spiritual growth

• achievement › inevitable result of choosing Father’s will

1:3.6In the uni­verses God the Fa­ther is, in po­ten­tial, the over­con­trol­ler of mat­ter, mind, and spirit. Only by means of his far-flung per­son­al­ity cir­cuit does God deal di­rectly with the per­son­al­i­ties of his vast cre­ation of will crea­tures, but he is con­tactable (out­side of Par­a­dise) only in the pres­ences of his frag­mented en­ti­ties, the will of God abroad in the uni­verses. This Par­a­dise spirit that in­dwells the minds of the mor­tals of time and there fos­ters the evo­lu­tion of the im­mor­tal soul of the sur­viv­ing crea­ture is of the na­ture and di­vin­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. But the minds of such evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses and must gain di­vine per­fec­tion by achiev­ing those ex­pe­ri­en­tial trans­for­ma­tions of spir­i­tual at­tain­ment which are the in­ev­i­ta­ble re­sult of a crea­ture’s choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• experience with God transcends logic or controversy

1:6.6The more com­pletely man un­der­stands him­self and ap­pre­ci­ates the per­son­al­ity val­ues of his fel­lows, the more he will crave to know the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity, and the more earnestly such a God-know­ing hu­man will strive to be­come like the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity. You can ar­gue over opin­ions about God, but ex­pe­ri­ence with him and in him ex­ists above and be­yond all hu­man con­tro­versy and mere in­tel­lec­tual logic. The God-know­ing man de­scribes his spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ences, not to con­vince un­be­liev­ers, but for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual sat­is­fac­tion of be­liev­ers.

• achievement › unlimited in quality, but limited in quantity by capacity of receptivity and love for Father

3:4.6Mor­tal man can­not pos­si­bly know the in­fini­tude of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Fi­nite mind can­not think through such an ab­so­lute truth or fact. But this same fi­nite hu­man be­ing can ac­tu­ally feel—lit­er­ally ex­pe­ri­ence—the full and undi­min­ished im­pact of such an in­fi­nite Fa­ther’s LOVE. Such a love can be truly ex­pe­ri­enced, al­beit while qual­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence is un­lim­ited, quan­tity of such an ex­pe­ri­ence is strictly lim­ited by the hu­man ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity and by the as­so­ci­ated ca­pac­ity to love the Fa­ther in re­turn.

• inconceivable spiritual difference between Father and man; lower beings brought into his presence would not know they were there

5:1.1The in­abil­ity of the fi­nite crea­ture to ap­proach the in­fi­nite Fa­ther is in­her­ent, not in the Fa­ther’s aloof­ness, but in the finite­ness and ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions of cre­ated be­ings. The mag­ni­tude of the spir­i­tual dif­fer­ence be­tween the high­est per­son­al­ity of uni­verse ex­is­tence and the lower groups of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences is in­con­ceiv­able. Were it pos­si­ble for the lower or­ders of in­tel­li­gence to be trans­ported in­stantly into the pres­ence of the Fa­ther him­self, they would not know they were there. They would there be just as obliv­i­ous of the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther as where they now are. There is a long, long road ahead of mor­tal man be­fore he can con­sis­tently and within the realms of pos­si­bil­ity ask for safe con­duct into the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Spir­i­tu­ally, man must be trans­lated many times be­fore he can at­tain a plane that will yield the spir­i­tual vi­sion which will en­able him to see even any one of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its.

• achievement › possibilities equal to all, regardless of endowment or environment

5:1.4The mor­tals of the realms of time and space may dif­fer greatly in in­nate abil­i­ties and in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ment, they may en­joy en­vi­ron­ments ex­cep­tion­ally fa­vor­able to so­cial ad­vance­ment and moral prog­ress, or they may suf­fer from the lack of al­most ev­ery hu­man aid to cul­ture and sup­posed ad­vance­ment in the arts of civ­i­liza­tion; but the pos­si­bil­i­ties for spir­i­tual prog­ress in the as­cen­sion ca­reer are equal to all; in­creas­ing lev­els of spir­i­tual in­sight and cos­mic mean­ings are at­tained quite in­de­pen­dently of all such so­ciomoral dif­fer­en­tials of the di­ver­si­fied ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ments on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

5:1.5How­ever Uran­tia mor­tals may dif­fer in their in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, eco­nomic, and even moral op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­dow­ments, for­get not that their spir­i­tual en­dow­ment is uni­form and unique. They all en­joy the same di­vine pres­ence of the gift from the Fa­ther, and they are all equally priv­i­leged to seek in­ti­mate per­sonal com­mu­nion with this in­dwelling spirit of di­vine ori­gin, while they may all equally choose to ac­cept the uni­form spir­i­tual lead­ing of these Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

5:1.6If mor­tal man is whole­heart­edly spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, un­re­servedly con­se­crated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, then, since he is so cer­tainly and so ef­fec­tively spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed by the in­dwelling and di­vine Ad­juster, there can­not fail to ma­te­ri­al­ize in that in­di­vid­ual’s ex­pe­ri­ence the sub­lime con­scious­ness of know­ing God and the su­per­nal as­sur­ance of sur­viv­ing for the pur­pose of find­ing God by the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like him.

5:1.7Man is spir­i­tu­ally in­dwelt by a sur­viv­ing Thought Ad­juster. If such a hu­man mind is sin­cerely and spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, if such a hu­man soul de­sires to know God and be­come like him, hon­estly wants to do the Fa­ther’s will, there ex­ists no neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of mor­tal de­pri­va­tion nor pos­i­tive power of pos­si­ble in­ter­fer­ence which can pre­vent such a di­vinely mo­ti­vated soul from se­curely as­cend­ing to the por­tals of Par­a­dise.

5:1.8The Fa­ther de­sires all his crea­tures to be in per­sonal com­mu­nion with him. He has on Par­a­dise a place to re­ceive all those whose sur­vival sta­tus and spir­i­tual na­ture make pos­si­ble such at­tain­ment. There­fore set­tle in your phi­los­o­phy now and for­ever: To each of you and to all of us, God is ap­proach­able, the Fa­ther is at­tain­able, the way is open; the forces of di­vine love and the ways and means of di­vine ad­min­is­tra­tion are all in­ter­locked in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate the ad­vance­ment of ev­ery wor­thy in­tel­li­gence of ev­ery uni­verse to the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• defined as › measure of Adjuster attunement, Fatherlikeness
• result of spiritual growth › bearing fruits of the spirit

5:2.4It is be­cause of this God frag­ment that in­dwells you that you can hope, as you pro­gress in har­mo­niz­ing with the Ad­juster’s spir­i­tual lead­ings, more fully to dis­cern the pres­ence and trans­form­ing power of those other spir­i­tual in­flu­ences that sur­round you and im­pinge upon you but do not func­tion as an in­te­gral part of you. The fact that you are not in­tel­lec­tu­ally con­scious of close and in­ti­mate con­tact with the in­dwelling Ad­juster does not in the least dis­prove such an ex­alted ex­pe­ri­ence. The proof of fra­ter­nity with the di­vine Ad­juster con­sists wholly in the na­ture and ex­tent of the fruits of the spirit which are yielded in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever. “By their fruits you shall know them.”

• defined as › ability to know God; urge to be like him

5:5.1Moral­ity has its ori­gin in the rea­son of self-con­scious­ness; it is super­an­i­mal but wholly evo­lu­tion­ary. Hu­man evo­lu­tion em­braces in its un­fold­ing all en­dow­ments an­te­ced­ent to the be­stowal of the Ad­justers and to the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth. But the at­tain­ment of lev­els of moral­ity does not de­liver man from the real strug­gles of mor­tal liv­ing. Man’s phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment en­tails the bat­tle for ex­is­tence; the so­cial sur­round­ings ne­ces­si­tate eth­i­cal ad­just­ments; the moral sit­u­a­tions re­quire the mak­ing of choices in the high­est realms of rea­son; the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence (hav­ing re­al­ized God) de­mands that man find him and sin­cerely strive to be like him.

• mortals cannot fully understand

5:5.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing es­sen­tially spir­i­tual, can never be fully un­der­stood by the ma­te­rial mind; hence the func­tion of the­ol­ogy, the psy­chol­ogy of re­li­gion. The es­sen­tial doc­trine of the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of God cre­ates a para­dox in fi­nite com­pre­hen­sion. It is well-nigh im­pos­si­ble for hu­man logic and fi­nite rea­son to har­mo­nize the con­cept of di­vine im­ma­nence, God within and a part of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, with the idea of God’s tran­scen­dence, the di­vine dom­i­na­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses. These two es­sen­tial con­cepts of De­ity must be uni­fied in the faith-grasp of the con­cept of the tran­scen­dence of a per­sonal God and in the re­al­iza­tion of the in­dwelling pres­ence of a frag­ment of that God in or­der to jus­tify in­tel­li­gent wor­ship and val­i­date the hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. The dif­fi­cul­ties and para­doxes of re­li­gion are in­her­ent in the fact that the re­al­i­ties of re­li­gion are ut­terly be­yond the mor­tal ca­pac­ity for in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

• result of spiritual growth › unifies personality by love; yields peace which passes all understanding

5:5.81. In­tel­lec­tu­ally he ac­quires the sat­is­fac­tions of a more uni­fied hu­man con­scious­ness.

• result of spiritual growth › substantiation of moral values

5:5.92. Phil­o­soph­i­cally he en­joys the sub­stan­ti­a­tion of his ide­als of moral val­ues.

• result of spiritual growth › experience of divine companionship

5:5.103. Spir­i­tu­ally he thrives in the ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vine com­pan­ion­ship, in the spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions of true wor­ship.

• experience remains the same over generations
• should subject itself to intelligent criticism

5:5.12The ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness re­mains the same from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but with each ad­vanc­ing epoch in hu­man knowl­edge the philo­sophic con­cept and the the­o­logic def­i­ni­tions of God must change. God-know­ing­ness, re­li­gious con­scious­ness, is a uni­verse re­al­ity, but no mat­ter how valid (real) re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is, it must be will­ing to sub­ject it­self to in­tel­li­gent crit­i­cism and rea­son­able philo­sophic in­ter­pre­ta­tion; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the to­tal­ity of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• defined as › human self entering new relationship with divine self

13:1.217. AS­CEND­ING­TON. This unique world is the “bo­som of the Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit,” the ren­dezvous of the as­cen­dant crea­tures of space, the re­ceiv­ing sphere of the pil­grims of time who are pass­ing through the Ha­vona uni­verse on their way to Par­a­dise. As­cend­ing­ton is the ac­tual Par­a­dise home of the as­cen­dant souls of time and space un­til they at­tain Par­a­dise sta­tus. You mor­tals will spend most of your Ha­vona “va­ca­tions” on As­cend­ing­ton. Dur­ing your Ha­vona life As­cend­ing­ton will be to you what the re­ver­sion di­rec­tors were dur­ing the lo­cal and super­uni­verse as­cen­sion. Here you will en­gage in thou­sands of ac­tiv­i­ties which are be­yond the grasp of mor­tal imag­i­na­tion. And as on ev­ery pre­vi­ous ad­vance in the God­ward as­cent, your hu­man self will here en­ter into new re­la­tion­ships with your di­vine self.

• achievement › some truth essential to s.g. must be superconsciously received

19:5.9We know that the Trin­ity Teacher Sons are de­voted to the con­scious en­light­en­ment of uni­verse crea­tures. I have ar­rived at the set­tled con­clu­sion that the In­spired Trin­ity Spir­its, by super­con­scious tech­niques, are also func­tion­ing as teach­ers of the realms. I am per­suaded that there is a vast body of es­sen­tial spir­i­tual knowl­edge, truth in­dis­pens­able to high spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, which can­not be con­sciously re­ceived; self-con­scious­ness would ef­fec­tively jeop­ar­dize the cer­tainty of re­cep­tion. If we are right in this con­cept, and my en­tire or­der of be­ing shares it, it may be the mis­sion of these In­spired Spir­its to over­come this dif­fi­culty, to bridge this gap in the uni­ver­sal scheme of moral en­light­en­ment and spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment. We think that these two types of Trin­ity-ori­gin teach­ers ef­fect some kind of li­ai­son in their ac­tiv­i­ties, but we do not re­ally know.

• achievement › by faith and revelation

19:5.12And from all this, you mor­tals, just now tak­ing your first step on the eter­nal jour­ney, can well see that you must ad­vance a long way be­fore you will pro­gress by “sight” and “ma­te­rial” as­sur­ance. You will long use faith and be de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion if you hope to pro­gress quickly and safely.

• achievement › divine technique in approach to Divinity

27:4.2Har­mony is the keynote of the cen­tral uni­verse, and de­tectable or­der pre­vails on Par­a­dise. Proper con­duct is es­sen­tial to prog­ress by way of knowl­edge, through phi­los­o­phy, to the spir­i­tual heights of spon­ta­neous wor­ship. There is a di­vine tech­nique in the ap­proach to Di­vin­ity; and the ac­quire­ment of this tech­nique must await the pil­grims’ ar­rival on Par­a­dise. The spirit of it has been im­parted on the cir­cles of Ha­vona, but the fi­nal touches of the train­ing of the pil­grims of time can be ap­plied only af­ter they ac­tu­ally at­tain the Isle of Light.

• achievement › grows out of divine capacity for action

28:6.18The uni­ver­sal econ­omy is based on in­take and out­put; through­out the eter­nal ca­reer you will never en­counter mo­not­ony of in­ac­tion or stag­na­tion of per­son­al­ity. Prog­ress is made pos­si­ble by in­her­ent mo­tion, ad­vance­ment grows out of the di­vine ca­pac­ity for ac­tion, and achieve­ment is the child of imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­ture. But in­her­ent in this ca­pac­ity for achieve­ment is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of ethics, the ne­ces­sity for rec­og­niz­ing that the world and the uni­verse are filled with a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ing types of be­ings. All of this mag­nif­i­cent cre­ation, in­clud­ing your­self, was not made just for you. This is not an ego­cen­tric uni­verse. The Gods have de­creed, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive,” and said your Mas­ter Son, “He who would be great­est among you let him be server of all.”

• more honor to those who start at bottom

32:3.10The fact of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin does not at­tach stigma to any per­son­al­ity in the sight of the uni­verse as that is the ex­clu­sive method of pro­duc­ing one of the two ba­sic types of fi­nite in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures. When the heights of per­fec­tion and eter­nity are at­tained, all the more honor to those who be­gan at the bot­tom and joy­fully climbed the lad­der of life, round by round, and who, when they do reach the heights of glory, will have gained a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which em­bod­ies an ac­tual knowl­edge of ev­ery phase of life from the bot­tom to the top.

• God has given us himself that we may be like him

32:4.12The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has poured out him­self, as it were, to make all cre­ation rich in per­son­al­ity pos­ses­sion and po­ten­tial spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. God has given us him­self that we may be like him, and he has re­served for him­self of power and glory only that which is nec­es­sary for the main­te­nance of those things for the love of which he has thus di­vested him­self of all things else.

• achievement › by obeying divine leadings

34:5.5Though the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all flesh, this spirit of the Son is al­most wholly lim­ited in func­tion and power by man’s per­sonal re­cep­tion of that which con­sti­tutes the sum and sub­stance of the mis­sion of the be­stowal Son. The Holy Spirit is partly in­de­pen­dent of hu­man at­ti­tude and par­tially con­di­tioned by the de­ci­sions and co-op­er­a­tion of the will of man. Nev­er­the­less, the min­istry of the Holy Spirit be­comes in­creas­ingly ef­fec­tive in the sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the in­ner life of those mor­tals who the more fully obey the di­vine lead­ings.

• spiritual forces unerringly seek and attain original levels; carry us along

34:6.4Spir­i­tual forces unerringly seek and at­tain their own orig­i­nal lev­els. Hav­ing gone out from the Eter­nal, they are cer­tain to re­turn thereto, bring­ing with them all those chil­dren of time and space who have es­poused the lead­ing and teach­ing of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, those who have been truly “born of the Spirit,” the faith sons of God.

• achievement › every step must be willing, intelligent, cheerful

34:6.11The Spirit never drives, only leads. If you are a will­ing learner, if you want to at­tain spirit lev­els and reach di­vine heights, if you sin­cerely de­sire to reach the eter­nal goal, then the di­vine Spirit will gen­tly and lov­ingly lead you along the path­way of son­ship and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Ev­ery step you take must be one of will­ing­ness, in­tel­li­gent and cheer­ful co-op­er­a­tion. The dom­i­na­tion of the Spirit is never tainted with co­er­cion nor com­pro­mised by com­pul­sion.

• achievement › entirely dependent on mind endowment

36:2.18Num­ber Five World is con­cerned wholly with life as­so­ci­ated with mind. Each of its satel­lites is de­voted to the study of a sin­gle phase of crea­ture mind cor­re­lated with crea­ture life. Mind such as man com­pre­hends is an en­dow­ment of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its super­im­posed on the non­teach­able or me­chan­i­cal lev­els of mind by the agen­cies of the In­fi­nite Spirit. The life pat­terns are var­i­ously re­spon­sive to these ad­ju­tants and to the dif­fer­ent spirit min­istries op­er­at­ing through­out the uni­verses of time and space. The ca­pac­ity of ma­te­rial crea­tures to ef­fect spirit re­sponse is en­tirely de­pen­dent on the as­so­ci­ated mind en­dow­ment, which, in turn, has di­rec­tion­ized the course of the bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion of these same mor­tal crea­tures.

• achievement › learning to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial

39:4.11What is loy­alty? It is the fruit of an in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion of uni­verse broth­er­hood; one could not take so much and give noth­ing. As you as­cend the per­son­al­ity scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be fil­ial, and then may you be free; but not un­til you are a fi­nal­i­ter, not un­til you have at­tained per­fec­tion of loy­alty, can you self-re­al­ize fi­nal­ity of lib­erty.

• achievement › by gradual stages

39:4.12These ser­a­phim teach the fruit­ful­ness of pa­tience: That stag­na­tion is cer­tain death, but that over­rapid growth is equally sui­ci­dal; that as a drop of wa­ter from a higher level falls to a lower and, flow­ing on­ward, passes ever down­ward through a suc­ces­sion of short falls, so ever up­ward is prog­ress in the mor­ontia and spirit worlds—and just as slowly and by just such grad­ual stages.

• achievement › divine rest essential to effective utilization of spirit energy

44:5.10These en­ergy ma­nip­u­la­tors also func­tion in hun­dreds of other ways too nu­mer­ous to cat­a­logue, such as coun­sel­ing with the ser­a­phim, cheru­bim, and sa­no­bim re­gard­ing the most ef­fi­cient modes of en­ergy in­take and as to the main­te­nance of the most help­ful bal­ances of di­ver­gent forces be­tween ac­tive cheru­bim and pas­sive sa­no­bim. In many other ways do these ex­perts lend as­sis­tance to mor­ontia and spirit crea­tures in their ef­forts to un­der­stand the di­vine rest, which is so es­sen­tial to the ef­fec­tive uti­liza­tion of the ba­sic en­er­gies of space.

• achievement › by integration of truth, beauty, and goodness

44:7.2Beauty, rhythm, and har­mony are in­tel­lec­tu­ally as­so­ci­ated and spir­i­tu­ally akin. Truth, fact, and re­la­tion­ship are in­tel­lec­tu­ally in­sep­a­ra­ble and as­so­ci­ated with the philo­sophic con­cepts of beauty. Good­ness, righ­teous­ness, and jus­tice are phil­o­soph­i­cally in­ter­re­lated and spir­i­tu­ally bound up to­gether with liv­ing truth and di­vine beauty.

44:7.3Cos­mic con­cepts of true phi­los­o­phy, the por­trayal of ce­les­tial artistry, or the mor­tal at­tempt to de­pict the hu­man rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine beauty can never be truly sat­is­fy­ing if such at­tempted crea­ture pro­gres­sion is un­uni­fied. These ex­pres­sions of the di­vine urge within the evolv­ing crea­ture may be in­tel­lec­tu­ally true, emo­tion­ally beau­ti­ful, and spir­i­tu­ally good; but the real soul of ex­pres­sion is ab­sent un­less these re­al­i­ties of truth, mean­ings of beauty, and val­ues of good­ness are uni­fied in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of the ar­ti­san, the sci­en­tist, or the philoso­pher.

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.

• achievement › exchange human mind for mind of Jesus

48:6.26Even on Uran­tia, these ser­a­phim teach the ev­er­last­ing truth: If your own mind does not serve you well, you can ex­change it for the mind of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who al­ways serves you well.

• problems of spiritual growth › impatience is spirit poison

48:7.2018. Im­pa­tience is a spirit poi­son; anger is like a stone hurled into a hor­net’s nest.

• achievement › soul made divine by what it strives to do, not by what it does

48:7.2422. The evolv­ing soul is not made di­vine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

• gland chemistry influences spiritual receptivity

49:5.193. Spirit-re­cep­tion se­ries. There are three groups of mind de­sign as re­lated to con­tact with spirit af­fairs. This clas­si­fi­ca­tion does not re­fer to the one-, two-, and three-brained or­ders of mor­tals; it refers pri­mar­ily to gland chem­istry, more par­tic­u­larly to the or­ga­ni­za­tion of cer­tain glands com­pa­ra­ble to the pi­tu­itary bod­ies. The races on some worlds have one gland, on oth­ers two, as do Uran­tians, while on still other spheres the races have three of these unique bod­ies. The in­her­ent imag­i­na­tion and spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity is def­i­nitely in­flu­enced by this dif­fer­en­tial chem­i­cal en­dow­ment.

• defined as › partnership with God in perfection attainment

54:2.2Ev­ery crea­ture of ev­ery evolv­ing uni­verse who as­pires to do the Fa­ther’s will is des­tined to be­come the part­ner of the time-space Cre­ators in this mag­nif­i­cent ad­ven­ture of ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Were this not true, the Fa­ther would have hardly en­dowed such crea­tures with cre­ative free will, nei­ther would he in­dwell them, ac­tu­ally go into part­ner­ship with them by means of his own spirit.

• individual mortal is never retarded by universe government

55:11.6Let it be made clear that the ad­min­is­tra­tive mech­a­nisms and gov­ern­men­tal tech­niques of a uni­verse or a super­uni­verse can­not in any man­ner limit or re­tard the evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment or spir­i­tual prog­ress of an in­di­vid­ual in­hab­ited planet or of any in­di­vid­ual mor­tal on such a sphere.

• defined as › fruit of divinity

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

• achievement › dependent on knowledge and wisdom

65:8.4As mind evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on, and de­layed by, the slow de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so is spir­i­tual prog­ress de­pen­dent on men­tal ex­pan­sion and un­fail­ingly de­layed by in­tel­lec­tual re­tar­da­tion. But this does not mean that spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, or wis­dom. The soul may evolve re­gard­less of men­tal cul­ture but not in the ab­sence of men­tal ca­pac­ity and de­sire—the choice of sur­vival and the de­ci­sion to achieve ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion—to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Al­though sur­vival may not de­pend on the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and wis­dom, pro­gres­sion most cer­tainly does.

• achievement › may be natural and gradual, or may occur in a crisis

65:8.6When phys­i­cal con­di­tions are ripe, sud­den men­tal evo­lu­tions may take place; when mind sta­tus is pro­pi­tious, sud­den spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tions may oc­cur; when spir­i­tual val­ues re­ceive proper rec­og­ni­tion, then cos­mic mean­ings be­come dis­cern­i­ble, and in­creas­ingly the per­son­al­ity is re­leased from the hand­i­caps of time and de­liv­ered from the lim­i­ta­tions of space.

• modern civilization at standstill in

81:6.25The great­est twen­ti­eth-cen­tury in­flu­ences con­tribut­ing to the fur­ther­ance of civ­i­liza­tion and the ad­vance­ment of cul­ture are the marked in­crease in world travel and the un­par­al­leled im­prove­ments in meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the im­prove­ment in ed­u­ca­tion has not kept pace with the ex­pand­ing so­cial struc­ture; nei­ther has the mod­ern ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ethics de­vel­oped in cor­re­spon­dence with growth along more purely in­tel­lec­tual and sci­en­tific lines. And mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion is at a stand­still in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment and the safe­guard­ing of the home in­sti­tu­tion.

• achievement › moral and spiritual adjustments can be instant

81:6.40Man should be un­afraid to ex­per­i­ment with the mech­a­nisms of so­ci­ety. But al­ways should these ad­ven­tures in cul­tural ad­just­ment be con­trolled by those who are fully con­ver­sant with the his­tory of so­cial evo­lu­tion; and al­ways should these in­no­va­tors be coun­seled by the wis­dom of those who have had prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the do­mains of con­tem­plated so­cial or eco­nomic ex­per­i­ment. No great so­cial or eco­nomic change should be at­tempted sud­denly. Time is es­sen­tial to all types of hu­man ad­just­ment—phys­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic. Only moral and spir­i­tual ad­just­ments can be made on the spur of the mo­ment, and even these re­quire the pass­ing of time for the full out­work­ing of their ma­te­rial and so­cial reper­cus­sions. The ide­als of the race are the chief sup­port and as­sur­ance dur­ing the crit­i­cal times when civ­i­liza­tion is in tran­sit from one level to an­other.

• problems of spiritual growth › foolish to attempt too sudden acceleration of

92:2.4But it is only fool­ish to at­tempt the too sud­den ac­cel­er­a­tion of re­li­gious growth. A race or na­tion can only as­sim­i­late from any ad­vanced re­li­gion that which is rea­son­ably con­sis­tent and com­pat­i­ble with its cur­rent evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus, plus its ge­nius for adap­ta­tion. So­cial, cli­matic, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nomic con­di­tions are all in­flu­en­tial in de­ter­min­ing the course and prog­ress of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion. So­cial moral­ity is not de­ter­mined by re­li­gion, that is, by evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion; rather are the forms of re­li­gion dic­tated by the racial moral­ity.

• should subject itself to intelligent criticism

99:3.7The great weak­ness of all this un­rec­og­nized and un­con­scious type of re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity is that it is un­able to profit from open re­li­gious crit­i­cism and thereby at­tain to prof­itable lev­els of self-cor­rec­tion. It is a fact that re­li­gion does not grow un­less it is dis­ci­plined by con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, am­pli­fied by phi­los­o­phy, pu­ri­fied by sci­ence, and nour­ished by loyal fel­low­ship.

• achievement › greatest spiritual jeopardy is partial progress

99:4.8Man’s great­est spir­i­tual jeop­ardy con­sists in par­tial prog­ress, the predica­ment of un­fin­ished growth: for­sak­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions of fear with­out im­me­di­ately grasp­ing the rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion of love. Mod­ern sci­ence, par­tic­u­larly psy­chol­ogy, has weak­ened only those re­li­gions which are so largely de­pen­dent upon fear, su­per­sti­tion, and emo­tion.

• achievement › love supplies soil for
• achievement › stimulated by intimate association with other religionists

100:0.2Spir­i­tual growth is mu­tu­ally stim­u­lated by in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with other re­li­gion­ists. Love sup­plies the soil for re­li­gious growth—an ob­jec­tive lure in the place of sub­jec­tive grat­i­fi­ca­tion—yet it yields the su­preme sub­jec­tive sat­is­fac­tion. And re­li­gion en­no­bles the com­mon­place drudgery of daily liv­ing.

100:1.1While re­li­gion pro­duces growth of mean­ings and en­hance­ment of val­ues, evil al­ways re­sults when purely per­sonal eval­u­a­tions are el­e­vated to the lev­els of ab­so­lutes. A child eval­u­ates ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­cor­dance with the con­tent of plea­sure; ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tional to the sub­sti­tu­tion of higher mean­ings for per­sonal plea­sure, even loy­al­ties to the high­est con­cepts of di­ver­si­fied life sit­u­a­tions and cos­mic re­la­tions.

100:1.2Some per­sons are too busy to grow and are there­fore in grave dan­ger of spir­i­tual fix­a­tion. Pro­vi­sion must be made for growth of mean­ings at dif­fer­ing ages, in suc­ces­sive cul­tures, and in the pass­ing stages of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion. The chief in­hibitors of growth are prej­u­dice and ig­no­rance.

100:1.3Give ev­ery de­vel­op­ing child a chance to grow his own re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence; do not force a ready-made adult ex­pe­ri­ence upon him. Re­mem­ber, year-by-year prog­ress through an es­tab­lished ed­u­ca­tional regime does not nec­es­sar­ily mean in­tel­lec­tual prog­ress, much less spir­i­tual growth. En­large­ment of vo­cab­u­lary does not sig­nify de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter. Growth is not truly in­di­cated by mere prod­ucts but rather by prog­ress. Real ed­u­ca­tional growth is in­di­cated by en­hance­ment of ide­als, in­creased ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ues, new mean­ings of val­ues, and aug­mented loy­alty to su­preme val­ues.

100:1.4Chil­dren are per­ma­nently im­pressed only by the loy­al­ties of their adult as­so­ciates; pre­cept or even ex­am­ple is not last­ingly in­flu­en­tial. Loyal per­sons are grow­ing per­sons, and growth is an im­pres­sive and in­spir­ing re­al­ity. Live loy­ally to­day—grow—and to­mor­row will at­tend to it­self. The quick­est way for a tad­pole to be­come a frog is to live loy­ally each mo­ment as a tad­pole.

• result of spiritual growth › evidenced by love, ministry, worship

100:1.5The soil es­sen­tial for re­li­gious growth pre­sup­poses a pro­gres­sive life of self-re­al­iza­tion, the co-or­di­na­tion of nat­u­ral propen­si­ties, the ex­er­cise of cu­rios­ity and the en­joy­ment of rea­son­able ad­ven­ture, the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion, the func­tion­ing of the fear stim­u­lus of at­ten­tion and aware­ness, the won­der-lure, and a nor­mal con­scious­ness of small­ness, hu­mil­ity. Growth is also pred­i­cated on the dis­cov­ery of self­hood ac­com­pa­nied by self-crit­i­cism—con­science, for con­science is re­ally the crit­i­cism of one­self by one’s own value-habits, per­sonal ide­als.

• achievement › by wholehearted devotion to supreme values
• temporal conditions do not inhibit s.g. by soul dedicated to Father

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.

100:1.7Re­li­gion can­not be be­stowed, re­ceived, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which grows pro­por­tion­ally to the grow­ing quest for fi­nal val­ues. Cos­mic growth thus at­tends on the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mean­ings and the ever-ex­pand­ing el­e­va­tion of val­ues. But no­bil­ity it­self is al­ways an un­con­scious growth.

• defined as › unvaryingly unconscious
• result of spiritual growth › evidenced by love, ministry, worship

100:1.8Re­li­gious habits of think­ing and act­ing are con­trib­u­tory to the econ­omy of spir­i­tual growth. One can de­velop re­li­gious pre­dis­po­si­tions to­ward fa­vor­able re­ac­tion to spir­i­tual stim­uli, a sort of con­di­tioned spir­i­tual re­flex. Habits which fa­vor re­li­gious growth em­brace cul­ti­vated sen­si­tiv­ity to di­vine val­ues, rec­og­ni­tion of re­li­gious liv­ing in oth­ers, re­flec­tive med­i­ta­tion on cos­mic mean­ings, wor­ship­ful prob­lem solv­ing, shar­ing one’s spir­i­tual life with one’s fel­lows, avoid­ance of self­ish­ness, re­fusal to pre­sume on di­vine mercy, liv­ing as in the pres­ence of God. The fac­tors of re­li­gious growth may be in­ten­tional, but the growth it­self is un­vary­ingly un­con­scious.

• defined as › signifying creative activities in superconscious
• defined as › unvaryingly unconscious

100:1.9The un­con­scious na­ture of re­li­gious growth does not, how­ever, sig­nify that it is an ac­tiv­ity func­tion­ing in the sup­posed sub­con­scious realms of hu­man in­tel­lect; rather does it sig­nify cre­ative ac­tiv­i­ties in the super­con­scious lev­els of mor­tal mind. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of un­con­scious re­li­gious growth is the one pos­i­tive proof of the func­tional ex­is­tence of the super­con­scious­ness.

• achievement › by recognition of spiritual poverty
• achievement › dependent on living spiritual connection; continuously bearing spiritual fruit

100:2.1Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment de­pends, first, on the main­te­nance of a liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with true spir­i­tual forces and, sec­ond, on the con­tin­u­ous bear­ing of spir­i­tual fruit: yield­ing the min­istry to one’s fel­lows of that which has been re­ceived from one’s spir­i­tual bene­fac­tors. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is pred­i­cated on in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual pov­erty cou­pled with the self-con­scious­ness of per­fec­tion-hunger, the de­sire to know God and be like him, the whole­hearted pur­pose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• defined as › awakening to needs, discernment of meanings, discovery of values
• result of spiritual growth › evidenced by love, ministry, worship

100:2.2Spir­i­tual growth is first an awak­en­ing to needs, next a dis­cern­ment of mean­ings, and then a dis­cov­ery of val­ues. The ev­i­dence of true spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment con­sists in the ex­hi­bi­tion of a hu­man per­son­al­ity mo­ti­vated by love, ac­ti­vated by un­selfish min­istry, and dom­i­nated by the whole­hearted wor­ship of the per­fec­tion ide­als of di­vin­ity. And this en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tutes the re­al­ity of re­li­gion as con­trasted with mere the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs.

100:2.3Re­li­gion can pro­gress to that level of ex­pe­ri­ence whereon it be­comes an en­light­ened and wise tech­nique of spir­i­tual re­ac­tion to the uni­verse. Such a glo­ri­fied re­li­gion can func­tion on three lev­els of hu­man per­son­al­ity: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, and the spir­i­tual; upon the mind, in the evolv­ing soul, and with the in­dwelling spirit.

• achievement › by elimination of selfish qualities of love
• defined as › indicating nearness to God, usefulness to fellow beings

100:2.4Spir­i­tu­al­ity be­comes at once the in­di­ca­tor of one’s near­ness to God and the mea­sure of one’s use­ful­ness to fel­low be­ings. Spir­i­tu­al­ity en­hances the abil­ity to dis­cover beauty in things, rec­og­nize truth in mean­ings, and dis­cover good­ness in val­ues. Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment is de­ter­mined by ca­pac­ity there­for and is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the elim­i­na­tion of the self­ish qual­i­ties of love.

• defined as › measure of Adjuster attunement, Fatherlikeness

100:2.5Ac­tual spir­i­tual sta­tus is the mea­sure of De­ity at­tain­ment, Ad­juster at­tune­ment. The achieve­ment of fi­nal­ity of spir­i­tu­al­ity is equiv­a­lent to the at­tain­ment of the max­i­mum of re­al­ity, the max­i­mum of God­like­ness. Eter­nal life is the end­less quest for in­fi­nite val­ues.

100:2.6The goal of hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion should be spir­i­tual, not ma­te­rial. The only re­al­i­ties worth striv­ing for are di­vine, spir­i­tual, and eter­nal. Mor­tal man is en­ti­tled to the en­joy­ment of phys­i­cal plea­sures and to the sat­is­fac­tion of hu­man af­fec­tions; he is ben­e­fited by loy­alty to hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions and tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tions; but these are not the eter­nal foun­da­tions upon which to build the im­mor­tal per­son­al­ity which must tran­scend space, van­quish time, and achieve the eter­nal des­tiny of di­vine per­fec­tion and fi­nal­i­ter ser­vice.

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

• achievement › may be natural and gradual, or may occur in a crisis

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.

• achievement › faith must be vigorously exercised

100:3.7Man can­not cause growth, but he can sup­ply fa­vor­able con­di­tions. Growth is al­ways un­con­scious, be it phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, or spir­i­tual. Love thus grows; it can­not be cre­ated, man­u­fac­tured, or pur­chased; it must grow. Evo­lu­tion is a cos­mic tech­nique of growth. So­cial growth can­not be se­cured by leg­is­la­tion, and moral growth is not had by im­proved ad­min­is­tra­tion. Man may man­u­fac­ture a ma­chine, but its real value must be de­rived from hu­man cul­ture and per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Man’s sole con­tri­bu­tion to growth is the mo­bi­liza­tion of the to­tal pow­ers of his per­son­al­ity—liv­ing faith.

100:4.1Re­li­gious liv­ing is de­voted liv­ing, and de­voted liv­ing is cre­ative liv­ing, orig­i­nal and spon­ta­neous. New re­li­gious in­sights arise out of con­flicts which ini­ti­ate the choos­ing of new and bet­ter re­ac­tion habits in the place of older and in­fe­rior re­ac­tion pat­terns. New mean­ings only emerge amid con­flict; and con­flict per­sists only in the face of re­fusal to es­pouse the higher val­ues con­noted in su­pe­rior mean­ings.

• problems of spiritual growth › no s.g. without psychic conflict, spiritual agitation

100:4.2Re­li­gious per­plex­i­ties are in­ev­i­ta­ble; there can be no growth with­out psy­chic con­flict and spir­i­tual ag­i­ta­tion. The or­ga­ni­za­tion of a philo­sophic stan­dard of liv­ing en­tails con­sid­er­able com­mo­tion in the philo­sophic realms of the mind. Loy­al­ties are not ex­er­cised in be­half of the great, the good, the true, and the no­ble with­out a strug­gle. Ef­fort is at­ten­dant upon clar­i­fi­ca­tion of spir­i­tual vi­sion and en­hance­ment of cos­mic in­sight. And the hu­man in­tel­lect protests against be­ing weaned from sub­sist­ing upon the non­spir­i­tual en­er­gies of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. The sloth­ful an­i­mal mind rebels at the ef­fort re­quired to wres­tle with cos­mic prob­lem solv­ing.

• result of spiritual growth › unifies personality by love; yields peace which passes all understanding

100:4.3But the great prob­lem of re­li­gious liv­ing con­sists in the task of uni­fy­ing the soul pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity by the dom­i­nance of LOVE. Health, men­tal ef­fi­ciency, and hap­pi­ness arise from the uni­fi­ca­tion of phys­i­cal sys­tems, mind sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems. Of health and san­ity man un­der­stands much, but of hap­pi­ness he has truly re­al­ized very lit­tle. The high­est hap­pi­ness is in­dis­sol­ubly linked with spir­i­tual prog­ress. Spir­i­tual growth yields last­ing joy, peace which passes all un­der­stand­ing.

100:4.4In phys­i­cal life the senses tell of the ex­is­tence of things; mind dis­cov­ers the re­al­ity of mean­ings; but the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence re­veals to the in­di­vid­ual the true val­ues of life. These high lev­els of hu­man liv­ing are at­tained in the su­preme love of God and in the un­selfish love of man. If you love your fel­low men, you must have dis­cov­ered their val­ues. Je­sus loved men so much be­cause he placed such a high value upon them. You can best dis­cover val­ues in your as­so­ciates by dis­cov­er­ing their mo­ti­va­tion. If some­one ir­ri­tates you, causes feel­ings of re­sent­ment, you should sym­pa­thet­i­cally seek to dis­cern his view­point, his rea­sons for such ob­jec­tion­able con­duct. If once you un­der­stand your neigh­bor, you will be­come tol­er­ant, and this tol­er­ance will grow into friend­ship and ripen into love.

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.

100:4.6You can­not truly love your fel­lows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thor­ough­go­ing un­der­stand­ing of your neigh­bor’s mo­tives and sen­ti­ments. It is not so im­por­tant to love all men to­day as it is that each day you learn to love one more hu­man be­ing. If each day or each week you achieve an un­der­stand­ing of one more of your fel­lows, and if this is the limit of your abil­ity, then you are cer­tainly so­cial­iz­ing and truly spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing your per­son­al­ity. Love is in­fec­tious, and when hu­man de­vo­tion is in­tel­li­gent and wise, love is more catch­ing than hate. But only gen­uine and un­selfish love is truly con­ta­gious. If each mor­tal could only be­come a fo­cus of dy­namic af­fec­tion, this be­nign virus of love would soon per­vade the sen­ti­men­tal emo­tion-stream of hu­man­ity to such an ex­tent that all civ­i­liza­tion would be en­com­passed by love, and that would be the re­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• achievement › leads from stagnation through conflict to co-ordination

100:5.2The pro­gres­sion of re­li­gious growth leads from stag­na­tion through con­flict to co-or­di­na­tion, from in­se­cu­rity to un­doubt­ing faith, from con­fu­sion of cos­mic con­scious­ness to uni­fi­ca­tion of per­son­al­ity, from the tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive to the eter­nal, from the bond­age of fear to the lib­erty of di­vine son­ship.

• achievement › may be natural and gradual, or may occur in a crisis

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

• achievement › our thoughts, not our feelings, lead us Godward

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

• result of spiritual growth › 12 reactions showing existence of Adjusters

101:3.4Through re­li­gious faith the soul of man re­veals it­self and demon­strates the po­ten­tial di­vin­ity of its emerg­ing na­ture by the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it in­duces the mor­tal per­son­al­ity to re­act to cer­tain try­ing in­tel­lec­tual and test­ing so­cial sit­u­a­tions. Gen­uine spir­i­tual faith (true moral con­scious­ness) is re­vealed in that it:

101:3.51. Causes ethics and morals to pro­gress de­spite in­her­ent and ad­verse an­i­mal­is­tic ten­den­cies.

101:3.62. Pro­duces a sub­lime trust in the good­ness of God even in the face of bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and crush­ing de­feat.

101:3.73. Gen­er­ates pro­found cour­age and con­fi­dence de­spite nat­u­ral ad­ver­sity and phys­i­cal calamity.

101:3.84. Ex­hibits in­ex­pli­ca­ble poise and sus­tain­ing tran­quil­lity not­with­stand­ing baf­fling dis­eases and even acute phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing.

101:3.95. Main­tains a mys­te­ri­ous poise and com­po­sure of per­son­al­ity in the face of mal­treat­ment and the rank­est in­jus­tice.

101:3.106. Main­tains a di­vine trust in ul­ti­mate vic­tory in spite of the cru­el­ties of seem­ingly blind fate and the ap­par­ent ut­ter in­dif­fer­ence of nat­u­ral forces to hu­man wel­fare.

101:3.117. Per­sists in the unswerv­ing be­lief in God de­spite all con­trary demon­stra­tions of logic and suc­cess­fully with­stands all other in­tel­lec­tual soph­ist­ries.

101:3.128. Con­tin­ues to ex­hibit un­daunted faith in the soul’s sur­vival re­gard­less of the de­cep­tive teach­ings of false sci­ence and the per­sua­sive delu­sions of un­sound phi­los­o­phy.

101:3.139. Lives and tri­umphs ir­re­spec­tive of the crush­ing over­load of the com­plex and par­tial civ­i­liza­tions of mod­ern times.

101:3.1410. Con­tributes to the con­tin­ued sur­vival of al­tru­ism in spite of hu­man self­ish­ness, so­cial an­tag­o­nisms, in­dus­trial greeds, and po­lit­i­cal mal­ad­just­ments.

101:3.1511. Stead­fastly ad­heres to a sub­lime be­lief in uni­verse unity and di­vine guid­ance re­gard­less of the per­plex­ing pres­ence of evil and sin.

101:3.1612. Goes right on wor­ship­ing God in spite of any­thing and ev­ery­thing. Dares to de­clare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”

101:3.17We know, then, by three phe­nom­ena, that man has a di­vine spirit or spir­its dwell­ing within him: first, by per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—re­li­gious faith; sec­ond, by rev­e­la­tion—per­sonal and racial; and third, by the amaz­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of such ex­tra­or­di­nary and un­nat­u­ral re­ac­tions to his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as are il­lus­trated by the fore­go­ing recital of twelve spir­it­like per­for­mances in the pres­ence of the ac­tual and try­ing sit­u­a­tions of real hu­man ex­is­tence. And there are still oth­ers.

101:6.1The mor­ontia phase of re­vealed re­li­gion has to do with the ex­pe­ri­ence of sur­vival, and its great urge is the at­tain­ment of spirit per­fec­tion. There also is pres­ent the higher urge of wor­ship, as­so­ci­ated with an im­pelling call to in­creased eth­i­cal ser­vice. Mor­ontia in­sight en­tails an ever-ex­pand­ing con­scious­ness of the Sev­en­fold, the Su­preme, and even the Ul­ti­mate.

101:6.2Through­out all re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, from its ear­li­est in­cep­tion on the ma­te­rial level up to the time of the at­tain­ment of full spirit sta­tus, the Ad­juster is the se­cret of the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the ex­is­tence of the Su­preme; and this same Ad­juster also holds the se­crets of your faith in the tran­scen­den­tal at­tain­ment of the Ul­ti­mate. The ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­son­al­ity of evolv­ing man, united to the Ad­juster essence of the ex­is­ten­tial God, con­sti­tutes the po­ten­tial com­ple­tion of su­preme ex­is­tence and is in­her­ently the ba­sis for the super­fi­nite even­tu­a­tion of tran­scen­den­tal per­son­al­ity.

101:6.3Moral will em­braces de­ci­sions based on rea­soned knowl­edge, aug­mented by wis­dom, and sanc­tioned by re­li­gious faith. Such choices are acts of moral na­ture and ev­i­dence the ex­is­tence of moral per­son­al­ity, the fore­run­ner of mor­ontia per­son­al­ity and even­tu­ally of true spirit sta­tus.

101:6.4The evo­lu­tion­ary type of knowl­edge is but the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory ma­te­rial; this is the most prim­i­tive form of crea­ture con­scious­ness. Wis­dom em­braces the ideas for­mu­lated from pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory in pro­cess of as­so­ci­a­tion and re­com­bi­na­tion, and such phe­nom­ena dif­fer­en­ti­ate hu­man mind from mere an­i­mal mind. An­i­mals have knowl­edge, but only man pos­sesses wis­dom ca­pac­ity. Truth is made ac­ces­si­ble to the wis­dom-en­dowed in­di­vid­ual by the be­stowal on such a mind of the spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Sons, the Thought Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth.

101:6.5Christ Mi­chael, when be­stowed on Uran­tia, lived un­der the reign of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion up to the time of his bap­tism. From that mo­ment up to and in­clud­ing the event of his cru­ci­fix­ion he car­ried for­ward his work by the com­bined guid­ance of evo­lu­tion­ary and re­vealed re­li­gion. From the morn­ing of his res­ur­rec­tion un­til his as­cen­sion he tra­versed the man­i­fold phases of the mor­ontia life of mor­tal tran­si­tion from the world of mat­ter to that of spirit. Af­ter his as­cen­sion Mi­chael be­came mas­ter of the ex­pe­ri­ence of Su­prem­acy, the re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme; and be­ing the one per­son in Neb­a­don pos­sessed of un­lim­ited ca­pac­ity to ex­pe­ri­ence the re­al­ity of the Su­preme, he forth­with at­tained to the sta­tus of the sov­er­eignty of su­prem­acy in and to his lo­cal uni­verse.

101:6.6With man, the even­tual fu­sion and re­sul­tant one­ness with the in­dwelling Ad­juster—the per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis of man and the essence of God—con­sti­tute him, in po­ten­tial, a liv­ing part of the Su­preme and in­sure for such a one­time mor­tal be­ing the eter­nal birthright of the end­less pur­suit of fi­nal­ity of uni­verse ser­vice for and with the Su­preme.

• overview

101:6.7Rev­e­la­tion teaches mor­tal man that, to start such a mag­nif­i­cent and in­trigu­ing ad­ven­ture through space by means of the pro­gres­sion of time, he should be­gin by the or­ga­ni­za­tion of knowl­edge into idea-de­ci­sions; next, man­date wis­dom to la­bor un­remit­tingly at its no­ble task of trans­form­ing self-pos­sessed ideas into in­creas­ingly prac­ti­cal but nonethe­less su­per­nal ide­als, even those con­cepts which are so rea­son­able as ideas and so log­i­cal as ide­als that the Ad­juster dares so to com­bine and spir­i­tize them as to ren­der them avail­able for such as­so­ci­a­tion in the fi­nite mind as will con­sti­tute them the ac­tual hu­man com­ple­ment thus made ready for the ac­tion of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions of Par­a­dise truth—uni­ver­sal truth. The co-or­di­na­tion of idea-de­ci­sions, log­i­cal ide­als, and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a righ­teous char­ac­ter, the pre­req­ui­site for mor­tal ad­mis­sion to the ever-ex­pand­ing and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the mor­ontia worlds.

101:6.8The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tuted the first Uran­tian re­li­gion which so fully em­braced a har­mo­nious co-or­di­na­tion of knowl­edge, wis­dom, faith, truth, and love as com­pletely and si­mul­ta­ne­ously to pro­vide tem­po­ral tran­quil­lity, in­tel­lec­tual cer­tainty, moral en­light­en­ment, philo­sophic sta­bil­ity, eth­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity, God-con­scious­ness, and the pos­i­tive as­sur­ance of per­sonal sur­vival. The faith of Je­sus pointed the way to fi­nal­ity of hu­man sal­va­tion, to the ul­ti­mate of mor­tal uni­verse at­tain­ment, since it pro­vided for:

101:6.91. Sal­va­tion from ma­te­rial fet­ters in the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God, who is spirit.

101:6.102. Sal­va­tion from in­tel­lec­tual bond­age: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.

101:6.113. Sal­va­tion from spir­i­tual blind­ness, the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of the fra­ter­nity of mor­tal be­ings and the mor­ontian aware­ness of the broth­er­hood of all uni­verse crea­tures; the ser­vice-dis­cov­ery of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and the min­istry-rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of spirit val­ues.

101:6.124. Sal­va­tion from in­com­plete­ness of self through the at­tain­ment of the spirit lev­els of the uni­verse and through the even­tual re­al­iza­tion of the har­mony of Ha­vona and the per­fec­tion of Par­a­dise.

101:6.135. Sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the lim­i­ta­tions of self-con­scious­ness through the at­tain­ment of the cos­mic lev­els of the Su­preme Mind and by co-or­di­na­tion with the at­tain­ments of all other self-con­scious be­ings.

101:6.146. Sal­va­tion from time, the achieve­ment of an eter­nal life of un­end­ing pro­gres­sion in God-rec­og­ni­tion and God-ser­vice.

101:6.157. Sal­va­tion from the fi­nite, the per­fected one­ness with De­ity in and through the Su­preme by which the crea­ture at­tempts the tran­scen­den­tal dis­cov­ery of the Ul­ti­mate on the post­fi­naliter lev­els of the ab­so­nite.

101:6.16Such a sev­en­fold sal­va­tion is the equiv­a­lent of the com­plete­ness and per­fec­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of the ul­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. And all this, in po­ten­tial, is con­tained within the re­al­ity of the faith of the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion. And it can be so con­tained since the faith of Je­sus was nour­ished by, and was rev­e­la­tory of, even re­al­i­ties be­yond the ul­ti­mate; the faith of Je­sus ap­proached the sta­tus of a uni­verse ab­so­lute in so far as such is pos­si­ble of man­i­fes­ta­tion in the evolv­ing cos­mos of time and space.

• result of spiritual growth › we can attain same satisfaction in experience with Father as did Jesus

101:6.17Through the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of the faith of Je­sus, mor­tal man can fore­taste in time the re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Je­sus made the dis­cov­ery, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, of the Fi­nal Fa­ther, and his broth­ers in the flesh of mor­tal life can fol­low him along this same ex­pe­ri­ence of Fa­ther dis­cov­ery. They can even at­tain, as they are, the same sat­is­fac­tion in this ex­pe­ri­ence with the Fa­ther as did Je­sus as he was. New po­ten­tials were ac­tu­al­ized in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don con­se­quent upon the ter­mi­nal be­stowal of Mi­chael, and one of these was the new il­lu­mi­na­tion of the path of eter­nity that leads to the Fa­ther of all, and which can be tra­versed even by the mor­tals of ma­te­rial flesh and blood in the ini­tial life on the plan­ets of space. Je­sus was and is the new and liv­ing way whereby man can come into the di­vine in­her­i­tance which the Fa­ther has de­creed shall be his for but the ask­ing. In Je­sus there is abun­dantly demon­strated both the be­gin­nings and end­ings of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man­ity, even of di­vine hu­man­ity.

• problems of spiritual growth › early arrested if satisfied with slight attainments

101:7.4The great dif­fer­ence be­tween a re­li­gious and a non­re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing con­sists in the na­ture and level of rec­og­nized val­ues and in the ob­ject of loy­al­ties. There are four phases in the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy: Such an ex­pe­ri­ence may be­come merely con­for­ma­tive, re­signed to sub­mis­sion to tra­di­tion and au­thor­ity. Or it may be sat­is­fied with slight at­tain­ments, just enough to sta­bi­lize the daily liv­ing, and there­fore be­comes early ar­rested on such an ad­ven­ti­tious level. Such mor­tals be­lieve in let­ting well enough alone. A third group pro­gress to the level of log­i­cal in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity but there stag­nate in con­se­quence of cul­tural slav­ery. It is in­deed piti­ful to be­hold gi­ant in­tel­lects held so se­curely within the cruel grasp of cul­tural bond­age. It is equally pa­thetic to ob­serve those who trade their cul­tural bond­age for the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fet­ters of a sci­ence, falsely so called. The fourth level of phi­los­o­phy at­tains free­dom from all con­ven­tional and tra­di­tional hand­i­caps and dares to think, act, and live hon­estly, loy­ally, fear­lessly, and truth­fully.

• achievement › discovering good and right technique of reacting to ever-recurring situations

101:9.5The en­light­ened spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of civ­i­lized man is not con­cerned so much with some spe­cific in­tel­lec­tual be­lief or with any one par­tic­u­lar mode of liv­ing as with dis­cov­er­ing the truth of liv­ing, the good and right tech­nique of re­act­ing to the ever-re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Moral con­scious­ness is just a name ap­plied to the hu­man rec­og­ni­tion and aware­ness of those eth­i­cal and emerg­ing mor­ontial val­ues which duty de­mands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day con­trol and guid­ance of con­duct.

• achievement › faith must be vigorously exercised

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

• error directly proportional to content of materialism

102:4.4The el­e­ment of er­ror pres­ent in hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the con­tent of ma­te­ri­al­ism which con­tam­i­nates the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s pre­spirit pro­gres­sion in the uni­verse con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vest­ing him­self of these er­ro­neous ideas of the na­ture of God and of the re­al­ity of pure and true spirit. De­ity is more than spirit, but the spir­i­tual ap­proach is the only one pos­si­ble to as­cend­ing man.

• achievement › none without conscious effort, determinations

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

• achievement › none without conscious effort, determinations

103:2.6In the ab­sence of wrong teach­ing, the mind of the nor­mal child moves pos­i­tively, in the emer­gence of re­li­gious con­scious­ness, to­ward moral righ­teous­ness and so­cial min­istry, rather than neg­a­tively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be con­flict in the de­vel­op­ment of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but there are al­ways pres­ent the in­ev­i­ta­ble de­ci­sions, ef­fort, and func­tion of the hu­man will.

• achievement › greatest where external pressures are minimum

103:5.11But man is not saved or en­no­bled by pres­sure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolv­ing soul. Pres­sure may de­form the per­son­al­ity, but it never stim­u­lates growth. Even ed­u­ca­tional pres­sure is only neg­a­tively help­ful in that it may aid in the pre­ven­tion of dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences. Spir­i­tual growth is great­est where all ex­ter­nal pres­sures are at a min­i­mum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is free­dom.” Man de­vel­ops best when the pres­sures of home, com­mu­nity, church, and state are least. But this must not be con­strued as mean­ing that there is no place in a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety for home, so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, church, and state.

• defined as › reality proportional to spiritual content

103:9.12There is a re­al­ity in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence that is pro­por­tional to the spir­i­tual con­tent, and such a re­al­ity is tran­scen­dent to rea­son, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, and all other hu­man achieve­ments. The con­vic­tions of such an ex­pe­ri­ence are unas­sail­able; the logic of re­li­gious liv­ing is in­con­tro­vert­ible; the cer­tainty of such knowl­edge is super­hu­man; the sat­is­fac­tions are su­perbly di­vine, the cour­age in­domitable, the de­vo­tions un­ques­tion­ing, the loy­al­ties su­preme, and the des­tinies fi­nal—eter­nal, ul­ti­mate, and uni­ver­sal.

• quest for God is endless!

106:7.5No mat­ter how much you may grow in Fa­ther com­pre­hen­sion, your mind will al­ways be stag­gered by the un­re­vealed in­fin­ity of the Fa­ther-I AM, the un­ex­plored vast­ness of which will al­ways re­main un­fath­omable and in­com­pre­hen­si­ble through­out all the cy­cles of eter­nity. No mat­ter how much of God you may at­tain, there will al­ways re­main much more of him, the ex­is­tence of which you will not even sus­pect. And we be­lieve that this is just as true on tran­scen­den­tal lev­els as it is in the do­mains of fi­nite ex­is­tence. The quest for God is end­less!

106:7.6Such in­abil­ity to at­tain God in a fi­nal sense should in no man­ner dis­cour­age uni­verse crea­tures; in­deed, you can and do at­tain De­ity lev­els of the Sev­en­fold, the Su­preme, and the Ul­ti­mate, which mean to you what the in­fi­nite re­al­iza­tion of God the Fa­ther means to the Eter­nal Son and to the Con­joint Ac­tor in their ab­so­lute sta­tus of eter­nity ex­is­tence. Far from ha­rass­ing the crea­ture, the in­fin­ity of God should be the su­preme as­sur­ance that through­out all end­less fu­tu­rity an as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity will have be­fore him the pos­si­bil­i­ties of per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment and De­ity as­so­ci­a­tion which even eter­nity will nei­ther ex­haust nor ter­mi­nate.

• achievement › by Father identification
• defined as › measure of Adjuster attunement, Fatherlikeness
• defined as › never-ending voyage of discovery into absoluteness of Father

106:9.11Sooner or later all uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties be­gin to re­al­ize that the fi­nal quest of eter­nity is the end­less ex­plo­ration of in­fin­ity, the never-end­ing voy­age of dis­cov­ery into the ab­so­lute­ness of the First Source and Cen­ter. Sooner or later we all be­come aware that all crea­ture growth is pro­por­tional to Fa­ther iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. We ar­rive at the un­der­stand­ing that liv­ing the will of God is the eter­nal pass­port to the end­less pos­si­bil­ity of in­fin­ity it­self. Mor­tals will some­time re­al­ize that suc­cess in the quest of the In­fi­nite is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the achieve­ment of Fa­ther­like­ness, and that in this uni­verse age the re­al­i­ties of the Fa­ther are re­vealed within the qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity. And these qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity are per­son­ally ap­pro­pri­ated by uni­verse crea­tures in the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing di­vinely, and to live di­vinely means ac­tu­ally to live the will of God.

• achievement › greatest s.g. in mind of perfect poise, housed in body of clean habits
• problems of spiritual growth › unbalanced s.g. produces fanatical interpretation of spirit leadings

110:6.4When the de­vel­op­ment of the in­tel­lec­tual na­ture pro­ceeds faster than that of the spir­i­tual, such a sit­u­a­tion ren­ders com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Thought Ad­juster both dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous. Like­wise, over­spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment tends to pro­duce a fa­nat­i­cal and per­verted in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the spirit lead­ings of the di­vine in­dweller. Lack of spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity makes it very dif­fi­cult to trans­mit to such a ma­te­rial in­tel­lect the spir­i­tual truths res­i­dent in the higher super­con­scious­ness. It is to the mind of per­fect poise, housed in a body of clean habits, sta­bi­lized neu­ral en­er­gies, and bal­anced chem­i­cal func­tion—when the phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual pow­ers are in tri­une har­mony of de­vel­op­ment—that a max­i­mum of light and truth can be im­parted with a min­i­mum of tem­po­ral dan­ger or risk to the real wel­fare of such a be­ing. By such a bal­anced growth does man as­cend the cir­cles of plan­e­tary pro­gres­sion one by one, from the sev­enth to the first.

• little to do with planetary material prosperity

110:6.19There is only an in­di­rect re­la­tion be­tween cos­mic-cir­cle at­tain­ment and ac­tual spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence; such at­tain­ments are re­cip­ro­cal and there­fore mu­tu­ally ben­e­fi­cial. Purely spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment may have lit­tle to do with plan­e­tary ma­te­rial pros­per­ity, but cir­cle at­tain­ment al­ways aug­ments the po­ten­tial of hu­man suc­cess and mor­tal achieve­ment.

• achievement › where we are is not so important as direction of progress, what we are striving to become

111:1.5Mor­tal mind is a tem­po­rary in­tel­lect sys­tem loaned to hu­man be­ings for use dur­ing a ma­te­rial life­time, and as they use this mind, they are ei­ther ac­cept­ing or re­ject­ing the po­ten­tial of eter­nal ex­is­tence. Mind is about all you have of uni­verse re­al­ity that is sub­ject to your will, and the soul—the mor­ontia self—will faith­fully por­tray the har­vest of the tem­po­ral de­ci­sions which the mor­tal self is mak­ing. Hu­man con­scious­ness rests gen­tly upon the elec­tro­chem­i­cal mech­a­nism be­low and del­i­cately touches the spirit-mor­ontia en­ergy sys­tem above. Of nei­ther of these two sys­tems is the hu­man be­ing ever com­pletely con­scious in his mor­tal life; there­fore must he work in mind, of which he is con­scious. And it is not so much what mind com­pre­hends as what mind de­sires to com­pre­hend that in­sures sur­vival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striv­ing to be like that con­sti­tutes spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It is not so much that man is con­scious of God as that man yearns for God that re­sults in uni­verse as­cen­sion. What you are to­day is not so im­por­tant as what you are be­com­ing day by day and in eter­nity.

• achievement › by sincerity and steadfastness of God-seeking decisions

112:2.20The ma­te­rial self, the ego-en­tity of hu­man iden­tity, is de­pen­dent dur­ing the phys­i­cal life on the con­tin­u­ing func­tion of the ma­te­rial life ve­hi­cle, on the con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of the un­bal­anced equi­lib­rium of en­er­gies and in­tel­lect which, on Uran­tia, has been given the name life. But self­hood of sur­vival value, self­hood that can tran­scend the ex­pe­ri­ence of death, is only evolved by es­tab­lish­ing a po­ten­tial trans­fer of the seat of the iden­tity of the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity from the tran­sient life ve­hi­cle—the ma­te­rial body—to the more en­dur­ing and im­mor­tal na­ture of the mor­ontia soul and on be­yond to those lev­els whereon the soul be­comes in­fused with, and even­tu­ally at­tains the sta­tus of, spirit re­al­ity. This ac­tual trans­fer from ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tion to mor­ontia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is ef­fected by the sin­cer­ity, per­sis­tence, and stead­fast­ness of the God-seek­ing de­ci­sions of the hu­man crea­ture.

• achievement › when man and God enter into partnership, no limitation can be placed upon future possibilities

118:5.2In the be­gin­ning the Fa­ther does all, but as the pan­o­rama of eter­nity un­folds in re­sponse to the will and man­dates of the In­fi­nite, it be­comes in­creas­ingly ap­par­ent that crea­tures, even men, are to be­come God’s part­ners in the re­al­iza­tion of fi­nal­ity of des­tiny. And this is true even in the life in the flesh; when man and God en­ter into part­ner­ship, no lim­i­ta­tion can be placed upon the fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties of such a part­ner­ship. When man re­al­izes that the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is his part­ner in eter­nal pro­gres­sion, when he fuses with the in­dwelling Fa­ther pres­ence, he has, in spirit, bro­ken the fet­ters of time and has al­ready en­tered upon the pro­gres­sions of eter­nity in the quest for the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• achievement › may be natural and gradual, or may occur in a crisis

129:4.2The purely hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—the per­sonal spir­i­tual growth—of the Son of Man well-nigh reached the apex of at­tain­ment dur­ing this, the twenty-ninth year. This ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment was a con­sis­tently grad­ual growth from the mo­ment of the ar­rival of his Thought Ad­juster un­til the day of the com­ple­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of that nat­u­ral and nor­mal hu­man re­la­tion­ship be­tween the ma­te­rial mind of man and the mind-en­dow­ment of the spirit—the phe­nom­e­non of the mak­ing of these two minds one, the ex­pe­ri­ence which the Son of Man at­tained in com­ple­tion and fi­nal­ity, as an in­car­nated mor­tal of the realm, on the day of his bap­tism in the Jor­dan.

• defined as › ability to know God; urge to be like him

133:6.5“The soul is the self-re­flec­tive, truth-dis­cern­ing, and spirit-per­ceiv­ing part of man which for­ever el­e­vates the hu­man be­ing above the level of the an­i­mal world. Self-con­scious­ness, in and of it­self, is not the soul. Moral self-con­scious­ness is true hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion and con­sti­tutes the foun­da­tion of the hu­man soul, and the soul is that part of man which rep­re­sents the po­ten­tial sur­vival value of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Moral choice and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, the abil­ity to know God and the urge to be like him, are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soul. The soul of man can­not ex­ist apart from moral think­ing and spir­i­tual ac­tiv­ity. A stag­nant soul is a dy­ing soul. But the soul of man is dis­tinct from the di­vine spirit which dwells within the mind. The di­vine spirit ar­rives si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the first moral ac­tiv­ity of the hu­man mind, and that is the oc­ca­sion of the birth of the soul.

• achievement › not accelerated by artificial situations

136:8.8Je­sus por­trayed to all the worlds of his vast uni­verse the folly of cre­at­ing ar­ti­fi­cial sit­u­a­tions for the pur­pose of ex­hibit­ing ar­bi­trary au­thor­ity or of in­dulging ex­cep­tional power for the pur­pose of en­hanc­ing moral val­ues or ac­cel­er­at­ing spir­i­tual prog­ress. Je­sus de­cided that he would not lend his mis­sion on earth to a rep­e­ti­tion of the dis­ap­point­ment of the reign of the Mac­cabees. He re­fused to pros­ti­tute his di­vine at­tri­butes for the pur­pose of ac­quir­ing un­earned pop­u­lar­ity or for gain­ing po­lit­i­cal pres­tige. He would not coun­te­nance the trans­mu­ta­tion of di­vine and cre­ative en­ergy into na­tional power or in­ter­na­tional pres­tige. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth re­fused to com­pro­mise with evil, much less to con­sort with sin. The Mas­ter tri­umphantly put loy­alty to his Fa­ther’s will above ev­ery other earthly and tem­po­ral con­sid­er­a­tion.

• achievement › where we are is not so important as direction of progress, what we are striving to become

147:5.7That same evening Je­sus made the long-to-be-re­mem­bered ad­dress to the apos­tles re­gard­ing the rel­a­tive value of sta­tus with God and prog­ress in the eter­nal as­cent to Par­a­dise. Said Je­sus: “My chil­dren, if there ex­ists a true and liv­ing con­nec­tion be­tween the child and the Fa­ther, the child is cer­tain to pro­gress con­tin­u­ously to­ward the Fa­ther’s ide­als. True, the child may at first make slow prog­ress, but the prog­ress is none the less sure. The im­por­tant thing is not the ra­pid­ity of your prog­ress but rather its cer­tainty. Your ac­tual achieve­ment is not so im­por­tant as the fact that the di­rec­tion of your prog­ress is God­ward. What you are be­com­ing day by day is of in­finitely more im­por­tance than what you are to­day.

• problems of spiritual growth › overindulgence destructive of

147:5.9But Je­sus earnestly warned his apos­tles against the fool­ish­ness of the child of God who pre­sumes upon the Fa­ther’s love. He de­clared that the heav­enly Fa­ther is not a lax, loose, or fool­ishly in­dul­gent par­ent who is ever ready to con­done sin and for­give reck­less­ness. He cau­tioned his hear­ers not mis­tak­enly to ap­ply his il­lus­tra­tions of fa­ther and son so as to make it ap­pear that God is like some overindul­gent and un­wise par­ents who con­spire with the fool­ish of earth to en­com­pass the moral un­do­ing of their thought­less chil­dren, and who are thereby cer­tainly and di­rectly con­tribut­ing to the delin­quency and early de­mor­al­iza­tion of their own off­spring. Said Je­sus: “My Fa­ther does not in­dul­gently con­done those acts and prac­tices of his chil­dren which are self-de­struc­tive and sui­ci­dal to all moral growth and spir­i­tual prog­ress. Such sin­ful prac­tices are an abom­i­na­tion in the sight of God.”

• Father requires growth in grace

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

• problems of spiritual growth › difficulties must be encountered for growth of soul

154:2.5Uni­verse dif­fi­cul­ties must be met and plan­e­tary ob­sta­cles must be en­coun­tered as a part of the ex­pe­ri­ence train­ing pro­vided for the growth and de­vel­op­ment, the pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion, of the evolv­ing souls of mor­tal crea­tures. The spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the hu­man soul re­quires in­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence with the ed­u­ca­tional solv­ing of a wide range of real uni­verse prob­lems. The an­i­mal na­ture and the lower forms of will crea­tures do not pro­gress fa­vor­ably in en­vi­ron­men­tal ease. Prob­lem­atic sit­u­a­tions, cou­pled with ex­er­tion stim­uli, con­spire to pro­duce those ac­tiv­i­ties of mind, soul, and spirit which con­tribute might­ily to the achieve­ment of wor­thy goals of mor­tal pro­gres­sion and to the at­tain­ment of higher lev­els of spirit des­tiny.

• achievement › go forward in righteousness or retrogress into sin

156:2.6The theme of Je­sus’ in­struc­tions dur­ing the so­journ at Sidon was spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion. He told them they could not stand still; they must go for­ward in righ­teous­ness or ret­rogress into evil and sin. He ad­mon­ished them to “for­get those things which are in the past while you push for­ward to em­brace the greater re­al­i­ties of the king­dom.” He be­sought them not to be con­tent with their child­hood in the gospel but to strive for the at­tain­ment of the full stature of di­vine son­ship in the com­mu­nion of the spirit and in the fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers.

• achievement › by spiritual transformation

156:5.5“But let me warn you against the folly of un­der­tak­ing to sur­mount temp­ta­tion by the ef­fort of sup­plant­ing one de­sire by an­other and sup­pos­edly su­pe­rior de­sire through the mere force of the hu­man will. If you would be truly tri­umphant over the temp­ta­tions of the lesser and lower na­ture, you must come to that place of spir­i­tual ad­van­tage where you have re­ally and truly de­vel­oped an ac­tual in­ter­est in, and love for, those higher and more ide­al­is­tic forms of con­duct which your mind is de­sirous of sub­sti­tut­ing for these lower and less ide­al­is­tic habits of be­hav­ior that you rec­og­nize as temp­ta­tion. You will in this way be de­liv­ered through spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion rather than be in­creas­ingly over­bur­dened with the de­cep­tive sup­pres­sion of mor­tal de­sires. The old and the in­fe­rior will be for­got­ten in the love for the new and the su­pe­rior. Beauty is al­ways tri­umphant over ug­li­ness in the hearts of all who are il­lu­mi­nated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the ex­pul­sive en­ergy of a new and sin­cere spir­i­tual af­fec­tion. And again I say to you, be not over­come by evil but rather over­come evil with good.”

• achievement › by falling in love with truth

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• problems of spiritual growth › fringe of conflict must be traversed

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

• problems of spiritual growth › fringe of conflict must be traversed

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

• defined as › letting go of God that he may refresh our souls

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

• result of spiritual growth › peace experienced, provided we continue in consecrated living

160:5.10I see in the teach­ings of Je­sus, re­li­gion at its best. This gospel en­ables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we will­ing to pay the price of this en­trance into the king­dom of heaven? Are we will­ing to be born again? to be re­made? Are we will­ing to be sub­ject to this ter­ri­ble and test­ing pro­cess of self-de­struc­tion and soul re­con­struc­tion? Has not the Mas­ter said: “Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have come to bring peace but rather a soul strug­gle”? True, af­ter we pay the price of ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, we do ex­pe­ri­ence great peace pro­vided we con­tinue to walk in these spir­i­tual paths of con­se­crated liv­ing.

162:7.1On the af­ter­noon of the last day of the feast and af­ter the apos­tles had failed in their ef­forts to per­suade him to flee from Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus again went into the tem­ple to teach. Find­ing a large com­pany of be­liev­ers as­sem­bled in Sol­o­mon’s Porch, he spoke to them, say­ing:

162:7.2“If my words abide in you and you are minded to do the will of my Fa­ther, then are you truly my dis­ci­ples. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. I know how you will an­swer me: We are the chil­dren of Abra­ham, and we are in bond­age to none; how then shall we be made free? Even so, I do not speak of out­ward sub­jec­tion to an­other’s rule; I re­fer to the lib­er­ties of the soul. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ev­ery­one who com­mits sin is the bond ser­vant of sin. And you know that the bond ser­vant is not likely to abide for­ever in the mas­ter’s house. You also know that the son does re­main in his fa­ther’s house. If, there­fore, the Son shall make you free, shall make you sons, you shall be free in­deed.

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

162:7.4“Which of you con­victs me of sin? If I, then, pro­claim and live the truth shown me by the Fa­ther, why do you not be­lieve? He who is of God hears gladly the words of God; for this cause many of you hear not my words, be­cause you are not of God. Your teach­ers have even pre­sumed to say that I do my works by the power of the prince of dev­ils. One near by has just said that I have a devil, that I am a child of the devil. But all of you who deal hon­estly with your own souls know full well that I am not a devil. You know that I honor the Fa­ther even while you would dis­honor me. I seek not my own glory, only the glory of my Par­a­dise Fa­ther. And I do not judge you, for there is one who judges for me.

162:7.5“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you who be­lieve the gospel that, if a man will keep this word of truth alive in his heart, he shall never taste death. And now just at my side a scribe says this state­ment proves that I have a devil, see­ing that Abra­ham is dead, also the proph­ets. And he asks: ‘Are you so much greater than Abra­ham and the proph­ets that you dare to stand here and say that whoso keeps your word shall not taste death? Who do you claim to be that you dare to ut­ter such blas­phemies?’ And I say to all such that, if I glo­rify my­self, my glory is as noth­ing. But it is the Fa­ther who shall glo­rify me, even the same Fa­ther whom you call God. But you have failed to know this your God and my Fa­ther, and I have come to bring you to­gether; to show you how to be­come truly the sons of God. Though you know not the Fa­ther, I truly know him. Even Abra­ham re­joiced to see my day, and by faith he saw it and was glad.”

162:7.6When the un­be­liev­ing Jews and the agents of the San­hedrin who had gath­ered about by this time heard these words, they raised a tu­mult, shout­ing: “You are not fifty years of age, and yet you talk about see­ing Abra­ham; you are a child of the devil!” Je­sus was un­able to con­tinue the dis­course. He only said as he de­parted, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, be­fore Abra­ham was, I am.” Many of the un­be­liev­ers rushed forth for stones to cast at him, and the agents of the San­hedrin sought to place him un­der ar­rest, but the Mas­ter quickly made his way through the tem­ple cor­ri­dors and es­caped to a se­cret meet­ing place near Beth­any where Martha, Mary, and Laz­a­rus awaited him.

• precise definitions limit believer’s spiritual imagination

179:5.4In in­sti­tut­ing this re­mem­brance sup­per, the Mas­ter, as was al­ways his habit, re­sorted to para­bles and sym­bols. He em­ployed sym­bols be­cause he wanted to teach cer­tain great spir­i­tual truths in such a man­ner as to make it dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sors to at­tach pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and def­i­nite mean­ings to his words. In this way he sought to pre­vent suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions from crys­tal­liz­ing his teach­ing and bind­ing down his spir­i­tual mean­ings by the dead chains of tra­di­tion and dogma. In the es­tab­lish­ment of the only cer­e­mony or sacra­ment as­so­ci­ated with his whole life mis­sion, Je­sus took great pains to sug­gest his mean­ings rather than to com­mit him­self to pre­cise def­i­ni­tions. He did not wish to de­stroy the in­di­vid­ual’s con­cept of di­vine com­mu­nion by es­tab­lish­ing a pre­cise form; nei­ther did he de­sire to limit the be­liever’s spir­i­tual imag­i­na­tion by for­mally cramp­ing it. He rather sought to set man’s re­born soul free upon the joy­ous wings of a new and liv­ing spir­i­tual lib­erty.

179:5.5Not­with­stand­ing the Mas­ter’s ef­fort thus to es­tab­lish this new sacra­ment of the re­mem­brance, those who fol­lowed af­ter him in the in­ter­ven­ing cen­turies saw to it that his ex­press de­sire was ef­fec­tively thwarted in that his sim­ple spir­i­tual sym­bol­ism of that last night in the flesh has been re­duced to pre­cise in­ter­pre­ta­tions and sub­jected to the al­most math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion of a set for­mula. Of all Je­sus’ teach­ings none have be­come more tra­di­tion-stan­dard­ized.

• achievement › by maintaining living connection with Jesus

180:2.1Then Je­sus stood up again and con­tin­ued teach­ing his apos­tles: “I am the true vine, and my Fa­ther is the hus­band­man. I am the vine, and you are the branches. And the Fa­ther re­quires of me only that you shall bear much fruit. The vine is pruned only to in­crease the fruit­ful­ness of its branches. Ev­ery branch com­ing out of me which bears no fruit, the Fa­ther will take away. Ev­ery branch which bears fruit, the Fa­ther will cleanse that it may bear more fruit. Al­ready are you clean through the word I have spo­ken, but you must con­tinue to be clean. You must abide in me, and I in you; the branch will die if it is sep­a­rated from the vine. As the branch can­not bear fruit ex­cept it abides in the vine, so nei­ther can you yield the fruits of lov­ing ser­vice ex­cept you abide in me. Re­mem­ber: I am the real vine, and you are the liv­ing branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit of the spirit and ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme joy of yield­ing this spir­i­tual har­vest. If you will main­tain this liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with me, you will bear abun­dant fruit. If you abide in me and my words live in you, you will be able to com­mune freely with me, and then can my liv­ing spirit so in­fuse you that you may ask what­so­ever my spirit wills and do all this with the as­sur­ance that the Fa­ther will grant us our pe­ti­tion. Herein is the Fa­ther glo­ri­fied: that the vine has many liv­ing branches, and that ev­ery branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these fruit-bear­ing branches—my friends who love one an­other, even as I have loved them—all men will know that you are truly my dis­ci­ples.

• Father requires growth in grace

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• apostles made more s.g. in 1 month alone than in 4 years with Jesus
• intellectual mistakes did not interfere with apostles’ s.g.

194:2.9But these mis­takes of the in­tel­lect in no way in­ter­fered with the be­liever’s great prog­ress in growth in spirit. In less than a month af­ter the be­stowal of the Spirit of Truth, the apos­tles made more in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress than dur­ing their al­most four years of per­sonal and lov­ing as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Nei­ther did this sub­sti­tu­tion of the fact of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus for the sav­ing gospel truth of son­ship with God in any way in­ter­fere with the rapid spread of their teach­ings; on the con­trary, this over­shad­ow­ing of Je­sus’ mes­sage by the new teach­ings about his per­son and res­ur­rec­tion seemed greatly to fa­cil­i­tate the preach­ing of the good news.

• Jesus’ faith destroyed every conflicting desire

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

• Jesus’ s.g. resulted from singleness of purpose, unselfish devotion

196:2.7You would be nei­ther shocked nor dis­turbed by some of Je­sus’ strong pro­nounce­ments if you would only re­mem­ber that he was the world’s most whole­hearted and de­voted re­li­gion­ist. He was a wholly con­se­crated mor­tal, un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to do­ing his Fa­ther’s will. Many of his ap­par­ently hard say­ings were more of a per­sonal con­fes­sion of faith and a pledge of de­vo­tion than com­mands to his fol­low­ers. And it was this very sin­gle­ness of pur­pose and un­selfish de­vo­tion that en­abled him to ef­fect such ex­traor­di­nary prog­ress in the con­quest of the hu­man mind in one short life. Many of his dec­la­ra­tions should be con­sid­ered as a con­fes­sion of what he de­manded of him­self rather than what he re­quired of all his fol­low­ers. In his de­vo­tion to the cause of the king­dom, Je­sus burned all bridges be­hind him; he sac­ri­ficed all hin­drances to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will.

• achievement › by integration of truth, beauty, and goodness

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.

196:3.24God is not the mere in­ven­tion of man’s ide­al­ism; he is the very source of all such super­an­i­mal in­sights and val­ues. God is not a hy­poth­e­sis for­mu­lated to unify the hu­man con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness; he is the per­son­al­ity of love from whom all of these uni­verse man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. The truth, beauty, and good­ness of man’s world are uni­fied by the in­creas­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity of the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tals as­cend­ing to­ward Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties. The unity of truth, beauty, and good­ness can only be re­al­ized in the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the God-know­ing per­son­al­ity.