perspective

• increasing time frame makes God’s will more discernible

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.

• increasing time frame makes God’s will more discernible

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.

• gain true p. from studying origin, history, and destiny of situation

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

• vastness of God’s plan makes it impossible to see much in one life

32:5.1There is a great and glo­ri­ous pur­pose in the march of the uni­verses through space. All of your mor­tal strug­gling is not in vain. We are all part of an im­mense plan, a gi­gan­tic en­ter­prise, and it is the vast­ness of the un­der­tak­ing that ren­ders it im­pos­si­ble to see very much of it at any one time and dur­ing any one life. We are all a part of an eter­nal project which the Gods are super­vis­ing and out­work­ing. The whole mar­velous and uni­ver­sal mech­a­nism moves on ma­jes­ti­cally through space to the mu­sic of the me­ter of the in­fi­nite thought and the eter­nal pur­pose of the First Great Source and Cen­ter.

32:5.2The eter­nal pur­pose of the eter­nal God is a high spir­i­tual ideal. The events of time and the strug­gles of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence are but the tran­sient scaf­fold­ing which bridges over to the other side, to the prom­ised land of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and su­per­nal ex­is­tence. Of course, you mor­tals find it dif­fi­cult to grasp the idea of an eter­nal pur­pose; you are vir­tu­ally un­able to com­pre­hend the thought of eter­nity, some­thing never be­gin­ning and never end­ing. Ev­ery­thing fa­mil­iar to you has an end.

• grasping eternal goal-meanings in seemingly insignificant time-space activities

43:8.106. Ad­just all of these var­i­ous so­cial­iza­tion tech­niques to the fur­ther­ance of the pro­gres­sive co-or­di­na­tion of the Par­a­dise-as­cen­sion ca­reer; aug­ment uni­verse in­sight by en­hanc­ing the abil­ity to grasp the eter­nal goal-mean­ings con­cealed within these seem­ingly in­signif­i­cant time-space ac­tiv­i­ties.

• danger of losing one’s sense of proportion

50:1.2The prince of a newly in­hab­ited world is sur­rounded by a loyal corps of helpers and as­sis­tants and by large num­bers of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. But the di­rect­ing corps of such new worlds must be of the lower or­ders of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of a sys­tem in or­der to be in­nately sym­pa­thetic with, and un­der­stand­ing of, the plan­e­tary prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. And all of this ef­fort to pro­vide sym­pa­thetic ruler­ship for the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds en­tails the in­creased li­a­bil­ity that these near-hu­man per­son­al­i­ties may be led astray by the ex­al­ta­tion of their own minds over and above the will of the Su­preme Rulers.

50:1.3Be­ing quite alone as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of di­vin­ity on the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, these Sons are tested severely, and Neb­a­don has suf­fered the mis­for­tune of sev­eral re­bel­lions. In the cre­ation of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and the Plan­e­tary Princes there oc­curs the per­son­al­iza­tion of a con­cept that has been get­ting far­ther and far­ther away from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son, and there is an in­creas­ing dan­ger of los­ing the sense of pro­por­tion as to one’s self-im­por­tance and a greater like­li­hood of fail­ure to keep a proper grasp of the val­ues and re­la­tion­ships of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of di­vine be­ings and their gra­da­tions of au­thor­ity. That the Fa­ther is not per­son­ally pres­ent in the lo­cal uni­verse also im­poses a cer­tain test of faith and loy­alty on all these Sons.

• those able to observe wider stretches discover divine oneness which overspreads all

56:0.2The di­verse lev­els of cre­ation are all uni­fied in the plans and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse. To the cir­cum­scribed minds of time-space mor­tals the uni­verse may pre­sent many prob­lems and sit­u­a­tions which ap­par­ently por­tray dishar­mony and in­di­cate ab­sence of ef­fec­tive co-or­di­na­tion; but those of us who are able to ob­serve wider stretches of uni­ver­sal phe­nom­ena, and who are more ex­pe­ri­enced in this art of de­tect­ing the ba­sic unity which un­der­lies cre­ative di­ver­sity and of dis­cov­er­ing the di­vine one­ness which over­spreads all this func­tion­ing of plu­ral­ity, bet­ter per­ceive the di­vine and sin­gle pur­pose ex­hib­ited in all these man­i­fold man­i­fes­ta­tions of uni­ver­sal cre­ative en­ergy.

• individual’s lifetime is yardstick for time measurement

65:8.3The in­di­vid­ual’s yard­stick for time mea­sure­ment is the length of his life. All crea­tures are thus time con­di­tioned, and there­fore do they re­gard evo­lu­tion as be­ing a long-drawn-out pro­cess. To those of us whose life span is not lim­ited by a tem­po­ral ex­is­tence, evo­lu­tion does not seem to be such a pro­tracted trans­ac­tion. On Par­a­dise, where time is nonex­is­tent, these things are all pres­ent in the mind of In­fin­ity and the acts of Eter­nity.

• each generation smiles at its ancestors’ foolish superstitions

86:6.5Each pass­ing gen­er­a­tion smiles at the fool­ish su­per­sti­tions of its an­ces­tors while it goes on en­ter­tain­ing those fal­la­cies of thought and wor­ship which will give cause for fur­ther smil­ing on the part of en­light­ened pos­ter­ity.

• man needs sustenance of a cosmic perspective
• religion provides goal above temporal objectives

99:7.2Po­lit­i­cal sci­ence must ef­fect the re­con­struc­tion of eco­nomics and in­dus­try by the tech­niques it learns from the so­cial sci­ences and by the in­sights and mo­tives sup­plied by re­li­gious liv­ing. In all so­cial re­con­struc­tion re­li­gion pro­vides a sta­bi­liz­ing loy­alty to a tran­scen­dent ob­ject, a steady­ing goal be­yond and above the im­me­di­ate and tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive. In the midst of the con­fu­sions of a rapidly chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment mor­tal man needs the sus­te­nance of a far-flung cos­mic per­spec­tive.

• man defending family from saber-toothed tiger

100:4.5In the mind’s eye con­jure up a pic­ture of one of your prim­i­tive an­ces­tors of cave-dwell­ing times—a short, mis­shapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man stand­ing, legs spread, club up­raised, breath­ing hate and an­i­mos­ity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a pic­ture hardly de­picts the di­vine dig­nity of man. But al­low us to en­large the pic­ture. In front of this an­i­mated hu­man crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Be­hind him, a woman and two chil­dren. Im­me­di­ately you rec­og­nize that such a pic­ture stands for the be­gin­nings of much that is fine and no­ble in the hu­man race, but the man is the same in both pic­tures. Only, in the sec­ond sketch you are fa­vored with a widened hori­zon. You therein dis­cern the mo­ti­va­tion of this evolv­ing mor­tal. His at­ti­tude be­comes praise­wor­thy be­cause you un­der­stand him. If you could only fathom the mo­tives of your as­so­ciates, how much bet­ter you would un­der­stand them. If you could only know your fel­lows, you would even­tu­ally fall in love with them.

• awareness that God and divine hosts are on our side
• gaze upon universe from within – God’s viewpoint

101:10.9Now, rather, are the sons of God en­listed to­gether in fight­ing the bat­tle of re­al­ity’s tri­umph over the par­tial shad­ows of ex­is­tence. At last all crea­tures be­come con­scious of the fact that God and all the di­vine hosts of a well-nigh lim­it­less uni­verse are on their side in the su­per­nal strug­gle to at­tain eter­nity of life and di­vin­ity of sta­tus. Such faith-lib­er­ated sons have cer­tainly en­listed in the strug­gles of time on the side of the su­preme forces and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties of eter­nity; even the stars in their courses are now do­ing bat­tle for them; at last they gaze upon the uni­verse from within, from God’s view­point, and all is trans­formed from the un­cer­tain­ties of ma­te­rial iso­la­tion to the sureties of eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. Even time it­self be­comes but the shadow of eter­nity cast by Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties upon the mov­ing panoply of space.

• when clouds gather overhead, look beyond mists of mortal uncertainty

108:6.8You hu­mans have be­gun an end­less un­fold­ing of an al­most in­fi­nite pan­o­rama, a lim­it­less ex­pand­ing of never-end­ing, ever-widen­ing spheres of op­por­tu­nity for ex­hil­a­rat­ing ser­vice, match­less ad­ven­ture, sub­lime un­cer­tainty, and bound­less at­tain­ment. When the clouds gather over­head, your faith should ac­cept the fact of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, and thus you should be able to look be­yond the mists of mor­tal un­cer­tainty into the clear shin­ing of the sun of eter­nal righ­teous­ness on the beck­on­ing heights of the man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia.

• logical thought is within frame of postulates; all are erroneous to greater or lesser degree

115:1.1Par­tial, in­com­plete, and evolv­ing in­tel­lects would be help­less in the mas­ter uni­verse, would be un­able to form the first ra­tio­nal thought pat­tern, were it not for the in­nate abil­ity of all mind, high or low, to form a uni­verse frame in which to think. If mind can­not fathom con­clu­sions, if it can­not pen­e­trate to true ori­gins, then will such mind un­fail­ingly pos­tu­late con­clu­sions and in­vent ori­gins that it may have a means of log­i­cal thought within the frame of these mind-cre­ated pos­tu­lates. And while such uni­verse frames for crea­ture thought are in­dis­pens­able to ra­tio­nal in­tel­lec­tual op­er­a­tions, they are, with­out ex­cep­tion, er­ro­neous to a greater or lesser de­gree.

• comprehension of Deity’s relation to cosmos helpful to man’s cosmic orientation

118:1.1It is help­ful to man’s cos­mic ori­en­ta­tion to at­tain all pos­si­ble com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity’s re­la­tion to the cos­mos. While ab­so­lute De­ity is eter­nal in na­ture, the Gods are re­lated to time as an ex­pe­ri­ence in eter­nity. In the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses eter­nity is tem­po­ral ev­er­last­ing­ness—the ev­er­last­ing now.

• insight into wholeness of past-present-future events

118:1.8The time unit of im­ma­tu­rity con­cen­trates mean­ing-value into the pres­ent mo­ment in such a way as to di­vorce the pres­ent of its true re­la­tion­ship to the not-pres­ent—the past-fu­ture. The time unit of ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tioned so to re­veal the co-or­di­nate re­la­tion­ship of past-pres­ent-fu­ture that the self be­gins to gain in­sight into the whole­ness of events, be­gins to view the land­scape of time from the panoramic per­spec­tive of broad­ened hori­zons, be­gins per­haps to sus­pect the non­be­gin­ning, non­end­ing eter­nal con­tin­uum, the frag­ments of which are called time.

• perspective

118:10.131. Man’s aug­ment­ing vi­sion—his in­creased un­der­stand­ing of the world in which he lives; his en­larg­ing ca­pac­ity for the com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial facts of time, the mean­ing­ful ideas of thought, and the valu­able ide­als of spir­i­tual in­sight. As long as men mea­sure only by the yard­stick of the things of a phys­i­cal na­ture, they can never hope to find unity in time and space.

• one-eyed person cannot visualize depth

130:4.4A one-eyed per­son can never hope to vi­su­al­ize depth of per­spec­tive. Nei­ther can sin­gle-eyed ma­te­rial sci­en­tists nor sin­gle-eyed spir­i­tual mys­tics and al­le­gorists cor­rectly vi­su­al­ize and ad­e­quately com­pre­hend the true depths of uni­verse re­al­ity. All true val­ues of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence are con­cealed in depth of rec­og­ni­tion.

• rest and relaxation shrink size of problems

143:3.3This was a mar­velous oc­ca­sion in the ex­pe­ri­ence of each of them; they never for­got the day go­ing up the moun­tain. Through­out the en­tire trip hardly a word was said about their trou­bles. Upon reach­ing the top of the moun­tain, Je­sus seated them about him while he said: “My breth­ren, you must all learn the value of rest and the ef­fi­cacy of re­lax­ation. You must re­al­ize that the best method of solv­ing some en­tan­gled prob­lems is to for­sake them for a time. Then when you go back fresh from your rest or wor­ship, you are able to at­tack your trou­bles with a clearer head and a stead­ier hand, not to men­tion a more res­o­lute heart. Again, many times your prob­lem is found to have shrunk in size and pro­por­tions while you have been rest­ing your mind and body.”

• values and facts must not become disproportionate

143:6.3The first night of the camp on Mount Ger­izim the apos­tles ex­pected that Je­sus would re­buke them for their at­ti­tude to­ward the woman at Ja­cob’s well, but he made no ref­er­ence to the mat­ter. In­stead he gave them that mem­o­rable talk on “The re­al­i­ties which are cen­tral in the king­dom of God.” In any re­li­gion it is very easy to al­low val­ues to be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and to per­mit facts to oc­cupy the place of truth in one’s the­ol­ogy. The fact of the cross be­came the very cen­ter of sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity; but it is not the cen­tral truth of the re­li­gion which may be de­rived from the life and teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• acquire long-distance view of destiny

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

• present is trivial divorced from past and future

160:2.94. The en­hanced de­fense against all evil. Per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion and mu­tual af­fec­tion is an ef­fi­cient in­sur­ance against evil. Dif­fi­cul­ties, sor­row, dis­ap­point­ment, and de­feat are more painful and dis­heart­en­ing when borne alone. As­so­ci­a­tion does not trans­mute evil into righ­teous­ness, but it does aid in greatly less­en­ing the sting. Said your Mas­ter, “Happy are they who mourn”—if a friend is at hand to com­fort. There is pos­i­tive strength in the knowl­edge that you live for the wel­fare of oth­ers, and that these oth­ers like­wise live for your wel­fare and ad­vance­ment. Man lan­guishes in iso­la­tion. Hu­man be­ings un­fail­ingly be­come dis­cour­aged when they view only the tran­si­tory trans­ac­tions of time. The pres­ent, when di­vorced from the past and the fu­ture, be­comes ex­as­per­at­ingly triv­ial. Only a glimpse of the cir­cle of eter­nity can in­spire man to do his best and can chal­lenge the best in him to do its ut­most. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most un­selfishly for the good of oth­ers, his fel­low so­journ­ers in time and eter­nity.

• lesser matters should give way before greater

162:8.3As Martha bus­ied her­self with all these sup­posed du­ties, she was per­turbed be­cause Mary did noth­ing to help. There­fore she went to Je­sus and said: “Mas­ter, do you not care that my sis­ter has left me alone to do all of the serv­ing? Will you not bid her to come and help me?” Je­sus an­swered: “Martha, Martha, why are you al­ways anx­ious about so many things and trou­bled by so many tri­fles? Only one thing is re­ally worth while, and since Mary has cho­sen this good and need­ful part, I shall not take it away from her. But when will both of you learn to live as I have taught you: both serv­ing in co-op­er­a­tion and both re­fresh­ing your souls in uni­son? Can you not learn that there is a time for ev­ery­thing—that the lesser mat­ters of life should give way be­fore the greater things of the heav­enly king­dom?”

• see evil against background of good

195:5.12As you view the world, re­mem­ber that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white back­ground of ul­ti­mate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up mis­er­ably against a black back­ground of evil.

195:5.13When there is so much good truth to pub­lish and pro­claim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just be­cause it ap­pears to be a fact? The beau­ties of the spir­i­tual val­ues of truth are more plea­sur­able and up­lift­ing than is the phe­nom­e­non of evil.