Cali­gas­tia, were pres­ent with Je­sus and were made fully vis­i­ble to him. And this “temp­ta­tion,” this fi­nal trial of hu­man loy­alty in the face of the mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions of rebel per­son­al­i­ties, had not to do with food, tem­ple pin­na­cles, or pre­sump­tu­ous acts. It had not to do with the king­doms of this world but with the sov­er­eignty of a mighty and glo­ri­ous uni­verse. The sym­bol­ism of your rec­ords was in­tended for the back­ward ages of the world’s child­like thought. And sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions should un­der­stand what a great strug­gle the Son of Man passed through that event­ful day on Mount Her­mon.

134:8.7To the many pro­pos­als and coun­ter­pro­pos­als of the emis­saries of Lu­cifer, Je­sus only made re­ply: “May the will of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther pre­vail, and you, my re­bel­lious son, may the An­cients of Days judge you di­vinely. I am your Cre­ator-fa­ther; I can hardly judge you justly, and my mercy you have al­ready spurned. I com­mit you to the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the Judges of a greater uni­verse.”

134:8.8To all the Lu­cifer-sug­gested com­pro­mises and make­shifts, to all such specious pro­pos­als about the in­car­na­tion be­stowal, Je­sus only made re­ply, “The will of my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise be done.” And when the try­ing or­deal was fin­ished, the de­tached guard­ian ser­a­phim re­turned to Je­sus’ side and min­is­tered to him.

134:8.9On an af­ter­noon in late sum­mer, amid the trees and in the si­lence of na­ture, Mi­chael of Neb­a­don won the un­ques­tioned sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse. On that day he com­pleted the task set for Cre­ator Sons to live to the full the in­car­nated life in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space. The uni­verse an­nounce­ment of this mo­men­tous achieve­ment was not made un­til the day of his bap­tism, months af­ter­ward, but it all re­ally took place that day on the moun­tain. And when Je­sus came down from his so­journ on Mount Her­mon, the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in Sa­ta­nia and the Cali­gas­tia se­ces­sion on Uran­tia were vir­tu­ally set­tled. Je­sus had paid the last price re­quired of him to at­tain the sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse, which in it­self reg­u­lates the sta­tus of all rebels and de­ter­mines that all such fu­ture up­heavals (if they ever oc­cur) may be dealt with sum­mar­ily and ef­fec­tively. Ac­cord­ingly, it may be seen that the so-called “great temp­ta­tion” of Je­sus took place some­time be­fore his bap­tism and not just af­ter that event.

134:8.10At the end of this so­journ on the moun­tain, as Je­sus was mak­ing his de­scent, he met Tiglath com­ing up to the ren­dezvous with food. Turn­ing him back, he said only: “The pe­riod of rest is over; I must re­turn to my Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” He was a silent and much changed man as they jour­neyed back to Dan, where he took leave of the lad, giv­ing him the don­key. He then pro­ceeded south by the same way he had come, to Ca­per­naum.

• times of isolation › 40 days in wilderness

136:2.6When Je­sus was bap­tized, he re­pented of no mis­deeds; he made no con­fes­sion of sin. His was the bap­tism of con­se­cra­tion to the per­for­mance of the will of the heav­enly Fa­ther. At his bap­tism he heard the un­mis­tak­able call of his Fa­ther, the fi­nal sum­mons to be about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness, and he went away into pri­vate seclu­sion for forty days to think over these man­i­fold prob­lems. In thus re­tir­ing for a sea­son from ac­tive per­son­al­ity con­tact with his earthly as­so­ciates, Je­sus, as he was and on Uran­tia, was fol­low­ing the very pro­ce­dure that ob­tains on the mor­ontia worlds when­ever an as­cend­ing mor­tal fuses with the in­ner pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

136:3.1Je­sus had en­dured the great temp­ta­tion of his mor­tal be­stowal be­fore his bap­tism when he had been wet with the dews of Mount Her­mon for six weeks. There on Mount Her­mon, as an un­aided mor­tal of the realm, he had met and de­feated the Uran­tia pre­tender, Cali­gas­tia, the prince of this world. That event­ful day, on the uni­verse rec­ords, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth had be­come the Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia. And this Prince of Uran­tia, so soon to be pro­claimed su­preme Sov­er­eign of Neb­a­don, now went into forty days of re­tire­ment to for­mu­late the plans and de­ter­mine upon the tech­nique of pro­claim­ing the new king­dom of God in the hearts of men.

136:3.2Af­ter his bap­tism he en­tered upon the forty days of ad­just­ing him­self to the changed re­la­tion­ships of the world and the uni­verse oc­ca­sioned by the per­son­al­iza­tion of his Ad­juster. Dur­ing this iso­la­tion in the Perean hills he de­ter­mined upon the pol­icy to be pur­sued and the meth­ods to be em­ployed in the new and changed phase of earth life which he was about to in­au­gu­rate.

136:3.3Je­sus did not go into re­tire­ment for the pur­pose of fast­ing and for the af­flic­tion of his soul. He was not an as­cetic, and he came for­ever to de­stroy all such no­tions re­gard­ing the ap­proach to God. His rea­sons for seek­ing this re­tire­ment were en­tirely dif­fer­ent from those which had ac­tu­ated Moses and Eli­jah, and even John the Bap­tist. Je­sus was then wholly self-con­scious con­cern­ing his re­la­tion to the uni­verse of his mak­ing and also to the uni­verse of uni­verses, super­vised by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, his Fa­ther in heaven. He now fully re­called the be­stowal charge and its in­struc­tions ad­min­is­tered by his el­der brother, Im­manuel, ere he en­tered upon his Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. He now clearly and fully com­pre­hended all these far-flung re­la­tion­ships, and he de­sired to be away for a sea­son of quiet med­i­ta­tion so that he could think out the plans and de­cide upon the pro­ce­dures for the pros­e­cu­tion of his pub­lic labors in be­half of this world and for all other worlds in his lo­cal uni­verse.

136:3.4While wan­der­ing about in the hills, seek­ing a suit­able shel­ter, Je­sus en­coun­tered his uni­verse chief ex­ec­u­tive, Ga­briel, the Bright and Morn­ing Star of Neb­a­don. Ga­briel now re-es­tab­lished per­sonal com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Cre­ator Son of the uni­verse; they met di­rectly for the first time since Mi­chael took leave of his as­so­ciates on Sal­ving­ton when he went to Eden­tia prepara­tory to en­ter­ing upon the Uran­tia be­stowal. Ga­briel, by di­rec­tion of Im­manuel and on au­thor­ity of the Uversa An­cients of Days, now laid be­fore Je­sus in­for­ma­tion in­di­cat­ing that his be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence on Uran­tia was prac­ti­cally fin­ished so far as con­cerned the earn­ing of the per­fected sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse and the ter­mi­na­tion of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. The for­mer was achieved on the day of his bap­tism when the per­son­al­iza­tion of his Ad­juster demon­strated the per­fec­tion and com­ple­tion of his be­stowal in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, and the lat­ter was a fact of his­tory on that day when he came down from Mount Her­mon to join the wait­ing lad, Tiglath. Je­sus was now in­formed, upon the high­est au­thor­ity of the lo­cal uni­verse and the super­uni­verse, that his be­stowal work was fin­ished in so far as it af­fected his per­sonal sta­tus in re­la­tion to sov­er­eignty and re­bel­lion. He had al­ready had this as­sur­ance di­rect from Par­a­dise in the bap­tismal vi­sion and in the phe­nom­e­non of the per­son­al­iza­tion of his in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

136:3.5While he tar­ried on the moun­tain, talk­ing with Ga­briel, the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther of Eden­tia ap­peared to Je­sus and Ga­briel in per­son, say­ing: “The rec­ords are com­pleted. The sov­er­eignty of Mi­chael num­ber 611,121 over his uni­verse of Neb­a­don rests in com­ple­tion at the right hand of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. I bring to you the be­stowal re­lease of Im­manuel, your spon­sor-brother for the Uran­tia in­car­na­tion. You are at lib­erty now or at any sub­se­quent time, in the man­ner of your own choos­ing, to ter­mi­nate your in­car­na­tion be­stowal, as­cend to the right hand of your Fa­ther, re­ceive your sov­er­eignty, and as­sume your well-earned un­con­di­tional ruler­ship of all Neb­a­don. I also tes­tify to the com­ple­tion of the rec­ords of the super­uni­verse, by au­tho­riza­tion of the An­cients of Days, hav­ing to do with the ter­mi­na­tion of all sin-re­bel­lion in your uni­verse and en­dow­ing you with full and un­lim­ited au­thor­ity to deal with any and all such pos­si­ble up­heavals in the fu­ture. Tech­ni­cally, your work on Uran­tia and in the flesh of the mor­tal crea­ture is fin­ished. Your course from now on is a mat­ter of your own choos­ing.”

136:3.6When the Most High Fa­ther of Eden­tia had taken leave, Je­sus held long con­verse with Ga­briel re­gard­ing the wel­fare of the uni­verse and, send­ing greet­ings to Im­manuel, prof­fered his as­sur­ance that, in the work which he was about to un­der­take on Uran­tia, he would be ever mind­ful of the coun­sel he had re­ceived in con­nec­tion with the pre­be­stowal charge ad­min­is­tered on Sal­ving­ton.

136:3.7Through­out all of these forty days of iso­la­tion James and John the sons of Zeb­e­dee were en­gaged in search­ing for Je­sus. Many times they were not far from his abid­ing place, but never did they find him.

136:4.1Day by day, up in the hills, Je­sus for­mu­lated the plans for the re­main­der of his Uran­tia be­stowal. He first de­cided not to teach con­tem­po­ra­ne­ously with John. He planned to re­main in com­par­a­tive re­tire­ment un­til the work of John achieved its pur­pose, or un­til John was sud­denly stopped by im­pris­on­ment. Je­sus well knew that John’s fear­less and tact­less preach­ing would pres­ently arouse the fears and en­mity of the civil rulers. In view of John’s pre­car­i­ous sit­u­a­tion, Je­sus be­gan def­i­nitely to plan his pro­gram of pub­lic labors in be­half of his peo­ple and the world, in be­half of ev­ery in­hab­ited world through­out his vast uni­verse. Mi­chael’s mor­tal be­stowal was on Uran­tia but for all worlds of Neb­a­don.

136:4.2The first thing Je­sus did, af­ter think­ing through the gen­eral plan of co-or­di­nat­ing his pro­gram with John’s move­ment, was to re­view in his mind the in­struc­tions of Im­manuel. Care­fully he thought over the ad­vice given him con­cern­ing his meth­ods of la­bor, and that he was to leave no per­ma­nent writ­ing on the planet. Never again did Je­sus write on any­thing ex­cept sand. On his next visit to Naz­a­reth, much to the sor­row of his brother Joseph, Je­sus de­stroyed all of his writ­ing that was pre­served on the boards about the car­pen­ter shop, and which hung upon the walls of the old home. And Je­sus pon­dered well over Im­manuel’s ad­vice per­tain­ing to his eco­nomic, so­cial, and po­lit­i­cal at­ti­tude to­ward the world as he should find it.

136:4.3Je­sus did not fast dur­ing this forty days’ iso­la­tion. The longest pe­riod he went with­out food was his first two days in the hills when he was so en­grossed with his think­ing that he for­got all about eat­ing. But on the third day he went in search of food. Nei­ther was he tempted dur­ing this time by any evil spir­its or rebel per­son­al­i­ties of sta­tion on this world or from any other world.

136:4.4These forty days were the oc­ca­sion of the fi­nal con­fer­ence be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine minds, or rather the first real func­tion­ing of these two minds as now made one. The re­sults of this mo­men­tous sea­son of med­i­ta­tion demon­strated con­clu­sively that the di­vine mind has tri­umphantly and spir­i­tu­ally dom­i­nated the hu­man in­tel­lect. The mind of man has be­come the mind of God from this time on, and though the self­hood of the mind of man is ever pres­ent, al­ways does this spir­i­tu­al­ized hu­man mind say, “Not my will but yours be done.”

136:4.5The trans­ac­tions of this event­ful time were not the fan­tas­tic vi­sions of a starved and weak­ened mind, nei­ther were they the con­fused and puerile sym­bol­isms which af­ter­ward gained rec­ord as the “temp­ta­tions of Je­sus in the wilder­ness.” Rather was this a sea­son for think­ing over the whole event­ful and var­ied ca­reer of the Uran­tia be­stowal and for the care­ful lay­ing of those plans for fur­ther min­istry which would best serve this world while also con­tribut­ing some­thing to the bet­ter­ment of all other re­bel­lion-iso­lated spheres. Je­sus thought over the whole span of hu­man life on Uran­tia, from the days of An­don and Fonta, down through Adam’s de­fault, and on to the min­istry of the Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem.

136:4.6Ga­briel had re­minded Je­sus that there were two ways in which he might man­i­fest him­self to the world in case he should choose to tarry on Uran­tia for a time. And it was made clear to Je­sus that his choice in this mat­ter would have noth­ing to do with ei­ther his uni­verse sov­er­eignty or the ter­mi­na­tion of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. These two ways of world min­istry were:

136:4.71. His own way—the way that might seem most pleas­ant and prof­itable from the stand­point of the im­me­di­ate needs of this world and the pres­ent ed­i­fi­ca­tion of his own uni­verse.

136:4.82. The Fa­ther’s way—the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of a farsee­ing ideal of crea­ture life vi­su­al­ized by the high per­son­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

136:4.9It was thus made clear to Je­sus that there were two ways in which he could or­der the re­main­der of his earth life. Each of these ways had some­thing to be said in its fa­vor as it might be re­garded in the light of the im­me­di­ate sit­u­a­tion. The Son of Man clearly saw that his choice be­tween these two modes of con­duct would have noth­ing to do with his re­cep­tion of uni­verse sov­er­eignty; that was a mat­ter al­ready set­tled and sealed on the rec­ords of the uni­verse of uni­verses and only awaited his de­mand in per­son. But it was in­di­cated to Je­sus that it would af­ford his Par­a­dise brother, Im­manuel, great sat­is­fac­tion if he, Je­sus, should see fit to fin­ish up his earth ca­reer of in­car­na­tion as he had so nobly be­gun it, al­ways sub­ject to the Fa­ther’s will. On the third day of this iso­la­tion Je­sus prom­ised him­self he would go back to the world to fin­ish his earth ca­reer, and that in a sit­u­a­tion in­volv­ing any two ways he would al­ways choose the Fa­ther’s will. And he lived out the re­main­der of his earth life al­ways true to that re­solve. Even to the bit­ter end he in­vari­ably sub­or­di­nated his sov­er­eign will to that of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

• times of isolation › went apart 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.

136:4.11In all this plan­ning for the re­main­der of his earth life, Je­sus was al­ways torn in his hu­man heart by two op­pos­ing courses of con­duct:

136:4.121. He en­ter­tained a strong de­sire to win his peo­ple—and the whole world—to be­lieve in him and to ac­cept his new spir­i­tual king­dom. And he well knew their ideas con­cern­ing the com­ing Mes­siah.

136:4.132. To live and work as he knew his Fa­ther would ap­prove, to con­duct his work in be­half of other worlds in need, and to con­tinue, in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom, to re­veal the Fa­ther and show forth his di­vine char­ac­ter of love.

136:4.14Through­out these event­ful days Je­sus lived in an an­cient rock cav­ern, a shel­ter in the side of the hills near a vil­lage some­time called Beit Adis. He drank from the small spring which came from the side of the hill near this rock shel­ter.

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.

• destroyed basis for feelings of i.

140:8.113. So­cial at­ti­tude. The Jew­ish rab­bis had long de­bated the ques­tion: Who is my neigh­bor? Je­sus came pre­sent­ing the idea of ac­tive and spon­ta­neous kind­ness, a love of one’s fel­low men so gen­uine that it ex­panded the neigh­bor­hood to in­clude the whole world, thereby mak­ing all men one’s neigh­bors. But with all this, Je­sus was in­ter­ested only in the in­di­vid­ual, not the mass. Je­sus was not a so­ci­ol­o­gist, but he did la­bor to break down all forms of self­ish iso­la­tion. He taught pure sym­pa­thy, com­pas­sion. Mi­chael of Neb­a­don is a mercy-dom­i­nated Son; com­pas­sion is his very na­ture.

• gospel demands active social contact

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

144:3.13It is not strange that the apos­tles de­sired Je­sus to teach them a model prayer for be­liev­ers. John the Bap­tist had taught his fol­low­ers sev­eral prayers; all great teach­ers had for­mu­lated prayers for their pupils. The re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jews had some twenty-five or thirty set prayers which they re­cited in the syn­a­gogues and even on the street cor­ners. Je­sus was par­tic­u­larly averse to pray­ing in pub­lic. Up to this time the twelve had heard him pray only a few times. They ob­served him spend­ing en­tire nights at prayer or wor­ship, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the man­ner or form of his pe­ti­tions. They were re­ally hard pressed to know what to an­swer the mul­ti­tudes when they asked to be taught how to pray as John had taught his dis­ci­ples.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

144:3.23When Je­sus spent whole nights on the moun­tain in prayer, it was mainly for his dis­ci­ples, par­tic­u­larly for the twelve. The Mas­ter prayed very lit­tle for him­self, al­though he en­gaged in much wor­ship of the na­ture of un­der­stand­ing com­mu­nion with his Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

151:0.1By March 10 all of the preach­ing and teach­ing groups had for­gath­ered at Beth­saida. Thurs­day night and Fri­day many of them went out to fish, while on the Sab­bath day they at­tended the syn­a­gogue to hear an aged Jew of Da­mas­cus dis­course on the glory of fa­ther Abra­ham. Je­sus spent most of this Sab­bath day alone in the hills. That Sat­ur­day night the Mas­ter talked for more than an hour to the as­sem­bled groups on “The mis­sion of ad­ver­sity and the spir­i­tual value of dis­ap­point­ment.” This was a mem­o­rable oc­ca­sion, and his hear­ers never for­got the les­son he im­parted.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

151:5.1The mul­ti­tude con­tin­ued to in­crease through­out the week. On Sab­bath Je­sus has­tened away to the hills, but when Sun­day morn­ing came, the crowds re­turned. Je­sus spoke to them in the early af­ter­noon af­ter the preach­ing of Pe­ter, and when he had fin­ished, he said to his apos­tles: “I am weary of the throngs; let us cross over to the other side that we may rest for a day.”

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

152:4.1The apos­tles, with­out their Mas­ter—sent off by them­selves—en­tered the boat and in si­lence be­gan to row to­ward Beth­saida on the west­ern shore of the lake. None of the twelve was so crushed and down­cast as Si­mon Pe­ter. Hardly a word was spo­ken; they were all think­ing of the Mas­ter alone in the hills. Had he for­saken them? He had never be­fore sent them all away and re­fused to go with them. What could all this mean?

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

152:5.5Je­sus then an­nounced that he wished to with­draw for a few days of rest with his apos­tles be­fore they made ready to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and he for­bade any of the dis­ci­ples or the mul­ti­tude to fol­low him. Ac­cord­ingly they went by boat to the re­gion of Gen­nesaret for two or three days of rest and sleep. Je­sus was prepar­ing for a great cri­sis of his life on earth, and he there­fore spent much time in com­mu­nion with the Fa­ther in heaven.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

153:5.2And now, on top of all of these wor­ries, when they reached home, Je­sus re­fused to eat. For hours he iso­lated him­self in one of the up­per rooms. It was al­most mid­night when Joab, the leader of the evan­ge­lists, re­turned and re­ported that about one third of his as­so­ciates had de­serted the cause. All through the evening loyal dis­ci­ples had come and gone, re­port­ing that the re­vul­sion of feel­ing to­ward the Mas­ter was gen­eral in Ca­per­naum. The lead­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem were not slow to feed this feel­ing of dis­af­fec­tion and in ev­ery way pos­si­ble to seek to pro­mote the move­ment away from Je­sus and his teach­ings. Dur­ing these try­ing hours the twelve women were in ses­sion over at Pe­ter’s house. They were tremen­dously up­set, but none of them de­serted.

• cf: instruction to go apart

155:5.14All twenty-four of his hear­ers rose to their feet, in­tend­ing to sig­nify their united and loyal re­sponse to this, one of the few emo­tional ap­peals which Je­sus ever made to them, but he raised his hand and stopped them, say­ing: “Go now apart by your­selves, each man alone with the Fa­ther, and there find the un­emo­tional an­swer to my ques­tion, and hav­ing found such a true and sin­cere at­ti­tude of soul, speak that an­swer freely and boldly to my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther, whose in­fi­nite life of love is the very spirit of the re­li­gion we pro­claim.”

• cf: instruction to go apart

157:4.8And when Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he di­rected the twelve to go apart by them­selves in the hills to seek wis­dom, strength, and spir­i­tual guid­ance un­til the time of the evening meal. And they did as the Mas­ter ad­mon­ished them.

• cf: instruction to go apart

157:7.2And that was all An­drew could elicit from Je­sus. Al­ways had there been some strangeness be­tween this Judean and his Galilean breth­ren. Ju­das had been shocked by the death of John the Bap­tist, severely hurt by the Mas­ter’s re­bukes on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, dis­ap­pointed when Je­sus re­fused to be made king, hu­mil­i­ated when he fled from the Phar­isees, cha­grined when he re­fused to ac­cept the chal­lenge of the Phar­isees for a sign, be­wil­dered by the re­fusal of his Mas­ter to re­sort to man­i­fes­ta­tions of power, and now, more re­cently, de­pressed and some­times de­jected by an empty trea­sury. And Ju­das missed the stim­u­lus of the mul­ti­tudes.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

158:1.6It was about three o’clock on this beau­ti­ful af­ter­noon that Je­sus took leave of the three apos­tles, say­ing: “I go apart by my­self for a sea­son to com­mune with the Fa­ther and his mes­sen­gers; I bid you tarry here and, while await­ing my re­turn, pray that the Fa­ther’s will may be done in all your ex­pe­ri­ence in con­nec­tion with the fur­ther be­stowal mis­sion of the Son of Man.” And af­ter say­ing this to them, Je­sus with­drew for a long con­fer­ence with Ga­briel and the Fa­ther Mel­chiz­e­dek, not re­turn­ing un­til about six o’clock. When Je­sus saw their anx­i­ety over his pro­longed ab­sence, he said: “Why were you afraid? You well know I must be about my Fa­ther’s busi­ness; where­fore do you doubt when I am not with you? I now de­clare that the Son of Man has cho­sen to go through his full life in your midst and as one of you. Be of good cheer; I will not leave you un­til my work is fin­ished.”

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

160:1.10But the great­est of all meth­ods of prob­lem solv­ing I have learned from Je­sus, your Mas­ter. I re­fer to that which he so con­sis­tently prac­tices, and which he has so faith­fully taught you, the iso­la­tion of wor­ship­ful med­i­ta­tion. In this habit of Je­sus’ go­ing off so fre­quently by him­self to com­mune with the Fa­ther in heaven is to be found the tech­nique, not only of gath­er­ing strength and wis­dom for the or­di­nary con­flicts of liv­ing, but also of ap­pro­pri­at­ing the en­ergy for the so­lu­tion of the higher prob­lems of a moral and spir­i­tual na­ture. But even cor­rect meth­ods of solv­ing prob­lems will not com­pen­sate for in­her­ent de­fects of per­son­al­ity or atone for the ab­sence of the hunger and thirst for true righ­teous­ness.

160:1.11I am deeply im­pressed with the cus­tom of Je­sus in go­ing apart by him­self to en­gage in these sea­sons of soli­tary sur­vey of the prob­lems of liv­ing; to seek for new stores of wis­dom and en­ergy for meet­ing the man­i­fold de­mands of so­cial ser­vice; to quicken and deepen the su­preme pur­pose of liv­ing by ac­tu­ally sub­ject­ing the to­tal per­son­al­ity to the con­scious­ness of con­tact­ing with di­vin­ity; to grasp for pos­ses­sion of new and bet­ter meth­ods of ad­just­ing one­self to the ever-chang­ing sit­u­a­tions of liv­ing ex­is­tence; to ef­fect those vi­tal re­con­struc­tions and read­just­ments of one’s per­sonal at­ti­tudes which are so es­sen­tial to en­hanced in­sight into ev­ery­thing worth while and real; and to do all of this with an eye sin­gle to the glory of God—to breathe in sin­cer­ity your Mas­ter’s fa­vorite prayer, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”

160:1.12This wor­ship­ful prac­tice of your Mas­ter brings that re­lax­ation which re­news the mind; that il­lu­mi­na­tion which in­spires the soul; that cour­age which en­ables one bravely to face one’s prob­lems; that self-un­der­stand­ing which oblit­er­ates de­bil­i­tat­ing fear; and that con­scious­ness of union with di­vin­ity which equips man with the as­sur­ance that en­ables him to dare to be God­like. The re­lax­ation of wor­ship, or spir­i­tual com­mu­nion as prac­ticed by the Mas­ter, re­lieves ten­sion, re­moves con­flicts, and might­ily aug­ments the to­tal re­sources of the per­son­al­ity. And all this phi­los­o­phy, plus the gospel of the king­dom, con­sti­tutes the new re­li­gion as I un­der­stand it.

• times of isolation › went apart for communion

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

• knows of our i.

181:1.6“Doubt not any of these truths even af­ter you are scat­tered abroad by per­se­cu­tion and are down­cast by many sor­rows. When you feel that you are alone in the world, I will know of your iso­la­tion even as, when you are scat­tered ev­ery man to his own place, leav­ing the Son of Man in the hands of his en­e­mies, you will know of mine. But I am never alone; al­ways is the Fa­ther with me. Even at such a time I will pray for you. And all of these things have I told you that you might have peace and have it more abun­dantly. In this world you will have tribu­la­tion, but be of good cheer; I have tri­umphed in the world and shown you the way to eter­nal joy and ev­er­last­ing ser­vice.”

• triumphed over all fears of

182:3.9The ex­pe­ri­ence of part­ing with the apos­tles was a great strain on the hu­man heart of Je­sus; this sor­row of love bore down on him and made it more dif­fi­cult to face such a death as he well knew awaited him. He re­al­ized how weak and how ig­no­rant his apos­tles were, and he dreaded to leave them. He well knew that the time of his de­par­ture had come, but his hu­man heart longed to find out whether there might not pos­si­bly be some le­git­i­mate av­enue of es­cape from this ter­ri­ble plight of suf­fer­ing and sor­row. And when it had thus sought es­cape, and failed, it was will­ing to drink the cup. The di­vine mind of Mi­chael knew he had done his best for the twelve apos­tles; but the hu­man heart of Je­sus wished that more might have been done for them be­fore they should be left alone in the world. Je­sus’ heart was be­ing crushed; he truly loved his breth­ren. He was iso­lated from his fam­ily in the flesh; one of his cho­sen as­so­ciates was be­tray­ing him. His fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple had re­jected him and thereby sealed their doom as a peo­ple with a spe­cial mis­sion on earth. His soul was tor­tured by baf­fled love and re­jected mercy. It was just one of those aw­ful hu­man mo­ments when ev­ery­thing seems to bear down with crush­ing cru­elty and ter­ri­ble agony.

• triumphed over all fears of

184:4.6These are the mo­ments of the Mas­ter’s great­est vic­to­ries in all his long and event­ful ca­reer as maker, up­holder, and sav­ior of a vast and far-flung uni­verse. Hav­ing lived to the full a life of re­veal­ing God to man, Je­sus is now en­gaged in mak­ing a new and un­prece­dented rev­e­la­tion of man to God. Je­sus is now re­veal­ing to the worlds the fi­nal tri­umph over all fears of crea­ture per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion. The Son of Man has fi­nally achieved the re­al­iza­tion of iden­tity as the Son of God. Je­sus does not hes­i­tate to as­sert that he and the Fa­ther are one; and on the ba­sis of the fact and truth of that su­preme and su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence, he ad­mon­ishes ev­ery king­dom be­liever to be­come one with him even as he and his Fa­ther are one. The liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­li­gion of Je­sus thus be­comes the sure and cer­tain tech­nique whereby the spir­i­tu­ally iso­lated and cos­mi­cally lonely mor­tals of earth are en­abled to es­cape per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion, with all its con­se­quences of fear and as­so­ci­ated feel­ings of help­less­ness. In the fra­ter­nal re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven the faith sons of God find fi­nal de­liv­er­ance from the iso­la­tion of the self, both per­sonal and plan­e­tary. The God-know­ing be­liever in­creas­ingly ex­pe­ri­ences the ec­stasy and grandeur of spir­i­tual so­cial­iza­tion on a uni­verse scale—cit­i­zen­ship on high in as­so­ci­a­tion with the eter­nal re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine des­tiny of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment.

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

91:2.7Prayer con­tributes greatly to the de­vel­op­ment of the re­li­gious sen­ti­ment of an evolv­ing hu­man mind. It is a mighty in­flu­ence work­ing to pre­vent iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity.

101:10.7Re­li­gion ef­fec­tu­ally cures man’s sense of ide­al­is­tic iso­la­tion or spir­i­tual lone­li­ness; it en­fran­chises the be­liever as a son of God, a cit­i­zen of a new and mean­ing­ful uni­verse. Re­li­gion as­sures man that, in fol­low­ing the gleam of righ­teous­ness dis­cern­i­ble in his soul, he is thereby iden­ti­fy­ing him­self with the plan of the In­fi­nite and the pur­pose of the Eter­nal. Such a lib­er­ated soul im­me­di­ately be­gins to feel at home in this new uni­verse, his uni­verse.

68:2.1Civ­i­lized so­ci­ety is the re­sult of man’s early ef­forts to over­come his dis­like of iso­la­tion. But this does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify mu­tual af­fec­tion, and the pres­ent tur­bu­lent state of cer­tain prim­i­tive groups well il­lus­trates what the early tribes came up through. But though the in­di­vid­u­als of a civ­i­liza­tion may col­lide with each other and strug­gle against one an­other, and though civ­i­liza­tion it­self may ap­pear to be an in­con­sis­tent mass of striv­ing and strug­gling, it does ev­i­dence earnest striv­ing, not the deadly mo­not­ony of stag­na­tion.

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.