The Reality of Religious Experience

103:9.1The­ol­ogy deals with the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, meta­physics (rev­e­la­tion) with the philo­sophic as­pects. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the spir­i­tual con­tent of re­li­gion. Not­with­stand­ing the mytho­logic va­garies and the psy­cho­logic il­lu­sions of the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, the meta­phys­i­cal as­sump­tions of er­ror and the tech­niques of self-de­cep­tion, the po­lit­i­cal dis­tor­tions and the so­cioe­co­nomic per­ver­sions of the philo­sophic con­tent of re­li­gion, the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of per­sonal re­li­gion re­mains gen­uine and valid.

103:9.2Re­li­gion has to do with feel­ing, act­ing, and liv­ing, not merely with think­ing. Think­ing is more closely re­lated to the ma­te­rial life and should be in the main, but not al­to­gether, dom­i­nated by rea­son and the facts of sci­ence and, in its non­ma­te­rial reaches to­ward the spirit realms, by truth. No mat­ter how il­lu­sory and er­ro­neous one’s the­ol­ogy, one’s re­li­gion may be wholly gen­uine and ev­er­last­ingly true.

103:9.3Bud­dhism in its orig­i­nal form is one of the best re­li­gions with­out a God which has arisen through­out all the evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory of Uran­tia, al­though, as this faith de­vel­oped, it did not re­main god­less. Re­li­gion with­out faith is a con­tra­dic­tion; with­out God, a philo­sophic in­con­sis­tency and an in­tel­lec­tual ab­sur­dity.

103:9.4The mag­i­cal and mytho­log­i­cal parent­age of nat­u­ral re­li­gion does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity and truth of the later rev­e­la­tional re­li­gions and the con­sum­mate sav­ing gospel of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Je­sus’ life and teach­ings fi­nally di­vested re­li­gion of the su­per­sti­tions of magic, the il­lu­sions of mythol­ogy, and the bond­age of tra­di­tional dog­ma­tism. But this early magic and mythol­ogy very ef­fec­tively pre­pared the way for later and su­pe­rior re­li­gion by as­sum­ing the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of super­ma­te­rial val­ues and be­ings.

103:9.5Al­though re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is a purely spir­i­tual sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non, such an ex­pe­ri­ence em­braces a pos­i­tive and liv­ing faith at­ti­tude to­ward the high­est realms of uni­verse ob­jec­tive re­al­ity. The ideal of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy is such a faith-trust as would lead man un­qual­i­fiedly to de­pend upon the ab­so­lute love of the in­fi­nite Fa­ther of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Such a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence far tran­scends the philo­sophic ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of ide­al­is­tic de­sire; it ac­tu­ally takes sal­va­tion for granted and con­cerns it­self only with learn­ing and do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. The ear­marks of such a re­li­gion are: faith in a su­preme De­ity, hope of eter­nal sur­vival, and love, es­pe­cially of one’s fel­lows.

103:9.6When the­ol­ogy mas­ters re­li­gion, re­li­gion dies; it be­comes a doc­trine in­stead of a life. The mis­sion of the­ol­ogy is merely to fa­cil­i­tate the self-con­scious­ness of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The­ol­ogy con­sti­tutes the re­li­gious ef­fort to de­fine, clar­ify, ex­pound, and jus­tify the ex­pe­ri­en­tial claims of re­li­gion, which, in the last anal­y­sis, can be val­i­dated only by liv­ing faith. In the higher phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse, wis­dom, like rea­son, be­comes al­lied to faith. Rea­son, wis­dom, and faith are man’s high­est hu­man at­tain­ments. Rea­son in­tro­duces man to the world of facts, to things; wis­dom in­tro­duces him to a world of truth, to re­la­tion­ships; faith ini­ti­ates him into a world of di­vin­ity, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:9.7Faith most will­ingly car­ries rea­son along as far as rea­son can go and then goes on with wis­dom to the full philo­sophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the lim­it­less and never-end­ing uni­verse jour­ney in the sole com­pany of TRUTH.

103:9.8Sci­ence (knowl­edge) is founded on the in­her­ent (ad­ju­tant spirit) as­sump­tion that rea­son is valid, that the uni­verse can be com­pre­hended. Phi­los­o­phy (co-or­di­nate com­pre­hen­sion) is founded on the in­her­ent (spirit of wis­dom) as­sump­tion that wis­dom is valid, that the ma­te­rial uni­verse can be co-or­di­nated with the spir­i­tual. Re­li­gion (the truth of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence) is founded on the in­her­ent (Thought Ad­juster) as­sump­tion that faith is valid, that God can be known and at­tained.

103:9.9The full re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of mor­tal life con­sists in a pro­gres­sive will­ing­ness to be­lieve these as­sump­tions of rea­son, wis­dom, and faith. Such a life is one mo­ti­vated by truth and dom­i­nated by love; and these are the ide­als of ob­jec­tive cos­mic re­al­ity whose ex­is­tence can­not be ma­te­ri­ally demon­strated.

103:9.10When rea­son once rec­og­nizes right and wrong, it ex­hibits wis­dom; when wis­dom chooses be­tween right and wrong, truth and er­ror, it demon­strates spirit lead­ing. And thus are the func­tions of mind, soul, and spirit ever closely united and func­tion­ally in­teras­so­ci­ated. Rea­son deals with fac­tual knowl­edge; wis­dom, with phi­los­o­phy and rev­e­la­tion; faith, with liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Through truth man at­tains beauty and by spir­i­tual love as­cends to good­ness.

103:9.11Faith leads to know­ing God, not merely to a mys­ti­cal feel­ing of the di­vine pres­ence. Faith must not be over­much in­flu­enced by its emo­tional con­se­quences. True re­li­gion is an ex­pe­ri­ence of be­liev­ing and know­ing as well as a sat­is­fac­tion of feel­ing.

103:9.12There is a re­al­ity in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence that is pro­por­tional to the spir­i­tual con­tent, and such a re­al­ity is tran­scen­dent to rea­son, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, and all other hu­man achieve­ments. The con­vic­tions of such an ex­pe­ri­ence are unas­sail­able; the logic of re­li­gious liv­ing is in­con­tro­vert­ible; the cer­tainty of such knowl­edge is super­hu­man; the sat­is­fac­tions are su­perbly di­vine, the cour­age in­domitable, the de­vo­tions un­ques­tion­ing, the loy­al­ties su­preme, and the des­tinies fi­nal—eter­nal, ul­ti­mate, and uni­ver­sal.

103:9.13[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]