mirrors

94:6.10The Con­fu­cian preach­ment of moral­ity was pred­i­cated on the the­ory that the earthly way is the dis­torted shadow of the heav­enly way; that the true pat­tern of tem­po­ral civ­i­liza­tion is the mir­ror re­flec­tion of the eter­nal or­der of heaven. The po­ten­tial God con­cept in Con­fu­cian­ism was al­most com­pletely sub­or­di­nated to the em­pha­sis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pat­tern of the cos­mos.

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.

25:2.4Each of the seven super­cre­ations is ac­tu­ally per­vaded by that one of the Mas­ter Spir­its who pre­sides over its des­tinies. Each super­uni­verse thus be­comes like a gi­gan­tic mir­ror re­flect­ing the na­ture and char­ac­ter of the super­vis­ing Mas­ter Spirit, and all of this is fur­ther con­tin­ued in ev­ery sub­sidiary lo­cal uni­verse by the pres­ence and func­tion of the Cre­ative Mother Spir­its. The ef­fect of such an en­vi­ron­ment upon evo­lu­tion­ary growth is so pro­found that in their post­super­uni­verse ca­reers the con­cil­ia­tors col­lec­tively man­i­fest forty-nine ex­pe­ri­en­tial view­points, or in­sights, each an­gu­lar—hence in­com­plete—but all mu­tu­ally com­pen­satory and to­gether tend­ing to en­com­pass the cir­cle of Su­prem­acy.

102:8.4Ethics is the ex­ter­nal so­cial or racial mir­ror which faith­fully re­flects the oth­er­wise un­ob­serv­able prog­ress of in­ter­nal spir­i­tual and re­li­gious de­vel­op­ments. Man has al­ways thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deep­est ideas and high­est ide­als. Even his­toric re­li­gion has al­ways cre­ated its God con­cep­tions out of its high­est rec­og­nized val­ues. Ev­ery in­tel­li­gent crea­ture gives the name of God to the best and high­est thing he knows.

28:4.1The pri­mary se­con­a­phim, of as­sign­ment to the An­cients of Days, are liv­ing mir­rors in the ser­vice of these tri­une rulers. Think what it means in the econ­omy of a super­uni­verse to be able to turn, as it were, to a liv­ing mir­ror and therein to see and there­with to hear the cer­tain re­sponses of an­other be­ing a thou­sand or a hun­dred thou­sand light-years dis­tant and to do all this in­stantly and unerringly. Rec­ords are es­sen­tial to the con­duct of the uni­verses, broad­casts are ser­vice­able, the work of the Soli­tary and other mes­sen­gers is very help­ful, but the An­cients of Days from their po­si­tion mid­way be­tween the in­hab­ited worlds and Par­a­dise—be­tween man and God—can in­stantly look both ways, hear both ways, and know both ways.

86:5.14The shadow came, later on, to be feared and revered equally with the breath. The re­flec­tion of one­self in the wa­ter was also some­times looked upon as proof of the dou­ble self, and mir­rors were re­garded with su­per­sti­tious awe. Even now many civ­i­lized per­sons turn the mir­ror to the wall in the event of death. Some back­ward tribes still be­lieve that the mak­ing of pic­tures, draw­ings, mod­els, or im­ages re­moves all or a part of the soul from the body; hence such are for­bid­den.

131:7.3“‘Ev­ery time man yields to anx­i­ety, he takes one step away from the lead­ing of the spirit of his heart.’ Pride ob­scures God. If you would ob­tain heav­enly help, put away your pride; ev­ery hair of pride shuts off sav­ing light, as it were, by a great cloud. If you are not right on the in­side, it is use­less to pray for that which is on the out­side. ‘If I hear your prayers, it is be­cause you come be­fore me with a clean heart, free from false­hood and hypocrisy, with a soul which re­flects truth like a mir­ror. If you would gain im­mor­tal­ity, for­sake the world and come to me.’”

28:5.112. The Soul of Phi­los­o­phy. These won­der­ful teach­ers are also at­tached to the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom and, when not oth­er­wise di­rec­tion­ized, re­main in fo­cal syn­chrony with the mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy on Par­a­dise. Think of step­ping up to a huge liv­ing mir­ror, as it were, but in­stead of be­hold­ing the like­ness of your fi­nite and ma­te­rial self, of per­ceiv­ing a re­flec­tion of the wis­dom of di­vin­ity and the phi­los­o­phy of Par­a­dise. And if it be­comes de­sir­able to “in­car­nate” this phi­los­o­phy of per­fec­tion, so to di­lute it as to make it prac­ti­cal of ap­pli­ca­tion to, and as­sim­i­la­tion by, the lowly peo­ples of the lower worlds, these liv­ing mir­rors have only to turn their faces down­ward to re­flect the stan­dards and needs of an­other world or uni­verse.