Jesus Delivers a Discourse on Reality 

During his tour of the Mediterranean world, Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid stopped at Alexandria. The night before they left, Ganid and Jesus had a long visit with a university professor who lectured on the teachings of Plato. Jesus interpreted the professor’s teachings for Ganid but injected none of his own. Gonod was away on business that evening and after the professor had departed, Jesus and Ganid had a long talk about Plato’s doctrines.

Ganid had a penetrating mind and was an excellent student. To his many searching questions, Jesus gave qualified approval to some of the Greek teachings which had to do with the theory that the material things of the world are shadowy reflections of invisible but more substantial spiritual realities. But he wanted to lay a more trustworthy, broader, deeper foundation for the lad’s thinking; so he gave a long discourse concerning the nature of reality in the universe.

Among other things related to the understanding of reality, summarized, and in modern language, Jesus said this to Ganid:

The source of universe reality is the Infinite, the First Cause, the Upholder and Creator of the cosmos, commonly referred to as God. The material things of finite creation are the time-space repercussions of the free will acts of this eternal God. God is the original cause of reality in the physical, intellectual, and spirit realms. God projects these realities on a universal scale; they are related and integrated by and through experience. This experience progresses toward the perfection of God and the divine values that are the substance of enduring reality. In an ever-changing universe, God, the Original Personality of causation, intelligence, and spiritual experience is changeless, absolute. All things change except God who maintains the standard of perfection. God is the absolute of perfect reality in every manner and function.

The highest level of reality to which a personal creature can progress is God. God has bestowed free will on every potential soul and asks in return that they become as perfect in their realm as God is in the divine realm. This brings spirit unity to reality, oneness with God. Only in the perfection, harmony, and unanimity of will can the creature become as one with the Creator. Such a state of divine unity is attained and maintained only by the creature voluntarily choosing to align his or her will with that of the Creator. If reality perfection is to be achieved, and unity with God attained, the desire to do God’s will must be supreme in the soul and dominant in the mind.

A one-eyed person can never hope to visualize depth of perspective. Neither can single-eyed material scientists nor single-eyed spiritual mystics and visionaries correctly envision and adequately comprehend the true depths of universe reality. All true values of creature experience are concealed in depth of recognition. To perceive this depth, God provides a fragment of deity to indwell the human mind. Without it, there can be only partial and limited understanding of the value, depth, and spiritual substance of even local reality.

The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God. The real problem is: How can the finite mind achieve a logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought? This universe-knowing state of mind can be had only by conceiving that the quantitative fact and the qualitative value have a common causation in the Paradise Father. Such a conception of reality yields a broader insight into the purposeful unity of universe phenomena; it even reveals a spiritual goal of progressive personality achievement. And this is a concept of unity which can sense the unchanging background of a living universe of continually changing impersonal relations and evolving personal relationships.

Matter and spirit and the state intervening between them are three interrelated and interassociated levels of the true unity of the real universe. Regardless of how divergent the universe phenomena of fact and value may appear to be, they are, after all, unified in God, the author and upholder of reality.

Human mind is akin to but slightly above the mind of the higher animals. Animals cannot experience superconsciousness, consciousness of consciousness. The animal mind is only conscious of the objective universe. Humans’ superconscious mind has a spirit nucleus that is able to perceive reality in many of its phases, to accumulate knowledge and wisdom, to progress in soul growth. Reality perception expands as mortals become immortals who, by perfection attainment, ascend to the highest level, to Paradise, the home of God. Once there, perfected beings may enjoy the embrace of the creator of personality, the maker and upholder of reality, and thereby experience yet other levels and phases of universe reality.

Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. Personality is a cosmic endowment that interacts with mind, a changeless phase of universal reality that can coexist with unlimited change and at the same time retain its identity in the very presence of all such changes, and forever afterward. Mind and personality are gifts from God, indispensable elements of spiritual reality. Mind, personality, soul, and body working in combination generate a unique view of reality and, when operating in harmony, can open the spiritual eyes for a glimpse of divine reality. Cosmic reality is subject to universal expansion, personality to infinite diversification, and both are capable of almost unlimited Deity coordination and eternal stabilization.

Reality of material existence attaches to unrecognized energy as well as to visible matter. When the energies of the universe are so slowed down that they acquire the requisite degree of motion, then, under favorable conditions, these same energies become mass. And forget not, the mind which can alone perceive the presence of apparent realities is itself also real. And the fundamental cause of this universe of energy-mass, mind, and spirit, is eternal – it exists and consists in the nature and reactions of the Universal Father.

In another discourse, Jesus said to Ganid: “My son, I have already told you much about the mind of man and the divine spirit that lives therein, but now let me emphasize that self-consciousness is a reality. When any animal becomes self-conscious, it becomes a primitive man. Such an attainment results from a co-ordination of function between impersonal energy and spirit-conceiving mind. It is this phenomenon which warrants the bestowal of an absolute focal point for the human personality, the spirit of the Father in heaven that may indwell the self-conscious human mind.”

Ganid went to his rest thinking of these profound teachings and before going to sleep formulated other questions for Jesus.

The next morning, before they embarked for Crete, Ganid asked questions about evil and its relation to reality. In modern terms and in part, Jesus replied:

Error (evil) is a temporary reality born of imperfection. The presence of evil constitutes proof of the inaccuracies of mind and the immaturity of the evolving self. 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. Evil is a shadow of reality, a phase of incompleteness that falls across man’s path to Paradise perfection.

Relative reality, reality perceived by the human mind, is imperfect and therefore manifests potential evil. Potential evil is related to ever-changing evolution from imperfection to perfection. The fact of the partial in the presence of the complete constitutes relativity of reality, creates necessity for intellectual choosing, and establishes value levels of spirit recognition and response. The incomplete and finite concept of God’s reality which is held by the temporal and limited creature mind is, in and of itself, potential evil. When mortal mind chooses unwisely actual evil is realized.

The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof. A shadow is only relatively real. Actual evil is not necessary as a personal experience. Potential evil acts equally well as a decision stimulus in the realms of moral progress on the lower levels of spiritual development. Evil becomes a reality of personal experience only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.

Misadaptation of self-conscious life to the universe results in cosmic disharmony. Final divergence from the trend of the universe terminates in intellectual isolation, separation from God. If evil, sin, and iniquity become habitual, having lost all spiritual value, soul death follows. Conversely, choosing goodness is incontrovertible proof of the desire of a soul to know and do the will of God. And this soul-life, in the aggregate, struggles toward higher values, having for its final goal perfection and an actual meeting with God who, with good reason, commanded his children, "Be you perfect." Perfection is the adventurous journey to the realization of enduring divine reality, to the unimaginable glories of eternal life in all its phases and manifestations.

All static, dead concepts are potentially evil. The finite shadow of relative and living truth is continually moving. Static, stationary concepts invariably retard science, politics, society, and religion. Static, fixed, unmoving concepts may represent a certain knowledge, but they are deficient in wisdom and devoid of truth. Reality-recognition is a true insight into the guidance of the cosmic mind and its stabilized control of the never-ending process of turning spirit potential into actual goodness values through living experience.

The presence of goodness and evil in the world is in itself positive proof of the existence and reality of man’s moral will which thus identifies these values and is also able to choose between them. Evil arises out of the temporary imperfections which appear in the shadow cast by a finite universe of things and beings. Goodness is the living light of the universal expression of the eternal realities of the Infinite One, the Universal Father of all.

Truth 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. The standard of true values must be looked for in the spiritual world and on divine levels of eternal reality.

Knowledge 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 universe. 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.

Humans may develop spiritual insight into eternal realities and initiate originality of living. This leads to loving service, devotion to the underlying and permanent spiritual needs of the human race. Such a selfless love for one’s fellows is the divine ideal and an eternal reality. Love for humans is expressed in service, love for God finds expression in worship. And worship is the yardstick which measures the extent of the soul’s detachment from the material universe and its simultaneous and secure attachment to the spiritual realities of all creation. God rules the universe by the compelling power of love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship.