The Urantia Book

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reward

10 paragraphs · about 4 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under reward, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

28:5.176. The Sat­is­fac­tion of Ser­vice. These an­gels are highly re­flec­tive of the at­ti­tude of the di­rec­tors of con­duct on Par­a­dise, and func­tion­ing much as do the Joys of Ex­is­tence, they strive to en­hance the value of ser­vice and to aug­ment the sat­is­fac­tions to be de­rived there­from. They have done much to il­lu­mi­nate the de­ferred re­wards in­her­ent in un­selfish ser­vice, ser­vice for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom of truth.

28:6.8The mercy re­flec­tors, with their ter­tiary as­so­ciates, en­gage in nu­mer­ous super­uni­verse min­istries, in­clud­ing the teach­ing of the as­cend­ing crea­tures. Among many other things the Sig­nif­i­cances of Ori­gins teach these as­cend­ers how to ap­ply spirit ethics, and fol­low­ing such train­ing, the Mem­o­ries of Mercy teach them how to be truly mer­ci­ful. While the spirit tech­niques of mercy min­istry are be­yond your con­cept, you should even now un­der­stand that mercy is a qual­ity of growth. You should re­al­ize that there is a great re­ward of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion in be­ing first just, next fair, then pa­tient, then kind. And then, on that foun­da­tion, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and re­ally show mercy; but you can­not ex­hibit mercy in and of it­self. These steps must be tra­versed; oth­er­wise there can be no gen­uine mercy. There may be pa­tron­age, con­de­scen­sion, or char­ity—even pity—but not mercy. True mercy comes only as the beau­ti­ful cli­max to these pre­ced­ing ad­juncts to group un­der­stand­ing, mu­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion, fra­ter­nal fel­low­ship, spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, and di­vine har­mony.

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

50:7.3All through the Par­a­dise ca­reer, re­ward fol­lows ef­fort as the re­sult of causes. Such re­wards set off the in­di­vid­ual from the av­er­age, pro­vide a dif­fer­en­tial of crea­ture ex­pe­ri­ence, and con­tribute to the ver­sa­til­ity of ul­ti­mate per­for­mances in the col­lec­tive body of the fi­nal­i­ters.

64:4.2800,000 years ago game was abun­dant; many species of deer, as well as ele­phants and hip­popota­muses, roamed over Eu­rope. Cat­tle were plen­ti­ful; horses and wolves were ev­ery­where. The Ne­an­derthalers were great hunters, and the tribes in France were the first to adopt the prac­tice of giv­ing the most suc­cess­ful hunters the choice of women for wives.

64:4.3–11 · nine paragraphs not cited here ·

64:4.3The rein­deer was highly use­ful to these Ne­an­derthal peo­ples, serv­ing as food, cloth­ing, and for tools, since they made var­i­ous uses of the horns and bones. They had lit­tle cul­ture, but they greatly im­proved the work in flint un­til it al­most reached the lev­els of the days of An­don. Large flints at­tached to wooden han­dles came back into use and served as axes and picks.

64:4.4750,000 years ago the fourth ice sheet was well on its way south. With their im­proved im­ple­ments the Ne­an­derthalers made holes in the ice cov­er­ing the north­ern rivers and thus were able to spear the fish which came up to these vents. Ever these tribes re­treated be­fore the ad­vanc­ing ice, which at this time made its most ex­ten­sive in­va­sion of Eu­rope.

64:4.5In these times the Siberian glacier was mak­ing its south­ern­most march, com­pelling early man to move south­ward, back to­ward the lands of his ori­gin. But the hu­man species had so dif­fer­en­ti­ated that the dan­ger of fur­ther min­gling with its non­pro­gres­sive simian rel­a­tives was greatly less­ened.

64:4.6700,000 years ago the fourth glacier, the great­est of all in Eu­rope, was in re­ces­sion; men and an­i­mals were re­turn­ing north. The cli­mate was cool and moist, and prim­i­tive man again thrived in Eu­rope and west­ern Asia. Grad­u­ally the forests spread north over land which had been so re­cently cov­ered by the glacier.

64:4.7Mam­malian life had been lit­tle changed by the great glacier. These an­i­mals per­sisted in that nar­row belt of land ly­ing be­tween the ice and the Alps and, upon the re­treat of the glacier, again rapidly spread out over all Eu­rope. There ar­rived from Africa, over the Si­cil­ian land bridge, straight-tusked ele­phants, broad-nosed rhinoceroses, hye­nas, and African li­ons, and these new an­i­mals vir­tu­ally ex­ter­mi­nated the saber-toothed tigers and the hip­popota­muses.

64:4.8650,000 years ago wit­nessed the con­tin­u­a­tion of the mild cli­mate. By the mid­dle of the in­ter­glacial pe­riod it had be­come so warm that the Alps were al­most de­nuded of ice and snow.

64:4.9600,000 years ago the ice had reached its then north­ern­most point of re­treat and, af­ter a pause of a few thou­sand years, started south again on its fifth ex­cur­sion. But there was lit­tle mod­i­fi­ca­tion of cli­mate for fifty thou­sand years. Man and the an­i­mals of Eu­rope were lit­tle changed. The slight arid­ity of the for­mer pe­riod less­ened, and the alpine glaciers de­scended far down the river val­leys.

64:4.10550,000 years ago the ad­vanc­ing glacier again pushed man and the an­i­mals south. But this time man had plenty of room in the wide belt of land stretch­ing north­east into Asia and ly­ing be­tween the ice sheet and the then greatly ex­panded Black Sea ex­ten­sion of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean.

64:4.11These times of the fourth and fifth glaciers wit­nessed the fur­ther spread of the crude cul­ture of the Ne­an­derthal races. But there was so lit­tle prog­ress that it truly ap­peared as though the at­tempt to pro­duce a new and mod­i­fied type of in­tel­li­gent life on Uran­tia was about to fail. For al­most a quar­ter of a mil­lion years these prim­i­tive peo­ples drifted on, hunt­ing and fight­ing, by spells im­prov­ing in cer­tain di­rec­tions, but, on the whole, steadily ret­ro­gress­ing as com­pared with their su­pe­rior An­donic an­ces­tors.

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

99:5.2Al­ways keep in mind: True re­li­gion is to know God as your Fa­ther and man as your brother. Re­li­gion is not a slav­ish be­lief in threats of pun­ish­ment or mag­i­cal promises of fu­ture mys­ti­cal re­wards.

131:8.5“The Great Su­preme is all-per­vad­ing; he is on the left hand and on the right; he sup­ports all cre­ation and in­dwells all true be­ings. You can­not find the Su­preme, nei­ther can you go to a place where he is not. If a man rec­og­nizes the evil of his ways and re­pents of sin from the heart, then may he seek for­give­ness; he may es­cape the penalty; he may change calamity into bless­ing. The Su­preme is the se­cure refuge for all cre­ation; he is the guard­ian and sav­ior of man­kind. If you seek for him daily, you shall find him. Since he can for­give sins, he is in­deed most pre­cious to all men. Al­ways re­mem­ber that God does not re­ward man for what he does but for what he is; there­fore should you ex­tend help to your fel­lows with­out the thought of re­wards. Do good with­out thought of ben­e­fit to the self.

141:7.5Je­sus made it plain that he had come to es­tab­lish per­sonal and eter­nal re­la­tions with men which should for­ever take prece­dence over all other hu­man re­la­tion­ships. And he em­pha­sized that this in­ti­mate spir­i­tual fel­low­ship was to be ex­tended to all men of all ages and of all so­cial con­di­tions among all peo­ples. The only re­ward which he held out for his chil­dren was: in this world—spir­i­tual joy and di­vine com­mu­nion; in the next world—eter­nal life in the prog­ress of the di­vine spirit re­al­i­ties of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

193:4.117. He never learned that the real re­wards for no­ble liv­ing are, af­ter all, spir­i­tual prizes, which are not al­ways dis­tributed dur­ing this one short life in the flesh.

Onward

See also achievement; karma; profit

Cited alongside: hunters, religion