emotions

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

152:6.3The sec­ond night of their so­journ at Gen­nesaret the Mas­ter again told the apos­tles the para­ble of the sower and added these words: “You see, my chil­dren, the ap­peal to hu­man feel­ings is tran­si­tory and ut­terly dis­ap­point­ing; the ex­clu­sive ap­peal to the in­tel­lect of man is like­wise empty and bar­ren; it is only by mak­ing your ap­peal to the spirit which lives within the hu­man mind that you can hope to achieve last­ing suc­cess and ac­com­plish those mar­velous trans­for­ma­tions of hu­man char­ac­ter that are pres­ently shown in the abun­dant yield­ing of the gen­uine fruits of the spirit in the daily lives of all who are thus de­liv­ered from the dark­ness of doubt by the birth of the spirit into the light of faith—the king­dom of heaven.”

159:3.2Al­ways re­spect the per­son­al­ity of man. Never should a righ­teous cause be pro­moted by force; spir­i­tual vic­to­ries can be won only by spir­i­tual power. This in­junc­tion against the em­ploy­ment of ma­te­rial in­flu­ences refers to psy­chic force as well as to phys­i­cal force. Over­pow­er­ing ar­gu­ments and men­tal su­pe­ri­or­ity are not to be em­ployed to co­erce men and women into the king­dom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or over­awed by shrewd elo­quence. While emo­tion as a fac­tor in hu­man de­ci­sions can­not be wholly elim­i­nated, it should not be di­rectly ap­pealed to in the teach­ings of those who would ad­vance the cause of the king­dom. Make your ap­peals di­rectly to the di­vine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not ap­peal to fear, pity, or mere sen­ti­ment. In ap­peal­ing to men, be fair; ex­er­cise self-con­trol and ex­hibit due re­straint; show proper re­spect for the per­son­al­i­ties of your pupils. Re­mem­ber that I have said: “Be­hold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

110:5.4While their mor­tal hosts are asleep, the Ad­justers try to reg­is­ter their cre­ations in the higher lev­els of the ma­te­rial mind, and some of your grotesque dreams in­di­cate their fail­ure to make ef­fi­cient con­tact. The ab­sur­di­ties of dream life not only tes­tify to pres­sure of un­ex­pressed emo­tions but also bear wit­ness to the hor­ri­ble dis­tor­tion of the rep­re­sen­ta­tions of the spir­i­tual con­cepts pre­sented by the Ad­justers. Your own pas­sions, urges, and other in­nate ten­den­cies trans­late them­selves into the pic­ture and sub­sti­tute their un­ex­pressed de­sires for the di­vine mes­sages which the in­dwellers are en­deav­or­ing to put into the psy­chic rec­ords dur­ing un­con­scious sleep.

• controlling influence in evolution, not thinking

85:7.2You must re­mem­ber that feel­ing, not think­ing, was the guid­ing and con­trol­ling in­flu­ence in all evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment. To the prim­i­tive mind there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween fear­ing, shun­ning, hon­or­ing, and wor­ship­ing.

• do not lead us Godward; rather, thoughts

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

101:1.4Re­li­gion lives and pros­pers, then, not by sight and feel­ing, but rather by faith and in­sight. It con­sists not in the dis­cov­ery of new facts or in the find­ing of a unique ex­pe­ri­ence, but rather in the dis­cov­ery of new and spir­i­tual mean­ings in facts al­ready well known to man­kind. The high­est re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is not de­pen­dent on prior acts of be­lief, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity; nei­ther is re­li­gion the off­spring of sub­lime feel­ings and purely mys­ti­cal emo­tions. It is, rather, a pro­foundly deep and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with the spirit in­flu­ences res­i­dent within the hu­man mind, and as far as such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­fin­able in terms of psy­chol­ogy, it is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­al­ity of be­liev­ing in God as the re­al­ity of such a purely per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• regarding moral values is paramount in religion

103:3.4Re­mem­ber that in the re­li­gion of all ages the ex­pe­ri­ence which is paramount is the feel­ing re­gard­ing moral val­ues and so­cial mean­ings, not the think­ing re­gard­ing the­o­logic dog­mas or philo­sophic the­o­ries. Re­li­gion evolves fa­vor­ably as the el­e­ment of magic is re­placed by the con­cept of morals.

62:2.3The mem­bers of this new species had the largest brains for their size of any an­i­mal that had thereto­fore ex­isted on earth. They ex­pe­ri­enced many of the emo­tions and shared nu­mer­ous in­stincts which later char­ac­ter­ized prim­i­tive man, be­ing highly cu­ri­ous and ex­hibit­ing con­sid­er­able ela­tion when suc­cess­ful at any un­der­tak­ing. Food hunger and sex crav­ing were well de­vel­oped, and a def­i­nite sex se­lec­tion was man­i­fested in a crude form of court­ship and choice of mates. They would fight fiercely in de­fense of their kin­dred and were quite ten­der in fam­ily as­so­ci­a­tions, pos­sess­ing a sense of self-abase­ment bor­der­ing on shame and re­morse. They were very af­fec­tion­ate and touch­ingly loyal to their mates, but if cir­cum­stances sep­a­rated them, they would choose new part­ners.

62:2.4Be­ing small of stature and hav­ing keen minds to re­al­ize the dan­gers of their for­est habi­tat, they de­vel­oped an ex­traor­di­nary fear which led to those wise pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures that so enor­mously con­tributed to sur­vival, such as their con­struc­tion of crude shel­ters in the high tree­tops which elim­i­nated many of the per­ils of ground life. The be­gin­ning of the fear ten­den­cies of man­kind more specif­i­cally dates from these days.

62:2.5These dawn mam­mals de­vel­oped more of a tribal spirit than had ever been pre­vi­ously ex­hib­ited. They were, in­deed, highly gre­gar­i­ous but nev­er­the­less ex­ceed­ingly pug­na­cious when in any way dis­turbed in the or­di­nary pur­suit of their rou­tine life, and they dis­played fiery tem­pers when their anger was fully aroused. Their bel­li­cose na­tures, how­ever, served a good pur­pose; su­pe­rior groups did not hes­i­tate to make war on their in­fe­rior neigh­bors, and thus, by se­lec­tive sur­vival, the species was pro­gres­sively im­proved. They very soon dom­i­nated the life of the smaller crea­tures of this re­gion, and very few of the older non­car­niv­o­rous mon­key­like tribes sur­vived.

152:6.4Je­sus taught the ap­peal to the emo­tions as the tech­nique of ar­rest­ing and fo­cus­ing the in­tel­lec­tual at­ten­tion. He des­ig­nated the mind thus aroused and quick­ened as the gate­way to the soul, where there re­sides that spir­i­tual na­ture of man which must rec­og­nize truth and re­spond to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel in or­der to af­ford the per­ma­nent re­sults of true char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tions.

182:3.7Ear­lier in the evening it had not seemed so dif­fi­cult to drink the cup, but as the hu­man Je­sus bade farewell to his apos­tles and sent them to their rest, the trial grew more ap­palling. Je­sus ex­pe­ri­enced that nat­u­ral ebb and flow of feel­ing which is com­mon to all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, and just now he was weary from work, ex­hausted from the long hours of stren­u­ous la­bor and painful anx­i­ety con­cern­ing the safety of his apos­tles. While no mor­tal can pre­sume to un­der­stand the thoughts and feel­ings of the in­car­nate Son of God at such a time as this, we know that he en­dured great an­guish and suf­fered un­told sor­row, for the per­spi­ra­tion rolled off his face in great drops. He was at last con­vinced that the Fa­ther in­tended to al­low nat­u­ral events to take their course; he was fully de­ter­mined to em­ploy none of his sov­er­eign power as the su­preme head of a uni­verse to save him­self.

118:8.2Mor­tal man is a ma­chine, a liv­ing mech­a­nism; his roots are truly in the phys­i­cal world of en­ergy. Many hu­man re­ac­tions are me­chan­i­cal in na­ture; much of life is ma­chine­like. But man, a mech­a­nism, is much more than a ma­chine; he is mind en­dowed and spirit in­dwelt; and though he can never through­out his ma­te­rial life es­cape the chem­i­cal and elec­tri­cal me­chan­ics of his ex­is­tence, he can in­creas­ingly learn how to sub­or­di­nate this phys­i­cal-life ma­chine to the di­rec­tive wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence by the pro­cess of con­se­crat­ing the hu­man mind to the ex­e­cu­tion of the spir­i­tual urges of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

102:3.3Ma­te­rial feel­ings, hu­man emo­tions, lead di­rectly to ma­te­rial ac­tions, self­ish acts. Re­li­gious in­sights, spir­i­tual mo­ti­va­tions, lead di­rectly to re­li­gious ac­tions, un­selfish acts of so­cial ser­vice and al­tru­is­tic benev­o­lence.

62:3.6Com­pared with the an­ces­tral species, the mid-mam­mals were an im­prove­ment in ev­ery way. Even their po­ten­tial life span was longer, be­ing about twenty-five years. A num­ber of rudi­men­tary hu­man traits ap­peared in this new species. In ad­di­tion to the in­nate propen­si­ties ex­hib­ited by their an­ces­tors, these mid-mam­mals were ca­pa­ble of show­ing dis­gust in cer­tain re­pul­sive sit­u­a­tions. They fur­ther pos­sessed a well-de­fined hoard­ing in­stinct; they would hide food for sub­se­quent use and were greatly given to the col­lec­tion of smooth round peb­bles and cer­tain types of round stones suit­able for de­fen­sive and of­fen­sive am­mu­ni­tion.

62:3.9You can hardly re­al­ize by what nar­row mar­gins your pre­hu­man an­ces­tors missed ex­tinc­tion from time to time. Had the an­ces­tral frog of all hu­man­ity jumped two inches less on a cer­tain oc­ca­sion, the whole course of evo­lu­tion would have been markedly changed. The im­me­di­ate lemur­like mother of the dawn-mam­mal species es­caped death no less than five times by mere hair­breadth mar­gins be­fore she gave birth to the fa­ther of the new and higher mam­malian or­der. But the clos­est call of all was when light­ning struck the tree in which the prospec­tive mother of the Pri­mates twins was sleep­ing. Both of these mid-mam­mal par­ents were severely shocked and badly burned; three of their seven chil­dren were killed by this bolt from the skies. These evolv­ing an­i­mals were al­most su­per­sti­tious. This cou­ple whose tree­top home had been struck were re­ally the lead­ers of the more pro­gres­sive group of the mid-mam­mal species; and fol­low­ing their ex­am­ple, more than half the tribe, em­brac­ing the more in­tel­li­gent fam­i­lies, moved about two miles away from this lo­cal­ity and be­gan the con­struc­tion of new tree­top abodes and new ground shel­ters—their tran­sient re­treats in time of sud­den dan­ger.

159:3.6Some­time the chil­dren of the king­dom will re­al­ize that strong feel­ings of emo­tion are not equiv­a­lent to the lead­ings of the di­vine spirit. To be strongly and strangely im­pressed to do some­thing or to go to a cer­tain place, does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that such im­pulses are the lead­ings of the in­dwelling spirit.

62:5.4Many new emo­tions early ap­peared in these hu­man twins. They ex­pe­ri­enced ad­mi­ra­tion for both ob­jects and other be­ings and ex­hib­ited con­sid­er­able van­ity. But the most re­mark­able ad­vance in emo­tional de­vel­op­ment was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a new group of re­ally hu­man feel­ings, the wor­ship­ful group, em­brac­ing awe, rev­er­ence, hu­mil­ity, and even a prim­i­tive form of grat­i­tude. Fear, joined with ig­no­rance of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena, is about to give birth to prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

62:5.5Not only were such hu­man feel­ings man­i­fested in these prim­i­tive hu­mans, but many more highly evolved sen­ti­ments were also pres­ent in rudi­men­tary form. They were mildly cog­nizant of pity, shame, and re­proach and were acutely con­scious of love, hate, and re­venge, be­ing also sus­cep­ti­ble to marked feel­ings of jeal­ousy.

62:5.6These first two hu­mans—the twins—were a great trial to their Pri­mates par­ents. They were so cu­ri­ous and ad­ven­tur­ous that they nearly lost their lives on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions be­fore they were eight years old. As it was, they were rather well scarred up by the time they were twelve.

68:6.4When the land yield is re­duced or the pop­u­la­tion is in­creased, the in­ev­i­ta­ble strug­gle is re­newed; the very worst traits of hu­man na­ture are brought to the sur­face. The im­prove­ment of the land yield, the ex­ten­sion of the me­chan­i­cal arts, and the re­duc­tion of pop­u­la­tion all tend to fos­ter the de­vel­op­ment of the bet­ter side of hu­man na­ture.