flesh

34:7.1The flesh, the in­her­ent na­ture de­rived from the an­i­mal-ori­gin races, does not nat­u­rally bear the fruits of the di­vine Spirit. When the mor­tal na­ture has been up­stepped by the ad­di­tion of the na­ture of the Ma­te­rial Sons of God, as the Uran­tia races were in a mea­sure ad­vanced by the be­stowal of Adam, then is the way bet­ter pre­pared for the Spirit of Truth to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster to bring forth the beau­ti­ful har­vest of the char­ac­ter fruits of the spirit. If you do not re­ject this spirit, even though eter­nity may be re­quired to ful­fill the com­mis­sion, “he will guide you into all truth.”

34:7.2Evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals in­hab­it­ing nor­mal worlds of spir­i­tual prog­ress do not ex­pe­ri­ence the acute con­flicts be­tween the spirit and the flesh which char­ac­ter­ize the pres­ent-day Uran­tia races. But even on the most ideal plan­ets, pre-Adamic man must put forth pos­i­tive ef­forts to as­cend from the purely an­i­mal­is­tic plane of ex­is­tence up through suc­ces­sive lev­els of in­creas­ingly in­tel­lec­tual mean­ings and higher spir­i­tual val­ues.

34:7.3The mor­tals of a nor­mal world do not ex­pe­ri­ence con­stant war­fare be­tween their phys­i­cal and spir­i­tual na­tures. They are con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of climb­ing up from the an­i­mal lev­els of ex­is­tence to the higher planes of spir­i­tual liv­ing, but this as­cent is more like un­der­go­ing an ed­u­ca­tional train­ing when com­pared with the in­tense con­flicts of Uran­tia mor­tals in this realm of the di­ver­gent ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual na­tures.

34:7.4The Uran­tia peo­ples are suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of a dou­ble de­pri­va­tion of help in this task of pro­gres­sive plan­e­tary spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. The Cali­gas­tia up­heaval pre­cip­i­tated world-wide con­fu­sion and robbed all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of the moral as­sis­tance which a well-or­dered so­ci­ety would have pro­vided. But even more dis­as­trous was the Adamic de­fault in that it de­prived the races of that su­pe­rior type of phys­i­cal na­ture which would have been more con­so­nant with spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tions.

34:7.5Uran­tia mor­tals are com­pelled to un­dergo such marked strug­gling be­tween the spirit and the flesh be­cause their re­mote an­ces­tors were not more fully Adamized by the Edenic be­stowal. It was the di­vine plan that the mor­tal races of Uran­tia should have had phys­i­cal na­tures more nat­u­rally spirit re­spon­sive.

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

34:7.7Those God-know­ing men and women who have been born of the Spirit ex­pe­ri­ence no more con­flict with their mor­tal na­tures than do the in­hab­i­tants of the most nor­mal of worlds, plan­ets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by re­bel­lion. Faith sons work on in­tel­lec­tual lev­els and live on spir­i­tual planes far above the con­flicts pro­duced by un­re­strained or un­nat­u­ral phys­i­cal de­sires. The nor­mal urges of an­i­mal be­ings and the nat­u­ral ap­petites and im­pulses of the phys­i­cal na­ture are not in con­flict with even the high­est spir­i­tual at­tain­ment ex­cept in the minds of ig­no­rant, mis­taught, or un­for­tu­nately over­con­sci­en­tious per­sons.

34:7.8Hav­ing started out on the way of life ev­er­last­ing, hav­ing ac­cepted the as­sign­ment and re­ceived your or­ders to ad­vance, do not fear the dan­gers of hu­man for­get­ful­ness and mor­tal in­con­stancy, do not be trou­bled with doubts of fail­ure or by per­plex­ing con­fu­sion, do not fal­ter and ques­tion your sta­tus and stand­ing, for in ev­ery dark hour, at ev­ery cross­road in the for­ward strug­gle, the Spirit of Truth will al­ways speak, say­ing, “This is the way.”

34:7.9[Pre­sented by a Mighty Mes­sen­ger tem­porar­ily as­signed to ser­vice on Uran­tia.]

95:4.3This wise man of the Nile taught that “riches take them­selves wings and fly away”—that all things earthly are evanes­cent. His great prayer was to be “saved from fear.” He ex­horted all to turn away from “the words of men” to “the acts of God.” In sub­stance he taught: Man pro­poses but God dis­poses. His teach­ings, trans­lated into He­brew, de­ter­mined the phi­los­o­phy of the Old Tes­ta­ment Book of Proverbs. Trans­lated into Greek, they gave color to all sub­se­quent Hel­lenic re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy. The later Alexan­drian philoso­pher, Philo, pos­sessed a copy of the Book of Wis­dom.

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

89:3.2Just about the time bar­bar­ian man was re­cov­er­ing from the waste­ful prac­tice of burn­ing and bury­ing prop­erty with the dead, just as the eco­nomic struc­ture of the races was be­gin­ning to take shape, this new re­li­gious doc­trine of re­nun­ci­a­tion ap­peared, and tens of thou­sands of earnest souls be­gan to court pov­erty. Prop­erty was re­garded as a spir­i­tual hand­i­cap. These no­tions of the spir­i­tual dan­gers of ma­te­rial pos­ses­sion were widespreadly en­ter­tained in the times of Philo and Paul, and they have markedly in­flu­enced Eu­ro­pean phi­los­o­phy ever since.

89:3.3Pov­erty was just a part of the rit­ual of the mor­ti­fi­ca­tion of the flesh which, un­for­tu­nately, be­came in­cor­po­rated into the writ­ings and teach­ings of many re­li­gions, no­tably Chris­tian­ity. Pen­ance is the neg­a­tive form of this oft­times fool­ish rit­ual of re­nun­ci­a­tion. But all this taught the sav­age self-con­trol, and that was a worth-while ad­vance­ment in so­cial evo­lu­tion. Self-de­nial and self-con­trol were two of the great­est so­cial gains from early evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Self-con­trol gave man a new phi­los­o­phy of life; it taught him the art of aug­ment­ing life’s frac­tion by low­er­ing the de­nom­i­na­tor of per­sonal de­mands in­stead of al­ways at­tempt­ing to in­crease the nu­mer­a­tor of self­ish grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

• spirit is easy victor over f.

34:6.9In ev­ery mor­tal there ex­ists a dual na­ture: the in­her­i­tance of an­i­mal ten­den­cies and the high urge of spirit en­dow­ment. Dur­ing the short life you live on Uran­tia, these two di­verse and op­pos­ing urges can sel­dom be fully rec­on­ciled; they can hardly be har­mo­nized and uni­fied; but through­out your life­time the com­bined Spirit ever min­is­ters to as­sist you in sub­ject­ing the flesh more and more to the lead­ing of the Spirit. Even though you must live your ma­te­rial life through, even though you can­not es­cape the body and its ne­ces­si­ties, nonethe­less, in pur­pose and ide­als you are em­pow­ered in­creas­ingly to sub­ject the an­i­mal na­ture to the mas­tery of the Spirit. There truly ex­ists within you a con­spir­acy of spir­i­tual forces, a con­fed­er­a­tion of di­vine pow­ers, whose ex­clu­sive pur­pose is to ef­fect your fi­nal de­liv­er­ance from ma­te­rial bond­age and fi­nite hand­i­caps.

• refereeing conflicting contentions of f. and spirit

37:6.6The pro­gres­sion of eter­nity does not con­sist solely in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. In­tel­lec­tual ac­qui­si­tion is also a part of uni­ver­sal ed­u­ca­tion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of the mind is broad­ened equally with the ex­pan­sion of the spir­i­tual hori­zon. Mind and spirit are af­forded like op­por­tu­ni­ties for train­ing and ad­vance­ment. But in all this su­perb train­ing of mind and spirit you are for­ever free from the hand­i­caps of mor­tal flesh. No longer must you con­stantly ref­eree the con­flict­ing con­tentions of your di­ver­gent spir­i­tual and ma­te­rial na­tures. At last you are qual­i­fied to en­joy the uni­fied urge of a glo­ri­fied mind long since di­vested of prim­i­tive an­i­mal­is­tic trends to­wards things ma­te­rial.

• that which is born of f. is f.

142:6.5Je­sus said: “Nev­er­the­less, I de­clare to you, ex­cept a man be born of the spirit, he can­not en­ter into the king­dom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. But you should not mar­vel that I said you must be born from above. When the wind blows, you hear the rus­tle of the leaves, but you do not see the wind—whence it comes or whither it goes—and so it is with ev­ery­one born of the spirit. With the eyes of the flesh you can be­hold the man­i­fes­ta­tions of the spirit, but you can­not ac­tu­ally dis­cern the spirit.”

• f. does not naturally bear fruits of Spirit

143:2.5“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the in­flu­ence of the evil one when in re­al­ity you have but been led astray by your own nat­u­ral ten­den­cies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and some­times even des­per­ately wicked? How easy for you to be­come self-de­ceived and thereby fall into fool­ish fears, divers lusts, en­slav­ing plea­sures, mal­ice, envy, and even venge­ful ha­tred!

• avoid wasteful, weakening conflicts of the f.

156:5.4“It is not strange that you ask such ques­tions see­ing that you are be­gin­ning to know the Fa­ther as I know him, and not as the early He­brew proph­ets so dimly saw him. You well know how our fore­fa­thers were dis­posed to see God in al­most ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. They looked for the hand of God in all nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences and in ev­ery un­usual episode of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. They con­nected God with both good and evil. They thought he soft­ened the heart of Moses and hard­ened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do some­thing, good or evil, he was in the habit of ac­count­ing for these un­usual emo­tions by re­mark­ing: ‘The Lord spoke to me say­ing, do thus and so, or go here and there.’ Ac­cord­ingly, since men so of­ten and so vi­o­lently ran into temp­ta­tion, it be­came the habit of our fore­fa­thers to be­lieve that God led them thither for test­ing, pun­ish­ing, or strength­en­ing. But you, in­deed, now know bet­ter. You know that men are all too of­ten led into temp­ta­tion by the urge of their own self­ish­ness and by the im­pulses of their an­i­mal na­tures. When you are in this way tempted, I ad­mon­ish you that, while you rec­og­nize temp­ta­tion hon­estly and sin­cerely for just what it is, you in­tel­li­gently redi­rect the en­er­gies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seek­ing ex­pres­sion, into higher chan­nels and to­ward more ide­al­is­tic goals. In this way may you trans­form your temp­ta­tions into the high­est types of up­lift­ing mor­tal min­istry while you al­most wholly avoid these waste­ful and weak­en­ing con­flicts be­tween the an­i­mal and spir­i­tual na­tures.

• spirit is easy victor over f.

157:6.4Thus did Je­sus ex­em­plify in his life what he taught in his re­li­gion: the growth of the spir­i­tual na­ture by the tech­nique of liv­ing prog­ress. He did not place em­pha­sis, as did his later fol­low­ers, upon the in­ces­sant strug­gle be­tween the soul and the body. He rather taught that the spirit was easy vic­tor over both and ef­fec­tive in the prof­itable rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of much of this in­tel­lec­tual and in­stinc­tual war­fare.

• all pass through conflict traversing from f. to spirit

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

94:8.16Sid­dhartha hardly be­lieved in the im­mor­tal­ity of the hu­man per­son­al­ity; his phi­los­o­phy only pro­vided for a sort of func­tional con­ti­nu­ity. He never clearly de­fined what he meant to in­clude in the doc­trine of Nir­vana. The fact that it could the­o­ret­i­cally be ex­pe­ri­enced dur­ing mor­tal ex­is­tence would in­di­cate that it was not viewed as a state of com­plete an­ni­hi­la­tion. It im­plied a con­di­tion of su­preme en­light­en­ment and su­per­nal bliss wherein all fet­ters bind­ing man to the ma­te­rial world had been bro­ken; there was free­dom from the de­sires of mor­tal life and de­liv­er­ance from all dan­ger of ever again ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­car­na­tion.

94:8.8Closely linked to the doc­trine of suf­fer­ing and the es­cape there­from was the phi­los­o­phy of the Eight­fold Path: right views, as­pi­ra­tions, speech, con­duct, liveli­hood, ef­fort, mind­ful­ness, and con­tem­pla­tion. It was not Gau­tama’s in­ten­tion to at­tempt to de­stroy all ef­fort, de­sire, and af­fec­tion in the es­cape from suf­fer­ing; rather was his teach­ing de­signed to pic­ture to mor­tal man the fu­til­ity of pin­ning all hope and as­pi­ra­tions en­tirely on tem­po­ral goals and ma­te­rial ob­jec­tives. It was not so much that love of one’s fel­lows should be shunned as that the true be­liever should also look be­yond the as­so­ci­a­tions of this ma­te­rial world to the re­al­i­ties of the eter­nal fu­ture.

111:7.5“Much of my dif­fi­culty was due to the un­end­ing con­flict be­tween the two na­tures of my sub­ject: the urge of am­bi­tion op­posed by an­i­mal in­do­lence; the ide­als of a su­pe­rior peo­ple crossed by the in­stincts of an in­fe­rior race; the high pur­poses of a great mind an­tag­o­nized by the urge of a prim­i­tive in­her­i­tance; the long-dis­tance view of a far-see­ing Mon­i­tor coun­ter­acted by the near­sight­ed­ness of a crea­ture of time; the pro­gres­sive plans of an as­cend­ing be­ing mod­i­fied by the de­sires and long­ings of a ma­te­rial na­ture; the flashes of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence can­celled by the chem­i­cal-en­ergy man­dates of the evolv­ing race; the urge of an­gels op­posed by the emo­tions of an an­i­mal; the train­ing of an in­tel­lect an­nulled by the ten­den­cies of in­stinct; the ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual op­posed by the ac­cu­mu­lated propen­si­ties of the race; the aims of the best over­shad­owed by the drift of the worst; the flight of ge­nius neu­tral­ized by the grav­ity of medi­ocrity; the prog­ress of the good re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the bad; the art of the beau­ti­ful be­smirched by the pres­ence of evil; the buoy­ancy of health neu­tral­ized by the de­bil­ity of dis­ease; the foun­tain of faith pol­luted by the poi­sons of fear; the spring of joy em­bit­tered by the wa­ters of sor­row; the glad­ness of an­tic­i­pa­tion dis­il­lu­sioned by the bit­ter­ness of re­al­iza­tion; the joys of liv­ing ever threat­ened by the sor­rows of death. Such a life on such a planet! And yet, be­cause of the ever-pres­ent help and urge of the Thought Ad­juster, this soul did achieve a fair de­gree of hap­pi­ness and suc­cess and has even now as­cended to the judg­ment halls of man­so­nia.”

153:5.4“My beloved, you must re­mem­ber that it is the spirit that quick­ens; the flesh and all that per­tains thereto is of lit­tle profit. The words which I have spo­ken to you are spirit and life. Be of good cheer! I have not de­serted you. Many shall be of­fended by the plain speak­ing of these days. Al­ready you have heard that many of my dis­ci­ples have turned back; they walk no more with me. From the be­gin­ning I knew that these half­hearted be­liev­ers would fall out by the way. Did I not choose you twelve men and set you apart as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom? And now at such a time as this would you also desert? Let each of you look to his own faith, for one of you stands in grave dan­ger.” And when Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter said: “Yes, Lord, we are sad and per­plexed, but we will never for­sake you. You have taught us the words of eter­nal life. We have be­lieved in you and fol­lowed with you all this time. We will not turn back, for we know that you are sent by God.” And as Pe­ter ceased speak­ing, they all with one ac­cord nod­ded their ap­proval of his pledge of loy­alty.

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

171:4.2Early on Thurs­day morn­ing be­fore the oth­ers were awake, Je­sus called An­drew and said: “Awaken your breth­ren! I have some­thing to say to them.” Je­sus knew about the swords and which of his apos­tles had re­ceived and were wear­ing these weapons, but he never dis­closed to them that he knew such things. When An­drew had aroused his as­so­ciates, and they had as­sem­bled off by them­selves, Je­sus said: “My chil­dren, you have been with me a long while, and I have taught you much that is need­ful for this time, but I would now warn you not to put your trust in the un­cer­tain­ties of the flesh nor in the frail­ties of man’s de­fense against the tri­als and test­ing which lie ahead of us. I have called you apart here by your­selves that I may once more plainly tell you that we are go­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem, where you know the Son of Man has al­ready been con­demned to death. Again am I telling you that the Son of Man will be de­liv­ered into the hands of the chief priests and the re­li­gious rulers; that they will con­demn him and then de­liver him into the hands of the gen­tiles. And so will they mock the Son of Man, even spit upon him and scourge him, and they will de­liver him up to death. And when they kill the Son of Man, be not dis­mayed, for I de­clare that on the third day he shall rise. Take heed to your­selves and re­mem­ber that I have fore­warned you.”

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

• usually caused by one’s own debased tendencies and natural propensities rather than the devil

53:8.9In gen­eral, when weak and dis­so­lute mor­tals are sup­posed to be un­der the in­flu­ence of dev­ils and demons, they are merely be­ing dom­i­nated by their own in­her­ent and de­based ten­den­cies, be­ing led away by their own nat­u­ral propen­si­ties. The devil has been given a great deal of credit for evil which does not be­long to him. Cali­gas­tia has been com­par­a­tively im­po­tent since the cross of Christ.

• greatest passions are lust, anger, pride, deceit, greed

131:4.7“God is our Fa­ther, the earth our mother, and the uni­verse our birth­place. With­out God the soul is a pris­oner; to know God re­leases the soul. By med­i­ta­tion on God, by union with him, there comes de­liv­er­ance from the il­lu­sions of evil and ul­ti­mate sal­va­tion from all ma­te­rial fet­ters. When man shall roll up space as a piece of leather, then will come the end of evil be­cause man has found God. O God, save us from the three­fold ruin of hell—lust, wrath, and avarice! O soul, gird your­self for the spirit strug­gle of im­mor­tal­ity! When the end of mor­tal life comes, hes­i­tate not to for­sake this body for a more fit and beau­ti­ful form and to awake in the realms of the Su­preme and Im­mor­tal, where there is no fear, sor­row, hunger, thirst, or death. To know God is to cut the cords of death. The God-know­ing soul rises in the uni­verse like the cream ap­pears on top of the milk. We wor­ship God, the all-worker, the Great Soul, who is ever seated in the heart of his crea­tures. And they who know that God is en­throned in the hu­man heart are des­tined to be­come like him—im­mor­tal. Evil must be left be­hind in this world, but virtue fol­lows the soul to heaven.

• greatest passions are lust, anger, pride, deceit, greed

131:6.2“The Lord of Heaven is su­preme. Those who com­mit sin will not as­cend on high, but those who walk in the paths of righ­teous­ness shall find a place in heaven. We are as­sured of the life here­after if we know truth. The soul of man may as­cend to the high­est heaven, there to de­velop its true spir­i­tual na­ture, to at­tain per­fec­tion. The es­tate of heaven de­liv­ers man from the bond­age of sin and in­tro­duces him to the fi­nal beat­i­tudes; the righ­teous man has al­ready ex­pe­ri­enced an end of sin and all its as­so­ci­ated mis­eries. Self is man’s in­vin­ci­ble foe, and self is man­i­fested as man’s four great­est pas­sions: anger, pride, de­ceit, and greed. Man’s great­est vic­tory is the con­quest of him­self. When man looks to God for for­give­ness, and when he makes bold to en­joy such lib­erty, he is thereby de­liv­ered from fear. Man should jour­ney through life treat­ing his fel­low crea­tures as he would like to be treated.”

• sensual gratifications alone do not confer happiness

136:6.10This great de­ci­sion of Je­sus por­trays dra­mat­i­cally the truth that self­ish sat­is­fac­tion and sen­su­ous grat­i­fi­ca­tion, alone and of them­selves, are not able to con­fer hap­pi­ness upon evolv­ing hu­man be­ings. There are higher val­ues in mor­tal ex­is­tence—in­tel­lec­tual mas­tery and spir­i­tual achieve­ment—which far tran­scend the nec­es­sary grat­i­fi­ca­tion of man’s purely phys­i­cal ap­petites and urges. Man’s nat­u­ral en­dow­ment of tal­ent and abil­ity should be chiefly de­voted to the de­vel­op­ment and en­no­ble­ment of his higher pow­ers of mind and spirit.

• inherited urges cannot be altogether modified

140:4.8An ef­fec­tive phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing is formed by a com­bi­na­tion of cos­mic in­sight and the to­tal of one’s emo­tional re­ac­tions to the so­cial and eco­nomic en­vi­ron­ment. Re­mem­ber: While in­her­ited urges can­not be fun­da­men­tally mod­i­fied, emo­tional re­sponses to such urges can be changed; there­fore the moral na­ture can be mod­i­fied, char­ac­ter can be im­proved. In the strong char­ac­ter emo­tional re­sponses are in­te­grated and co-or­di­nated, and thus is pro­duced a uni­fied per­son­al­ity. De­fi­cient uni­fi­ca­tion weak­ens the moral na­ture and en­gen­ders un­hap­pi­ness.

• not suppressed by religious rebuke or laws

140:8.21Je­sus had lit­tle to say about the so­cial vices of his day; sel­dom did he make ref­er­ence to moral delin­quency. He was a pos­i­tive teacher of true virtue. He stu­diously avoided the neg­a­tive method of im­part­ing in­struc­tion; he re­fused to ad­ver­tise evil. He was not even a moral re­former. He well knew, and so taught his apos­tles, that the sen­sual urges of man­kind are not sup­pressed by ei­ther re­li­gious re­buke or le­gal pro­hi­bi­tions. His few de­nun­ci­a­tions were largely di­rected against pride, cru­elty, op­pres­sion, and hypocrisy.

• fickleness of sex urge

160:2.10I re­peat, such in­spir­ing and en­nobling as­so­ci­a­tion finds its ideal pos­si­bil­i­ties in the hu­man mar­riage re­la­tion. True, much is at­tained out of mar­riage, and many, many mar­riages ut­terly fail to pro­duce these moral and spir­i­tual fruits. Too many times mar­riage is en­tered by those who seek other val­ues which are lower than these su­pe­rior ac­com­pa­ni­ments of hu­man ma­tu­rity. Ideal mar­riage must be founded on some­thing more sta­ble than the fluc­tu­a­tions of sen­ti­ment and the fick­le­ness of mere sex at­trac­tion; it must be based on gen­uine and mu­tual per­sonal de­vo­tion. And thus, if you can build up such trust­wor­thy and ef­fec­tive small units of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion, when these are as­sem­bled in the ag­gre­gate, the world will be­hold a great and glo­ri­fied so­cial struc­ture, the civ­i­liza­tion of mor­tal ma­tu­rity. Such a race might be­gin to re­al­ize some­thing of your Mas­ter’s ideal of “peace on earth and good will among men.” While such a so­ci­ety would not be per­fect or en­tirely free from evil, it would at least ap­proach the sta­bi­liza­tion of ma­tu­rity.