The Reality of Religious Experience

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

103:2.2But those per­sons who were so reared by their par­ents that they grew up in the con­scious­ness of be­ing chil­dren of a lov­ing heav­enly Fa­ther, should not look askance at their fel­low mor­tals who could only at­tain such con­scious­ness of fel­low­ship with God through a psy­cho­log­i­cal cri­sis, an emo­tional up­heaval.

103:2.3The evo­lu­tion­ary soil in the mind of man in which the seed of re­vealed re­li­gion ger­mi­nates is the moral na­ture that so early gives ori­gin to a so­cial con­scious­ness. The first prompt­ings of a child’s moral na­ture have not to do with sex, guilt, or per­sonal pride, but rather with im­pulses of jus­tice, fair­ness, and urges to kind­ness—help­ful min­istry to one’s fel­lows. And when such early moral awak­en­ings are nur­tured, there oc­curs a grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the re­li­gious life which is com­par­a­tively free from con­flicts, up­heavals, and crises.

103:2.4Ev­ery hu­man be­ing very early ex­pe­ri­ences some­thing of a con­flict be­tween his self-seek­ing and his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses, and many times the first ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness may be at­tained as the re­sult of seek­ing for super­hu­man help in the task of re­solv­ing such moral con­flicts.

103:2.5The psy­chol­ogy of a child is nat­u­rally pos­i­tive, not neg­a­tive. So many mor­tals are neg­a­tive be­cause they were so trained. When it is said that the child is pos­i­tive, ref­er­ence is made to his moral im­pulses, those pow­ers of mind whose emer­gence sig­nals the ar­rival of the Thought Ad­juster.

103:2.6In the ab­sence of wrong teach­ing, the mind of the nor­mal child moves pos­i­tively, in the emer­gence of re­li­gious con­scious­ness, to­ward moral righ­teous­ness and so­cial min­istry, rather than neg­a­tively, away from sin and guilt. There may or may not be con­flict in the de­vel­op­ment of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but there are al­ways pres­ent the in­ev­i­ta­ble de­ci­sions, ef­fort, and func­tion of the hu­man will.

103:2.7Moral choos­ing is usu­ally ac­com­pa­nied by more or less moral con­flict. And this very first con­flict in the child mind is be­tween the urges of ego­ism and the im­pulses of al­tru­ism. The Thought Ad­juster does not dis­re­gard the per­son­al­ity val­ues of the ego­is­tic mo­tive but does op­er­ate to place a slight pref­er­ence upon the al­tru­is­tic im­pulse as lead­ing to the goal of hu­man hap­pi­ness and to the joys of the king­dom of heaven.

103:2.8When a moral be­ing chooses to be un­selfish when con­fronted by the urge to be self­ish, that is prim­i­tive re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. No an­i­mal can make such a choice; such a de­ci­sion is both hu­man and re­li­gious. It em­braces the fact of God-con­scious­ness and ex­hibits the im­pulse of so­cial ser­vice, the ba­sis of the broth­er­hood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judg­ment by an act of the free will, such a de­ci­sion con­sti­tutes a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:2.9But be­fore a child has de­vel­oped suf­fi­ciently to ac­quire moral ca­pac­ity and there­fore to be able to choose al­tru­is­tic ser­vice, he has al­ready de­vel­oped a strong and well-uni­fied ego­is­tic na­ture. And it is this fac­tual sit­u­a­tion that gives rise to the the­ory of the strug­gle be­tween the “higher” and the “lower” na­tures, be­tween the “old man of sin” and the “new na­ture” of grace. Very early in life the nor­mal child be­gins to learn that it is “more blessed to give than to re­ceive.”

103:2.10Man tends to iden­tify the urge to be self-serv­ing with his ego—him­self. In con­trast he is in­clined to iden­tify the will to be al­tru­is­tic with some in­flu­ence out­side him­self—God. And in­deed is such a judg­ment right, for all such non­self de­sires do ac­tu­ally have their ori­gin in the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster, and this Ad­juster is a frag­ment of God. The im­pulse of the spirit Mon­i­tor is re­al­ized in hu­man con­scious­ness as the urge to be al­tru­is­tic, fel­low-crea­ture minded. At least this is the early and fun­da­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of the child mind. When the grow­ing child fails of per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion, the al­tru­is­tic drive may be­come so overde­vel­oped as to work se­ri­ous in­jury to the wel­fare of the self. A mis­guided con­science can be­come re­spon­si­ble for much con­flict, worry, sor­row, and no end of hu­man un­hap­pi­ness.