truth, beauty, and goodness

2:7.1All fi­nite knowl­edge and crea­ture un­der­stand­ing are rel­a­tive. In­for­ma­tion and in­tel­li­gence, gleaned from even high sources, is only rel­a­tively com­plete, lo­cally ac­cu­rate, and per­son­ally true.

2:7.2Phys­i­cal facts are fairly uni­form, but truth is a liv­ing and flex­i­ble fac­tor in the phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse. Evolv­ing per­son­al­i­ties are only par­tially wise and rel­a­tively true in their com­mu­ni­ca­tions. They can be cer­tain only as far as their per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence ex­tends. That which ap­par­ently may be wholly true in one place may be only rel­a­tively true in an­other seg­ment of cre­ation.

2:7.3Di­vine truth, fi­nal truth, is uni­form and uni­ver­sal, but the story of things spir­i­tual, as it is told by nu­mer­ous in­di­vid­u­als hail­ing from var­i­ous spheres, may some­times vary in de­tails ow­ing to this rel­a­tiv­ity in the com­plete­ness of knowl­edge and in the re­plete­ness of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence as well as in the length and ex­tent of that ex­pe­ri­ence. While the laws and de­crees, the thoughts and at­ti­tudes, of the First Great Source and Cen­ter are eter­nally, in­finitely, and uni­ver­sally true; at the same time, their ap­pli­ca­tion to, and ad­just­ment for, ev­ery uni­verse, sys­tem, world, and cre­ated in­tel­li­gence, are in ac­cor­dance with the plans and tech­nique of the Cre­ator Sons as they func­tion in their re­spec­tive uni­verses, as well as in har­mony with the lo­cal plans and pro­ce­dures of the In­fi­nite Spirit and of all other as­so­ci­ated ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties.

2:7.4The false sci­ence of ma­te­ri­al­ism would sen­tence mor­tal man to be­come an out­cast in the uni­verse. Such par­tial knowl­edge is po­ten­tially evil; it is knowl­edge com­posed of both good and evil. Truth is beau­ti­ful be­cause it is both re­plete and sym­met­ri­cal. When man searches for truth, he pur­sues the di­vinely real.

2:7.5Philoso­phers com­mit their gravest er­ror when they are mis­led into the fal­lacy of ab­strac­tion, the prac­tice of fo­cus­ing the at­ten­tion upon one as­pect of re­al­ity and then of pro­nounc­ing such an iso­lated as­pect to be the whole truth. The wise philoso­pher will al­ways look for the cre­ative de­sign which is be­hind, and pre-ex­is­tent to, all uni­verse phe­nom­ena. The cre­ator thought in­vari­ably pre­cedes cre­ative ac­tion.

2:7.6In­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness can dis­cover the beauty of truth, its spir­i­tual qual­ity, not only by the philo­sophic con­sis­tency of its con­cepts, but more cer­tainly and surely by the unerring re­sponse of the ever-pres­ent Spirit of Truth. Hap­pi­ness en­sues from the rec­og­ni­tion of truth be­cause it can be acted out; it can be lived. Dis­ap­point­ment and sor­row at­tend upon er­ror be­cause, not be­ing a re­al­ity, it can­not be re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence. Di­vine truth is best known by its spir­i­tual fla­vor.

2:7.7The eter­nal quest is for uni­fi­ca­tion, for di­vine co­her­ence. The far-flung phys­i­cal uni­verse co­heres in the Isle of Par­a­dise; the in­tel­lec­tual uni­verse co­heres in the God of mind, the Con­joint Ac­tor; the spir­i­tual uni­verse is co­her­ent in the per­son­al­ity of the Eter­nal Son. But the iso­lated mor­tal of time and space co­heres in God the Fa­ther through the di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster and the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s Ad­juster is a frag­ment of God and ev­er­last­ingly seeks for di­vine uni­fi­ca­tion; it co­heres with, and in, the Par­a­dise De­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter.

2:7.8The dis­cern­ment of su­preme beauty is the dis­cov­ery and in­te­gra­tion of re­al­ity: The dis­cern­ment of the di­vine good­ness in the eter­nal truth, that is ul­ti­mate beauty. Even the charm of hu­man art con­sists in the har­mony of its unity.

2:7.9The great mis­take of the He­brew re­li­gion was its fail­ure to as­so­ciate the good­ness of God with the fac­tual truths of sci­ence and the ap­peal­ing beauty of art. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed, and since re­li­gion con­tin­ued to pur­sue the same un­wise course of overem­pha­siz­ing the good­ness of God to the rel­a­tive ex­clu­sion of truth and ne­glect of beauty, there de­vel­oped an in­creas­ing ten­dency for cer­tain types of men to turn away from the ab­stract and dis­so­ci­ated con­cept of iso­lated good­ness. The over­stressed and iso­lated moral­ity of mod­ern re­li­gion, which fails to hold the de­vo­tion and loy­alty of many twen­ti­eth-cen­tury men, would re­ha­bil­i­tate it­self if, in ad­di­tion to its moral man­dates, it would give equal con­sid­er­a­tion to the truths of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, and to the beau­ties of the phys­i­cal cre­ation, the charm of in­tel­lec­tual art, and the grandeur of gen­uine char­ac­ter achieve­ment.

2:7.10The re­li­gious chal­lenge of this age is to those farsee­ing and for­ward-look­ing men and women of spir­i­tual in­sight who will dare to con­struct a new and ap­peal­ing phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing out of the en­larged and ex­qui­sitely in­te­grated mod­ern con­cepts of cos­mic truth, uni­verse beauty, and di­vine good­ness. Such a new and righ­teous vi­sion of moral­ity will at­tract all that is good in the mind of man and chal­lenge that which is best in the hu­man soul. Truth, beauty, and good­ness are di­vine re­al­i­ties, and as man as­cends the scale of spir­i­tual liv­ing, these su­preme qual­i­ties of the Eter­nal be­come in­creas­ingly co-or­di­nated and uni­fied in God, who is love.

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.

2:7.12Truth is co­her­ent, beauty at­trac­tive, good­ness sta­bi­liz­ing. And when these val­ues of that which is real are co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, the re­sult is a high or­der of love con­di­tioned by wis­dom and qual­i­fied by loy­alty. The real pur­pose of all uni­verse ed­u­ca­tion is to ef­fect the bet­ter co-or­di­na­tion of the iso­lated child of the worlds with the larger re­al­i­ties of his ex­pand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­al­ity is fi­nite on the hu­man level, in­fi­nite and eter­nal on the higher and di­vine lev­els.

2:7.13[Pre­sented by a Di­vine Coun­selor act­ing by au­thor­ity of the An­cients of Days on Uversa.]

56:10.1As the worlds set­tled in life and light pro­gress from the ini­tial stage to the sev­enth epoch, they suc­ces­sively grasp for the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of God the Sev­en­fold, rang­ing from the ado­ra­tion of the Cre­ator Son to the wor­ship of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Through­out the con­tin­u­ing sev­enth stage of such a world’s his­tory the ever-pro­gress­ing mor­tals grow in the knowl­edge of God the Su­preme, while they vaguely dis­cern the re­al­ity of the over­shad­ow­ing min­istry of God the Ul­ti­mate.

56:10.2Through­out this glo­ri­ous age the chief pur­suit of the ever-ad­vanc­ing mor­tals is the quest for a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing and a fuller re­al­iza­tion of the com­pre­hen­si­ble el­e­ments of De­ity—truth, beauty, and good­ness. This rep­re­sents man’s ef­fort to dis­cern God in mind, mat­ter, and spirit. And as the mor­tal pur­sues this quest, he finds him­self in­creas­ingly ab­sorbed in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial study of phi­los­o­phy, cos­mol­ogy, and di­vin­ity.

56:10.3Phi­los­o­phy you some­what grasp, and di­vin­ity you com­pre­hend in wor­ship, so­cial ser­vice, and per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, but the pur­suit of beauty—cos­mol­ogy—you all too of­ten limit to the study of man’s crude artis­tic en­deav­ors. Beauty, art, is largely a mat­ter of the uni­fi­ca­tion of con­trasts. Va­ri­ety is es­sen­tial to the con­cept of beauty. The su­preme beauty, the height of fi­nite art, is the drama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vast­ness of the cos­mic ex­tremes of Cre­ator and crea­ture. Man find­ing God and God find­ing man—the crea­ture be­com­ing per­fect as is the Cre­ator—that is the su­per­nal achieve­ment of the su­premely beau­ti­ful, the at­tain­ment of the apex of cos­mic art.

56:10.4Hence ma­te­ri­al­ism, athe­ism, is the max­i­ma­tion of ug­li­ness, the cli­max of the fi­nite an­tithe­sis of the beau­ti­ful. High­est beauty con­sists in the pan­o­rama of the uni­fi­ca­tion of the vari­a­tions which have been born of pre-ex­is­tent har­mo­nious re­al­ity.

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.

56:10.9The worlds set­tled in light and life are so fully con­cerned with the com­pre­hen­sion of truth, beauty, and good­ness be­cause these qual­ity val­ues em­brace the rev­e­la­tion of De­ity to the realms of time and space. The mean­ings of eter­nal truth make a com­bined ap­peal to the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual na­tures of mor­tal man. Uni­ver­sal beauty em­braces the har­mo­nious re­la­tions and rhythms of the cos­mic cre­ation; this is more dis­tinctly the in­tel­lec­tual ap­peal and leads to­wards uni­fied and syn­chronous com­pre­hen­sion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Di­vine good­ness rep­re­sents the rev­e­la­tion of in­fi­nite val­ues to the fi­nite mind, therein to be per­ceived and el­e­vated to the very thresh­old of the spir­i­tual level of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion.

56:10.10Truth is the ba­sis of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, pre­sent­ing the in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of re­li­gion. Beauty spon­sors art, mu­sic, and the mean­ing­ful rhythms of all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Good­ness em­braces the sense of ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gion—ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion-hunger.

56:10.11The ex­is­tence of beauty im­plies the pres­ence of ap­pre­cia­tive crea­ture mind just as cer­tainly as the fact of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion in­di­cates the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Beauty is the in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of the har­mo­nious time-space syn­the­sis of the far-flung di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of phe­nom­e­nal re­al­ity, all of which stems from pre-ex­is­tent and eter­nal one­ness.

56:10.12Good­ness is the men­tal rec­og­ni­tion of the rel­a­tive val­ues of the di­verse lev­els of di­vine per­fec­tion. The rec­og­ni­tion of good­ness im­plies a mind of moral sta­tus, a per­sonal mind with abil­ity to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween good and evil. But the pos­ses­sion of good­ness, great­ness, is the mea­sure of real di­vin­ity at­tain­ment.

56:10.13The rec­og­ni­tion of true re­la­tions im­plies a mind com­pe­tent to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween truth and er­ror. The be­stowal Spirit of Truth which in­vests the hu­man minds of Uran­tia is unerringly re­spon­sive to truth—the liv­ing spirit re­la­tion­ship of all things and all be­ings as they are co-or­di­nated in the eter­nal as­cent God­ward.

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

56:10.15Even truth, beauty, and good­ness—man’s in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to the uni­verse of mind, mat­ter, and spirit—must be com­bined into one uni­fied con­cept of a di­vine and su­preme ideal. As mor­tal per­son­al­ity uni­fies the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence with mat­ter, mind, and spirit, so does this di­vine and su­preme ideal be­come power-uni­fied in Su­prem­acy and then per­son­al­ized as a God of fa­therly love.

56:10.16All in­sight into the re­la­tions of the parts to any given whole re­quires an un­der­stand­ing grasp of the re­la­tion of all parts to that whole; and in the uni­verse this means the re­la­tion of cre­ated parts to the Cre­ative Whole. De­ity thus be­comes the tran­scen­den­tal, even the in­fi­nite, goal of uni­ver­sal and eter­nal at­tain­ment.

56:10.17Uni­ver­sal beauty is the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­flec­tion of the Isle of Par­a­dise in the ma­te­rial cre­ation, while eter­nal truth is the spe­cial min­istry of the Par­a­dise Sons who not only be­stow them­selves upon the mor­tal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peo­ples. Di­vine good­ness is more fully shown forth in the lov­ing min­istry of the man­i­fold per­son­al­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit. But love, the sum to­tal of these three qual­i­ties, is man’s per­cep­tion of God as his spirit Fa­ther.

56:10.18Phys­i­cal mat­ter is the time-space shadow of the Par­a­dise en­ergy-shin­ing of the ab­so­lute De­i­ties. Truth mean­ings are the mor­tal-in­tel­lect reper­cus­sions of the eter­nal word of De­ity—the time-space com­pre­hen­sion of su­preme con­cepts. The good­ness val­ues of di­vin­ity are the mer­ci­ful min­istries of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties of the Uni­ver­sal, the Eter­nal, and the In­fi­nite to the time-space fi­nite crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary spheres.

56:10.19These mean­ing­ful re­al­ity val­ues of di­vin­ity are blended in the Fa­ther’s re­la­tion with each per­sonal crea­ture as di­vine love. They are co-or­di­nated in the Son and his Sons as di­vine mercy. They man­i­fest their qual­i­ties through the Spirit and his spirit chil­dren as di­vine min­istry, the por­trayal of lov­ing mercy to the chil­dren of time. These three di­vini­ties are pri­mar­ily man­i­fested by the Su­preme Be­ing as power-per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis. They are var­i­ously shown forth by God the Sev­en­fold in seven dif­fer­ing as­so­ci­a­tions of di­vine mean­ings and val­ues on seven as­cend­ing lev­els.

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.

56:10.21Love is the de­sire to do good to oth­ers.

56:10.22[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger vis­it­ing on Uran­tia, by re­quest of the Neb­a­don Rev­e­la­tory Corps and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with a cer­tain Mel­chiz­e­dek, the vicegerent Plan­e­tary Prince of Uran­tia.]

56:10.23This pa­per on Uni­ver­sal Unity is the twenty-fifth of a se­ries of pre­sen­ta­tions by var­i­ous au­thors, hav­ing been spon­sored as a group by a com­mis­sion of Neb­a­don per­son­al­i­ties num­ber­ing twelve and act­ing un­der the di­rec­tion of Man­tu­tia Mel­chiz­e­dek. We in­dited these nar­ra­tives and put them in the En­glish lan­guage, by a tech­nique au­tho­rized by our su­pe­ri­ors, in the year 1934 of Uran­tia time.

196:3.32Some men’s lives are too great and no­ble to de­scend to the low level of be­ing merely suc­cess­ful. The an­i­mal must adapt it­self to the en­vi­ron­ment, but the re­li­gious man tran­scends his en­vi­ron­ment and in this way es­capes the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent ma­te­rial world through this in­sight of di­vine love. This con­cept of love gen­er­ates in the soul of man that super­an­i­mal ef­fort to find truth, beauty, and good­ness; and when he does find them, he is glo­ri­fied in their em­brace; he is con­sumed with the de­sire to live them, to do righ­teous­ness.

5:4.6The He­brews based their re­li­gion on good­ness; the Greeks on beauty; both re­li­gions sought truth. Je­sus re­vealed a God of love, and love is all-em­brac­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness.

103:9.10When rea­son once rec­og­nizes right and wrong, it ex­hibits wis­dom; when wis­dom chooses be­tween right and wrong, truth and er­ror, it demon­strates spirit lead­ing. And thus are the func­tions of mind, soul, and spirit ever closely united and func­tion­ally in­teras­so­ci­ated. Rea­son deals with fac­tual knowl­edge; wis­dom, with phi­los­o­phy and rev­e­la­tion; faith, with liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Through truth man at­tains beauty and by spir­i­tual love as­cends to 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.

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.