Ray Sherman
Creations Musical,Philosophical, and Poetical

Website contents © by Ray Sherman



The Source of Morality
Quotations selected and edited by Ray Sherman



THEO
RY: 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


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