thought

110:4.3Cer­tain abrupt pre­sen­ta­tions of thoughts, con­clu­sions, and other pic­tures of mind are some­times the di­rect or in­di­rect work of the Ad­juster; but far more of­ten they are the sud­den emer­gence into con­scious­ness of ideas which have been group­ing them­selves to­gether in the sub­merged men­tal lev­els, nat­u­ral and ev­ery­day oc­cur­rences of nor­mal and or­di­nary psy­chic func­tion in­her­ent in the cir­cuits of the evolv­ing an­i­mal mind. (In con­trast with these sub­con­scious em­a­na­tions, the rev­e­la­tions of the Ad­juster ap­pear through the realms of the super­con­scious.)

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

131:5.2“All things come from, and be­long to, the One God—all-wise, good, righ­teous, holy, re­splen­dent, and glo­ri­ous. This, our God, is the source of all lu­mi­nos­ity. He is the Cre­ator, the God of all good pur­poses, and the pro­tec­tor of the jus­tice of the uni­verse. The wise course in life is to act in con­so­nance with the spirit of truth. God is all-see­ing, and he be­holds both the evil deeds of the wicked and the good works of the righ­teous; our God ob­serves all things with a flash­ing eye. His touch is the touch of heal­ing. The Lord is an all-pow­er­ful bene­fac­tor. God stretches out his benef­i­cent hand to both the righ­teous and the wicked. God es­tab­lished the world and or­dained the re­wards for good and for evil. The all-wise God has prom­ised im­mor­tal­ity to the pi­ous souls who think purely and act righ­teously. As you su­premely de­sire, so shall you be. The light of the sun is as wis­dom to those who dis­cern God in the uni­verse.

44:4.63. Ideo­graph re­cord­ers. We have the equiv­a­lent of both your writ­ten and spo­ken word, but in pre­serv­ing thought, we usu­ally em­ploy con­cept pic­tur­iza­tion and ideo­graph tech­niques. Those who pre­serve ideographs are able to im­prove one thou­sand­fold upon the work of the con­cept re­cord­ers.

56:10.5The at­tain­ment of cos­mo­logic lev­els of thought in­cludes:

56:10.61. Cu­rios­ity. Hunger for har­mony and thirst for beauty. Per­sis­tent at­tempts to dis­cover new lev­els of har­mo­nious cos­mic re­la­tion­ships.

56:10.72. Aes­thetic ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Love of the beau­ti­ful and ever-ad­vanc­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the artis­tic touch of all cre­ative man­i­fes­ta­tions on all lev­els of re­al­ity.

56:10.83. Ethic sen­si­tiv­ity. Through the re­al­iza­tion of truth the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty leads to the sense of the eter­nal fit­ness of those things which im­pinge upon the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine good­ness in De­ity re­la­tions with all be­ings; and thus even cos­mol­ogy leads to the pur­suit of di­vine re­al­ity val­ues—to God-con­scious­ness.

9:6.2Much as the Fa­ther draws all per­son­al­ity to him­self, and as the Son at­tracts all spir­i­tual re­al­ity, so does the Con­joint Ac­tor ex­er­cise a draw­ing power on all minds; he un­qual­i­fiedly dom­i­nates and con­trols the uni­ver­sal mind cir­cuit. All true and gen­uine in­tel­lec­tual val­ues, all di­vine thoughts and per­fect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this ab­so­lute cir­cuit of mind.

110:5.4While their mor­tal hosts are asleep, the Ad­justers try to reg­is­ter their cre­ations in the higher lev­els of the ma­te­rial mind, and some of your grotesque dreams in­di­cate their fail­ure to make ef­fi­cient con­tact. The ab­sur­di­ties of dream life not only tes­tify to pres­sure of un­ex­pressed emo­tions but also bear wit­ness to the hor­ri­ble dis­tor­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the spir­i­tual con­cepts pre­sented by the Ad­justers. Your own pas­sions, urges, and other in­nate ten­den­cies trans­late them­selves into the pic­ture and sub­sti­tute their un­ex­pressed de­sires for the di­vine mes­sages which the in­dwellers are en­deav­or­ing to put into the psy­chic rec­ords dur­ing un­con­scious sleep.

110:7.6But with the vast ma­jor­ity of Uran­tians the Ad­juster must pa­tiently await the ar­rival of death de­liv­er­ance; must await the lib­er­a­tion of the emerg­ing soul from the well-nigh com­plete dom­i­na­tion of the en­ergy pat­terns and chem­i­cal forces in­her­ent in your ma­te­rial or­der of ex­is­tence. The chief dif­fi­culty you ex­pe­ri­ence in con­tact­ing with your Ad­justers con­sists in this very in­her­ent ma­te­rial na­ture. So few mor­tals are real thinkers; you do not spir­i­tu­ally de­velop and dis­ci­pline your minds to the point of fa­vor­able li­ai­son with the di­vine Ad­justers. The ear of the hu­man mind is al­most deaf to the spir­i­tual pleas which the Ad­juster trans­lates from the man­i­fold mes­sages of the uni­ver­sal broad­casts of love pro­ceed­ing from the Fa­ther of mer­cies. The Ad­juster finds it al­most im­pos­si­ble to reg­is­ter these in­spir­ing spirit lead­ings in an an­i­mal mind so com­pletely dom­i­nated by the chem­i­cal and elec­tri­cal forces in­her­ent in your phys­i­cal na­tures.

100:3.2To the re­li­gion­ist the word God be­comes a sym­bol sig­ni­fy­ing the ap­proach to su­preme re­al­ity and the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine value. Hu­man likes and dis­likes do not de­ter­mine good and evil; moral val­ues do not grow out of wish ful­fill­ment or emo­tional frus­tra­tion.

81:6.166. Ef­fec­tive­ness of lan­guage. The spread of civ­i­liza­tion must wait upon lan­guage. Live and grow­ing lan­guages in­sure the ex­pan­sion of civ­i­lized think­ing and plan­ning. Dur­ing the early ages im­por­tant ad­vances were made in lan­guage. To­day, there is great need for fur­ther lin­guis­tic de­vel­op­ment to fa­cil­i­tate the ex­pres­sion of evolv­ing thought.

81:6.17Lan­guage evolved out of group as­so­ci­a­tions, each lo­cal group de­vel­op­ing its own sys­tem of word ex­change. Lan­guage grew up through ges­tures, signs, cries, im­i­ta­tive sounds, in­to­na­tion, and ac­cent to the vo­cal­iza­tion of sub­se­quent al­pha­bets. Lan­guage is man’s great­est and most ser­vice­able think­ing tool, but it never flour­ished un­til so­cial groups ac­quired some leisure. The ten­dency to play with lan­guage de­vel­ops new words—slang. If the ma­jor­ity adopt the slang, then us­age con­sti­tutes it lan­guage. The ori­gin of di­alects is il­lus­trated by the in­dul­gence in “baby talk” in a fam­ily group.

97:7.7And it com­forted the Jew­ish cap­tives, as it has thou­sands upon thou­sands ever since, to hear such words as: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I have cre­ated you, I have re­deemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.’” “When you pass through the wa­ters, I will be with you since you are pre­cious in my sight.” “Can a woman for­get her suck­ling child that she should not have com­pas­sion on her son? Yes, she may for­get, yet will I not for­get my chil­dren, for be­hold I have graven them upon the palms of my hands; I have even cov­ered them with the shadow of my hands.” “Let the wicked for­sake his ways and the un­righ­teous man his thoughts, and let him re­turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abun­dantly par­don.”

85:7.2You must re­mem­ber that feel­ing, not think­ing, was the guid­ing and con­trol­ling in­flu­ence in all evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment. To the prim­i­tive mind there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween fear­ing, shun­ning, hon­or­ing, and wor­ship­ing.

109:5.3But your un­steady and rapidly shift­ing men­tal at­ti­tudes of­ten re­sult in thwart­ing the plans and in­ter­rupt­ing the work of the Ad­justers. Their work is not only in­ter­fered with by the in­nate na­tures of the mor­tal races, but this min­istry is also greatly re­tarded by your own pre­con­ceived opin­ions, set­tled ideas, and long-stand­ing prej­u­dices. Be­cause of these hand­i­caps, many times only their un­fin­ished cre­ations emerge into con­scious­ness, and con­fu­sion of con­cept is in­ev­i­ta­ble. There­fore, in scru­ti­niz­ing men­tal sit­u­a­tions, safety lies only in the prompt rec­og­ni­tion of each and ev­ery thought and ex­pe­ri­ence for just what it ac­tu­ally and fun­da­men­tally is, dis­re­gard­ing en­tirely what it might have been.

102:3.1In­tel­lec­tual de­fi­ciency or ed­u­ca­tional pov­erty un­avoid­ably hand­i­caps higher re­li­gious at­tain­ment be­cause such an im­pov­er­ished en­vi­ron­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture robs re­li­gion of its chief chan­nel of philo­sophic con­tact with the world of sci­en­tific knowl­edge. The in­tel­lec­tual fac­tors of re­li­gion are im­por­tant, but their overde­vel­op­ment is like­wise some­times very hand­i­cap­ping and em­bar­rass­ing. Re­li­gion must con­tin­u­ally la­bor un­der a para­dox­i­cal ne­ces­sity: the ne­ces­sity of mak­ing ef­fec­tive use of thought while at the same time dis­count­ing the spir­i­tual ser­vice­able­ness of all think­ing.

44:1.86. Mel­ody of thought—the think­ing of spir­i­tual thoughts can be so per­fected as to burst forth in the mel­o­dies of Ha­vona.

14:5.2Life on the di­vine worlds of the cen­tral uni­verse is so rich and full, so com­plete and re­plete, that it wholly tran­scends the hu­man con­cept of any­thing a cre­ated be­ing could pos­si­bly ex­pe­ri­ence. The so­cial and eco­nomic ac­tiv­i­ties of this eter­nal cre­ation are en­tirely dis­sim­i­lar to the oc­cu­pa­tions of ma­te­rial crea­tures liv­ing on evo­lu­tion­ary worlds like Uran­tia. Even the tech­nique of Ha­vona thought is un­like the pro­cess of think­ing on Uran­tia.

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.

103:4.3The sense of guilt (not the con­scious­ness of sin) comes ei­ther from in­ter­rupted spir­i­tual com­mu­nion or from the low­er­ing of one’s moral ide­als. De­liv­er­ance from such a predica­ment can only come through the re­al­iza­tion that one’s high­est moral ide­als are not nec­es­sar­ily syn­ony­mous with the will of God. Man can­not hope to live up to his high­est ide­als, but he can be true to his pur­pose of find­ing God and be­com­ing more and more like him.

131:2.3“The power of the Lord is great and his un­der­stand­ing in­fi­nite. Says the Lord: ‘As the heav­ens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.’ God re­veals the deep and se­cret things be­cause the light dwells with him. The Lord is mer­ci­ful and gra­cious; he is long-suf­fer­ing and abun­dant in good­ness and truth. The Lord is good and up­right; the meek will he guide in judg­ment. Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts God. God is our refuge and strength, a very pres­ent help in trou­ble.