wisdom

• infinite w. arbiter of proportions of justice and mercy

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

• God’s w. consists in his perfect insight
• sources of wisdom › learned only by experiencing tribulation, adjustment to failure

4:3.4God re­pents of noth­ing he has ever done, now does, or ever will do. He is all-wise as well as all-pow­er­ful. Man’s wis­dom grows out of the tri­als and er­rors of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; God’s wis­dom con­sists in the un­qual­i­fied per­fec­tion of his in­fi­nite uni­verse in­sight, and this di­vine fore­knowl­edge ef­fec­tively di­rects the cre­ative free will.

• sources of wisdom › from studying origin, history, and destiny of situation

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

• sources of wisdom › Perfectors of Wisdom

19:2.3Wher­ever and when­ever a Per­fec­tor of Wis­dom func­tions, there and then di­vine wis­dom func­tions. There is ac­tu­al­ity of pres­ence and per­fec­tion of man­i­fes­ta­tion in the knowl­edge and wis­dom rep­re­sented in the do­ings of these mighty and ma­jes­tic per­son­al­i­ties. They do not re­flect the wis­dom of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity; they are that wis­dom. They are the sources of wis­dom for all teach­ers in the ap­pli­ca­tion of uni­verse knowl­edge; they are the foun­tains of dis­cre­tion and the well­springs of dis­crim­i­na­tion to the in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing and dis­cern­ment in all uni­verses.

• sources of wisdom › divine insight and personal experience

19:2.4Wis­dom is two­fold in ori­gin, be­ing de­rived from the per­fec­tion of di­vine in­sight in­her­ent in per­fect be­ings and from the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence ac­quired by evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures. The Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom are the di­vine wis­dom of the Par­a­dise per­fec­tion of De­ity in­sight. Their ad­min­is­tra­tive as­so­ciates on Uversa, the Mighty Mes­sen­gers, Those with­out Name and Num­ber, and Those High in Au­thor­ity, when act­ing to­gether, are the uni­verse wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence. A di­vine be­ing can have per­fec­tion of di­vine knowl­edge. An evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal can some­time at­tain per­fec­tion of as­cen­dant knowl­edge, but nei­ther of these be­ings alone ex­hausts the po­ten­tials of all pos­si­ble wis­dom. Ac­cord­ingly, when­ever in the con­duct of the super­uni­verse it is de­sired to achieve the max­i­mum of ad­min­is­tra­tive wis­dom, these per­fec­tors of the wis­dom of di­vine in­sight are al­ways as­so­ci­ated with those as­cen­dant per­son­al­i­ties who have come up to the high re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of super­uni­verse au­thor­ity through the ex­pe­ri­en­tial tribu­la­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary pro­gres­sion.

• perfection of understanding is indispensable to Paradise perfection

26:4.14Faith has won for the as­cen­dant pil­grim a per­fec­tion of pur­pose which ad­mits the chil­dren of time to the por­tals of eter­nity. Now must the pil­grim helpers be­gin the work of de­vel­op­ing that per­fec­tion of un­der­stand­ing and that tech­nique of com­pre­hen­sion which are so in­dis­pens­able to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion of per­son­al­ity.

26:4.15Abil­ity to com­pre­hend is the mor­tal pass­port to Par­a­dise. Will­ing­ness to be­lieve is the key to Ha­vona. The ac­cep­tance of son­ship, co-op­er­a­tion with the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the price of evo­lu­tion­ary sur­vival.

27:6.1Next to the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of wor­ship is the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of phi­los­o­phy. Never do you climb so high or ad­vance so far that there do not re­main a thou­sand mys­ter­ies which de­mand the em­ploy­ment of phi­los­o­phy in an at­tempted so­lu­tion.

• sources of wisdom › divine insight and personal experience

27:6.2The mas­ter philoso­phers of Par­a­dise de­light to lead the minds of its in­hab­i­tants, both na­tive and as­cen­dant, in the ex­hil­a­rat­ing pur­suit of at­tempt­ing to solve uni­verse prob­lems. These super­aphic mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy are the “wise men of heaven,” the be­ings of wis­dom who make use of the truth of knowl­edge and the facts of ex­pe­ri­ence in their ef­forts to mas­ter the un­known. With them knowl­edge at­tains to truth and ex­pe­ri­ence as­cends to wis­dom. On Par­a­dise the as­cen­dant per­son­al­i­ties of space ex­pe­ri­ence the heights of be­ing: They have knowl­edge; they know the truth; they may phi­los­o­phize—think the truth; they may even seek to en­com­pass the con­cepts of the Ul­ti­mate and at­tempt to grasp the tech­niques of the Ab­so­lutes.

• 70 divisions of

27:6.3At the south­ern ex­trem­ity of the vast Par­a­dise do­main the mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy con­duct elab­o­rate courses in the sev­enty func­tional di­vi­sions of wis­dom. Here they dis­course upon the plans and pur­poses of In­fin­ity and seek to co-or­di­nate the ex­pe­ri­ences, and to com­pose the knowl­edge, of all who have ac­cess to their wis­dom. They have de­vel­oped a highly spe­cial­ized at­ti­tude to­ward var­i­ous uni­verse prob­lems, but their fi­nal con­clu­sions are al­ways in uni­form agree­ment.

27:6.4These Par­a­dise philoso­phers teach by ev­ery pos­si­ble method of in­struc­tion, in­clud­ing the higher graph tech­nique of Ha­vona and cer­tain Par­a­dise meth­ods of com­mu­ni­cat­ing in­for­ma­tion. All of these higher tech­niques of im­part­ing knowl­edge and con­vey­ing ideas are ut­terly be­yond the com­pre­hen­sion ca­pac­ity of even the most highly de­vel­oped hu­man mind. One hour’s in­struc­tion on Par­a­dise would be the equiv­a­lent of ten thou­sand years of the word-mem­ory meth­ods of Uran­tia. You can­not grasp such com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­niques, and there is sim­ply noth­ing in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with which they may be com­pared, noth­ing to which they can be likened.

27:6.5The mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy take su­preme plea­sure in im­part­ing their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses to those be­ings who have as­cended from the worlds of space. And while phi­los­o­phy can never be as set­tled in its con­clu­sions as the facts of knowl­edge and the truths of ex­pe­ri­ence, yet, when you have lis­tened to these pri­mary super­na­phim dis­course upon the un­solved prob­lems of eter­nity and the per­for­mances of the Ab­so­lutes, you will feel a cer­tain and last­ing sat­is­fac­tion con­cern­ing these un­mas­tered ques­tions.

27:6.6These in­tel­lec­tual pur­suits of Par­a­dise are not broad­cast; the phi­los­o­phy of per­fec­tion is avail­able only to those who are per­son­ally pres­ent. The en­cir­cling cre­ations know of these teach­ings only from those who have passed through this ex­pe­ri­ence, and who have sub­se­quently car­ried this wis­dom out to the uni­verses of space.

• sources of wisdom › let him who lacks w. ask

28:5.8It is writ­ten, “If any man lack wis­dom, let him ask.” On Uversa, when it be­comes nec­es­sary to ar­rive at the de­ci­sions of wis­dom in the per­plex­ing sit­u­a­tions of the com­plex af­fairs of the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment, when both the wis­dom of per­fec­tion and of prac­ti­ca­bil­ity must be forth­com­ing, then do the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom sum­mon a bat­tery of the Voices of Wis­dom and, by the con­sum­mate skill of their or­der, so at­tune and di­rec­tion­ize these liv­ing re­ceivers of the en­minded and cir­cu­lat­ing wis­dom of the uni­verse of uni­verses that pres­ently, from these sec­o­raphic voices, there en­sues a stream of the wis­dom of di­vin­ity from the uni­verse above and a flood of the wis­dom of prac­ti­cal­ity from the higher minds of the uni­verses be­low.

• resolving confusion between versions of

28:5.9If con­fu­sion arises re­gard­ing the har­mo­niza­tion of these two ver­sions of wis­dom, im­me­di­ate ap­peal is made to the Di­vine Coun­selors, who forth­with rule as to the proper com­bi­na­tion of pro­ce­dures. If there is any doubt as to the au­then­tic­ity of some­thing com­ing in from realms where re­bel­lion has been rife, ap­peal is made to the Cen­sors, who, with their Dis­cern­ers of Spir­its, are able to rule im­me­di­ately as to “what man­ner of spirit” ac­tu­ated the ad­viser. So are the wis­dom of the ages and the in­tel­lect of the mo­ment ever pres­ent with the An­cients of Days, like an open book be­fore their benef­i­cent gaze.

• sources of wisdom › from studying origin, history, and destiny of situation

32:2.13But the evo­lu­tion of a lo­cal uni­verse is a long nar­ra­tive. Pa­pers deal­ing with the super­uni­verse in­tro­duce this sub­ject, those of this sec­tion, treat­ing of the lo­cal cre­ations, con­tinue it, while those to fol­low, touch­ing upon the his­tory and des­tiny of Uran­tia, com­plete the story. But you can ad­e­quately com­pre­hend the des­tiny of the mor­tals of such a lo­cal cre­ation only by a pe­rusal of the nar­ra­tives of the life and teach­ings of your Cre­ator Son as he once lived the life of man, in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, on your own evo­lu­tion­ary world.

• defined as › goal of purely mental and moral existence

36:5.127. The spirit of wis­dom—the in­her­ent ten­dency of all moral crea­tures to­wards or­derly and pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion­ary ad­vance­ment. This is the high­est of the ad­ju­tants, the spirit co-or­di­na­tor and ar­tic­u­la­tor of the work of all the oth­ers. This spirit is the se­cret of that in­born urge of mind crea­tures which ini­ti­ates and main­tains the prac­ti­cal and ef­fec­tive pro­gram of the as­cend­ing scale of ex­is­tence; that gift of liv­ing things which ac­counts for their in­ex­pli­ca­ble abil­ity to sur­vive and, in sur­vival, to uti­lize the co-or­di­na­tion of all their past ex­pe­ri­ence and pres­ent op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ac­qui­si­tion of all of ev­ery­thing that all of the other six men­tal min­is­ters can mo­bi­lize in the mind of the or­gan­ism con­cerned. Wis­dom is the acme of in­tel­lec­tual per­for­mance. Wis­dom is the goal of a purely men­tal and moral ex­is­tence.

• sources of wisdom › focalized experience engenders authoritative w.

40:10.6While the Ad­juster-fused fi­nal­i­ters ob­vi­ously en­joy the widest ser­vice op­por­tu­nity of all, the at­tain­ment of this goal au­to­mat­i­cally shuts them off from the chance to par­tic­i­pate in the age­long strug­gle of some one uni­verse or super­uni­verse, from the ear­lier and less set­tled epochs to the later and es­tab­lished eras of rel­a­tive per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Fi­nal­i­ters ac­quire a mar­velous and far-flung ex­pe­ri­ence of tran­sient ser­vice in all seven seg­ments of the grand uni­verse, but they do not or­di­nar­ily ac­quire that in­ti­mate knowl­edge of any one uni­verse which even now char­ac­ter­izes the Spirit-fused vet­er­ans of the Neb­a­don Corps of Com­ple­tion. These in­di­vid­u­als en­joy an op­por­tu­nity to wit­ness the as­cend­ing pro­ces­sional of the plan­e­tary ages as they un­fold one by one on ten mil­lion in­hab­ited worlds. And in the faith­ful ser­vice of such lo­cal uni­verse cit­i­zens, ex­pe­ri­ence super­im­poses upon ex­pe­ri­ence un­til the full­ness of time ripens that high qual­ity of wis­dom which is en­gen­dered by fo­cal­ized ex­pe­ri­ence—au­thor­i­ta­tive wis­dom—and this in it­self is a vi­tal fac­tor in the set­tling of any lo­cal uni­verse.

40:10.7As it is with the Spirit fusers, so is it with those Son-fused mor­tals who have achieved res­i­den­tial sta­tus on Uversa. Some of these be­ings hail from the ear­li­est epochs of Or­von­ton, and they rep­re­sent a slowly ac­cu­mu­lat­ing body of in­sight-deep­en­ing wis­dom which is mak­ing ever-aug­ment­ing ser­vice con­tri­bu­tions to the wel­fare and even­tual set­tle­ment of the sev­enth super­uni­verse.

• sources of wisdom › learned only by experiencing tribulation, adjustment to failure

48:7.1412. The great­est af­flic­tion of the cos­mos is never to have been af­flicted. Mor­tals only learn wis­dom by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing tribu­la­tion.

• sources of wisdom › facts are building blocks of w. which are cemented by experience

50:5.74. The quest for knowl­edge and wis­dom. Food, se­cu­rity, plea­sure, and leisure pro­vide the foun­da­tion for the de­vel­op­ment of cul­ture and the spread of knowl­edge. The ef­fort to ex­e­cute knowl­edge re­sults in wis­dom, and when a cul­ture has learned how to profit and im­prove by ex­pe­ri­ence, civ­i­liza­tion has re­ally ar­rived. Food, se­cu­rity, and ma­te­rial com­fort still dom­i­nate so­ci­ety, but many for­ward-look­ing in­di­vid­u­als are hun­ger­ing for knowl­edge and thirst­ing for wis­dom. Ev­ery child is pro­vided an op­por­tu­nity to learn by do­ing; ed­u­ca­tion is the watch­word of these ages.

• must be cosmic in scope, spiritual in motivation

54:1.7Even wis­dom is di­vine and safe only when it is cos­mic in scope and spir­i­tual in mo­ti­va­tion.

• no limit to intellectual evolution

55:6.5We con­ceive that phys­i­cal evo­lu­tion will have at­tained its full de­vel­op­ment by the end of the fifth epoch of the light-and-life era. We ob­serve that the up­per lim­its of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment as­so­ci­ated with evolv­ing hu­man mind are de­ter­mined by the Ad­juster-fu­sion level of con­joint mor­ontia val­ues and cos­mic mean­ings. But con­cern­ing wis­dom: While we do not re­ally know, we con­jec­ture that there can never be a limit to in­tel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion and the at­tain­ment of wis­dom. On a sev­enth-stage world, wis­dom can ex­haust the ma­te­rial po­ten­tials, en­ter upon mota in­sight, and even­tu­ally even taste of ab­so­nite grandeur.

• sources of wisdom › fruit of divinity

56:10.20To fi­nite man truth, beauty, and good­ness em­brace the full rev­e­la­tion of di­vin­ity re­al­ity. As this love-com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity finds spir­i­tual ex­pres­sion in the lives of God-know­ing mor­tals, there are yielded the fruits of di­vin­ity: in­tel­lec­tual peace, so­cial prog­ress, moral sat­is­fac­tion, spir­i­tual joy, and cos­mic wis­dom. The ad­vanced mor­tals on a world in the sev­enth stage of light and life have learned that love is the great­est thing in the uni­verse—and they know that God is love.

• spiritual progress not dependent upon

65:8.4As mind evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on, and de­layed by, the slow de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so is spir­i­tual prog­ress de­pen­dent on men­tal ex­pan­sion and un­fail­ingly de­layed by in­tel­lec­tual re­tar­da­tion. But this does not mean that spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, or wis­dom. The soul may evolve re­gard­less of men­tal cul­ture but not in the ab­sence of men­tal ca­pac­ity and de­sire—the choice of sur­vival and the de­ci­sion to achieve ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion—to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Al­though sur­vival may not de­pend on the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and wis­dom, pro­gres­sion most cer­tainly does.

• sources of wisdom › fear of the Lord is the beginning of w.

68:3.3Ex­cept for this ghost fac­tor, all so­ci­ety was founded on fun­da­men­tal needs and ba­sic bi­o­logic urges. But ghost fear in­tro­duced a new fac­tor in civ­i­liza­tion, a fear which reaches out and away from the el­e­men­tal needs of the in­di­vid­ual, and which rises far above even the strug­gles to main­tain the group. The dread of the de­parted spir­its of the dead brought to light a new and amaz­ing form of fear, an ap­palling and pow­er­ful ter­ror, which con­tributed to whip­ping the loose so­cial or­ders of early ages into the more thor­oughly dis­ci­plined and bet­ter con­trolled prim­i­tive groups of an­cient times. This sense­less su­per­sti­tion, some of which still per­sists, pre­pared the minds of men, through su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­real and the super­nat­u­ral, for the later dis­cov­ery of “the fear of the Lord which is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.” The base­less fears of evo­lu­tion are de­signed to be sup­planted by the awe for De­ity in­spired by rev­e­la­tion. The early cult of ghost fear be­came a pow­er­ful so­cial bond, and ever since that far-dis­tant day man­kind has been striv­ing more or less for the at­tain­ment of spir­i­tu­al­ity.

• ascending levels of

71:7.2In the ideal state, ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues through­out life, and phi­los­o­phy some­time be­comes the chief pur­suit of its cit­i­zens. The cit­i­zens of such a com­mon­wealth pur­sue wis­dom as an en­hance­ment of in­sight into the sig­nif­i­cance of hu­man re­la­tions, the mean­ings of re­al­ity, the no­bil­ity of val­ues, the goals of liv­ing, and the glo­ries of cos­mic des­tiny.

• ascending levels of

71:7.5Ed­u­ca­tion is the busi­ness of liv­ing; it must con­tinue through­out a life­time so that man­kind may grad­u­ally ex­pe­ri­ence the as­cend­ing lev­els of mor­tal wis­dom, which are:

71:7.61. The knowl­edge of things.

71:7.72. The re­al­iza­tion of mean­ings.

71:7.83. The ap­pre­ci­a­tion of val­ues.

71:7.94. The no­bil­ity of work—duty.

71:7.105. The mo­ti­va­tion of goals—moral­ity.

71:7.116. The love of ser­vice—char­ac­ter.

71:7.127. Cos­mic in­sight—spir­i­tual dis­cern­ment.

71:7.13And then, by means of these achieve­ments, many will as­cend to the mor­tal ul­ti­mate of mind at­tain­ment, God-con­scious­ness.

• most disheartening miscarriage was Adam’s default

75:8.6All in all, there prob­a­bly never was a more dis­heart­en­ing mis­car­riage of wis­dom on any planet in all Neb­a­don. But it is not sur­pris­ing that these mis­steps oc­cur in the af­fairs of the evo­lu­tion­ary uni­verses. We are a part of a gi­gan­tic cre­ation, and it is not strange that ev­ery­thing does not work in per­fec­tion; our uni­verse was not cre­ated in per­fec­tion. Per­fec­tion is our eter­nal goal, not our ori­gin.

• sources of wisdom › secured only through experience by those innately intelligent

81:6.13But the con­ti­nent rich­est in nat­u­ral de­posits and the most ad­vanced me­chan­i­cal equip­ment will make lit­tle prog­ress if the in­tel­li­gence of its peo­ple is on the de­cline. Knowl­edge can be had by ed­u­ca­tion, but wis­dom, which is in­dis­pens­able to true cul­ture, can be se­cured only through ex­pe­ri­ence and by men and women who are in­nately in­tel­li­gent. Such a peo­ple are able to learn from ex­pe­ri­ence; they may be­come truly wise.

• wisdom

85:7.3When the wor­ship urge is ad­mon­ished and di­rected by wis­dom—med­i­ta­tive and ex­pe­ri­en­tial think­ing—it then be­gins to de­velop into the phe­nom­e­non of real re­li­gion. When the sev­enth ad­ju­tant spirit, the spirit of wis­dom, achieves ef­fec­tive min­is­tra­tion, then in wor­ship man be­gins to turn away from na­ture and nat­u­ral ob­jects to the God of na­ture and to the eter­nal Cre­ator of all things nat­u­ral.

• ask God for w. to solve problems

91:6.5Do not be so sloth­ful as to ask God to solve your dif­fi­cul­ties, but never hes­i­tate to ask him for wis­dom and spir­i­tual strength to guide and sus­tain you while you your­self res­o­lutely and coura­geously at­tack the prob­lems at hand.

• ask God for w. to solve problems

91:9.76. Your prayer will be di­rected ex­clu­sively for di­vine wis­dom to solve the spe­cific hu­man prob­lems en­coun­tered in the Par­a­dise as­cen­sion—the at­tain­ment of di­vine per­fec­tion.

• defined as › knowledge directed by reason, illuminated by revelation

92:2.1Re­li­gion is the most rigid and un­yield­ing of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions, but it does tardily ad­just to chang­ing so­ci­ety. Even­tu­ally, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion does re­flect the chang­ing mores, which, in turn, may have been af­fected by re­vealed re­li­gion. Slowly, surely, but grudg­ingly, does re­li­gion (wor­ship) fol­low in the wake of wis­dom—knowl­edge di­rected by ex­pe­ri­en­tial rea­son and il­lu­mi­nated by di­vine rev­e­la­tion.

• sources of wisdom › made possible by religion

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

• must evolve

101:4.2Man­kind should un­der­stand that we who par­tic­i­pate in the rev­e­la­tion of truth are very rig­or­ously lim­ited by the in­struc­tions of our su­pe­ri­ors. We are not at lib­erty to an­tic­i­pate the sci­en­tific dis­cov­er­ies of a thou­sand years. Rev­e­la­tors must act in ac­cor­dance with the in­struc­tions which form a part of the rev­e­la­tion man­date. We see no way of over­com­ing this dif­fi­culty, ei­ther now or at any fu­ture time. We full well know that, while the his­toric facts and re­li­gious truths of this se­ries of rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tions will stand on the rec­ords of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our state­ments re­gard­ing the phys­i­cal sci­ences will stand in need of re­vi­sion in con­se­quence of ad­di­tional sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments and new dis­cov­er­ies. These new de­vel­op­ments we even now fore­see, but we are for­bid­den to in­clude such hu­manly undis­cov­ered facts in the rev­e­la­tory rec­ords. Let it be made clear that rev­e­la­tions are not nec­es­sar­ily in­spired. The cos­mol­ogy of these rev­e­la­tions is not in­spired. It is lim­ited by our per­mis­sion for the co-or­di­na­tion and sort­ing of pres­ent-day knowl­edge. While di­vine or spir­i­tual in­sight is a gift, hu­man wis­dom must evolve.

• defined as › embracing ideas in process of association and recombination

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.

• does justice to differing men

102:3.7Sci­ence sorts men; re­li­gion loves men, even as your­self; wis­dom does jus­tice to dif­fer­ing men; but rev­e­la­tion glo­ri­fies man and dis­closes his ca­pac­ity for part­ner­ship with God.

• defined as › consciousness of meaning of personality

102:3.9Knowl­edge yields pride in the fact of per­son­al­ity; wis­dom is the con­scious­ness of the mean­ing of per­son­al­ity; re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­ence of cog­nizance of the value of per­son­al­ity; rev­e­la­tion is the as­sur­ance of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

• defined as › man’s highest human attainment

103:9.6When the­ol­ogy mas­ters re­li­gion, re­li­gion dies; it be­comes a doc­trine in­stead of a life. The mis­sion of the­ol­ogy is merely to fa­cil­i­tate the self-con­scious­ness of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The­ol­ogy con­sti­tutes the re­li­gious ef­fort to de­fine, clar­ify, ex­pound, and jus­tify the ex­pe­ri­en­tial claims of re­li­gion, which, in the last anal­y­sis, can be val­i­dated only by liv­ing faith. In the higher phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse, wis­dom, like rea­son, be­comes al­lied to faith. Rea­son, wis­dom, and faith are man’s high­est hu­man at­tain­ments. Rea­son in­tro­duces man to the world of facts, to things; wis­dom in­tro­duces him to a world of truth, to re­la­tion­ships; faith ini­ti­ates him into a world of di­vin­ity, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

• sources of wisdom › facts are building blocks of w. which are cemented by experience

111:6.6Sci­ence is the source of facts, and mind can­not op­er­ate with­out facts. They are the build­ing blocks in the con­struc­tion of wis­dom which are ce­mented to­gether by life ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can find the love of God with­out facts, and man can dis­cover the laws of God with­out love, but man can never be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate the in­fi­nite sym­me­try, the su­per­nal har­mony, the ex­qui­site re­plete­ness of the all-in­clu­sive na­ture of the First Source and Cen­ter un­til he has found di­vine law and di­vine love and has ex­pe­ri­en­tially uni­fied these in his own evolv­ing cos­mic phi­los­o­phy.

• leads to worship

112:2.11As mind pur­sues re­al­ity to its ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, mat­ter van­ishes to the ma­te­rial senses but may still re­main real to mind. When spir­i­tual in­sight pur­sues that re­al­ity which re­mains af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of mat­ter and pur­sues it to an ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, it van­ishes to mind, but the in­sight of spirit can still per­ceive cos­mic re­al­i­ties and su­preme val­ues of a spir­i­tual na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly does sci­ence give way to phi­los­o­phy, while phi­los­o­phy must sur­ren­der to the con­clu­sions in­her­ent in gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Think­ing sur­ren­ders to wis­dom, and wis­dom is lost in en­light­ened and re­flec­tive wor­ship.

• leads to worship

112:2.13In time, think­ing leads to wis­dom and wis­dom leads to wor­ship; in eter­nity, wor­ship leads to wis­dom, and wis­dom even­tu­ates in the fi­nal­ity of thought.

• sources of wisdom › lengthening time unit in experience

118:1.3There is a di­rect re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­tu­rity and the unit of time con­scious­ness in any given in­tel­lect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer pe­riod, but in­evitably it is the cri­te­rion by which the con­scious self eval­u­ates the cir­cum­stances of life, and by which the con­ceiv­ing in­tel­lect mea­sures and eval­u­ates the facts of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence.

118:1.4Ex­pe­ri­ence, wis­dom, and judg­ment are the con­comi­tants of the length­en­ing of the time unit in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. As the hu­man mind reck­ons back­ward into the past, it is eval­u­at­ing past ex­pe­ri­ence for the pur­pose of bring­ing it to bear on a pres­ent sit­u­a­tion. As mind reaches out into the fu­ture, it is at­tempt­ing to eval­u­ate the fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance of pos­si­ble ac­tion. And hav­ing thus reck­oned with both ex­pe­ri­ence and wis­dom, the hu­man will ex­er­cises judg­ment-de­ci­sion in the pres­ent, and the plan of ac­tion thus born of the past and the fu­ture be­comes ex­is­tent.

118:1.5In the ma­tu­rity of the de­vel­op­ing self, the past and fu­ture are brought to­gether to il­lu­mi­nate the true mean­ing of the pres­ent. As the self ma­tures, it reaches fur­ther and fur­ther back into the past for ex­pe­ri­ence, while its wis­dom fore­casts seek to pen­e­trate deeper and deeper into the un­known fu­ture. And as the con­ceiv­ing self ex­tends this reach ever fur­ther into both past and fu­ture, so does judg­ment be­come less and less de­pen­dent on the mo­men­tary pres­ent. In this way does de­ci­sion-ac­tion be­gin to es­cape from the fet­ters of the mov­ing pres­ent, while it be­gins to take on the as­pects of past-fu­ture sig­nif­i­cance.

118:1.6Pa­tience is ex­er­cised by those mor­tals whose time units are short; true ma­tu­rity tran­scends pa­tience by a for­bear­ance born of real un­der­stand­ing.

118:1.7To be­come ma­ture is to live more in­tensely in the pres­ent, at the same time es­cap­ing from the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent. The plans of ma­tu­rity, founded on past ex­pe­ri­ence, are com­ing into be­ing in the pres­ent in such man­ner as to en­hance the val­ues of the fu­ture.

118:1.8The time unit of im­ma­tu­rity con­cen­trates mean­ing-value into the pres­ent mo­ment in such a way as to di­vorce the pres­ent of its true re­la­tion­ship to the not-pres­ent—the past-fu­ture. The time unit of ma­tu­rity is pro­por­tioned so to re­veal the co-or­di­nate re­la­tion­ship of past-pres­ent-fu­ture that the self be­gins to gain in­sight into the whole­ness of events, be­gins to view the land­scape of time from the panoramic per­spec­tive of broad­ened hori­zons, be­gins per­haps to sus­pect the non­be­gin­ning, non­end­ing eter­nal con­tin­uum, the frag­ments of which are called time.

• sources of wisdom › slow accumulation of painfully garnered w.

118:8.5The whole prin­ci­ple of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion makes it im­pos­si­ble for prim­i­tive man to ap­pear on the in­hab­ited worlds with any large en­dow­ment of self-re­straint. There­fore does the same cre­ative de­sign which pur­posed evo­lu­tion like­wise pro­vide those ex­ter­nal re­straints of time and space, hunger and fear, which ef­fec­tively cir­cum­scribe the sub­spir­i­tual choice range of such un­cul­tured crea­tures. As man’s mind suc­cess­fully over­strides in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult bar­ri­ers, this same cre­ative de­sign has also pro­vided for the slow ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the racial her­itage of painfully gar­nered ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom—in other words, for the main­te­nance of a bal­ance be­tween the di­min­ish­ing ex­ter­nal re­straints and the aug­ment­ing in­ter­nal re­straints.

• possibility of making mistakes inherent in acquiring

130:4.11Er­ror (evil) is the penalty of im­per­fec­tion. The qual­i­ties of im­per­fec­tion or facts of mis­adap­ta­tion are dis­closed on the ma­te­rial level by crit­i­cal ob­ser­va­tion and by sci­en­tific anal­y­sis; on the moral level, by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The pres­ence of evil con­sti­tutes proof of the in­ac­cu­ra­cies of mind and the im­ma­tu­rity of the evolv­ing self. Evil is, there­fore, also a mea­sure of im­per­fec­tion in uni­verse in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing mis­takes is in­her­ent in the ac­qui­si­tion of wis­dom, the scheme of pro­gress­ing from the par­tial and tem­po­ral to the com­plete and eter­nal, from the rel­a­tive and im­per­fect to the fi­nal and per­fected. Er­ror is the shadow of rel­a­tive in­com­plete­ness which must of ne­ces­sity fall across man’s as­cend­ing uni­verse path to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion. Er­ror (evil) is not an ac­tual uni­verse qual­ity; it is sim­ply the ob­ser­va­tion of a rel­a­tiv­ity in the re­lat­ed­ness of the im­per­fec­tion of the in­com­plete fi­nite to the as­cend­ing lev­els of the Su­preme and Ul­ti­mate.

• sources of wisdom › fear of the Lord is the beginning of w.

131:2.6“God has made man a lit­tle less than di­vine and has crowned him with love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righ­teous, but the way of the un­godly shall per­ish. The fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom; the knowl­edge of the Su­preme is un­der­stand­ing. Says the Al­mighty God: ‘Walk be­fore me and be per­fect.’ For­get not that pride goes be­fore de­struc­tion and a haughty spirit be­fore a fall. He who rules his own spirit is might­ier than he who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In re­turn­ing to your spir­i­tual rest shall you be saved; in quiet­ness and con­fi­dence shall be your strength.’ They who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings like ea­gles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness.’

• sources of wisdom › regarding parts from viewpoint of whole

131:8.4“The wise man uni­ver­sal­izes his heart. A lit­tle knowl­edge is a dan­ger­ous thing. Those who as­pire to great­ness must learn to hum­ble them­selves. In cre­ation the Su­preme be­came the world’s mother. To know one’s mother is to rec­og­nize one’s son­ship. He is a wise man who re­gards all parts from the point of view of the whole. Re­late your­self to ev­ery man as if you were in his place. Rec­om­pense in­jury with kind­ness. If you love peo­ple, they will draw near you—you will have no dif­fi­culty in win­ning them.

• sources of wisdom › recognizing one’s insignificance

131:8.6“They who know the laws of the Eter­nal are wise. Ig­no­rance of the di­vine law is mis­ery and dis­as­ter. They who know the laws of God are lib­eral minded. If you know the Eter­nal, even though your body per­ish, your soul shall sur­vive in spirit ser­vice. You are truly wise when you rec­og­nize your in­signif­i­cance. If you abide in the light of the Eter­nal, you shall en­joy the en­light­en­ment of the Su­preme. Those who ded­i­cate their per­sons to the ser­vice of the Su­preme are joy­ous in this pur­suit of the Eter­nal. When man dies, the spirit be­gins to wing its long flight on the great home jour­ney.”

• sources of wisdom › learned only by experiencing tribulation, adjustment to failure

132:7.2“Ga­nid, the man was not hun­gry for truth. He was not dis­sat­is­fied with him­self. He was not ready to ask for help, and the eyes of his mind were not open to re­ceive light for the soul. That man was not ripe for the har­vest of sal­va­tion; he must be al­lowed more time for the tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties of life to pre­pare him for the re­cep­tion of wis­dom and higher learn­ing. Or, if we could have him live with us, we might by our lives show him the Fa­ther in heaven, and thus would he be­come so at­tracted by our lives as sons of God that he would be con­strained to in­quire about our Fa­ther. You can­not re­veal God to those who do not seek for him; you can­not lead un­will­ing souls into the joys of sal­va­tion. Man must be­come hun­gry for truth as a re­sult of the ex­pe­ri­ences of liv­ing, or he must de­sire to know God as the re­sult of con­tact with the lives of those who are ac­quainted with the di­vine Fa­ther be­fore an­other hu­man be­ing can act as the means of lead­ing such a fel­low mor­tal to the Fa­ther in heaven. If we know God, our real busi­ness on earth is so to live as to per­mit the Fa­ther to re­veal him­self in our lives, and thus will all God-seek­ing per­sons see the Fa­ther and ask for our help in find­ing out more about the God who in this man­ner finds ex­pres­sion in our lives.”

• exalt w. and she will promote you

133:9.3It was at Ur that Ga­nid had a long talk with Je­sus re­gard­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween knowl­edge, wis­dom, and truth. And he was greatly charmed with the say­ing of the He­brew wise man: “Wis­dom is the prin­ci­pal thing; there­fore get wis­dom. With all your quest for knowl­edge, get un­der­stand­ing. Ex­alt wis­dom and she will pro­mote you. She will bring you to honor if you will but em­brace her.”

• exalt w. and she will promote you

144:8.7On this af­ter­noon Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach, say­ing: “But to what shall I liken this gen­er­a­tion? Many of you will re­ceive nei­ther John’s mes­sage nor my teach­ing. You are like the chil­dren play­ing in the mar­ket place who call to their fel­lows and say: ‘We piped for you and you did not dance; we wailed and you did not mourn.’ And so with some of you. John came nei­ther eat­ing nor drink­ing, and they said he had a devil. The Son of Man comes eat­ing and drink­ing, and these same peo­ple say: ‘Be­hold, a glut­tonous man and a winebib­ber, a friend of pub­li­cans and sin­ners!’ Truly, wis­dom is jus­ti­fied by her chil­dren.

• dead stores of worldly

147:5.8“This trans­formed woman whom some of you saw at Si­mon’s house to­day is, at this mo­ment, liv­ing on a level which is vastly be­low that of Si­mon and his well-mean­ing as­so­ciates; but while these Phar­isees are oc­cu­pied with the false prog­ress of the il­lu­sion of travers­ing de­cep­tive cir­cles of mean­ing­less cer­e­mo­nial ser­vices, this woman has, in dead earnest, started out on the long and event­ful search for God, and her path to­ward heaven is not blocked by spir­i­tual pride and moral self-sat­is­fac­tion. The woman is, hu­manly speak­ing, much far­ther away from God than Si­mon, but her soul is in pro­gres­sive mo­tion; she is on the way to­ward an eter­nal goal. There are pres­ent in this woman tremen­dous spir­i­tual pos­si­bil­i­ties for the fu­ture. Some of you may not stand high in ac­tual lev­els of soul and spirit, but you are mak­ing daily prog­ress on the liv­ing way opened up, through faith, to God. There are tremen­dous pos­si­bil­i­ties in each of you for the fu­ture. Bet­ter by far to have a small but liv­ing and grow­ing faith than to be pos­sessed of a great in­tel­lect with its dead stores of worldly wis­dom and spir­i­tual un­be­lief.”

• sources of wisdom › fear of the Lord is the beginning of w.

149:6.2“My chil­dren, I am not sur­prised that you ask such ques­tions. In the be­gin­ning it was only through fear that man could learn rev­er­ence, but I have come to re­veal the Fa­ther’s love so that you will be at­tracted to the wor­ship of the Eter­nal by the draw­ing of a son’s af­fec­tion­ate rec­og­ni­tion and re­cip­ro­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s pro­found and per­fect love. I would de­liver you from the bond­age of driv­ing your­selves through slav­ish fear to the irk­some ser­vice of a jeal­ous and wrath­ful King-God. I would in­struct you in the Fa­ther-son re­la­tion­ship of God and man so that you may be joy­fully led into that sub­lime and su­per­nal free wor­ship of a lov­ing, just, and mer­ci­ful Fa­ther-God.

149:6.3“The ‘fear of the Lord’ has had dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the suc­ces­sive ages, com­ing up from fear, through an­guish and dread, to awe and rev­er­ence. And now from rev­er­ence I would lead you up, through rec­og­ni­tion, re­al­iza­tion, and ap­pre­ci­a­tion, to love. When man rec­og­nizes only the works of God, he is led to fear the Su­preme; but when man be­gins to un­der­stand and ex­pe­ri­ence the per­son­al­ity and char­ac­ter of the liv­ing God, he is led in­creas­ingly to love such a good and per­fect, uni­ver­sal and eter­nal Fa­ther. And it is just this chang­ing of the re­la­tion of man to God that con­sti­tutes the mis­sion of the Son of Man on earth.

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

149:6.5“Your fore­bears feared God be­cause he was mighty and mys­te­ri­ous. You shall adore him be­cause he is mag­nif­i­cent in love, plen­teous in mercy, and glo­ri­ous in truth. The power of God en­gen­ders fear in the heart of man, but the no­bil­ity and righ­teous­ness of his per­son­al­ity beget rev­er­ence, love, and will­ing wor­ship. A du­ti­ful and af­fec­tion­ate son does not fear or dread even a mighty and no­ble fa­ther. I have come into the world to put love in the place of fear, joy in the place of sor­row, con­fi­dence in the place of dread, lov­ing ser­vice and ap­pre­cia­tive wor­ship in the place of slav­ish bond­age and mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. But it is still true of those who sit in dark­ness that ‘the fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.’ But when the light has more fully come, the sons of God are led to praise the In­fi­nite for what he is rather than to fear him for what he does.

• sources of wisdom › divine insight and personal experience

157:6.2Nei­ther Pe­ter nor the other apos­tles had a very ad­e­quate con­cep­tion of Je­sus’ di­vin­ity. They lit­tle re­al­ized that this was the be­gin­ning of a new epoch in their Mas­ter’s ca­reer on earth, the time when the teacher-healer was be­com­ing the newly con­ceived Mes­siah—the Son of God. From this time on a new note ap­peared in the Mas­ter’s mes­sage. Hence­forth his one ideal of liv­ing was the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther, while his one idea in teach­ing was to pre­sent to his uni­verse the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of that su­preme wis­dom which can only be com­pre­hended by liv­ing it. He came that we all might have life and have it more abun­dantly.

• defined as › cumulative because it can be communicated to succeeding generations

160:2.3It is this abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate and share mean­ings that con­sti­tutes hu­man cul­ture and en­ables man, through so­cial as­so­ci­a­tions, to build civ­i­liza­tions. Knowl­edge and wis­dom be­come cu­mu­la­tive be­cause of man’s abil­ity to com­mu­ni­cate these pos­ses­sions to suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions. And thereby arise the cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties of the race: art, sci­ence, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy.

• defined as › consciousness of knowledge

160:2.72. Union of souls—the mo­bi­liza­tion of wis­dom. Ev­ery hu­man be­ing sooner or later ac­quires a cer­tain con­cept of this world and a cer­tain vi­sion of the next. Now it is pos­si­ble, through per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion, to unite these views of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence and eter­nal prospects. Thus does the mind of one aug­ment its spir­i­tual val­ues by gain­ing much of the in­sight of the other. In this way men en­rich the soul by pool­ing their re­spec­tive spir­i­tual pos­ses­sions. Like­wise, in this same way, man is en­abled to avoid that ever-pres­ent ten­dency to fall vic­tim to dis­tor­tion of vi­sion, prej­u­dice of view­point, and nar­row­ness of judg­ment. Fear, envy, and con­ceit can be pre­vented only by in­ti­mate con­tact with other minds. I call your at­ten­tion to the fact that the Mas­ter never sends you out alone to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom; he al­ways sends you out two and two. And since wis­dom is super­knowl­edge, it fol­lows that, in the union of wis­dom, the so­cial group, small or large, mu­tu­ally shares all knowl­edge.

• sources of wisdom › learned only by experiencing tribulation, adjustment to failure

160:4.14Suc­cess may gen­er­ate cour­age and pro­mote con­fi­dence, but wis­dom comes only from the ex­pe­ri­ences of ad­just­ment to the re­sults of one’s fail­ures. Men who pre­fer op­ti­mistic il­lu­sions to re­al­ity can never be­come wise. Only those who face facts and ad­just them to ide­als can achieve wis­dom. Wis­dom em­braces both the fact and the ideal and there­fore saves its devo­tees from both of those bar­ren ex­tremes of phi­los­o­phy—the man whose ide­al­ism ex­cludes facts and the ma­te­ri­al­ist who is de­void of spir­i­tual out­look. Those timid souls who can only keep up the strug­gle of life by the aid of con­tin­u­ous false il­lu­sions of suc­cess are doomed to suf­fer fail­ure and ex­pe­ri­ence de­feat as they ul­ti­mately awaken from the dream world of their own imag­i­na­tions.

• defined as › consciousness of knowledge

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.

• elevate to living truth

180:5.4The true child of uni­verse in­sight looks for the liv­ing Spirit of Truth in ev­ery wise say­ing. The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is con­stantly el­e­vat­ing wis­dom to the liv­ing-truth lev­els of di­vine at­tain­ment; the spir­i­tu­ally un­pro­gres­sive soul is all the while drag­ging the liv­ing truth down to the dead lev­els of wis­dom and to the do­main of mere ex­alted knowl­edge.

• defined as › embracing discretion as well as courage

181:2.15Je­sus then stepped over to James Zeb­e­dee, who stood in si­lence as the Mas­ter ad­dressed him, say­ing: “James, when you and your younger brother once came to me seek­ing prefer­ment in the hon­ors of the king­dom, and I told you such hon­ors were for the Fa­ther to be­stow, I asked if you were able to drink my cup, and both of you an­swered that you were. Even if you were not then able, and if you are not now able, you will soon be pre­pared for such a ser­vice by the ex­pe­ri­ence you are about to pass through. By such be­hav­ior you an­gered your breth­ren at that time. If they have not al­ready fully for­given you, they will when they see you drink my cup. Whether your min­istry be long or short, pos­sess your soul in pa­tience. When the new teacher comes, let him teach you the poise of com­pas­sion and that sym­pa­thetic tol­er­ance which is born of sub­lime con­fi­dence in me and of per­fect sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will. Ded­i­cate your life to the dem­on­stra­tion of that com­bined hu­man af­fec­tion and di­vine dig­nity of the God-know­ing and Son-be­liev­ing dis­ci­ple. And all who thus live will re­veal the gospel even in the man­ner of their death. You and your brother John will go dif­fer­ent ways, and one of you may sit down with me in the eter­nal king­dom long be­fore the other. It would help you much if you would learn that true wis­dom em­braces dis­cre­tion as well as cour­age. You should learn sagac­ity to go along with your ag­gres­sive­ness. There will come those su­preme mo­ments wherein my dis­ci­ples will not hes­i­tate to lay down their lives for this gospel, but in all or­di­nary cir­cum­stances it would be far bet­ter to pla­cate the wrath of un­be­liev­ers that you might live and con­tinue to preach the glad tid­ings. As far as lies in your power, live long on the earth that your life of many years may be fruit­ful in souls won for the heav­enly king­dom.”