The Sojourn at Rome

132:2.1Mar­dus was the ac­knowl­edged leader of the Cyn­ics of Rome, and he be­came a great friend of the scribe of Da­mas­cus. Day af­ter day he con­versed with Je­sus, and night upon night he lis­tened to his su­per­nal teach­ing. Among the more im­por­tant dis­cus­sions with Mar­dus was the one de­signed to an­swer this sin­cere Cynic’s ques­tion about good and evil. In sub­stance, and in twen­ti­eth-cen­tury phrase­ol­ogy, Je­sus said:

132:2.2My brother, good and evil are merely words sym­bol­iz­ing rel­a­tive lev­els of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion of the ob­serv­able uni­verse. If you are eth­i­cally lazy and so­cially in­dif­fer­ent, you can take as your stan­dard of good the cur­rent so­cial us­ages. If you are spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent and morally un­pro­gres­sive, you may take as your stan­dards of good the re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions of your con­tem­po­raries. But the soul that sur­vives time and emerges into eter­nity must make a liv­ing and per­sonal choice be­tween good and evil as they are de­ter­mined by the true val­ues of the spir­i­tual stan­dards es­tab­lished by the di­vine spirit which the Fa­ther in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This in­dwelling spirit is the stan­dard of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

132:2.3Good­ness, like truth, is al­ways rel­a­tive and un­fail­ingly evil-con­trasted. It is the per­cep­tion of these qual­i­ties of good­ness and truth that en­ables the evolv­ing souls of men to make those per­sonal de­ci­sions of choice which are es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival.

132:2.4The spir­i­tu­ally blind in­di­vid­ual who log­i­cally fol­lows sci­en­tific dic­ta­tion, so­cial us­age, and re­li­gious dogma stands in grave dan­ger of sac­ri­fic­ing his moral free­dom and los­ing his spir­i­tual lib­erty. Such a soul is des­tined to be­come an in­tel­lec­tual par­rot, a so­cial au­toma­ton, and a slave to re­li­gious au­thor­ity.

132:2.5Good­ness is al­ways grow­ing to­ward new lev­els of the in­creas­ing lib­erty of moral self-re­al­iza­tion and spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment—the dis­cov­ery of, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with, the in­dwelling Ad­juster. An ex­pe­ri­ence is good when it height­ens the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty, aug­ments the moral will, en­hances the dis­cern­ment of truth, en­larges the ca­pac­ity to love and serve one’s fel­lows, ex­alts the spir­i­tual ide­als, and uni­fies the su­preme hu­man mo­tives of time with the eter­nal plans of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, all of which lead di­rectly to an in­creased de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will, thereby fos­ter­ing the di­vine pas­sion to find God and to be more like him.

132:2.6As you as­cend the uni­verse scale of crea­ture de­vel­op­ment, you will find in­creas­ing good­ness and di­min­ish­ing evil in per­fect ac­cor­dance with your ca­pac­ity for good­ness-ex­pe­ri­ence and truth-dis­cern­ment. The abil­ity to en­ter­tain er­ror or ex­pe­ri­ence evil will not be fully lost un­til the as­cend­ing hu­man soul achieves fi­nal spirit lev­els.

132:2.7Good­ness is liv­ing, rel­a­tive, al­ways pro­gress­ing, in­vari­ably a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and ev­er­last­ingly cor­re­lated with the dis­cern­ment of truth and beauty. Good­ness is found in the rec­og­ni­tion of the pos­i­tive truth-val­ues of the spir­i­tual level, which must, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, be con­trasted with the neg­a­tive coun­ter­part—the shad­ows of po­ten­tial evil.

132:2.8Un­til you at­tain Par­a­dise lev­els, good­ness will al­ways be more of a quest than a pos­ses­sion, more of a goal than an ex­pe­ri­ence of at­tain­ment. But even as you hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, you ex­pe­ri­ence in­creas­ing sat­is­fac­tion in the par­tial at­tain­ment of good­ness. The pres­ence of good­ness and evil in the world is in it­self pos­i­tive proof of the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of man’s moral will, the per­son­al­ity, which thus iden­ti­fies these val­ues and is also able to choose be­tween them.

132:2.9By the time of the at­tain­ment of Par­a­dise the as­cend­ing mor­tal’s ca­pac­ity for iden­ti­fy­ing the self with true spirit val­ues has be­come so en­larged as to re­sult in the at­tain­ment of the per­fec­tion of the pos­ses­sion of the light of life. Such a per­fected spirit per­son­al­ity be­comes so wholly, di­vinely, and spir­i­tu­ally uni­fied with the pos­i­tive and su­preme qual­i­ties of good­ness, beauty, and truth that there re­mains no pos­si­bil­ity that such a righ­teous spirit would cast any neg­a­tive shadow of po­ten­tial evil when ex­posed to the search­ing lu­mi­nos­ity of the di­vine light of the in­fi­nite Rulers of Par­a­dise. In all such spirit per­son­al­i­ties, good­ness is no longer par­tial, con­trastive, and com­par­a­tive; it has be­come di­vinely com­plete and spir­i­tu­ally re­plete; it ap­proaches the pu­rity and per­fec­tion of the Su­preme.

132:2.10The 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.