Every society has some great wisdom handed down to it by religious teachers, philosophers, and fools. Sometimes they are the same person.

The Great Generation that preceded City of Heaven had it's own wisdom, as did the builders of Heaven.

“In ages past, at the turn of every year men looked ahead to their dreams for the coming days and resolved to improve the months before them. But each year I look to the memory of days we regard as gone, never to be seen again.

Surely we take the past with us. Its dying embers set afire the future. Yet in my hot rage to avenge my past I also fashion a heart cold to that which came before. What kind of man am I who so easily buries the past under the excuse of not being able to change it?

Do not be surprised when I say that I am a man who has learned his lesson: My future is as equally unchangeable as my past. Now is all that matters, and all that matters is already gone. So I shall not strive so hard.”

- From the preface to the book,
“Summation of Frustration: Theosophy’s Triumph over Purpose,”
by heretical philosopher Panchen Self.

 “If you point to the sky and say, ‘Look, there is Heaven,’ you will not find it. If you point to the ground and say, ‘Heaven must be there,’ it will not be revealed. ‘Where then is Heaven?’ some wondered. The King said, ‘Point to the sky and point to the ground. There you will find Heaven.’”

“It has been said that we learn from our mistakes. But since we are only Terran, imperfect as we are, we forget most of them and never learn the lessons of the past. Thank the Great Cause for technology! Now I can revisit my every transgression since consciousness and replay it again and again so the learning never ceases!

Is it any wonder I want to die?”

Governing Ambassador Arla Sonra’s diary entry marking the fiftieth  anniversary of mandatory link-tech installation at birth.

“What value has battle and what meaning has victory when the conquered cannot appreciate the victor?
When the conquered and the conqueror are one.”

“Does love last forever? I used to think so, now I am not so sure. If Man were immortal, would not the track record of even his early years demonstrate that love usually gives way to tolerance? And what is tolerance but another word for hatred?
If love lasts forever, then we are robbed by death. But if not, then death is our escape from the inevitable. If we are honest, we will confess there are many days that we wish to be robbed rather than to face the inevitable.”

- Excerpted from Elnon Sim’s,
“Transient Passions: A New Terran Philosophy of Love”

“For countless generations, those who held to the hidden teachings of Isa were subjected to various indignities from one extreme to the other. This was because each generation was determined to expand beyond its own. Each generation looked at the surrounding culture and flatly condemned it. They may have not said so in words. In fact, they often denied it, couching their messenger movement in phrases like, ‘Hate the practice, but love the practitioner;’ but they demonstrated their attitude of self-righteousness by openly demanding that others join them. ‘We are better than you, join us and you can be better too!’ The great messenger movement lasted for more than two thousand years before the second coming of the King—but this is no longer our way.

“We know we are better, but if we advocate it, the authorities will surely crush our movement. Toward the end of the Many Generations, billions died for the cause of a few—and those were in the days of primitive technologies, before the unity of the world. Our day is different! Today’s authority is planetary! No government has ever possessed the technology or capability to carry out such a threat as completely as this one. It is not that we are afraid; it is that we must survive! Therefore, my friends, in all your enclaves never forget that our method is minimal and our mantra is to Hide in the Open.”

“Do the dead dream?
Only between their screams.”

-Isian Proverb

“I have come to the awful conclusion that at the consummation of our age, when Deos has restored all things to perfect order and our joy is complete, there will be one who, though Himself perfect, will suffer for time unceasing. Is it not Deos Himself? Do not the books tell us that He never forgets—that it is impossible for Him to forget? Then what of those people whom He loved, for whom He died in the expression of that love, who are lost forever? Will He not, like a tragic father, always bear an unquenchable grief for those lost whom He can never forget?
It must be a terrifying thing to be Deos. I thank Him daily for the mercy of forgetfulness. I only wish I could share it with Him.”

“...then the man prepared his request for the Isian. ‘Surely the King intends for His people to live in peace and safety, does he not?’ The Isian did not answer. ‘But if not peace and safety, then why else would He reign?’ Again, the Isian did not answer. ‘Isian, if the King does not intend peace and safety, then why should I serve Him?’ Upon which the Isian answered, ‘So that you may live in peace and safety.’

‘Is this not what I asked?’

‘You asked what He intended, then assumed His intention. Therefore, I gave no answer.’ The man considered the Isian's words in silence, then presented his request, ‘I seek peace and safety.’

‘You shall have it,’ the Isian replied. ‘I give you the desert in which you may dwell alone.’”

‘The Great Generation: Isian Accounts’ 9:7-12

“In the early days of my work, I wanted nothing more than to show mercy to the guilty. Who is guiltier than the man locked in a cage? I became a volunteer counselor at the regional prison.

Once, while consoling an aged man who had spent most of his life incarcerated for a particularly horrid and violent crime, an alarm sounded and the door of each man’s cell automatically locked. The guards came and counted all the prisoners, two men per cell. I was trapped, but decided to spend my time encouraging the man I was visiting. When the guard came for the count, he saw only my back, as I sat facing the aged man.

Hours later, the doors unlocked and several guards walked in and arrested me. It seemed that while the doors were secured, the aged man’s cellmate escaped and made his way through the desert before anyone knew it. He murdered a family at a rest stop and stole their transport.
I was released after enduring much verbal abuse, but never allowed to return.

All my life I have wondered if my carelessness and naïveté made me an accessory. I think of this often—every time I recall the aged man’s laughter when the doors unlocked.”

 

 “Early in life, I, like everyone, had to answer the question, ‘What will I do with my life?’ But there are some people, whether they take it upon themselves or are thrust into it, who graduate from such elementary wonderings. They are the ones to whose words people cling to and whose vision they believe. They surrender to them bits of their hearts and moments from their lives. It is these visionaries who are forced to answer the question, ‘What will I do with their lives?’ My horror is that I have become such a person and I haven’t finished answering the first question.”

-Opening diary entry of Ebtisam Ardmunh on the day of his accession to his first fablership at the age of twenty-eight. At eighty-three, Ardmunh took the seat of Royalist Prime. Ardmunh reigned for seventy-seven years, leading the Synod into what became known as the Last Restoration.

“Deos forgive me. What have I done?”

-Deathbed petition of Royalist Prime Ardmunh,
17th Nisan, 923 ATH

“Every ten years, each head of a household sought a private audience with the Isian for his district, to learn some great truth or a story to hand down to his family after him. As was the custom, a man of the Brighten District presented himself before his Isian, ’I have waited these many years to see you face-to-face,’ he said, ‘that I might learn the wisdom of Isa and the truth that will guide my life. Please speak to me this truth.’

‘Shall I tell you directly,’ asked the Isian, ‘or share a parable as He did?’

The man looked with eagerness at the Isian and responded, ‘Oh, a parable, please!’

‘Very well, there once was a man who asked for wisdom in a parable. When he received it, he went away asking, ‘What does it mean?’ To which he was told, ‘You asked for a parable, not for the meaning.’

The man looked at the Isian. ‘I understand.’

‘Do you understand?’ the Isian asked.

‘Yes, indeed. The meaning is quite clear.’

‘And what is the meaning?’ the Isian asked, to which the man replied, ‘My life is a parable.’

‘Yes,’ the Isian said, ‘but what does it mean?’”

“It is a cruel irony that someone else pays a high and horrible price for another’s freedom—few pay, all benefit. Oppression is more equal—all pay and few benefit. Thank the Great Cause that life is not fair; I do not think we could afford it.”

-From a private letter by Governing Ambassador Arla Sonra to Upper House Senator Bunjar Neelin speculating on the rising tensions between Parliament and the Synod.

There was a man who spent his many years pursuing his desires in business, community, and politics. As time went by, the man’s fulfillment with the activities of life waned, his wife aged, and his children grew until they left and he was again alone with the woman he had known so long. Realizing the former days were gone never to be redeemed, he sought to make up to his companion for the years of neglect he had given her. He asked his wife, “Tell me your dreams, that I might spend the rest of my life helping you live them.”

The man’s wife looked at him softly, then lovingly put her hand to his cheek and said, “O my husband, my only dream in life was to be your wife, and the mother of your children.”

At this the man walked away sad, thinking he had married a woman without vision

“He is the surrogate of the King, the one who speaks, who acts, and who leads in His place. He is endowed as the Regent of His office, exercising all of His authority, applying all of His wisdom. For these reasons we regard his office as infallible though he is a mere man.
Should a man of faults assume the office of Prime, we who are loyal to the King will follow the Prime’s edicts and implement his vision. Honor for the office, which is rightly the King’s, though occupied by flawed men, demands no less.

If we who follow are mistaken, if our judgment in this be cause for future tragedy, then let men bear the retribution, but the Prime, as the direct surrogate and Regent of the King, be honored.

This is right and true and unquestionable, stamped with the King’s authority and exercised by His Regent, the Royalist Prime Adnan Che, this 174th day of 422, After the Hiding.”

-Registry of Primal Edicts, Fifth Century, First Millennia ATH,
Supreme Archives, Synod of Nations.

“Primes die, but the King lives forever. Let Parliament manage the affairs of men, and the man manage the affairs of his own heart. We shall each pay our accounts to the King later. Until then, Parliament shall rule and the Synod shall address our conscience.”

-From a speech by Upper House President Xanev Tolisaa’,
announcing the adoption of the treaty, Divergence of Parliament and the Synod, enacted by the Upper House, 73rd day of 926 ATH.

“There is nothing more necessary and yet so precarious as unity. Embrace cooperation, but never kiss it.”

 -From a guest lecture to 4th year Polifaith Diplomacy students,
 University of Nations, Class of 1396 ATH,
Governing Ambassador Arla Sonra.

“All of my married life I kept a mistress—solitude. I would retreat to her from time to time when the demands of my family overwhelmed me. I often longed to shed my mundane existence and run away with her. Now that I am truly alone I have learned that my mistress has a sister.
“Solitude makes a poor companion, and despair is cruel company. Why do men secretly hate the ones they openly love?”

“Some say that if they had to live life over again, they would not change a thing, yet others say they would change it all. Are not all such people fools? If we chose the same, we would surely die of the mundane, knowing the outcome of all things. If we chose differently, who is to say the outcome—and the journey there—would not be worse? I thank the Great Cause that such decisions are not in the realm of possibility, for if they were, life would surely be an even greater terror. For what would Deos do to relieve his boredom?”

Biographical musings of the heretical philosopher Panchen Self,
taken from his digital pamphlet, “A Theosophy of Zero One.”