The Reality of Religious Experience

103:3.1While the be­lief in spir­its, dreams, and di­verse other su­per­sti­tions all played a part in the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin of prim­i­tive re­li­gions, you should not over­look the in­flu­ence of the clan or tribal spirit of sol­i­dar­ity. In the group re­la­tion­ship there was pre­sented the ex­act so­cial sit­u­a­tion which pro­vided the chal­lenge to the ego­is­tic-al­tru­is­tic con­flict in the moral na­ture of the early hu­man mind. In spite of their be­lief in spir­its, prim­i­tive Aus­tralians still fo­cus their re­li­gion upon the clan. In time, such re­li­gious con­cepts tend to per­son­al­ize, first, as an­i­mals, and later, as a super­man or as a God. Even such in­fe­rior races as the African Bush­men, who are not even totemic in their be­liefs, do have a rec­og­ni­tion of the dif­fer­ence be­tween the self-in­ter­est and the group-in­ter­est, a prim­i­tive dis­tinc­tion be­tween the val­ues of the sec­u­lar and the sa­cred. But the so­cial group is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­gard­less of the in­flu­ence of all these prim­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to man’s early re­li­gion, the fact re­mains that the true re­li­gious im­pulse has its ori­gin in gen­uine spirit pres­ences ac­ti­vat­ing the will to be un­selfish.

103:3.2Later re­li­gion is fore­shad­owed in the prim­i­tive be­lief in nat­u­ral won­ders and mys­ter­ies, the im­per­sonal mana. But sooner or later the evolv­ing re­li­gion re­quires that the in­di­vid­ual should make some per­sonal sac­ri­fice for the good of his so­cial group, should do some­thing to make other peo­ple hap­pier and bet­ter. Ul­ti­mately, re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the ser­vice of God and of man.

103:3.3Re­li­gion is de­signed to change man’s en­vi­ron­ment, but much of the re­li­gion found among mor­tals to­day has be­come help­less to do this. En­vi­ron­ment has all too of­ten mas­tered re­li­gion.

103:3.4Re­mem­ber that in the re­li­gion of all ages the ex­pe­ri­ence which is paramount is the feel­ing re­gard­ing moral val­ues and so­cial mean­ings, not the think­ing re­gard­ing the­o­logic dog­mas or philo­sophic the­o­ries. Re­li­gion evolves fa­vor­ably as the el­e­ment of magic is re­placed by the con­cept of morals.

103:3.5Man evolved through the su­per­sti­tions of mana, magic, na­ture wor­ship, spirit fear, and an­i­mal wor­ship to the var­i­ous cer­e­mo­ni­als whereby the re­li­gious at­ti­tude of the in­di­vid­ual be­came the group re­ac­tions of the clan. And then these cer­e­monies be­came fo­cal­ized and crys­tal­lized into tribal be­liefs, and even­tu­ally these fears and faiths be­came per­son­al­ized into gods. But in all of this re­li­gious evo­lu­tion the moral el­e­ment was never wholly ab­sent. The im­pulse of the God within man was al­ways po­tent. And these pow­er­ful in­flu­ences—one hu­man and the other di­vine—in­sured the sur­vival of re­li­gion through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of the ages and that not­with­stand­ing it was so of­ten threat­ened with ex­tinc­tion by a thou­sand sub­ver­sive ten­den­cies and hos­tile an­tag­o­nisms.