ethics

28:6.21. The Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins. The as­cen­dant Trin­i­tized Sons of a super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment are charged with the re­spon­si­bil­ity of deal­ing with all is­sues grow­ing out of the ori­gin of any in­di­vid­ual, race, or world; and the sig­nif­i­cance of ori­gin is the paramount ques­tion in all our plans for the cos­mic ad­vance­ment of the liv­ing crea­tures of the realm. All re­la­tion­ships and the ap­pli­ca­tion of ethics grow out of the fun­da­men­tal facts of ori­gin. Ori­gin is the ba­sis of the re­la­tional re­ac­tion of the Gods. Al­ways does the Con­joint Ac­tor “take note of the man, in what man­ner he was born.”

12:5.10Un­spir­i­tual an­i­mals know only the past and live in the pres­ent. Spirit-in­dwelt man has pow­ers of pre­vi­sion (in­sight); he may vi­su­al­ize the fu­ture. Only for­ward-look­ing and pro­gres­sive at­ti­tudes are per­son­ally real. Static ethics and tra­di­tional moral­ity are just slightly super­an­i­mal. Nor is sto­icism a high or­der of self-re­al­iza­tion. Ethics and morals be­come truly hu­man when they are dy­namic and pro­gres­sive, alive with uni­verse re­al­ity.

86:6.7With the emer­gence of these con­cepts, there was ini­ti­ated the long and waste­ful strug­gle to ap­pease the ever-dis­pleased spir­its, the slav­ish bond­age to evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gious fear, that long waste of hu­man ef­fort upon tombs, tem­ples, sac­ri­fices, and priest­hoods. It was a ter­ri­ble and fright­ful price to pay, but it was worth all it cost, for man therein achieved a nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of rel­a­tive right and wrong; hu­man ethics was born!

111:4.4The in­ner and the outer worlds have a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. Any civ­i­liza­tion is in jeop­ardy when three quar­ters of its youth en­ter ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pro­fes­sions and de­vote them­selves to the pur­suit of the sen­sory ac­tiv­i­ties of the outer world. Civ­i­liza­tion is in dan­ger when youth ne­glect to in­ter­est them­selves in ethics, so­ci­ol­ogy, eu­gen­ics, phi­los­o­phy, the fine arts, re­li­gion, and cos­mol­ogy.

• recognition of morality, rights of others

27:3.1The higher you as­cend in the scale of life, the more at­ten­tion must be paid to uni­verse ethics. Eth­i­cal aware­ness is sim­ply the rec­og­ni­tion by any in­di­vid­ual of the rights in­her­ent in the ex­is­tence of any and all other in­di­vid­u­als. But spir­i­tual ethics far tran­scends the mor­tal and even the mor­ontia con­cept of per­sonal and group re­la­tions.

• not meaningless formalities but inherent proprieties

27:4.1Hav­ing al­ready been fully in­structed in the ethics of Par­a­dise re­la­tion­ships—nei­ther mean­ing­less for­mal­i­ties nor the dic­ta­tions of ar­ti­fi­cial castes but rather the in­her­ent pro­pri­eties—the as­cen­dant mor­tals find it help­ful to re­ceive the coun­sel of the super­aphic di­rec­tors of con­duct, who in­struct the new mem­bers of Par­a­dise so­ci­ety in the us­ages of the per­fect con­duct of the high be­ings who so­journ on the cen­tral Isle of Light and Life.

• recognition that creation, including ourselves, was not made just for us

28:6.18The uni­ver­sal econ­omy is based on in­take and out­put; through­out the eter­nal ca­reer you will never en­counter mo­not­ony of in­ac­tion or stag­na­tion of per­son­al­ity. Prog­ress is made pos­si­ble by in­her­ent mo­tion, ad­vance­ment grows out of the di­vine ca­pac­ity for ac­tion, and achieve­ment is the child of imag­i­na­tive ad­ven­ture. But in­her­ent in this ca­pac­ity for achieve­ment is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of ethics, the ne­ces­sity for rec­og­niz­ing that the world and the uni­verse are filled with a mul­ti­tude of dif­fer­ing types of be­ings. All of this mag­nif­i­cent cre­ation, in­clud­ing your­self, was not made just for you. This is not an ego­cen­tric uni­verse. The Gods have de­creed, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive,” and said your Mas­ter Son, “He who would be great­est among you let him be server of all.”

• secret of pleasant and profitable interrelationships

43:8.3Your so­journ on Eden­tia and its as­so­ci­ated spheres will be chiefly oc­cu­pied with the mas­tery of group ethics, the se­cret of pleas­ant and prof­itable in­ter­re­la­tion­ship be­tween the var­i­ous uni­verse and super­uni­verse or­ders of in­tel­li­gent per­son­al­i­ties.

• innate, divine, universal

54:4.4Most of the lib­er­ties which Lu­cifer sought he al­ready had; oth­ers he was to re­ceive in the fu­ture. All these pre­cious en­dow­ments were lost by giv­ing way to im­pa­tience and yield­ing to a de­sire to pos­sess what one craves now and to pos­sess it in de­fi­ance of all obli­ga­tion to re­spect the rights and lib­er­ties of all other be­ings com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. Eth­i­cal obli­ga­tions are in­nate, di­vine, and uni­ver­sal.

• eternal fitness of Deity relations with all beings

56:10.83. Ethic sen­si­tiv­ity. Through the re­al­iza­tion of truth the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty leads to the sense of the eter­nal fit­ness of those things which im­pinge upon the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine good­ness in De­ity re­la­tions with all be­ings; and thus even cos­mol­ogy leads to the pur­suit of di­vine re­al­ity val­ues—to God-con­scious­ness.

• recognition of morality, rights of others

92:7.5Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was largely a ma­te­rial-value con­scious­ness, but civ­i­liza­tion el­e­vates re­li­gious val­ues, for true re­li­gion is the de­vo­tion of the self to the ser­vice of mean­ing­ful and su­preme val­ues. As re­li­gion evolves, ethics be­comes the phi­los­o­phy of morals, and moral­ity be­comes the dis­ci­pline of self by the stan­dards of high­est mean­ings and su­preme val­ues—di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als. And thus re­li­gion be­comes a spon­ta­neous and ex­qui­site de­vo­tion, the liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the loy­alty of love.

• external social mirror of internal spiritual developments

102:8.4Ethics is the ex­ter­nal so­cial or racial mir­ror which faith­fully re­flects the oth­er­wise un­ob­serv­able prog­ress of in­ter­nal spir­i­tual and re­li­gious de­vel­op­ments. Man has al­ways thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deep­est ideas and high­est ide­als. Even his­toric re­li­gion has al­ways cre­ated its God con­cep­tions out of its high­est rec­og­nized val­ues. Ev­ery in­tel­li­gent crea­ture gives the name of God to the best and high­est thing he knows.

• highest e. is to love neighbor as self

170:3.63. To thus love your neigh­bor as your­self is the high­est ethics.

196:3.26The evo­lu­tion­ary mind is able to dis­cover law, morals, and ethics; but the be­stowed spirit, the in­dwelling Ad­juster, re­veals to the evolv­ing hu­man mind the law­giver, the Fa­ther-source of all that is true, beau­ti­ful, and good; and such an il­lu­mi­nated man has a re­li­gion and is spir­i­tu­ally equipped to be­gin the long and ad­ven­tur­ous search for God.

98:7.107. The philo­sophic thought of the Hel­lenis­tic peo­ples, from Alexan­dria and An­ti­och through Greece to Syra­cuse and Rome. The phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks was more in har­mony with Paul’s ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity than with any other cur­rent re­li­gious sys­tem and be­came an im­por­tant fac­tor in the suc­cess of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent. Greek phi­los­o­phy, cou­pled with Paul’s the­ol­ogy, still forms the ba­sis of Eu­ro­pean ethics.

101:3.1Re­li­gion is so vi­tal that it per­sists in the ab­sence of learn­ing. It lives in spite of its con­tam­i­na­tion with er­ro­neous cos­molo­gies and false philoso­phies; it sur­vives even the con­fu­sion of meta­physics. In and through all the his­toric vi­cis­si­tudes of re­li­gion there ever per­sists that which is in­dis­pens­able to hu­man prog­ress and sur­vival: the eth­i­cal con­science and the moral con­scious­ness.

170:3.8It there­fore is ev­i­dent that the true and in­ner re­li­gion of the king­dom un­fail­ingly and in­creas­ingly tends to man­i­fest it­self in prac­ti­cal av­enues of so­cial ser­vice. Je­sus taught a liv­ing re­li­gion that im­pelled its be­liev­ers to en­gage in the do­ing of lov­ing ser­vice. But Je­sus did not put ethics in the place of re­li­gion. He taught re­li­gion as a cause and ethics as a re­sult.

170:3.9The righ­teous­ness of any act must be mea­sured by the mo­tive; the high­est forms of good are there­fore un­con­scious. Je­sus was never con­cerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly con­cerned with that in­ward and spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther which so cer­tainly and di­rectly man­i­fests it­self as out­ward and lov­ing ser­vice for man. He taught that the re­li­gion of the king­dom is a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which no man can con­tain within him­self; that the con­scious­ness of be­ing a mem­ber of the fam­ily of be­liev­ers leads in­evitably to the prac­tice of the pre­cepts of the fam­ily con­duct, the ser­vice of one’s broth­ers and sis­ters in the ef­fort to en­hance and en­large the broth­er­hood.

43:8.12We have por­trayed Eden­tia so­cial­iza­tion as an as­so­ci­a­tion of a mor­ontia mor­tal with a uni­v­i­ta­tia fam­ily group con­sist­ing of ten in­tel­lec­tu­ally dis­sim­i­lar in­di­vid­u­als con­comi­tant with a sim­i­lar as­so­ci­a­tion with ten fel­low mor­ontians. But on the first seven ma­jor worlds only one as­cend­ing mor­tal lives with ten uni­v­i­ta­tia. On the sec­ond group of seven ma­jor worlds two mor­tals abide with each na­tive group of ten, and so on up un­til, on the last group of seven ma­jor spheres, ten mor­ontia be­ings are domi­ciled with ten uni­v­i­ta­tia. As you learn how bet­ter to so­cial­ize with the uni­v­i­ta­tia, you will prac­tice such im­proved ethics in your re­la­tions with your fel­low mor­ontia pro­gres­sors.

115:1.2Con­cep­tual frames of the uni­verse are only rel­a­tively true; they are ser­vice­able scaf­fold­ing which must even­tu­ally give way be­fore the ex­pan­sions of en­larg­ing cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion. The un­der­stand­ings of truth, beauty, and good­ness, moral­ity, ethics, duty, love, di­vin­ity, ori­gin, ex­is­tence, pur­pose, des­tiny, time, space, even De­ity, are only rel­a­tively true. God is much, much more than a Fa­ther, but the Fa­ther is man’s high­est con­cept of God; nonethe­less, the Fa­ther-Son por­trayal of Cre­ator-crea­ture re­la­tion­ship will be aug­mented by those super­mor­tal con­cep­tions of De­ity which will be at­tained in Or­von­ton, in Ha­vona, and on Par­a­dise. Man must think in a mor­tal uni­verse frame, but that does not mean that he can­not en­vi­sion other and higher frames within which thought can take place.

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

92:3.7But while call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that re­li­gion was es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, it should be re­corded that nat­u­ral re­li­gion has also done much to crip­ple and hand­i­cap the very civ­i­liza­tion which it oth­er­wise fos­tered and main­tained. Re­li­gion has ham­pered in­dus­trial ac­tiv­i­ties and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment; it has been waste­ful of la­bor and has squan­dered cap­i­tal; it has not al­ways been help­ful to the fam­ily; it has not ad­e­quately fos­tered peace and good will; it has some­times ne­glected ed­u­ca­tion and re­tarded sci­ence; it has un­duly im­pov­er­ished life for the pre­tended en­rich­ment of death. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, hu­man re­li­gion, has in­deed been guilty of all these and many more mis­takes, er­rors, and blun­ders; nev­er­the­less, it did main­tain cul­tural ethics, civ­i­lized moral­ity, and so­cial co­her­ence, and made it pos­si­ble for later re­vealed re­li­gion to com­pen­sate for these many evo­lu­tion­ary short­com­ings.

92:3.8Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion has been man’s most ex­pen­sive but in­com­pa­ra­bly ef­fec­tive in­sti­tu­tion. Hu­man re­li­gion can be jus­ti­fied only in the light of evo­lu­tion­ary civ­i­liza­tion. If man were not the as­cen­dant prod­uct of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion, then would such a course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment stand with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

101:0.2Re­li­gion is the an­ces­tor of the ad­vanced ethics and morals of pro­gres­sive so­cial evo­lu­tion. But re­li­gion, as such, is not merely a moral move­ment, al­beit the out­ward and so­cial man­i­fes­ta­tions of re­li­gion are might­ily in­flu­enced by the eth­i­cal and moral mo­men­tum of hu­man so­ci­ety. Al­ways is re­li­gion the in­spi­ra­tion of man’s evolv­ing na­ture, but it is not the se­cret of that evo­lu­tion.

82:1.10No hu­man emo­tion or im­pulse, when un­bri­dled and over­in­dulged, can pro­duce so much harm and sor­row as this pow­er­ful sex urge. In­tel­li­gent sub­mis­sion of this im­pulse to the reg­u­la­tions of so­ci­ety is the su­preme test of the ac­tu­al­ity of any civ­i­liza­tion. Self-con­trol, more and more self-con­trol, is the ever-in­creas­ing de­mand of ad­vanc­ing man­kind. Se­crecy, in­sin­cer­ity, and hypocrisy may ob­scure sex prob­lems, but they do not pro­vide so­lu­tions, nor do they ad­vance ethics.

28:5.133. The Union of Souls. Com­plet­ing the tri­une staff of at­tach­ment to the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom, are these re­flec­tors of the ide­als and sta­tus of eth­i­cal re­la­tion­ships. Of all the prob­lems in the uni­verse re­quir­ing an ex­er­cise of the con­sum­mate wis­dom of ex­pe­ri­ence and adapt­abil­ity, none are more im­por­tant than those aris­ing out of the re­la­tion­ships and as­so­ci­a­tions of in­tel­li­gent be­ings. Whether in hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions of com­merce and trade, friend­ship and mar­riage, or in the li­aisons of the an­gelic hosts, there con­tinue to arise petty fric­tions, mi­nor mis­un­der­stand­ings too triv­ial even to en­gage the at­ten­tion of con­cil­ia­tors but suf­fi­ciently ir­ri­tat­ing and dis­turb­ing to mar the smooth work­ing of the uni­verse if they were al­lowed to mul­ti­ply and con­tinue. There­fore do the Per­fec­tors of Wis­dom make avail­able the wise ex­pe­ri­ence of their or­der as the “oil of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion” for an en­tire super­uni­verse. In all this work these wise men of the super­uni­verses are ably sec­onded by their re­flec­tive as­so­ciates, the Unions of Souls, who make avail­able cur­rent in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the uni­verse and con­cur­rently por­tray the Par­a­dise ideal of the best ad­just­ment of these per­plex­ing prob­lems. When not specif­i­cally di­rec­tion­ized else­where, these se­con­a­phim re­main in re­flec­tive li­ai­son with the in­ter­preters of ethics on Par­a­dise.

28:6.8The mercy re­flec­tors, with their ter­tiary as­so­ciates, en­gage in nu­mer­ous super­uni­verse min­istries, in­clud­ing the teach­ing of the as­cend­ing crea­tures. Among many other things the Sig­nif­i­cances of Ori­gins teach these as­cend­ers how to ap­ply spirit ethics, and fol­low­ing such train­ing, the Mem­o­ries of Mercy teach them how to be truly mer­ci­ful. While the spirit tech­niques of mercy min­istry are be­yond your con­cept, you should even now un­der­stand that mercy is a qual­ity of growth. You should re­al­ize that there is a great re­ward of per­sonal sat­is­fac­tion in be­ing first just, next fair, then pa­tient, then kind. And then, on that foun­da­tion, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and re­ally show mercy; but you can­not ex­hibit mercy in and of it­self. These steps must be tra­versed; oth­er­wise there can be no gen­uine mercy. There may be pa­tron­age, con­de­scen­sion, or char­ity—even pity—but not mercy. True mercy comes only as the beau­ti­ful cli­max to these pre­ced­ing ad­juncts to group un­der­stand­ing, mu­tual ap­pre­ci­a­tion, fra­ter­nal fel­low­ship, spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, and di­vine har­mony.

52:1.6Man’s ac­quire­ment of eth­i­cal judg­ment, moral will, is usu­ally co­in­ci­dent with the ap­pear­ance of early lan­guage. Upon at­tain­ing the hu­man level, af­ter this emer­gence of mor­tal will, these be­ings be­come re­cep­tive to the tem­po­rary in­dwelling of the di­vine Ad­justers, and upon death many are duly elected as sur­vivors and sealed by the arch­an­gels for sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion and Spirit fu­sion. The arch­an­gels al­ways ac­com­pany the Plan­e­tary Princes, and a dis­pen­sa­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the prince’s ar­rival.