conscience

• criticism by one’s own value-habits, ideals
• human psychic reaction; hardly voice of God

92:2.6Re­li­gion has at one time or an­other sanc­tioned all sorts of con­trary and in­con­sis­tent be­hav­ior, has at some time ap­proved of prac­ti­cally all that is now re­garded as im­moral or sin­ful. Con­science, un­taught by ex­pe­ri­ence and un­aided by rea­son, never has been, and never can be, a safe and unerring guide to hu­man con­duct. Con­science is not a di­vine voice speak­ing to the hu­man soul. It is merely the sum to­tal of the moral and eth­i­cal con­tent of the mores of any cur­rent stage of ex­is­tence; it sim­ply rep­re­sents the hu­manly con­ceived ideal of re­ac­tion in any given set of cir­cum­stances.

• Salem teachers proclaimed c. as mandate of God

95:3.5Egypt was in­tel­lec­tual and moral but not overly spir­i­tual. In six thou­sand years only four great proph­ets arose among the Egyp­tians. Amen­emope they fol­lowed for a sea­son; Okhban they mur­dered; Ikh­na­ton they ac­cepted but half­heart­edly for one short gen­er­a­tion; Moses they re­jected. Again was it po­lit­i­cal rather than re­li­gious cir­cum­stances that made it easy for Abra­ham and, later on, for Joseph to ex­ert great in­flu­ence through­out Egypt in be­half of the Salem teach­ings of one God. But when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies first en­tered Egypt, they en­coun­tered this highly eth­i­cal cul­ture of evo­lu­tion blended with the mod­i­fied moral stan­dards of Mes­o­po­ta­mian im­mi­grants. These early Nile val­ley teach­ers were the first to pro­claim con­science as the man­date of God, the voice of De­ity.

• criticism by one’s own value-habits, ideals
• self-criticism essential to religious growth

100:1.5The soil es­sen­tial for re­li­gious growth pre­sup­poses a pro­gres­sive life of self-re­al­iza­tion, the co-or­di­na­tion of nat­u­ral propen­si­ties, the ex­er­cise of cu­rios­ity and the en­joy­ment of rea­son­able ad­ven­ture, the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of feel­ings of sat­is­fac­tion, the func­tion­ing of the fear stim­u­lus of at­ten­tion and aware­ness, the won­der-lure, and a nor­mal con­scious­ness of small­ness, hu­mil­ity. Growth is also pred­i­cated on the dis­cov­ery of self­hood ac­com­pa­nied by self-crit­i­cism—con­science, for con­science is re­ally the crit­i­cism of one­self by one’s own value-habits, per­sonal ide­als.

• misguided c. responsible for much unhappiness

103:2.10Man tends to iden­tify the urge to be self-serv­ing with his ego—him­self. In con­trast he is in­clined to iden­tify the will to be al­tru­is­tic with some in­flu­ence out­side him­self—God. And in­deed is such a judg­ment right, for all such non­self de­sires do ac­tu­ally have their ori­gin in the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, and this Ad­juster is a frag­ment of God. The im­pulse of the spirit Mon­i­tor is re­al­ized in hu­man con­scious­ness as the urge to be al­tru­is­tic, fel­low-crea­ture minded. At least this is the early and fun­da­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of the child mind. When the grow­ing child fails of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion, the al­tru­is­tic drive may be­come so overde­vel­oped as to work se­ri­ous in­jury to the wel­fare of the self. A mis­guided con­science can be­come re­spon­si­ble for much con­flict, worry, sor­row, and no end of hu­man un­hap­pi­ness.

• admonishes us to do right
• human psychic reaction; hardly voice of God

110:5.1Do not con­fuse and con­found the mis­sion and in­flu­ence of the Ad­juster with what is com­monly called con­science; they are not di­rectly re­lated. Con­science is a hu­man and purely psy­chic re­ac­tion. It is not to be de­spised, but it is hardly the voice of God to the soul, which in­deed the Ad­juster’s would be if such a voice could be heard. Con­science, rightly, ad­mon­ishes you to do right; but the Ad­juster, in ad­di­tion, en­deav­ors to tell you what truly is right; that is, when and as you are able to per­ceive the Mon­i­tor’s lead­ing.

• hazardous to differentiate from Adjusters’ registry
• human psychic reaction; hardly voice of God

110:5.5It is ex­tremely dan­ger­ous to pos­tu­late as to the Ad­juster con­tent of the dream life. The Ad­justers do work dur­ing sleep, but your or­di­nary dream ex­pe­ri­ences are purely phys­i­o­logic and psy­cho­logic phe­nom­ena. Like­wise, it is haz­ardous to at­tempt the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the Ad­justers’ con­cept reg­istry from the more or less con­tin­u­ous and con­scious re­cep­tion of the dic­ta­tions of mor­tal con­science. These are prob­lems which will have to be solved through in­di­vid­ual dis­crim­i­na­tion and per­sonal de­ci­sion. But a hu­man be­ing would do bet­ter to err in re­ject­ing an Ad­juster’s ex­pres­sion through be­liev­ing it to be a purely hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence than to blun­der into ex­alt­ing a re­ac­tion of the mor­tal mind to the sphere of di­vine dig­nity. Re­mem­ber, the in­flu­ence of a Thought Ad­juster is for the most part, though not wholly, a super­con­scious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• responds to emotional appeal

154:6.8Mary and Je­sus’ broth­ers thought that Je­sus did not un­der­stand them, that he had lost in­ter­est in them, lit­tle re­al­iz­ing that it was they who failed to un­der­stand Je­sus. Je­sus fully un­der­stood how dif­fi­cult it is for men to break with their past. He knew how hu­man be­ings are swayed by the preacher’s elo­quence, and how the con­science re­sponds to emo­tional ap­peal as the mind does to logic and rea­son, but he also knew how far more dif­fi­cult it is to per­suade men to dis­own the past.

• maintain c. void of offense

156:2.7Said Je­sus: “My dis­ci­ples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all con­scious sin, but you must refuse to har­bor even the feel­ings of guilt. If you con­fess your sins, they are for­given; there­fore must you main­tain a con­science void of of­fense.”