The Real Nature of Religion

101:6.1The mor­ontia phase of re­vealed re­li­gion has to do with the ex­pe­ri­ence of sur­vival, and its great urge is the at­tain­ment of spirit per­fec­tion. There also is pres­ent the higher urge of wor­ship, as­so­ci­ated with an im­pelling call to in­creased eth­i­cal ser­vice. Mor­ontia in­sight en­tails an ever-ex­pand­ing con­scious­ness of the Sev­en­fold, the Su­preme, and even the Ul­ti­mate.

101:6.2Through­out all re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, from its ear­li­est in­cep­tion on the ma­te­rial level up to the time of the at­tain­ment of full spirit sta­tus, the Ad­juster is the se­cret of the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the ex­is­tence of the Su­preme; and this same Ad­juster also holds the se­crets of your faith in the tran­scen­den­tal at­tain­ment of the Ul­ti­mate. The ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­son­al­ity of evolv­ing man, united to the Ad­juster essence of the ex­is­ten­tial God, con­sti­tutes the po­ten­tial com­ple­tion of su­preme ex­is­tence and is in­her­ently the ba­sis for the super­fi­nite even­tu­a­tion of tran­scen­den­tal per­son­al­ity.

101:6.3Moral will em­braces de­ci­sions based on rea­soned knowl­edge, aug­mented by wis­dom, and sanc­tioned by re­li­gious faith. Such choices are acts of moral na­ture and ev­i­dence the ex­is­tence of moral per­son­al­ity, the fore­run­ner of mor­ontia per­son­al­ity and even­tu­ally of true spirit sta­tus.

101:6.4The evo­lu­tion­ary type of knowl­edge is but the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory ma­te­rial; this is the most prim­i­tive form of crea­ture con­scious­ness. Wis­dom em­braces the ideas for­mu­lated from pro­to­plas­mic mem­ory in pro­cess of as­so­ci­a­tion and re­com­bi­na­tion, and such phe­nom­ena dif­fer­en­ti­ate hu­man mind from mere an­i­mal mind. An­i­mals have knowl­edge, but only man pos­sesses wis­dom ca­pac­ity. Truth is made ac­ces­si­ble to the wis­dom-en­dowed in­di­vid­ual by the be­stowal on such a mind of the spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Sons, the Thought Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth.

101:6.5Christ Mi­chael, when be­stowed on Uran­tia, lived un­der the reign of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion up to the time of his bap­tism. From that mo­ment up to and in­clud­ing the event of his cru­ci­fix­ion he car­ried for­ward his work by the com­bined guid­ance of evo­lu­tion­ary and re­vealed re­li­gion. From the morn­ing of his res­ur­rec­tion un­til his as­cen­sion he tra­versed the man­i­fold phases of the mor­ontia life of mor­tal tran­si­tion from the world of mat­ter to that of spirit. Af­ter his as­cen­sion Mi­chael be­came mas­ter of the ex­pe­ri­ence of Su­prem­acy, the re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme; and be­ing the one per­son in Neb­a­don pos­sessed of un­lim­ited ca­pac­ity to ex­pe­ri­ence the re­al­ity of the Su­preme, he forth­with at­tained to the sta­tus of the sov­er­eignty of su­prem­acy in and to his lo­cal uni­verse.

101:6.6With man, the even­tual fu­sion and re­sul­tant one­ness with the in­dwelling Ad­juster—the per­son­al­ity syn­the­sis of man and the essence of God—con­sti­tute him, in po­ten­tial, a liv­ing part of the Su­preme and in­sure for such a one­time mor­tal be­ing the eter­nal birthright of the end­less pur­suit of fi­nal­ity of uni­verse ser­vice for and with the Su­preme.

101:6.7Rev­e­la­tion teaches mor­tal man that, to start such a mag­nif­i­cent and in­trigu­ing ad­ven­ture through space by means of the pro­gres­sion of time, he should be­gin by the or­ga­ni­za­tion of knowl­edge into idea-de­ci­sions; next, man­date wis­dom to la­bor un­remit­tingly at its no­ble task of trans­form­ing self-pos­sessed ideas into in­creas­ingly prac­ti­cal but nonethe­less su­per­nal ide­als, even those con­cepts which are so rea­son­able as ideas and so log­i­cal as ide­als that the Ad­juster dares so to com­bine and spir­i­tize them as to ren­der them avail­able for such as­so­ci­a­tion in the fi­nite mind as will con­sti­tute them the ac­tual hu­man com­ple­ment thus made ready for the ac­tion of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space man­i­fes­ta­tions of Par­a­dise truth—uni­ver­sal truth. The co-or­di­na­tion of idea-de­ci­sions, log­i­cal ide­als, and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a righ­teous char­ac­ter, the pre­req­ui­site for mor­tal ad­mis­sion to the ever-ex­pand­ing and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the mor­ontia worlds.

101:6.8The teach­ings of Je­sus con­sti­tuted the first Uran­tian re­li­gion which so fully em­braced a har­mo­nious co-or­di­na­tion of knowl­edge, wis­dom, faith, truth, and love as com­pletely and si­mul­ta­ne­ously to pro­vide tem­po­ral tran­quil­lity, in­tel­lec­tual cer­tainty, moral en­light­en­ment, philo­sophic sta­bil­ity, eth­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity, God-con­scious­ness, and the pos­i­tive as­sur­ance of per­sonal sur­vival. The faith of Je­sus pointed the way to fi­nal­ity of hu­man sal­va­tion, to the ul­ti­mate of mor­tal uni­verse at­tain­ment, since it pro­vided for:

101:6.91. Sal­va­tion from ma­te­rial fet­ters in the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God, who is spirit.

101:6.102. Sal­va­tion from in­tel­lec­tual bond­age: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.

101:6.113. Sal­va­tion from spir­i­tual blind­ness, the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of the fra­ter­nity of mor­tal be­ings and the mor­ontian aware­ness of the broth­er­hood of all uni­verse crea­tures; the ser­vice-dis­cov­ery of spir­i­tual re­al­ity and the min­istry-rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of spirit val­ues.

101:6.124. Sal­va­tion from in­com­plete­ness of self through the at­tain­ment of the spirit lev­els of the uni­verse and through the even­tual re­al­iza­tion of the har­mony of Ha­vona and the per­fec­tion of Par­a­dise.

101:6.135. Sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the lim­i­ta­tions of self-con­scious­ness through the at­tain­ment of the cos­mic lev­els of the Su­preme Mind and by co-or­di­na­tion with the at­tain­ments of all other self-con­scious be­ings.

101:6.146. Sal­va­tion from time, the achieve­ment of an eter­nal life of un­end­ing pro­gres­sion in God-rec­og­ni­tion and God-ser­vice.

101:6.157. Sal­va­tion from the fi­nite, the per­fected one­ness with De­ity in and through the Su­preme by which the crea­ture at­tempts the tran­scen­den­tal dis­cov­ery of the Ul­ti­mate on the post­fi­naliter lev­els of the ab­so­nite.

101:6.16Such a sev­en­fold sal­va­tion is the equiv­a­lent of the com­plete­ness and per­fec­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of the ul­ti­mate ex­pe­ri­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. And all this, in po­ten­tial, is con­tained within the re­al­ity of the faith of the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion. And it can be so con­tained since the faith of Je­sus was nour­ished by, and was rev­e­la­tory of, even re­al­i­ties be­yond the ul­ti­mate; the faith of Je­sus ap­proached the sta­tus of a uni­verse ab­so­lute in so far as such is pos­si­ble of man­i­fes­ta­tion in the evolv­ing cos­mos of time and space.

101:6.17Through the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of the faith of Je­sus, mor­tal man can fore­taste in time the re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Je­sus made the dis­cov­ery, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, of the Fi­nal Fa­ther, and his broth­ers in the flesh of mor­tal life can fol­low him along this same ex­pe­ri­ence of Fa­ther dis­cov­ery. They can even at­tain, as they are, the same sat­is­fac­tion in this ex­pe­ri­ence with the Fa­ther as did Je­sus as he was. New po­ten­tials were ac­tu­al­ized in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don con­se­quent upon the ter­mi­nal be­stowal of Mi­chael, and one of these was the new il­lu­mi­na­tion of the path of eter­nity that leads to the Fa­ther of all, and which can be tra­versed even by the mor­tals of ma­te­rial flesh and blood in the ini­tial life on the plan­ets of space. Je­sus was and is the new and liv­ing way whereby man can come into the di­vine in­her­i­tance which the Fa­ther has de­creed shall be his for but the ask­ing. In Je­sus there is abun­dantly demon­strated both the be­gin­nings and end­ings of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man­ity, even of di­vine hu­man­ity.