parts and the whole

12:7.1There is op­er­a­tive through­out all time and space and with re­gard to all re­al­ity of what­ever na­ture an in­ex­orable and im­per­sonal law which is equiv­a­lent to the func­tion of a cos­mic prov­i­dence. Mercy char­ac­ter­izes God’s at­ti­tude of love for the in­di­vid­ual; im­par­tial­ity mo­ti­vates God’s at­ti­tude to­ward the to­tal. The will of God does not nec­es­sar­ily pre­vail in the part—the heart of any one per­son­al­ity—but his will does ac­tu­ally rule the whole, the uni­verse of uni­verses.

12:7.2In all his deal­ings with all his be­ings it is true that the laws of God are not in­her­ently ar­bi­trary. To you, with your lim­ited vi­sion and fi­nite view­point, the acts of God must of­ten ap­pear to be dic­ta­to­rial and ar­bi­trary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of re­peat­edly do­ing things; and he ever does all things well. You ob­serve that God does the same thing in the same way, re­peat­edly, sim­ply be­cause that is the best way to do that par­tic­u­lar thing in a given cir­cum­stance; and the best way is the right way, and there­fore does in­fi­nite wis­dom al­ways or­der it done in that pre­cise and per­fect man­ner. You should also re­mem­ber that na­ture is not the ex­clu­sive act of De­ity; other in­flu­ences are pres­ent in those phe­nom­ena which man calls na­ture.

12:7.3It is re­pug­nant to the di­vine na­ture to suf­fer any sort of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion or ever to per­mit the ex­e­cu­tion of any purely per­sonal act in an in­fe­rior way. It should be made clear, how­ever, that, if, in the di­vin­ity of any sit­u­a­tion, in the ex­trem­ity of any cir­cum­stance, in any case where the course of su­preme wis­dom might in­di­cate the de­mand for dif­fer­ent con­duct—if the de­mands of per­fec­tion might for any rea­son dic­tate an­other method of re­ac­tion, a bet­ter one, then and there would the all-wise God func­tion in that bet­ter and more suit­able way. That would be the ex­pres­sion of a higher law, not the re­ver­sal of a lower law.

12:7.4God is not a habit-bound slave to the chronic­ity of the rep­e­ti­tion of his own vol­un­tary acts. There is no con­flict among the laws of the In­fi­nite; they are all per­fec­tions of the in­fal­li­ble na­ture; they are all the un­ques­tioned acts ex­pres­sive of fault­less de­ci­sions. Law is the un­chang­ing re­ac­tion of an in­fi­nite, per­fect, and di­vine mind. The acts of God are all vo­li­tional not­with­stand­ing this ap­par­ent same­ness. In God there “is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing.” But all this which can be truly said of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be said with equal cer­tainty of all his sub­or­di­nate in­tel­li­gences or of his evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures.

12:7.5Be­cause God is change­less, there­fore can you de­pend, in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances, on his do­ing the same thing in the same iden­ti­cal and or­di­nary way. God is the as­sur­ance of sta­bil­ity for all cre­ated things and be­ings. He is God; there­fore he changes not.

12:7.6And all this stead­fast­ness of con­duct and uni­for­mity of ac­tion is per­sonal, con­scious, and highly vo­li­tional, for the great God is not a help­less slave to his own per­fec­tion and in­fin­ity. God is not a self-act­ing au­to­matic force; he is not a slav­ish law-bound power. God is nei­ther a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion nor a chem­i­cal for­mula. He is a free­will and pri­mal per­son­al­ity. He is the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, a be­ing sur­charged with per­son­al­ity and the uni­ver­sal fount of all crea­ture per­son­al­ity.

12:7.7The will of God does not uni­formly pre­vail in the heart of the God-seek­ing ma­te­rial mor­tal, but if the time frame is en­larged be­yond the mo­ment to em­brace the whole of the first life, then does God’s will be­come in­creas­ingly dis­cern­i­ble in the spirit fruits which are borne in the lives of the spirit-led chil­dren of God. And then, if hu­man life is fur­ther en­larged to in­clude the mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence, the di­vine will is ob­served to shine brighter and brighter in the spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing acts of those crea­tures of time who have be­gun to taste the di­vine de­lights of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­la­tion­ship of the per­son­al­ity of man with the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

12:7.8The Fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man pre­sent the para­dox of the part and the whole on the level of per­son­al­ity. God loves each in­di­vid­ual as an in­di­vid­ual child in the heav­enly fam­ily. Yet God thus loves ev­ery in­di­vid­ual; he is no re­specter of per­sons, and the uni­ver­sal­ity of his love brings into be­ing a re­la­tion­ship of the whole, the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood.

12:7.9The love of the Fa­ther ab­so­lutely in­di­vid­u­al­izes each per­son­al­ity as a unique child of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, a child with­out du­pli­cate in in­fin­ity, a will crea­ture ir­re­place­able in all eter­nity. The Fa­ther’s love glo­ri­fies each child of God, il­lu­mi­nat­ing each mem­ber of the ce­les­tial fam­ily, sharply sil­hou­et­ting the unique na­ture of each per­sonal be­ing against the im­per­sonal lev­els that lie out­side the fra­ter­nal cir­cuit of the Fa­ther of all. The love of God strik­ingly por­trays the tran­scen­dent value of each will crea­ture, un­mis­tak­ably re­veals the high value which the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has placed upon each and ev­ery one of his chil­dren from the high­est cre­ator per­son­al­ity of Par­a­dise sta­tus to the low­est per­son­al­ity of will dig­nity among the sav­age tribes of men in the dawn of the hu­man species on some evo­lu­tion­ary world of time and space.

12:7.10This very love of God for the in­di­vid­ual brings into be­ing the di­vine fam­ily of all in­di­vid­u­als, the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of the free­will chil­dren of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And this broth­er­hood, be­ing uni­ver­sal, is a re­la­tion­ship of the whole. Broth­er­hood, when uni­ver­sal, dis­closes not the each re­la­tion­ship, but the all re­la­tion­ship. Broth­er­hood is a re­al­ity of the to­tal and there­fore dis­closes qual­i­ties of the whole in con­tradis­tinc­tion to qual­i­ties of the part.

12:7.11Broth­er­hood con­sti­tutes a fact of re­la­tion­ship be­tween ev­ery per­son­al­ity in uni­ver­sal ex­is­tence. No per­son can es­cape the ben­e­fits or the penal­ties that may come as a re­sult of re­la­tion­ship to other per­sons. The part prof­its or suf­fers in mea­sure with the whole. The good ef­fort of each man ben­e­fits all men; the er­ror or evil of each man aug­ments the tribu­la­tion of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the prog­ress of the whole, so the prog­ress of the part. The rel­a­tive ve­loc­i­ties of part and whole de­ter­mine whether the part is re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the whole or is car­ried for­ward by the mo­men­tum of the cos­mic broth­er­hood.

12:7.12It is a mys­tery that God is a highly per­sonal self-con­scious be­ing with res­i­den­tial head­quar­ters, and at the same time per­son­ally pres­ent in such a vast uni­verse and per­son­ally in con­tact with such a well-nigh in­fi­nite num­ber of be­ings. That such a phe­nom­e­non is a mys­tery be­yond hu­man com­pre­hen­sion should not in the least lessen your faith. Do not al­low the mag­ni­tude of the in­fin­ity, the im­men­sity of the eter­nity, and the grandeur and glory of the match­less char­ac­ter of God to over­awe, stag­ger, or dis­cour­age you; for the Fa­ther is not very far from any one of you; he dwells within you, and in him do we all lit­er­ally move, ac­tu­ally live, and ver­i­ta­bly have our be­ing.

12:7.13Even though the Par­a­dise Fa­ther func­tions through his di­vine cre­ators and his crea­ture chil­dren, he also en­joys the most in­ti­mate in­ner con­tact with you, so sub­lime, so highly per­sonal, that it is even be­yond my com­pre­hen­sion—that mys­te­ri­ous com­mu­nion of the Fa­ther frag­ment with the hu­man soul and with the mor­tal mind of its ac­tual in­dwelling. Know­ing what you do of these gifts of God, you there­fore know that the Fa­ther is in in­ti­mate touch, not only with his di­vine as­so­ciates, but also with his evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal chil­dren of time. The Fa­ther in­deed abides on Par­a­dise, but his di­vine pres­ence also dwells in the minds of men.

12:7.14Even though the spirit of a Son be poured out upon all flesh, even though a Son once dwelt with you in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, even though the ser­a­phim per­son­ally guard and guide you, how can any of these di­vine be­ings of the Sec­ond and Third Cen­ters ever hope to come as near to you or to un­der­stand you as fully as the Fa­ther, who has given a part of him­self to be in you, to be your real and di­vine, even your eter­nal, self?

• parts and the whole

12:9.3Math­e­mat­ics, ma­te­rial sci­ence, is in­dis­pens­able to the in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sion of the ma­te­rial as­pects of the uni­verse, but such knowl­edge is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of the higher re­al­iza­tion of truth or of the per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of phys­i­cal en­ergy, the sum of two or more things is very of­ten some­thing more than, or some­thing dif­fer­ent from, the pre­dictable ad­di­tive con­se­quences of such unions. The en­tire sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics, the whole do­main of phi­los­o­phy, the high­est physics or chem­istry, could not pre­dict or know that the union of two gaseous hy­dro­gen atoms with one gaseous oxy­gen atom would re­sult in a new and qual­i­ta­tively super­ad­di­tive sub­stance—liq­uid wa­ter. The un­der­stand­ing knowl­edge of this one phys­io­chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­non should have pre­vented the de­vel­op­ment of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic phi­los­o­phy and mech­a­nis­tic cos­mol­ogy.

• parts and the whole

131:8.4“The wise man uni­ver­sal­izes his heart. A lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing. Those who as­pire to great­ness must learn to hum­ble them­selves. In cre­ation the Su­preme be­came the world’s mother. To know one’s mother is to rec­og­nize one’s son­ship. He is a wise man who re­gards all parts from the point of view of the whole. Re­late your­self to ev­ery man as if you were in his place. Rec­om­pense in­jury with kind­ness. If you love peo­ple, they will draw near you—you will have no dif­fi­culty in win­ning them.

116:6.6And as it is with the parts, so it is with the whole; the spirit per­son of Su­prem­acy re­quires the evo­lu­tion­ary power of the Al­mighty to achieve com­ple­tion of De­ity and to at­tain des­tiny of Trin­ity as­so­ci­a­tion. The ef­fort is made by the per­son­al­i­ties of time and space, but the cul­mi­na­tion and con­sum­ma­tion of this ef­fort is the act of the Al­mighty Su­preme. And while the growth of the whole is thus a to­tal­iz­ing of the col­lec­tive growth of the parts, it equally fol­lows that the evo­lu­tion of the parts is a seg­mented re­flec­tion of the pur­po­sive growth of the whole.

3:2.8The plan­e­tary crea­tures of God’s spirit in­dwelling, scat­tered hither and yon through­out the uni­verses of space, are so nearly in­fi­nite in num­ber and or­der, their in­tel­lects are so di­verse, their minds are so lim­ited and some­times so gross, their vi­sion is so cur­tailed and lo­cal­ized, that it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to for­mu­late gen­er­al­iza­tions of law ad­e­quately ex­pres­sive of the Fa­ther’s in­fi­nite at­tri­butes and at the same time to any de­gree com­pre­hen­si­ble to these cre­ated in­tel­li­gences. There­fore, to you the crea­ture, many of the acts of the all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator seem to be ar­bi­trary, de­tached, and not in­fre­quently heart­less and cruel. But again I as­sure you that this is not true. God’s do­ings are all pur­pose­ful, in­tel­li­gent, wise, kind, and eter­nally con­sid­er­ate of the best good, not al­ways of an in­di­vid­ual be­ing, an in­di­vid­ual race, an in­di­vid­ual planet, or even an in­di­vid­ual uni­verse; but they are for the wel­fare and best good of all con­cerned, from the low­est to the high­est. In the epochs of time the wel­fare of the part may some­times ap­pear to dif­fer from the wel­fare of the whole; in the cir­cle of eter­nity such ap­par­ent dif­fer­ences are nonex­is­tent.

54:6.3If an af­fec­tion­ate fa­ther of a large fam­ily chooses to show mercy to one of his chil­dren guilty of griev­ous wrong­do­ing, it may well be that the ex­ten­sion of mercy to this mis­be­hav­ing child will work a tem­po­rary hard­ship upon all the other and well-be­haved chil­dren. Such even­tu­al­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; such a risk is in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­al­ity sit­u­a­tion of hav­ing a lov­ing par­ent and of be­ing a mem­ber of a fam­ily group. Each mem­ber of a fam­ily prof­its by the righ­teous con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber; like­wise must each mem­ber suf­fer the im­me­di­ate time-con­se­quences of the mis­con­duct of ev­ery other mem­ber. Fam­i­lies, groups, na­tions, races, worlds, sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, and uni­verses are re­la­tion­ships of as­so­ci­a­tion which pos­sess in­di­vid­u­al­ity; and there­fore does ev­ery mem­ber of any such group, large or small, reap the ben­e­fits and suf­fer the con­se­quences of the right­do­ing and the wrong­do­ing of all other mem­bers of the group con­cerned.

54:6.4But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suf­fer the evil con­se­quences of the sin of some mem­ber of your fam­ily, some fel­low cit­i­zen or fel­low mor­tal, even re­bel­lion in the sys­tem or else­where—no mat­ter what you may have to en­dure be­cause of the wrong­do­ing of your as­so­ciates, fel­lows, or su­pe­ri­ors—you may rest se­cure in the eter­nal as­sur­ance that such tribu­la­tions are tran­sient af­flic­tions. None of these fra­ter­nal con­se­quences of mis­be­hav­ior in the group can ever jeop­ar­dize your eter­nal prospects or in the least de­gree de­prive you of your di­vine right of Par­a­dise as­cen­sion and God at­tain­ment.

67:7.1The per­sonal (cen­tripetal) con­se­quences of the crea­ture’s will­ful and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of light are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and in­di­vid­ual and are of con­cern only to De­ity and to that per­sonal crea­ture. Such a soul-de­stroy­ing har­vest of in­iq­uity is the in­ner reap­ing of the in­iq­ui­tous will crea­ture.

67:7.2But not so with the ex­ter­nal reper­cus­sions of sin: The im­per­sonal (cen­trifu­gal) con­se­quences of em­braced sin are both in­ev­i­ta­ble and col­lec­tive, be­ing of con­cern to ev­ery crea­ture func­tion­ing within the af­fect-range of such events.

67:7.3By fifty thou­sand years af­ter the col­lapse of the plan­e­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion, earthly af­fairs were so dis­or­ga­nized and re­tarded that the hu­man race had gained very lit­tle over the gen­eral evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus ex­ist­ing at the time of Cali­gas­tia’s ar­rival three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years pre­vi­ously. In cer­tain re­spects prog­ress had been made; in other di­rec­tions much ground had been lost.

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.

67:7.5Evil and sin visit their con­se­quences in ma­te­rial and so­cial realms and may some­times even re­tard spir­i­tual prog­ress on cer­tain lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity, but never does the sin of any be­ing rob an­other of the re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine right of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. Eter­nal sur­vival can be jeop­ar­dized only by the de­ci­sions of the mind and the choice of the soul of the in­di­vid­ual him­self.

67:7.6Sin on Uran­tia did very lit­tle to de­lay bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, but it did op­er­ate to de­prive the mor­tal races of the full ben­e­fit of the Adamic in­her­i­tance. Sin enor­mously re­tards in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment, moral growth, so­cial prog­ress, and mass spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. But it does not pre­vent the high­est spir­i­tual achieve­ment by any in­di­vid­ual who chooses to know God and sin­cerely do his di­vine will.

67:7.7Cali­gas­tia re­belled, Adam and Eve did de­fault, but no mor­tal sub­se­quently born on Uran­tia has suf­fered in his per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause of these blun­ders. Ev­ery mor­tal born on Uran­tia since Cali­gas­tia’s re­bel­lion has been in some man­ner time-pe­nal­ized, but the fu­ture wel­fare of such souls has never been in the least eter­nity-jeop­ar­dized. No per­son is ever made to suf­fer vi­tal spir­i­tual de­pri­va­tion be­cause of the sin of an­other. Sin is wholly per­sonal as to moral guilt or spir­i­tual con­se­quences, not­with­stand­ing its far-flung reper­cus­sions in ad­min­is­tra­tive, in­tel­lec­tual, and so­cial do­mains.

67:7.8While we can­not fathom the wis­dom that per­mits such catas­tro­phes, we can al­ways dis­cern the ben­e­fi­cial out­work­ing of these lo­cal dis­tur­bances as they are re­flected out upon the uni­verse at large.

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

15:14.3It is, how­ever, very dif­fi­cult to de­scribe our con­cep­tion of the true na­ture of the evo­lu­tion­ary pur­pose which is un­fold­ing in Or­von­ton, but it may be sug­gested by say­ing that in this super­cre­ation we feel that the six unique pur­poses of cos­mic evo­lu­tion as man­i­fested in the six as­so­ci­ated super­cre­ations are here be­ing in­teras­so­ci­ated into a mean­ing-of-the-whole; and it is for this rea­son that we have some­times con­jec­tured that the evolved and fin­ished per­son­al­iza­tion of God the Su­preme will in the re­mote fu­ture and from Uversa rule the per­fected seven super­uni­verses in all the ex­pe­ri­en­tial majesty of his then at­tained al­mighty sov­er­eign power.

117:0.4The parts and in­di­vid­u­als of the grand uni­verse evolve as a re­flec­tion of the to­tal evo­lu­tion of the Su­preme, while in turn the Su­preme is the syn­thetic cu­mu­la­tive to­tal of all grand uni­verse evo­lu­tion. From the mor­tal view­point both are evo­lu­tion­ary and ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­cip­ro­cals.

115:3.13The three Ab­so­lutes of po­ten­tial­ity are op­er­a­tive on the purely eter­nal level of the cos­mos, hence never func­tion as such on sub­ab­so­lute lev­els. On the de­scend­ing lev­els of re­al­ity the tri­odity of po­ten­tial­ity is man­i­fest with the Ul­ti­mate and upon the Su­preme. The po­ten­tial may fail to time-ac­tu­al­ize with re­spect to a part on some sub­ab­so­lute level, but never in the ag­gre­gate. The will of God does ul­ti­mately pre­vail, not al­ways con­cern­ing the in­di­vid­ual but in­vari­ably con­cern­ing the to­tal.

3:5.15Through­out the uni­verse, ev­ery unit is re­garded as a part of the whole. Sur­vival of the part is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the plan and pur­pose of the whole, the whole­hearted de­sire and per­fect will­ing­ness to do the Fa­ther’s di­vine will. The only evo­lu­tion­ary world with­out er­ror (the pos­si­bil­ity of un­wise judg­ment) would be a world with­out free in­tel­li­gence. In the Ha­vona uni­verse there are a bil­lion per­fect worlds with their per­fect in­hab­i­tants, but evolv­ing man must be fal­li­ble if he is to be free. Free and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­tel­li­gence can­not pos­si­bly at first be uni­formly wise. The pos­si­bil­ity of mis­taken judg­ment (evil) be­comes sin only when the hu­man will con­sciously en­dorses and know­ingly em­braces a de­lib­er­ate im­moral judg­ment.

10:7.2As things ap­pear to the mor­tal on the fi­nite level, the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, like the Su­preme Be­ing, is con­cerned only with the to­tal—to­tal planet, to­tal uni­verse, to­tal super­uni­verse, to­tal grand uni­verse. This to­tal­ity at­ti­tude ex­ists be­cause the Trin­ity is the to­tal of De­ity and for many other rea­sons.

118:10.11The love of the Fa­ther op­er­ates di­rectly in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual, in­de­pen­dent of the ac­tions or re­ac­tions of all other in­di­vid­u­als; the re­la­tion­ship is per­sonal—man and God. The im­per­sonal pres­ence of De­ity (Al­mighty Su­preme and Par­a­dise Trin­ity) man­i­fests re­gard for the whole, not for the part. The prov­i­dence of the over­con­trol of Su­prem­acy be­comes in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent as the suc­ces­sive parts of the uni­verse pro­gress in the at­tain­ment of fi­nite des­tinies. As the sys­tems, con­stel­la­tions, uni­verses, and super­uni­verses be­come set­tled in light and life, the Su­preme in­creas­ingly emerges as the mean­ing­ful cor­re­la­tor of all that is tran­spir­ing, while the Ul­ti­mate grad­u­ally emerges as the tran­scen­den­tal uni­fier of all things.

56:10.16All in­sight into the re­la­tions of the parts to any given whole re­quires an un­der­stand­ing grasp of the re­la­tion of all parts to that whole; and in the uni­verse this means the re­la­tion of cre­ated parts to the Cre­ative Whole. De­ity thus be­comes the tran­scen­den­tal, even the in­fi­nite, goal of uni­ver­sal and eter­nal at­tain­ment.

112:5.7If ever there is doubt as to the ad­vis­abil­ity of ad­vanc­ing a hu­man iden­tity to the man­sion worlds, the uni­verse gov­ern­ments in­vari­ably rule in the per­sonal in­ter­ests of that in­di­vid­ual; they un­hesi­tat­ingly ad­vance such a soul to the sta­tus of a tran­si­tional be­ing, while they con­tinue their ob­ser­va­tions of the emerg­ing mor­ontia in­tent and spir­i­tual pur­pose. Thus di­vine jus­tice is cer­tain of achieve­ment, and di­vine mercy is ac­corded fur­ther op­por­tu­nity for ex­tend­ing its min­istry.

112:5.8The gov­ern­ments of Or­von­ton and Neb­a­don do not claim ab­so­lute per­fec­tion for the de­tail work­ing of the uni­ver­sal plan of mor­tal reper­son­al­iza­tion, but they do claim to, and ac­tu­ally do, man­i­fest pa­tience, tol­er­ance, un­der­stand­ing, and mer­ci­ful sym­pa­thy. We had rather as­sume the risk of a sys­tem re­bel­lion than to court the haz­ard of de­priv­ing one strug­gling mor­tal from any evo­lu­tion­ary world of the eter­nal joy of pur­su­ing the as­cend­ing ca­reer.

112:5.1Self­hood is a cos­mic re­al­ity whether ma­te­rial, mor­ontial, or spir­i­tual. The ac­tu­al­ity of the per­sonal is the be­stowal of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther act­ing in and of him­self or through his man­i­fold uni­verse agen­cies. To say that a be­ing is per­sonal is to rec­og­nize the rel­a­tive in­di­vid­u­a­tion of such a be­ing within the cos­mic or­gan­ism. The liv­ing cos­mos is an all but in­finitely in­te­grated ag­gre­ga­tion of real units, all of which are rel­a­tively sub­ject to the des­tiny of the whole. But those that are per­sonal have been en­dowed with the ac­tual choice of des­tiny ac­cep­tance or of des­tiny re­jec­tion.

117:4.5Any iso­lated ac­tion of the per­sonal parts of the fi­nite is com­par­a­tively ir­rel­e­vant to the even­tual ap­pear­ance of the Su­preme Whole, but the whole is nonethe­less de­pen­dent on the to­tal acts of the man­i­fold parts. The per­son­al­ity of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal is in­signif­i­cant in the face of the to­tal of Su­prem­acy, but the per­son­al­ity of each hu­man be­ing rep­re­sents an ir­re­place­able mean­ing-value in the fi­nite; per­son­al­ity, hav­ing once been ex­pressed, never again finds iden­ti­cal ex­pres­sion ex­cept in the con­tin­u­ing ex­is­tence of that liv­ing per­son­al­ity.