omniscience

3:3.1“God knows all things.” The di­vine mind is con­scious of, and con­ver­sant with, the thought of all cre­ation. His knowl­edge of events is uni­ver­sal and per­fect. The di­vine en­ti­ties go­ing out from him are a part of him; he who “bal­ances the clouds” is also “per­fect in knowl­edge.” “The eyes of the Lord are in ev­ery place.” Said your great teacher of the in­signif­i­cant spar­row, “One of them shall not fall to the ground with­out my Fa­ther’s knowl­edge,” and also, “The very hairs of your head are num­bered.” “He tells the num­ber of the stars; he calls them all by their names.”

3:3.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is the only per­son­al­ity in all the uni­verse who does ac­tu­ally know the num­ber of the stars and plan­ets of space. All the worlds of ev­ery uni­verse are con­stantly within the con­scious­ness of God. He also says: “I have surely seen the af­flic­tion of my peo­ple, I have heard their cry, and I know their sor­rows.” For “the Lord looks from heaven; he be­holds all the sons of men; from the place of his habi­ta­tion he looks upon all the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” Ev­ery crea­ture child may truly say: “He knows the way I take, and when he has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” “God knows our down­sit­tings and our up­ris­ings; he un­der­stands our thoughts afar off and is ac­quainted with all our ways.” “All things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” And it should be a real com­fort to ev­ery hu­man be­ing to un­der­stand that “he knows your frame; he re­mem­bers that you are dust.” Je­sus, speak­ing of the liv­ing God, said, “Your Fa­ther knows what you have need of even be­fore you ask him.”

3:3.3God is pos­sessed of un­lim­ited power to know all things; his con­scious­ness is uni­ver­sal. His per­sonal cir­cuit en­com­passes all per­son­al­i­ties, and his knowl­edge of even the lowly crea­tures is sup­ple­mented in­di­rectly through the de­scend­ing se­ries of di­vine Sons and di­rectly through the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers. And fur­ther­more, the In­fi­nite Spirit is all the time ev­ery­where pres­ent.

3:3.4We are not wholly cer­tain as to whether or not God chooses to fore­know events of sin. But even if God should fore­know the free­will acts of his chil­dren, such fore­knowl­edge does not in the least ab­ro­gate their free­dom. One thing is cer­tain: God is never sub­jected to sur­prise.

3:3.5Om­nipo­tence does not im­ply the power to do the non­doable, the un­god­like act. Nei­ther does om­ni­science im­ply the know­ing of the un­know­able. But such state­ments can hardly be made com­pre­hen­si­ble to the fi­nite mind. The crea­ture can hardly un­der­stand the range and lim­i­ta­tions of the will of the Cre­ator.

118:7.1The func­tion of Cre­ator will and crea­ture will, in the grand uni­verse, op­er­ates within the lim­its, and in ac­cor­dance with the pos­si­bil­i­ties, es­tab­lished by the Mas­ter Ar­chi­tects. This fore­or­di­na­tion of these max­i­mum lim­its does not, how­ever, in the least abridge the sov­er­eignty of crea­ture will within these bound­aries. Nei­ther does ul­ti­mate fore­knowl­edge—full al­lowance for all fi­nite choice—con­sti­tute an ab­ro­ga­tion of fi­nite vo­li­tion. A ma­ture and farsee­ing hu­man be­ing might be able to fore­cast the de­ci­sion of some younger as­so­ciate most ac­cu­rately, but this fore­knowl­edge takes noth­ing away from the free­dom and gen­uine­ness of the de­ci­sion it­self. The Gods have wisely lim­ited the range of the ac­tion of im­ma­ture will, but it is true will, nonethe­less, within these de­fined lim­its.

118:7.2Even the su­preme cor­re­la­tion of all past, pres­ent, and fu­ture choice does not in­val­i­date the au­then­tic­ity of such choos­ings. It rather in­di­cates the fore­or­dained trend of the cos­mos and sug­gests fore­knowl­edge of those vo­li­tional be­ings who may, or may not, elect to be­come con­trib­u­tory parts of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­tu­al­iza­tion of all re­al­ity.

118:7.3Er­ror in fi­nite choos­ing is time bound and time lim­ited. It can ex­ist only in time and within the evolv­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Such mis­taken choos­ing is time pos­si­ble and in­di­cates (be­sides the in­com­plete­ness of the Su­preme) that cer­tain range of choice with which im­ma­ture crea­tures must be en­dowed in or­der to en­joy uni­verse pro­gres­sion by mak­ing free­will con­tact with re­al­ity.

118:7.4Sin in time-con­di­tioned space clearly proves the tem­po­ral lib­erty—even li­cense—of the fi­nite will. Sin de­picts im­ma­tu­rity daz­zled by the free­dom of the rel­a­tively sov­er­eign will of per­son­al­ity while fail­ing to per­ceive the su­preme obli­ga­tions and du­ties of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

118:7.5In­iq­uity in the fi­nite do­mains re­veals the tran­sient re­al­ity of all God-uniden­ti­fied self­hood. Only as a crea­ture be­comes God iden­ti­fied, does he be­come truly real in the uni­verses. Fi­nite per­son­al­ity is not self-cre­ated, but in the super­uni­verse arena of choice it does self-de­ter­mine des­tiny.

118:7.6The be­stowal of life ren­ders ma­te­rial-en­ergy sys­tems ca­pa­ble of self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-prop­a­ga­tion, and self-adap­ta­tion. The be­stowal of per­son­al­ity im­parts to liv­ing or­gan­isms the fur­ther pre­rog­a­tives of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, self-evo­lu­tion, and self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a fu­sion spirit of De­ity.

118:7.7Sub­per­sonal liv­ing things in­di­cate mind ac­ti­vat­ing en­ergy-mat­ter, first as phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, and then as ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its. Per­son­al­ity en­dow­ment comes from the Fa­ther and im­parts unique pre­rog­a­tives of choice to the liv­ing sys­tem. But if per­son­al­ity has the pre­rog­a­tive of ex­er­cis­ing vo­li­tional choice of re­al­ity iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and if this is a true and free choice, then must evolv­ing per­son­al­ity also have the pos­si­ble choice of be­com­ing self-con­fus­ing, self-dis­rupt­ing, and self-de­stroy­ing. The pos­si­bil­ity of cos­mic self-de­struc­tion can­not be avoided if the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity is to be truly free in the ex­er­cise of fi­nite will.

118:7.8There­fore is there in­creased safety in nar­row­ing the lim­its of per­son­al­ity choice through­out the lower lev­els of ex­is­tence. Choice be­comes in­creas­ingly lib­er­ated as the uni­verses are as­cended; choice even­tu­ally ap­prox­i­mates di­vine free­dom when the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity achieves di­vin­ity of sta­tus, su­prem­acy of con­se­cra­tion to the pur­poses of the uni­verse, com­ple­tion of cos­mic-wis­dom at­tain­ment, and fi­nal­ity of crea­ture iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the will and the way of God.

18:1.5Since the work of these su­preme di­rec­tors has to do with the in­ti­mate and per­sonal con­tact of the De­i­ties with these seven ba­sic group­ings of uni­verse be­ings when domi­ciled on these seven spe­cial worlds or while func­tion­ing through­out the grand uni­verse, it is fit­ting that these very per­sonal re­la­tions and ex­traor­di­nary con­tacts should be held sa­credly se­cret. The Par­a­dise Cre­ators re­spect the pri­vacy and sanc­tity of per­son­al­ity even in their lowly crea­tures. And this is true both of in­di­vid­u­als and of the var­i­ous sep­a­rate or­ders of per­son­al­i­ties.

23:2.20They go forth to in­ves­ti­gate the clues fur­nished by the space con­tem­pla­tors of the realms. Un­doubt­edly the Par­a­dise De­i­ties know of the ex­is­tence of these undis­cov­ered en­ergy sys­tems of space, but they never di­vulge such in­for­ma­tion. If the Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers did not ex­plore and chart these newly or­ga­niz­ing en­ergy cen­ters, such phe­nom­ena would long re­main un­no­ticed even by the in­tel­li­gences of ad­ja­cent realms. Soli­tary Mes­sen­gers, as a class, are highly sen­si­tive to grav­ity; ac­cord­ingly they can some­times de­tect the prob­a­ble pres­ence of very small dark plan­ets, the very worlds which are best adapted to life ex­per­i­ments.

24:2.2The Cen­sus Di­rec­tors are a spe­cial and com­pleted cre­ation of the In­fi­nite Spirit, and they ex­ist in num­bers un­known to us. They are so cre­ated as to be able to main­tain per­fect syn­chrony with the re­flec­tiv­ity tech­nique of the super­uni­verses, while at the same time they are per­son­ally sen­si­tive and re­spon­sive to in­tel­li­gent will. These di­rec­tors, by a not-fully-un­der­stood tech­nique, are made im­me­di­ately aware of the birth of will in any part of the grand uni­verse. They are, there­fore, al­ways com­pe­tent to give us the num­ber, na­ture, and where­abouts of all will crea­tures in any part of the cen­tral cre­ation and the seven super­uni­verses. But they do not func­tion on Par­a­dise; there is no need for them there. On Par­a­dise knowl­edge is in­her­ent; the De­i­ties know all things.

25:4.16Such a liv­ing li­brary of ap­plied law could not be cre­ated; such be­ings must be evolved by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The in­fi­nite De­i­ties are ex­is­ten­tial, hence are com­pen­sated for lack of ex­pe­ri­ence; they know all even be­fore they ex­pe­ri­ence all, but they do not im­part this non­ex­pe­ri­en­tial knowl­edge to their sub­or­di­nate crea­tures.

4:3.4God re­pents of noth­ing he has ever done, now does, or ever will do. He is all-wise as well as all-pow­er­ful. Man’s wis­dom grows out of the tri­als and er­rors of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; God’s wis­dom con­sists in the un­qual­i­fied per­fec­tion of his in­fi­nite uni­verse in­sight, and this di­vine fore­knowl­edge ef­fec­tively di­rects the cre­ative free will.

32:4.8We can see and un­der­stand the mech­a­nism whereby the Sons en­joy in­ti­mate and com­plete knowl­edge re­gard­ing the uni­verses of their ju­ris­dic­tion; but we can­not fully com­pre­hend the meth­ods whereby God is so fully and per­son­ally con­ver­sant with the de­tails of the uni­verse of uni­verses, al­though we at least can rec­og­nize the av­enue whereby the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can re­ceive in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing, and man­i­fest his pres­ence to, the be­ings of his im­mense cre­ation. Through the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit the Fa­ther is cog­nizant—has per­sonal knowl­edge—of all the thoughts and acts of all the be­ings in all the sys­tems of all the uni­verses of all cre­ation. Though we can­not fully grasp this tech­nique of God’s com­mu­nion with his chil­dren, we can be strength­ened in the as­sur­ance that the “Lord knows his chil­dren,” and that of each one of us “he takes note where we were born.”

108:0.2Noth­ing in the en­tire uni­verse can sub­sti­tute for the fact of ex­pe­ri­ence on nonex­is­ten­tial lev­els. The in­fi­nite God is, as al­ways, re­plete and com­plete, in­finitely in­clu­sive of all things ex­cept evil and crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence. God can­not do wrong; he is in­fal­li­ble. God can­not ex­pe­ri­en­tially know what he has never per­son­ally ex­pe­ri­enced; God’s pre­knowl­edge is ex­is­ten­tial. There­fore does the spirit of the Fa­ther de­scend from Par­a­dise to par­tic­i­pate with fi­nite mor­tals in ev­ery bona fide ex­pe­ri­ence of the as­cend­ing ca­reer; it is only by such a method that the ex­is­ten­tial God could be­come in truth and in fact man’s ex­pe­ri­en­tial Fa­ther. The in­fin­ity of the eter­nal God en­com­passes the po­ten­tial for fi­nite ex­pe­ri­ence, which in­deed be­comes ac­tual in the min­istry of the Ad­juster frag­ments that ac­tu­ally share the life vi­cis­si­tude ex­pe­ri­ences of hu­man be­ings.

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!”

146:5.2When this no­ble­man had lo­cated Je­sus in Cana, he be­sought him to hurry over to Ca­per­naum and heal his af­flicted son. While the apos­tles stood by in breath­less ex­pectancy, Je­sus, look­ing at the fa­ther of the sick boy, said: “How long shall I bear with you? The power of God is in your midst, but ex­cept you see signs and be­hold won­ders, you refuse to be­lieve.” But the no­ble­man pleaded with Je­sus, say­ing: “My Lord, I do be­lieve, but come ere my child per­ishes, for when I left him he was even then at the point of death.” And when Je­sus had bowed his head a mo­ment in silent med­i­ta­tion, he sud­denly spoke, “Re­turn to your home; your son will live.” Ti­tus be­lieved the word of Je­sus and has­tened back to Ca­per­naum. And as he was re­turn­ing, his ser­vants came out to meet him, say­ing, “Re­joice, for your son is im­proved—he lives.” Then Ti­tus in­quired of them at what hour the boy be­gan to mend, and when the ser­vants an­swered “yes­ter­day about the sev­enth hour the fever left him,” the fa­ther re­called that it was about that hour when Je­sus had said, “Your son will live.” And Ti­tus hence­forth be­lieved with a whole heart, and all his fam­ily also be­lieved. This son be­came a mighty min­is­ter of the king­dom and later yielded up his life with those who suf­fered in Rome. Though the en­tire house­hold of Ti­tus, their friends, and even the apos­tles re­garded this episode as a mir­a­cle, it was not. At least this was not a mir­a­cle of cur­ing phys­i­cal dis­ease. It was merely a case of pre­knowl­edge con­cern­ing the course of nat­u­ral law, just such knowl­edge as Je­sus fre­quently re­sorted to sub­se­quent to his bap­tism.

161:3.2We can un­der­stand his unique per­for­mances only by ac­cept­ing the the­ory that he could, at will, self-limit his di­vin­ity con­scious­ness. We are fully cog­nizant that he fre­quently with­held from his as­so­ciates his fore­knowl­edge of events, and that he was aware of the na­ture of their think­ing and plan­ning. We un­der­stand that he did not wish his fol­low­ers to know too fully that he was able to dis­cern their thoughts and to pen­e­trate their plans. He did not de­sire too far to tran­scend the con­cept of the hu­man as it was held in the minds of his apos­tles and dis­ci­ples.

161:3.3We are ut­terly at a loss to dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween his prac­tice of self-lim­it­ing his di­vine con­scious­ness and his tech­nique of con­ceal­ing his pre­knowl­edge and thought dis­cern­ment from his hu­man as­so­ciates. We are con­vinced that he used both of these tech­niques, but we are not al­ways able, in a given in­stance, to spec­ify which method he may have em­ployed. We fre­quently ob­served him act­ing with only the hu­man con­tent of con­scious­ness; then would we be­hold him in con­fer­ence with the di­rec­tors of the ce­les­tial hosts of the uni­verse and dis­cern the un­doubted func­tion­ing of the di­vine mind. And then on al­most num­ber­less oc­ca­sions did we wit­ness the work­ing of this com­bined per­son­al­ity of man and God as it was ac­ti­vated by the ap­par­ent per­fect union of the hu­man and the di­vine minds. This is the limit of our knowl­edge of such phe­nom­ena; we re­ally do not ac­tu­ally know the full truth about this mys­tery.

192:1.7Pe­ter then joined his com­rades as they hauled in the net. When they had landed their catch, they counted the fish, and there were 153 large ones. And again was the mis­take made of call­ing this an­other mirac­u­lous catch of fish. There was no mir­a­cle con­nected with this episode. It was merely an ex­er­cise of the Mas­ter’s pre­knowl­edge. He knew the fish were there and ac­cord­ingly di­rected the apos­tles where to cast the net.

28:5.22So it is with mor­tal man: The Mother Spirit of Sal­ving­ton knows you fully, for the Holy Spirit on your world “searches all things,” and what­so­ever the di­vine Spirit knows of you is im­me­di­ately avail­able when­ever the sec­o­raphic dis­cern­ers re­flect with the Spirit con­cern­ing the Spirit’s knowl­edge of you. It should, how­ever, be men­tioned that the knowl­edge and plans of the Fa­ther frag­ments are not re­flectible. The dis­cern­ers can and do re­flect the pres­ence of the Ad­justers (and the Cen­sors pro­nounce them di­vine), but they can­not de­ci­pher the con­tent of the mind­ed­ness of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

9:7.5Re­flec­tiv­ity ap­pears to be om­ni­science within the lim­its of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial fi­nite and may rep­re­sent the emer­gence of the pres­ence-con­scious­ness of the Su­preme Be­ing. If this as­sump­tion is true, then the uti­liza­tion of re­flec­tiv­ity in any of its phases is equiv­a­lent to par­tial con­tact with the con­scious­ness of the Su­preme.

16:2.4The Seven Mas­ter Spir­its are col­lec­tively en­dowed with the su­preme-ul­ti­mate at­tri­butes of the Third Source and Cen­ter. While each one in­di­vid­u­ally par­takes of this en­dow­ment, only col­lec­tively do they dis­close the at­tri­butes of om­nipo­tence, om­ni­science, and om­nipres­ence. No one of them can so func­tion uni­ver­sally; as in­di­vid­u­als and in the ex­er­cise of these pow­ers of su­prem­acy and ul­ti­macy each is per­son­ally lim­ited to the super­uni­verse of im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion.

105:7.139. Om­nipo­tence, om­ni­science, and om­nipres­ence.