Religion in Human Experience

100:3.1Re­li­gion is not a tech­nique for at­tain­ing a static and bliss­ful peace of mind; it is an im­pulse for or­ga­niz­ing the soul for dy­namic ser­vice. It is the en­list­ment of the to­tal­ity of self­hood in the loyal ser­vice of lov­ing God and serv­ing man. Re­li­gion pays any price es­sen­tial to the at­tain­ment of the su­preme goal, the eter­nal prize. There is a con­se­crated com­plete­ness in re­li­gious loy­alty which is su­perbly sub­lime. And these loy­al­ties are so­cially ef­fec­tive and spir­i­tu­ally pro­gres­sive.

100:3.2To the re­li­gion­ist the word God be­comes a sym­bol sig­ni­fy­ing the ap­proach to su­preme re­al­ity and the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine value. Hu­man likes and dis­likes do not de­ter­mine good and evil; moral val­ues do not grow out of wish ful­fill­ment or emo­tional frus­tra­tion.

100:3.3In the con­tem­pla­tion of val­ues you must dis­tin­guish be­tween that which is value and that which has value. You must rec­og­nize the re­la­tion be­tween plea­sur­able ac­tiv­i­ties and their mean­ing­ful in­te­gra­tion and en­hanced re­al­iza­tion on ever pro­gres­sively higher and higher lev­els of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

100:3.4Mean­ing is some­thing which ex­pe­ri­ence adds to value; it is the ap­pre­cia­tive con­scious­ness of val­ues. An iso­lated and purely self­ish plea­sure may con­note a vir­tual de­val­u­a­tion of mean­ings, a mean­ing­less en­joy­ment bor­der­ing on rel­a­tive evil. Val­ues are ex­pe­ri­en­tial when re­al­i­ties are mean­ing­ful and men­tally as­so­ci­ated, when such re­la­tion­ships are rec­og­nized and ap­pre­ci­ated by mind.

100:3.5Val­ues can never be static; re­al­ity sig­ni­fies change, growth. Change with­out growth, ex­pan­sion of mean­ing and ex­al­ta­tion of value, is val­ue­less—is po­ten­tial evil. The greater the qual­ity of cos­mic adap­ta­tion, the more of mean­ing any ex­pe­ri­ence pos­sesses. Val­ues are not con­cep­tual il­lu­sions; they are real, but al­ways they de­pend on the fact of re­la­tion­ships. Val­ues are al­ways both ac­tual and po­ten­tial—not what was, but what is and is to be.

100:3.6The as­so­ci­a­tion of ac­tu­als and po­ten­tials equals growth, the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of val­ues. But growth is not mere prog­ress. Prog­ress is al­ways mean­ing­ful, but it is rel­a­tively val­ue­less with­out growth. The su­preme value of hu­man life con­sists in growth of val­ues, prog­ress in mean­ings, and re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic in­ter­re­lat­ed­ness of both of these ex­pe­ri­ences. And such an ex­pe­ri­ence is the equiv­a­lent of God-con­scious­ness. Such a mor­tal, while not super­nat­u­ral, is truly be­com­ing super­hu­man; an im­mor­tal soul is evolv­ing.

100:3.7Man can­not cause growth, but he can sup­ply fa­vor­able con­di­tions. Growth is al­ways un­con­scious, be it phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, or spir­i­tual. Love thus grows; it can­not be cre­ated, man­u­fac­tured, or pur­chased; it must grow. Evo­lu­tion is a cos­mic tech­nique of growth. So­cial growth can­not be se­cured by leg­is­la­tion, and moral growth is not had by im­proved ad­min­is­tra­tion. Man may man­u­fac­ture a ma­chine, but its real value must be de­rived from hu­man cul­ture and per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Man’s sole con­tri­bu­tion to growth is the mo­bi­liza­tion of the to­tal pow­ers of his per­son­al­ity—liv­ing faith.