truth

• defined as › value-realization of God-consciousness, divinity

0:1.17Di­vin­ity is crea­ture com­pre­hen­si­ble as truth, beauty, and good­ness; cor­re­lated in per­son­al­ity as love, mercy, and min­istry; dis­closed on im­per­sonal lev­els as jus­tice, power, and sov­er­eignty.

• God is source of

1:2.1God is pri­mal re­al­ity in the spirit world; God is the source of truth in the mind spheres; God over­shad­ows all through­out the ma­te­rial realms. To all cre­ated in­tel­li­gences God is a per­son­al­ity, and to the uni­verse of uni­verses he is the First Source and Cen­ter of eter­nal re­al­ity. God is nei­ther man­like nor ma­chine­like. The First Fa­ther is uni­ver­sal spirit, eter­nal truth, in­fi­nite re­al­ity, and fa­ther per­son­al­ity.

• defined as › relative and expanding, lives always in present

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.

• defined as › living spirit relationship of all things and beings

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.

• defined as › divine t. is final, uniform, and universal

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.

• defined as › coherent, replete, symmetrical, divinely real, beautiful, good

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.

• defined as › able to be acted out, lived
• defined as › best known by spiritual flavor
• Spirit of Truth › unerringly responds to t.

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.

• defined as › coherent, replete, symmetrical, divinely real, beautiful, good

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.

• believers should › follow t. wherever it leads, and regardless of conclusions it reaches

3:5.105. Is the love of truth and the will­ing­ness to go wher­ever it leads, de­sir­able? Then must man grow up in a world where er­ror is pres­ent and false­hood al­ways pos­si­ble.

• warnings › do not seek to promulgate t. by secular laws

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

• Inspired Trinity Spirits impart t. superconsciously

19:5.7The In­spired Spir­its do not ap­par­ently be­long to the evo­lu­tion­ary scheme of the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets or uni­verses, and yet they seem to be al­most ev­ery­where. Even as I am en­gaged in the for­mu­la­tion of this state­ment, my as­so­ci­ated Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger’s per­sonal sen­si­tiv­ity to the pres­ence of this or­der of Spirit in­di­cates that there is with us at this very mo­ment, not over twenty-five feet away, a Spirit of the In­spired or­der and of the third vol­ume of power pres­ence. The third vol­ume of power pres­ence sug­gests to us the prob­a­bil­ity that three In­spired Spir­its are func­tion­ing in li­ai­son.

19:5.8Of more than twelve or­ders of be­ings as­so­ci­ated with me at this time, the Soli­tary Mes­sen­ger is the only one aware of the pres­ence of these mys­te­ri­ous en­ti­ties of the Trin­ity. And fur­ther, while we are thus ap­prised of the near­ness of these di­vine Spir­its, we are all equally ig­no­rant of their mis­sion. We re­ally do not know whether they are merely in­ter­ested ob­servers of our do­ings, or whether they are, in some man­ner un­known to us, ac­tu­ally con­tribut­ing to the suc­cess of our un­der­tak­ing.

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.

• one is not reckoned as possessing t. until he has shared it with others

25:4.12Those mor­tals and mid­way­ers who serve tran­siently with the ad­vis­ers are cho­sen for such work be­cause of their ex­pert­ness in the con­cept of uni­ver­sal law and su­preme jus­tice. As you jour­ney to­ward your Par­a­dise goal, con­stantly ac­quir­ing added knowl­edge and en­hanced skill, you are con­tin­u­ously af­forded the op­por­tu­nity to give out to oth­ers the wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence you have al­ready ac­cu­mu­lated; all the way in to Ha­vona you en­act the role of a pupil-teacher. You will work your way through the as­cend­ing lev­els of this vast ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­ver­sity by im­part­ing to those just be­low you the new-found knowl­edge of your ad­vanc­ing ca­reer. In the uni­ver­sal regime you are not reck­oned as hav­ing pos­sessed your­self of knowl­edge and truth un­til you have demon­strated your abil­ity and your will­ing­ness to im­part this knowl­edge and truth to oth­ers.

• ascension plan characterized by giving t. to others as soon as it is acquired

30:3.9The en­tire as­cen­dant plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion is char­ac­ter­ized by the prac­tice of giv­ing out to other be­ings new truth and ex­pe­ri­ence just as soon as ac­quired. You work your way through the long school of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment by serv­ing as teach­ers to those pupils just be­hind you in the scale of pro­gres­sion.

• Spirit of Truth › is personification of t.

34:4.5The Cre­ator Sons are en­dowed with a spirit of uni­verse pres­ence in many ways anal­o­gous to that of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its of Par­a­dise. This is the Spirit of Truth which is poured out upon a world by a be­stowal Son af­ter he re­ceives spir­i­tual ti­tle to such a sphere. This be­stowed Com­forter is the spir­i­tual force which ever draws all truth seek­ers to­wards Him who is the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of truth in the lo­cal uni­verse. This spirit is an in­her­ent en­dow­ment of the Cre­ator Son, emerg­ing from his di­vine na­ture just as the mas­ter cir­cuits of the grand uni­verse are de­rived from the per­son­al­ity pres­ences of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• defined as › defined only by living; cannot be imprisoned; dies in human formulation

34:6.6The dead the­ory of even the high­est re­li­gious doc­trines is pow­er­less to trans­form hu­man char­ac­ter or to con­trol mor­tal be­hav­ior. What the world of to­day needs is the truth which your teacher of old de­clared: “Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” The seed of the­o­ret­i­cal truth is dead, the high­est moral con­cepts with­out ef­fect, un­less and un­til the di­vine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quick­ens the for­mu­las of righ­teous­ness.

• Spirit of Truth › will lead us into all t.

34:7.1The flesh, the in­her­ent na­ture de­rived from the an­i­mal-ori­gin races, does not nat­u­rally bear the fruits of the di­vine Spirit. When the mor­tal na­ture has been up­stepped by the ad­di­tion of the na­ture of the Ma­te­rial Sons of God, as the Uran­tia races were in a mea­sure ad­vanced by the be­stowal of Adam, then is the way bet­ter pre­pared for the Spirit of Truth to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster to bring forth the beau­ti­ful har­vest of the char­ac­ter fruits of the spirit. If you do not re­ject this spirit, even though eter­nity may be re­quired to ful­fill the com­mis­sion, “he will guide you into all truth.”

• defined as › coherent, replete, symmetrical, divinely real, beautiful, good

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.

• defined as › inconcussible, adaptable, radiantly alive
• humor lessens shock of unexpected t.

48:4.18Hu­mor should func­tion as an au­to­matic safety valve to pre­vent the build­ing up of ex­ces­sive pres­sures due to the mo­not­ony of sus­tained and se­ri­ous self-con­tem­pla­tion in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tense strug­gle for de­vel­op­men­tal prog­ress and no­ble achieve­ment. Hu­mor also func­tions to lessen the shock of the un­ex­pected im­pact of fact or of truth, rigid un­yield­ing fact and flex­i­ble ever-liv­ing truth. The mor­tal per­son­al­ity, never sure as to which will next be en­coun­tered, through hu­mor swiftly grasps—sees the point and achieves in­sight—the un­ex­pected na­ture of the sit­u­a­tion be it fact or be it truth.

• warnings › sometimes error so great that rectification by revelation inadvisable

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

• creating new pictures out of old facts is artistic triumph of
• defined as › inconcussible, adaptable, radiantly alive
• iron band of so-called unchanging t.
• warnings › right in fact can be wrong in t.

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

• warnings › no celestial assistance until we act on t. we have

48:7.97. Blind and un­fore­seen ac­ci­dents do not oc­cur in the cos­mos. Nei­ther do the ce­les­tial be­ings as­sist the lower be­ing who re­fuses to act upon his light of truth.

• believers should › whet appetites of associates for t.

48:7.1614. Whet the ap­petites of your as­so­ciates for truth; give ad­vice only when it is asked for.

• defined as › felt most in adversity

48:7.1816. You can­not per­ceive spir­i­tual truth un­til you feel­ingly ex­pe­ri­ence it, and many truths are not re­ally felt ex­cept in ad­ver­sity.

• warnings › argumentative defense of proposition inversely proportional to t. contained

48:7.3028. The ar­gu­men­ta­tive de­fense of any propo­si­tion is in­versely pro­por­tional to the truth con­tained.

• makes men free

52:5.4The be­stowal Son lives and dies for the spir­i­tual up­lift of the mor­tal races of a world. He es­tab­lishes the “new and liv­ing way”; his life is an in­car­na­tion of Par­a­dise truth in mor­tal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowl­edge of which men shall be free.

• defined as › man’s effort to discern God in mind

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.

• defined as › always a revelation

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.

• defined as › intellectual foundation of religion

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.

• defined as › living spirit relationship of all things and beings

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.

• ministry of Paradise Sons

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.

• defined as › time-space comprehension of supreme concepts

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.

• warnings › Lucifer and Caligastia did not abide in t.

67:1.2In the course of this in­spec­tion Sa­tan in­formed Cali­gas­tia of Lu­cifer’s then pro­posed “Dec­la­ra­tion of Lib­erty,” and as we now know, the Prince agreed to be­tray the planet upon the an­nounce­ment of the re­bel­lion. The loyal uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties look with pe­cu­liar dis­dain upon Prince Cali­gas­tia be­cause of this pre­med­i­tated be­trayal of trust. The Cre­ator Son voiced this con­tempt when he said: “You are like your leader, Lu­cifer, and you have sin­fully per­pet­u­ated his in­iq­uity. He was a fal­si­fier from the be­gin­ning of his self-ex­al­ta­tion be­cause he abode not in the truth.”

• historically › Chinese worship of t. stimulated research, exploration

79:6.11This wor­ship of truth was provoca­tive of re­search and fear­less ex­plo­ration of the laws of na­ture and the po­ten­tials of man­kind. The Chi­nese of even six thou­sand years ago were still keen stu­dents and ag­gres­sive in their pur­suit of truth.

• defined as › relative and expanding, lives always in present

79:8.8The great weak­ness of an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion is that it pro­motes a back­ward-look­ing phi­los­o­phy. How­ever wise it may be to glean wis­dom from the past, it is folly to re­gard the past as the ex­clu­sive source of truth. Truth is rel­a­tive and ex­pand­ing; it lives al­ways in the pres­ent, achiev­ing new ex­pres­sion in each gen­er­a­tion of men—even in each hu­man life.

• man gradually backing into

88:4.5The ob­jects of sci­ence are iden­ti­cal with those of magic. Man­kind is pro­gress­ing from magic to sci­ence, not by med­i­ta­tion and rea­son, but rather through long ex­pe­ri­ence, grad­u­ally and painfully. Man is grad­u­ally back­ing into the truth, be­gin­ning in er­ror, pro­gress­ing in er­ror, and fi­nally at­tain­ing the thresh­old of truth. Only with the ar­rival of the sci­en­tific method has he faced for­ward. But prim­i­tive man had to ex­per­i­ment or per­ish.

• warnings › t. does not resent honest examination or criticism

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.

• warnings › no creed is uniquely The Truth

92:3.4Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion makes no pro­vi­sion for change or re­vi­sion; un­like sci­ence, it does not pro­vide for its own pro­gres­sive cor­rec­tion. Evolved re­li­gion com­mands re­spect be­cause its fol­low­ers be­lieve it is The Truth; “the faith once de­liv­ered to the saints” must, in the­ory, be both fi­nal and in­fal­li­ble. The cult re­sists de­vel­op­ment be­cause real prog­ress is cer­tain to mod­ify or de­stroy the cult it­self; there­fore must re­vi­sion al­ways be forced upon it.

• warnings › no creed is uniquely The Truth

92:7.3The many re­li­gions of Uran­tia are all good to the ex­tent that they bring man to God and bring the re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther to man. It is a fal­lacy for any group of re­li­gion­ists to con­ceive of their creed as The Truth; such at­ti­tudes be­speak more of the­o­log­i­cal ar­ro­gance than of cer­tainty of faith. There is not a Uran­tia re­li­gion that could not prof­itably study and as­sim­i­late the best of the truths con­tained in ev­ery other faith, for all con­tain truth. Re­li­gion­ists would do bet­ter to bor­row the best in their neigh­bors’ liv­ing spir­i­tual faith rather than to de­nounce the worst in their lin­ger­ing su­per­sti­tions and out­worn rit­u­als.

• historically › difficult to perpetuate t. prior to printing

93:7.4You who to­day en­joy the ad­van­tages of the art of print­ing lit­tle un­der­stand how dif­fi­cult it was to per­pet­u­ate truth dur­ing these ear­lier times; how easy it was to lose sight of a new doc­trine from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other. There was al­ways a ten­dency for the new doc­trine to be­come ab­sorbed into the older body of re­li­gious teach­ing and mag­i­cal prac­tice. A new rev­e­la­tion is al­ways con­tam­i­nated by the older evo­lu­tion­ary be­liefs.

• one is not reckoned as possessing t. until he has shared it with others

94:6.6His un­der­stand­ing of the eter­nal pur­pose of God was clear, for he said: “The Ab­so­lute De­ity does not strive but is al­ways vic­to­ri­ous; he does not co­erce man­kind but al­ways stands ready to re­spond to their true de­sires; the will of God is eter­nal in pa­tience and eter­nal in the in­evitabil­ity of its ex­pres­sion.” And of the true re­li­gion­ist he said, in ex­press­ing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive: “The good man seeks not to re­tain truth for him­self but rather at­tempts to be­stow these riches upon his fel­lows, for that is the re­al­iza­tion of truth. The will of the Ab­so­lute God al­ways ben­e­fits, never de­stroys; the pur­pose of the true be­liever is al­ways to act but never to co­erce.”

• historically › Buddhism taught relativity of all t.

94:11.4The great ad­vance made in Bud­dhist phi­los­o­phy con­sisted in its com­pre­hen­sion of the rel­a­tiv­ity of all truth. Through the mech­a­nism of this hy­poth­e­sis Bud­dhists have been able to rec­on­cile and cor­re­late the di­ver­gen­cies within their own re­li­gious scrip­tures as well as the dif­fer­ences be­tween their own and many oth­ers. It was taught that the small truth was for lit­tle minds, the large truth for great minds.

• Jesus lived and was the t.

100:7.2The un­fail­ing kind­ness of Je­sus touched the hearts of men, but his stal­wart strength of char­ac­ter amazed his fol­low­ers. He was truly sin­cere; there was noth­ing of the hyp­ocrite in him. He was free from af­fec­ta­tion; he was al­ways so re­fresh­ingly gen­uine. He never stooped to pre­tense, and he never re­sorted to sham­ming. He lived the truth, even as he taught it. He was the truth. He was con­strained to pro­claim sav­ing truth to his gen­er­a­tion, even though such sin­cer­ity some­times caused pain. He was un­ques­tion­ingly loyal to all truth.

• defined as › always a revelation
• defined as › autorevelation by indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation by some celestial agency

101:4.3Truth is al­ways a rev­e­la­tion: au­torev­e­la­tion when it emerges as a re­sult of the work of the in­dwelling Ad­juster; ep­ochal rev­e­la­tion when it is pre­sented by the func­tion of some other ce­les­tial agency, group, or per­son­al­ity.

• made accessible by Adjuster and Spirit of Truth

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.

• makes men free

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

• defined as › known by those who do the divine will

101:10.6Never can there be ei­ther sci­en­tific or log­i­cal proofs of di­vin­ity. Rea­son alone can never val­i­date the val­ues and good­nesses of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. But it will al­ways re­main true: Whoso­ever wills to do the will of God shall com­pre­hend the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual val­ues. This is the near­est ap­proach that can be made on the mor­tal level to of­fer­ing proofs of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Such faith af­fords the only es­cape from the me­chan­i­cal clutch of the ma­te­rial world and from the er­ror dis­tor­tion of the in­com­plete­ness of the in­tel­lec­tual world; it is the only dis­cov­ered so­lu­tion to the im­passe in mor­tal think­ing re­gard­ing the con­tin­u­ing sur­vival of the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity. It is the only pass­port to com­ple­tion of re­al­ity and to eter­nity of life in a uni­ver­sal cre­ation of love, law, unity, and pro­gres­sive De­ity at­tain­ment.

• defined as › known by those who do the divine will

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.

• warnings › do not slight t. accompanied by obsolete ideas

102:1.3Ow­ing to the iso­la­tion of re­bel­lion, the rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia has all too of­ten been mixed up with the state­ments of par­tial and tran­sient cos­molo­gies. Truth re­mains un­changed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but the as­so­ci­ated teach­ings about the phys­i­cal world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eter­nal truth should not be slighted be­cause it chances to be found in com­pany with ob­so­lete ideas re­gard­ing the ma­te­rial world. The more of sci­ence you know, the less sure you can be; the more of re­li­gion you have, the more cer­tain you are.

• hunger for t. is a revelation

102:3.12The pur­suit of knowl­edge con­sti­tutes sci­ence; the search for wis­dom is phi­los­o­phy; the love for God is re­li­gion; the hunger for truth is a rev­e­la­tion. But it is the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster that at­taches the feel­ing of re­al­ity to man’s spir­i­tual in­sight into the cos­mos.

• always has advantage over error
• drives out serious error

102:6.7Be­lief may not be able to re­sist doubt and with­stand fear, but faith is al­ways tri­umphant over doubt­ing, for faith is both pos­i­tive and liv­ing. The pos­i­tive al­ways has the ad­van­tage over the neg­a­tive, truth over er­ror, ex­pe­ri­ence over the­ory, spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties over the iso­lated facts of time and space. The con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of this spir­i­tual cer­tainty con­sists in the so­cial fruits of the spirit which such be­liev­ers, faithers, yield as a re­sult of this gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Said Je­sus: “If you love your fel­lows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples.”

• believers should › follow t. wherever it leads, and regardless of conclusions it reaches

103:7.5But logic can never suc­ceed in har­mo­niz­ing the find­ings of sci­ence and the in­sights of re­li­gion un­less both the sci­en­tific and the re­li­gious as­pects of a per­son­al­ity are truth dom­i­nated, sin­cerely de­sirous of fol­low­ing the truth wher­ever it may lead re­gard­less of the con­clu­sions which it may reach.

• best criticized by revelation
• Spirit of Truth › unerringly responds to t.

103:7.8The truth—an un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic re­la­tion­ships, uni­verse facts, and spir­i­tual val­ues—can best be had through the min­istry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be crit­i­cized by rev­e­la­tion. But rev­e­la­tion orig­i­nates nei­ther a sci­ence nor a re­li­gion; its func­tion is to co-or­di­nate both sci­ence and re­li­gion with the truth of re­al­ity. Al­ways, in the ab­sence of rev­e­la­tion or in the fail­ure to ac­cept or grasp it, has mor­tal man re­sorted to his fu­tile ges­ture of meta­physics, that be­ing the only hu­man sub­sti­tute for the rev­e­la­tion of truth or for the mota of mor­ontia per­son­al­ity.

• believers should › base life on highest consciousness of

110:3.71. Choos­ing to re­spond to di­vine lead­ing; sin­cerely bas­ing the hu­man life on the high­est con­scious­ness of truth, beauty, and good­ness, and then co-or­di­nat­ing these qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity through wis­dom, wor­ship, faith, and love.

• maximum imparted to mind of perfect poise in body of clean habits

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.

• defined as › value-realization of God-consciousness, divinity

111:3.7In so far as man’s evolv­ing mor­ontia soul be­comes per­me­ated by truth, beauty, and good­ness as the value-re­al­iza­tion of God-con­scious­ness, such a re­sul­tant be­ing be­comes in­de­struc­tible. If there is no sur­vival of eter­nal val­ues in the evolv­ing soul of man, then mor­tal ex­is­tence is with­out mean­ing, and life it­self is a tragic il­lu­sion. But it is for­ever true: What you be­gin in time you will as­suredly fin­ish in eter­nity—if it is worth fin­ish­ing.

• warnings › man’s understanding of t. only relatively true

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

• defined as › finite maximum of experience

117:1.7Truth, beauty, and good­ness are cor­re­lated in the min­istry of the Spirit, the grandeur of Par­a­dise, the mercy of the Son, and the ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme. God the Su­preme is truth, beauty, and good­ness, for these con­cepts of di­vin­ity rep­re­sent fi­nite max­i­mums of ide­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. The eter­nal sources of these tri­une qual­i­ties of di­vin­ity are on super­fi­nite lev­els, but a crea­ture could only con­ceive of such sources as super­truth, super­beauty, and super­good­ness.

• defined as › inconcussible, adaptable, radiantly alive
• more t. we know, the more t. we are

118:3.2Things are time con­di­tioned, but truth is time­less. The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can un­der­stand and of the fu­ture you can com­pre­hend.

118:3.3Truth is in­con­cus­si­ble—for­ever ex­empt from all tran­sient vi­cis­si­tudes, al­beit never dead and for­mal, al­ways vi­brant and adapt­able—ra­di­antly alive. But when truth be­comes linked with fact, then both time and space con­di­tion its mean­ings and cor­re­late its val­ues. Such re­al­i­ties of truth wed­ded to fact be­come con­cepts and are ac­cord­ingly rel­e­gated to the do­main of rel­a­tive cos­mic re­al­i­ties.

• Jesus embraced t. no matter what the apparent source

126:3.8While turn­ing all these prob­lems over in his mind, he found in the syn­a­gogue li­brary at Naz­a­reth, among the apoc­a­lyp­tic books which he had been study­ing, this man­u­script called “The Book of Enoch”; and though he was cer­tain that it had not been writ­ten by Enoch of old, it proved very in­trigu­ing to him, and he read and reread it many times. There was one pas­sage which par­tic­u­larly im­pressed him, a pas­sage in which this term “Son of Man” ap­peared. The writer of this so-called Book of Enoch went on to tell about this Son of Man, de­scrib­ing the work he would do on earth and ex­plain­ing that this Son of Man, be­fore com­ing down on this earth to bring sal­va­tion to man­kind, had walked through the courts of heav­enly glory with his Fa­ther, the Fa­ther of all; and that he had turned his back upon all this grandeur and glory to come down on earth to pro­claim sal­va­tion to needy mor­tals. As Je­sus would read these pas­sages (well un­der­stand­ing that much of the East­ern mys­ti­cism which had be­come ad­mixed with these teach­ings was er­ro­neous), he re­sponded in his heart and rec­og­nized in his mind that of all the Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions of the He­brew scrip­tures and of all the the­o­ries about the Jew­ish de­liv­erer, none was so near the truth as this story tucked away in this only par­tially ac­cred­ited Book of Enoch; and he then and there de­cided to adopt as his in­au­gu­ral ti­tle “the Son of Man.” And this he did when he sub­se­quently be­gan his pub­lic work. Je­sus had an unerring abil­ity for the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and truth he never hes­i­tated to em­brace, no mat­ter from what source it ap­peared to em­anate.

• Jesus lived and was the t.

130:1.1Dur­ing their stay in Joppa, Je­sus met Ga­diah, a Phil­is­tine in­ter­preter who worked for one Si­mon a tan­ner. Gonod’s agents in Mes­o­po­ta­mia had trans­acted much busi­ness with this Si­mon; so Gonod and his son de­sired to pay him a visit on their way to Cae­sarea. While they tar­ried at Joppa, Je­sus and Ga­diah be­came warm friends. This young Phil­is­tine was a truth seeker. Je­sus was a truth giver; he was the truth for that gen­er­a­tion on Uran­tia. When a great truth seeker and a great truth giver meet, the re­sult is a great and lib­er­at­ing en­light­en­ment born of the ex­pe­ri­ence of new truth.

• defined as › experienced when spirit is permitted to reign in soul
• defined as › man’s effort to discern God in mind

130:4.10Knowl­edge is the sphere of the ma­te­rial or fact-dis­cern­ing mind. Truth is the do­main of the spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed in­tel­lect that is con­scious of know­ing God. Knowl­edge is demon­stra­ble; truth is ex­pe­ri­enced. Knowl­edge is a pos­ses­sion of the mind; truth an ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul, the pro­gress­ing self. Knowl­edge is a func­tion of the non­spir­i­tual level; truth is a phase of the mind-spirit level of the uni­verses. The eye of the ma­te­rial mind per­ceives a world of fac­tual knowl­edge; the eye of the spir­i­tu­al­ized in­tel­lect dis­cerns a world of true val­ues. These two views, syn­chro­nized and har­mo­nized, re­veal the world of re­al­ity, wherein wis­dom in­ter­prets the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verse in terms of pro­gres­sive per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• sincere pursuit of t. leads to God

131:1.6“The man who knows God looks upon all men as equal; they are his breth­ren. Those who are self­ish, those who ig­nore their broth­ers in the flesh, have only weari­ness as their re­ward. Those who love their fel­lows and who have pure hearts shall see God. God never for­gets sin­cer­ity. He will guide the hon­est of heart into the truth, for God is truth.

• sustains the universe

131:4.6“The spirit of the Uni­verse Keeper en­ters the soul of the sim­ple crea­ture. That man is wise who wor­ships the One God. Those who strive for per­fec­tion must in­deed know the Lord Su­preme. He never fears who knows the bliss­ful se­cu­rity of the Su­preme, for the Su­preme says to those who serve him, ‘Fear not, for I am with you.’ The God of prov­i­dence is our Fa­ther. God is truth. And it is the de­sire of God that his crea­tures should un­der­stand him—come fully to know the truth. Truth is eter­nal; it sus­tains the uni­verse. Our su­preme de­sire shall be union with the Su­preme. The Great Con­trol­ler is the gen­er­a­tor of all things—all evolves from him. And this is the sum of duty: Let no man do to an­other what would be re­pug­nant to him­self; cher­ish no mal­ice, smite not him who smites you, con­quer anger with mercy, and van­quish hate by benev­o­lence. And all this we should do be­cause God is a kind friend and a gra­cious fa­ther who re­mits all our earthly of­fenses.

• drives out serious error

132:0.4Je­sus learned much about men while in Rome, but the most valu­able of all the man­i­fold ex­pe­ri­ences of his six months’ so­journ in that city was his con­tact with, and in­flu­ence upon, the re­li­gious lead­ers of the em­pire’s cap­i­tal. Be­fore the end of the first week in Rome Je­sus had sought out, and had made the ac­quain­tance of, the worth-while lead­ers of the Cyn­ics, the Sto­ics, and the mys­tery cults, in par­tic­u­lar the Mith­raic group. Whether or not it was ap­par­ent to Je­sus that the Jews were go­ing to re­ject his mis­sion, he most cer­tainly fore­saw that his mes­sen­gers were pres­ently com­ing to Rome to pro­claim the king­dom of heaven; and he there­fore set about, in the most amaz­ing man­ner, to pre­pare the way for the bet­ter and more cer­tain re­cep­tion of their mes­sage. He se­lected five of the lead­ing Sto­ics, eleven of the Cyn­ics, and six­teen of the mys­tery-cult lead­ers and spent much of his spare time for al­most six months in in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with these re­li­gious teach­ers. And this was his method of in­struc­tion: Never once did he at­tack their er­rors or even men­tion the flaws in their teach­ings. In each case he would se­lect the truth in what they taught and then pro­ceed so to em­bel­lish and il­lu­mi­nate this truth in their minds that in a very short time this en­hance­ment of the truth ef­fec­tively crowded out the as­so­ci­ated er­ror; and thus were these Je­sus-taught men and women pre­pared for the sub­se­quent rec­og­ni­tion of ad­di­tional and sim­i­lar truths in the teach­ings of the early Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. It was this early ac­cep­tance of the teach­ings of the gospel preach­ers which gave that pow­er­ful im­pe­tus to the rapid spread of Chris­tian­ity in Rome and from there through­out the em­pire.

• defined as › always relative and evil-contrasted

132:2.3Good­ness, like truth, is al­ways rel­a­tive and un­fail­ingly evil-con­trasted. It is the per­cep­tion of these qual­i­ties of good­ness and truth that en­ables the evolv­ing souls of men to make those per­sonal de­ci­sions of choice which are es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival.

132:3.1Nabon was a Greek Jew and fore­most among the lead­ers of the chief mys­tery cult in Rome, the Mith­raic. While this high priest of Mith­ra­ism held many con­fer­ences with the Da­mas­cus scribe, he was most per­ma­nently in­flu­enced by their dis­cus­sion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make a con­vert of Je­sus and had even sug­gested that he re­turn to Pales­tine as a Mith­raic teacher. He lit­tle re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing him to be­come one of the early con­verts to the gospel of the king­dom. Re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, the sub­stance of Je­sus’ teach­ing was:

• defined as › defined only by living; cannot be imprisoned; dies in human formulation

132:3.2Truth can­not be de­fined with words, only by liv­ing. Truth is al­ways more than knowl­edge. Knowl­edge per­tains to things ob­served, but truth tran­scends such purely ma­te­rial lev­els in that it con­sorts with wis­dom and em­braces such im­pon­der­ables as hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, even spir­i­tual and liv­ing re­al­i­ties. Knowl­edge orig­i­nates in sci­ence; wis­dom, in true phi­los­o­phy; truth, in the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual liv­ing. Knowl­edge deals with facts; wis­dom, with re­la­tion­ships; truth, with re­al­ity val­ues.

132:3.3Man tends to crys­tal­lize sci­ence, for­mu­late phi­los­o­phy, and dog­ma­tize truth be­cause he is men­tally lazy in ad­just­ing to the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of liv­ing, while he is also ter­ri­bly afraid of the un­known. Nat­u­ral man is slow to ini­ti­ate changes in his habits of think­ing and in his tech­niques of liv­ing.

132:3.4Re­vealed truth, per­son­ally dis­cov­ered truth, is the su­preme de­light of the hu­man soul; it is the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the in­dwelling spirit. The eter­nal sal­va­tion of this truth-dis­cern­ing and beauty-lov­ing soul is as­sured by that hunger and thirst for good­ness which leads this mor­tal to de­velop a sin­gle­ness of pur­pose to do the Fa­ther’s will, to find God and to be­come like him. There is never con­flict be­tween true knowl­edge and truth. There may be con­flict be­tween knowl­edge and hu­man be­liefs, be­liefs col­ored with prej­u­dice, dis­torted by fear, and dom­i­nated by the dread of fac­ing new facts of ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• defined as › possessed only by exercise of faith

132:3.5But truth can never be­come man’s pos­ses­sion with­out the ex­er­cise of faith. This is true be­cause man’s thoughts, wis­dom, ethics, and ide­als will never rise higher than his faith, his sub­lime hope. And all such true faith is pred­i­cated on pro­found re­flec­tion, sin­cere self-crit­i­cism, and un­com­pro­mis­ing moral con­scious­ness. Faith is the in­spi­ra­tion of the spir­i­tized cre­ative imag­i­na­tion.

132:3.6Faith acts to re­lease the super­hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties of the di­vine spark, the im­mor­tal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival. Plants and an­i­mals sur­vive in time by the tech­nique of pass­ing on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other iden­ti­cal par­ti­cles of them­selves. The hu­man soul (per­son­al­ity) of man sur­vives mor­tal death by iden­tity as­so­ci­a­tion with this in­dwelling spark of di­vin­ity, which is im­mor­tal, and which func­tions to per­pet­u­ate the hu­man per­son­al­ity upon a con­tin­u­ing and higher level of pro­gres­sive uni­verse ex­is­tence. The con­cealed seed of the hu­man soul is an im­mor­tal spirit. The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the soul is the first of a suc­ces­sion of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tions of spir­i­tual and pro­gress­ing ex­is­tences, ter­mi­nat­ing only when this di­vine en­tity at­tains the source of its ex­is­tence, the per­sonal source of all ex­is­tence, God, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

132:3.7Hu­man life con­tin­ues—sur­vives—be­cause it has a uni­verse func­tion, the task of find­ing God. The faith-ac­ti­vated soul of man can­not stop short of the at­tain­ment of this goal of des­tiny; and when it does once achieve this di­vine goal, it can never end be­cause it has be­come like God—eter­nal.

132:3.8Spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is an ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­creas­ing and vol­un­tary choice of good­ness at­tended by an equal and pro­gres­sive diminu­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity of evil. With the at­tain­ment of fi­nal­ity of choice for good­ness and of com­pleted ca­pac­ity for truth ap­pre­ci­a­tion, there comes into ex­is­tence a per­fec­tion of beauty and ho­li­ness whose righ­teous­ness eter­nally in­hibits the pos­si­bil­ity of the emer­gence of even the con­cept of po­ten­tial evil. Such a God-know­ing soul casts no shadow of doubt­ing evil when func­tion­ing on such a high spirit level of di­vine good­ness.

132:3.9The pres­ence of the Par­a­dise spirit in the mind of man con­sti­tutes the rev­e­la­tion prom­ise and the faith pledge of an eter­nal ex­is­tence of di­vine pro­gres­sion for ev­ery soul seek­ing to achieve iden­tity with this im­mor­tal and in­dwelling spirit frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

132:3.10Uni­verse prog­ress is char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing per­son­al­ity free­dom be­cause it is as­so­ci­ated with the pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of self-un­der­stand­ing and con­se­quent vol­un­tary self-re­straint. The at­tain­ment of per­fec­tion of spir­i­tual self-re­straint equals com­plete­ness of uni­verse free­dom and per­sonal lib­erty. Faith fos­ters and main­tains man’s soul in the midst of the con­fu­sion of his early ori­en­ta­tion in such a vast uni­verse, whereas prayer be­comes the great uni­fier of the var­i­ous in­spi­ra­tions of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the faith urges of a soul try­ing to iden­tify it­self with the spirit ide­als of the in­dwelling and as­so­ci­ated di­vine pres­ence.

132:3.11Nabon was greatly im­pressed by these words, as he was by each of his talks with Je­sus. These truths con­tin­ued to burn within his heart, and he was of great as­sis­tance to the later ar­riv­ing preach­ers of Je­sus’ gospel.

• believers should › believe t. despite all appearances to contrary

133:1.4“Ga­nid, I can well un­der­stand how some of these prob­lems per­plex you, and I will en­deavor to an­swer your ques­tion. First, in all at­tacks which might be made upon my per­son, I would de­ter­mine whether or not the ag­gres­sor was a son of God—my brother in the flesh—and if I thought such a crea­ture did not pos­sess moral judg­ment and spir­i­tual rea­son, I would un­hesi­tat­ingly de­fend my­self to the full ca­pac­ity of my pow­ers of re­sis­tance, re­gard­less of con­se­quences to the at­tacker. But I would not thus as­sault a fel­low man of son­ship sta­tus, even in self-de­fense. That is, I would not pun­ish him in ad­vance and with­out judg­ment for his as­sault upon me. I would by ev­ery pos­si­ble ar­ti­fice seek to pre­vent and dis­suade him from mak­ing such an at­tack and to mit­i­gate it in case of my fail­ure to abort it. Ga­nid, I have ab­so­lute con­fi­dence in my heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care; I am con­se­crated to do­ing the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. I do not be­lieve that real harm can be­fall me; I do not be­lieve that my life­work can re­ally be jeop­ar­dized by any­thing my en­e­mies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no vi­o­lence to fear from our friends. I am ab­so­lutely as­sured that the en­tire uni­verse is friendly to me—this all-pow­er­ful truth I in­sist on be­liev­ing with a whole­hearted trust in spite of all ap­pear­ances to the con­trary.”

• believers should › give milk of t. to babes

133:4.2The miller he taught about grind­ing up the grains of truth in the mill of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence so as to ren­der the dif­fi­cult things of di­vine life read­ily re­ceiv­able by even the weak and fee­ble among one’s fel­low mor­tals. Said Je­sus: “Give the milk of truth to those who are babes in spir­i­tual per­cep­tion. In your liv­ing and lov­ing min­istry serve spir­i­tual food in at­trac­tive form and suited to the ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity of each of your in­quir­ers.”

• warnings › presentation beyond capacity causes confusion

137:7.14As they thus tar­ried be­fore em­bark­ing on their ac­tive pub­lic preach­ing, Je­sus and the seven spent two evenings each week at the syn­a­gogue in the study of the He­brew scrip­tures. In later years af­ter sea­sons of in­tense pub­lic work, the apos­tles looked back upon these four months as the most pre­cious and prof­itable of all their as­so­ci­a­tion with the Mas­ter. Je­sus taught these men all they could as­sim­i­late. He did not make the mis­take of overteach­ing them. He did not pre­cip­i­tate con­fu­sion by the pre­sen­ta­tion of truth too far be­yond their ca­pac­ity to com­pre­hend.

• warnings › t. not lived up to becomes darkness

139:12.8This is just the rea­son why Je­sus per­mit­ted Ju­das to go on to the very end, al­ways do­ing ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to trans­form and save this weak and con­fused apos­tle. But when light is not hon­estly re­ceived and lived up to, it tends to be­come dark­ness within the soul. Ju­das grew in­tel­lec­tu­ally re­gard­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings about the king­dom, but he did not make prog­ress in the ac­quire­ment of spir­i­tual char­ac­ter as did the other apos­tles. He failed to make sat­is­fac­tory per­sonal prog­ress in spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

• seekers for t. rewarded now

140:5.71. “Happy are the poor in spirit—the hum­ble.” To a child, hap­pi­ness is the sat­is­fac­tion of im­me­di­ate plea­sure crav­ing. The adult is will­ing to sow seeds of self-de­nial in or­der to reap sub­se­quent har­vests of aug­mented hap­pi­ness. In Je­sus’ times and since, hap­pi­ness has all too of­ten been as­so­ci­ated with the idea of the pos­ses­sion of wealth. In the story of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can pray­ing in the tem­ple, the one felt rich in spirit—ego­tis­ti­cal; the other felt “poor in spirit”—hum­ble. One was self-suf­fi­cient; the other was teach­able and truth-seek­ing. The poor in spirit seek for goals of spir­i­tual wealth—for God. And such seek­ers af­ter truth do not have to wait for re­wards in a dis­tant fu­ture; they are re­warded now. They find the king­dom of heaven within their own hearts, and they ex­pe­ri­ence such hap­pi­ness now.

• drives out serious error

141:6.2When Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Je­sus were alone, Si­mon asked the Mas­ter: “Why is it that I could not per­suade him? Why did he so re­sist me and so read­ily lend an ear to you?” Je­sus an­swered: “Si­mon, Si­mon, how many times have I in­structed you to re­frain from all ef­forts to take some­thing out of the hearts of those who seek sal­va­tion? How of­ten have I told you to la­bor only to put some­thing into these hun­gry souls? Lead men into the king­dom, and the great and liv­ing truths of the king­dom will pres­ently drive out all se­ri­ous er­ror. When you have pre­sented to mor­tal man the good news that God is his Fa­ther, you can the eas­ier per­suade him that he is in re­al­ity a son of God. And hav­ing done that, you have brought the light of sal­va­tion to the one who sits in dark­ness. Si­mon, when the Son of Man came first to you, did he come de­nounc­ing Moses and the proph­ets and pro­claim­ing a new and bet­ter way of life? No. I came not to take away that which you had from your fore­fa­thers but to show you the per­fected vi­sion of that which your fa­thers saw only in part. Go then, Si­mon, teach­ing and preach­ing the king­dom, and when you have a man safely and se­curely within the king­dom, then is the time, when such a one shall come to you with in­quiries, to im­part in­struc­tion hav­ing to do with the pro­gres­sive ad­vance­ment of the soul within the di­vine king­dom.”

• makes men free

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• Spirit of Truth › unerringly responds to t.

142:5.2“As to my mes­sage and the teach­ing of my dis­ci­ples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we pro­claim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will wit­ness in your hearts that our mes­sage is gen­uine. Con­cern­ing the king­dom and your as­sur­ance of ac­cep­tance by the heav­enly Fa­ther, let me ask what fa­ther among you who is a wor­thy and kind­hearted fa­ther would keep his son in anx­i­ety or sus­pense re­gard­ing his sta­tus in the fam­ily or his place of se­cu­rity in the af­fec­tions of his fa­ther’s heart? Do you earth fa­thers take plea­sure in tor­tur­ing your chil­dren with un­cer­tainty about their place of abid­ing love in your hu­man hearts? Nei­ther does your Fa­ther in heaven leave his faith chil­dren of the spirit in doubt­ful un­cer­tainty as to their po­si­tion in the king­dom. If you re­ceive God as your Fa­ther, then in­deed and in truth are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you se­cure in the po­si­tion and stand­ing of all that con­cerns eter­nal and di­vine son­ship. If you be­lieve my words, you thereby be­lieve in Him who sent me, and by thus be­liev­ing in the Fa­ther, you have made your sta­tus in heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship sure. If you do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, you shall never fail in the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal life of prog­ress in the di­vine king­dom.

• makes men free

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• warnings › right in fact can be wrong in t.

143:6.1On the evening that Nalda drew the crowd out from Sy­char to see Je­sus, the twelve had just re­turned with food, and they be­sought Je­sus to eat with them in­stead of talk­ing to the peo­ple, for they had been with­out food all day and were hun­gry. But Je­sus knew that dark­ness would soon be upon them; so he per­sisted in his de­ter­mi­na­tion to talk to the peo­ple be­fore he sent them away. When An­drew sought to per­suade him to eat a bite be­fore speak­ing to the crowd, Je­sus said, “I have meat to eat that you do not know about.” When the apos­tles heard this, they said among them­selves: “Has any man brought him aught to eat? Can it be that the woman gave him food as well as drink?” When Je­sus heard them talk­ing among them­selves, be­fore he spoke to the peo­ple, he turned aside and said to the twelve: “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me and to ac­com­plish His work. You should no longer say it is such and such a time un­til the har­vest. Be­hold these peo­ple com­ing out from a Samar­i­tan city to hear us; I tell you the fields are al­ready white for the har­vest. He who reaps re­ceives wages and gath­ers this fruit to eter­nal life; con­se­quently the sow­ers and the reapers re­joice to­gether. For herein is the say­ing true: ‘One sows and an­other reaps.’ I am now send­ing you to reap that whereon you have not la­bored; oth­ers have la­bored, and you are about to en­ter into their la­bor.” This he said in ref­er­ence to the preach­ing of John the Bap­tist.

• hidden from the wise, revealed to babes

144:8.8“It would ap­pear that the Fa­ther in heaven has hid­den some of these truths from the wise and haughty, while he has re­vealed them to babes. But the Fa­ther does all things well; the Fa­ther re­veals him­self to the uni­verse by the meth­ods of his own choos­ing. Come, there­fore, all you who la­bor and are heavy laden, and you shall find rest for your souls. Take upon you the di­vine yoke, and you will ex­pe­ri­ence the peace of God, which passes all un­der­stand­ing.”

• warnings › t. does not resent honest examination or criticism

146:3.2The apos­tles were a bit dis­con­certed by the open man­ner of Je­sus’ as­sent to many of the Greek’s propo­si­tions, but Je­sus af­ter­ward pri­vately said to them: “My chil­dren, mar­vel not that I was tol­er­ant of the Greek’s phi­los­o­phy. True and gen­uine in­ward cer­tainty does not in the least fear out­ward anal­y­sis, nor does truth re­sent hon­est crit­i­cism. You should never for­get that in­tol­er­ance is the mask cov­er­ing up the en­ter­tain­ment of se­cret doubts as to the true­ness of one’s be­lief. No man is at any time dis­turbed by his neigh­bor’s at­ti­tude when he has per­fect con­fi­dence in the truth of that which he whole­heart­edly be­lieves. Cour­age is the con­fi­dence of thor­ough­go­ing hon­esty about those things which one pro­fesses to be­lieve. Sin­cere men are un­afraid of the crit­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of their true con­vic­tions and no­ble ide­als.”

• old and true vs. new but false

147:7.3Then the Mas­ter pro­ceeded to warn his hear­ers against en­ter­tain­ing the no­tion that all olden teach­ing should be re­placed en­tirely by new doc­trines. Said Je­sus: “That which is old and also true must abide. Like­wise, that which is new but false must be re­jected. But that which is new and also true, have the faith and cour­age to ac­cept. Re­mem­ber it is writ­ten: ‘For­sake not an old friend, for the new is not com­pa­ra­ble to him. As new wine, so is a new friend; if it be­comes old, you shall drink it with glad­ness.’”

• believers should › allow t. to strike into heart with living roots

151:2.2Af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence, Pe­ter said: “Mas­ter, we have talked much con­cern­ing the para­ble, and this is the in­ter­pre­ta­tion I have de­cided upon: The sower is the gospel preacher; the seed is the word of God. The seed which fell by the way­side rep­re­sents those who do not un­der­stand the gospel teach­ing. The birds which snatched away the seed that fell upon the hard­ened ground rep­re­sent Sa­tan, or the evil one, who steals away that which has been sown in the hearts of these ig­no­rant ones. The seed which fell upon the rocky places, and which sprang up so sud­denly, rep­re­sents those su­per­fi­cial and un­think­ing per­sons who, when they hear the glad tid­ings, re­ceive the mes­sage with joy; but be­cause the truth has no real root in their deeper un­der­stand­ing, their de­vo­tion is short-lived in the face of tribu­la­tion and per­se­cu­tion. When trou­ble comes, these be­liev­ers stum­ble; they fall away when tempted. The seed which fell among thorns rep­re­sents those who hear the word will­ingly, but who al­low the cares of the world and the de­ceit­ful­ness of riches to choke the word of truth so that it be­comes un­fruit­ful. Now the seed which fell on good ground and sprang up to bear, some thirty, some sixty, and some a hun­dred­fold, rep­re­sents those who, when they have heard the truth, re­ceive it with vary­ing de­grees of ap­pre­ci­a­tion—ow­ing to their dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual en­dow­ments—and hence man­i­fest these vary­ing de­grees of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.”

• warnings › t. does not resent honest examination or criticism

153:2.11By this time there was much mur­mur­ing in the syn­a­gogue, and such a tu­mult was threat­ened that Je­sus stood up and said: “Let us be pa­tient; the truth never suf­fers from hon­est ex­am­i­na­tion. I am all that you say but more. The Fa­ther and I are one; the Son does only that which the Fa­ther teaches him, while all those who are given to the Son by the Fa­ther, the Son will re­ceive to him­self. You have read where it is writ­ten in the Proph­ets, ‘You shall all be taught by God,’ and that ‘Those whom the Fa­ther teaches will hear also his Son.’ Ev­ery one who yields to the teach­ing of the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling spirit will even­tu­ally come to me. Not that any man has seen the Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther’s spirit does live within man. And the Son who came down from heaven, he has surely seen the Fa­ther. And those who truly be­lieve this Son al­ready have eter­nal life.

• warnings › do not seek to promulgate t. by secular laws

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• warnings › t. is not boundary line of self-righteous exclusiveness

155:3.3The apos­tles learned that the Jews were spir­i­tu­ally stag­nant and dy­ing be­cause they had crys­tal­lized truth into a creed; that when truth be­comes for­mu­lated as a bound­ary line of self-righ­teous ex­clu­sive­ness in­stead of serv­ing as sign­posts of spir­i­tual guid­ance and prog­ress, such teach­ings lose their cre­ative and life-giv­ing power and ul­ti­mately be­come merely preser­va­tive and fos­siliz­ing.

• Jesus embraced t. no matter what the apparent source
• warnings › do not discount t. because of apparently human source

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

• false teachers frightened by new revelations of

155:6.6Shame on those false re­li­gious teach­ers who would drag hun­gry souls back into the dim and dis­tant past and there leave them! And so are these un­for­tu­nate per­sons doomed to be­come fright­ened by ev­ery new dis­cov­ery, while they are dis­com­fited by ev­ery new rev­e­la­tion of truth. The prophet who said, “He will be kept in per­fect peace whose mind is stayed on God,” was not a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­liever in au­thor­i­ta­tive the­ol­ogy. This truth-know­ing hu­man had dis­cov­ered God; he was not merely talk­ing about God.

• Jesus embraced t. no matter what the apparent source
• warnings › do not discount t. because of apparently human source

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

• believers should › freely receive; freely give

159:1.5“And this chief stew­ard, hav­ing thus re­ceived mercy and for­give­ness at the hands of the king, went about his busi­ness, and find­ing one of his sub­or­di­nate stew­ards who owed him a mere hun­dred denarii, he laid hold upon him and, tak­ing him by the throat, said, ‘Pay me all you owe.’ And then did this fel­low stew­ard fall down be­fore the chief stew­ard and, be­seech­ing him, said: ‘Only have pa­tience with me, and I will pres­ently be able to pay you.’ But the chief stew­ard would not show mercy to his fel­low stew­ard but rather had him cast in prison un­til he should pay his debt. When his fel­low ser­vants saw what had hap­pened, they were so dis­tressed that they went and told their lord and mas­ter, the king. When the king heard of the do­ings of his chief stew­ard, he called this un­grate­ful and un­for­giv­ing man be­fore him and said: ‘You are a wicked and un­wor­thy stew­ard. When you sought for com­pas­sion, I freely for­gave you your en­tire debt. Why did you not also show mercy to your fel­low stew­ard, even as I showed mercy to you?’ And the king was so very an­gry that he de­liv­ered his un­grate­ful chief stew­ard to the jail­ers that they might hold him un­til he had paid all that was due. And even so shall my heav­enly Fa­ther show the more abun­dant mercy to those who freely show mercy to their fel­lows. How can you come to God ask­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for your short­com­ings when you are wont to chas­tise your breth­ren for be­ing guilty of these same hu­man frail­ties? I say to all of you: Freely you have re­ceived the good things of the king­dom; there­fore freely give to your fel­lows on earth.”

• authority of t. is spirit indwelling its manifestations

159:4.7“The au­thor­ity of truth is the very spirit that in­dwells its liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions, and not the dead words of the less il­lu­mi­nated and sup­pos­edly in­spired men of an­other gen­er­a­tion. And even if these holy men of old lived in­spired and spirit-filled lives, that does not mean that their words were sim­i­larly spir­i­tu­ally in­spired. To­day we make no rec­ord of the teach­ings of this gospel of the king­dom lest, when I have gone, you speed­ily be­come di­vided up into sundry groups of truth con­tenders as a re­sult of the di­ver­sity of your in­ter­pre­ta­tion of my teach­ings. For this gen­er­a­tion it is best that we live these truths while we shun the mak­ing of rec­ords.

• makes men free

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.

• hunger for t. essential to enter kingdom, salvation

170:2.222. Truth hunger. The thirst for righ­teous­ness, a change of mind, the ac­quire­ment of the mo­tive to be like God and to find God.

• hunger for t. essential to enter kingdom, salvation

170:5.13Je­sus fore­saw that a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, or church, would fol­low the prog­ress of the true spir­i­tual king­dom, and that is why he never op­posed the apos­tles’ prac­tic­ing the rite of John’s bap­tism. He taught that the truth-lov­ing soul, the one who hungers and thirsts for righ­teous­ness, for God, is ad­mit­ted by faith to the spir­i­tual king­dom; at the same time the apos­tles taught that such a be­liever is ad­mit­ted to the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion of dis­ci­ples by the out­ward rite of bap­tism.

• believers should › enhance t. by passing through personal experience
• warnings › reckoning required according to what given

176:3.7Truth is liv­ing; the Spirit of Truth is ever lead­ing the chil­dren of light into new realms of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and di­vine ser­vice. You are not given truth to crys­tal­lize into set­tled, safe, and hon­ored forms. Your rev­e­la­tion of truth must be so en­hanced by pass­ing through your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence that new beauty and ac­tual spir­i­tual gains will be dis­closed to all who be­hold your spir­i­tual fruits and in con­se­quence thereof are led to glo­rify the Fa­ther who is in heaven. Only those faith­ful ser­vants who thus grow in the knowl­edge of the truth, and who thereby de­velop the ca­pac­ity for di­vine ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties, can ever hope to “en­ter fully into the joy of their Lord.” What a sorry sight for suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus to say, re­gard­ing their stew­ard­ship of di­vine truth: “Here, Mas­ter, is the truth you com­mit­ted to us a hun­dred or a thou­sand years ago. We have lost noth­ing; we have faith­fully pre­served all you gave us; we have al­lowed no changes to be made in that which you taught us; here is the truth you gave us.” But such a plea con­cern­ing spir­i­tual in­do­lence will not jus­tify the bar­ren stew­ard of truth in the pres­ence of the Mas­ter. In ac­cor­dance with the truth com­mit­ted to your hands will the Mas­ter of truth re­quire a reck­on­ing.

176:3.8In the next world you will be asked to give an ac­count of the en­dow­ments and stew­ard­ships of this world. Whether in­her­ent tal­ents are few or many, a just and mer­ci­ful reck­on­ing must be faced. If en­dow­ments are used only in self­ish pur­suits and no thought is be­stowed upon the higher duty of ob­tain­ing in­creased yield of the fruits of the spirit, as they are man­i­fested in the ever-ex­pand­ing ser­vice of men and the wor­ship of God, such self­ish stew­ards must ac­cept the con­se­quences of their de­lib­er­ate choos­ing.

• believers should › freely receive; freely give

176:3.10Said Je­sus that night as they went to their rest: “Freely have you re­ceived; there­fore freely should you give of the truth of heaven, and in the giv­ing will this truth mul­ti­ply and show forth the in­creas­ing light of sav­ing grace, even as you min­is­ter it.”

• believers should › allow t. to strike into heart with living roots

177:5.2This was the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ warn­ing his fol­low­ers to be­ware of the sup­port of the mul­ti­tude. He re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee when time and again great throngs of peo­ple en­thu­si­as­ti­cally fol­lowed them around and then just as ar­dently turned against them and re­turned to their for­mer ways of be­liev­ing and liv­ing. And then he said: “And so you must not al­low your­selves to be de­ceived by the great crowds who heard us in the tem­ple, and who seemed to be­lieve our teach­ings. These mul­ti­tudes lis­ten to the truth and be­lieve it su­per­fi­cially with their minds, but few of them per­mit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with liv­ing roots. Those who know the gospel only in the mind, and who have not ex­pe­ri­enced it in the heart, can­not be de­pended upon for sup­port when real trou­ble comes. When the rulers of the Jews reach an agree­ment to de­stroy the Son of Man, and when they strike with one ac­cord, you will see the mul­ti­tude ei­ther flee in dis­may or else stand by in silent amaze­ment while these mad­dened and blinded rulers lead the teach­ers of the gospel truth to their death. And then, when ad­ver­sity and per­se­cu­tion de­scend upon you, still oth­ers who you think love the truth will be scat­tered, and some will re­nounce the gospel and desert you. Some who have been very close to us have al­ready made up their minds to desert. You have rested to­day in prepa­ra­tion for those times which are now upon us. Watch, there­fore, and pray that on the mor­row you may be strength­ened for the days that are just ahead.”

• warnings › do not seek to promulgate t. by secular laws

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

• believers should › feed roots of t. with spiritual communion and social service

178:1.13When a king­dom be­liever is called upon to serve the civil gov­ern­ment, let him ren­der such ser­vice as a tem­po­ral cit­i­zen of such a gov­ern­ment, al­beit such a be­liever should dis­play in his civil ser­vice all of the or­di­nary traits of cit­i­zen­ship as these have been en­hanced by the spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment of the en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion of the mind of mor­tal man with the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God. If the un­be­liever can qual­ify as a su­pe­rior civil ser­vant, you should se­ri­ously ques­tion whether the roots of truth in your heart have not died from the lack of the liv­ing wa­ters of com­bined spir­i­tual com­mu­nion and so­cial ser­vice. The con­scious­ness of son­ship with God should quicken the en­tire life ser­vice of ev­ery man, woman, and child who has be­come the pos­ses­sor of such a mighty stim­u­lus to all the in­her­ent pow­ers of a hu­man per­son­al­ity.

• believers should › be mighty in promulgation of t.; stand in vigorous defense of t.

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

178:1.16And for­get not: We have made no di­rect at­tack upon the per­sons or upon the au­thor­ity of those who sit in Moses’ seat; we only of­fered them the new light, which they have so vig­or­ously re­jected. We have as­sailed them only by the de­nun­ci­a­tion of their spir­i­tual dis­loy­alty to the very truths which they pro­fess to teach and safe­guard. We clashed with these es­tab­lished lead­ers and rec­og­nized rulers only when they threw them­selves di­rectly in the way of the preach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom to the sons of men. And even now, it is not we who as­sail them, but they who seek our de­struc­tion. Do not for­get that you are com­mis­sioned to go forth preach­ing only the good news. You are not to at­tack the old ways; you are skill­fully to put the leaven of new truth in the midst of the old be­liefs. Let the Spirit of Truth do his own work. Let con­tro­versy come only when they who de­spise the truth force it upon you. But when the will­ful un­be­liever at­tacks you, do not hes­i­tate to stand in vig­or­ous de­fense of the truth which has saved and sanc­ti­fied you.

• Judas failed to love t. with his whole soul

179:4.2When the twelve heard this, hav­ing al­ready been robbed of much of their self-as­sertive­ness and self-con­fi­dence by the para­ble of the feet wash­ing and the Mas­ter’s sub­se­quent dis­course, they be­gan to look at one an­other while in dis­con­certed tones they hes­i­tat­ingly in­quired, “Is it I?” And when they had all so in­quired, Je­sus said: “While it is nec­es­sary that I go to the Fa­ther, it was not re­quired that one of you should be­come a traitor to ful­fill the Fa­ther’s will. This is the com­ing to fruit of the con­cealed evil in the heart of one who failed to love the truth with his whole soul. How de­ceit­ful is the in­tel­lec­tual pride that pre­cedes the spir­i­tual down­fall! My friend of many years, who even now eats my bread, will be will­ing to be­tray me, even as he now dips his hand with me in the dish.”

• warnings › t. not lived up to becomes darkness

180:3.2“Many of those who will as­sail you are ig­no­rant of the light of heaven, but this is not true of some who now per­se­cute us. If we had not taught them the truth, they might do many strange things with­out falling un­der con­dem­na­tion, but now, since they have known the light and pre­sumed to re­ject it, they have no ex­cuse for their at­ti­tude. He who hates me hates my Fa­ther. It can­not be oth­er­wise; the light which would save you if ac­cepted can only con­demn you if it is know­ingly re­jected. And what have I done to these men that they should hate me with such a ter­ri­ble ha­tred? Noth­ing, save to of­fer them fel­low­ship on earth and sal­va­tion in heaven. But have you not read in the Scrip­ture the say­ing: ‘And they hated me with­out a cause’?

• Jesus lived and was the t.

180:3.7When Je­sus heard Thomas, he an­swered: “Thomas, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man goes to the Fa­ther ex­cept through me. All who find the Fa­ther, first find me. If you know me, you know the way to the Fa­ther. And you do know me, for you have lived with me and you now see me.”

• defined as › defined only by living; cannot be imprisoned; dies in human formulation
• defined as › experienced when spirit is permitted to reign in soul

180:5.2Di­vine truth is a spirit-dis­cerned and liv­ing re­al­ity. Truth ex­ists only on high spir­i­tual lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity and the con­scious­ness of com­mu­nion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can ex­pe­ri­ence the growth of truth in the soul and en­joy the lib­erty of its en­light­en­ment in the mind, but you can­not im­prison truth in for­mu­las, codes, creeds, or in­tel­lec­tual pat­terns of hu­man con­duct. When you un­der­take the hu­man for­mu­la­tion of di­vine truth, it speed­ily dies. The post-mortem sal­vage of im­pris­oned truth, even at best, can even­tu­ate only in the re­al­iza­tion of a pe­cu­liar form of in­tel­lec­tu­al­ized glo­ri­fied wis­dom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a the­ory. Liv­ing truth is dy­namic and can en­joy only an ex­pe­ri­en­tial ex­is­tence in the hu­man mind.

180:5.3In­tel­li­gence grows out of a ma­te­rial ex­is­tence which is il­lu­mi­nated by the pres­ence of the cos­mic mind. Wis­dom com­prises the con­scious­ness of knowl­edge el­e­vated to new lev­els of mean­ing and ac­ti­vated by the pres­ence of the uni­verse en­dow­ment of the ad­ju­tant of wis­dom. Truth is a spir­i­tual re­al­ity value ex­pe­ri­enced only by spirit-en­dowed be­ings who func­tion upon super­ma­te­rial lev­els of uni­verse con­scious­ness, and who, af­ter the re­al­iza­tion of truth, per­mit its spirit of ac­ti­va­tion to live and reign within their souls.

• warnings › mistake always to frankly speak one’s mind

180:5.5The golden rule, when di­vested of the super­hu­man in­sight of the Spirit of Truth, be­comes noth­ing more than a rule of high eth­i­cal con­duct. The golden rule, when lit­er­ally in­ter­preted, may be­come the in­stru­ment of great of­fense to one’s fel­lows. With­out a spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment of the golden rule of wis­dom you might rea­son that, since you are de­sirous that all men speak the full and frank truth of their minds to you, you should there­fore fully and frankly speak the full thought of your mind to your fel­low be­ings. Such an un­spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule might re­sult in un­told un­hap­pi­ness and no end of sor­row.

• believers should › not doubt t. after being scattered by persecution

181:1.6“Doubt not any of these truths even af­ter you are scat­tered abroad by per­se­cu­tion and are down­cast by many sor­rows. When you feel that you are alone in the world, I will know of your iso­la­tion even as, when you are scat­tered ev­ery man to his own place, leav­ing the Son of Man in the hands of his en­e­mies, you will know of mine. But I am never alone; al­ways is the Fa­ther with me. Even at such a time I will pray for you. And all of these things have I told you that you might have peace and have it more abun­dantly. In this world you will have tribu­la­tion, but be of good cheer; I have tri­umphed in the world and shown you the way to eter­nal joy and ev­er­last­ing ser­vice.”

• warnings › mistake always to frankly speak one’s mind

181:2.21Then went the Mas­ter over to Na­than­iel. As Na­than­iel stood up, Je­sus bade him be seated and, sit­ting down by his side, said: “Na­than­iel, you have learned to live above prej­u­dice and to prac­tice in­creased tol­er­ance since you be­came my apos­tle. But there is much more for you to learn. You have been a bless­ing to your fel­lows in that they have al­ways been ad­mon­ished by your con­sis­tent sin­cer­ity. When I have gone, it may be that your frank­ness will in­ter­fere with your get­ting along well with your breth­ren, both old and new. You should learn that the ex­pres­sion of even a good thought must be mod­u­lated in ac­cor­dance with the in­tel­lec­tual sta­tus and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of the hearer. Sin­cer­ity is most ser­vice­able in the work of the king­dom when it is wed­ded to dis­cre­tion.

• purifies

182:1.5“You gave me twelve men, and I have kept them all save one, the son of re­venge, who would not have fur­ther fel­low­ship with us. These men are weak and frail, but I know we can trust them; I have proved them; they love me, even as they rev­er­ence you. While they must suf­fer much for my sake, I de­sire that they should also be filled with the joy of the as­sur­ance of son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom. I have given these men your word and have taught them the truth. The world may hate them, even as it has hated me, but I do not ask that you take them out of the world, only that you keep them from the evil in the world. Sanc­tify them in the truth; your word is truth. And as you sent me into this world, even so am I about to send these men into the world. For their sakes I have lived among men and have con­se­crated my life to your ser­vice that I might in­spire them to be pu­ri­fied through the truth I have taught them and the love I have re­vealed to them. I well know, my Fa­ther, that there is no need for me to ask you to watch over these breth­ren af­ter I have gone; I know you love them even as I, but I do this that they may the bet­ter re­al­ize the Fa­ther loves mor­tal men even as does the Son.

• historically › Pilate’s question regarding t.

185:3.5Then said Pi­late, half in ridicule and half in sin­cer­ity, “Truth, what is truth—who knows?”

• warnings › right in fact can be wrong in t.

189:2.6The Chris­tian be­lief in the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus has been based on the fact of the “empty tomb.” It was in­deed a fact that the tomb was empty, but this is not the truth of the res­ur­rec­tion. The tomb was truly empty when the first be­liev­ers ar­rived, and this fact, as­so­ci­ated with that of the un­doubted res­ur­rec­tion of the Mas­ter, led to the for­mu­la­tion of a be­lief which was not true: the teach­ing that the ma­te­rial and mor­tal body of Je­sus was raised from the grave. Truth hav­ing to do with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues can­not al­ways be built up by a com­bi­na­tion of ap­par­ent facts. Al­though in­di­vid­ual facts may be ma­te­ri­ally true, it does not fol­low that the as­so­ci­a­tion of a group of facts must nec­es­sar­ily lead to truth­ful spir­i­tual con­clu­sions.

• believers should › freely receive; freely give

193:0.5“Among your­selves, here, you share the knowl­edge that I have risen from the dead, but that is not strange. I have the power to lay down my life and to take it up again; the Fa­ther gives such power to his Par­a­dise Sons. You should the rather be stirred in your hearts by the knowl­edge that the dead of an age en­tered upon the eter­nal as­cent soon af­ter I left Joseph’s new tomb. I lived my life in the flesh to show how you can, through lov­ing ser­vice, be­come God-re­veal­ing to your fel­low men even as, by lov­ing you and serv­ing you, I have be­come God-re­veal­ing to you. I have lived among you as the Son of Man that you, and all other men, might know that you are all in­deed the sons of God. There­fore, go you now into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom of heaven to all men. Love all men as I have loved you; serve your fel­low mor­tals as I have served you. Freely you have re­ceived, freely give. Only tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem while I go to the Fa­ther, and un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth. He shall lead you into the en­larged truth, and I will go with you into all the world. I am with you al­ways, and my peace I leave with you.”

• hunger for t. essential to enter kingdom, salvation

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.”

• makes men free

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.

• makes men free

194:3.5On the day of Pen­te­cost the re­li­gion of Je­sus broke all na­tional re­stric­tions and racial fet­ters. It is for­ever true, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.” On this day the Spirit of Truth be­came the per­sonal gift from the Mas­ter to ev­ery mor­tal. This spirit was be­stowed for the pur­pose of qual­i­fy­ing be­liev­ers more ef­fec­tively to preach the gospel of the king­dom, but they mis­took the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­ceiv­ing the out­poured spirit for a part of the new gospel which they were un­con­sciously for­mu­lat­ing.

• warnings › confusing when dismembered or too much analyzed

195:5.2Truth of­ten be­comes con­fus­ing and even mis­lead­ing when it is dis­mem­bered, seg­re­gated, iso­lated, and too much an­a­lyzed. Liv­ing truth teaches the truth seeker aright only when it is em­braced in whole­ness and as a liv­ing spir­i­tual re­al­ity, not as a fact of ma­te­rial sci­ence or an in­spi­ra­tion of in­ter­ven­ing art.

• concept not inherent in physics

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

• sincere pursuit of t. leads to God

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.

• defined as › gospel of fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man is greatest

195:10.21The hope of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity is that it should cease to spon­sor the so­cial sys­tems and in­dus­trial poli­cies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion while it humbly bows it­self be­fore the cross it so valiantly ex­tols, there to learn anew from Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the great­est truths mor­tal man can ever hear—the liv­ing gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

• warnings › service of t. no substitute for religious experience

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.