leisure

30:4.28The first act of your Ha­vona ca­reer will be to rec­og­nize and thank your trans­port se­con­a­phim for the long and safe jour­ney. Then you are pre­sented to those be­ings who will spon­sor your early Ha­vona ac­tiv­i­ties. Next you go to reg­is­ter your ar­rival and pre­pare your mes­sage of thanks­giv­ing and ado­ra­tion for dis­patch to the Cre­ator Son of your lo­cal uni­verse, the uni­verse Fa­ther who made pos­si­ble your son­ship ca­reer. This con­cludes the for­mal­i­ties of the Ha­vona ar­rival; where­upon you are ac­corded a long pe­riod of leisure for free ob­ser­va­tion, and this af­fords op­por­tu­nity for look­ing up your friends, fel­lows, and as­so­ciates of the long as­cen­sion ex­pe­ri­ence. You may also con­sult the broad­casts to as­cer­tain who of your fel­low pil­grims have de­parted for Ha­vona since the time of your leav­ing Uversa.

30:4.32Par­a­dise ar­rivals are ac­corded a pe­riod of free­dom, af­ter which they be­gin their as­so­ci­a­tions with the seven groups of the pri­mary super­na­phim. They are des­ig­nated Par­a­dise grad­u­ates when they have fin­ished their course with the con­duc­tors of wor­ship and then, as fi­nal­i­ters, are as­signed on ob­ser­va­tional and co-op­er­a­tive ser­vice to the ends of the far-flung cre­ation. As yet there seems to be no spe­cific or set­tled em­ploy­ment for the Mor­tal Corps of Fi­nal­i­ters, though they serve in many ca­pac­i­ties on worlds set­tled in light and life.

47:3.6From the res­ur­rec­tion halls you pro­ceed to the Mel­chiz­e­dek sec­tor, where you are as­signed per­ma­nent res­i­dence. Then you en­ter upon ten days of per­sonal lib­erty. You are free to ex­plore the im­me­di­ate vicin­ity of your new home and to fa­mil­iar­ize your­self with the pro­gram which lies im­me­di­ately ahead. You also have time to grat­ify your de­sire to con­sult the reg­istry and call upon your loved ones and other earth friends who may have pre­ceded you to these worlds. At the end of your ten-day pe­riod of leisure you be­gin the sec­ond step in the Par­a­dise jour­ney, for the man­sion worlds are ac­tual train­ing spheres, not merely de­ten­tion plan­ets.

114:6.1511. The an­gels of di­ver­sion. These are the ser­a­phim who fos­ter the val­ues of play, hu­mor, and rest. They ever seek to up­lift man’s recre­ational di­ver­sions and thus to pro­mote the more prof­itable uti­liza­tion of hu­man leisure. The pres­ent corps is the third of that or­der to min­is­ter on Uran­tia.

78:2.4Adam left a great in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual cul­ture be­hind him, but it was not ad­vanced in me­chan­i­cal ap­pli­ances since ev­ery civ­i­liza­tion is lim­ited by avail­able nat­u­ral re­sources, in­her­ent ge­nius, and suf­fi­cient leisure to in­sure in­ven­tive fruition. The civ­i­liza­tion of the vi­o­let race was pred­i­cated on the pres­ence of Adam and on the tra­di­tions of the first Eden. Af­ter Adam’s death and as these tra­di­tions grew dim through the pass­ing mil­len­ni­ums, the cul­tural level of the Adamites steadily de­te­ri­o­rated un­til it reached a state of re­cip­ro­cal bal­ance with the sta­tus of the sur­round­ing peo­ples and the nat­u­rally evolv­ing cul­tural ca­pac­i­ties of the vi­o­let race.

81:2.2You who now live amid lat­ter-day scenes of bud­ding cul­ture and be­gin­ning prog­ress in so­cial af­fairs, who ac­tu­ally have some lit­tle spare time in which to think about so­ci­ety and civ­i­liza­tion, must not over­look the fact that your early an­ces­tors had lit­tle or no leisure which could be de­voted to thought­ful re­flec­tion and so­cial think­ing.

81:2.14The sav­age is a slave to na­ture, but sci­en­tific civ­i­liza­tion is slowly con­fer­ring in­creas­ing lib­erty on man­kind. Through an­i­mals, fire, wind, wa­ter, elec­tric­ity, and other undis­cov­ered sources of en­ergy, man has lib­er­ated, and will con­tinue to lib­er­ate, him­self from the ne­ces­sity for un­remit­ting toil. Re­gard­less of the tran­sient trou­ble pro­duced by the pro­lific in­ven­tion of ma­chin­ery, the ul­ti­mate ben­e­fits to be de­rived from such me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tions are in­es­timable. Civ­i­liza­tion can never flour­ish, much less be es­tab­lished, un­til man has leisure to think, to plan, to imag­ine new and bet­ter ways of do­ing things.

81:6.62. Cap­i­tal goods. Cul­ture is never de­vel­oped un­der con­di­tions of pov­erty; leisure is es­sen­tial to the prog­ress of civ­i­liza­tion. In­di­vid­ual char­ac­ter of moral and spir­i­tual value may be ac­quired in the ab­sence of ma­te­rial wealth, but a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is only de­rived from those con­di­tions of ma­te­rial pros­per­ity which fos­ter leisure com­bined with am­bi­tion.

81:6.17Lan­guage evolved out of group as­so­ci­a­tions, each lo­cal group de­vel­op­ing its own sys­tem of word ex­change. Lan­guage grew up through ges­tures, signs, cries, im­i­ta­tive sounds, in­to­na­tion, and ac­cent to the vo­cal­iza­tion of sub­se­quent al­pha­bets. Lan­guage is man’s great­est and most ser­vice­able think­ing tool, but it never flour­ished un­til so­cial groups ac­quired some leisure. The ten­dency to play with lan­guage de­vel­ops new words—slang. If the ma­jor­ity adopt the slang, then us­age con­sti­tutes it lan­guage. The ori­gin of di­alects is il­lus­trated by the in­dul­gence in “baby talk” in a fam­ily group.

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

68:5.7Pas­toral liv­ing af­forded fur­ther re­lief from food slav­ery; man learned to live on the in­ter­est of his cap­i­tal, the in­crease in his flocks; and this pro­vided more leisure for cul­ture and prog­ress.

81:6.7Dur­ing prim­i­tive times life on Uran­tia was a se­ri­ous and sober busi­ness. And it was to es­cape this in­ces­sant strug­gle and in­ter­minable toil that man­kind con­stantly tended to drift to­ward the salu­bri­ous cli­mate of the trop­ics. While these warmer zones of habi­ta­tion af­forded some re­mis­sion from the in­tense strug­gle for ex­is­tence, the races and tribes who thus sought ease sel­dom uti­lized their un­earned leisure for the ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion. So­cial prog­ress has in­vari­ably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their in­tel­li­gent toil, learned how to wrest a liv­ing from the land with less­ened ef­fort and short­ened days of la­bor and thus have been able to en­joy a well-earned and prof­itable mar­gin of leisure.

118:10.9Some of the amaz­ingly for­tu­itous con­di­tions oc­ca­sion­ally pre­vail­ing on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds may be due to the grad­u­ally emerg­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme, the fore­tast­ing of his fu­ture uni­verse ac­tiv­i­ties. Most of what a mor­tal would call prov­i­den­tial is not; his judg­ment of such mat­ters is very hand­i­capped by lack of far­sighted vi­sion into the true mean­ings of the cir­cum­stances of life. Much of what a mor­tal would call good luck might re­ally be bad luck; the smile of for­tune that be­stows un­earned leisure and un­de­served wealth may be the great­est of hu­man af­flic­tions; the ap­par­ent cru­elty of a per­verse fate that heaps tribu­la­tion upon some suf­fer­ing mor­tal may in re­al­ity be the tem­per­ing fire that is trans­mut­ing the soft iron of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity into the tem­pered steel of real char­ac­ter.