water

159:2.1Je­sus went over to Gamala to visit John and those who worked with him at that place. That evening, af­ter the ses­sion of ques­tions and an­swers, John said to Je­sus: “Mas­ter, yes­ter­day I went over to Ashtaroth to see a man who was teach­ing in your name and even claim­ing to be able to cast out dev­ils. Now this fel­low had never been with us, nei­ther does he fol­low af­ter us; there­fore I for­bade him to do such things.” Then said Je­sus: “For­bid him not. Do you not per­ceive that this gospel of the king­dom shall pres­ently be pro­claimed in all the world? How can you ex­pect that all who will be­lieve the gospel shall be sub­ject to your di­rec­tion? Re­joice that al­ready our teach­ing has be­gun to man­i­fest it­self be­yond the bounds of our per­sonal in­flu­ence. Do you not see, John, that those who pro­fess to do great works in my name must even­tu­ally sup­port our cause? They cer­tainly will not be quick to speak evil of me. My son, in mat­ters of this sort it would be bet­ter for you to reckon that he who is not against us is for us. In the gen­er­a­tions to come many who are not wholly wor­thy will do many strange things in my name, but I will not for­bid them. I tell you that, even when a cup of cold wa­ter is given to a thirsty soul, the Fa­ther’s mes­sen­gers shall ever make rec­ord of such a ser­vice of love.”

136:7.3Un­der­stand­ing all of this and know­ing that the Mas­ter re­fused to work in de­fi­ance of his es­tab­lished laws of na­ture in so far as his per­sonal con­duct was con­cerned, you know of a cer­tainty that he never walked on the wa­ter nor did any­thing else which was an out­rage to his ma­te­rial or­der of ad­min­is­ter­ing the world; al­ways, of course, bear­ing in mind that there had, as yet, been found no way whereby he could be wholly de­liv­ered from the lack of con­trol over the el­e­ment of time in con­nec­tion with those mat­ters put un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster.

137:4.10Mary was danc­ing with glee. She did not know how the wine would be pro­duced, but she con­fi­dently be­lieved that she had fi­nally per­suaded her first-born son to as­sert his au­thor­ity, to dare to step forth and claim his po­si­tion and ex­hibit his Mes­sianic power. And, be­cause of the pres­ence and as­so­ci­a­tion of cer­tain uni­verse pow­ers and per­son­al­i­ties, of which all those pres­ent were wholly ig­no­rant, she was not to be dis­ap­pointed. The wine Mary de­sired and which Je­sus, the God-man, hu­manly and sym­pa­thet­i­cally wished for, was forth­com­ing.

137:4.11Near at hand stood six wa­ter­pots of stone, filled with wa­ter, hold­ing about twenty gal­lons apiece. This wa­ter was in­tended for sub­se­quent use in the fi­nal pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies of the wed­ding cel­e­bra­tion. The com­mo­tion of the ser­vants about these huge stone ves­sels, un­der the busy di­rec­tion of his mother, at­tracted Je­sus’ at­ten­tion, and go­ing over, he ob­served that they were draw­ing wine out of them by the pitcher­ful.

137:4.12It was grad­u­ally dawn­ing upon Je­sus what had hap­pened. Of all per­sons pres­ent at the mar­riage feast of Cana, Je­sus was the most sur­prised. Oth­ers had ex­pected him to work a won­der, but that was just what he had pur­posed not to do. And then the Son of Man re­called the ad­mo­ni­tion of his Per­son­al­ized Thought Ad­juster in the hills. He re­counted how the Ad­juster had warned him about the in­abil­ity of any power or per­son­al­ity to de­prive him of the cre­ator pre­rog­a­tive of in­de­pen­dence of time. On this oc­ca­sion power trans­form­ers, mid­way­ers, and all other re­quired per­son­al­i­ties were as­sem­bled near the wa­ter and other nec­es­sary el­e­ments, and in the face of the ex­pressed wish of the Uni­verse Cre­ator Sov­er­eign, there was no es­cap­ing the in­stan­ta­neous ap­pear­ance of wine. And this oc­cur­rence was made dou­bly cer­tain since the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster had sig­ni­fied that the ex­e­cu­tion of the Son’s de­sire was in no way a con­tra­ven­tion of the Fa­ther’s will.

137:4.13But this was in no sense a mir­a­cle. No law of na­ture was mod­i­fied, ab­ro­gated, or even tran­scended. Noth­ing hap­pened but the ab­ro­ga­tion of time in as­so­ci­a­tion with the ce­les­tial as­sem­bly of the chem­i­cal el­e­ments req­ui­site for the elab­o­ra­tion of the wine. At Cana on this oc­ca­sion the agents of the Cre­ator made wine just as they do by the or­di­nary nat­u­ral pro­cesses ex­cept that they did it in­de­pen­dently of time and with the in­ter­ven­tion of super­hu­man agen­cies in the mat­ter of the space as­sem­bly of the nec­es­sary chem­i­cal in­gre­di­ents.

138:8.53. The turn­ing of the wa­ter into wine at Cana. Je­sus se­ri­ously charged them, say­ing, “Tell no man about the wa­ter and the wine.”

46:2.2There are thou­sands upon thou­sands of small lakes but no rag­ing rivers nor ex­pan­sive oceans. There is no rain­fall, nei­ther storms nor bliz­zards, on any of the ar­chi­tec­tural worlds, but there is the daily pre­cip­i­ta­tion of the con­den­sa­tion of mois­ture dur­ing the time of low­est tem­per­a­ture at­tend­ing the light re­ces­sion. (The dew point is higher on a three-gas world than on a two-gas planet like Uran­tia.) The phys­i­cal plant life and the mor­ontia world of liv­ing things both re­quire mois­ture, but this is largely sup­plied by the sub­soil sys­tem of cir­cu­la­tion which ex­tends all over the sphere, even up to the very tops of the high­lands. This wa­ter sys­tem is not en­tirely sub­sur­face, for there are many canals in­ter­con­nect­ing the sparkling lakes of Je­ru­sem.

43:1.2The wa­ter of Eden­tia and sim­i­lar ar­chi­tec­tural spheres is no dif­fer­ent from the wa­ter of the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets. The wa­ter sys­tems of such spheres are both sur­face and sub­ter­ranean, and the mois­ture is in con­stant cir­cu­la­tion. Eden­tia can be cir­cum­nav­i­gated via these var­i­ous wa­ter routes, though the chief chan­nel of trans­porta­tion is the at­mo­sphere. Spirit be­ings would nat­u­rally travel above the sur­face of the sphere, while the mor­ontia and ma­te­rial be­ings make use of ma­te­rial and semi­ma­te­rial means to ne­go­ti­ate at­mo­spheric pas­sage.

41:7.13These so­lar tem­per­a­tures op­er­ate to enor­mously speed up the ul­ti­ma­tons and the elec­trons, at least such of the lat­ter as con­tinue to main­tain their ex­is­tence un­der these con­di­tions. You will re­al­ize what high tem­per­a­ture means by way of the ac­cel­er­a­tion of ul­ti­ma­tonic and elec­tronic ac­tiv­i­ties when you pause to con­sider that one drop of or­di­nary wa­ter con­tains over one bil­lion tril­lions of atoms. This is the en­ergy of more than one hun­dred horse­power ex­erted con­tin­u­ously for two years. The to­tal heat now given out by the so­lar sys­tem sun each sec­ond is suf­fi­cient to boil all the wa­ter in all the oceans on Uran­tia in just one sec­ond of time.

41:10.3The phys­i­cal as­pects of the in­di­vid­ual worlds are largely de­ter­mined by mode of ori­gin, as­tro­nom­i­cal sit­u­a­tion, and phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. Age, size, rate of rev­o­lu­tion, and ve­loc­ity through space are also de­ter­min­ing fac­tors. Both the gas-con­trac­tion and the solid-ac­cre­tion worlds are char­ac­ter­ized by moun­tains and, dur­ing their ear­lier life, when not too small, by wa­ter and air. The molten-split and col­li­sional worlds are some­times with­out ex­ten­sive moun­tain ranges.

66:5.21Be­fore the Prince’s ar­rival, bathing had been an ex­clu­sively re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. It was in­deed dif­fi­cult to per­suade prim­i­tive men to wash their bod­ies as a health prac­tice. Lut fi­nally in­duced the re­li­gious teach­ers to in­clude cleans­ing with wa­ter as a part of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies to be prac­ticed in con­nec­tion with the noon­time de­vo­tions, once a week, in the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all.

• best means of resisting ghosts

83:4.6Fire and wa­ter were al­ways con­sid­ered the best means of re­sist­ing ghosts and evil spir­its; hence al­tar fires and lighted can­dles, as well as the bap­tismal sprin­kling of holy wa­ter, were usu­ally in ev­i­dence at wed­dings. For a long time it was cus­tom­ary to set a false wed­ding day and then sud­denly post­pone the event so as to put the ghosts and spir­its off the track.

• best means of resisting ghosts

84:1.4Many early peo­ples as­so­ci­ated ghosts with the sea; hence vir­gins were greatly re­stricted in their bathing prac­tices; young women were far more afraid of bathing in the sea at high tide than of hav­ing sex re­la­tions. De­formed or pre­ma­ture ba­bies were re­garded as the young of an­i­mals which had found their way into a woman’s body as a re­sult of care­less bathing or through malev­o­lent spirit ac­tiv­ity. Sav­ages, of course, thought noth­ing of stran­gling such off­spring at birth.

• best means of resisting ghosts

87:6.12Wa­ter was re­garded as the best pro­tec­tion against ghosts. Holy wa­ter was su­pe­rior to all other forms, wa­ter in which the priests had washed their feet. Both fire and wa­ter were be­lieved to con­sti­tute im­pass­able bar­ri­ers to ghosts. The Ro­mans car­ried wa­ter three times around the corpse; in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury the body is sprin­kled with holy wa­ter, and hand wash­ing at the ceme­tery is still a Jew­ish rit­ual. Bap­tism was a fea­ture of the later wa­ter rit­ual; prim­i­tive bathing was a re­li­gious cer­e­mony. Only in re­cent times has bathing be­come a san­i­tary prac­tice.

• early fetish

88:1.2The first fe­tishes were pe­cu­liarly marked peb­bles, and “sa­cred stones” have ever since been sought by man; a string of beads was once a col­lec­tion of sa­cred stones, a bat­tery of charms. Many tribes had fe­tish stones, but few have sur­vived as have the Kaaba and the Stone of Scone. Fire and wa­ter were also among the early fe­tishes, and fire wor­ship, to­gether with be­lief in holy wa­ter, still sur­vives.

• potent fetish in treating disease; ancients enjoyed hot springs

90:4.6Since wa­ter was a po­tent fe­tish, it was uti­lized in the treat­ment of many ail­ments. For long it was be­lieved that the spirit caus­ing the sick­ness could be elim­i­nated by sweat­ing. Va­por baths were highly re­garded; nat­u­ral hot springs soon blos­somed as prim­i­tive health re­sorts. Early man dis­cov­ered that heat would re­lieve pain; he used sun­light, fresh an­i­mal or­gans, hot clay, and hot stones, and many of these meth­ods are still em­ployed. Rhythm was prac­ticed in an ef­fort to in­flu­ence the spir­its; the tom-toms were uni­ver­sal.

162:4.3Sev­enty bul­locks were sac­ri­ficed dur­ing the feast, the sym­bol of the sev­enty na­tions of hea­then­dom. The cer­e­mony of the out­pour­ing of the wa­ter sym­bol­ized the out­pour­ing of the di­vine spirit. This cer­e­mony of the wa­ter fol­lowed the sun­rise pro­ces­sion of the priests and Levites. The wor­shipers passed down the steps lead­ing from the court of Is­rael to the court of the women while suc­ces­sive blasts were blown upon the sil­very trum­pets. And then the faith­ful marched on to­ward the Beau­ti­ful Gate, which opened upon the court of the gen­tiles. Here they turned about to face west­ward, to re­peat their chants, and to con­tinue their march for the sym­bolic wa­ter.

162:6.3At the con­clu­sion of this early morn­ing ser­vice Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the mul­ti­tude, say­ing: “Have you not read in the Scrip­ture: ‘Be­hold, as the wa­ters are poured out upon the dry ground and spread over the parched soil, so will I give the spirit of ho­li­ness to be poured out upon your chil­dren for a bless­ing even to your chil­dren’s chil­dren’? Why will you thirst for the min­istry of the spirit while you seek to wa­ter your souls with the tra­di­tions of men, poured from the bro­ken pitch­ers of cer­e­mo­nial ser­vice? That which you see go­ing on about this tem­ple is the way in which your fa­thers sought to sym­bol­ize the be­stowal of the di­vine spirit upon the chil­dren of faith, and you have done well to per­pet­u­ate these sym­bols, even down to this day. But now has come to this gen­er­a­tion the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther of spir­its through the be­stowal of his Son, and all of this will cer­tainly be fol­lowed by the be­stowal of the spirit of the Fa­ther and the Son upon the chil­dren of men. To ev­ery one who has faith shall this be­stowal of the spirit be­come the true teacher of the way which leads to life ev­er­last­ing, to the true wa­ters of life in the king­dom of heaven on earth and in the Fa­ther’s Par­a­dise over there.”

12:9.3Math­e­mat­ics, ma­te­rial sci­ence, is in­dis­pens­able to the in­tel­li­gent dis­cus­sion of the ma­te­rial as­pects of the uni­verse, but such knowl­edge is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of the higher re­al­iza­tion of truth or of the per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of phys­i­cal en­ergy, the sum of two or more things is very of­ten some­thing more than, or some­thing dif­fer­ent from, the pre­dictable ad­di­tive con­se­quences of such unions. The en­tire sci­ence of math­e­mat­ics, the whole do­main of phi­los­o­phy, the high­est physics or chem­istry, could not pre­dict or know that the union of two gaseous hy­dro­gen atoms with one gaseous oxy­gen atom would re­sult in a new and qual­i­ta­tively super­ad­di­tive sub­stance—liq­uid wa­ter. The un­der­stand­ing knowl­edge of this one phys­io­chem­i­cal phe­nom­e­non should have pre­vented the de­vel­op­ment of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic phi­los­o­phy and mech­a­nis­tic cos­mol­ogy.

12:9.4Tech­ni­cal anal­y­sis does not re­veal what a per­son or a thing can do. For ex­am­ple: Wa­ter is used ef­fec­tively to ex­tin­guish fire. That wa­ter will put out fire is a fact of ev­ery­day ex­pe­ri­ence, but no anal­y­sis of wa­ter could ever be made to dis­close such a prop­erty. Anal­y­sis de­ter­mines that wa­ter is com­posed of hy­dro­gen and oxy­gen; a fur­ther study of these el­e­ments dis­closes that oxy­gen is the real sup­porter of com­bus­tion and that hy­dro­gen will it­self freely burn.

1:7.2Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of wa­ter might find unity with the ocean. Man at­tains di­vine union by pro­gres­sive re­cip­ro­cal spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, by per­son­al­ity in­ter­course with the per­sonal God, by in­creas­ingly at­tain­ing the di­vine na­ture through whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent con­for­mity to the di­vine will. Such a sub­lime re­la­tion­ship can ex­ist only be­tween per­son­al­i­ties.

69:9.12Wa­ter holes and wells were among the first pri­vate pos­ses­sions. The whole fe­tish prac­tice was uti­lized to guard wa­ter holes, wells, trees, crops, and honey. Fol­low­ing the loss of faith in the fe­tish, laws were evolved to pro­tect pri­vate be­long­ings. But game laws, the right to hunt, long pre­ceded land laws. The Amer­i­can red man never un­der­stood pri­vate own­er­ship of land; he could not com­pre­hend the white man’s view.

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

124:1.8This win­ter and the next were the cold­est in Naz­a­reth for many decades. Je­sus had seen snow on the moun­tains, and sev­eral times it had fallen in Naz­a­reth, re­main­ing on the ground only a short time; but not un­til this win­ter had he seen ice. The fact that wa­ter could be had as a solid, a liq­uid, and a va­por—he had long pon­dered over the es­cap­ing steam from the boil­ing pots—caused the lad to think a great deal about the phys­i­cal world and its con­sti­tu­tion; and yet the per­son­al­ity em­bod­ied in this grow­ing youth was all this while the ac­tual cre­ator and or­ga­nizer of all these things through­out a far-flung uni­verse.