The Urantia Book

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48 paragraphs · about 21 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under light, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

0:6.8Mind is a phe­nom­e­non con­not­ing the pres­ence-ac­tiv­ity of liv­ing min­istry in ad­di­tion to var­ied en­ergy sys­tems; and this is true on all lev­els of in­tel­li­gence. In per­son­al­ity, mind ever in­ter­venes be­tween spirit and mat­ter; there­fore is the uni­verse il­lu­mi­nated by three kinds of light: ma­te­rial light, in­tel­lec­tual in­sight, and spirit lu­mi­nos­ity.

0:6.9Light—spirit lu­mi­nos­ity—is a word sym­bol, a fig­ure of speech, which con­notes the per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion char­ac­ter­is­tic of spirit be­ings of di­verse or­ders. This lu­mi­nous em­a­na­tion is in no re­spect re­lated ei­ther to in­tel­lec­tual in­sight or to phys­i­cal-light man­i­fes­ta­tions.

1:3.3The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not in­vis­i­ble be­cause he is hid­ing him­self away from the lowly crea­tures of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic hand­i­caps and lim­ited spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. The sit­u­a­tion rather is: “You can­not see my face, for no mor­tal can see me and live.” No ma­te­rial man could be­hold the spirit God and pre­serve his mor­tal ex­is­tence. The glory and the spir­i­tual bril­liance of the di­vine per­son­al­ity pres­ence is im­pos­si­ble of ap­proach by the lower groups of spirit be­ings or by any or­der of ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties. The spir­i­tual lu­mi­nos­ity of the Fa­ther’s per­sonal pres­ence is a “light which no mor­tal man can ap­proach; which no ma­te­rial crea­ture has seen or can see.” But it is not nec­es­sary to see God with the eyes of the flesh in or­der to dis­cern him by the faith-vi­sion of the spir­i­tu­al­ized mind.

1:5.3God is not hid­ing from any of his crea­tures. He is un­ap­proach­able to so many or­ders of be­ings only be­cause he “dwells in a light which no ma­te­rial crea­ture can ap­proach.” The im­men­sity and grandeur of the di­vine per­son­al­ity is be­yond the grasp of the un­per­fected mind of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals. He “mea­sures the wa­ters in the hol­low of his hand, mea­sures a uni­verse with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the cir­cle of the earth, who stretches out the heav­ens as a cur­tain and spreads them out as a uni­verse to dwell in.” “Lift up your eyes on high and be­hold who has cre­ated all these things, who brings out their worlds by num­ber and calls them all by their names”; and so it is true that “the in­vis­i­ble things of God are par­tially un­der­stood by the things which are made.” To­day, and as you are, you must dis­cern the in­vis­i­ble Maker through his man­i­fold and di­verse cre­ation, as well as through the rev­e­la­tion and min­is­tra­tion of his Sons and their nu­mer­ous sub­or­di­nates.

2:1.1“Touch­ing the In­fi­nite, we can­not find him out. The di­vine foot­steps are not known.” “His un­der­stand­ing is in­fi­nite and his great­ness is un­search­able.” The blind­ing light of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence is such that to his lowly crea­tures he ap­par­ently “dwells in the thick dark­ness.” Not only are his thoughts and plans un­search­able, but “he does great and mar­velous things with­out num­ber.” “God is great; we com­pre­hend him not, nei­ther can the num­ber of his years be searched out.” “Will God in­deed dwell on the earth? Be­hold, the heaven (uni­verse) and the heaven of heav­ens (uni­verse of uni­verses) can­not con­tain him.” “How un­search­able are his judg­ments and his ways past find­ing out!”

3:2.3Of all the di­vine at­tri­butes, his om­nipo­tence, es­pe­cially as it pre­vails in the ma­te­rial uni­verse, is the best un­der­stood. Viewed as an un­spir­i­tual phe­nom­e­non, God is en­ergy. This dec­la­ra­tion of phys­i­cal fact is pred­i­cated on the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble truth that the First Source and Cen­ter is the pri­mal cause of the uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena of all space. From this di­vine ac­tiv­ity all phys­i­cal en­ergy and other ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. Light, that is, light with­out heat, is an­other of the non­spir­i­tual man­i­fes­ta­tions of the De­i­ties. And there is still an­other form of non­spir­i­tual en­ergy which is vir­tu­ally un­known on Uran­tia; it is as yet un­rec­og­nized.

11:0.2The ma­te­rial beauty of Par­a­dise con­sists in the mag­nif­i­cence of its phys­i­cal per­fec­tion; the grandeur of the Isle of God is ex­hib­ited in the su­perb in­tel­lec­tual ac­com­plish­ments and mind de­vel­op­ment of its in­hab­i­tants; the glory of the cen­tral Isle is shown forth in the in­fi­nite en­dow­ment of di­vine spirit per­son­al­ity—the light of life. But the depths of the spir­i­tual beauty and the won­ders of this mag­nif­i­cent en­sem­ble are ut­terly be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion of the fi­nite mind of ma­te­rial crea­tures. The glory and spir­i­tual splen­dor of the di­vine abode are im­pos­si­ble of mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion. And Par­a­dise is from eter­nity; there are nei­ther rec­ords nor tra­di­tions re­spect­ing the ori­gin of this nu­clear Isle of Light and Life.

13:0.3The seven se­cret spheres of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, cir­cu­lat­ing about Par­a­dise in close prox­im­ity to the eter­nal Isle, are highly re­flec­tive of the spir­i­tual lu­mi­nos­ity of the cen­tral shin­ing of the eter­nal De­i­ties, shed­ding this light of di­vine glory through­out Par­a­dise and even upon the seven cir­cuits of Ha­vona.

13:0.4On the seven sa­cred worlds of the Eter­nal Son there ap­pear to take ori­gin the im­per­sonal en­er­gies of spirit lu­mi­nos­ity. No per­sonal be­ing may so­journ on any of these seven shin­ing realms. With spir­i­tual glory they il­lu­mi­nate all Par­a­dise and Ha­vona, and they di­rec­tion­ize pure spirit lu­mi­nos­ity to the seven super­uni­verses. These bril­liant spheres of the sec­ond cir­cuit like­wise emit their light (light with­out heat) to Par­a­dise and to the bil­lion worlds of the seven-cir­cuited cen­tral uni­verse.

13:3.1The seven lu­mi­nous spheres of the Eter­nal Son are the worlds of the seven phases of pure-spirit ex­is­tence. These shin­ing orbs are the source of the three­fold light of Par­a­dise and Ha­vona, their in­flu­ence be­ing largely, but not wholly, con­fined to the cen­tral uni­verse.

15:6.8The Suns. These are the stars of space in all their var­i­ous stages of ex­is­tence. Some are soli­tary evolv­ing space sys­tems; oth­ers are dou­ble stars, con­tract­ing or dis­ap­pear­ing plan­e­tary sys­tems. The stars of space ex­ist in no less than a thou­sand dif­fer­ent states and stages. You are fa­mil­iar with suns that emit light ac­com­pa­nied by heat; but there are also suns which shine with­out heat.

15:6.9The tril­lions upon tril­lions of years that an or­di­nary sun will con­tinue to give out heat and light well il­lus­trates the vast store of en­ergy which each unit of mat­ter con­tains. The ac­tual en­ergy stored in these in­vis­i­ble par­ti­cles of phys­i­cal mat­ter is well-nigh unimag­in­able. And this en­ergy be­comes al­most wholly avail­able as light when sub­jected to the tremen­dous heat pres­sure and the as­so­ci­ated en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties which pre­vail in the in­te­rior of the blaz­ing suns. Still other con­di­tions en­able these suns to trans­form and send forth much of the en­ergy of space which comes their way in the es­tab­lished space cir­cuits. Many phases of phys­i­cal en­ergy and all forms of mat­ter are at­tracted to, and sub­se­quently dis­tributed by, the so­lar dy­namos. In this way the suns serve as lo­cal ac­cel­er­a­tors of en­ergy cir­cu­la­tion, act­ing as au­to­matic power-con­trol sta­tions.

15:6.10–12 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

15:6.10The super­uni­verse of Or­von­ton is il­lu­mi­nated and warmed by more than ten tril­lion blaz­ing suns. These suns are the stars of your ob­serv­able as­tro­nomic sys­tem. More than two tril­lion are too dis­tant and too small ever to be seen from Uran­tia. But in the mas­ter uni­verse there are as many suns as there are glasses of wa­ter in the oceans of your world.

15:6.11The Dark Is­lands of Space. These are the dead suns and other large ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter de­void of light and heat. The dark is­lands are some­times enor­mous in mass and ex­ert a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence in uni­verse equi­lib­rium and en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tion. The den­sity of some of these large masses is well-nigh un­be­liev­able. And this great con­cen­tra­tion of mass en­ables these dark is­lands to func­tion as pow­er­ful bal­ance wheels, hold­ing large neigh­bor­ing sys­tems in ef­fec­tive leash. They hold the grav­ity bal­ance of power in many con­stel­la­tions; many phys­i­cal sys­tems which would oth­er­wise speed­ily dive to de­struc­tion in near-by suns are held se­curely in the grav­ity grasp of these guard­ian dark is­lands. It is be­cause of this func­tion that we can lo­cate them ac­cu­rately. We have mea­sured the grav­ity pull of the lu­mi­nous bod­ies, and we can there­fore cal­cu­late the ex­act size and lo­ca­tion of the dark is­lands of space which so ef­fec­tively func­tion to hold a given sys­tem steady in its course.

15:6.12Mi­nor Space Bod­ies. The me­te­ors and other small par­ti­cles of mat­ter cir­cu­lat­ing and evolv­ing in space con­sti­tute an enor­mous ag­gre­gate of en­ergy and ma­te­rial sub­stance.

15:6.13Many comets are un­estab­lished wild off­spring of the so­lar mother wheels, which are be­ing grad­u­ally brought un­der con­trol of the cen­tral gov­ern­ing sun. Comets also have nu­mer­ous other ori­gins. A comet’s tail points away from the at­tract­ing body or sun be­cause of the elec­tri­cal re­ac­tion of its highly ex­panded gases and be­cause of the ac­tual pres­sure of light and other en­er­gies em­a­nat­ing from the sun. This phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tutes one of the pos­i­tive proofs of the re­al­ity of light and its as­so­ci­ated en­er­gies; it demon­strates that light has weight. Light is a real sub­stance, not sim­ply waves of hy­po­thet­i­cal ether.

15:7.1While each super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment pre­sides near the cen­ter of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses of its space seg­ment, it oc­cu­pies a world made to or­der and is peo­pled by ac­cred­ited per­son­al­i­ties. These head­quar­ters worlds are ar­chi­tec­tural spheres, space bod­ies specif­i­cally con­structed for their spe­cial pur­pose. While shar­ing the light of near-by suns, these spheres are in­de­pen­dently lighted and heated. Each has a sun which gives forth light with­out heat, like the satel­lites of Par­a­dise, while each is sup­plied with heat by the cir­cu­la­tion of cer­tain en­ergy cur­rents near the sur­face of the sphere. These head­quar­ters worlds be­long to one of the greater sys­tems sit­u­ated near the as­tro­nom­i­cal cen­ter of their re­spec­tive super­uni­verses.

27:7.7Some­times all Par­a­dise be­comes en­gulfed in a dom­i­nat­ing tide of spir­i­tual and wor­ship­ful ex­pres­sion. Of­ten the con­duc­tors of wor­ship can­not con­trol such phe­nom­ena un­til the ap­pear­ance of the three­fold fluc­tu­a­tion of the light of the De­ity abode, sig­ni­fy­ing that the di­vine heart of the Gods has been fully and com­pletely sat­is­fied by the sin­cere wor­ship of the res­i­dents of Par­a­dise, the per­fect cit­i­zens of glory and the as­cen­dant crea­tures of time. What a tri­umph of tech­nique! What a fruition of the eter­nal plan and pur­pose of the Gods that the in­tel­li­gent love of the crea­ture child should give full sat­is­fac­tion to the in­fi­nite love of the Cre­ator Fa­ther!

29:3.9Out­side of Ha­vona the Su­preme Power Cen­ters func­tion only on es­pe­cially con­structed (ar­chi­tec­tural) spheres or on oth­er­wise suit­ably con­sti­tuted space bod­ies. The ar­chi­tec­tural worlds are so con­structed that the liv­ing power cen­ters can act as se­lec­tive switches to di­rec­tion­ize, mod­ify, and con­cen­trate the en­er­gies of space as they pour over these spheres. They could not so func­tion on an or­di­nary evo­lu­tion­ary sun or planet. Cer­tain groups are also con­cerned in the heat­ing and other ma­te­rial ne­ces­si­ties of these spe­cial head­quar­ters worlds. And though it is be­yond the scope of Uran­tia knowl­edge, I may state that these or­ders of liv­ing power per­son­al­i­ties have much to do with the dis­tri­bu­tion of the light that shines with­out heat. They do not pro­duce this phe­nom­e­non, but they are con­cerned with its dis­sem­i­na­tion and di­rec­tion­iza­tion.

34:1.1Af­ter the com­ple­tion of the phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion of a starry and plan­e­tary clus­ter and the es­tab­lish­ment of the en­ergy cir­cuits by the super­uni­verse power cen­ters, sub­se­quent to this pre­lim­i­nary work of cre­ation by the agen­cies of the In­fi­nite Spirit, op­er­at­ing through, and un­der the di­rec­tion of, his lo­cal uni­verse cre­ative fo­cal­iza­tion, there goes forth the procla­ma­tion of the Mi­chael Son that life is next to be pro­jected in the newly or­ga­nized uni­verse. Upon the Par­a­dise rec­og­ni­tion of this dec­la­ra­tion of in­ten­tion, there oc­curs a re­ac­tion of ap­proval in the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, fol­lowed by the dis­ap­pear­ance in the spir­i­tual shin­ing of the De­i­ties of the Mas­ter Spirit in whose super­uni­verse this new cre­ation is or­ga­niz­ing. Mean­while the other Mas­ter Spir­its draw near this cen­tral lodg­ment of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties, and sub­se­quently, when the De­ity-em­braced Mas­ter Spirit emerges to the rec­og­ni­tion of his fel­lows, there oc­curs what is known as a “pri­mary erup­tion.” This is a tremen­dous spir­i­tual flash, a phe­nom­e­non clearly dis­cern­i­ble as far away as the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse con­cerned; and si­mul­ta­ne­ously with this lit­tle-un­der­stood Trin­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion there oc­curs a marked change in the na­ture of the cre­ative spirit pres­ence and power of the In­fi­nite Spirit res­i­dent in the lo­cal uni­verse con­cerned. In re­sponse to these Par­a­dise phe­nom­ena there im­me­di­ately per­son­al­izes, in the very pres­ence of the Cre­ator Son, a new per­sonal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the In­fi­nite Spirit. This is the Di­vine Min­is­ter. The in­di­vid­u­al­ized Cre­ative Spirit helper of the Cre­ator Son has be­come his per­sonal cre­ative as­so­ciate, the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit.

40:5.19As to the chances of mor­tal sur­vival, let it be made for­ever clear: All souls of ev­ery pos­si­ble phase of mor­tal ex­is­tence will sur­vive pro­vided they man­i­fest will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate with their in­dwelling Ad­justers and ex­hibit a de­sire to find God and to at­tain di­vine per­fec­tion, even though these de­sires be but the first faint flick­ers of the prim­i­tive com­pre­hen­sion of that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.”

41:1.2One hun­dred Su­preme Power Cen­ters of the fourth or­der are per­ma­nently as­signed to our lo­cal uni­verse. These be­ings re­ceive the in­com­ing lines of power from the third-or­der cen­ters of Uversa and re­lay the down-stepped and mod­i­fied cir­cuits to the power cen­ters of our con­stel­la­tions and sys­tems. These power cen­ters, in as­so­ci­a­tion, func­tion to pro­duce the liv­ing sys­tem of con­trol and equal­iza­tion which op­er­ates to main­tain the bal­ance and dis­tri­bu­tion of oth­er­wise fluc­tu­at­ing and vari­able en­er­gies. Power cen­ters are not, how­ever, con­cerned with tran­sient and lo­cal en­ergy up­heavals, such as sun spots and sys­tem elec­tric dis­tur­bances; light and elec­tric­ity are not the ba­sic en­er­gies of space; they are sec­ondary and sub­sidiary man­i­fes­ta­tions.

41:5.2Light, in the pres­ence of the propul­sive gases, is highly ex­plo­sive when con­fined at high tem­per­a­tures by opaque re­tain­ing walls. Light is real. As you value en­ergy and power on your world, sun­light would be eco­nom­i­cal at a mil­lion dol­lars a pound.

41:5.3–5 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

41:5.3The in­te­rior of your sun is a vast X-ray gen­er­a­tor. The suns are sup­ported from within by the in­ces­sant bom­bard­ment of these mighty em­a­na­tions.

41:5.4It re­quires more than one-half mil­lion years for an X-ray-stim­u­lated elec­tron to work its way from the very cen­ter of an av­er­age sun up to the so­lar sur­face, whence it starts out on its space ad­ven­ture, maybe to warm an in­hab­ited planet, to be cap­tured by a me­teor, to par­tic­i­pate in the birth of an atom, to be at­tracted by a highly charged dark is­land of space, or to find its space flight ter­mi­nated by a fi­nal plunge into the sur­face of a sun sim­i­lar to the one of its ori­gin.

41:5.5The X rays of a sun’s in­te­rior charge the highly heated and ag­i­tated elec­trons with suf­fi­cient en­ergy to carry them out through space, past the hosts of de­tain­ing in­flu­ences of in­ter­ven­ing mat­ter and, in spite of di­ver­gent grav­ity at­trac­tions, on to the dis­tant spheres of the re­mote sys­tems. The great en­ergy of ve­loc­ity re­quired to es­cape the grav­ity clutch of a sun is suf­fi­cient to in­sure that the sun­beam will travel on with un­abated ve­loc­ity un­til it en­coun­ters con­sid­er­able masses of mat­ter; where­upon it is quickly trans­formed into heat with the lib­er­a­tion of other en­er­gies.

41:5.6En­ergy, whether as light or in other forms, in its flight through space moves straight for­ward. The ac­tual par­ti­cles of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence tra­verse space like a fusil­lade. They go in a straight and un­bro­ken line or pro­ces­sion ex­cept as they are acted on by su­pe­rior forces, and ex­cept as they ever obey the lin­ear-grav­ity pull in­her­ent in ma­te­rial mass and the cir­cu­lar-grav­ity pres­ence of the Isle of Par­a­dise.

41:5.7So­lar en­ergy may seem to be pro­pelled in waves, but that is due to the ac­tion of co­ex­is­tent and di­verse in­flu­ences. A given form of or­ga­nized en­ergy does not pro­ceed in waves but in di­rect lines. The pres­ence of a sec­ond or a third form of force-en­ergy may cause the stream un­der ob­ser­va­tion to ap­pear to travel in wavy for­ma­tion, just as, in a blind­ing rain­storm ac­com­pa­nied by a heavy wind, the wa­ter some­times ap­pears to fall in sheets or to de­scend in waves. The rain­drops are com­ing down in a di­rect line of un­bro­ken pro­ces­sion, but the ac­tion of the wind is such as to give the vis­i­ble ap­pear­ance of sheets of wa­ter and waves of rain­drops.

41:5.8The ac­tion of cer­tain sec­ondary and other undis­cov­ered en­er­gies pres­ent in the space re­gions of your lo­cal uni­verse is such that so­lar-light em­a­na­tions ap­pear to ex­e­cute cer­tain wavy phe­nom­ena as well as to be chopped up into in­finites­i­mal por­tions of def­i­nite length and weight. And, prac­ti­cally con­sid­ered, that is ex­actly what hap­pens. You can hardly hope to ar­rive at a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the be­hav­ior of light un­til such a time as you ac­quire a clearer con­cept of the in­ter­ac­tion and in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of the var­i­ous space-forces and so­lar en­er­gies op­er­at­ing in the space re­gions of Neb­a­don. Your pres­ent con­fu­sion is also due to your in­com­plete grasp of this prob­lem as it in­volves the in­teras­so­ci­ated ac­tiv­i­ties of the per­sonal and non­per­sonal con­trol of the mas­ter uni­verse—the pres­ences, the per­for­mances, and the co-or­di­na­tion of the Con­joint Ac­tor and the Un­qual­i­fied Ab­so­lute.

41:6.1In de­ci­pher­ing spec­tral phe­nom­ena, it should be re­mem­bered that space is not empty; that light, in travers­ing space, is some­times slightly mod­i­fied by the var­i­ous forms of en­ergy and mat­ter which cir­cu­late in all or­ga­nized space. Some of the lines in­di­cat­ing un­known mat­ter which ap­pear in the spec­tra of your sun are due to mod­i­fi­ca­tions of well-known el­e­ments which are float­ing through­out space in shat­tered form, the atomic ca­su­al­ties of the fierce en­coun­ters of the so­lar el­e­men­tal bat­tles. Space is per­vaded by these wan­der­ing dere­licts, es­pe­cially sodium and cal­cium.

41:6.2 · one paragraph not cited here ·

41:6.2Cal­cium is, in fact, the chief el­e­ment of the mat­ter-per­me­ation of space through­out Or­von­ton. Our whole super­uni­verse is sprin­kled with minutely pul­ver­ized stone. Stone is lit­er­ally the ba­sic build­ing mat­ter for the plan­ets and spheres of space. The cos­mic cloud, the great space blan­ket, con­sists for the most part of the mod­i­fied atoms of cal­cium. The stone atom is one of the most preva­lent and per­sis­tent of the el­e­ments. It not only en­dures so­lar ion­iza­tion—split­ting—but per­sists in an as­so­cia­tive iden­tity even af­ter it has been bat­tered by the de­struc­tive X rays and shat­tered by the high so­lar tem­per­a­tures. Cal­cium pos­sesses an in­di­vid­u­al­ity and a longevity ex­celling all of the more com­mon forms of mat­ter.

41:6.3As your physi­cists have sus­pected, these mu­ti­lated rem­nants of so­lar cal­cium lit­er­ally ride the light beams for var­ied dis­tances, and thus their wide­spread dis­sem­i­na­tion through­out space is tremen­dously fa­cil­i­tated. The sodium atom, un­der cer­tain mod­i­fi­ca­tions, is also ca­pa­ble of light and en­ergy lo­co­mo­tion. The cal­cium feat is all the more re­mark­able since this el­e­ment has al­most twice the mass of sodium. Lo­cal space-per­me­ation by cal­cium is due to the fact that it es­capes from the so­lar pho­to­sphere, in mod­i­fied form, by lit­er­ally rid­ing the out­go­ing sun­beams. Of all the so­lar el­e­ments, cal­cium, not­with­stand­ing its com­par­a­tive bulk—con­tain­ing as it does twenty re­volv­ing elec­trons—is the most suc­cess­ful in es­cap­ing from the so­lar in­te­rior to the realms of space. This ex­plains why there is a cal­cium layer, a gaseous stone sur­face, on the sun six thou­sand miles thick; and this de­spite the fact that nine­teen lighter el­e­ments, and nu­mer­ous heav­ier ones, are un­der­neath.

41:9.1The larger suns main­tain such a grav­ity con­trol over their elec­trons that light es­capes only with the aid of the pow­er­ful X rays. These helper rays pen­e­trate all space and are con­cerned in the main­te­nance of the ba­sic ul­ti­ma­tonic as­so­ci­a­tions of en­ergy. The great en­ergy losses in the early days of a sun, sub­se­quent to its at­tain­ment of max­i­mum tem­per­a­ture—up­wards of 35,000,000 de­grees—are not so much due to light es­cape as to ul­ti­ma­tonic leak­age. These ul­ti­ma­ton en­er­gies es­cape out into space, to en­gage in the ad­ven­ture of elec­tronic as­so­ci­a­tion and en­ergy ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion, as a ver­i­ta­ble en­ergy blast dur­ing ado­les­cent so­lar times.

42:4.1Light, heat, elec­tric­ity, mag­netism, chem­ism, en­ergy, and mat­ter are—in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny—one and the same thing, to­gether with other ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties as yet undis­cov­ered on Uran­tia.

42:4.2We do not fully com­pre­hend the al­most end­less changes to which phys­i­cal en­ergy may be sub­ject. In one uni­verse it ap­pears as light, in an­other as light plus heat, in an­other as forms of en­ergy un­known on Uran­tia; in un­told mil­lions of years it may reap­pear as some form of rest­less, surg­ing elec­tri­cal en­ergy or mag­netic power; and still later on it may again ap­pear in a sub­se­quent uni­verse as some form of vari­able mat­ter go­ing through a se­ries of meta­mor­phoses, to be fol­lowed by its out­ward phys­i­cal dis­ap­pear­ance in some great cat­a­clysm of the realms. And then, af­ter count­less ages and al­most end­less wan­der­ing through num­ber­less uni­verses, again may this same en­ergy re-emerge and many times change its form and po­ten­tial; and so do these trans­for­ma­tions con­tinue through suc­ces­sive ages and through­out count­less realms. Thus mat­ter sweeps on, un­der­go­ing the trans­mu­ta­tions of time but swing­ing ever true to the cir­cle of eter­nity; even if long pre­vented from re­turn­ing to its source, it is ever re­spon­sive thereto, and it ever pro­ceeds in the path or­dained by the In­fi­nite Per­son­al­ity who sent it forth.

42:5.108. The white light—the whole vis­i­ble light of the suns.

42:5.11–13 · three paragraphs not cited here ·

42:5.119. In­frared rays—the slow­ing down of elec­tronic ac­tiv­ity still nearer the stage of ap­pre­cia­ble heat.

42:5.1210. Hertzian waves—those en­er­gies uti­lized on Uran­tia for broad­cast­ing.

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

42:5.14The so-called ether is merely a col­lec­tive name to des­ig­nate a group of force and en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties oc­cur­ring in space. Ul­ti­ma­tons, elec­trons, and other mass ag­gre­ga­tions of en­ergy are uni­form par­ti­cles of mat­ter, and in their tran­sit through space they re­ally pro­ceed in di­rect lines. Light and all other forms of rec­og­niz­able en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tions con­sist of a suc­ces­sion of def­i­nite en­ergy par­ti­cles which pro­ceed in di­rect lines ex­cept as mod­i­fied by grav­ity and other in­ter­ven­ing forces. That these pro­ces­sions of en­ergy par­ti­cles ap­pear as wave phe­nom­ena when sub­jected to cer­tain ob­ser­va­tions is due to the re­sis­tance of the un­dif­fer­en­ti­ated force blan­ket of all space, the hy­po­thet­i­cal ether, and to the in­ter­grav­ity ten­sion of the as­so­ci­ated ag­gre­ga­tions of mat­ter. The spac­ing of the par­ti­cle-in­ter­vals of mat­ter, to­gether with the ini­tial ve­loc­ity of the en­ergy beams, es­tab­lishes the un­du­la­tory ap­pear­ance of many forms of en­ergy-mat­ter.

44:1.42. Spir­i­tual light—the con­trol and in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of the light of the mor­ontia and spir­i­tual realms.

51:1.3Ma­te­rial Sons vary in height from eight to ten feet, and their bod­ies glow with the bril­liance of ra­di­ant light of a vi­o­let hue. While ma­te­rial blood cir­cu­lates through their ma­te­rial bod­ies, they are also sur­charged with di­vine en­ergy and sat­u­rated with ce­les­tial light. These Ma­te­rial Sons (the Adams) and Ma­te­rial Daugh­ters (the Eves) are equal to each other, dif­fer­ing only in re­pro­duc­tive na­ture and in cer­tain chem­i­cal en­dow­ments. They are equal but dif­fer­en­tial, male and fe­male—hence com­ple­men­tal—and are de­signed to serve on al­most all as­sign­ments in pairs.

58:1.7On a planet where life has a ma­rine ori­gin, the ideal con­di­tions for life im­plan­ta­tion are pro­vided by a large num­ber of in­land seas, by an ex­ten­sive shore line of shal­low wa­ters and shel­tered bays; and just such a dis­tri­bu­tion of the earth’s wa­ters was rapidly de­vel­op­ing. These an­cient in­land seas were sel­dom over five or six hun­dred feet deep, and sun­light can pen­e­trate ocean wa­ter for more than six hun­dred feet.

101:0.3Re­li­gion, the con­vic­tion-faith of the per­son­al­ity, can al­ways tri­umph over the su­per­fi­cially con­tra­dic­tory logic of de­spair born in the un­be­liev­ing ma­te­rial mind. There re­ally is a true and gen­uine in­ner voice, that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.” And this spirit lead­ing is dis­tinct from the eth­i­cal prompt­ing of hu­man con­science. The feel­ing of re­li­gious as­sur­ance is more than an emo­tional feel­ing. The as­sur­ance of re­li­gion tran­scends the rea­son of the mind, even the logic of phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion is faith, trust, and as­sur­ance.

107:4.5There is a char­ac­ter­is­tic light, a spirit lu­mi­nos­ity, which ac­com­pa­nies this di­vine pres­ence, and which has be­come gen­er­ally as­so­ci­ated with Thought Ad­justers. In the uni­verse of Neb­a­don this Par­a­dise lu­mi­nos­ity is widespreadly known as the “pi­lot light”; on Uversa it is called the “light of life.” On Uran­tia this phe­nom­e­non has some­times been re­ferred to as that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.”

133:5.4Sci­en­tists may some day mea­sure the en­ergy, or force man­i­fes­ta­tions, of grav­i­ta­tion, light, and elec­tric­ity, but these same sci­en­tists can never (sci­en­tif­i­cally) tell you what these uni­verse phe­nom­ena are. Sci­ence deals with phys­i­cal-en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties; re­li­gion deals with eter­nal val­ues. True phi­los­o­phy grows out of the wis­dom which does its best to cor­re­late these quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive ob­ser­va­tions. There al­ways ex­ists the dan­ger that the purely phys­i­cal sci­en­tist may be­come af­flicted with math­e­mat­i­cal pride and sta­tis­ti­cal ego­tism, not to men­tion spir­i­tual blind­ness.

139:12.8This is just the rea­son why Je­sus per­mit­ted Ju­das to go on to the very end, al­ways do­ing ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to trans­form and save this weak and con­fused apos­tle. But when light is not hon­estly re­ceived and lived up to, it tends to be­come dark­ness within the soul. Ju­das grew in­tel­lec­tu­ally re­gard­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings about the king­dom, but he did not make prog­ress in the ac­quire­ment of spir­i­tual char­ac­ter as did the other apos­tles. He failed to make sat­is­fac­tory per­sonal prog­ress in spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

140:3.13“You are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill can­not be hid. Nei­ther do men light a can­dle and put it un­der a bushel, but on a can­dle­stick; and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine be­fore men that they may see your good works and be led to glo­rify your Fa­ther who is in heaven.

140:4.5While light dis­pels dark­ness, it can also be so “blind­ing” as to con­fuse and frus­trate. We are ad­mon­ished to let our light so shine that our fel­lows will be guided into new and godly paths of en­hanced liv­ing. Our light should so shine as not to at­tract at­ten­tion to self. Even one’s vo­ca­tion can be uti­lized as an ef­fec­tive “re­flec­tor” for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of this light of life.

151:3.1The apos­tles were para­ble-minded, so much so that the whole of the next evening was de­voted to the fur­ther dis­cus­sion of para­bles. Je­sus in­tro­duced the evening’s con­fer­ence by say­ing: “My beloved, you must al­ways make a dif­fer­ence in teach­ing so as to suit your pre­sen­ta­tion of truth to the minds and hearts be­fore you. When you stand be­fore a mul­ti­tude of vary­ing in­tel­lects and tem­per­a­ments, you can­not speak dif­fer­ent words for each class of hear­ers, but you can tell a story to con­vey your teach­ing; and each group, even each in­di­vid­ual, will be able to make his own in­ter­pre­ta­tion of your para­ble in ac­cor­dance with his own in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. You are to let your light shine but do so with wis­dom and dis­cre­tion. No man, when he lights a lamp, cov­ers it up with a ves­sel or puts it un­der the bed; he puts his lamp on a stand where all can be­hold the light. Let me tell you that noth­ing is hid in the king­dom of heaven which shall not be made man­i­fest; nei­ther are there any se­crets which shall not ul­ti­mately be made known. Even­tu­ally, all these things shall come to light. Think not only of the mul­ti­tudes and how they hear the truth; take heed also to your­selves how you hear. Re­mem­ber that I have many times told you: To him who has shall be given more, while from him who has not shall be taken away even that which he thinks he has.”

162:5.1On the evening of the next to the last day of the feast, when the scene was bril­liantly il­lu­mi­nated by the lights of the can­de­labras and the torches, Je­sus stood up in the midst of the as­sem­bled throng and said:

162:5.2“I am the light of the world. He who fol­lows me shall not walk in dark­ness but shall have the light of life. Pre­sum­ing to place me on trial and as­sum­ing to sit as my judges, you de­clare that, if I bear wit­ness of my­self, my wit­ness can­not be true. But never can the crea­ture sit in judg­ment on the Cre­ator. Even if I do bear wit­ness about my­self, my wit­ness is ev­er­last­ingly true, for I know whence I came, who I am, and whither I go. You who would kill the Son of Man know not whence I came, who I am, or whither I go. You only judge by the ap­pear­ances of the flesh; you do not per­ceive the re­al­i­ties of the spirit. I judge no man, not even my arch­en­emy. But if I should choose to judge, my judg­ment would be true and righ­teous, for I would judge not alone but in as­so­ci­a­tion with my Fa­ther, who sent me into the world, and who is the source of all true judg­ment. You even al­low that the wit­ness of two re­li­able per­sons may be ac­cepted—well, then, I bear wit­ness of these truths; so also does my Fa­ther in heaven. And when I told you this yes­ter­day, in your dark­ness you asked me, ‘Where is your Fa­ther?’ Truly, you know nei­ther me nor my Fa­ther, for if you had known me, you would also have known the Fa­ther.

162:5.3“I have al­ready told you that I am go­ing away, and that you will seek me and not find me, for where I am go­ing you can­not come. You who would re­ject this light are from be­neath; I am from above. You who pre­fer to sit in dark­ness are of this world; I am not of this world, and I live in the eter­nal light of the Fa­ther of lights. You all have had abun­dant op­por­tu­nity to learn who I am, but you shall have still other ev­i­dence con­firm­ing the iden­tity of the Son of Man. I am the light of life, and ev­ery one who de­lib­er­ately and with un­der­stand­ing re­jects this sav­ing light shall die in his sins. Much I have to tell you, but you are un­able to re­ceive my words. How­ever, he who sent me is true and faith­ful; my Fa­ther loves even his erring chil­dren. And all that my Fa­ther has spo­ken I also pro­claim to the world.

162:5.4“When the Son of Man is lifted up, then shall you all know that I am he, and that I have done noth­ing of my­self but only as the Fa­ther has taught me. I speak these words to you and to your chil­dren. And he who sent me is even now with me; he has not left me alone, for I do al­ways that which is pleas­ing in his sight.”

162:5.5As Je­sus thus taught the pil­grims in the tem­ple courts, many be­lieved. And no man dared to lay hands upon him.

174:5.7“He who be­lieves this gospel, be­lieves not merely in me but in Him who sent me. When you look upon me, you see not only the Son of Man but also Him who sent me. I am the light of the world, and whoso­ever will be­lieve my teach­ing shall no longer abide in dark­ness. If you gen­tiles will hear me, you shall re­ceive the words of life and shall en­ter forth­with into the joy­ous lib­erty of the truth of son­ship with God. If my fel­low coun­try­men, the Jews, choose to re­ject me and to refuse my teach­ings, I will not sit in judg­ment on them, for I came not to judge the world but to of­fer it sal­va­tion. Nev­er­the­less, they who re­ject me and refuse to re­ceive my teach­ing shall be brought to judg­ment in due sea­son by my Fa­ther and those whom he has ap­pointed to sit in judg­ment on such as re­ject the gift of mercy and the truths of sal­va­tion. Re­mem­ber, all of you, that I speak not of my­self, but that I have faith­fully de­clared to you that which the Fa­ther com­manded I should re­veal to the chil­dren of men. And these words which the Fa­ther di­rected me to speak to the world are words of di­vine truth, ev­er­last­ing mercy, and eter­nal life.

180:3.2“Many of those who will as­sail you are ig­no­rant of the light of heaven, but this is not true of some who now per­se­cute us. If we had not taught them the truth, they might do many strange things with­out falling un­der con­dem­na­tion, but now, since they have known the light and pre­sumed to re­ject it, they have no ex­cuse for their at­ti­tude. He who hates me hates my Fa­ther. It can­not be oth­er­wise; the light which would save you if ac­cepted can only con­demn you if it is know­ingly re­jected. And what have I done to these men that they should hate me with such a ter­ri­ble ha­tred? Noth­ing, save to of­fer them fel­low­ship on earth and sal­va­tion in heaven. But have you not read in the Scrip­ture the say­ing: ‘And they hated me with­out a cause’?

182:1.12I am the light of the world.

Onward

See also energy; sun (Urantia’s); suns

Cited alongside: suns, energy, Jesus, matter, Paradise, Universal Father, electricity, God