prejudice

160:1.7Suc­cess­ful liv­ing is noth­ing more or less than the art of the mas­tery of de­pend­able tech­niques for solv­ing com­mon prob­lems. The first step in the so­lu­tion of any prob­lem is to lo­cate the dif­fi­culty, to iso­late the prob­lem, and frankly to rec­og­nize its na­ture and grav­ity. The great mis­take is that, when life prob­lems ex­cite our pro­found fears, we refuse to rec­og­nize them. Like­wise, when the ac­knowl­edg­ment of our dif­fi­cul­ties en­tails the re­duc­tion of our long-cher­ished con­ceit, the ad­mis­sion of envy, or the aban­don­ment of deep-seated prej­u­dices, the av­er­age per­son prefers to cling to the old il­lu­sions of safety and to the long-cher­ished false feel­ings of se­cu­rity. Only a brave per­son is will­ing hon­estly to ad­mit, and fear­lessly to face, what a sin­cere and log­i­cal mind dis­cov­ers.

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

162:7.3“I know that you are Abra­ham’s seed, yet your lead­ers seek to kill me be­cause my word has not been al­lowed to have its trans­form­ing in­flu­ence in their hearts. Their souls are sealed by prej­u­dice and blinded by the pride of re­venge. I de­clare to you the truth which the eter­nal Fa­ther shows me, while these de­luded teach­ers seek to do the things which they have learned only from their tem­po­ral fa­thers. And when you re­ply that Abra­ham is your fa­ther, then do I tell you that, if you were the chil­dren of Abra­ham, you would do the works of Abra­ham. Some of you be­lieve my teach­ing, but oth­ers seek to de­stroy me be­cause I have told you the truth which I re­ceived from God. But Abra­ham did not so treat the truth of God. I per­ceive that some among you are de­ter­mined to do the works of the evil one. If God were your Fa­ther, you would know me and love the truth which I re­veal. Will you not see that I come forth from the Fa­ther, that I am sent by God, that I am not do­ing this work of my­self? Why do you not un­der­stand my words? Is it be­cause you have cho­sen to be­come the chil­dren of evil? If you are the chil­dren of dark­ness, you will hardly walk in the light of the truth which I re­veal. The chil­dren of evil fol­low only in the ways of their fa­ther, who was a de­ceiver and stood not for the truth be­cause there came to be no truth in him. But now comes the Son of Man speak­ing and liv­ing the truth, and many of you refuse to be­lieve.

49:5.18These three or­ders stand on an equal foot­ing in the as­cen­sion ca­reer. Each must tra­verse the same in­tel­lec­tual scale of de­vel­op­ment, and each must mas­ter the same spir­i­tual tests of pro­gres­sion. The sys­tem ad­min­is­tra­tion and the con­stel­la­tion over­con­trol of these dif­fer­ent worlds are uni­formly free from dis­crim­i­na­tion; even the regimes of the Plan­e­tary Princes are iden­ti­cal.

82:6.8For the past hun­dred years more racial hy­bridiza­tion has been tak­ing place on Uran­tia than has oc­curred in thou­sands of years. The dan­ger of gross dishar­monies as a re­sult of cross­breed­ing of hu­man stocks has been greatly ex­ag­ger­ated. The chief trou­bles of “half-breeds” are due to so­cial prej­u­dices.

82:6.9The Pit­cairn ex­per­i­ment of blend­ing the white and Poly­ne­sian races turned out fairly well be­cause the white men and the Poly­ne­sian women were of fairly good racial strains. In­ter­breed­ing be­tween the high­est types of the white, red, and yel­low races would im­me­di­ately bring into ex­is­tence many new and bi­o­log­i­cally ef­fec­tive char­ac­ter­is­tics. These three peo­ples be­long to the pri­mary San­gik races. Mix­tures of the white and black races are not so de­sir­able in their im­me­di­ate re­sults, nei­ther are such mu­latto off­spring so ob­jec­tion­able as so­cial and racial prej­u­dice would seek to make them ap­pear. Phys­i­cally, such white-black hy­brids are ex­cel­lent spec­i­mens of hu­man­ity, not­with­stand­ing their slight in­fe­ri­or­ity in some other re­spects.

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

160:2.72. Union of souls—the mo­bi­liza­tion of wis­dom. Ev­ery hu­man be­ing sooner or later ac­quires a cer­tain con­cept of this world and a cer­tain vi­sion of the next. Now it is pos­si­ble, through per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion, to unite these views of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence and eter­nal prospects. Thus does the mind of one aug­ment its spir­i­tual val­ues by gain­ing much of the in­sight of the other. In this way men en­rich the soul by pool­ing their re­spec­tive spir­i­tual pos­ses­sions. Like­wise, in this same way, man is en­abled to avoid that ever-pres­ent ten­dency to fall vic­tim to dis­tor­tion of vi­sion, prej­u­dice of view­point, and nar­row­ness of judg­ment. Fear, envy, and con­ceit can be pre­vented only by in­ti­mate con­tact with other minds. I call your at­ten­tion to the fact that the Mas­ter never sends you out alone to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom; he al­ways sends you out two and two. And since wis­dom is super­knowl­edge, it fol­lows that, in the union of wis­dom, the so­cial group, small or large, mu­tu­ally shares all knowl­edge.

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

160:1.13Prej­u­dice blinds the soul to the rec­og­ni­tion of truth, and prej­u­dice can be re­moved only by the sin­cere de­vo­tion of the soul to the ado­ra­tion of a cause that is all-em­brac­ing and all-in­clu­sive of one’s fel­low men. Prej­u­dice is in­sep­a­ra­bly linked to self­ish­ness. Prej­u­dice can be elim­i­nated only by the aban­don­ment of self-seek­ing and by sub­sti­tut­ing there­for the quest of the sat­is­fac­tion of the ser­vice of a cause that is not only greater than self, but one that is even greater than all hu­man­ity—the search for God, the at­tain­ment of di­vin­ity. The ev­i­dence of ma­tu­rity of per­son­al­ity con­sists in the trans­for­ma­tion of hu­man de­sire so that it con­stantly seeks for the re­al­iza­tion of those val­ues which are high­est and most di­vinely real.

185:6.4There stood Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, clothed in an old pur­ple royal robe with a crown of thorns pierc­ing his kindly brow. His face was blood­stained and his form bowed down with suf­fer­ing and grief. But noth­ing can ap­peal to the un­feel­ing hearts of those who are vic­tims of in­tense emo­tional ha­tred and slaves to re­li­gious prej­u­dice. This sight sent a mighty shud­der through the realms of a vast uni­verse, but it did not touch the hearts of those who had set their minds to ef­fect the de­struc­tion of Je­sus.

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.”

• growth

100:1.2Some per­sons are too busy to grow and are there­fore in grave dan­ger of spir­i­tual fix­a­tion. Pro­vi­sion must be made for growth of mean­ings at dif­fer­ing ages, in suc­ces­sive cul­tures, and in the pass­ing stages of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion. The chief in­hibitors of growth are prej­u­dice and ig­no­rance.

• Adjusters’ work

109:5.3But your un­steady and rapidly shift­ing men­tal at­ti­tudes of­ten re­sult in thwart­ing the plans and in­ter­rupt­ing the work of the Ad­justers. Their work is not only in­ter­fered with by the in­nate na­tures of the mor­tal races, but this min­istry is also greatly re­tarded by your own pre­con­ceived opin­ions, set­tled ideas, and long-stand­ing prej­u­dices. Be­cause of these hand­i­caps, many times only their un­fin­ished cre­ations emerge into con­scious­ness, and con­fu­sion of con­cept is in­ev­i­ta­ble. There­fore, in scru­ti­niz­ing men­tal sit­u­a­tions, safety lies only in the prompt rec­og­ni­tion of each and ev­ery thought and ex­pe­ri­ence for just what it ac­tu­ally and fun­da­men­tally is, dis­re­gard­ing en­tirely what it might have been.

• creative imagination

111:4.9Since this in­ner life of man is truly cre­ative, there rests upon each per­son the re­spon­si­bil­ity of choos­ing as to whether this cre­ativ­ity shall be spon­ta­neous and wholly hap­haz­ard or con­trolled, di­rected, and con­struc­tive. How can a cre­ative imag­i­na­tion pro­duce wor­thy chil­dren when the stage whereon it func­tions is al­ready pre­oc­cu­pied by prej­u­dice, hate, fears, re­sent­ments, re­venge, and big­otries?