1097. What then is "perfection" or "genius"? "Perfection" or "genius", as we shall now see, is the complete contact of "thought" with the six basic energies of existence, which in turn means "life". But are not all "thoughts" in contact with "life"? No! A "thought" is not in perfect contact with life if it does not express culminating knowledge of the six stages of the cycle and the two mental poles or phenomena that we call "light" and "darkness" "good" and "evil", or "perfection" and "imperfection" respectively, which reach a culmination through these stages. If a "thought" has not culminated in these two poles or stages, it has not passed through the entire cycle. And since it has not passed through the entire cycle, it has not been influenced or transformed so as to express a balance (harmony) between the same six basic energies of the cycle and can thus appear only as "unfinished", which in turn is the same as "imperfect". "Thoughts" can thus be "unfinished". A "thought" that is not "finished" has thus not passed through the cycle and can thus represent merely a locality or a particular distance in this. But a particular distance in the cycle is thus in turn merely a particular distance in "evolution" and thereby in "perfection". To express this limited distance as the entire cycle is to manifest "falsehood". And we have here arrived at the most eminent, direct cosmic answer to the great question that up to this point in history has not been sufficiently answered, namely "What is truth"? Since the full distance of the cycle is the passage through the domains of the six basic energies, and these six domains actually constitute "life in its entirety" or its appearance in its entire, all-embracing profusion of rays, it is evident that no "thought" whatsoever that represents a local stage in this "entirety" can represent anything but a local or limited expression of the radiant profusion of this "entirety", this "entirety" being of course nothing but the "absolute truth" and thereby absolute "perfection" or "genius".
      But since certain relationships of perspective in the sensory structure of the "living being" to a certain extent determine that the individual is able to perceive this locality only as the "entirety", the principle of "falsehood" arises to the same extent in its consciousness. This "falsehood" in the individual's manifestation of thoughts thus consists not merely of what is expressed by the familiar concept of a "lie" but is in reality identical to everything that comes under the concept of "primitivity", "imperfection" and "naivety". Everything that comes under the concept of "evil", "persecution", "slander", "anger", "revenge", "indignation" or, in brief, everything that expresses "unkindness" or "inhumanity" cannot possibly appear in any way other than as a limited or inadequate expression of the "entirety" of the cycle and thereby of life. Everything that comes under these concepts will therefore be "false" and thereby "untrue", where they are made out to be identical with the "entirety" or the culmination of life's highest ideals. And we have thus here gained a complete and unshakeable foundation on the basis of which we are able to measure or analyse the degree of perfection of every "thought" or the identity of every "thought" with the absolute "truth". We have seen that the scale for all "evolution" and therefore also for the evolution of "thought" extends unshakeably from primitivity and a culmination of brutality and violence or inhumanity to high-intellectuality and a culmination of sympathy, love or humaneness. To the same degree as the "thought" finds vent in brutality, violence and inhumanity, its manifestation lacks the effects of the cycle's higher basic energies. To the same degree as these effects are lacking in the manifestation, this manifestation thus exposes as a fact that the "thought" in question has not yet passed through the previously mentioned stages of the higher basic energies in its cycle and therefore to a corresponding degree can be nothing but "falsehood", which thus means an "unfinished" and thereby "imperfect" expression of "life in its entirety" or "absolute truth".