The Reality of Religious Experience

103:1.1The unity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence among a so­cial or racial group de­rives from the iden­ti­cal na­ture of the God frag­ment in­dwelling the in­di­vid­ual. It is this di­vine in man that gives ori­gin to his un­selfish in­ter­est in the wel­fare of other men. But since per­son­al­ity is unique—no two mor­tals be­ing alike—it in­evitably fol­lows that no two hu­man be­ings can sim­i­larly in­ter­pret the lead­ings and urges of the spirit of di­vin­ity which lives within their minds. A group of mor­tals can ex­pe­ri­ence spir­i­tual unity, but they can never at­tain philo­sophic uni­for­mity. And this di­ver­sity of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­li­gious thought and ex­pe­ri­ence is shown by the fact that twen­ti­eth-cen­tury the­olo­gians and philoso­phers have for­mu­lated up­ward of five hun­dred dif­fer­ent def­i­ni­tions of re­li­gion. In re­al­ity, ev­ery hu­man be­ing de­fines re­li­gion in the terms of his own ex­pe­ri­en­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the di­vine im­pulses em­a­nat­ing from the God spirit that in­dwells him, and there­fore must such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion be unique and wholly dif­fer­ent from the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of all other hu­man be­ings.

103:1.2When one mor­tal is in full agree­ment with the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of a fel­low mor­tal, that phe­nom­e­non in­di­cates that these two be­ings have had a sim­i­lar re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence touch­ing the mat­ters con­cerned in their sim­i­lar­ity of philo­sophic re­li­gious in­ter­pre­ta­tion.

103:1.3While your re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, it is most im­por­tant that you should be ex­posed to the knowl­edge of a vast num­ber of other re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences (the di­verse in­ter­pre­ta­tions of other and di­verse mor­tals) to the end that you may pre­vent your re­li­gious life from be­com­ing ego­cen­tric—cir­cum­scribed, self­ish, and unso­cial.

103:1.4Ra­tio­nal­ism is wrong when it as­sumes that re­li­gion is at first a prim­i­tive be­lief in some­thing which is then fol­lowed by the pur­suit of val­ues. Re­li­gion is pri­mar­ily a pur­suit of val­ues, and then there for­mu­lates a sys­tem of in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs. It is much eas­ier for men to agree on re­li­gious val­ues—goals—than on be­liefs—in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this ex­plains how re­li­gion can agree on val­ues and goals while ex­hibit­ing the con­fus­ing phe­nom­e­non of main­tain­ing a be­lief in hun­dreds of con­flict­ing be­liefs—creeds. This also ex­plains why a given per­son can main­tain his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the face of giv­ing up or chang­ing many of his re­li­gious be­liefs. Re­li­gion per­sists in spite of rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in re­li­gious be­liefs. The­ol­ogy does not pro­duce re­li­gion; it is re­li­gion that pro­duces the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy.

103:1.5That re­li­gion­ists have be­lieved so much that was false does not in­val­i­date re­li­gion be­cause re­li­gion is founded on the rec­og­ni­tion of val­ues and is val­i­dated by the faith of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion, then, is based on ex­pe­ri­ence and re­li­gious thought; the­ol­ogy, the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion, is an hon­est at­tempt to in­ter­pret that ex­pe­ri­ence. Such in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs may be right or wrong, or a mix­ture of truth and er­ror.

103:1.6The re­al­iza­tion of the rec­og­ni­tion of spir­i­tual val­ues is an ex­pe­ri­ence which is super­ide­a­tional. There is no word in any hu­man lan­guage which can be em­ployed to des­ig­nate this “sense,” “feel­ing,” “in­tu­ition,” or “ex­pe­ri­ence” which we have elected to call God-con­scious­ness. The spirit of God that dwells in man is not per­sonal—the Ad­juster is preper­sonal—but this Mon­i­tor pre­sents a value, ex­udes a fla­vor of di­vin­ity, which is per­sonal in the high­est and in­fi­nite sense. If God were not at least per­sonal, he could not be con­scious, and if not con­scious, then would he be in­frahu­man.