The Reality of Religious Experience

103:5.1The early evo­lu­tion­ary mind gives ori­gin to a feel­ing of so­cial duty and moral obli­ga­tion de­rived chiefly from emo­tional fear. The more pos­i­tive urge of so­cial ser­vice and the ide­al­ism of al­tru­ism are de­rived from the di­rect im­pulse of the di­vine spirit in­dwelling the hu­man mind.

103:5.2This idea-ideal of do­ing good to oth­ers—the im­pulse to deny the ego some­thing for the ben­e­fit of one’s neigh­bor—is very cir­cum­scribed at first. Prim­i­tive man re­gards as neigh­bor only those very close to him, those who treat him neigh­borly; as re­li­gious civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, one’s neigh­bor ex­pands in con­cept to em­brace the clan, the tribe, the na­tion. And then Je­sus en­larged the neigh­bor scope to em­brace the whole of hu­man­ity, even that we should love our en­e­mies. And there is some­thing in­side of ev­ery nor­mal hu­man be­ing that tells him this teach­ing is moral—right. Even those who prac­tice this ideal least, ad­mit that it is right in the­ory.

103:5.3All men rec­og­nize the moral­ity of this uni­ver­sal hu­man urge to be un­selfish and al­tru­is­tic. The hu­man­ist as­cribes the ori­gin of this urge to the nat­u­ral work­ing of the ma­te­rial mind; the re­li­gion­ist more cor­rectly rec­og­nizes that the truly un­selfish drive of mor­tal mind is in re­sponse to the in­ner spirit lead­ings of the Thought Ad­juster.

103:5.4But man’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these early con­flicts be­tween the ego-will and the other-than-self-will is not al­ways de­pend­able. Only a fairly well uni­fied per­son­al­ity can ar­bi­trate the mul­ti­form con­tentions of the ego crav­ings and the bud­ding so­cial con­scious­ness. The self has rights as well as one’s neigh­bors. Nei­ther has ex­clu­sive claims upon the at­ten­tion and ser­vice of the in­di­vid­ual. Fail­ure to re­solve this prob­lem gives ori­gin to the ear­li­est type of hu­man guilt feel­ings.

103:5.5Hu­man hap­pi­ness is achieved only when the ego de­sire of the self and the al­tru­is­tic urge of the higher self (di­vine spirit) are co-or­di­nated and rec­on­ciled by the uni­fied will of the in­te­grat­ing and super­vis­ing per­son­al­ity. The mind of evo­lu­tion­ary man is ever con­fronted with the in­tri­cate prob­lem of ref­er­ee­ing the con­test be­tween the nat­u­ral ex­pan­sion of emo­tional im­pulses and the moral growth of un­selfish urges pred­i­cated on spir­i­tual in­sight—gen­uine re­li­gious re­flec­tion.

103:5.6The at­tempt to se­cure equal good for the self and for the great­est num­ber of other selves pre­sents a prob­lem which can­not al­ways be sat­is­fac­to­rily re­solved in a time-space frame. Given an eter­nal life, such an­tag­o­nisms can be worked out, but in one short hu­man life they are in­ca­pable of so­lu­tion. Je­sus re­ferred to such a para­dox when he said: “Whoso­ever shall save his life shall lose it, but whoso­ever shall lose his life for the sake of the king­dom, shall find it.”

103:5.7The pur­suit of the ideal—the striv­ing to be God­like—is a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort be­fore death and af­ter. The life af­ter death is no dif­fer­ent in the es­sen­tials than the mor­tal ex­is­tence. Ev­ery­thing we do in this life which is good con­tributes di­rectly to the en­hance­ment of the fu­ture life. Real re­li­gion does not fos­ter moral in­do­lence and spir­i­tual lazi­ness by en­cour­ag­ing the vain hope of hav­ing all the virtues of a no­ble char­ac­ter be­stowed upon one as a re­sult of pass­ing through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death. True re­li­gion does not be­lit­tle man’s ef­forts to pro­gress dur­ing the mor­tal lease on life. Ev­ery mor­tal gain is a di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the en­rich­ment of the first stages of the im­mor­tal sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:5.8It is fa­tal to man’s ide­al­ism when he is taught that all of his al­tru­is­tic im­pulses are merely the de­vel­op­ment of his nat­u­ral herd in­stincts. But he is en­no­bled and might­ily en­er­gized when he learns that these higher urges of his soul em­anate from the spir­i­tual forces that in­dwell his mor­tal mind.

103:5.9It lifts man out of him­self and be­yond him­self when he once fully re­al­izes that there lives and strives within him some­thing which is eter­nal and di­vine. And so it is that a liv­ing faith in the super­hu­man ori­gin of our ide­als val­i­dates our be­lief that we are the sons of God and makes real our al­tru­is­tic con­vic­tions, the feel­ings of the broth­er­hood of man.

103:5.10Man, in his spir­i­tual do­main, does have a free will. Mor­tal man is nei­ther a help­less slave of the in­flex­i­ble sov­er­eignty of an all-pow­er­ful God nor the vic­tim of the hope­less fa­tal­ity of a mech­a­nis­tic cos­mic de­ter­min­ism. Man is most truly the ar­chi­tect of his own eter­nal des­tiny.

103:5.11But man is not saved or en­no­bled by pres­sure. Spirit growth springs from within the evolv­ing soul. Pres­sure may de­form the per­son­al­ity, but it never stim­u­lates growth. Even ed­u­ca­tional pres­sure is only neg­a­tively help­ful in that it may aid in the pre­ven­tion of dis­as­trous ex­pe­ri­ences. Spir­i­tual growth is great­est where all ex­ter­nal pres­sures are at a min­i­mum. “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is free­dom.” Man de­vel­ops best when the pres­sures of home, com­mu­nity, church, and state are least. But this must not be con­strued as mean­ing that there is no place in a pro­gres­sive so­ci­ety for home, so­cial in­sti­tu­tions, church, and state.

103:5.12When a mem­ber of a so­cial re­li­gious group has com­plied with the re­quire­ments of such a group, he should be en­cour­aged to en­joy re­li­gious lib­erty in the full ex­pres­sion of his own per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the truths of re­li­gious be­lief and the facts of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The se­cu­rity of a re­li­gious group de­pends on spir­i­tual unity, not on the­o­log­i­cal uni­for­mity. A re­li­gious group should be able to en­joy the lib­erty of free­think­ing with­out hav­ing to be­come “free­thinkers.” There is great hope for any church that wor­ships the liv­ing God, val­i­dates the broth­er­hood of man, and dares to re­move all creedal pres­sure from its mem­bers.