scaffolding

69:9.2Prim­i­tive com­mu­nism did not es­pe­cially level men down, nor did it ex­alt medi­ocrity, but it did put a pre­mium on in­ac­tiv­ity and idle­ness, and it did sti­fle in­dus­try and de­stroy am­bi­tion. Com­mu­nism was in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the growth of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety, but it gave way to the evo­lu­tion of a higher so­cial or­der be­cause it ran counter to four strong hu­man pro­cliv­i­ties:

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.

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

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.

90:3.10Evo­lu­tion unerringly achieves its end: It im­bues man with that su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­known and dread of the un­seen which is the scaf­fold­ing for the God con­cept. And hav­ing wit­nessed the birth of an ad­vanced com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity, through the co-or­di­nate ac­tion of rev­e­la­tion, this same tech­nique of evo­lu­tion then unerringly sets in mo­tion those forces of thought which will in­ex­orably oblit­er­ate the scaf­fold­ing, which has served its pur­pose.

92:3.5Only two in­flu­ences can mod­ify and up­lift the dog­mas of nat­u­ral re­li­gion: the pres­sure of the slowly ad­vanc­ing mores and the pe­ri­odic il­lu­mi­na­tion of ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion. And it is not strange that prog­ress was slow; in an­cient days, to be pro­gres­sive or in­ven­tive meant to be killed as a sor­cerer. The cult ad­vances slowly in gen­er­a­tion epochs and age­long cy­cles. But it does move for­ward. Evo­lu­tion­ary be­lief in ghosts laid the foun­da­tion for a phi­los­o­phy of re­vealed re­li­gion which will even­tu­ally de­stroy the su­per­sti­tion of its ori­gin.

65:4.10On Uran­tia the en­deav­ors of the Life Car­ri­ers to im­prove the Sa­ta­nia life pat­terns nec­es­sar­ily re­sulted in the pro­duc­tion of many ap­par­ently use­less forms of tran­si­tion life. But the gains al­ready ac­crued are suf­fi­cient to jus­tify the Uran­tia mod­i­fi­ca­tions of the stan­dard life de­signs.

65:4.11It was our in­ten­tion to pro­duce an early man­i­fes­ta­tion of will in the evo­lu­tion­ary life of Uran­tia, and we suc­ceeded. Or­di­nar­ily, will does not emerge un­til the col­ored races have long been in ex­is­tence, usu­ally first ap­pear­ing among the su­pe­rior types of the red man. Your world is the only planet in Sa­ta­nia where the hu­man type of will has ap­peared in a pre­col­ored race.

65:4.12But in our ef­fort to pro­vide for that com­bi­na­tion and as­so­ci­a­tion of in­her­i­tance fac­tors which fi­nally gave rise to the mam­malian an­ces­tors of the hu­man race, we were con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of per­mit­ting hun­dreds and thou­sands of other and com­par­a­tively use­less com­bi­na­tions and as­so­ci­a­tions of in­her­i­tance fac­tors to take place. Many of these seem­ingly strange by-prod­ucts of our ef­forts are cer­tain to meet your gaze as you dig back into the plan­e­tary past, and I can well un­der­stand how puz­zling some of these things must be to the lim­ited hu­man view­point.

134:5.8The dif­fi­culty in the evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty from the fam­ily to all man­kind, lies in the in­er­tia-re­sis­tance ex­hib­ited on all in­ter­ven­ing lev­els. Fam­i­lies have, on oc­ca­sion, de­fied their clan, while clans and tribes have of­ten been sub­ver­sive of the sov­er­eignty of the ter­ri­to­rial state. Each new and for­ward evo­lu­tion of po­lit­i­cal sov­er­eignty is (and has al­ways been) em­bar­rassed and ham­pered by the “scaf­fold­ing stages” of the pre­vi­ous de­vel­op­ments in po­lit­i­cal or­ga­ni­za­tion. And this is true be­cause hu­man loy­al­ties, once mo­bi­lized, are hard to change. The same loy­alty which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the tribe, makes dif­fi­cult the evo­lu­tion of the super­tribe—the ter­ri­to­rial state. And the same loy­alty (pa­tri­o­tism) which makes pos­si­ble the evo­lu­tion of the ter­ri­to­rial state, vastly com­pli­cates the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of the gov­ern­ment of all man­kind.

112:2.8All mor­tal con­cepts of re­al­ity are based on the as­sump­tion of the ac­tu­al­ity of hu­man per­son­al­ity; all con­cepts of super­hu­man re­al­i­ties are based on the ex­pe­ri­ence of the hu­man per­son­al­ity with and in the cos­mic re­al­i­ties of cer­tain as­so­ci­ated spir­i­tual en­ti­ties and di­vine per­son­al­i­ties. Ev­ery­thing non­spir­i­tual in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­cept­ing per­son­al­ity, is a means to an end. Ev­ery true re­la­tion­ship of mor­tal man with other per­sons—hu­man or di­vine—is an end in it­self. And such fel­low­ship with the per­son­al­ity of De­ity is the eter­nal goal of uni­verse as­cen­sion.

112:5.22The Thought Ad­juster will re­call and re­hearse for you only those mem­o­ries and ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of, and es­sen­tial to, your uni­verse ca­reer. If the Ad­juster has been a part­ner in the evo­lu­tion of aught in the hu­man mind, then will these worth-while ex­pe­ri­ences sur­vive in the eter­nal con­scious­ness of the Ad­juster. But much of your past life and its mem­o­ries, hav­ing nei­ther spir­i­tual mean­ing nor mor­ontia value, will per­ish with the ma­te­rial brain; much of ma­te­rial ex­pe­ri­ence will pass away as one­time scaf­fold­ing which, hav­ing bridged you over to the mor­ontia level, no longer serves a pur­pose in the uni­verse. But per­son­al­ity and the re­la­tion­ships be­tween per­son­al­i­ties are never scaf­fold­ing; mor­tal mem­ory of per­son­al­ity re­la­tion­ships has cos­mic value and will per­sist. On the man­sion worlds you will know and be known, and more, you will re­mem­ber, and be re­mem­bered by, your one­time as­so­ciates in the short but in­trigu­ing life on Uran­tia.

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.