natural law

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.

136:7.1Hav­ing 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.

136:9.9By 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.

166:4.8“3. You may reap the har­vest of your di­rect ef­forts to com­ply with the nat­u­ral laws gov­ern­ing the world.

15:8.8We are able to rec­og­nize most of the laws gov­ern­ing uni­verse equi­lib­rium and to pre­dict much per­tain­ing to uni­verse sta­bil­ity. Prac­ti­cally, our fore­casts are re­li­able, but we are al­ways con­fronted by cer­tain forces which are not wholly amenable to the laws of en­ergy con­trol and mat­ter be­hav­ior known to us. The pre­dictabil­ity of all phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena be­comes in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult as we pro­ceed out­ward in the uni­verses from Par­a­dise. As we pass be­yond the bor­ders of the per­sonal ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Par­a­dise Rulers, we are con­fronted with in­creas­ing in­abil­ity to reckon in ac­cor­dance with the stan­dards es­tab­lished and the ex­pe­ri­ence ac­quired in con­nec­tion with ob­ser­va­tions hav­ing ex­clu­sively to do with the phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena of the near-by as­tro­nomic sys­tems. Even in the realms of the seven super­uni­verses we are liv­ing in the midst of force ac­tions and en­ergy re­ac­tions which per­vade all our do­mains and ex­tend in uni­fied equi­lib­rium on through all re­gions of outer space.

15:8.9The far­ther out we go, the more cer­tainly we en­counter those vari­a­tional and un­pre­dictable phe­nom­ena which are so unerringly char­ac­ter­is­tic of the un­fath­omable pres­ence-per­for­mances of the Ab­so­lutes and the ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­i­ties. And these phe­nom­ena must be in­dica­tive of some uni­ver­sal over­con­trol of all things.

67:7.4Sin is never purely lo­cal in its ef­fects. The ad­min­is­tra­tive sec­tors of the uni­verses are or­gan­is­mal; the plight of one per­son­al­ity must to a cer­tain ex­tent be shared by all. Sin, be­ing an at­ti­tude of the per­son to­ward re­al­ity, is des­tined to ex­hibit its in­her­ent neg­a­tivis­tic har­vest upon any and all re­lated lev­els of uni­verse val­ues. But the full con­se­quences of er­ro­neous think­ing, evil-do­ing, or sin­ful plan­ning are ex­pe­ri­enced only on the level of ac­tual per­for­mance. The trans­gres­sion of uni­verse law may be fa­tal in the phys­i­cal realm with­out se­ri­ously in­volv­ing the mind or im­pair­ing the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Sin is fraught with fa­tal con­se­quences to per­son­al­ity sur­vival only when it is the at­ti­tude of the whole be­ing, when it stands for the choos­ing of the mind and the will­ing of the soul.