Ray Sherman
Creations Musical,Philosophical, and Poetical
Website contents © by Ray Sherman
The Source of Morality
Quotations selected and edited by Ray Sherman

THEORY: A species is an
organism. Every organism has an organizing center responsible for
its formation and preservation. The human species’ organizing
center is the source of morality.
—Ray Sherman
[We] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
—Bill W.
The patient is asked to imaginatively dramatize the following
situation: he imagines himself as having a specific personal or
interpersonal problem which he does not feel he can solve by the
ordinary rational means of the conscious personality. We then
explain to him that there is a wise teacher within him—his spiritual
Self—who already knows his problem, his crisis, his perplexity.
—Roberto
Assagioli, M.D.
Of the personified symbols of the spiritual Self, that of the
Inner Christ is one that we use in cases of individuals who are fairly
open to Christian symbolism....In the case of atheists it is possible
to use the inner teacher without going into a laborious discussion as
to the existence or non-existence of the deity.
—Roberto
Assagioli, M.D.
Friends [Quakers] have been suspicious of formal creeds or religious
philosophy that is not grounded in one's own experience. Instead one
must be guided by the Inward Teacher, the Inner Light.
—Wikipedia
The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the present, and the
only prophet of that which must be,...is that Over-soul, within which
every man's particular being is contained and made one with all other;
that common heart.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
How is it that we are not more sensitive to the presence of
something greater than ourselves moving forward within us and in
our midst?
—Pierre Teihard De Chardin
The Holy Spirit is believed to dwell in the individual [Christian]
believers and enable them to live a righteous and faithful life.
—Wikipedia
Among transcendentalists' core beliefs was an ideal spiritual state
that 'transcends' the physical and empirical and is realized only
through the individual's intuition....
—Wikipedia
...we are all part of something that transcends the individual experience....
—Ethical
Culture
The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power
which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which
impels us to regard others as other selves—this fact comes home to us
even more forcibly in sorrow than in
joy.
—Felix Adler
The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live
in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being.
—Felix Adler
...we can win from evil, if we choose, an inestimable good, namely—the
conviction that there is in us a power not of the senses, the
conviction that spirit exists, and exists in us.
—Felix Adler
...man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self,
which is the inner man, the spirit, the spark of divinity within the
soul.
—Aldous Huxley
The spark within is akin to the Divine Ground. By identifying ourselves
with the first we can come to unitive knowledge of the second.
—Aldous Huxley
PRAYER: Communication with the Source.
MEDITATION: Living in harmony with the Source.
SPIRITUAL: In a larger sense, describing any action which benefits
humanity as a whole. It properly relates humans to one another
and to the Source....
TRANSPERSONAL: Above and beyond the physical, emotional, and mental
personality; a universal quality which regards humanity as a whole, for
the purpose of expressing the good.
—Edith R. Stauffer
In addition to our immediate consciousness... there exists a second
psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which
is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does
not develop individually but is inherited.
—C. G. Jung
John Sellars...explains that Stoic physics involved the idea of a
“divine rational mind that pervades all of nature, which is the soul of
the world, and of which all our individual souls are fragments.”
—Antonia Macaro
...various late 19th-century social scientists...considered human
society to be analogous to an organism, and individual humans to be
analogous to the cells of an organism.
—Wikipedia
Just as it is useful to think of either a single human society or a
group of human societies as a von Neumann [self replicating] machine,
it is useful to think of an organism or a species the same way....This
implies some sort of central...processing unit that can transform
sensed inputs into action.
—Robert
J. Chassell
Teilhard’s noösphere is the sphere of thought constituted by the
interaction of human minds, which he sees as growing ever more
integrated and united as it is drawn towards a historical endpoint he
called the Omega point.
—Philosophy Now
I believe there is some kind of a transcendent organizing influence in the universe which operates in man as well....
—Carl Rogers
...we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
—William James
The dialogue may be verbal or non verbal, it may take place on a visual
or symbolic level, but however it occurs really relish this time you
are spending with your inner guide.
—Will Parfitt
At the center of your being you have the answer....
—Lao Tzu
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
—William Shakespeare
