The Real Nature of Religion

101:5.1Rev­e­la­tion is a tech­nique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the nec­es­sary work of sort­ing and sift­ing the er­rors of evo­lu­tion from the truths of spirit ac­quire­ment.

101:5.2Sci­ence deals with facts; re­li­gion is con­cerned only with val­ues. Through en­light­ened phi­los­o­phy the mind en­deav­ors to unite the mean­ings of both facts and val­ues, thereby ar­riv­ing at a con­cept of com­plete re­al­ity. Re­mem­ber that sci­ence is the do­main of knowl­edge, phi­los­o­phy the realm of wis­dom, and re­li­gion the sphere of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence. But re­li­gion, nonethe­less, pre­sents two phases of man­i­fes­ta­tion:

101:5.31. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of prim­i­tive wor­ship, the re­li­gion which is a mind deriva­tive.

101:5.42. Re­vealed re­li­gion. The uni­verse at­ti­tude which is a spirit deriva­tive; the as­sur­ance of, and be­lief in, the con­ser­va­tion of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity, and the even­tual at­tain­ment of the cos­mic De­ity, whose pur­pose has made all this pos­si­ble. It is a part of the plan of the uni­verse that, sooner or later, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is des­tined to re­ceive the spir­i­tual ex­pan­sion of rev­e­la­tion.

101:5.5Both sci­ence and re­li­gion start out with the as­sump­tion of cer­tain gen­er­ally ac­cepted bases for log­i­cal de­duc­tions. So, also, must phi­los­o­phy start its ca­reer upon the as­sump­tion of the re­al­ity of three things:

101:5.61. The ma­te­rial body.

101:5.72. The super­ma­te­rial phase of the hu­man be­ing, the soul or even the in­dwelling spirit.

101:5.83. The hu­man mind, the mech­a­nism for in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion be­tween spirit and mat­ter, be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual.

101:5.9Sci­en­tists as­sem­ble facts, philoso­phers co-or­di­nate ideas, while proph­ets ex­alt ide­als. Feel­ing and emo­tion are in­vari­able con­comi­tants of re­li­gion, but they are not re­li­gion. Re­li­gion may be the feel­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is hardly the ex­pe­ri­ence of feel­ing. Nei­ther logic (ra­tio­nal­iza­tion) nor emo­tion (feel­ing) is es­sen­tially a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, al­though both may var­i­ously be as­so­ci­ated with the ex­er­cise of faith in the fur­ther­ance of spir­i­tual in­sight into re­al­ity, all ac­cord­ing to the sta­tus and tem­per­a­men­tal ten­dency of the in­di­vid­ual mind.

101:5.10Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the out­work­ing of the en­dow­ment of the lo­cal uni­verse mind ad­ju­tant charged with the cre­ation and fos­ter­ing of the wor­ship trait in evolv­ing man. Such prim­i­tive re­li­gions are di­rectly con­cerned with ethics and morals, the sense of hu­man duty. Such re­li­gions are pred­i­cated on the as­sur­ance of con­science and re­sult in the sta­bi­liza­tion of rel­a­tively eth­i­cal civ­i­liza­tions.

101:5.11Per­son­ally re­vealed re­li­gions are spon­sored by the be­stowal spir­its rep­re­sent­ing the three per­sons of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and are es­pe­cially con­cerned with the ex­pan­sion of truth. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion drives home to the in­di­vid­ual the idea of per­sonal duty; re­vealed re­li­gion lays in­creas­ing em­pha­sis on lov­ing, the golden rule.

101:5.12Evolved re­li­gion rests wholly on faith. Rev­e­la­tion has the ad­di­tional as­sur­ance of its ex­panded pre­sen­ta­tion of the truths of di­vin­ity and re­al­ity and the still more valu­able tes­ti­mony of the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence which ac­cu­mu­lates in con­se­quence of the prac­ti­cal work­ing union of the faith of evo­lu­tion and the truth of rev­e­la­tion. Such a work­ing union of hu­man faith and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a char­ac­ter well on the road to the ac­tual ac­quire­ment of a mor­ontial per­son­al­ity.

101:5.13Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion pro­vides only the as­sur­ance of faith and the con­fir­ma­tion of con­science; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion pro­vides the as­sur­ance of faith plus the truth of a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. The third step in re­li­gion, or the third phase of the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion, has to do with the mor­ontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. In­creas­ingly in the mor­ontia pro­gres­sion the truths of re­vealed re­li­gion are ex­panded; more and more you will know the truth of su­preme val­ues, di­vine good­nesses, uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­ships, eter­nal re­al­i­ties, and ul­ti­mate des­tinies.

101:5.14In­creas­ingly through­out the mor­ontia pro­gres­sion the as­sur­ance of truth re­places the as­sur­ance of faith. When you are fi­nally mus­tered into the ac­tual spirit world, then will the as­sur­ances of pure spirit in­sight op­er­ate in the place of faith and truth or, rather, in con­junc­tion with, and super­im­posed upon, these for­mer tech­niques of per­son­al­ity as­sur­ance.