Religion in Human Experience

100:5.1The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the the­o­logic sense but lost in the di­rec­tional mean­ing, wan­der­ing about in con­fu­sion among the isms and cults of a frus­trated philo­sophic era. Too few have learned how to in­stall a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing in the place of re­li­gious au­thor­ity. (The sym­bols of so­cial­ized re­li­gion are not to be de­spised as chan­nels of growth, al­beit the river bed is not the river.)

100:5.2The pro­gres­sion of re­li­gious growth leads from stag­na­tion through con­flict to co-or­di­na­tion, from in­se­cu­rity to un­doubt­ing faith, from con­fu­sion of cos­mic con­scious­ness to uni­fi­ca­tion of per­son­al­ity, from the tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive to the eter­nal, from the bond­age of fear to the lib­erty of di­vine son­ship.

100:5.3It should be made clear that pro­fes­sions of loy­alty to the su­preme ide­als—the psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual aware­ness of God-con­scious­ness—may be a nat­u­ral and grad­ual growth or may some­times be ex­pe­ri­enced at cer­tain junc­tures, as in a cri­sis. The Apos­tle Paul ex­pe­ri­enced just such a sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar con­ver­sion that event­ful day on the Da­mas­cus road. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence the night he sat alone and sought to pen­e­trate the mys­tery of fi­nal truth. Many oth­ers have had like ex­pe­ri­ences, and many true be­liev­ers have pro­gressed in the spirit with­out sud­den con­ver­sion.

100:5.4Most of the spec­tac­u­lar phe­nom­ena as­so­ci­ated with so-called re­li­gious con­ver­sions are en­tirely psy­cho­logic in na­ture, but now and then there do oc­cur ex­pe­ri­ences which are also spir­i­tual in ori­gin. When the men­tal mo­bi­liza­tion is ab­so­lutely to­tal on any level of the psy­chic up­reach to­ward spirit at­tain­ment, when there ex­ists per­fec­tion of the hu­man mo­ti­va­tion of loy­al­ties to the di­vine idea, then there very of­ten oc­curs a sud­den down-grasp of the in­dwelling spirit to syn­chro­nize with the con­cen­trated and con­se­crated pur­pose of the super­con­scious mind of the be­liev­ing mor­tal. And it is such ex­pe­ri­ences of uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena that con­sti­tute the con­ver­sion which con­sists in fac­tors over and above purely psy­cho­logic in­volve­ment.

100:5.5But emo­tion alone is a false con­ver­sion; one must have faith as well as feel­ing. To the ex­tent that such psy­chic mo­bi­liza­tion is par­tial, and in so far as such hu­man-loy­alty mo­ti­va­tion is in­com­plete, to that ex­tent will the ex­pe­ri­ence of con­ver­sion be a blended in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual re­al­ity.

100:5.6If one is dis­posed to rec­og­nize a the­o­ret­i­cal sub­con­scious mind as a prac­ti­cal work­ing hy­poth­e­sis in the oth­er­wise uni­fied in­tel­lec­tual life, then, to be con­sis­tent, one should pos­tu­late a sim­i­lar and cor­re­spond­ing realm of as­cend­ing in­tel­lec­tual ac­tiv­ity as the super­con­scious level, the zone of im­me­di­ate con­tact with the in­dwelling spirit en­tity, the Thought Ad­juster. The great dan­ger in all these psy­chic spec­u­la­tions is that vi­sions and other so-called mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ences, along with ex­traor­di­nary dreams, may be re­garded as di­vine com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the hu­man mind. In times past, di­vine be­ings have re­vealed them­selves to cer­tain God-know­ing per­sons, not be­cause of their mys­tic trances or mor­bid vi­sions, but in spite of all these phe­nom­ena.

100:5.7In con­trast with con­ver­sion-seek­ing, the bet­ter ap­proach to the mor­ontia zones of pos­si­ble con­tact with the Thought Ad­juster would be through liv­ing faith and sin­cere wor­ship, whole­hearted and un­selfish prayer. Al­to­gether too much of the up­rush of the mem­o­ries of the un­con­scious lev­els of the hu­man mind has been mis­taken for di­vine rev­e­la­tions and spirit lead­ings.

100:5.8There is great dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with the ha­bit­ual prac­tice of re­li­gious day­dream­ing; mys­ti­cism may be­come a tech­nique of re­al­ity avoid­ance, al­beit it has some­times been a means of gen­uine spir­i­tual com­mu­nion. Short sea­sons of re­treat from the busy scenes of life may not be se­ri­ously dan­ger­ous, but pro­longed iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity is most un­de­sir­able. Un­der no cir­cum­stances should the trance­like state of vi­sion­ary con­scious­ness be cul­ti­vated as a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

100:5.9The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the mys­ti­cal state are dif­fu­sion of con­scious­ness with vivid is­lands of fo­cal at­ten­tion op­er­at­ing on a com­par­a­tively pas­sive in­tel­lect. All of this grav­i­tates con­scious­ness to­ward the sub­con­scious rather than in the di­rec­tion of the zone of spir­i­tual con­tact, the super­con­scious. Many mys­tics have car­ried their men­tal dis­so­ci­a­tion to the level of ab­nor­mal men­tal man­i­fes­ta­tions.

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

100:5.11How­ever fa­vor­able may have been the con­di­tions for mys­tic phe­nom­ena, it should be clearly un­der­stood that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth never re­sorted to such meth­ods for com­mu­nion with the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Je­sus had no sub­con­scious delu­sions or super­con­scious il­lu­sions.