morality

5:5.4Moral con­duct is al­ways an an­te­ced­ent of evolved re­li­gion and a part of even re­vealed re­li­gion, but never the whole of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. So­cial ser­vice is the re­sult of moral think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing. Moral­ity does not bi­o­log­i­cally lead to the higher spir­i­tual lev­els of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The ado­ra­tion of the ab­stract beau­ti­ful is not the wor­ship of God; nei­ther is ex­al­ta­tion of na­ture nor the rev­er­ence of unity the wor­ship of God.

121:5.17Moral­ity among the gen­tiles was not nec­es­sar­ily re­lated to ei­ther phi­los­o­phy or re­li­gion. Out­side of Pales­tine it not al­ways oc­curred to peo­ple that a priest of re­li­gion was sup­posed to lead a moral life. Jew­ish re­li­gion and sub­se­quently the teach­ings of Je­sus and later the evolv­ing Chris­tian­ity of Paul were the first Eu­ro­pean re­li­gions to lay one hand upon morals and the other upon ethics, in­sist­ing that re­li­gion­ists pay some at­ten­tion to both.

70:7.11But the se­cret so­ci­eties did aim at the im­prove­ment of ado­les­cent morals; one of the chief pur­poses of the pu­berty cer­e­monies was to im­press upon the boy that he must leave other men’s wives alone.

101:9.1No pro­fessed rev­e­la­tion of re­li­gion could be re­garded as au­then­tic if it failed to rec­og­nize the duty de­mands of eth­i­cal obli­ga­tion which had been cre­ated and fos­tered by pre­ced­ing evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Rev­e­la­tion un­fail­ingly en­larges the eth­i­cal hori­zon of evolved re­li­gion while it si­mul­ta­ne­ously and un­fail­ingly ex­pands the moral obli­ga­tions of all prior rev­e­la­tions.

101:9.2When you pre­sume to sit in crit­i­cal judg­ment on the prim­i­tive re­li­gion of man (or on the re­li­gion of prim­i­tive man), you should re­mem­ber to judge such sav­ages and to eval­u­ate their re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in ac­cor­dance with their en­light­en­ment and sta­tus of con­science. Do not make the mis­take of judg­ing an­other’s re­li­gion by your own stan­dards of knowl­edge and truth.

101:9.3True re­li­gion is that sub­lime and pro­found con­vic­tion within the soul which com­pellingly ad­mon­ishes man that it would be wrong for him not to be­lieve in those mor­ontial re­al­i­ties which con­sti­tute his high­est eth­i­cal and moral con­cepts, his high­est in­ter­pre­ta­tion of life’s great­est val­ues and the uni­verse’s deep­est re­al­i­ties. And such a re­li­gion is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of yield­ing in­tel­lec­tual loy­alty to the high­est dic­tates of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness.

101:9.4The search for beauty is a part of re­li­gion only in so far as it is eth­i­cal and to the ex­tent that it en­riches the con­cept of the moral. Art is only re­li­gious when it be­comes dif­fused with pur­pose which has been de­rived from high spir­i­tual mo­ti­va­tion.

101:9.5The en­light­ened spir­i­tual con­scious­ness of civ­i­lized man is not con­cerned so much with some spe­cific in­tel­lec­tual be­lief or with any one par­tic­u­lar mode of liv­ing as with dis­cov­er­ing the truth of liv­ing, the good and right tech­nique of re­act­ing to the ever-re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Moral con­scious­ness is just a name ap­plied to the hu­man rec­og­ni­tion and aware­ness of those eth­i­cal and emerg­ing mor­ontial val­ues which duty de­mands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day con­trol and guid­ance of con­duct.

101:9.6Though rec­og­niz­ing that re­li­gion is im­per­fect, there are at least two prac­ti­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of its na­ture and func­tion:

101:9.71. The spir­i­tual urge and philo­sophic pres­sure of re­li­gion tend to cause man to project his es­ti­ma­tion of moral val­ues di­rectly out­ward into the af­fairs of his fel­lows—the eth­i­cal re­ac­tion of re­li­gion.

101:9.82. Re­li­gion cre­ates for the hu­man mind a spir­i­tu­al­ized con­scious­ness of di­vine re­al­ity based on, and by faith de­rived from, an­te­ced­ent con­cepts of moral val­ues and co-or­di­nated with super­im­posed con­cepts of spir­i­tual val­ues. Re­li­gion thereby be­comes a cen­sor of mor­tal af­fairs, a form of glo­ri­fied moral trust and con­fi­dence in re­al­ity, the en­hanced re­al­i­ties of time and the more en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nity.

101:9.9Faith be­comes the con­nec­tion be­tween moral con­scious­ness and the spir­i­tual con­cept of en­dur­ing re­al­ity. Re­li­gion be­comes the av­enue of man’s es­cape from the ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions of the tem­po­ral and nat­u­ral world to the su­per­nal re­al­i­ties of the eter­nal and spir­i­tual world by and through the tech­nique of sal­va­tion, the pro­gres­sive mor­ontia trans­for­ma­tion.

160:5.4Moral­ity and re­li­gion are not nec­es­sar­ily the same. A sys­tem of morals, by grasp­ing an ob­ject of wor­ship, may be­come a re­li­gion. A re­li­gion, by los­ing its uni­ver­sal ap­peal to loy­alty and su­preme de­vo­tion, may evolve into a sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy or a code of morals. This thing, be­ing, state, or or­der of ex­is­tence, or pos­si­bil­ity of at­tain­ment which con­sti­tutes the su­preme ideal of re­li­gious loy­alty, and which is the re­cip­i­ent of the re­li­gious de­vo­tion of those who wor­ship, is God. Re­gard­less of the name ap­plied to this ideal of spirit re­al­ity, it is God.

2:6.4The con­cept of God as a king-judge, al­though it fos­tered a high moral stan­dard and cre­ated a law-re­spect­ing peo­ple as a group, left the in­di­vid­ual be­liever in a sad po­si­tion of in­se­cu­rity re­spect­ing his sta­tus in time and in eter­nity. The later He­brew proph­ets pro­claimed God to be a Fa­ther to Is­rael; Je­sus re­vealed God as the Fa­ther of each hu­man be­ing. The en­tire mor­tal con­cept of God is tran­scen­dently il­lu­mi­nated by the life of Je­sus. Self­less­ness is in­her­ent in pa­ren­tal love. God loves not like a fa­ther, but as a fa­ther. He is the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of ev­ery uni­verse per­son­al­ity.

• inexplicable without God

3:6.3All re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy, sooner or later, ar­rives at the con­cept of uni­fied uni­verse rule, of one God. Uni­verse causes can­not be lower than uni­verse ef­fects. The source of the streams of uni­verse life and of the cos­mic mind must be above the lev­els of their man­i­fes­ta­tion. The hu­man mind can­not be con­sis­tently ex­plained in terms of the lower or­ders of ex­is­tence. Man’s mind can be truly com­pre­hended only by rec­og­niz­ing the re­al­ity of higher or­ders of thought and pur­po­sive will. Man as a moral be­ing is in­ex­pli­ca­ble un­less the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is ac­knowl­edged.

• superanimal but wholly evolutionary

5:5.1Moral­ity has its ori­gin in the rea­son of self-con­scious­ness; it is super­an­i­mal but wholly evo­lu­tion­ary. Hu­man evo­lu­tion em­braces in its un­fold­ing all en­dow­ments an­te­ced­ent to the be­stowal of the Ad­justers and to the pour­ing out of the Spirit of Truth. But the at­tain­ment of lev­els of moral­ity does not de­liver man from the real strug­gles of mor­tal liv­ing. Man’s phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment en­tails the bat­tle for ex­is­tence; the so­cial sur­round­ings ne­ces­si­tate eth­i­cal ad­just­ments; the moral sit­u­a­tions re­quire the mak­ing of choices in the high­est realms of rea­son; the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence (hav­ing re­al­ized God) de­mands that man find him and sin­cerely strive to be like him.

• acceptance of duty

5:5.2Re­li­gion is not grounded in the facts of sci­ence, the obli­ga­tions of so­ci­ety, the as­sump­tions of phi­los­o­phy, or the im­plied du­ties of moral­ity. Re­li­gion is an in­de­pen­dent realm of hu­man re­sponse to life sit­u­a­tions and is un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited at all stages of hu­man de­vel­op­ment which are post­moral. Re­li­gion may per­me­ate all four lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of val­ues and the en­joy­ment of uni­verse fel­low­ship: the phys­i­cal or ma­te­rial level of self-preser­va­tion; the so­cial or emo­tional level of fel­low­ship; the moral or duty level of rea­son; the spir­i­tual level of the con­scious­ness of uni­verse fel­low­ship through di­vine wor­ship.

• barely superanimal unless progressive

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.

• acceptance of duty
• indigenous to human personality

16:7.1In­tel­li­gence alone can­not ex­plain the moral na­ture. Moral­ity, virtue, is in­dige­nous to hu­man per­son­al­ity. Moral in­tu­ition, the re­al­iza­tion of duty, is a com­po­nent of hu­man mind en­dow­ment and is as­so­ci­ated with the other in­alien­ables of hu­man na­ture: sci­en­tific cu­rios­ity and spir­i­tual in­sight. Man’s men­tal­ity far tran­scends that of his an­i­mal cousins, but it is his moral and re­li­gious na­tures that es­pe­cially dis­tin­guish him from the an­i­mal world.

• futile without cosmic insight

16:7.8Man’s moral na­ture would be im­po­tent with­out the art of mea­sure­ment, the dis­crim­i­na­tion em­bod­ied in his abil­ity to scru­ti­nize mean­ings. Like­wise would moral choos­ing be fu­tile with­out that cos­mic in­sight which yields the con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual val­ues. From the stand­point of in­tel­li­gence, man as­cends to the level of a moral be­ing be­cause he is en­dowed with per­son­al­ity.

• acceptance of duty

16:9.112. The quest for moral val­ues, the sense of duty.

• interaction of liberty and loyalty

39:4.104. Quick­en­ers of Moral­ity. On the man­sion worlds you be­gin to learn self-gov­ern­ment for the ben­e­fit of all con­cerned. Your mind learns co-op­er­a­tion, learns how to plan with other and wiser be­ings. On the sys­tem head­quar­ters the se­raphic teach­ers will fur­ther quicken your ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cos­mic moral­ity—of the in­ter­ac­tions of lib­erty and loy­alty.

• motivation of goals

71:7.105. The mo­ti­va­tion of goals—moral­ity.

• discipline of self by divine ideals

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.

• indispensable to human progress and survival

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.

• recognition of progressive obligation to Supreme Being

110:3.104. Joy­ful ac­cep­tance of cos­mic citizen­ship—hon­est rec­og­ni­tion of your pro­gres­sive obli­ga­tions to the Su­preme Be­ing, aware­ness of the in­ter­de­pen­dence of evo­lu­tion­ary man and evolv­ing De­ity. This is the birth of cos­mic moral­ity and the dawn­ing re­al­iza­tion of uni­ver­sal duty.

• awareness of relativity of relationships

112:0.119. It is char­ac­ter­ized by moral­ity—aware­ness of rel­a­tiv­ity of re­la­tion­ship with other per­sons. It dis­cerns con­duct lev­els and choos­ingly dis­crim­i­nates be­tween them.

• acceptance of duty
• recognition of progressive obligation to Supreme Being

117:4.8The tem­po­ral re­la­tion of man to the Su­preme is the foun­da­tion for cos­mic moral­ity, the uni­ver­sal sen­si­tiv­ity to, and ac­cep­tance of, duty. This is a moral­ity which tran­scends the tem­po­ral sense of rel­a­tive right and wrong; it is a moral­ity di­rectly pred­i­cated on the self-con­scious crea­ture’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial obli­ga­tion to ex­pe­ri­en­tial De­ity. Mor­tal man and all other fi­nite crea­tures are cre­ated out of the liv­ing po­ten­tial of en­ergy, mind, and spirit ex­is­tent in the Su­preme. It is upon the Su­preme that the Ad­juster-mor­tal as­cender draws for the cre­ation of the im­mor­tal and di­vine char­ac­ter of a fi­nal­i­ter. It is out of the very re­al­ity of the Su­preme that the Ad­juster, with the con­sent of the hu­man will, weaves the pat­terns of the eter­nal na­ture of an as­cend­ing son of God.

• insight into rightness and wrongness, eternal fitness of human relationships

147:4.8“5. The moral level. And then when you at­tain true philo­sophic lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, when you have real in­sight into the right­ness and wrong­ness of things, when you per­ceive the eter­nal fit­ness of hu­man re­la­tion­ships, you will be­gin to view such a prob­lem of in­ter­pre­ta­tion as you would imag­ine a high-minded, ide­al­is­tic, wise, and im­par­tial third per­son would so view and in­ter­pret such an in­junc­tion as ap­plied to your per­sonal prob­lems of ad­just­ment to your life sit­u­a­tions.

• insight into rightness and wrongness, eternal fitness of human relationships

196:3.25Moral­ity is the es­sen­tial pre-ex­is­tent soil of per­sonal God-con­scious­ness, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the Ad­juster’s in­ner pres­ence, but such moral­ity is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and the re­sul­tant spir­i­tual in­sight. The moral na­ture is super­an­i­mal but sub­spir­i­tual. Moral­ity is equiv­a­lent to the rec­og­ni­tion of duty, the re­al­iza­tion of the ex­is­tence of right and wrong. The moral zone in­ter­venes be­tween the an­i­mal and the hu­man types of mind as mor­ontia func­tions be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual spheres of per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment.

• superanimal but wholly evolutionary

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.

• superanimal but wholly evolutionary

196:3.27Moral­ity is not nec­es­sar­ily spir­i­tual; it may be wholly and purely hu­man, al­beit real re­li­gion en­hances all moral val­ues, makes them more mean­ing­ful. Moral­ity with­out re­li­gion fails to re­veal ul­ti­mate good­ness, and it also fails to pro­vide for the sur­vival of even its own moral val­ues. Re­li­gion pro­vides for the en­hance­ment, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, and as­sured sur­vival of ev­ery­thing moral­ity rec­og­nizes and ap­proves.

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

95:3.2Moral evo­lu­tion is not wholly de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion. High moral con­cepts can be de­rived from man’s own ex­pe­ri­ence. Man can even evolve spir­i­tual val­ues and de­rive cos­mic in­sight from his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­en­tial liv­ing be­cause a di­vine spirit in­dwells him. Such nat­u­ral evo­lu­tions of con­science and char­ac­ter were also aug­mented by the pe­ri­odic ar­rival of teach­ers of truth, in an­cient times from the sec­ond Eden, later on from Mel­chiz­e­dek’s head­quar­ters at Salem.

84:7.30Fam­ily life is the pro­gen­i­tor of true moral­ity, the an­ces­tor of the con­scious­ness of loy­alty to duty. The en­forced as­so­ci­a­tions of fam­ily life sta­bi­lize per­son­al­ity and stim­u­late its growth through the com­pul­sion of ne­ces­si­tous ad­just­ment to other and di­verse per­son­al­i­ties. But even more, a true fam­ily—a good fam­ily—re­veals to the pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ators the at­ti­tude of the Cre­ator to his chil­dren, while at the same time such true par­ents por­tray to their chil­dren the first of a long se­ries of as­cend­ing dis­clo­sures of the love of the Par­a­dise par­ent of all uni­verse chil­dren.

39:4.14The keys of the king­dom of heaven are: sin­cer­ity, more sin­cer­ity, and more sin­cer­ity. All men have these keys. Men use them—ad­vance in spirit sta­tus—by de­ci­sions, by more de­ci­sions, and by more de­ci­sions. The high­est moral choice is the choice of the high­est pos­si­ble value, and al­ways—in any sphere, in all of them—this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the hum­blest cit­i­zen of Je­ru­sem or even the least of mor­tals on Uran­tia.

28:6.206 and 7. The Se­cret of Great­ness and the Soul of Good­ness. The as­cend­ing pil­grims hav­ing awak­ened to the im­port of time, the way is pre­pared for the re­al­iza­tion of the solem­nity of trust and for the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the sanc­tity of ser­vice. While these are the moral el­e­ments of great­ness, there are also se­crets of great­ness. When the spir­i­tual tests of great­ness are ap­plied, the moral el­e­ments are not dis­re­garded, but the qual­ity of un­selfish­ness re­vealed in dis­in­ter­ested la­bor for the wel­fare of one’s earthly fel­lows, par­tic­u­larly wor­thy be­ings in need and in dis­tress, that is the real mea­sure of plan­e­tary great­ness. And the man­i­fes­ta­tion of great­ness on a world like Uran­tia is the ex­hi­bi­tion of self-con­trol. The great man is not he who “takes a city” or “over­throws a na­tion,” but rather “he who sub­dues his own tongue.”

5:5.13Eter­nal sur­vival of per­son­al­ity is wholly de­pen­dent on the choos­ing of the mor­tal mind, whose de­ci­sions de­ter­mine the sur­vival po­ten­tial of the im­mor­tal soul. When the mind be­lieves God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fos­ter­ing Ad­juster, they all de­sire God, then is sur­vival as­sured. Lim­i­ta­tions of in­tel­lect, cur­tail­ment of ed­u­ca­tion, de­pri­va­tion of cul­ture, im­pov­er­ish­ment of so­cial sta­tus, even in­fe­ri­or­ity of the hu­man stan­dards of moral­ity re­sult­ing from the un­for­tu­nate lack of ed­u­ca­tional, cul­tural, and so­cial ad­van­tages, can­not in­val­i­date the pres­ence of the di­vine spirit in such un­for­tu­nate and hu­manly hand­i­capped but be­liev­ing in­di­vid­u­als. The in­dwelling of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor con­sti­tutes the in­cep­tion and in­sures the pos­si­bil­ity of the po­ten­tial of growth and sur­vival of the im­mor­tal soul.

102:5.3You can psy­chol­o­gize evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion but not the per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence re­li­gion of spir­i­tual ori­gin. Hu­man moral­ity may rec­og­nize val­ues, but only re­li­gion can con­serve, ex­alt, and spir­i­tu­al­ize such val­ues. But not­with­stand­ing such ac­tions, re­li­gion is some­thing more than emo­tion­al­ized moral­ity. Re­li­gion is to moral­ity as love is to duty, as son­ship is to servi­tude, as essence is to sub­stance. Moral­ity dis­closes an al­mighty Con­trol­ler, a De­ity to be served; re­li­gion dis­closes an all-lov­ing Fa­ther, a God to be wor­shiped and loved. And again this is be­cause the spir­i­tual po­ten­tial­ity of re­li­gion is dom­i­nant over the duty ac­tu­al­ity of the moral­ity of evo­lu­tion.

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.

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.

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

140:10.8In re­sponse to a ques­tion asked by An­drew, the Mas­ter made it clear that the moral­ity of his teach­ing was in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­li­gion of his liv­ing. He taught moral­ity, not from the na­ture of man, but from the re­la­tion of man to God.

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.

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.

2:7.9The great mis­take of the He­brew re­li­gion was its fail­ure to as­so­ciate the good­ness of God with the fac­tual truths of sci­ence and the ap­peal­ing beauty of art. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed, and since re­li­gion con­tin­ued to pur­sue the same un­wise course of overem­pha­siz­ing the good­ness of God to the rel­a­tive ex­clu­sion of truth and ne­glect of beauty, there de­vel­oped an in­creas­ing ten­dency for cer­tain types of men to turn away from the ab­stract and dis­so­ci­ated con­cept of iso­lated good­ness. The over­stressed and iso­lated moral­ity of mod­ern re­li­gion, which fails to hold the de­vo­tion and loy­alty of many twen­ti­eth-cen­tury men, would re­ha­bil­i­tate it­self if, in ad­di­tion to its moral man­dates, it would give equal con­sid­er­a­tion to the truths of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, and to the beau­ties of the phys­i­cal cre­ation, the charm of in­tel­lec­tual art, and the grandeur of gen­uine char­ac­ter achieve­ment.

103:2.7Moral choos­ing is usu­ally ac­com­pa­nied by more or less moral con­flict. And this very first con­flict in the child mind is be­tween the urges of ego­ism and the im­pulses of al­tru­ism. The Thought Ad­juster does not dis­re­gard the per­son­al­ity val­ues of the ego­is­tic mo­tive but does op­er­ate to place a slight pref­er­ence upon the al­tru­is­tic im­pulse as lead­ing to the goal of hu­man hap­pi­ness and to the joys of the king­dom of heaven.

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

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.

162:3.1It was dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem that Je­sus dealt with a cer­tain woman of evil re­pute who was brought into his pres­ence by her ac­cusers and his en­e­mies. The dis­torted rec­ord you have of this episode would sug­gest that this woman had been brought be­fore Je­sus by the scribes and Phar­isees, and that Je­sus so dealt with them as to in­di­cate that these re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews might them­selves have been guilty of im­moral­ity. Je­sus well knew that, while these scribes and Phar­isees were spir­i­tu­ally blind and in­tel­lec­tu­ally prej­u­diced by their loy­alty to tra­di­tion, they were to be num­bered among the most thor­oughly moral men of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

132:2.10The pos­si­bil­ity of evil is nec­es­sary to moral choos­ing, but not the ac­tu­al­ity thereof. A shadow is only rel­a­tively real. Ac­tual evil is not nec­es­sary as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. Po­ten­tial evil acts equally well as a de­ci­sion stim­u­lus in the realms of moral prog­ress on the lower lev­els of spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment. Evil be­comes a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence only when a moral mind makes evil its choice.

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.

95:1.6The early prog­ress of the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing was highly grat­i­fy­ing un­til Na­bo­dad, the leader of the school at Kish, de­cided to make a con­certed at­tack upon the preva­lent prac­tices of tem­ple har­lotry. But the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies failed in their ef­fort to bring about this so­cial re­form, and in the wreck of this fail­ure all their more im­por­tant spir­i­tual and philo­sophic teach­ings went down in de­feat.

95:1.7This de­feat of the Salem gospel was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a great in­crease in the cult of Ishtar, a rit­ual which had al­ready in­vaded Pales­tine as Ash­toreth, Egypt as Isis, Greece as Aphrodite, and the north­ern tribes as As­tarte. And it was in con­nec­tion with this re­vival of the wor­ship of Ishtar that the Baby­lo­nian priests turned anew to stargaz­ing; as­trol­ogy ex­pe­ri­enced its last great Mes­o­po­ta­mian re­vival, for­tunetelling be­came the vogue, and for cen­turies the priest­hood in­creas­ingly de­te­ri­o­rated.

95:1.8Mel­chiz­e­dek had warned his fol­low­ers to teach about the one God, the Fa­ther and Maker of all, and to preach only the gospel of di­vine fa­vor through faith alone. But it has of­ten been the er­ror of the teach­ers of new truth to at­tempt too much, to at­tempt to sup­plant slow evo­lu­tion by sud­den rev­o­lu­tion. The Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies in Mes­o­po­ta­mia raised a moral stan­dard too high for the peo­ple; they at­tempted too much, and their no­ble cause went down in de­feat. They had been com­mis­sioned to preach a def­i­nite gospel, to pro­claim the truth of the re­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but they be­came en­tan­gled in the ap­par­ently wor­thy cause of re­form­ing the mores, and thus was their great mis­sion side­tracked and vir­tu­ally lost in frus­tra­tion and obliv­ion.

95:1.9In one gen­er­a­tion the Salem head­quar­ters at Kish came to an end, and the pro­pa­ganda of the be­lief in one God vir­tu­ally ceased through­out Mes­o­po­ta­mia. But rem­nants of the Salem schools per­sisted. Small bands scat­tered here and there con­tin­ued their be­lief in the one Cre­ator and fought against the idol­a­try and im­moral­ity of the Mes­o­po­ta­mian priests.

103:2.3The evo­lu­tion­ary soil in the mind of man in which the seed of re­vealed re­li­gion ger­mi­nates is the moral na­ture that so early gives ori­gin to a so­cial con­scious­ness. The first prompt­ings of a child’s moral na­ture have not to do with sex, guilt, or per­sonal pride, but rather with im­pulses of jus­tice, fair­ness, and urges to kind­ness—help­ful min­istry to one’s fel­lows. And when such early moral awak­en­ings are nur­tured, there oc­curs a grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the re­li­gious life which is com­par­a­tively free from con­flicts, up­heavals, and crises.

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.

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.