pride

111:6.2The cour­age re­quired to ef­fect the con­quest of na­ture and to tran­scend one’s self is a cour­age that might suc­cumb to the temp­ta­tions of self-pride. The mor­tal who can tran­scend self might yield to the temp­ta­tion to de­ify his own self-con­scious­ness. The mor­tal dilemma con­sists in the dou­ble fact that man is in bond­age to na­ture while at the same time he pos­sesses a unique lib­erty—free­dom of spir­i­tual choice and ac­tion. On ma­te­rial lev­els man finds him­self sub­servient to na­ture, while on spir­i­tual lev­els he is tri­umphant over na­ture and over all things tem­po­ral and fi­nite. Such a para­dox is in­sep­a­ra­ble from temp­ta­tion, po­ten­tial evil, de­ci­sional er­rors, and when self be­comes proud and ar­ro­gant, sin may evolve.

139:6.3Je­sus did not him­self give Na­than­iel a nick­name, but the twelve soon be­gan to speak of him in terms that sig­ni­fied hon­esty, sin­cer­ity. He was “with­out guile.” And this was his great virtue; he was both hon­est and sin­cere. The weak­ness of his char­ac­ter was his pride; he was very proud of his fam­ily, his city, his rep­u­ta­tion, and his na­tion, all of which is com­mend­able if it is not car­ried too far. But Na­than­iel was in­clined to go to ex­tremes with his per­sonal prej­u­dices. He was dis­posed to pre­judge in­di­vid­u­als in ac­cor­dance with his per­sonal opin­ions. He was not slow to ask the ques­tion, even be­fore he had met Je­sus, “Can any good thing come out of Naz­a­reth?” But Na­than­iel was not ob­sti­nate, even if he was proud. He was quick to re­verse him­self when he once looked into Je­sus’ face.

48:4.15When we are tempted to mag­nify our self-im­por­tance, if we stop to con­tem­plate the in­fin­ity of the great­ness and grandeur of our Mak­ers, our own self-glo­ri­fi­ca­tion be­comes sub­limely ridicu­lous, even verg­ing on the hu­mor­ous. One of the func­tions of hu­mor is to help all of us take our­selves less se­ri­ously. Hu­mor is the di­vine an­ti­dote for ex­al­ta­tion of ego.

111:6.10Pride is de­ceit­ful, in­tox­i­cat­ing, and sin-breed­ing whether found in an in­di­vid­ual, a group, a race, or a na­tion. It is lit­er­ally true, “Pride goes be­fore a fall.”

50:1.2The prince of a newly in­hab­ited world is sur­rounded by a loyal corps of helpers and as­sis­tants and by large num­bers of the min­is­ter­ing spir­its. But the di­rect­ing corps of such new worlds must be of the lower or­ders of the ad­min­is­tra­tors of a sys­tem in or­der to be in­nately sym­pa­thetic with, and un­der­stand­ing of, the plan­e­tary prob­lems and dif­fi­cul­ties. And all of this ef­fort to pro­vide sym­pa­thetic ruler­ship for the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds en­tails the in­creased li­a­bil­ity that these near-hu­man per­son­al­i­ties may be led astray by the ex­al­ta­tion of their own minds over and above the will of the Su­preme Rulers.

50:1.3Be­ing quite alone as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of di­vin­ity on the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, these Sons are tested severely, and Neb­a­don has suf­fered the mis­for­tune of sev­eral re­bel­lions. In the cre­ation of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and the Plan­e­tary Princes there oc­curs the per­son­al­iza­tion of a con­cept that has been get­ting far­ther and far­ther away from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son, and there is an in­creas­ing dan­ger of los­ing the sense of pro­por­tion as to one’s self-im­por­tance and a greater like­li­hood of fail­ure to keep a proper grasp of the val­ues and re­la­tion­ships of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of di­vine be­ings and their gra­da­tions of au­thor­ity. That the Fa­ther is not per­son­ally pres­ent in the lo­cal uni­verse also im­poses a cer­tain test of faith and loy­alty on all these Sons.

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.

149:6.11“You do well to be meek be­fore God and self-con­trolled be­fore men, but let your meek­ness be of spir­i­tual ori­gin and not the self-de­cep­tive dis­play of a self-con­scious sense of self-righ­teous su­pe­ri­or­ity. The prophet spoke ad­vis­edly when he said, ‘Walk humbly with God,’ for, while the Fa­ther in heaven is the In­fi­nite and the Eter­nal, he also dwells ‘with him who is of a con­trite mind and a hum­ble spirit.’ My Fa­ther dis­dains pride, loathes hypocrisy, and ab­hors in­iq­uity. And it was to em­pha­size the value of sin­cer­ity and per­fect trust in the lov­ing sup­port and faith­ful guid­ance of the heav­enly Fa­ther that I have so of­ten re­ferred to the lit­tle child as il­lus­tra­tive of the at­ti­tude of mind and the re­sponse of spirit which are so es­sen­tial to the en­trance of mor­tal man into the spirit re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of heaven.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.

131:2.6“God has made man a lit­tle less than di­vine and has crowned him with love and mercy. The Lord knows the way of the righ­teous, but the way of the un­godly shall per­ish. The fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom; the knowl­edge of the Su­preme is un­der­stand­ing. Says the Al­mighty God: ‘Walk be­fore me and be per­fect.’ For­get not that pride goes be­fore de­struc­tion and a haughty spirit be­fore a fall. He who rules his own spirit is might­ier than he who takes a city. Says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In re­turn­ing to your spir­i­tual rest shall you be saved; in quiet­ness and con­fi­dence shall be your strength.’ They who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings like ea­gles. They shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not be faint. The Lord shall give you rest from your fear. Says the Lord: ‘Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dis­mayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; yes, I will up­hold you with the right hand of my righ­teous­ness.’

179:4.2When the twelve heard this, hav­ing al­ready been robbed of much of their self-as­sertive­ness and self-con­fi­dence by the para­ble of the feet wash­ing and the Mas­ter’s sub­se­quent dis­course, they be­gan to look at one an­other while in dis­con­certed tones they hes­i­tat­ingly in­quired, “Is it I?” And when they had all so in­quired, Je­sus said: “While it is nec­es­sary that I go to the Fa­ther, it was not re­quired that one of you should be­come a traitor to ful­fill the Fa­ther’s will. This is the com­ing to fruit of the con­cealed evil in the heart of one who failed to love the truth with his whole soul. How de­ceit­ful is the in­tel­lec­tual pride that pre­cedes the spir­i­tual down­fall! My friend of many years, who even now eats my bread, will be will­ing to be­tray me, even as he now dips his hand with me in the dish.”

111:6.9Of all the dan­gers which be­set man’s mor­tal na­ture and jeop­ar­dize his spir­i­tual in­tegrity, pride is the great­est. Cour­age is val­or­ous, but ego­tism is vain­glo­ri­ous and sui­ci­dal. Rea­son­able self-con­fi­dence is not to be de­plored. Man’s abil­ity to tran­scend him­self is the one thing which dis­tin­guishes him from the an­i­mal king­dom.

142:0.2The first day in Je­ru­sa­lem Je­sus called upon his friend of for­mer years, An­nas, the one­time high priest and rel­a­tive of Sa­lome, Zeb­e­dee’s wife. An­nas had been hear­ing about Je­sus and his teach­ings, and when Je­sus called at the high priest’s home, he was re­ceived with much re­serve. When Je­sus per­ceived An­nas’s cold­ness, he took im­me­di­ate leave, say­ing as he de­parted: “Fear is man’s chief en­slaver and pride his great weak­ness; will you be­tray your­self into bond­age to both of these de­stroy­ers of joy and lib­erty?” But An­nas made no re­ply. The Mas­ter did not again see An­nas un­til the time when he sat with his son-in-law in judg­ment on the Son of Man.

66:1.5I was pres­ent on Je­ru­sem when the bril­liant Cali­gas­tia de­parted from the sys­tem cap­i­tal. No prince of the plan­ets ever em­barked upon a ca­reer of world ruler­ship with a richer prepara­tory ex­pe­ri­ence or with bet­ter prospects than did Cali­gas­tia on that event­ful day one-half mil­lion years ago. One thing is cer­tain: As I ex­e­cuted my as­sign­ment of putting the nar­ra­tive of that event on the broad­casts of the lo­cal uni­verse, I never for one mo­ment en­ter­tained even in the slight­est de­gree any idea that this no­ble La­non­an­dek would so shortly be­tray his sa­cred trust of plan­e­tary cus­tody and so hor­ri­bly stain the fair name of his ex­alted or­der of uni­verse son­ship. I re­ally re­garded Uran­tia as be­ing among the five or six most for­tu­nate plan­ets in all Sa­ta­nia in that it was to have such an ex­pe­ri­enced, bril­liant, and orig­i­nal mind at the helm of world af­fairs. I did not then com­pre­hend that Cali­gas­tia was in­sid­i­ously falling in love with him­self; I did not then so fully un­der­stand the sub­tleties of per­son­al­ity pride.

66:8.2It should be noted that both Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia had been pa­tiently in­structed and lov­ingly warned re­spect­ing their crit­i­cal ten­den­cies and the sub­tle de­vel­op­ment of their pride of self and its as­so­ci­ated ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the feel­ing of self-im­por­tance. But all of these at­tempts to help had been mis­con­strued as un­war­ranted crit­i­cism and as un­jus­ti­fied in­ter­fer­ence with per­sonal lib­er­ties. Both Cali­gas­tia and Lu­cifer judged their friendly ad­vis­ers as be­ing ac­tu­ated by the very rep­re­hen­si­ble mo­tives which were be­gin­ning to dom­i­nate their own dis­torted think­ing and mis­guided plan­ning. They judged their un­selfish ad­vis­ers by their own evolv­ing self­ish­ness.

53:2.5It is very dif­fi­cult to point out the ex­act cause or causes which fi­nally cul­mi­nated in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. We are cer­tain of only one thing, and that is: What­ever these first be­gin­nings were, they had their ori­gin in Lu­cifer’s mind. There must have been a pride of self that nour­ished it­self to the point of self-de­cep­tion, so that Lu­cifer for a time re­ally per­suaded him­self that his con­tem­pla­tion of re­bel­lion was ac­tu­ally for the good of the sys­tem, if not of the uni­verse. By the time his plans had de­vel­oped to the point of dis­il­lu­sion­ment, no doubt he had gone too far for his orig­i­nal and mis­chief-mak­ing pride to per­mit him to stop. At some point in this ex­pe­ri­ence he be­came in­sin­cere, and evil evolved into de­lib­er­ate and will­ful sin. That this hap­pened is proved by the sub­se­quent con­duct of this bril­liant ex­ec­u­tive. He was long of­fered op­por­tu­nity for re­pen­tance, but only some of his sub­or­di­nates ever ac­cepted the prof­fered mercy. The Faith­ful of Days of Eden­tia, on the re­quest of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, in per­son pre­sented the plan of Mi­chael for the sav­ing of these fla­grant rebels, but al­ways was the mercy of the Cre­ator Son re­jected and re­jected with in­creas­ing con­tempt and dis­dain.

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

131:7.3“‘Ev­ery time man yields to anx­i­ety, he takes one step away from the lead­ing of the spirit of his heart.’ Pride ob­scures God. If you would ob­tain heav­enly help, put away your pride; ev­ery hair of pride shuts off sav­ing light, as it were, by a great cloud. If you are not right on the in­side, it is use­less to pray for that which is on the out­side. ‘If I hear your prayers, it is be­cause you come be­fore me with a clean heart, free from false­hood and hypocrisy, with a soul which re­flects truth like a mir­ror. If you would gain im­mor­tal­ity, for­sake the world and come to me.’”

195:7.7The par­tially evolved men­tal mech­a­nism of mor­tal man is not ov­eren­dowed with con­sis­tency and wis­dom. Man’s con­ceit of­ten out­runs his rea­son and eludes his logic.

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.

130:3.7Je­sus and Ga­nid spent much time in the mu­seum dur­ing their stay in Alexan­dria. This mu­seum was not a col­lec­tion of rare ob­jects but rather a uni­ver­sity of fine art, sci­ence, and lit­er­a­ture. Learned pro­fes­sors here gave daily lec­tures, and in those times this was the in­tel­lec­tual cen­ter of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. Day by day Je­sus in­ter­preted the lec­tures to Ga­nid; one day dur­ing the sec­ond week the young man ex­claimed: “Teacher Joshua, you know more than these pro­fes­sors; you should stand up and tell them the great things you have told me; they are be­fogged by much think­ing. I shall speak to my fa­ther and have him ar­range it.” Je­sus smiled, say­ing: “You are an ad­mir­ing pupil, but these teach­ers are not minded that you and I should in­struct them. The pride of un­spir­i­tu­al­ized learn­ing is a treach­er­ous thing in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The true teacher main­tains his in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity by ever re­main­ing a learner.”

141:3.8Je­sus por­trayed con­quest by sac­ri­fice, the sac­ri­fice of pride and self­ish­ness. By show­ing mercy, he meant to por­tray spir­i­tual de­liv­er­ance from all grudges, grievances, anger, and the lust for self­ish power and re­venge. And when he said, “Re­sist not evil,” he later ex­plained that he did not mean to con­done sin or to coun­sel fra­ter­nity with in­iq­uity. He in­tended the more to teach for­give­ness, to “re­sist not evil treat­ment of one’s per­son­al­ity, evil in­jury to one’s feel­ings of per­sonal dig­nity.”

163:6.6The next day be­ing the Sab­bath, Je­sus went apart with the sev­enty and said to them: “I did in­deed re­joice with you when you came back bear­ing the good tid­ings of the re­cep­tion of the gospel of the king­dom by so many peo­ple scat­tered through­out Gal­i­lee, Samaria, and Judea. But why were you so sur­pris­ingly elated? Did you not ex­pect that your mes­sage would man­i­fest power in its de­liv­ery? Did you go forth with so lit­tle faith in this gospel that you come back in sur­prise at its ef­fec­tive­ness? And now, while I would not quench your spirit of re­joic­ing, I would sternly warn you against the sub­tleties of pride, spir­i­tual pride. If you could un­der­stand the down­fall of Lu­cifer, the in­iq­ui­tous one, you would solemnly shun all forms of spir­i­tual pride.

131:8.6“They who know the laws of the Eter­nal are wise. Ig­no­rance of the di­vine law is mis­ery and dis­as­ter. They who know the laws of God are lib­eral minded. If you know the Eter­nal, even though your body per­ish, your soul shall sur­vive in spirit ser­vice. You are truly wise when you rec­og­nize your in­signif­i­cance. If you abide in the light of the Eter­nal, you shall en­joy the en­light­en­ment of the Su­preme. Those who ded­i­cate their per­sons to the ser­vice of the Su­preme are joy­ous in this pur­suit of the Eter­nal. When man dies, the spirit be­gins to wing its long flight on the great home jour­ney.”