shadows

• interpret in terms of substance

1:6.1Hu­man per­son­al­ity is the time-space im­age-shadow cast by the di­vine Cre­ator per­son­al­ity. And no ac­tu­al­ity can ever be ad­e­quately com­pre­hended by an ex­am­i­na­tion of its shadow. Shad­ows should be in­ter­preted in terms of the true sub­stance.

• matter is shadow cast by mind in presence of spirit

12:8.15In cos­mic evo­lu­tion mat­ter be­comes a philo­sophic shadow cast by mind in the pres­ence of spirit lu­mi­nos­ity of di­vine en­light­en­ment, but this does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity of mat­ter-en­ergy. Mind, mat­ter, and spirit are equally real, but they are not of equal value to per­son­al­ity in the at­tain­ment of di­vin­ity. Con­scious­ness of di­vin­ity is a pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

12:8.16The brighter the shin­ing of the spir­i­tu­al­ized per­son­al­ity (the Fa­ther in the uni­verse, the frag­ment of po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity in the in­di­vid­ual crea­ture), the greater the shadow cast by the in­ter­ven­ing mind upon its ma­te­rial in­vest­ment. In time, man’s body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (iden­tity) and spirit sur­vive while the body does not. A cos­mic re­al­ity can be nonex­is­tent in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. And so your Greek fig­ure of speech—the ma­te­rial as the shadow of the more real spirit sub­stance—does have a philo­sophic sig­nif­i­cance.

• shadow of hair’s turning for untrue purpose

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

• unrobust souls had shorter s.

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.

• feared and revered by early man

86:5.14The shadow came, later on, to be feared and revered equally with the breath. The re­flec­tion of one­self in the wa­ter was also some­times looked upon as proof of the dou­ble self, and mir­rors were re­garded with su­per­sti­tious awe. Even now many civ­i­lized per­sons turn the mir­ror to the wall in the event of death. Some back­ward tribes still be­lieve that the mak­ing of pic­tures, draw­ings, mod­els, or im­ages re­moves all or a part of the soul from the body; hence such are for­bid­den.

• feared and revered by early man

88:5.5Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that names must be treated with re­spect, es­pe­cially names of the gods. The name was re­garded as an en­tity, an in­flu­ence dis­tinct from the phys­i­cal per­son­al­ity; it was es­teemed equally with the soul and the shadow. Names were pawned for loans; a man could not use his name un­til it had been re­deemed by pay­ment of the loan. Nowa­days one signs his name to a note. An in­di­vid­ual’s name soon be­came im­por­tant in magic. The sav­age had two names; the im­por­tant one was re­garded as too sa­cred to use on or­di­nary oc­ca­sions, hence the sec­ond or ev­ery­day name—a nick­name. He never told his real name to strangers. Any ex­pe­ri­ence of an un­usual na­ture caused him to change his name; some­times it was in an ef­fort to cure dis­ease or to stop bad luck. The sav­age could get a new name by buy­ing it from the tribal chief; men still in­vest in ti­tles and de­grees. But among the most prim­i­tive tribes, such as the African Bush­men, in­di­vid­ual names do not ex­ist.

• once “walled” into new buildings

89:6.5It was long the prac­tice of many groups to build slaves alive into im­por­tant walls. In later times the north­ern Eu­ro­pean tribes sub­sti­tuted the walling in of the shadow of a passerby for this cus­tom of en­tomb­ing liv­ing per­sons in the walls of new build­ings. The Chi­nese buried in a wall those work­men who died while con­struct­ing it.

• follow substance

165:5.3“Con­sider the lilies, how they grow; they toil not, nei­ther do they spin; yet I say to you, even Sol­o­mon in all his glory was not ar­rayed like one of these. If God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive to­day and to­mor­row is cut down and cast into the fire, how much more shall he clothe you, the am­bas­sadors of the heav­enly king­dom. O you of lit­tle faith! When you whole­heart­edly de­vote your­selves to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of the king­dom, you should not be of doubt­ful minds con­cern­ing the sup­port of your­selves or the fam­i­lies you have for­saken. If you give your lives truly to the gospel, you shall live by the gospel. If you are only be­liev­ing dis­ci­ples, you must earn your own bread and con­tribute to the sus­te­nance of all who teach and preach and heal. If you are anx­ious about your bread and wa­ter, wherein are you dif­fer­ent from the na­tions of the world who so dili­gently seek such ne­ces­si­ties? De­vote your­selves to your work, be­liev­ing that both the Fa­ther and I know that you have need of all these things. Let me as­sure you, once and for all, that, if you ded­i­cate your lives to the work of the king­dom, all your real needs shall be sup­plied. Seek the greater thing, and the lesser will be found therein; ask for the heav­enly, and the earthly shall be in­cluded. The shadow is cer­tain to fol­low the sub­stance.

• cease to be attracted by unreal and material s.

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”