matter, mind, and spirit

12:8.1“God is spirit,” but Par­a­dise is not. The ma­te­rial uni­verse is al­ways the arena wherein take place all spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties; spirit be­ings and spirit as­cend­ers live and work on phys­i­cal spheres of ma­te­rial re­al­ity.

12:8.2The be­stowal of cos­mic force, the do­main of cos­mic grav­ity, is the func­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise. All orig­i­nal force-en­ergy pro­ceeds from Par­a­dise, and the mat­ter for the mak­ing of un­told uni­verses now cir­cu­lates through­out the mas­ter uni­verse in the form of a super­grav­ity pres­ence which con­sti­tutes the force-charge of per­vaded space.

12:8.3What­ever the trans­for­ma­tions of force in the out­ly­ing uni­verses, hav­ing gone out from Par­a­dise, it jour­neys on sub­ject to the never-end­ing, ever-pres­ent, un­fail­ing pull of the eter­nal Isle, obe­di­ently and in­her­ently swing­ing on for­ever around the eter­nal space paths of the uni­verses. Phys­i­cal en­ergy is the one re­al­ity which is true and stead­fast in its obe­di­ence to uni­ver­sal law. Only in the realms of crea­ture vo­li­tion has there been de­vi­a­tion from the di­vine paths and the orig­i­nal plans. Power and en­ergy are the uni­ver­sal ev­i­dences of the sta­bil­ity, con­stancy, and eter­nity of the cen­tral Isle of Par­a­dise.

12:8.4The be­stowal of spirit and the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of per­son­al­i­ties, the do­main of spir­i­tual grav­ity, is the realm of the Eter­nal Son. And this spirit grav­ity of the Son, ever draw­ing all spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties to him­self, is just as real and ab­so­lute as is the all-pow­er­ful ma­te­rial grasp of the Isle of Par­a­dise. But ma­te­rial-minded man is nat­u­rally more fa­mil­iar with the ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions of a phys­i­cal na­ture than with the equally real and mighty op­er­a­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture which are dis­cerned only by the spir­i­tual in­sight of the soul.

12:8.5As the mind of any per­son­al­ity in the uni­verse be­comes more spir­i­tual—God­like—it be­comes less re­spon­sive to ma­te­rial grav­ity. Re­al­ity, mea­sured by phys­i­cal-grav­ity re­sponse, is the an­tithe­sis of re­al­ity as de­ter­mined by qual­ity of spirit con­tent. Phys­i­cal-grav­ity ac­tion is a quan­ti­ta­tive de­ter­miner of non­spirit en­ergy; spir­i­tual-grav­ity ac­tion is the qual­i­ta­tive mea­sure of the liv­ing en­ergy of di­vin­ity.

12:8.6What Par­a­dise is to the phys­i­cal cre­ation, and what the Eter­nal Son is to the spir­i­tual uni­verse, the Con­joint Ac­tor is to the realms of mind—the in­tel­li­gent uni­verse of ma­te­rial, mor­ontial, and spir­i­tual be­ings and per­son­al­i­ties.

12:8.7The Con­joint Ac­tor re­acts to both ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and there­fore in­her­ently be­comes the uni­ver­sal min­is­ter to all in­tel­li­gent be­ings, be­ings who may rep­re­sent a union of both the ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual phases of cre­ation. The en­dow­ment of in­tel­li­gence, the min­istry to the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual in the phe­nom­e­non of mind, is the ex­clu­sive do­main of the Con­joint Ac­tor, who thus be­comes the part­ner of the spir­i­tual mind, the essence of the mor­ontia mind, and the sub­stance of the ma­te­rial mind of the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures of time.

12:8.8Mind is the tech­nique whereby spirit re­al­i­ties be­come ex­pe­ri­en­tial to crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties. And in the last anal­y­sis the uni­fy­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties of even hu­man mind, the abil­ity to co-or­di­nate things, ideas, and val­ues, is super­ma­te­rial.

12:8.9Though it is hardly pos­si­ble for the mor­tal mind to com­pre­hend the seven lev­els of rel­a­tive cos­mic re­al­ity, the hu­man in­tel­lect should be able to grasp much of the mean­ing of three func­tion­ing lev­els of fi­nite re­al­ity:

12:8.101. Mat­ter. Or­ga­nized en­ergy which is sub­ject to lin­ear grav­ity ex­cept as it is mod­i­fied by mo­tion and con­di­tioned by mind.

12:8.112. Mind. Or­ga­nized con­scious­ness which is not wholly sub­ject to ma­te­rial grav­ity, and which be­comes truly lib­er­ated when mod­i­fied by spirit.

12:8.123. Spirit. The high­est per­sonal re­al­ity. True spirit is not sub­ject to phys­i­cal grav­ity but even­tu­ally be­comes the mo­ti­vat­ing in­flu­ence of all evolv­ing en­ergy sys­tems of per­son­al­ity dig­nity.

12:8.13The goal of ex­is­tence of all per­son­al­i­ties is spirit; ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions are rel­a­tive, and the cos­mic mind in­ter­venes be­tween these uni­ver­sal op­po­sites. The be­stowal of mind and the min­is­tra­tion of spirit are the work of the as­so­ciate per­sons of De­ity, the In­fi­nite Spirit and the Eter­nal Son. To­tal De­ity re­al­ity is not mind but spirit-mind—mind-spirit uni­fied by per­son­al­ity. Nev­er­the­less the ab­so­lutes of both the spirit and the thing con­verge in the per­son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

12:8.14On Par­a­dise the three en­er­gies, phys­i­cal, mindal, and spir­i­tual, are co-or­di­nate. In the evo­lu­tion­ary cos­mos en­ergy-mat­ter is dom­i­nant ex­cept in per­son­al­ity, where spirit, through the me­di­a­tion of mind, is striv­ing for the mas­tery. Spirit is the fun­da­men­tal re­al­ity of the per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence of all crea­tures be­cause God is spirit. Spirit is un­chang­ing, and there­fore, in all per­son­al­ity re­la­tions, it tran­scends both mind and mat­ter, which are ex­pe­ri­en­tial vari­ables of pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment.

12:8.15In cos­mic evo­lu­tion mat­ter be­comes a philo­sophic shadow cast by mind in the pres­ence of spirit lu­mi­nos­ity of di­vine en­light­en­ment, but this does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity of mat­ter-en­ergy. Mind, mat­ter, and spirit are equally real, but they are not of equal value to per­son­al­ity in the at­tain­ment of di­vin­ity. Con­scious­ness of di­vin­ity is a pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

12:8.16The brighter the shin­ing of the spir­i­tu­al­ized per­son­al­ity (the Fa­ther in the uni­verse, the frag­ment of po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity in the in­di­vid­ual crea­ture), the greater the shadow cast by the in­ter­ven­ing mind upon its ma­te­rial in­vest­ment. In time, man’s body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (iden­tity) and spirit sur­vive while the body does not. A cos­mic re­al­ity can be nonex­is­tent in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. And so your Greek fig­ure of speech—the ma­te­rial as the shadow of the more real spirit sub­stance—does have a philo­sophic sig­nif­i­cance.

65:7.8Al­ways should the do­mains of the phys­i­cal (elec­tro­chem­i­cal) and the men­tal re­sponse to en­vi­ron­men­tal stim­uli be dif­fer­en­ti­ated, and in turn must they all be rec­og­nized as phe­nom­ena apart from spir­i­tual ac­tiv­i­ties. The do­mains of phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual grav­ity are dis­tinct realms of cos­mic re­al­ity, not­with­stand­ing their in­ti­mate in­ter­re­la­tions.