Religion in Human Experience

100:2.1Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment de­pends, first, on the main­te­nance of a liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with true spir­i­tual forces and, sec­ond, on the con­tin­u­ous bear­ing of spir­i­tual fruit: yield­ing the min­istry to one’s fel­lows of that which has been re­ceived from one’s spir­i­tual bene­fac­tors. Spir­i­tual prog­ress is pred­i­cated on in­tel­lec­tual rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual pov­erty cou­pled with the self-con­scious­ness of per­fec­tion-hunger, the de­sire to know God and be like him, the whole­hearted pur­pose to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

100:2.2Spir­i­tual growth is first an awak­en­ing to needs, next a dis­cern­ment of mean­ings, and then a dis­cov­ery of val­ues. The ev­i­dence of true spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment con­sists in the ex­hi­bi­tion of a hu­man per­son­al­ity mo­ti­vated by love, ac­ti­vated by un­selfish min­istry, and dom­i­nated by the whole­hearted wor­ship of the per­fec­tion ide­als of di­vin­ity. And this en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tutes the re­al­ity of re­li­gion as con­trasted with mere the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs.

100:2.3Re­li­gion can pro­gress to that level of ex­pe­ri­ence whereon it be­comes an en­light­ened and wise tech­nique of spir­i­tual re­ac­tion to the uni­verse. Such a glo­ri­fied re­li­gion can func­tion on three lev­els of hu­man per­son­al­ity: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, and the spir­i­tual; upon the mind, in the evolv­ing soul, and with the in­dwelling spirit.

100:2.4Spir­i­tu­al­ity be­comes at once the in­di­ca­tor of one’s near­ness to God and the mea­sure of one’s use­ful­ness to fel­low be­ings. Spir­i­tu­al­ity en­hances the abil­ity to dis­cover beauty in things, rec­og­nize truth in mean­ings, and dis­cover good­ness in val­ues. Spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment is de­ter­mined by ca­pac­ity there­for and is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the elim­i­na­tion of the self­ish qual­i­ties of love.

100:2.5Ac­tual spir­i­tual sta­tus is the mea­sure of De­ity at­tain­ment, Ad­juster at­tune­ment. The achieve­ment of fi­nal­ity of spir­i­tu­al­ity is equiv­a­lent to the at­tain­ment of the max­i­mum of re­al­ity, the max­i­mum of God­like­ness. Eter­nal life is the end­less quest for in­fi­nite val­ues.

100:2.6The goal of hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion should be spir­i­tual, not ma­te­rial. The only re­al­i­ties worth striv­ing for are di­vine, spir­i­tual, and eter­nal. Mor­tal man is en­ti­tled to the en­joy­ment of phys­i­cal plea­sures and to the sat­is­fac­tion of hu­man af­fec­tions; he is ben­e­fited by loy­alty to hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions and tem­po­ral in­sti­tu­tions; but these are not the eter­nal foun­da­tions upon which to build the im­mor­tal per­son­al­ity which must tran­scend space, van­quish time, and achieve the eter­nal des­tiny of di­vine per­fec­tion and fi­nal­i­ter ser­vice.

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

100:2.8Af­ter such spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, whether se­cured by grad­ual growth or spe­cific cri­sis, there oc­curs a new ori­en­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity as well as the de­vel­op­ment of a new stan­dard of val­ues. Such spirit-born in­di­vid­u­als are so re­mo­ti­vated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fond­est am­bi­tions per­ish and their keen­est hopes crash; they pos­i­tively know that such catas­tro­phes are but the redi­rect­ing cat­a­clysms which wreck one’s tem­po­ral cre­ations pre­lim­i­nary to the rear­ing of the more no­ble and en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of a new and more sub­lime level of uni­verse at­tain­ment.