fanaticism

• doctrinal fetish betrays man into

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

• prevent religious f. by scientific mental attitude

99:3.145. Pre­ven­tion of fa­nati­cism by the com­pen­sa­tions of the sci­en­tific men­tal at­ti­tude.

• spiritual revelation sometimes precipitates

110:4.5There ex­ists a vast gulf be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine, be­tween man and God. The Uran­tia races are so largely elec­tri­cally and chem­i­cally con­trolled, so highly an­i­mallike in their com­mon be­hav­ior, so emo­tional in their or­di­nary re­ac­tions, that it be­comes ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the Mon­i­tors to guide and di­rect them. You are so de­void of coura­geous de­ci­sions and con­se­crated co-op­er­a­tion that your in­dwelling Ad­justers find it next to im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with the hu­man mind. Even when they do find it pos­si­ble to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolv­ing mor­tal soul, this spir­i­tual rev­e­la­tion of­ten so blinds the crea­ture as to pre­cip­i­tate a con­vul­sion of fa­nati­cism or to ini­ti­ate some other in­tel­lec­tual up­heaval which re­sults dis­as­trously. Many a new re­li­gion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, im­per­fect, mis­un­der­stood, and gar­bled com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Thought Ad­justers.

• enthusiasm may drive on into

149:4.3On this same oc­ca­sion the Mas­ter talked to the group about the de­sir­abil­ity of pos­sess­ing well-bal­anced char­ac­ters. He rec­og­nized that it was nec­es­sary for most men to de­vote them­selves to the mas­tery of some vo­ca­tion, but he de­plored all ten­dency to­ward over­spe­cial­iza­tion, to­ward be­com­ing nar­row-minded and cir­cum­scribed in life’s ac­tiv­i­ties. He called at­ten­tion to the fact that any virtue, if car­ried to ex­tremes, may be­come a vice. Je­sus al­ways preached tem­per­ance and taught con­sis­tency—pro­por­tion­ate ad­just­ment of life prob­lems. He pointed out that over­much sym­pa­thy and pity may de­gen­er­ate into se­ri­ous emo­tional in­sta­bil­ity; that en­thu­si­asm may drive on into fa­nati­cism. He dis­cussed one of their for­mer as­so­ciates whose imag­i­na­tion had led him off into vi­sion­ary and im­prac­ti­cal un­der­tak­ings. At the same time he warned them against the dan­gers of the dull­ness of over­con­ser­va­tive medi­ocrity.

• disastrous threats of

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

• faith may lead to

196:0.6In a re­li­gious ge­nius, strong spir­i­tual faith so many times leads di­rectly to dis­as­trous fa­nati­cism, to ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the re­li­gious ego, but it was not so with Je­sus. He was not un­fa­vor­ably af­fected in his prac­ti­cal life by his ex­traor­di­nary faith and spirit at­tain­ment be­cause this spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion was a wholly un­con­scious and spon­ta­neous soul ex­pres­sion of his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God.

196:0.7The all-con­sum­ing and in­domitable spir­i­tual faith of Je­sus never be­came fa­nat­i­cal, for it never at­tempted to run away with his well-bal­anced in­tel­lec­tual judg­ments con­cern­ing the pro­por­tional val­ues of prac­ti­cal and com­mon­place so­cial, eco­nomic, and moral life sit­u­a­tions. The Son of Man was a splen­didly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity; he was a per­fectly en­dowed di­vine be­ing; he was also mag­nif­i­cently co-or­di­nated as a com­bined hu­man and di­vine be­ing func­tion­ing on earth as a sin­gle per­son­al­ity. Al­ways did the Mas­ter co-or­di­nate the faith of the soul with the wis­dom-ap­praisals of sea­soned ex­pe­ri­ence. Per­sonal faith, spir­i­tual hope, and moral de­vo­tion were al­ways cor­re­lated in a match­less re­li­gious unity of har­mo­nious as­so­ci­a­tion with the keen re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity and sa­cred­ness of all hu­man loy­al­ties—per­sonal honor, fam­ily love, re­li­gious obli­ga­tion, so­cial duty, and eco­nomic ne­ces­sity.