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Urantia Book Paper 103 The Reality Of Religious Experience
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
...
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Paper 103 The Reality Of Religious Experience
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Introduction
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.
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.
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
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 interpreta-
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tion 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
top of page - 1133
4. SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
top of page - 1134
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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
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of the hopeless fatality of a mechanistic cosmic determinism. Man is most truly
the architect of his own eternal destiny.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 under
top of page - 1136
standing of universal truths and relationships without the guidance of human
philosophy and the illumination of divine revelation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
top of page - 1137
the energy concept. But in the time of space these divergencies are at one in
the Supreme.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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8. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
top of page - 1141
and erroneous one's theology, one's religion may be wholly genuine and
everlastingly true.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
top of page - 1142
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.
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.
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.
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
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? The ? Growth Of The ? Urantia Book ? Search ? SiteMap! ?
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