The Reality of Religious Experience

103:6.1The­ol­ogy is the study of the ac­tions and re­ac­tions of the hu­man spirit; it can never be­come a sci­ence since it must al­ways be com­bined more or less with psy­chol­ogy in its per­sonal ex­pres­sion and with phi­los­o­phy in its sys­tem­atic por­trayal. The­ol­ogy is al­ways the study of your re­li­gion; the study of an­other’s re­li­gion is psy­chol­ogy.

103:6.2When man ap­proaches the study and ex­am­i­na­tion of his uni­verse from the out­side, he brings into be­ing the var­i­ous phys­i­cal sci­ences; when he ap­proaches the re­search of him­self and the uni­verse from the in­side, he gives ori­gin to the­ol­ogy and meta­physics. The later art of phi­los­o­phy de­vel­ops in an ef­fort to har­mo­nize the many dis­crep­an­cies which are des­tined at first to ap­pear be­tween the find­ings and teach­ings of these two di­a­met­ri­cally op­po­site av­enues of ap­proach­ing the uni­verse of things and be­ings.

103:6.3Re­li­gion has to do with the spir­i­tual view­point, the aware­ness of the in­si­d­e­ness of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Man’s spir­i­tual na­ture af­fords him the op­por­tu­nity of turn­ing the uni­verse out­side in. It is there­fore true that, viewed ex­clu­sively from the in­si­d­e­ness of per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, all cre­ation ap­pears to be spir­i­tual in na­ture.

103:6.4When man an­a­lyt­i­cally in­spects the uni­verse through the ma­te­rial en­dow­ments of his phys­i­cal senses and as­so­ci­ated mind per­cep­tion, the cos­mos ap­pears to be me­chan­i­cal and en­ergy-ma­te­rial. Such a tech­nique of study­ing re­al­ity con­sists in turn­ing the uni­verse in­side out.

103:6.5A log­i­cal and con­sis­tent philo­sophic con­cept of the uni­verse can­not be built up on the pos­tu­la­tions of ei­ther ma­te­ri­al­ism or spiritism, for both of these sys­tems of think­ing, when uni­ver­sally ap­plied, are com­pelled to view the cos­mos in dis­tor­tion, the for­mer con­tact­ing with a uni­verse turned in­side out, the lat­ter re­al­iz­ing the na­ture of a uni­verse turned out­side in. Never, then, can ei­ther sci­ence or re­li­gion, in and of them­selves, stand­ing alone, hope to gain an ad­e­quate un­der­stand­ing of uni­ver­sal truths and re­la­tion­ships with­out the guid­ance of hu­man phi­los­o­phy and the il­lu­mi­na­tion of di­vine rev­e­la­tion.

103:6.6Al­ways must man’s in­ner spirit de­pend for its ex­pres­sion and self-re­al­iza­tion upon the mech­a­nism and tech­nique of the mind. Like­wise must man’s outer ex­pe­ri­ence of ma­te­rial re­al­ity be pred­i­cated on the mind con­scious­ness of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing per­son­al­ity. There­fore are the spir­i­tual and the ma­te­rial, the in­ner and the outer, hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences al­ways cor­re­lated with the mind func­tion and con­di­tioned, as to their con­scious re­al­iza­tion, by the mind ac­tiv­ity. Man ex­pe­ri­ences mat­ter in his mind; he ex­pe­ri­ences spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the soul but be­comes con­scious of this ex­pe­ri­ence in his mind. The in­tel­lect is the har­mo­nizer and the ever-pres­ent con­di­tioner and qual­i­fier of the sum to­tal of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. Both en­ergy-things and spirit val­ues are col­ored by their in­ter­pre­ta­tion through the mind me­dia of con­scious­ness.

103:6.7Your dif­fi­culty in ar­riv­ing at a more har­mo­nious co-or­di­na­tion be­tween sci­ence and re­li­gion is due to your ut­ter ig­no­rance of the in­ter­ven­ing do­main of the mor­ontia world of things and be­ings. The lo­cal uni­verse con­sists of three de­grees, or stages, of re­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion: mat­ter, mor­ontia, and spirit. The mor­ontia an­gle of ap­proach erases all di­ver­gence be­tween the find­ings of the phys­i­cal sci­ences and the func­tion­ing of the spirit of re­li­gion. Rea­son is the un­der­stand­ing tech­nique of the sci­ences; faith is the in­sight tech­nique of re­li­gion; mota is the tech­nique of the mor­ontia level. Mota is a super­ma­te­rial re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity which is be­gin­ning to com­pen­sate in­com­plete growth, hav­ing for its sub­stance knowl­edge-rea­son and for its essence faith-in­sight. Mota is a super­phil­o­soph­i­cal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of di­ver­gent re­al­ity per­cep­tion which is nonat­tain­able by ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties; it is pred­i­cated, in part, on the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing sur­vived the ma­te­rial life of the flesh. But many mor­tals have rec­og­nized the de­sir­abil­ity of hav­ing some method of rec­on­cil­ing the in­ter­play be­tween the widely sep­a­rated do­mains of sci­ence and re­li­gion; and meta­physics is the re­sult of man’s un­avail­ing at­tempt to span this well-rec­og­nized chasm. But hu­man meta­physics has proved more con­fus­ing than il­lu­mi­nat­ing. Meta­physics stands for man’s well-meant but fu­tile ef­fort to com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the mota of mor­ontia.

103:6.8Meta­physics has proved a fail­ure; mota, man can­not per­ceive. Rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique which can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the truth sen­si­tiv­ity of mota in a ma­te­rial world. Rev­e­la­tion au­thor­i­ta­tively clar­i­fies the mud­dle of rea­son-de­vel­oped meta­physics on an evo­lu­tion­ary sphere.

103:6.9Sci­ence is man’s at­tempted study of his phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, the world of en­ergy-mat­ter; re­li­gion is man’s ex­pe­ri­ence with the cos­mos of spirit val­ues; phi­los­o­phy has been de­vel­oped by man’s mind ef­fort to or­ga­nize and cor­re­late the find­ings of these widely sep­a­rated con­cepts into some­thing like a rea­son­able and uni­fied at­ti­tude to­ward the cos­mos. Phi­los­o­phy, clar­i­fied by rev­e­la­tion, func­tions ac­cept­ably in the ab­sence of mota and in the pres­ence of the break­down and fail­ure of man’s rea­son sub­sti­tute for mota—meta­physics.

103:6.10Early man did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the en­ergy level and the spirit level. It was the vi­o­let race and their And­ite suc­ces­sors who first at­tempted to di­vorce the math­e­mat­i­cal from the vo­li­tional. In­creas­ingly has civ­i­lized man fol­lowed in the foot­steps of the ear­li­est Greeks and the Sume­ri­ans who dis­tin­guished be­tween the inan­i­mate and the an­i­mate. And as civ­i­liza­tion pro­gresses, phi­los­o­phy will have to bridge ever-widen­ing gulfs be­tween the spirit con­cept and the en­ergy con­cept. But in the time of space these di­ver­gen­cies are at one in the Su­preme.

103:6.11Sci­ence must al­ways be grounded in rea­son, al­though imag­i­na­tion and con­jec­ture are help­ful in the ex­ten­sion of its bor­ders. Re­li­gion is for­ever de­pen­dent on faith, al­beit rea­son is a sta­bi­liz­ing in­flu­ence and a help­ful hand­maid. And al­ways there have been, and ever will be, mis­lead­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the phe­nom­ena of both the nat­u­ral and the spir­i­tual worlds, sci­ences and re­li­gions falsely so called.

103:6.12Out of his in­com­plete grasp of sci­ence, his faint hold upon re­li­gion, and his abortive at­tempts at meta­physics, man has at­tempted to con­struct his for­mu­la­tions of phi­los­o­phy. And mod­ern man would in­deed build a wor­thy and en­gag­ing phi­los­o­phy of him­self and his uni­verse were it not for the break­down of his all-im­por­tant and in­dis­pens­able meta­phys­i­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the worlds of mat­ter and spirit, the fail­ure of meta­physics to bridge the mor­ontia gulf be­tween the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual. Mor­tal man lacks the con­cept of mor­ontia mind and ma­te­rial; and rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique for aton­ing for this de­fi­ciency in the con­cep­tual data which man so ur­gently needs in or­der to con­struct a log­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse and to ar­rive at a sat­is­fy­ing un­der­stand­ing of his sure and set­tled place in that uni­verse.

103:6.13Rev­e­la­tion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s only hope of bridg­ing the mor­ontia gulf. Faith and rea­son, un­aided by mota, can­not con­ceive and con­struct a log­i­cal uni­verse. With­out the in­sight of mota, mor­tal man can­not dis­cern good­ness, love, and truth in the phe­nom­ena of the ma­te­rial world.

103:6.14When the phi­los­o­phy of man leans heav­ily to­ward the world of mat­ter, it be­comes ra­tio­nal­is­tic or nat­u­ral­is­tic. When phi­los­o­phy in­clines par­tic­u­larly to­ward the spir­i­tual level, it be­comes ide­al­is­tic or even mys­ti­cal. When phi­los­o­phy is so un­for­tu­nate as to lean upon meta­physics, it un­fail­ingly be­comes skep­ti­cal, con­fused. In past ages, most of man’s knowl­edge and in­tel­lec­tual eval­u­a­tions have fallen into one of these three dis­tor­tions of per­cep­tion. Phi­los­o­phy dare not project its in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­al­ity in the lin­ear fash­ion of logic; it must never fail to reckon with the el­lip­tic sym­me­try of re­al­ity and with the es­sen­tial cur­va­ture of all re­la­tion con­cepts.

103:6.15The high­est at­tain­able phi­los­o­phy of mor­tal man must be log­i­cally based on the rea­son of sci­ence, the faith of re­li­gion, and the truth in­sight af­forded by rev­e­la­tion. By this union man can com­pen­sate some­what for his fail­ure to de­velop an ad­e­quate meta­physics and for his in­abil­ity to com­pre­hend the mota of the mor­ontia.