values

17:3.5The Re­flec­tive Spir­its are not merely trans­mit­ting agents; they are re­ten­tive per­son­al­i­ties as well. Their off­spring, the se­con­a­phim, are also re­ten­tive or rec­ord per­son­al­i­ties. Ev­ery­thing of true spir­i­tual value is reg­is­tered in du­pli­cate, and one im­pres­sion is pre­served in the per­sonal equip­ment of some mem­ber of one of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of sec­o­raphic per­son­al­i­ties be­long­ing to the vast staff of the Re­flec­tive Spir­its.

103:1.4Ra­tio­nal­ism is wrong when it as­sumes that re­li­gion is at first a prim­i­tive be­lief in some­thing which is then fol­lowed by the pur­suit of val­ues. Re­li­gion is pri­mar­ily a pur­suit of val­ues, and then there for­mu­lates a sys­tem of in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs. It is much eas­ier for men to agree on re­li­gious val­ues—goals—than on be­liefs—in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this ex­plains how re­li­gion can agree on val­ues and goals while ex­hibit­ing the con­fus­ing phe­nom­e­non of main­tain­ing a be­lief in hun­dreds of con­flict­ing be­liefs—creeds. This also ex­plains why a given per­son can main­tain his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the face of giv­ing up or chang­ing many of his re­li­gious be­liefs. Re­li­gion per­sists in spite of rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in re­li­gious be­liefs. The­ol­ogy does not pro­duce re­li­gion; it is re­li­gion that pro­duces the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy.

7:1.1Ev­ery­thing taught con­cern­ing the im­ma­nence of God, his om­nipres­ence, om­nipo­tence, and om­ni­science, is equally true of the Son in the spir­i­tual do­mains. The pure and uni­ver­sal spirit grav­ity of all cre­ation, this ex­clu­sively spir­i­tual cir­cuit, leads di­rectly back to the per­son of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter on Par­a­dise. He pre­sides over the con­trol and op­er­a­tion of that ever-pres­ent and unerring spir­i­tual grasp of all true spirit val­ues. Thus does the Eter­nal Son ex­er­cise ab­so­lute spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty. He lit­er­ally holds all spirit re­al­i­ties and all spir­i­tu­al­ized val­ues, as it were, in the hol­low of his hand. The con­trol of uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual grav­ity is uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty.

100:1.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is markedly in­flu­enced by phys­i­cal health, in­her­ited tem­per­a­ment, and so­cial en­vi­ron­ment. But these tem­po­ral con­di­tions do not in­hibit in­ner spir­i­tual prog­ress by a soul ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There are pres­ent in all nor­mal mor­tals cer­tain in­nate drives to­ward growth and self-re­al­iza­tion which func­tion if they are not specif­i­cally in­hib­ited. The cer­tain tech­nique of fos­ter­ing this con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ment of the po­ten­tial of spir­i­tual growth is to main­tain an at­ti­tude of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues.

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

132:1.1It was with Ang­a­mon, the leader of the Sto­ics, that Je­sus had an all-night talk early dur­ing his so­journ in Rome. This man sub­se­quently be­came a great friend of Paul and proved to be one of the strong sup­port­ers of the Chris­tian church at Rome. In sub­stance, and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus taught Ang­a­mon:

132:1.2The stan­dard of true val­ues must be looked for in the spir­i­tual world and on di­vine lev­els of eter­nal re­al­ity. To an as­cend­ing mor­tal all lower and ma­te­rial stan­dards must be rec­og­nized as tran­sient, par­tial, and in­fe­rior. The sci­en­tist, as such, is lim­ited to the dis­cov­ery of the re­lat­ed­ness of ma­te­rial facts. Tech­ni­cally, he has no right to as­sert that he is ei­ther ma­te­ri­al­ist or ide­al­ist, for in so do­ing he has as­sumed to for­sake the at­ti­tude of a true sci­en­tist since any and all such as­ser­tions of at­ti­tude are the very essence of phi­los­o­phy.

132:1.3Un­less the moral in­sight and the spir­i­tual at­tain­ment of man­kind are pro­por­tion­ately aug­mented, the un­lim­ited ad­vance­ment of a purely ma­te­ri­al­is­tic cul­ture may even­tu­ally be­come a men­ace to civ­i­liza­tion. A purely ma­te­ri­al­is­tic sci­ence har­bors within it­self the po­ten­tial seed of the de­struc­tion of all sci­en­tific striv­ing, for this very at­ti­tude presages the ul­ti­mate col­lapse of a civ­i­liza­tion which has aban­doned its sense of moral val­ues and has re­pu­di­ated its spir­i­tual goal of at­tain­ment.

132:1.4The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic sci­en­tist and the ex­treme ide­al­ist are des­tined al­ways to be at log­ger­heads. This is not true of those sci­en­tists and ide­al­ists who are in pos­ses­sion of a com­mon stan­dard of high moral val­ues and spir­i­tual test lev­els. In ev­ery age sci­en­tists and re­li­gion­ists must rec­og­nize that they are on trial be­fore the bar of hu­man need. They must es­chew all war­fare be­tween them­selves while they strive valiantly to jus­tify their con­tin­ued sur­vival by en­hanced de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of hu­man prog­ress. If the so-called sci­ence or re­li­gion of any age is false, then must it ei­ther pu­rify its ac­tiv­i­ties or pass away be­fore the emer­gence of a ma­te­rial sci­ence or spir­i­tual re­li­gion of a truer and more wor­thy or­der.

67:3.9Cali­gas­tia, with a max­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and a vast ex­pe­ri­ence in uni­verse af­fairs, went astray—em­braced sin. Amadon, with a min­i­mum of in­tel­li­gence and ut­terly de­void of uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ence, re­mained stead­fast in the ser­vice of the uni­verse and in loy­alty to his as­so­ciate. Van uti­lized both mind and spirit in a mag­nif­i­cent and ef­fec­tive com­bi­na­tion of in­tel­lec­tual de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual in­sight, thereby achiev­ing an ex­pe­ri­en­tial level of per­son­al­ity re­al­iza­tion of the high­est at­tain­able or­der. Mind and spirit, when fully united, are po­ten­tial for the cre­ation of super­hu­man val­ues, even mor­ontia re­al­i­ties.

• spiritual v. unceasingly drawn inward to God

14:2.7The uni­ver­sal spir­i­tual grav­ity of the Eter­nal Son is amaz­ingly ac­tive through­out the cen­tral uni­verse. All spirit val­ues and spir­i­tual per­son­al­i­ties are un­ceas­ingly drawn in­ward to­wards the abode of the Gods. This God­ward urge is in­tense and in­es­cap­able. The am­bi­tion to at­tain God is stronger in the cen­tral uni­verse, not be­cause spirit grav­ity is stronger than in the out­ly­ing uni­verses, but be­cause those be­ings who have at­tained Ha­vona are more fully spir­i­tu­al­ized and hence more re­spon­sive to the ever-pres­ent ac­tion of the uni­ver­sal spirit-grav­ity pull of the Eter­nal Son.

• distinction between what is, and what has, value

100:3.3In the con­tem­pla­tion of val­ues you must dis­tin­guish be­tween that which is value and that which has value. You must rec­og­nize the re­la­tion be­tween plea­sur­able ac­tiv­i­ties and their mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion and en­hanced re­al­iza­tion on ever pro­gres­sively higher and higher lev­els of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• depend on fact of relationships

100:3.5Val­ues can never be static; re­al­ity sig­ni­fies change, growth. Change with­out growth, ex­pan­sion of mean­ing and ex­al­ta­tion of value, is val­ue­less—is po­ten­tial evil. The greater the qual­ity of cos­mic adap­ta­tion, the more of mean­ing any ex­pe­ri­ence pos­sesses. Val­ues are not con­cep­tual il­lu­sions; they are real, but al­ways they de­pend on the fact of re­la­tion­ships. Val­ues are al­ways both ac­tual and po­ten­tial—not what was, but what is and is to be.

• best discovered in associates’ motivations
• spiritual experience reveals true v.

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

• spiritual v. comprehended by doing will of God

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.

• quality represents estimate of v.; v. are felt by soul

111:3.6Mind knows quan­tity, re­al­ity, mean­ings. But qual­ity—val­ues—is felt. That which feels is the mu­tual cre­ation of mind, which knows, and the as­so­ci­ated spirit, which re­al­ity-izes.

• quality represents estimate of v.; v. are felt by soul

133:5.7Quan­tity may be iden­ti­fied as a fact, thus be­com­ing a sci­en­tific uni­for­mity. Qual­ity, be­ing a mat­ter of mind in­ter­pre­ta­tion, rep­re­sents an es­ti­mate of val­ues, and must, there­fore, re­main an ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual. When both sci­ence and re­li­gion be­come less dog­matic and more tol­er­ant of crit­i­cism, phi­los­o­phy will then be­gin to achieve unity in the in­tel­li­gent com­pre­hen­sion of the uni­verse.

• faith required to detect spiritual v.

195:7.4Par­a­dise val­ues of eter­nity and in­fin­ity, of truth, beauty, and good­ness, are con­cealed within the facts of the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verses of time and space. But it re­quires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mor­tal to de­tect and dis­cern these spir­i­tual val­ues.

• not psychological projections

195:7.5The re­al­i­ties and val­ues of spir­i­tual prog­ress are not a “psy­cho­logic pro­jec­tion”—a mere glo­ri­fied day­dream of the ma­te­rial mind. Such things are the spir­i­tual fore­casts of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, the spirit of God liv­ing in the mind of man. And let not your dab­blings with the faintly glimpsed find­ings of “rel­a­tiv­ity” dis­turb your con­cepts of the eter­nity and in­fin­ity of God. And in all your so­lic­i­ta­tion con­cern­ing the ne­ces­sity for self-ex­pres­sion do not make the mis­take of fail­ing to pro­vide for Ad­juster-ex­pres­sion, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of your real and bet­ter self.

• human mind discovers and chooses v.; does not create v.

196:3.10The hu­man mind does not cre­ate real val­ues; hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence does not yield uni­verse in­sight. Con­cern­ing in­sight, the rec­og­ni­tion of moral val­ues and the dis­cern­ment of spir­i­tual mean­ings, all that the hu­man mind can do is to dis­cover, rec­og­nize, in­ter­pret, and choose.

196:3.11The moral val­ues of the uni­verse be­come in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sions by the ex­er­cise of the three ba­sic judg­ments, or choices, of the mor­tal mind:

196:3.121. Self-judg­ment—moral choice.

196:3.132. So­cial-judg­ment—eth­i­cal choice.

196:3.143. God-judg­ment—re­li­gious choice.

• only spirit content is imperishable

196:3.35And God-con­scious­ness is equiv­a­lent to the in­te­gra­tion of the self with the uni­verse, and on its high­est lev­els of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Only the spirit con­tent of any value is im­per­ish­able. Even that which is true, beau­ti­ful, and good may not per­ish in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. If man does not choose to sur­vive, then does the sur­viv­ing Ad­juster con­serve those re­al­i­ties born of love and nur­tured in ser­vice. And all these things are a part of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Fa­ther is liv­ing love, and this life of the Fa­ther is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Fa­ther is in his Sons’ sons—mor­tal men. When all is said and done, the Fa­ther idea is still the high­est hu­man con­cept of God.

63:4.4These early men pos­sessed a touch­ing af­fec­tion for their com­rades and cer­tainly had a real, al­though crude, idea of friend­ship. It was a com­mon sight in later times, dur­ing their con­stantly re­cur­ring bat­tles with the in­fe­rior tribes, to see one of these prim­i­tive men valiantly fight­ing with one hand while he strug­gled on, try­ing to pro­tect and save an in­jured fel­low war­rior. Many of the most no­ble and highly hu­man traits of sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment were touch­ingly fore­shad­owed in these prim­i­tive peo­ples.

109:3.2On cer­tain prim­i­tive worlds (the se­ries one group) the Ad­juster in­dwells the mind of the crea­ture as an ex­pe­ri­en­tial train­ing, chiefly for self-cul­ture and pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment. Vir­gin Ad­justers are usu­ally sent to such worlds dur­ing the ear­lier times when prim­i­tive men are ar­riv­ing in the val­ley of de­ci­sion, but when com­par­a­tively few will elect to as­cend the moral heights be­yond the hills of self-mas­tery and char­ac­ter ac­quire­ment to at­tain the higher lev­els of emerg­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity. (Many, how­ever, who fail of Ad­juster fu­sion do sur­vive as Spirit-fused as­cend­ers.) The Ad­justers re­ceive valu­able train­ing and ac­quire won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence in tran­sient as­so­ci­a­tion with prim­i­tive minds, and they are able sub­se­quently to uti­lize this ex­pe­ri­ence for the ben­e­fit of su­pe­rior be­ings on other worlds. Noth­ing of sur­vival value is ever lost in all the wide uni­verse.

109:4.5I have ob­served a Thought Ad­juster in­dwelling a mind on Uran­tia who has, ac­cord­ing to the rec­ords on Uversa, in­dwelt fif­teen minds pre­vi­ously in Or­von­ton. We do not know whether this Mon­i­tor has had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences in other super­uni­verses, but I sus­pect so. This is a mar­velous Ad­juster and one of the most use­ful and po­tent forces on Uran­tia dur­ing this pres­ent age. What oth­ers have lost, in that they re­fused to sur­vive, this hu­man be­ing (and your whole world) now gains. From him who has not sur­vival qual­i­ties, shall be taken away even that ex­pe­ri­enced Ad­juster which he now has, while to him who has sur­vival prospects, shall be given even the pre-ex­pe­ri­enced Ad­juster of a sloth­ful de­serter.

109:6.1Ad­justers never fail; noth­ing worth sur­viv­ing is ever lost; ev­ery mean­ing­ful value in ev­ery will crea­ture is cer­tain of sur­vival, ir­re­spec­tive of the sur­vival or non­sur­vival of the mean­ing-dis­cov­er­ing or eval­u­at­ing per­son­al­ity. And so it is, a mor­tal crea­ture may re­ject sur­vival; still the life ex­pe­ri­ence is not wasted; the eter­nal Ad­juster car­ries the worth-while fea­tures of such an ap­par­ent life of fail­ure over into some other world and there be­stows these sur­viv­ing mean­ings and val­ues upon some higher type of mor­tal mind, one of sur­vival ca­pac­ity. No worth-while ex­pe­ri­ence ever hap­pens in vain; no true mean­ing or real value ever per­ishes.

109:6.2As re­lated to fu­sion can­di­dates, if a Mys­tery Mon­i­tor is de­serted by the mor­tal as­so­ciate, if the hu­man part­ner de­clines to pur­sue the as­cend­ing ca­reer, when re­leased by nat­u­ral death (or prior thereto), the Ad­juster car­ries away ev­ery­thing of sur­vival value which has evolved in the mind of that non­sur­viv­ing crea­ture. If an Ad­juster should re­peat­edly fail to at­tain fu­sion per­son­al­ity be­cause of the non­sur­vival of suc­ces­sive hu­man sub­jects, and if this Mon­i­tor should sub­se­quently be per­son­al­ized, all the ac­quired ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing in­dwelt and mas­tered all these mor­tal minds would be­come the ac­tual pos­ses­sion of such a newly Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, an en­dow­ment to be en­joyed and uti­lized through­out all fu­ture ages. A Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of this or­der is a com­pos­ite as­sem­bly of all the sur­vival traits of all his for­mer crea­ture hosts.

109:6.3When Ad­justers of long uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ence vol­un­teer to in­dwell di­vine Sons on be­stowal mis­sions, they full well know that per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment can never be achieved through this ser­vice. But of­ten does the Fa­ther of spir­its grant per­son­al­ity to these vol­un­teers and es­tab­lish them as di­rec­tors of their kind. These are the per­son­al­i­ties hon­ored with au­thor­ity on Di­vin­ing­ton. And their unique na­tures em­body the mo­saic hu­man­ity of their mul­ti­ple ex­pe­ri­ences of mor­tal in­dwelling and also the spirit tran­script of the hu­man di­vin­ity of the Par­a­dise be­stowal Son of the ter­mi­nal in­dwelling ex­pe­ri­ence.

109:6.4The ac­tiv­i­ties of Ad­justers in your lo­cal uni­verse are di­rected by the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don, that very Mon­i­tor who guided him step by step when he lived his hu­man life in the flesh of Joshua ben Joseph. Faith­ful to his trust was this ex­traor­di­nary Ad­juster, and wisely did this valiant Mon­i­tor di­rect the hu­man na­ture, ever guid­ing the mor­tal mind of the Par­a­dise Son in the choos­ing of the path of the Fa­ther’s per­fect will. This Ad­juster had pre­vi­ously served with Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek in the days of Abra­ham and had en­gaged in tremen­dous ex­ploits both pre­vi­ous to this in­dwelling and be­tween these be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ences.

109:6.5This Ad­juster did in­deed tri­umph in Je­sus’ hu­man mind—that mind which in each of life’s re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions main­tained a con­se­crated ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, say­ing, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” Such de­ci­sive con­se­cra­tion con­sti­tutes the true pass­port from the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man na­ture to the fi­nal­ity of di­vine at­tain­ment.

109:6.6This same Ad­juster now re­flects in the in­scrutable na­ture of his mighty per­son­al­ity the pre­bap­tismal hu­man­ity of Joshua ben Joseph, the eter­nal and liv­ing tran­script of the eter­nal and liv­ing val­ues which the great­est of all Uran­tians cre­ated out of the hum­ble cir­cum­stances of a com­mon­place life as it was lived to the com­plete ex­haus­tion of the spir­i­tual val­ues at­tain­able in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

109:6.7Ev­ery­thing of per­ma­nent value which is in­trusted to an Ad­juster is as­sured eter­nal sur­vival. In cer­tain in­stances the Mon­i­tor holds these pos­ses­sions for be­stowal on a mor­tal mind of fu­ture in­dwelling; in oth­ers, and upon per­son­al­iza­tion, these sur­viv­ing and con­served re­al­i­ties are held in trust for fu­ture uti­liza­tion in the ser­vice of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse.

102:5.3You can psy­chol­o­gize evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion but not the per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence re­li­gion of spir­i­tual ori­gin. Hu­man moral­ity may rec­og­nize val­ues, but only re­li­gion can con­serve, ex­alt, and spir­i­tu­al­ize such val­ues. But not­with­stand­ing such ac­tions, re­li­gion is some­thing more than emo­tion­al­ized moral­ity. Re­li­gion is to moral­ity as love is to duty, as son­ship is to servi­tude, as essence is to sub­stance. Moral­ity dis­closes an al­mighty Con­trol­ler, a De­ity to be served; re­li­gion dis­closes an all-lov­ing Fa­ther, a God to be wor­shiped and loved. And again this is be­cause the spir­i­tual po­ten­tial­ity of re­li­gion is dom­i­nant over the duty ac­tu­al­ity of the moral­ity of evo­lu­tion.

• pray only for v., not things

91:8.13Prayer is not a tech­nique of es­cape from con­flict but rather a stim­u­lus to growth in the very face of con­flict. Pray only for val­ues, not things; for growth, not for grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• v. must not become disproportionate

143:6.3The first night of the camp on Mount Ger­izim the apos­tles ex­pected that Je­sus would re­buke them for their at­ti­tude to­ward the woman at Ja­cob’s well, but he made no ref­er­ence to the mat­ter. In­stead he gave them that mem­o­rable talk on “The re­al­i­ties which are cen­tral in the king­dom of God.” In any re­li­gion it is very easy to al­low val­ues to be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and to per­mit facts to oc­cupy the place of truth in one’s the­ol­ogy. The fact of the cross be­came the very cen­ter of sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity; but it is not the cen­tral truth of the re­li­gion which may be de­rived from the life and teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• no attainable true v. apart from God

160:5.8I am not only in­trigued by the con­sum­mate ide­als of this re­li­gion of your Mas­ter, but I am might­ily moved to pro­fess my be­lief in his an­nounce­ment that these ide­als of spirit re­al­i­ties are at­tain­able; that you and I can en­ter upon this long and eter­nal ad­ven­ture with his as­sur­ance of the cer­tainty of our ul­ti­mate ar­rival at the por­tals of Par­a­dise. My breth­ren, I am a be­liever, I have em­barked; I am on my way with you in this eter­nal ven­ture. The Mas­ter says he came from the Fa­ther, and that he will show us the way. I am fully per­suaded he speaks the truth. I am fi­nally con­vinced that there are no at­tain­able ide­als of re­al­ity or val­ues of per­fec­tion apart from the eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.