symmetry

103:6.14When the phi­los­o­phy of man leans heav­ily to­ward the world of mat­ter, it be­comes ra­tio­nal­is­tic or nat­u­ral­is­tic. When phi­los­o­phy in­clines par­tic­u­larly to­ward the spir­i­tual level, it be­comes ide­al­is­tic or even mys­ti­cal. When phi­los­o­phy is so un­for­tu­nate as to lean upon meta­physics, it un­fail­ingly be­comes skep­ti­cal, con­fused. In past ages, most of man’s knowl­edge and in­tel­lec­tual eval­u­a­tions have fallen into one of these three dis­tor­tions of per­cep­tion. Phi­los­o­phy dare not project its in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­al­ity in the lin­ear fash­ion of logic; it must never fail to reckon with the el­lip­tic sym­me­try of re­al­ity and with the es­sen­tial cur­va­ture of all re­la­tion con­cepts.

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

34:5.7The pres­ence of the Holy Spirit of the Uni­verse Daugh­ter of the In­fi­nite Spirit, of the Spirit of Truth of the Uni­verse Son of the Eter­nal Son, and of the Ad­juster-spirit of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther in or with an evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal, de­notes sym­me­try of spir­i­tual en­dow­ment and min­istry and qual­i­fies such a mor­tal con­sciously to re­al­ize the faith-fact of son­ship with God.

34:2.6While the sev­enth seg­ment of the grand uni­verse may, in many re­spects, be tardy in de­vel­op­ment, thought­ful stu­dents of our prob­lems look for­ward to the evo­lu­tion of an ex­traor­di­nar­ily well-bal­anced cre­ation in the ages to come. We pre­dict this high de­gree of sym­me­try in Or­von­ton be­cause the pre­sid­ing Spirit of this super­uni­verse is the chief of the Mas­ter Spir­its on high, be­ing a spirit in­tel­li­gence em­body­ing the bal­anced union and per­fect co-or­di­na­tion of the traits and char­ac­ter of all three of the eter­nal De­i­ties. We are tardy and back­ward in com­par­i­son with other sec­tors, but there un­doubt­edly awaits us a tran­scen­dent de­vel­op­ment and an un­prece­dented achieve­ment some­time in the eter­nal ages of the fu­ture.

2:7.11All truth—ma­te­rial, philo­sophic, or spir­i­tual—is both beau­ti­ful and good. All real beauty—ma­te­rial art or spir­i­tual sym­me­try—is both true and good. All gen­uine good­ness—whether per­sonal moral­ity, so­cial eq­uity, or di­vine min­istry—is equally true and beau­ti­ful. Health, san­ity, and hap­pi­ness are in­te­gra­tions of truth, beauty, and good­ness as they are blended in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Such lev­els of ef­fi­cient liv­ing come about through the uni­fi­ca­tion of en­ergy sys­tems, idea sys­tems, and spirit sys­tems.

100:7.1Al­though the av­er­age mor­tal of Uran­tia can­not hope to at­tain the high per­fec­tion of char­ac­ter which Je­sus of Naz­a­reth ac­quired while so­journ­ing in the flesh, it is al­to­gether pos­si­ble for ev­ery mor­tal be­liever to de­velop a strong and uni­fied per­son­al­ity along the per­fected lines of the Je­sus per­son­al­ity. The unique fea­ture of the Mas­ter’s per­son­al­ity was not so much its per­fec­tion as its sym­me­try, its ex­qui­site and bal­anced uni­fi­ca­tion. The most ef­fec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of Je­sus con­sists in fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of the one who said, as he ges­tured to­ward the Mas­ter stand­ing be­fore his ac­cusers, “Be­hold the man!”

139:8.7The other apos­tles held Je­sus in rev­er­ence be­cause of some spe­cial and out­stand­ing trait of his re­plete per­son­al­ity, but Thomas revered his Mas­ter be­cause of his su­perbly bal­anced char­ac­ter. In­creas­ingly Thomas ad­mired and hon­ored one who was so lov­ingly mer­ci­ful yet so in­flex­i­bly just and fair; so firm but never ob­sti­nate; so calm but never in­dif­fer­ent; so help­ful and so sym­pa­thetic but never med­dle­some or dic­ta­to­rial; so strong but at the same time so gen­tle; so pos­i­tive but never rough or rude; so ten­der but never vac­il­lat­ing; so pure and in­no­cent but at the same time so vir­ile, ag­gres­sive, and force­ful; so truly coura­geous but never rash or fool­hardy; such a lover of na­ture but so free from all ten­dency to re­vere na­ture; so hu­mor­ous and so play­ful, but so free from lev­ity and frivolity. It was this match­less sym­me­try of per­son­al­ity that so charmed Thomas. He prob­a­bly en­joyed the high­est in­tel­lec­tual un­der­stand­ing and per­son­al­ity ap­pre­ci­a­tion of Je­sus of any of the twelve.