We navigate our lifetimes on Earth the way driverless cars navigate the road.

Driverless cars are complicated and smart—(like robotic versions of ourselves). They have working bodies and chassis (skin and bone), wheels (legs), sensors (nerves), actuators (muscles), processors and memories (brains), and operating systems made of software algorithms (knowledge and intelligence).

At the heart of them both—a person and a driverless car—I believe there’s a set of morals.

That’s debatable, of course, depending on what we mean by “morals.” Here’s the definition I use:

• to understand, to acknowledge, to devise, and to act.*

*This definition of morals was provided to our INIT group in the 1990s by “The Seven” finer beings who said they’ve been monitoring our world across the ages. They were contacting us through our phones, computers, radios, TVs, and other devices. Their reference to morals was part of a long message left on a telephone answering device of INIT members Maggy and Jules Harsch-Fischbach in Luxembourg in 1996. (It actually came in three consecutive messages, as it was too long for the TAD… though the original audiocassette, which Maggy gave to me during our 1996 meeting, was lost in our house fire along with the rest of the “solid evidence” of my ITC research.)

Morals Within Us, Ethics Around Us

Morals are inside everything that thinks—a sort of inner guidance system.

• Moral behavior for us humans means understanding the world around us and within us, acknowledging it, adjusting and updating our understanding to fit the current situation, and acting accordingly. The process is built into our body, mind, and spirit.
• Moral behavior for a driverless car means understanding the traffic conditions around it, acknowledging them, adapting to them, and acting accordingly. The process is built into the software (algorithms) and employed by the hardware (sensors, actuators, and so on).

Ethics, on the other hand, are outside forces that also provide guidance. They’re part of the environment.

• Ethics for us humans come from society’s rules and regulations, household chores, government laws, our bosses, and so on. How closely we comply with those ethical codes of conduct is a moral decision that can have rewards and consequences for us and for others.
• Ethics for a driverless car include traffic lanes, stoplights, road signs, and passenger input. How well the car adapts to those ethical conditions with “moral” choices has rewards and consequences—for example, either arriving safely or crashing along the way.

Then, with the morals inside us and the ethics around us, we can navigate through the world.

• For us humans, “the world” means society and the environment.
• For driverless cars, “the world” means roadways, traffic and pedestrians.

Comparing morals and ethics of humans and driverless cars is probably a little contrived, but I think it helps put things in perspective.

The rest of this article is just about morals—to understand, to acknowledge, to devise, and to act—especially how they spread peace and purpose among living things* throughout most of the cosmos… while here on Earth they get messy.

*As mentioned elsewhere on this site, everything is alive at some level, since everything is made of life-energy. So everything navigates with morals. For us humans (and presumably other animals and plants) that happens at the conscious level. For “nonliving” things (rocks, for example) it probably happens at the level of photons, waves, and particles, but that’s a little beyond the fringe of this article.

Navigating Rowdy Earth and the Cordial Cosmos

The problem is, this definition of morals doesn’t advocate love, honesty, trust, good will, gratitude, and other motivations that we think of as “right” and “good.” Instead, it simply suggests that we understand life’s changing conditions, acknowledge them, adjust our thinking, and act accordingly.

So just about anyone here on Earth could be considered “moral” with that definition—from Jesus or Muhammad or the Buddha, to Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot—as long as they’re making rational, conscious choices. Even a driverless car is “moral.”

That’s why it’s important to seek good moral guidance from finer sources where love and goodness are a way of life—in-beyond of our physical bodies—and not from our brains that are enmeshed in the dramas of Earth with its predatory, parasitic, and competitive compulsions, where moral dilemmas are as common as mosquitos.

Here’s how we find those finer morals within us, and why adopting them is so important during a lifetime.

Looking for Love in All the Right Places

This pulled-apart diagram shows how we’re all a lot more complicated and more perfect than we normally think. Our imperfect physical bodies are superimposed with various subtle bodies or spiritual copies that get finer as they diverge from the Earth into subtler universes (fine, white circles)  toward the source. The closer they are to the source, the more powerful, peaceful, and perfect they become. Closer to the Earth they’re unstable, rowdy, and confused.

Our subtle body at level 3 no longer has to contend with predators, parasites and competitors. Worlds at level three  provide win-win, live-and-let-live environments for their inhabitants, and everyone coexists with a sense of kindness, service, and mutual respect. Most of us awaken in a world at level 3 after we die, and we adapt to that finer way of life rather quickly. Those who can’t adapt (they’re too “earthy”) move to level 2 or level 1 where they can vent a bit and settle down before returning to level 3.

So, it’s in those worlds at level 3 and above where we can reap the benefits of good morals, even while we’re still alive on Earth.

Moral path. We simply have to understand our spiritual make-up, acknowledge it, devise or adapt it to our lives on Earth, and act accordingly.

So the first step is to understand and acknowledge our spirituality. There are various ways to foster that understanding—meditation, contemplation, prayer, study, and any other useful techniques that can plant a spiritual awareness into our day-to-day, waking consciousness.

Then, with practice, we unconsciously begin to think and behave in a finer way as we adapt to the changes and surprises happening around us here on rowdy Earth.

Ultimate goal. Though nearly impossible to achieve during a lifetime, the ultimate aim in all this is to establish a clear, conscious connection between our carnal mind (brain) and the source that rests at the center of everything. That would bring us perfect peace, since the source is that place of peace at the center of our being where everything’s perfect, all-knowing, and omnipotent.

It’s nearly impossible to achieve because Earth’s dramas are just so compelling. Most of us make that conscious connection along our spiritual journey after we die and migrate to finer realms.

So, after 73 years of living, this is the most important thing I can tell anyone:

“You have an inner light more powerful than anything in the universe. To access it, all you have to do is acknowledge its presence and learn how to connect with it consciously. That’s why I like heart meditation. The inner light isn’t a tool or a weapon. It’s a guidance system that can point you in the best direction for you, but there’s one problem. The ego likes to be in control. It won’t give up the driver’s seat easily. It’ll resist your efforts to connect to your inner light. The more you meditate, though, the more the ego relaxes its grip. And then patience, acceptance, oneness, love, and bliss all begin to ease into your life.”

Connecting to Our Inner Light

My favorite technique is heart meditation, since mystics in the India have said for centuries that the soul or source or atman rests within us in the area of the heart. (More about heart meditation…. )

Regardless of the techniques we use, though, conscious contact with the source involves patience, practice, and awareness, and the benefits are divine.

It doesn’t come easily when our lives are filled with drama, especially for parents whose kids are in danger. Most of us on Earth feel our deepest love for our families, especially our children (until, of course, we realize our connection to the source, where we find ultimate love).

So again, whenever our ego gets us twisted and tangled in life’s dramas, return to the moral path:

• Understand our spiritual connection to the source,
• Acknowledge it as the only true and important reality, and practice making conscious contact with the source,
• Devise or adjust that understanding to put all of those dramas in their temporary, short-lived place.
• The act accordingly: Detach from the dramas or, if helpful, talk through them with a loved and trusted friend who’s also aware of that spiritual connection to the source.

Teamwork can often be helpful as we walk the moral path, as long as the source is part of the team and everyone else on the team understands and acknowledges it.

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