The Real Nature of Religion

101:1.1True re­li­gion is not a sys­tem of philo­sophic be­lief which can be rea­soned out and sub­stan­ti­ated by nat­u­ral proofs, nei­ther is it a fan­tas­tic and mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ence of in­de­scrib­able feel­ings of ec­stasy which can be en­joyed only by the ro­man­tic devo­tees of mys­ti­cism. Re­li­gion is not the prod­uct of rea­son, but viewed from within, it is al­to­gether rea­son­able. Re­li­gion is not de­rived from the logic of hu­man phi­los­o­phy, but as a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence it is al­to­gether log­i­cal. Re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of di­vin­ity in the con­scious­ness of a moral be­ing of evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin; it rep­re­sents true ex­pe­ri­ence with eter­nal re­al­i­ties in time, the re­al­iza­tion of spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions while yet in the flesh.

101:1.2The Thought Ad­juster has no spe­cial mech­a­nism through which to gain self-ex­pres­sion; there is no mys­tic re­li­gious fac­ulty for the re­cep­tion or ex­pres­sion of re­li­gious emo­tions. These ex­pe­ri­ences are made avail­able through the nat­u­rally or­dained mech­a­nism of mor­tal mind. And therein lies one ex­pla­na­tion of the Ad­juster’s dif­fi­culty in en­gag­ing in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the ma­te­rial mind of its con­stant in­dwelling.

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

101:1.4Re­li­gion lives and pros­pers, then, not by sight and feel­ing, but rather by faith and in­sight. It con­sists not in the dis­cov­ery of new facts or in the find­ing of a unique ex­pe­ri­ence, but rather in the dis­cov­ery of new and spir­i­tual mean­ings in facts al­ready well known to man­kind. The high­est re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is not de­pen­dent on prior acts of be­lief, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity; nei­ther is re­li­gion the off­spring of sub­lime feel­ings and purely mys­ti­cal emo­tions. It is, rather, a pro­foundly deep and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with the spirit in­flu­ences res­i­dent within the hu­man mind, and as far as such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­fin­able in terms of psy­chol­ogy, it is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­al­ity of be­liev­ing in God as the re­al­ity of such a purely per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

101:1.5While re­li­gion is not the prod­uct of the ra­tio­nal­is­tic spec­u­la­tions of a ma­te­rial cos­mol­ogy, it is, nonethe­less, the cre­ation of a wholly ra­tio­nal in­sight which orig­i­nates in man’s mind-ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion is born nei­ther of mys­tic med­i­ta­tions nor of iso­lated con­tem­pla­tions, al­beit it is ever more or less mys­te­ri­ous and al­ways in­de­fin­able and in­ex­pli­ca­ble in terms of purely in­tel­lec­tual rea­son and philo­sophic logic. The germs of true re­li­gion orig­i­nate in the do­main of man’s moral con­scious­ness, and they are re­vealed in the growth of man’s spir­i­tual in­sight, that fac­ulty of hu­man per­son­al­ity which ac­crues as a con­se­quence of the pres­ence of the God-re­veal­ing Thought Ad­juster in the God-hun­gry mor­tal mind.

101:1.6Faith unites moral in­sight with con­sci­en­tious dis­crim­i­na­tions of val­ues, and the pre-ex­is­tent evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty com­pletes the an­ces­try of true re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion even­tu­ally re­sults in the cer­tain con­scious­ness of God and in the un­doubted as­sur­ance of the sur­vival of the be­liev­ing per­son­al­ity.

101:1.7Thus it may be seen that re­li­gious long­ings and spir­i­tual urges are not of such a na­ture as would merely lead men to want to be­lieve in God, but rather are they of such na­ture and power that men are pro­foundly im­pressed with the con­vic­tion that they ought to be­lieve in God. The sense of evo­lu­tion­ary duty and the obli­ga­tions con­se­quent upon the il­lu­mi­na­tion of rev­e­la­tion make such a pro­found im­pres­sion upon man’s moral na­ture that he fi­nally reaches that po­si­tion of mind and that at­ti­tude of soul where he con­cludes that he has no right not to be­lieve in God. The higher and super­phil­o­sophic wis­dom of such en­light­ened and dis­ci­plined in­di­vid­u­als ul­ti­mately in­structs them that to doubt God or dis­trust his good­ness would be to prove un­true to the realest and deep­est thing within the hu­man mind and soul—the di­vine Ad­juster.