The Reality of Religious Experience

103:4.1The char­ac­ter­is­tic dif­fer­ence be­tween a so­cial oc­ca­sion and a re­li­gious gath­er­ing is that in con­trast with the sec­u­lar the re­li­gious is per­vaded by the at­mo­sphere of com­mu­nion. In this way hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion gen­er­ates a feel­ing of fel­low­ship with the di­vine, and this is the be­gin­ning of group wor­ship. Par­tak­ing of a com­mon meal was the ear­li­est type of so­cial com­mu­nion, and so did early re­li­gions pro­vide that some por­tion of the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice should be eaten by the wor­shipers. Even in Chris­tian­ity the Lord’s Sup­per re­tains this mode of com­mu­nion. The at­mo­sphere of the com­mu­nion pro­vides a re­fresh­ing and com­fort­ing pe­riod of truce in the con­flict of the self-seek­ing ego with the al­tru­is­tic urge of the in­dwelling spirit Mon­i­tor. And this is the pre­lude to true wor­ship—the prac­tice of the pres­ence of God which even­tu­ates in the emer­gence of the broth­er­hood of man.

103:4.2When prim­i­tive man felt that his com­mu­nion with God had been in­ter­rupted, he re­sorted to sac­ri­fice of some kind in an ef­fort to make atone­ment, to re­store friendly re­la­tion­ship. The hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness leads to the dis­cov­ery of truth, and truth aug­ments ide­als, and this cre­ates new prob­lems for the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists, for our ide­als tend to grow by ge­o­met­ri­cal pro­gres­sion, while our abil­ity to live up to them is en­hanced only by arith­meti­cal pro­gres­sion.

103:4.3The sense of guilt (not the con­scious­ness of sin) comes ei­ther from in­ter­rupted spir­i­tual com­mu­nion or from the low­er­ing of one’s moral ide­als. De­liv­er­ance from such a predica­ment can only come through the re­al­iza­tion that one’s high­est moral ide­als are not nec­es­sar­ily syn­ony­mous with the will of God. Man can­not hope to live up to his high­est ide­als, but he can be true to his pur­pose of find­ing God and be­com­ing more and more like him.

103:4.4Je­sus swept away all of the cer­e­mo­ni­als of sac­ri­fice and atone­ment. He de­stroyed the ba­sis of all this fic­ti­tious guilt and sense of iso­la­tion in the uni­verse by declar­ing that man is a child of God; the crea­ture-Cre­ator re­la­tion­ship was placed on a child-par­ent ba­sis. God be­comes a lov­ing Fa­ther to his mor­tal sons and daugh­ters. All cer­e­mo­ni­als not a le­git­i­mate part of such an in­ti­mate fam­ily re­la­tion­ship are for­ever ab­ro­gated.

103:4.5God the Fa­ther deals with man his child on the ba­sis, not of ac­tual virtue or wor­thi­ness, but in rec­og­ni­tion of the child’s mo­ti­va­tion—the crea­ture pur­pose and in­tent. The re­la­tion­ship is one of par­ent-child as­so­ci­a­tion and is ac­tu­ated by di­vine love.