The Urantia Book
PAPER 103
THE REALITY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
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.
