ideals

87:7.1The cult type of so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion per­sisted be­cause it pro­vided a sym­bol­ism for the preser­va­tion and stim­u­la­tion of moral sen­ti­ments and re­li­gious loy­al­ties. The cult grew out of the tra­di­tions of “old fam­i­lies” and was per­pet­u­ated as an es­tab­lished in­sti­tu­tion; all fam­i­lies have a cult of some sort. Ev­ery in­spir­ing ideal grasps for some per­pet­u­at­ing sym­bol­ism—seeks some tech­nique for cul­tural man­i­fes­ta­tion which will in­sure sur­vival and aug­ment re­al­iza­tion—and the cult achieves this end by fos­ter­ing and grat­i­fy­ing emo­tion.

111:4.10Ideas may take ori­gin in the stim­uli of the outer world, but ide­als are born only in the cre­ative realms of the in­ner world. To­day the na­tions of the world are di­rected by men who have a super­abun­dance of ideas, but they are pov­erty-stricken in ide­als. That is the ex­pla­na­tion of pov­erty, di­vorce, war, and racial ha­treds.

81:6.269. The racial ide­als. The ide­als of one gen­er­a­tion carve out the chan­nels of des­tiny for im­me­di­ate pos­ter­ity. The qual­ity of the so­cial torch­bear­ers will de­ter­mine whether civ­i­liza­tion goes for­ward or back­ward. The homes, churches, and schools of one gen­er­a­tion pre­de­ter­mine the char­ac­ter trend of the suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The moral and spir­i­tual mo­men­tum of a race or a na­tion largely de­ter­mines the cul­tural ve­loc­ity of that civ­i­liza­tion.

81:6.27Ide­als el­e­vate the source of the so­cial stream. And no stream will rise any higher than its source no mat­ter what tech­nique of pres­sure or di­rec­tional con­trol may be em­ployed. The driv­ing power of even the most ma­te­rial as­pects of a cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is res­i­dent in the least ma­te­rial of so­ci­ety’s achieve­ments. In­tel­li­gence may con­trol the mech­a­nism of civ­i­liza­tion, wis­dom may di­rect it, but spir­i­tual ide­al­ism is the en­ergy which re­ally up­lifts and ad­vances hu­man cul­ture from one level of at­tain­ment to an­other.

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

103:4.2When prim­i­tive man felt that his com­mu­nion with God had been in­ter­rupted, he re­sorted to sac­ri­fice of some kind in an ef­fort to make atone­ment, to re­store friendly re­la­tion­ship. The hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness leads to the dis­cov­ery of truth, and truth aug­ments ide­als, and this cre­ates new prob­lems for the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists, for our ide­als tend to grow by ge­o­met­ri­cal pro­gres­sion, while our abil­ity to live up to them is en­hanced only by arith­meti­cal pro­gres­sion.

156:5.16Are your ide­als suf­fi­ciently high to in­sure your eter­nal sal­va­tion while your ideas are so prac­ti­cal as to ren­der you a use­ful cit­i­zen to func­tion on earth in as­so­ci­a­tion with your mor­tal fel­lows? In the spirit, your cit­i­zen­ship is in heaven; in the flesh, you are still cit­i­zens of the earth king­doms. Ren­der to the Cae­sars the things which are ma­te­rial and to God those which are spir­i­tual.

103:4.3The sense of guilt (not the con­scious­ness of sin) comes ei­ther from in­ter­rupted spir­i­tual com­mu­nion or from the low­er­ing of one’s moral ide­als. De­liv­er­ance from such a predica­ment can only come through the re­al­iza­tion that one’s high­est moral ide­als are not nec­es­sar­ily syn­ony­mous with the will of God. Man can­not hope to live up to his high­est ide­als, but he can be true to his pur­pose of find­ing God and be­com­ing more and more like him.

160:5.5The so­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of a true re­li­gion con­sist in the fact that it in­vari­ably seeks to con­vert the in­di­vid­ual and to trans­form the world. Re­li­gion im­plies the ex­is­tence of undis­cov­ered ide­als which far tran­scend the known stan­dards of ethics and moral­ity em­bod­ied in even the high­est so­cial us­ages of the most ma­ture in­sti­tu­tions of civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion reaches out for undis­cov­ered ide­als, un­ex­plored re­al­i­ties, super­hu­man val­ues, di­vine wis­dom, and true spirit at­tain­ment. True re­li­gion does all of this; all other be­liefs are not wor­thy of the name. You can­not have a gen­uine spir­i­tual re­li­gion with­out the su­preme and su­per­nal ideal of an eter­nal God. A re­li­gion with­out this God is an in­ven­tion of man, a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion of life­less in­tel­lec­tual be­liefs and mean­ing­less emo­tional cer­e­monies. A re­li­gion might claim as the ob­ject of its de­vo­tion a great ideal. But such ide­als of un­re­al­ity are not at­tain­able; such a con­cept is il­lu­sion­ary. The only ide­als sus­cep­ti­ble of hu­man at­tain­ment are the di­vine re­al­i­ties of the in­fi­nite val­ues res­i­dent in the spir­i­tual fact of the eter­nal God.

160:5.8I am not only in­trigued by the con­sum­mate ide­als of this re­li­gion of your Mas­ter, but I am might­ily moved to pro­fess my be­lief in his an­nounce­ment that these ide­als of spirit re­al­i­ties are at­tain­able; that you and I can en­ter upon this long and eter­nal ad­ven­ture with his as­sur­ance of the cer­tainty of our ul­ti­mate ar­rival at the por­tals of Par­a­dise. My breth­ren, I am a be­liever, I have em­barked; I am on my way with you in this eter­nal ven­ture. The Mas­ter says he came from the Fa­ther, and that he will show us the way. I am fully per­suaded he speaks the truth. I am fi­nally con­vinced that there are no at­tain­able ide­als of re­al­ity or val­ues of per­fec­tion apart from the eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

103:5.1The early evo­lu­tion­ary mind gives ori­gin to a feel­ing of so­cial duty and moral obli­ga­tion de­rived chiefly from emo­tional fear. The more pos­i­tive urge of so­cial ser­vice and the ide­al­ism of al­tru­ism are de­rived from the di­rect im­pulse of the di­vine spirit in­dwelling the hu­man mind.

103:5.2This idea-ideal of do­ing good to oth­ers—the im­pulse to deny the ego some­thing for the ben­e­fit of one’s neigh­bor—is very cir­cum­scribed at first. Prim­i­tive man re­gards as neigh­bor only those very close to him, those who treat him neigh­borly; as re­li­gious civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, one’s neigh­bor ex­pands in con­cept to em­brace the clan, the tribe, the na­tion. And then Je­sus en­larged the neigh­bor scope to em­brace the whole of hu­man­ity, even that we should love our en­e­mies. And there is some­thing in­side of ev­ery nor­mal hu­man be­ing that tells him this teach­ing is moral—right. Even those who prac­tice this ideal least, ad­mit that it is right in the­ory.

103:5.3All men rec­og­nize the moral­ity of this uni­ver­sal hu­man urge to be un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic. The hu­man­ist as­cribes the ori­gin of this urge to the nat­u­ral work­ing of the ma­te­rial mind; the re­li­gion­ist more cor­rectly rec­og­nizes that the truly un­selfish drive of mor­tal mind is in re­sponse to the in­ner spirit lead­ings of the Thought Ad­juster.

103:5.4But man’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these early con­flicts be­tween the ego-will and the other-than-self-will is not al­ways de­pend­able. Only a fairly well uni­fied per­son­al­ity can ar­bi­trate the mul­ti­form con­tentions of the ego crav­ings and the bud­ding so­cial con­scious­ness. The self has rights as well as one’s neigh­bors. Nei­ther has ex­clu­sive claims upon the at­ten­tion and ser­vice of the in­di­vid­ual. Fail­ure to re­solve this prob­lem gives ori­gin to the ear­li­est type of hu­man guilt feel­ings.

103:5.5Hu­man hap­pi­ness is achieved only when the ego de­sire of the self and the al­tru­is­tic urge of the higher self (di­vine spirit) are co-or­di­nated and rec­on­ciled by the uni­fied will of the in­te­grat­ing and super­vis­ing per­son­al­ity. The mind of evo­lu­tion­ary man is ever con­fronted with the in­tri­cate prob­lem of ref­er­ee­ing the con­test be­tween the nat­u­ral ex­pan­sion of emo­tional im­pulses and the moral growth of un­selfish urges pred­i­cated on spir­i­tual in­sight—gen­uine re­li­gious re­flec­tion.

103:5.6The at­tempt to se­cure equal good for the self and for the great­est num­ber of other selves pre­sents a prob­lem which can­not al­ways be sat­is­fac­to­rily re­solved in a time-space frame. Given an eter­nal life, such an­tag­o­nisms can be worked out, but in one short hu­man life they are in­ca­pable of so­lu­tion. Je­sus re­ferred to such a para­dox when he said: “Whoso­ever shall save his life shall lose it, but whoso­ever shall lose his life for the sake of the king­dom, shall find it.”

103:5.7The pur­suit of the ideal—the striv­ing to be God­like—is a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort be­fore death and af­ter. The life af­ter death is no dif­fer­ent in the es­sen­tials than the mor­tal ex­is­tence. Ev­ery­thing we do in this life which is good con­tributes di­rectly to the en­hance­ment of the fu­ture life. Real re­li­gion does not fos­ter moral in­do­lence and spir­i­tual lazi­ness by en­cour­ag­ing the vain hope of hav­ing all the virtues of a no­ble char­ac­ter be­stowed upon one as a re­sult of pass­ing through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death. True re­li­gion does not be­lit­tle man’s ef­forts to pro­gress dur­ing the mor­tal lease on life. Ev­ery mor­tal gain is a di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the en­rich­ment of the first stages of the im­mor­tal sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:5.8It is fa­tal to man’s ide­al­ism when he is taught that all of his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses are merely the de­vel­op­ment of his nat­u­ral herd in­stincts. But he is en­no­bled and might­ily en­er­gized when he learns that these higher urges of his soul em­anate from the spir­i­tual forces that in­dwell his mor­tal mind.

103:5.9It lifts man out of him­self and be­yond him­self when he once fully re­al­izes that there lives and strives within him some­thing which is eter­nal and di­vine. And so it is that a liv­ing faith in the super­hu­man ori­gin of our ide­als val­i­dates our be­lief that we are the sons of God and makes real our al­tru­is­tic con­vic­tions, the feel­ings of the broth­er­hood of man.

103:5.10Man, in his spir­i­tual do­main, does have a free will. Mor­tal man is nei­ther a help­less slave of the in­flex­i­ble sov­er­eignty of an all-pow­er­ful God nor the vic­tim of the hope­less fa­tal­ity of a mech­a­nis­tic cos­mic de­ter­min­ism. Man is most truly the ar­chi­tect of his own eter­nal des­tiny.

103:5.11But man is not saved or en­no­bled by pres­sure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolv­ing soul. Pres­sure may de­form the per­son­al­ity, but it never stim­u­lates growth. Even ed­u­ca­tional pres­sure is only neg­a­tively help­ful in that it may aid in the pre­ven­tion of dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences. Spir­i­tual growth is great­est where all ex­ter­nal pres­sures are at a min­i­mum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is free­dom.” Man de­vel­ops best when the pres­sures of home, com­mu­nity, church, and state are least. But this must not be con­strued as mean­ing that there is no place in a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety for home, so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, church, and state.

103:5.12When a mem­ber of a so­cial re­li­gious group has com­plied with the re­quire­ments of such a group, he should be en­cour­aged to en­joy re­li­gious lib­erty in the full ex­pres­sion of his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the truths of re­li­gious be­lief and the facts of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The se­cu­rity of a re­li­gious group de­pends on spir­i­tual unity, not on the­o­log­i­cal uni­for­mity. A re­li­gious group should be able to en­joy the lib­erty of free­think­ing with­out hav­ing to be­come “free­thinkers.” There is great hope for any church that wor­ships the liv­ing God, val­i­dates the broth­er­hood of man, and dares to re­move all creedal pres­sure from its mem­bers.