self-realization

65:6.2There is orig­i­nal en­dow­ment of adap­ta­tion in liv­ing things and be­ings. In ev­ery liv­ing plant or an­i­mal cell, in ev­ery liv­ing or­gan­ism—ma­te­rial or spir­i­tual—there is an in­sa­tiable crav­ing for the at­tain­ment of ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal ad­just­ment, or­gan­is­mal adap­ta­tion, and aug­mented life re­al­iza­tion. These in­ter­minable ef­forts of all liv­ing things ev­i­dence the ex­is­tence within them of an in­nate striv­ing for per­fec­tion.

44:8.3There is no caste in the ranks of spirit ar­ti­sans. No mat­ter how lowly your ori­gin, if you have abil­ity and the gift of ex­pres­sion, you will gain ad­e­quate rec­og­ni­tion and re­ceive due ap­pre­ci­a­tion as you as­cend up­ward in the scale of mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. There can be no hand­i­cap of hu­man hered­ity or de­pri­va­tion of mor­tal en­vi­ron­ment which the mor­ontia ca­reer will not fully com­pen­sate and wholly re­move. And all such sat­is­fac­tions of artis­tic achieve­ment and ex­pres­sion­ful self-re­al­iza­tion will be ef­fected by your own per­sonal ef­forts in pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment. At last the as­pi­ra­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary medi­ocrity may be re­al­ized. While the Gods do not ar­bi­trar­ily be­stow tal­ents and abil­ity upon the chil­dren of time, they do pro­vide for the at­tain­ment of the sat­is­fac­tion of all their no­ble long­ings and for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of all hu­man hunger for su­per­nal self-ex­pres­sion.

44:8.4But ev­ery hu­man be­ing should re­mem­ber: Many am­bi­tions to ex­cel which tan­ta­lize mor­tals in the flesh will not per­sist with these same mor­tals in the mor­ontia and spirit ca­reers. The as­cend­ing mor­ontians learn to so­cial­ize their for­mer purely self­ish long­ings and ego­is­tic am­bi­tions. Nev­er­the­less, those things which you so earnestly longed to do on earth and which cir­cum­stances so per­sis­tently de­nied you, if, af­ter ac­quir­ing true mota in­sight in the mor­ontia ca­reer, you still de­sire to do, then will you most cer­tainly be granted ev­ery op­por­tu­nity fully to sat­isfy your long-cher­ished de­sires.

44:8.5Be­fore as­cend­ing mor­tals leave the lo­cal uni­verse to em­bark upon their spirit ca­reers, they will be sa­ti­ated re­spect­ing ev­ery in­tel­lec­tual, artis­tic, and so­cial long­ing or true am­bi­tion which ever char­ac­ter­ized their mor­tal or mor­ontia planes of ex­is­tence. This is the achieve­ment of equal­ity of the sat­is­fac­tion of self-ex­pres­sion and self-re­al­iza­tion but not the at­tain­ment of iden­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­en­tial sta­tus nor the com­plete oblit­er­a­tion of char­ac­ter­is­tic in­di­vid­u­al­ity in skill, tech­nique, and ex­pres­sion. But the new spirit dif­fer­en­tial of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­en­tial at­tain­ment will not be­come thus lev­eled off and equal­ized un­til af­ter you have fin­ished the last cir­cle of the Ha­vona ca­reer. And then will the Par­a­dise res­i­dents be con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of ad­just­ing to that ab­so­nite dif­fer­en­tial of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which can be lev­eled off only by the group at­tain­ment of the ul­ti­mate of crea­ture sta­tus—the sev­enth-stage-spirit des­tiny of the mor­tal fi­nal­i­ters.

56:10.14Ev­ery im­pulse of ev­ery elec­tron, thought, or spirit is an act­ing unit in the whole uni­verse. Only sin is iso­lated and evil grav­ity re­sist­ing on the men­tal and spir­i­tual lev­els. The uni­verse is a whole; no thing or be­ing ex­ists or lives in iso­la­tion. Self-re­al­iza­tion is po­ten­tially evil if it is an­ti­so­cial. It is lit­er­ally true: “No man lives by him­self.” Cos­mic so­cial­iza­tion con­sti­tutes the high­est form of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion. Said Je­sus: “He who would be great­est among you, let him be­come server of all.”

94:11.6But a great lim­i­ta­tion in the orig­i­nal gospel of Sid­dhartha, as it was in­ter­preted by his fol­low­ers, was that it at­tempted the com­plete lib­er­a­tion of the hu­man self from all the lim­i­ta­tions of the mor­tal na­ture by the tech­nique of iso­lat­ing the self from ob­jec­tive re­al­ity. True cos­mic self-re­al­iza­tion re­sults from iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with cos­mic re­al­ity and with the fi­nite cos­mos of en­ergy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and con­di­tioned by time.

100:1.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is markedly in­flu­enced by phys­i­cal health, in­her­ited tem­per­a­ment, and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment. But these tem­po­ral con­di­tions do not in­hibit in­ner spir­i­tual prog­ress by a soul ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There are pres­ent in all nor­mal mor­tals cer­tain in­nate drives to­ward growth and self-re­al­iza­tion which func­tion if they are not specif­i­cally in­hib­ited. The cer­tain tech­nique of fos­ter­ing this con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ment of the po­ten­tial of spir­i­tual growth is to main­tain an at­ti­tude of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues.

44:8.1Al­though ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans do not per­son­ally work on ma­te­rial plan­ets, such as Uran­tia, they do come, from time to time, from the head­quar­ters of the sys­tem to prof­fer help to the nat­u­rally gifted in­di­vid­u­als of the mor­tal races. When thus as­signed, these ar­ti­sans tem­porar­ily work un­der the super­vi­sion of the plan­e­tary an­gels of prog­ress. The se­raphic hosts co-op­er­ate with these ar­ti­sans in at­tempt­ing to as­sist those mor­tal artists who pos­sess in­her­ent en­dow­ments, and who also pos­sess Ad­justers of spe­cial and pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence.

44:8.2There are three pos­si­ble sources of spe­cial hu­man abil­ity: At the bot­tom al­ways there ex­ists the nat­u­ral or in­her­ent ap­ti­tude. Spe­cial abil­ity is never an ar­bi­trary gift of the Gods; there is al­ways an an­ces­tral foun­da­tion for ev­ery out­stand­ing tal­ent. In ad­di­tion to this nat­u­ral abil­ity, or rather sup­ple­men­tal thereto, there may be con­tributed the lead­ings of the Thought Ad­juster in those in­di­vid­u­als whose in­dwelling Ad­justers may have had ac­tual and bona fide ex­pe­ri­ences along such lines on other worlds and in other mor­tal crea­tures. In those cases where both the hu­man mind and the in­dwelling Ad­juster are un­usu­ally skill­ful, the spirit ar­ti­sans may be del­e­gated to act as har­mo­niz­ers of these tal­ents and oth­er­wise to as­sist and in­spire these mor­tals to seek for ever-per­fect­ing ide­als and to at­tempt their en­hanced por­trayal for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion of the realm.

44:8.6And this is the story of the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans, that cos­mopoli­tan body of ex­qui­site work­ers who do so much to glo­rify the ar­chi­tec­tural spheres with the artis­tic por­tray­als of the di­vine beauty of the Par­a­dise Cre­ators.

44:8.7[In­dited by an Arch­an­gel of Neb­a­don.]

44:7.4These di­vine qual­i­ties are per­fectly and ab­so­lutely uni­fied in God. And ev­ery God-know­ing man or an­gel pos­sesses the po­ten­tial of un­lim­ited self-ex­pres­sion on ever-pro­gres­sive lev­els of uni­fied self-re­al­iza­tion by the tech­nique of the never-end­ing achieve­ment of God­like­ness—the ex­pe­ri­en­tial blend­ing in the evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence of eter­nal truth, uni­ver­sal beauty, and di­vine good­ness.

103:9.9The full re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of mor­tal life con­sists in a pro­gres­sive will­ing­ness to be­lieve these as­sump­tions of rea­son, wis­dom, and faith. Such a life is one mo­ti­vated by truth and dom­i­nated by love; and these are the ide­als of ob­jec­tive cos­mic re­al­ity whose ex­is­tence can­not be ma­te­ri­ally demon­strated.

71:3.9A moral so­ci­ety should aim to pre­serve the self-re­spect of its cit­i­zenry and af­ford ev­ery nor­mal in­di­vid­ual ad­e­quate op­por­tu­nity for self-re­al­iza­tion. Such a plan of so­cial achieve­ment would yield a cul­tural so­ci­ety of the high­est or­der. So­cial evo­lu­tion should be en­cour­aged by gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion which ex­er­cises a min­i­mum of reg­u­la­tive con­trol. That state is best which co-or­di­nates most while gov­ern­ing least.

12:5.10Un­spir­i­tual an­i­mals know only the past and live in the pres­ent. Spirit-in­dwelt man has pow­ers of pre­vi­sion (in­sight); he may vi­su­al­ize the fu­ture. Only for­ward-look­ing and pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes are per­son­ally real. Static ethics and tra­di­tional moral­ity are just slightly super­an­i­mal. Nor is sto­icism a high or­der of self-re­al­iza­tion. Ethics and morals be­come truly hu­man when they are dy­namic and pro­gres­sive, alive with uni­verse re­al­ity.

68:2.3So­ci­ety is con­cerned with self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-main­te­nance, and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion is wor­thy of be­com­ing the im­me­di­ate goal of many cul­tural groups.