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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 103
THE REALITY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
103:0.1
ALL of man's truly religious reactions are sponsored by
the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are
censored by the adjutant of wisdom. Man's first
supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment
in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and
long before either the bestowals of the divine Sons or
the universal bestowal of the Adjusters, this influence
functions to enlarge man's viewpoint of ethics,
religion, and spirituality. Subsequent to the bestowals
of the Paradise Sons the liberated Spirit of Truth makes
mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human
capacity to perceive religious truths. As evolution
advances on an inhabited world, the Thought Adjusters
increasingly participate in the development of the
higher types of human religious insight. The Thought
Adjuster is the cosmic window through which the finite
creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and
divinities of limitless Deity, the Universal Father.
103:0.2
The religious tendencies of the human races are innate;
they are universally manifested and have an apparently
natural origin; primitive religions are always
evolutionary in their genesis. As natural religious
experience continues to progress, periodic revelations
of truth punctuate the otherwise slow-moving course of
planetary evolution.
103:0.3
On Urantia, today, there are four kinds of religion:
1. Natural or evolutionary religion.
2. Supernatural or revelatory religion.
3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the
admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically
thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created
religions.
1. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
103:1.1
The unity of religious experience among a social or
racial group derives from the identical nature of the
God fragment indwelling the individual. It is this
divine in man that gives origin to his unselfish
interest in the welfare of other men. But since
personality is unique -- no two mortals being alike --
it inevitably follows that no two human beings can
similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit
of divinity which lives within their minds. A group of
mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can
never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity
of the interpretation of religious thought and
experience is shown by the fact that twentieth-century
theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of
five hundred different definitions of religion. In
reality, every human being defines religion in the terms
of his own experiential interpretation of the divine
impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells
him, and therefore must such an interpretation be unique
and wholly different from the religious philosophy of
all other human beings.
103:1.2
When one mortal is in full agreement with the religious
philosophy of a fellow mortal, that phenomenon indicates
that these two beings have had a similar
religious experience
touching the matters concerned in their similarity of
philosophic religious interpretation.
103:1.3
While your religion is a matter of personal experience,
it is most important that you should be exposed to the
knowledge of a vast number of other religious
experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and
diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your
religious life from becoming egocentric --
circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.
103:1.4
Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that religion is at
first a primitive belief in something which is then
followed by the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily
a pursuit of values, and then there formulates a system
of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to
agree on religious values -- goals -- than on beliefs --
interpretations. And this explains how religion can
agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing
phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of
conflicting beliefs -- creeds. This also explains why a
given person can maintain his religious experience in
the face of giving up or changing many of his religious
beliefs. Religion persists in spite of revolutionary
changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce
religion; it is religion that produces theologic
philosophy.
103:1.5
That religionists have believed so much that was false
does not invalidate religion because religion is founded
on the recognition of values and is validated by the
faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then,
is based on experience and religious thought; theology,
the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to
interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs
may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.
103:1.6
The realization of the recognition of spiritual values
is an experience which is superideational. There is no
word in any human language which can be employed to
designate this "sense," "feeling," "intuition," or
"experience" which we have elected to call
God-consciousness. The spirit of God that dwells in man
is not personal -- the Adjuster is prepersonal -- but
this Monitor presents a value, exudes a flavor of
divinity, which is personal in the highest and infinite
sense. If God were not at least personal, he could not
be conscious, and if not conscious, then would he be
infrahuman.
2. RELIGION AND THE INDIVIDUAL
103:2.1
Religion is functional in the human mind and has been
realized in experience prior to its appearance in human
consciousness. A child has been in existence about nine
months before it experiences
birth. But
the "birth" of religion is not sudden; it is rather a
gradual emergence. Nevertheless, sooner or later there
is a "birth day." You do not enter the kingdom of heaven
unless you have been "born again" -- born of the Spirit.
Many spiritual births are accompanied by much anguish of
spirit and marked psychological perturbations, as many
physical births are characterized by a "stormy labor"
and other abnormalities of "delivery." Other spiritual
births are a natural and normal growth of the
recognition of supreme values with an enhancement of
spiritual experience, albeit no religious development
occurs without conscious effort and positive and
individual determinations. Religion is never a passive
experience, a negative attitude. What is termed the
"birth of religion" is not directly associated with
so-called conversion experiences which usually
characterize religious episodes occurring later in life
as a result of mental conflict, emotional repression,
and temperamental upheavals.
103:2.2
But those persons who were so reared by their parents
that they grew up in the consciousness of being children
of a loving heavenly Father, should not look askance at
their fellow mortals who could only attain such
consciousness of fellowship with God through a
psychological crisis, an emotional upheaval.
103:2.3
The evolutionary soil in the mind of man in which the
seed of revealed religion germinates is the moral nature
that so early gives origin to a social consciousness.
The first promptings of a child's moral nature have not
to do with sex, guilt, or personal pride, but rather
with impulses of justice, fairness, and urges to
kindness -- helpful ministry to one's fellows. And when
such early moral awakenings are nurtured, there occurs a
gradual development of the religious life which is
comparatively free from conflicts, upheavals, and
crises.
103:2.4
Every human being very early experiences something of a
conflict between his self-seeking and his altruistic
impulses, and many times the first experience of
God-consciousness may be attained as the result of
seeking for superhuman help in the task of resolving
such moral conflicts.
103:2.5
The psychology of a child is naturally positive, not
negative. So many mortals are negative because they were
so trained. When it is said that the child is positive,
reference is made to his moral impulses, those powers of
mind whose emergence signals the arrival of the Thought
Adjuster.
103:2.6
In the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of the normal
child moves positively, in the emergence of religious
consciousness, toward moral righteousness and social
ministry, rather than negatively, away from sin and
guilt. There may or may not be conflict in the
development of religious experience, but there are
always present the inevitable decisions, effort, and
function of the human will.
103:2.7
Moral choosing is usually accompanied by more or less
moral conflict. And this very first conflict in the
child mind is between the urges of egoism and the
impulses of altruism. The Thought Adjuster does not
disregard the personality values of the egoistic motive
but does operate to place a slight preference upon the
altruistic impulse as leading to the goal of human
happiness and to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.
103:2.8
When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when
confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive
religious experience. No animal can make such a choice;
such a decision is both human and religious. It embraces
the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse
of social service, the basis of the brotherhood of man.
When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of
the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious
experience.
103:2.9
But before a child has developed sufficiently to acquire
moral capacity and therefore to be able to choose
altruistic service, he has already developed a strong
and well-unified egoistic nature. And it is this factual
situation that gives rise to the theory of the struggle
between the "higher" and the "lower" natures, between
the "old man of sin" and the "new nature" of grace. Very
early in life the normal child begins to learn that it
is "more blessed to give than to receive."
103:2.10
Man tends to identify the urge to be self-serving with
his ego -- himself. In contrast he is inclined to
identify the will to be altruistic with some influence
outside himself -- God. And indeed is such a judgment
right, for all such nonself desires do actually have
their origin in the leadings of the indwelling Thought
Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of God. The
impulse of the spirit Monitor is realized in human
consciousness as the urge to be altruistic,
fellow-creature minded. At least this is the early and
fundamental experience of the child mind. When the
growing child fails of personality unification, the
altruistic drive may become so overdeveloped as to work
serious injury to the welfare of the self. A misguided
conscience can become responsible for much conflict,
worry, sorrow, and no end of human unhappiness.
3. RELIGION AND THE HUMAN RACE
103:3.1
While the belief in spirits, dreams, and diverse other
superstitions all played a part in the evolutionary
origin of primitive religions, you should not overlook
the influence of the clan or tribal spirit of
solidarity. In the group relationship there was
presented the exact social situation which provided the
challenge to the egoistic-altruistic conflict in the
moral nature of the early human mind. In spite of their
belief in spirits, primitive Australians still focus
their religion upon the clan. In time, such religious
concepts tend to personalize, first, as animals, and
later, as a superman or as a God. Even such inferior
races as the African Bushmen, who are not even totemic
in their beliefs, do have a recognition of the
difference between the self-interest and the
group-interest, a primitive distinction between the
values of the secular and the sacred. But the social
group is not the source of religious experience.
Regardless of the influence of all these primitive
contributions to man's early religion, the fact remains
that the true religious impulse has its origin in
genuine spirit presences activating the will to be
unselfish.
103:3.2
Later religion is foreshadowed in the primitive belief
in natural wonders and mysteries, the impersonal mana.
But sooner or later the evolving religion requires that
the individual should make some personal sacrifice for
the good of his social group, should do something to
make other people happier and better. Ultimately,
religion is destined to become the service of God and of
man.
103:3.3
Religion is designed to change man's environment, but
much of the religion found among mortals today has
become helpless to do this. Environment has all too
often mastered religion.
103:3.4
Remember that in the religion of all ages the experience
which is paramount is the feeling regarding moral values
and social meanings, not the thinking regarding
theologic dogmas or philosophic theories. Religion
evolves favorably as the element of magic is replaced by
the concept of morals.
103:3.5
Man evolved through the superstitions of mana, magic,
nature worship, spirit fear, and animal worship to the
various ceremonials whereby the religious attitude of
the individual became the group reactions of the clan.
And then these ceremonies became focalized and
crystallized into tribal beliefs, and eventually these
fears and faiths became personalized into gods. But in
all of this religious evolution the moral element was
never wholly absent. The impulse of the God within man
was always potent. And these powerful influences -- one
human and the other divine -- insured the survival of
religion throughout the vicissitudes of the ages and
that notwithstanding it was so often threatened with
extinction by a thousand subversive tendencies and
hostile antagonisms.
4. SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
103:4.1
The characteristic difference between a social occasion
and a religious gathering is that in contrast with the
secular the religious is pervaded by the atmosphere of
communion. In
this way human association generates a feeling of
fellowship with the divine, and this is the beginning of
group worship. Partaking of a common meal was the
earliest type of social communion, and so did early
religions provide that some portion of the ceremonial
sacrifice should be eaten by the worshipers. Even in
Christianity the Lord's Supper retains this mode of
communion. The atmosphere of the communion provides a
refreshing and comforting period of truce in the
conflict of the self-seeking ego with the altruistic
urge of the indwelling spirit Monitor. And this is the
prelude to true worship -- the practice of the presence
of God which eventuates in the emergence of the
brotherhood of man.
103:4.2
When primitive man felt that his communion with God had
been interrupted, he resorted to sacrifice of some kind
in an effort to make atonement, to restore friendly
relationship. The hunger and thirst for righteousness
leads to the discovery of truth, and truth augments
ideals, and this creates new problems for the individual
religionists, for our ideals tend to grow by geometrical
progression, while our ability to live up to them is
enhanced only by arithmetical progression.
103:4.3
The sense of guilt (not the consciousness of sin) comes
either from interrupted spiritual communion or from the
lowering of one's moral ideals. Deliverance from such a
predicament can only come through the realization that
one's highest moral ideals are not necessarily
synonymous with the will of God. Man cannot hope to live
up to his highest ideals, but he can be true to his
purpose of finding God and becoming more and more like
him.
103:4.4
Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and
atonement. He destroyed the basis of all this fictitious
guilt and sense of isolation in the universe by
declaring that man is a child of God; the
creature-Creator relationship was placed on a
child-parent basis. God becomes a loving Father to his
mortal sons and daughters. All ceremonials not a
legitimate part of such an intimate family relationship
are forever abrogated.
103:4.5
God the Father deals with man his child on the basis,
not of actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition
of the child's motivation -- the creature purpose and
intent. The relationship is one of parent-child
association and is actuated by divine love.
5. THE ORIGIN OF IDEALS
103:5.1
The early evolutionary mind gives origin to a feeling of
social duty and moral obligation derived chiefly from
emotional fear. The more positive urge of social service
and the idealism of altruism are derived from the direct
impulse of the divine spirit indwelling the human mind.
103:5.2
This idea-ideal of doing good to others -- the impulse
to deny the ego something for the benefit of one's
neighbor -- is very circumscribed at first. Primitive
man regards as neighbor only those very close to him,
those who treat him neighborly; as religious
civilization advances, one's neighbor expands in concept
to embrace the clan, the tribe, the nation. And then
Jesus enlarged the neighbor scope to embrace the whole
of humanity, even that we should love our enemies. And
there is something inside of every normal human being
that tells him this teaching is moral -- right. Even
those who practice this ideal least, admit that it is
right in theory.
103:5.3
All men recognize the morality of this universal human
urge to be unselfish and altruistic. The humanist
ascribes the origin of this urge to the natural working
of the material mind; the religionist more correctly
recognizes that the truly unselfish drive of mortal mind
is in response to the inner spirit leadings of the
Thought Adjuster.
103:5.4
But man's interpretation of these early conflicts
between the ego-will and the other-than-self-will is not
always dependable. Only a fairly well unified
personality can arbitrate the multiform contentions of
the ego cravings and the budding social consciousness.
The self has rights as well as one's neighbors. Neither
has exclusive claims upon the attention and service of
the individual. Failure to resolve this problem gives
origin to the earliest type of human guilt feelings.
103:5.5
Human happiness is achieved only when the ego desire of
the self and the altruistic urge of the higher self
(divine spirit) are co-ordinated and reconciled by the
unified will of the integrating and supervising
personality. The mind of evolutionary man is ever
confronted with the intricate problem of refereeing the
contest between the natural expansion of emotional
impulses and the moral growth of unselfish urges
predicated on spiritual insight -- genuine religious
reflection.
103:5.6
The attempt to secure equal good for the self and for
the greatest number of other selves presents a problem
which cannot always be satisfactorily resolved in a
time-space frame. Given an eternal life, such
antagonisms can be worked out, but in one short human
life they are incapable of solution. Jesus referred to
such a paradox when he said: "Whosoever shall save his
life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life
for the sake of the kingdom, shall find it."
103:5.7
The pursuit of the ideal -- the striving to be Godlike
-- is a continuous effort before death and after. The
life after death is no different in the essentials than
the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life
which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of
the future life. Real religion does not foster moral
indolence and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain
hope of having all the virtues of a noble character
bestowed upon one as a result of passing through the
portals of natural death. True religion does not
belittle man's efforts to progress during the mortal
lease on life. Every mortal gain is a direct
contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of
the immortal survival experience.
103:5.8
It is fatal to man's idealism when he is taught that all
of his altruistic impulses are merely the development of
his natural herd instincts. But he is ennobled and
mightily energized when he learns that these higher
urges of his soul emanate from the spiritual forces that
indwell his mortal mind.
103:5.9
It lifts man out of himself and beyond himself when he
once fully realizes that there lives and strives within
him something which is eternal and divine. And so it is
that a living faith in the superhuman origin of our
ideals validates our belief that we are the sons of God
and makes real our altruistic convictions, the feelings
of the brotherhood of man.
103:5.10
Man, in his spiritual domain, does have a free will.
Mortal man is neither a helpless slave of the inflexible
sovereignty of an all-powerful God nor the victim of the
hopeless fatality of a mechanistic cosmic determinism.
Man is most truly the architect of his own eternal
destiny.
103:5.11
But man is not saved or ennobled by pressure. Spirit
growth springs from within the evolving soul. Pressure
may deform the personality, but it never stimulates
growth. Even educational pressure is only negatively
helpful in that it may aid in the prevention of
disastrous experiences. Spiritual growth is greatest
where all external pressures are at a minimum. "Where
the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." Man
develops best when the pressures of home, community,
church, and state are least. But this must not be
construed as meaning that there is no place in a
progressive society for home, social institutions,
church, and state.
103:5.12
When a member of a social religious group has complied
with the requirements of such a group, he should be
encouraged to enjoy religious liberty in the full
expression of his own personal interpretation of the
truths of religious belief and the facts of religious
experience. The security of a religious group depends on
spiritual unity, not on theological uniformity. A
religious group should be able to enjoy the liberty of
freethinking without having to become "freethinkers."
There is great hope for any church that worships the
living God, validates the brotherhood of man, and dares
to remove all creedal pressure from its members.
6. PHILOSOPHIC CO-ORDINATION
103:6.1
Theology is the study of the actions and reactions of
the human spirit; it can never become a science since it
must always be combined more or less with psychology in
its personal expression and with philosophy in its
systematic portrayal. Theology is always the study of
your
religion; the study of another's religion is psychology.
103:6.2
When man approaches the study and examination of his
universe from the
outside, he brings into being the various physical
sciences; when he approaches the research of himself and
the universe from the
inside, he
gives origin to theology and metaphysics. The later art
of philosophy develops in an effort to harmonize the
many discrepancies which are destined at first to appear
between the findings and teachings of these two
diametrically opposite avenues of approaching the
universe of things and beings.
103:6.3
Religion has to do with the spiritual viewpoint, the
awareness of the
insideness of human experience. Man's spiritual
nature affords him the opportunity of turning the
universe outside in. It is therefore true that, viewed
exclusively from the insideness of personality
experience, all creation appears to be spiritual in
nature.
103:6.4
When man analytically inspects the universe through the
material endowments of his physical senses and
associated mind perception, the cosmos appears to be
mechanical and energy-material. Such a technique of
studying reality consists in turning the universe inside
out.
103:6.5
A logical and consistent philosophic concept of the
universe cannot be built up on the postulations of
either materialism or spiritism, for both of these
systems of thinking, when universally applied, are
compelled to view the cosmos in distortion, the former
contacting with a universe turned inside out, the latter
realizing the nature of a universe turned outside in.
Never, then, can either science or religion, in and of
themselves, standing alone, hope to gain an adequate
understanding of universal truths and relationships
without the guidance of human philosophy and the
illumination of divine revelation.
103:6.6
Always must man's inner spirit depend for its expression
and self-realization upon the mechanism and technique of
the mind. Likewise must man's outer experience of
material reality be predicated on the mind consciousness
of the experiencing personality. Therefore are the
spiritual and the material, the inner and the outer,
human experiences always correlated with the mind
function and conditioned, as to their conscious
realization, by the mind activity. Man experiences
matter in his mind; he experiences spiritual reality in
the soul but becomes conscious of this experience in his
mind. The intellect is the harmonizer and the
ever-present conditioner and qualifier of the sum total
of mortal experience. Both energy-things and spirit
values are colored by their interpretation through the
mind media of consciousness.
103:6.7
Your difficulty in arriving at a more harmonious
co-ordination between science and religion is due to
your utter ignorance of the intervening domain of the
morontia world of things and beings. The local universe
consists of three degrees, or stages, of reality
manifestation: matter, morontia, and spirit. The
morontia angle of approach erases all divergence between
the findings of the physical sciences and the
functioning of the spirit of religion. Reason is the
understanding technique of the sciences; faith is the
insight technique of religion; mota is the technique of
the morontia level. Mota is a supermaterial reality
sensitivity which is beginning to compensate incomplete
growth, having for its substance knowledge-reason and
for its essence faith-insight. Mota is a
superphilosophical reconciliation of divergent reality
perception which is nonattainable by material
personalities; it is predicated, in part, on the
experience of having survived the material life of the
flesh. But many mortals have recognized the desirability
of having some method of reconciling the interplay
between the widely separated domains of science and
religion; and metaphysics is the result of man's
unavailing attempt to span this well-recognized chasm.
But human metaphysics has proved more confusing than
illuminating. Metaphysics stands for man's well-meant
but futile effort to compensate for the absence of the
mota of morontia.
103:6.8
Metaphysics has proved a failure; mota, man cannot
perceive. Revelation is the only technique which can
compensate for the absence of the truth sensitivity of
mota in a material world. Revelation authoritatively
clarifies the muddle of reason-developed metaphysics on
an evolutionary sphere.
103:6.9
Science is man's attempted study of his physical
environment, the world of energy-matter; religion is
man's experience with the cosmos of spirit values;
philosophy has been developed by man's mind effort to
organize and correlate the findings of these widely
separated concepts into something like a reasonable and
unified attitude toward the cosmos. Philosophy,
clarified by revelation, functions acceptably in the
absence of mota and in the presence of the breakdown and
failure of man's reason substitute for mota --
metaphysics.
103:6.10
Early man did not differentiate between the energy level
and the spirit level. It was the violet race and their
Andite successors who first attempted to divorce the
mathematical from the volitional. Increasingly has
civilized man followed in the footsteps of the earliest
Greeks and the Sumerians who distinguished between the
inanimate and the animate. And as civilization
progresses, philosophy will have to bridge ever-widening
gulfs between the spirit concept and the energy concept.
But in the time of space these divergencies are at one
in the Supreme.
103:6.11
Science must always be grounded in reason, although
imagination and conjecture are helpful in the extension
of its borders. Religion is forever dependent on faith,
albeit reason is a stabilizing influence and a helpful
handmaid. And always there have been, and ever will be,
misleading interpretations of the phenomena of both the
natural and the spiritual worlds, sciences and religions
falsely so called.
103:6.12
Out of his incomplete grasp of science, his faint hold
upon religion, and his abortive attempts at metaphysics,
man has attempted to construct his formulations of
philosophy. And modern man would indeed build a worthy
and engaging philosophy of himself and his universe were
it not for the breakdown of his all-important and
indispensable metaphysical connection between the worlds
of matter and spirit, the failure of metaphysics to
bridge the morontia gulf between the physical and the
spiritual. Mortal man lacks the concept of morontia mind
and material; and
revelation is the only technique for atoning for
this deficiency in the conceptual data which man so
urgently needs in order to construct a logical
philosophy of the universe and to arrive at a satisfying
understanding of his sure and settled place in that
universe.
103:6.13
Revelation is evolutionary man's only hope of bridging
the morontia gulf. Faith and reason, unaided by mota,
cannot conceive and construct a logical universe.
Without the insight of mota, mortal man cannot discern
goodness, love, and truth in the phenomena of the
material world.
103:6.14
When the philosophy of man leans heavily toward the
world of matter, it becomes rationalistic or
naturalistic.
When philosophy inclines particularly toward the
spiritual level, it becomes
idealistic or
even mystical. When philosophy is so unfortunate as to
lean upon metaphysics, it unfailingly becomes
skeptical,
confused. In past ages, most of man's knowledge and
intellectual evaluations have fallen into one of these
three distortions of perception. Philosophy dare not
project its interpretations of reality in the linear
fashion of logic; it must never fail to reckon with the
elliptic symmetry of reality and with the essential
curvature of all relation concepts.
103:6.15
The highest attainable philosophy of mortal man must be
logically based on the reason of science, the faith of
religion, and the truth insight afforded by revelation.
By this union man can compensate somewhat for his
failure to develop an adequate metaphysics and for his
inability to comprehend the mota of the morontia.
7. SCIENCE AND RELIGION
103:7.1
Science is sustained by reason, religion by faith.
Faith, though not predicated on reason, is reasonable;
though independent of logic, it is nonetheless
encouraged by sound logic. Faith cannot be nourished
even by an ideal philosophy; indeed, it is, with
science, the very source of such a philosophy. Faith,
human religious insight, can be surely instructed only
by revelation, can be surely elevated only by personal
mortal experience with the spiritual Adjuster presence
of the God who is spirit.
103:7.2
True salvation is the technique of the divine evolution
of the mortal mind from matter identification through
the realms of morontia liaison to the high universe
status of spiritual correlation. And as material
intuitive instinct precedes the appearance of reasoned
knowledge in terrestrial evolution, so does the
manifestation of spiritual intuitive insight presage the
later appearance of morontia and spirit reason and
experience in the supernal program of celestial
evolution, the business of transmuting the potentials of
man the temporal into the actuality and divinity of man
the eternal, a Paradise finaliter.
103:7.3
But as ascending man reaches inward and Paradiseward for
the God experience, he will likewise be reaching outward
and spaceward for an energy understanding of the
material cosmos. The progression of science is not
limited to the terrestrial life of man; his universe and
superuniverse ascension experience will to no small
degree be the study of energy transmutation and material
metamorphosis. God is spirit, but Deity is unity, and
the unity of Deity not only embraces the spiritual
values of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son but
is also cognizant of the energy facts of the Universal
Controller and the Isle of Paradise, while these two
phases of universal reality are perfectly correlated in
the mind relationships of the Conjoint Actor and unified
on the finite level in the emerging Deity of the Supreme
Being.
103:7.4
The union of the scientific attitude and the religious
insight by the mediation of experiential philosophy is
part of man's long Paradise-ascension experience. The
approximations of mathematics and the certainties of
insight will always require the harmonizing function of
mind logic on all levels of experience short of the
maximum attainment of the Supreme.
103:7.5
But logic can never succeed in harmonizing the findings
of science and the insights of religion unless both the
scientific and the religious aspects of a personality
are truth dominated, sincerely desirous of following the
truth wherever it may lead regardless of the conclusions
which it may reach.
103:7.6
Logic is the technique of philosophy, its method of
expression. Within the domain of true science, reason is
always amenable to genuine logic; within the domain of
true religion, faith is always logical from the basis of
an inner viewpoint, even though such faith may appear to
be quite unfounded from the inlooking viewpoint of the
scientific approach. From outward, looking within, the
universe may appear to be material; from within, looking
out, the same universe appears to be wholly spiritual.
Reason grows out of material awareness, faith out of
spiritual awareness, but through the mediation of a
philosophy strengthened by revelation, logic may confirm
both the inward and the outward view, thereby effecting
the stabilization of both science and religion. Thus,
through common contact with the logic of philosophy, may
both science and religion become increasingly tolerant
of each other, less and less skeptical.
103:7.7
What both developing science and religion need is more
searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater
awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status. The
teachers of both science and religion are often
altogether too self-confident and dogmatic. Science and
religion can only be self-critical of their
facts. The
moment departure is made from the stage of facts, reason
abdicates or else rapidly degenerates into a consort of
false logic.
103:7.8
The truth -- an understanding of cosmic relationships,
universe facts, and spiritual values -- can best be had
through the ministry of the Spirit of Truth and can best
be criticized by
revelation. But revelation originates neither a
science nor a religion; its function is to co-ordinate
both science and religion with the truth of reality.
Always, in the absence of revelation or in the failure
to accept or grasp it, has mortal man resorted to his
futile gesture of metaphysics, that being the only human
substitute for the revelation of truth or for the mota
of morontia personality.
103:7.9
The science of the material world enables man to
control, and to some extent dominate, his physical
environment. The religion of the spiritual experience is
the source of the fraternity impulse which enables men
to live together in the complexities of the civilization
of a scientific age. Metaphysics, but more certainly
revelation, affords a common meeting ground for the
discoveries of both science and religion and makes
possible the human attempt logically to correlate these
separate but interdependent domains of thought into a
well-balanced philosophy of scientific stability and
religious certainty.
103:7.10
In the mortal state, nothing can be absolutely proved;
both science and religion are predicated on assumptions.
On the morontia level, the postulates of both science
and religion are capable of partial proof by mota logic.
On the spiritual level of maximum status, the need for
finite proof gradually vanishes before the actual
experience of and with reality; but even then there is
much beyond the finite that remains unproved.
103:7.11
All divisions of human thought are predicated on certain
assumptions which are accepted, though unproved, by the
constitutive reality sensitivity of the mind endowment
of man. Science starts out on its vaunted career of
reasoning by
assuming the reality of three things: matter,
motion, and life. Religion starts out with the
assumption of the validity of three things: mind,
spirit, and the universe -- the Supreme Being.
103:7.12
Science becomes the thought domain of mathematics, of
the energy and material of time in space. Religion
assumes to deal not only with finite and temporal spirit
but also with the spirit of eternity and supremacy. Only
through a long experience in mota can these two extremes
of universe perception be made to yield analogous
interpretations of origins, functions, relations,
realities, and destinies. The maximum harmonization of
the energy-spirit divergence is in the encircuitment of
the Seven Master Spirits; the first unification thereof,
in the Deity of the Supreme; the finality unity thereof,
in the infinity of the First Source and Center, the I
AM.
103:7.13
Reason is the
act of recognizing the conclusions of consciousness with
regard to the experience in and with the physical world
of energy and matter.
Faith is the
act of recognizing the validity of spiritual
consciousness -- something which is incapable of other
mortal proof.
Logic is the synthetic truth-seeking progression of
the unity of faith and reason and is founded on the
constitutive mind endowments of mortal beings, the
innate recognition of things, meanings, and values.
103:7.14
There is a real proof of spiritual reality in the
presence of the Thought Adjuster, but the validity of
this presence is not demonstrable to the external world,
only to the one who thus experiences the indwelling of
God. The consciousness of the Adjuster is based on the
intellectual reception of truth, the supermind
perception of goodness, and the personality motivation
to love.
103:7.15
Science discovers the material world, religion evaluates
it, and philosophy endeavors to interpret its meanings
while co-ordinating the scientific material viewpoint
with the religious spiritual concept. But history is a
realm in which science and religion may never fully
agree.
8. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
103:8.1
Although both science and philosophy may assume the
probability of God by their reason and logic, only the
personal religious experience of a spirit-led man can
affirm the certainty of such a supreme and personal
Deity. By the technique of such an incarnation of living
truth the philosophic hypothesis of the probability of
God becomes a religious reality.
103:8.2
The confusion about the experience of the certainty of
God arises out of the dissimilar interpretations and
relations of that experience by separate individuals and
by different races of men. The experiencing of God may
be wholly valid, but the discourse
about God,
being intellectual and philosophical, is divergent and
oftentimes confusingly fallacious.
103:8.3
A good and noble man may be consummately in love with
his wife but utterly unable to pass a satisfactory
written examination on the psychology of marital love.
Another man, having little or no love for his spouse,
might pass such an examination most acceptably. The
imperfection of the lover's insight into the true nature
of the beloved does not in the least invalidate either
the reality or sincerity of his love.
103:8.4
If you truly believe in God -- by faith know him and
love him -- do not permit the reality of such an
experience to be in any way lessened or detracted from
by the doubting insinuations of science, the caviling of
logic, the postulates of philosophy, or the clever
suggestions of well-meaning souls who would create a
religion without God.
103:8.5
The certainty of the God-knowing religionist should not
be disturbed by the uncertainty of the doubting
materialist; rather should the uncertainty of the
unbeliever be mightily challenged by the profound faith
and unshakable certainty of the experiential believer.
103:8.6
Philosophy, to be of the greatest service to both
science and religion, should avoid the extremes of both
materialism and pantheism. Only a philosophy which
recognizes the reality of personality -- permanence in
the presence of change -- can be of moral value to man,
can serve as a liaison between the theories of material
science and spiritual religion. Revelation is a
compensation for the frailties of evolving philosophy.
9. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION
103:9.1
Theology deals with the intellectual content of
religion, metaphysics (revelation) with the philosophic
aspects. Religious experience is the spiritual content
of religion. Notwithstanding the mythologic vagaries and
the psychologic illusions of the intellectual content of
religion, the metaphysical assumptions of error and the
techniques of self-deception, the political distortions
and the socioeconomic perversions of the philosophic
content of religion, the spiritual experience of
personal religion remains genuine and valid.
103:9.2
Religion has to do with feeling, acting, and living, not
merely with thinking. Thinking is more closely related
to the material life and should be in the main, but not
altogether, dominated by reason and the facts of science
and, in its nonmaterial reaches toward the spirit
realms, by truth. No matter how illusory and erroneous
one's theology, one's religion may be wholly genuine and
everlastingly true.
103:9.3
Buddhism in its original form is one of the best
religions without a God which has arisen throughout all
the evolutionary history of Urantia, although, as this
faith developed, it did not remain godless. Religion
without faith is a contradiction; without God, a
philosophic inconsistency and an intellectual absurdity.
103:9.4
The magical and mythological parentage of natural
religion does not invalidate the reality and truth of
the later revelational religions and the consummate
saving gospel of the religion of Jesus. Jesus' life and
teachings finally divested religion of the superstitions
of magic, the illusions of mythology, and the bondage of
traditional dogmatism. But this early magic and
mythology very effectively prepared the way for later
and superior religion by assuming the existence and
reality of supermaterial values and beings.
103:9.5
Although religious experience is a purely spiritual
subjective phenomenon, such an experience embraces a
positive and living faith attitude toward the highest
realms of universe objective reality. The ideal of
religious philosophy is such a faith-trust as would lead
man unqualifiedly to depend upon the absolute love of
the infinite Father of the universe of universes. Such a
genuine religious experience far transcends the
philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it
actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself
only with learning and doing the will of the Father in
Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in
a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love,
especially of one's fellows.
103:9.6
When theology masters religion, religion dies; it
becomes a doctrine instead of a life. The mission of
theology is merely to facilitate the self-consciousness
of personal spiritual experience. Theology constitutes
the religious effort to define, clarify, expound, and
justify the experiential claims of religion, which, in
the last analysis, can be validated only by living
faith. In the higher philosophy of the universe, wisdom,
like reason, becomes allied to faith. Reason, wisdom,
and faith are man's highest human attainments. Reason
introduces man to the world of facts, to things; wisdom
introduces him to a world of truth, to relationships;
faith initiates him into a world of divinity, spiritual
experience.
103:9.7
Faith most willingly carries reason along as far as
reason can go and then goes on with wisdom to the full
philosophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon
the limitless and never-ending universe journey in the
sole company of TRUTH.
103:9.8
Science (knowledge) is founded on the inherent (adjutant
spirit) assumption that reason is valid, that the
universe can be comprehended. Philosophy (co-ordinate
comprehension) is founded on the inherent (spirit of
wisdom) assumption that wisdom is valid, that the
material universe can be co-ordinated with the
spiritual. Religion (the truth of personal spiritual
experience) is founded on the inherent (Thought
Adjuster) assumption that faith is valid, that God can
be known and attained.
103:9.9
The full realization of the reality of mortal life
consists in a progressive willingness to believe these
assumptions of reason, wisdom, and faith. Such a life is
one motivated by truth and dominated by love; and these
are the ideals of objective cosmic reality whose
existence cannot be materially demonstrated.
103:9.10
When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits
wisdom; when wisdom chooses between right and wrong,
truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading. And
thus are the functions of mind, soul, and spirit ever
closely united and functionally interassociated. Reason
deals with factual knowledge; wisdom, with philosophy
and revelation; faith, with living spiritual experience.
Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love
ascends to goodness.
103:9.11
Faith leads to knowing God, not merely to a mystical
feeling of the divine presence. Faith must not be
overmuch influenced by its emotional consequences. True
religion is an experience of believing and knowing as
well as a satisfaction of feeling.
103:9.12
There is a reality in religious experience that is
proportional to the spiritual content, and such a
reality is transcendent to reason, science, philosophy,
wisdom, and all other human achievements. The
convictions of such an experience are unassailable; the
logic of religious living is incontrovertible; the
certainty of such knowledge is superhuman; the
satisfactions are superbly divine, the courage
indomitable, the devotions unquestioning, the loyalties
supreme, and the destinies final -- eternal, ultimate,
and universal.
103:9.13
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
*
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