paradox

• God’s immanence and transcendence

5:5.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing es­sen­tially spir­i­tual, can never be fully un­der­stood by the ma­te­rial mind; hence the func­tion of the­ol­ogy, the psy­chol­ogy of re­li­gion. The es­sen­tial doc­trine of the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of God cre­ates a para­dox in fi­nite com­pre­hen­sion. It is well-nigh im­pos­si­ble for hu­man logic and fi­nite rea­son to har­mo­nize the con­cept of di­vine im­ma­nence, God within and a part of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, with the idea of God’s tran­scen­dence, the di­vine dom­i­na­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses. These two es­sen­tial con­cepts of De­ity must be uni­fied in the faith-grasp of the con­cept of the tran­scen­dence of a per­sonal God and in the re­al­iza­tion of the in­dwelling pres­ence of a frag­ment of that God in or­der to jus­tify in­tel­li­gent wor­ship and val­i­date the hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. The dif­fi­cul­ties and para­doxes of re­li­gion are in­her­ent in the fact that the re­al­i­ties of re­li­gion are ut­terly be­yond the mor­tal ca­pac­ity for in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

• of simultaneous measurements

65:6.1It is im­pos­si­ble ac­cu­rately to de­ter­mine, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, the ex­act lo­ca­tion and the ve­loc­ity of a mov­ing ob­ject; any at­tempt at mea­sure­ment of ei­ther in­evitably in­volves change in the other. The same sort of a para­dox con­fronts mor­tal man when he un­der­takes the chem­i­cal anal­y­sis of pro­to­plasm. The chemist can elu­ci­date the chem­istry of dead pro­to­plasm, but he can­not dis­cern ei­ther the phys­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion or the dy­namic per­for­mance of liv­ing pro­to­plasm. Ever will the sci­en­tist come nearer and nearer the se­crets of life, but never will he find them and for no other rea­son than that he must kill pro­to­plasm in or­der to an­a­lyze it. Dead pro­to­plasm weighs the same as liv­ing pro­to­plasm, but it is not the same.

111:6.1Many of the tem­po­ral trou­bles of mor­tal man grow out of his two­fold re­la­tion to the cos­mos. Man is a part of na­ture—he ex­ists in na­ture—and yet he is able to tran­scend na­ture. Man is fi­nite, but he is in­dwelt by a spark of in­fin­ity. Such a dual sit­u­a­tion not only pro­vides the po­ten­tial for evil but also en­gen­ders many so­cial and moral sit­u­a­tions fraught with much un­cer­tainty and not a lit­tle anx­i­ety.

111:6.2The cour­age re­quired to ef­fect the con­quest of na­ture and to tran­scend one’s self is a cour­age that might suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tions of self-pride. The mor­tal who can tran­scend self might yield to the temp­ta­tion to de­ify his own self-con­scious­ness. The mor­tal dilemma con­sists in the dou­ble fact that man is in bond­age to na­ture while at the same time he pos­sesses a unique lib­erty—free­dom of spir­i­tual choice and ac­tion. On ma­te­rial lev­els man finds him­self sub­servient to na­ture, while on spir­i­tual lev­els he is tri­umphant over na­ture and over all things tem­po­ral and fi­nite. Such a para­dox is in­sep­a­ra­ble from temp­ta­tion, po­ten­tial evil, de­ci­sional er­rors, and when self be­comes proud and ar­ro­gant, sin may evolve.

111:6.3The prob­lem of sin is not self-ex­is­tent in the fi­nite world. The fact of finite­ness is not evil or sin­ful. The fi­nite world was made by an in­fi­nite Cre­ator—it is the hand­i­work of his di­vine Sons—and there­fore it must be good. It is the mis­use, dis­tor­tion, and per­ver­sion of the fi­nite that gives ori­gin to evil and sin.

111:6.4The spirit can dom­i­nate mind; so mind can con­trol en­ergy. But mind can con­trol en­ergy only through its own in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of the meta­mor­phic po­ten­tials in­her­ent in the math­e­mat­i­cal level of the causes and ef­fects of the phys­i­cal do­mains. Crea­ture mind does not in­her­ently con­trol en­ergy; that is a De­ity pre­rog­a­tive. But crea­ture mind can and does ma­nip­u­late en­ergy just in so far as it has be­come mas­ter of the en­ergy se­crets of the phys­i­cal uni­verse.

111:6.5When man wishes to mod­ify phys­i­cal re­al­ity, be it him­self or his en­vi­ron­ment, he suc­ceeds to the ex­tent that he has dis­cov­ered the ways and means of con­trol­ling mat­ter and di­rect­ing en­ergy. Un­aided mind is im­po­tent to in­flu­ence any­thing ma­te­rial save its own phys­i­cal mech­a­nism, with which it is in­escapably linked. But through the in­tel­li­gent use of the body mech­a­nism, mind can cre­ate other mech­a­nisms, even en­ergy re­la­tion­ships and liv­ing re­la­tion­ships, by the uti­liza­tion of which this mind can in­creas­ingly con­trol and even dom­i­nate its phys­i­cal level in the uni­verse.

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

111:6.7The ex­pan­sion of ma­te­rial knowl­edge per­mits a greater in­tel­lec­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the mean­ings of ideas and the val­ues of ide­als. A hu­man be­ing can find truth in his in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence, but he needs a clear knowl­edge of facts to ap­ply his per­sonal dis­cov­ery of truth to the ruth­lessly prac­ti­cal de­mands of ev­ery­day life.

111:6.8It is only nat­u­ral that mor­tal man should be ha­rassed by feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity as he views him­self in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound to na­ture while he pos­sesses spir­i­tual pow­ers wholly tran­scen­dent to all things tem­po­ral and fi­nite. Only re­li­gious con­fi­dence—liv­ing faith—can sus­tain man amid such dif­fi­cult and per­plex­ing prob­lems.

111:6.9Of all the dan­gers which be­set man’s mor­tal na­ture and jeop­ar­dize his spir­i­tual in­tegrity, pride is the great­est. Cour­age is val­or­ous, but ego­tism is vain­glo­ri­ous and sui­ci­dal. Rea­son­able self-con­fi­dence is not to be de­plored. Man’s abil­ity to tran­scend him­self is the one thing which dis­tin­guishes him from the an­i­mal king­dom.

111:6.10Pride is de­ceit­ful, in­tox­i­cat­ing, and sin-breed­ing whether found in an in­di­vid­ual, a group, a race, or a na­tion. It is lit­er­ally true, “Pride goes be­fore a fall.”

• infinity is the maximum p.

115:3.4It is only man’s dis­tance from in­fin­ity that causes this con­cept to be ex­pressed as one word. While in­fin­ity is on the one hand UNITY, on the other it is DI­VER­SITY with­out end or limit. In­fin­ity, as it is ob­served by fi­nite in­tel­li­gences, is the max­i­mum para­dox of crea­ture phi­los­o­phy and fi­nite meta­physics. Though man’s spir­i­tual na­ture reaches up in the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence to the Fa­ther who is in­fi­nite, man’s in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity is ex­hausted by the max­i­mum con­cep­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing. Be­yond the Su­preme, con­cepts are in­creas­ingly names; less and less are they true des­ig­na­tions of re­al­ity; more and more do they be­come the crea­ture’s pro­jec­tion of fi­nite un­der­stand­ing to­ward the super­fi­nite.