liberty

• finaliters experience finality of
• only after learning loyalty, love, and brotherhood

39:4.11What is loy­alty? It is the fruit of an in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion of uni­verse broth­er­hood; one could not take so much and give noth­ing. As you as­cend the per­son­al­ity scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be fil­ial, and then may you be free; but not un­til you are a fi­nal­i­ter, not un­til you have at­tained per­fec­tion of loy­alty, can you self-re­al­ize fi­nal­ity of lib­erty.

• through knowing truth

52:5.4The be­stowal Son lives and dies for the spir­i­tual up­lift of the mor­tal races of a world. He es­tab­lishes the “new and liv­ing way”; his life is an in­car­na­tion of Par­a­dise truth in mor­tal flesh, that very truth—even the Spirit of Truth—in the knowl­edge of which men shall be free.

• predicated on justice, intelligence, maturity, fraternity, equity

54:1.2True lib­erty is the quest of the ages and the re­ward of evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress. False lib­erty is the sub­tle de­cep­tion of the er­ror of time and the evil of space. En­dur­ing lib­erty is pred­i­cated on the re­al­ity of jus­tice—in­tel­li­gence, ma­tu­rity, fra­ter­nity, and eq­uity.

• progressively related to cosmic reality

54:1.3Lib­erty is a self-de­stroy­ing tech­nique of cos­mic ex­is­tence when its mo­ti­va­tion is un­in­tel­li­gent, un­con­di­tioned, and un­con­trolled. True lib­erty is pro­gres­sively re­lated to re­al­ity and is ever re­gard­ful of so­cial eq­uity, cos­mic fair­ness, uni­verse fra­ter­nity, and di­vine obli­ga­tions.

54:1.4Lib­erty is sui­ci­dal when di­vorced from ma­te­rial jus­tice, in­tel­lec­tual fair­ness, so­cial for­bear­ance, moral duty, and spir­i­tual val­ues. Lib­erty is nonex­is­tent apart from cos­mic re­al­ity, and all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity is pro­por­tional to its di­vin­ity re­la­tion­ships.

• consequent upon enhanced self-control

54:1.5Un­bri­dled self-will and un­reg­u­lated self-ex­pres­sion equal un­mit­i­gated self­ish­ness, the acme of un­god­li­ness. Lib­erty with­out the as­so­ci­ated and ever-in­creas­ing con­quest of self is a fig­ment of ego­is­tic mor­tal imag­i­na­tion. Self-mo­ti­vated lib­erty is a con­cep­tual il­lu­sion, a cruel de­cep­tion. Li­cense mas­querad­ing in the gar­ments of lib­erty is the fore­run­ner of ab­ject bond­age.

54:1.6True lib­erty is the as­so­ciate of gen­uine self-re­spect; false lib­erty is the con­sort of self-ad­mi­ra­tion. True lib­erty is the fruit of self-con­trol; false lib­erty, the as­sump­tion of self-as­ser­tion. Self-con­trol leads to al­tru­is­tic ser­vice; self-ad­mi­ra­tion tends to­wards the ex­ploita­tion of oth­ers for the self­ish ag­gran­dize­ment of such a mis­taken in­di­vid­ual as is will­ing to sac­ri­fice righ­teous at­tain­ment for the sake of pos­sess­ing un­just power over his fel­low be­ings.

• through capital and invention

69:5.15Though cap­i­tal has tended to lib­er­ate man, it has greatly com­pli­cated his so­cial and in­dus­trial or­ga­ni­za­tion. The abuse of cap­i­tal by un­fair cap­i­tal­ists does not de­stroy the fact that it is the ba­sis of mod­ern in­dus­trial so­ci­ety. Through cap­i­tal and in­ven­tion the pres­ent gen­er­a­tion en­joys a higher de­gree of free­dom than any that ever pre­ceded it on earth. This is placed on rec­ord as a fact and not in jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the many mis­uses of cap­i­tal by thought­less and self­ish cus­to­di­ans.

• only under reign of law

71:2.123. The reign of law. Lib­erty can be en­joyed only when the will and whims of hu­man rulers are re­placed by leg­isla­tive en­act­ments in ac­cor­dance with ac­cepted fun­da­men­tal law.

• consequent upon enhanced self-control

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

• only under reign of law

81:5.7Lib­erty sub­ject to group reg­u­la­tion is the le­git­i­mate goal of so­cial evo­lu­tion. Lib­erty with­out re­stric­tions is the vain and fan­ci­ful dream of un­sta­ble and flighty hu­man minds.

• through knowing truth

101:6.102. Sal­va­tion from in­tel­lec­tual bond­age: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.

• where spirit is, there is freedom

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.

• only under reign of law

134:6.1If one man craves free­dom—lib­erty—he must re­mem­ber that all other men long for the same free­dom. Groups of such lib­erty-lov­ing mor­tals can­not live to­gether in peace with­out be­com­ing sub­servient to such laws, rules, and reg­u­la­tions as will grant each per­son the same de­gree of free­dom while at the same time safe­guard­ing an equal de­gree of free­dom for all of his fel­low mor­tals. If one man is to be ab­so­lutely free, then an­other must be­come an ab­so­lute slave. And the rel­a­tive na­ture of free­dom is true so­cially, eco­nom­i­cally, and po­lit­i­cally. Free­dom is the gift of civ­i­liza­tion made pos­si­ble by the en­force­ment of LAW.

• through knowing truth

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• through knowing truth

143:1.4“I have come into this world to do the will of my Fa­ther and to re­veal his lov­ing char­ac­ter to all man­kind. That, my breth­ren, is my mis­sion. And this one thing I will do, re­gard­less of the mis­un­der­stand­ing of my teach­ings by Jews or gen­tiles of this day or of an­other gen­er­a­tion. But you should not over­look the fact that even di­vine love has its se­vere dis­ci­plines. A fa­ther’s love for his son of­ten­times im­pels the fa­ther to re­strain the un­wise acts of his thought­less off­spring. The child does not al­ways com­pre­hend the wise and lov­ing mo­tives of the fa­ther’s re­strain­ing dis­ci­pline. But I de­clare to you that my Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does rule a uni­verse of uni­verses by the com­pelling power of his love. Love is the great­est of all spirit re­al­i­ties. Truth is a lib­er­at­ing rev­e­la­tion, but love is the su­preme re­la­tion­ship. And no mat­ter what blun­ders your fel­low men make in their world man­age­ment of to­day, in an age to come the gospel which I de­clare to you will rule this very world. The ul­ti­mate goal of hu­man prog­ress is the rev­er­ent rec­og­ni­tion of the fa­ther­hood of God and the lov­ing ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the broth­er­hood of man.

• through knowing truth

162:7.2“If my words abide in you and you are minded to do the will of my Fa­ther, then are you truly my dis­ci­ples. You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. I know how you will an­swer me: We are the chil­dren of Abra­ham, and we are in bond­age to none; how then shall we be made free? Even so, I do not speak of out­ward sub­jec­tion to an­other’s rule; I re­fer to the lib­er­ties of the soul. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, ev­ery­one who com­mits sin is the bond ser­vant of sin. And you know that the bond ser­vant is not likely to abide for­ever in the mas­ter’s house. You also know that the son does re­main in his fa­ther’s house. If, there­fore, the Son shall make you free, shall make you sons, you shall be free in­deed.

• through knowing truth

194:2.2The first mis­sion of this spirit is, of course, to fos­ter and per­son­al­ize truth, for it is the com­pre­hen­sion of truth that con­sti­tutes the high­est form of hu­man lib­erty. Next, it is the pur­pose of this spirit to de­stroy the be­liever’s feel­ing of or­phan­hood. Je­sus hav­ing been among men, all be­liev­ers would ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of lone­li­ness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.

• through knowing truth
• where spirit is, there is freedom

194:3.5On the day of Pen­te­cost the re­li­gion of Je­sus broke all na­tional re­stric­tions and racial fet­ters. It is for­ever true, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.” On this day the Spirit of Truth be­came the per­sonal gift from the Mas­ter to ev­ery mor­tal. This spirit was be­stowed for the pur­pose of qual­i­fy­ing be­liev­ers more ef­fec­tively to preach the gospel of the king­dom, but they mis­took the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­ceiv­ing the out­poured spirit for a part of the new gospel which they were un­con­sciously for­mu­lat­ing.

• where spirit is, there is freedom

194:3.14Be­fore the teach­ings of Je­sus which cul­mi­nated in Pen­te­cost, women had lit­tle or no spir­i­tual stand­ing in the tenets of the older re­li­gions. Af­ter Pen­te­cost, in the broth­er­hood of the king­dom woman stood be­fore God on an equal­ity with man. Among the one hun­dred and twenty who re­ceived this spe­cial vis­i­ta­tion of the spirit were many of the women dis­ci­ples, and they shared these bless­ings equally with the men be­liev­ers. No longer can man pre­sume to mo­nop­o­lize the min­istry of re­li­gious ser­vice. The Phar­isee might go on thank­ing God that he was “not born a woman, a leper, or a gen­tile,” but among the fol­low­ers of Je­sus woman has been for­ever set free from all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tions based on sex. Pen­te­cost oblit­er­ated all re­li­gious dis­crim­i­na­tion founded on racial dis­tinc­tion, cul­tural dif­fer­ences, so­cial caste, or sex prej­u­dice. No won­der these be­liev­ers in the new re­li­gion would cry out, “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is lib­erty.”

• proportional to degree of doing Father’s will

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.

177:2.7It is true that many of the ob­jec­tion­able stunt­ing in­flu­ences and other cramp­ing fea­tures of these olden Jew­ish homes have been vir­tu­ally elim­i­nated from many of the bet­ter-reg­u­lated mod­ern homes. There is, in­deed, more spon­ta­neous free­dom and far more per­sonal lib­erty, but this lib­erty is not re­strained by love, mo­ti­vated by loy­alty, nor di­rected by the in­tel­li­gent dis­ci­pline of wis­dom. As long as we teach the child to pray, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven,” a tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­ity rests upon all earthly fa­thers so to live and or­der their homes that the word fa­ther be­comes worthily en­shrined in the minds and hearts of all grow­ing chil­dren.

• existing only within realm of one’s consciousness

34:3.8When a Cre­ative Spirit be­comes “space con­scious,” she is prepar­ing to rec­og­nize a cir­cum­scribed “space do­main” as hers, a realm in which to be space free in con­tradis­tinc­tion to all other space by which she would be con­di­tioned. One is free to choose and act only within the realm of one’s con­scious­ness.

• right to love and be loved, privilege of worshiping God and serving fellows

54:2.5No be­ing in all the uni­verse has the right­ful lib­erty to de­prive any other be­ing of true lib­erty, the right to love and be loved, the priv­i­lege of wor­ship­ing God and of serv­ing his fel­lows.

• ideal of society

69:8.11While the ideal of so­ci­ety is uni­ver­sal free­dom, idle­ness should never be tol­er­ated. All able-bod­ied per­sons should be com­pelled to do at least a self-sus­tain­ing amount of work.

• daring to think, act, and live honestly, loyally, fearlessly, and truthfully

101:7.4The great dif­fer­ence be­tween a re­li­gious and a non­re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing con­sists in the na­ture and level of rec­og­nized val­ues and in the ob­ject of loy­al­ties. There are four phases in the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy: Such an ex­pe­ri­ence may be­come merely con­for­ma­tive, re­signed to sub­mis­sion to tra­di­tion and au­thor­ity. Or it may be sat­is­fied with slight at­tain­ments, just enough to sta­bi­lize the daily liv­ing, and there­fore be­comes early ar­rested on such an ad­ven­ti­tious level. Such mor­tals be­lieve in let­ting well enough alone. A third group pro­gress to the level of log­i­cal in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity but there stag­nate in con­se­quence of cul­tural slav­ery. It is in­deed piti­ful to be­hold gi­ant in­tel­lects held so se­curely within the cruel grasp of cul­tural bond­age. It is equally pa­thetic to ob­serve those who trade their cul­tural bond­age for the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fet­ters of a sci­ence, falsely so called. The fourth level of phi­los­o­phy at­tains free­dom from all con­ven­tional and tra­di­tional hand­i­caps and dares to think, act, and live hon­estly, loy­ally, fear­lessly, and truth­fully.

110:0.1The en­dow­ment of im­per­fect be­ings with free­dom en­tails in­ev­i­ta­ble tragedy, and it is the na­ture of the per­fect an­ces­tral De­ity to uni­ver­sally and af­fec­tion­ately share these suf­fer­ings in lov­ing com­pan­ion­ship.

48:7.86. To en­joy priv­i­lege with­out abuse, to have lib­erty with­out li­cense, to pos­sess power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for self-ag­gran­dize­ment—these are the marks of high civ­i­liza­tion.

67:5.1Great con­fu­sion reigned in Dala­ma­tia and there­about for al­most fifty years af­ter the in­sti­ga­tion of re­bel­lion. The com­plete and rad­i­cal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the whole world was at­tempted; rev­o­lu­tion dis­placed evo­lu­tion as the pol­icy of cul­tural ad­vance­ment and racial im­prove­ment. Among the su­pe­rior and par­tially trained so­journ­ers in and near Dala­ma­tia there ap­peared a sud­den ad­vance­ment in cul­tural sta­tus, but when these new and rad­i­cal meth­ods were at­tempted on the out­ly­ing peo­ples, in­de­scrib­able con­fu­sion and racial pan­de­mo­nium was the im­me­di­ate re­sult. Lib­erty was quickly trans­lated into li­cense by the half-evolved prim­i­tive men of those days.

89:3.7Some­day man should learn how to en­joy lib­erty with­out li­cense, nour­ish­ment with­out glut­tony, and plea­sure with­out de­bauch­ery. Self-con­trol is a bet­ter hu­man pol­icy of be­hav­ior reg­u­la­tion than is ex­treme self-de­nial. Nor did Je­sus ever teach these un­rea­son­able views to his fol­low­ers.

• fallacies of personal liberty

35:10.5Many of the La­non­an­dek Sons in the older sys­tems, how­ever, have es­tab­lished won­der­ful rec­ords of ser­vice, ad­min­is­tra­tion, and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. They are a no­ble, faith­ful, and loyal group, not­with­stand­ing their ten­dency to fall into er­ror through fal­la­cies of per­sonal lib­erty and fic­tions of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion.

• fallacies of personal liberty

39:4.6In the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion in Sa­ta­nia very few of the jus­tice guides were lost, but more than one quar­ter of the other ad­min­is­tra­tor ser­a­phim and of the lower or­ders of se­raphic min­is­ters were mis­led and de­luded by the soph­ist­ries of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty.

• liberty divorced from justice and moral duty is suicidal

53:0.1Lu­cifer was a bril­liant pri­mary La­non­an­dek Son of Neb­a­don. He had ex­pe­ri­enced ser­vice in many sys­tems, had been a high coun­selor of his group, and was dis­tin­guished for wis­dom, sagac­ity, and ef­fi­ciency. Lu­cifer was num­ber 37 of his or­der, and when com­mis­sioned by the Mel­chiz­e­deks, he was des­ig­nated as one of the one hun­dred most able and bril­liant per­son­al­i­ties in more than seven hun­dred thou­sand of his kind. From such a mag­nif­i­cent be­gin­ning, through evil and er­ror, he em­braced sin and now is num­bered as one of three Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns in Neb­a­don who have suc­cumbed to the urge of self and sur­ren­dered to the soph­istry of spu­ri­ous per­sonal lib­erty—re­jec­tion of uni­verse al­le­giance and dis­re­gard of fra­ter­nal obli­ga­tions, blind­ness to cos­mic re­la­tion­ships.

54:1.1Of all the per­plex­ing prob­lems grow­ing out of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, none has oc­ca­sioned more dif­fi­culty than the fail­ure of im­ma­ture evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals to dis­tin­guish be­tween true and false lib­erty.

54:1.7Even wis­dom is di­vine and safe only when it is cos­mic in scope and spir­i­tual in mo­ti­va­tion.

54:1.8There is no er­ror greater than that species of self-de­cep­tion which leads in­tel­li­gent be­ings to crave the ex­er­cise of power over other be­ings for the pur­pose of de­priv­ing these per­sons of their nat­u­ral lib­er­ties. The golden rule of hu­man fair­ness cries out against all such fraud, un­fair­ness, self­ish­ness, and un­righ­teous­ness. Only true and gen­uine lib­erty is com­pat­i­ble with the reign of love and the min­istry of mercy.

54:1.9How dare the self-willed crea­ture en­croach upon the rights of his fel­lows in the name of per­sonal lib­erty when the Su­preme Rulers of the uni­verse stand back in mer­ci­ful re­spect for these pre­rog­a­tives of will and po­ten­tials of per­son­al­ity! No be­ing, in the ex­er­cise of his sup­posed per­sonal lib­erty, has a right to de­prive any other be­ing of those priv­i­leges of ex­is­tence con­ferred by the Cre­ators and duly re­spected by all their loyal as­so­ciates, sub­or­di­nates, and sub­jects.

54:1.10Evo­lu­tion­ary man may have to con­tend for his ma­te­rial lib­er­ties with tyrants and op­pres­sors on a world of sin and in­iq­uity or dur­ing the early times of a prim­i­tive evolv­ing sphere, but not so on the mor­ontia worlds or on the spirit spheres. War is the her­itage of early evo­lu­tion­ary man, but on worlds of nor­mal ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion phys­i­cal com­bat as a tech­nique of ad­just­ing racial mis­un­der­stand­ings has long since fallen into dis­re­pute.

• depriving others of privileges of existence

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

• unbridled personal liberty

74:5.6Even among the Eden­ites there were those con­fused minds that leaned to­ward the Cali­gas­tia teach­ing of un­bri­dled per­sonal lib­erty; and they caused Adam no end of trou­ble; al­ways were they up­set­ting the best-laid plans for or­derly pro­gres­sion and sub­stan­tial de­vel­op­ment. He was fi­nally com­pelled to with­draw his pro­gram for im­me­di­ate so­cial­iza­tion; he fell back on Van’s method of or­ga­ni­za­tion, di­vid­ing the Eden­ites into com­pa­nies of one hun­dred with cap­tains over each and with lieu­tenants in charge of groups of ten.

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

195:1.1The Hel­l­eniza­tion of Chris­tian­ity started in earnest on that event­ful day when the Apos­tle Paul stood be­fore the coun­cil of the Are­opa­gus in Athens and told the Athe­ni­ans about “the Un­known God.” There, un­der the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis, this Ro­man cit­i­zen pro­claimed to these Greeks his ver­sion of the new re­li­gion which had taken ori­gin in the Jew­ish land of Gal­i­lee. And there was some­thing strangely alike in Greek phi­los­o­phy and many of the teach­ings of Je­sus. They had a com­mon goal—both aimed at the emer­gence of the in­di­vid­ual. The Greek, at so­cial and po­lit­i­cal emer­gence; Je­sus, at moral and spir­i­tual emer­gence. The Greek taught in­tel­lec­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to po­lit­i­cal free­dom; Je­sus taught spir­i­tual lib­er­al­ism lead­ing to re­li­gious lib­erty. These two ideas put to­gether con­sti­tuted a new and mighty char­ter for hu­man free­dom; they pre­saged man’s so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and spir­i­tual lib­erty.

54:2.1With the Son and in the Spirit did God project eter­nal Ha­vona, and ever since has there ob­tained the eter­nal pat­tern of co-or­di­nate par­tic­i­pa­tion in cre­ation—shar­ing. This pat­tern of shar­ing is the mas­ter de­sign for ev­ery one of the Sons and Daugh­ters of God who go out into space to en­gage in the at­tempt to du­pli­cate in time the cen­tral uni­verse of eter­nal per­fec­tion.

54:2.2Ev­ery crea­ture of ev­ery evolv­ing uni­verse who as­pires to do the Fa­ther’s will is des­tined to be­come the part­ner of the time-space Cre­ators in this mag­nif­i­cent ad­ven­ture of ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Were this not true, the Fa­ther would have hardly en­dowed such crea­tures with cre­ative free will, nei­ther would he in­dwell them, ac­tu­ally go into part­ner­ship with them by means of his own spirit.

54:2.3Lu­cifer’s folly was the at­tempt to do the non­doable, to short-cir­cuit time in an ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verse. Lu­cifer’s crime was the at­tempted cre­ative dis­en­fran­chise­ment of ev­ery per­son­al­ity in Sa­ta­nia, the un­rec­og­nized abridg­ment of the crea­ture’s per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion—free­will par­tic­i­pa­tion—in the long evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle to at­tain the sta­tus of light and life both in­di­vid­u­ally and col­lec­tively. In so do­ing this one­time Sov­er­eign of your sys­tem set the tem­po­ral pur­pose of his own will di­rectly athwart the eter­nal pur­pose of God’s will as it is re­vealed in the be­stowal of free will upon all per­sonal crea­tures. The Lu­cifer re­bel­lion thus threat­ened the max­i­mum pos­si­ble in­fringe­ment of the free­will choice of the as­cend­ers and servers of the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia—a threat forever­more to de­prive ev­ery one of these be­ings of the thrilling ex­pe­ri­ence of con­tribut­ing some­thing per­sonal and unique to the slowly erect­ing mon­u­ment to ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom which will some­time ex­ist as the per­fected sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia. Thus does the Lu­cifer man­i­festo, mas­querad­ing in the ha­bil­i­ments of lib­erty, stand forth in the clear light of rea­son as a mon­u­men­tal threat to con­sum­mate the theft of per­sonal lib­erty and to do it on a scale that has been ap­proached only twice in all the his­tory of Neb­a­don.

54:2.4In short, what God had given men and an­gels Lu­cifer would have taken away from them, that is, the di­vine priv­i­lege of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cre­ation of their own des­tinies and of the des­tiny of this lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds.

70:12.5Uran­tia mor­tals are en­ti­tled to lib­erty; they should cre­ate their sys­tems of gov­ern­ment; they should adopt their con­sti­tu­tions or other char­ters of civil au­thor­ity and ad­min­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dure. And hav­ing done this, they should se­lect their most com­pe­tent and wor­thy fel­lows as chief ex­ec­u­tives. For rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the leg­isla­tive branch they should elect only those who are qual­i­fied in­tel­lec­tu­ally and morally to ful­fill such sa­cred re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. As judges of their high and su­preme tri­bu­nals only those who are en­dowed with nat­u­ral abil­ity and who have been made wise by re­plete ex­pe­ri­ence should be cho­sen.

132:3.10Uni­verse prog­ress is char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing per­son­al­ity free­dom be­cause it is as­so­ci­ated with the pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of self-un­der­stand­ing and con­se­quent vol­un­tary self-re­straint. The at­tain­ment of per­fec­tion of spir­i­tual self-re­straint equals com­plete­ness of uni­verse free­dom and per­sonal lib­erty. Faith fos­ters and main­tains man’s soul in the midst of the con­fu­sion of his early ori­en­ta­tion in such a vast uni­verse, whereas prayer be­comes the great uni­fier of the var­i­ous in­spi­ra­tions of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the faith urges of a soul try­ing to iden­tify it­self with the spirit ide­als of the in­dwelling and as­so­ci­ated di­vine pres­ence.

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.

48:6.6You are not given un­re­stricted choice as to your fu­ture course; but you may choose within the lim­its of that which the tran­si­tion min­is­ters and their su­pe­ri­ors wisely de­ter­mine to be most suit­able for your fu­ture spirit at­tain­ment. The spirit world is gov­erned on the prin­ci­ple of re­spect­ing your free­will choice pro­vided the course you may choose is not detri­men­tal to you or in­ju­ri­ous to your fel­lows.