After Pentecost

195:7.1How fool­ish it is for ma­te­rial-minded man to al­low such vul­ner­a­ble the­o­ries as those of a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse to de­prive him of the vast spir­i­tual re­sources of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of true re­li­gion. Facts never quar­rel with real spir­i­tual faith; the­o­ries may. Bet­ter that sci­ence should be de­voted to the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion rather than at­tempt­ing the over­throw of re­li­gious faith—hu­man be­lief in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

195:7.2Sci­ence should do for man ma­te­ri­ally what re­li­gion does for him spir­i­tu­ally: ex­tend the hori­zon of life and en­large his per­son­al­ity. True sci­ence can have no last­ing quar­rel with true re­li­gion. The “sci­en­tific method” is merely an in­tel­lec­tual yard­stick where­with to mea­sure ma­te­rial ad­ven­tures and phys­i­cal achieve­ments. But be­ing ma­te­rial and wholly in­tel­lec­tual, it is ut­terly use­less in the eval­u­a­tion of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences.

195:7.3The in­con­sis­tency of the mod­ern mech­a­nist is: If this were merely a ma­te­rial uni­verse and man only a ma­chine, such a man would be wholly un­able to rec­og­nize him­self as such a ma­chine, and like­wise would such a ma­chine-man be wholly un­con­scious of the fact of the ex­is­tence of such a ma­te­rial uni­verse. The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic dis­may and de­spair of a mech­a­nis­tic sci­ence has failed to rec­og­nize the fact of the spirit-in­dwelt mind of the sci­en­tist whose very super­ma­te­rial in­sight for­mu­lates these mis­taken and self-con­tra­dic­tory con­cepts of a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic uni­verse.

195:7.4Par­a­dise val­ues of eter­nity and in­fin­ity, of truth, beauty, and good­ness, are con­cealed within the facts of the phe­nom­ena of the uni­verses of time and space. But it re­quires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mor­tal to de­tect and dis­cern these spir­i­tual val­ues.

195:7.5The re­al­i­ties and val­ues of spir­i­tual prog­ress are not a “psy­cho­logic pro­jec­tion”—a mere glo­ri­fied day­dream of the ma­te­rial mind. Such things are the spir­i­tual fore­casts of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, the spirit of God liv­ing in the mind of man. And let not your dab­blings with the faintly glimpsed find­ings of “rel­a­tiv­ity” dis­turb your con­cepts of the eter­nity and in­fin­ity of God. And in all your so­lic­i­ta­tion con­cern­ing the ne­ces­sity for self-ex­pres­sion do not make the mis­take of fail­ing to pro­vide for Ad­juster-ex­pres­sion, the man­i­fes­ta­tion of your real and bet­ter self.

195:7.6If this were only a ma­te­rial uni­verse, ma­te­rial man would never be able to ar­rive at the con­cept of the mech­a­nis­tic char­ac­ter of such an ex­clu­sively ma­te­rial ex­is­tence. This very mech­a­nis­tic con­cept of the uni­verse is in it­self a non­ma­te­rial phe­nom­e­non of mind, and all mind is of non­ma­te­rial ori­gin, no mat­ter how thor­oughly it may ap­pear to be ma­te­ri­ally con­di­tioned and mech­a­nis­ti­cally con­trolled.

195:7.7The par­tially evolved men­tal mech­a­nism of mor­tal man is not ov­eren­dowed with con­sis­tency and wis­dom. Man’s con­ceit of­ten out­runs his rea­son and eludes his logic.

195:7.8The very pes­simism of the most pes­simistic ma­te­ri­al­ist is, in and of it­self, suf­fi­cient proof that the uni­verse of the pes­simist is not wholly ma­te­rial. Both op­ti­mism and pes­simism are con­cept re­ac­tions in a mind con­scious of val­ues as well as of facts. If the uni­verse were truly what the ma­te­ri­al­ist re­gards it to be, man as a hu­man ma­chine would then be de­void of all con­scious rec­og­ni­tion of that very fact. With­out the con­scious­ness of the con­cept of val­ues within the spirit-born mind, the fact of uni­verse ma­te­ri­al­ism and the mech­a­nis­tic phe­nom­ena of uni­verse op­er­a­tion would be wholly un­rec­og­nized by man. One ma­chine can­not be con­scious of the na­ture or value of an­other ma­chine.

195:7.9A mech­a­nis­tic phi­los­o­phy of life and the uni­verse can­not be sci­en­tific be­cause sci­ence rec­og­nizes and deals only with ma­te­ri­als and facts. Phi­los­o­phy is in­evitably super­sci­en­tific. Man is a ma­te­rial fact of na­ture, but his life is a phe­nom­e­non which tran­scends the ma­te­rial lev­els of na­ture in that it ex­hibits the con­trol at­tri­butes of mind and the cre­ative qual­i­ties of spirit.

195:7.10The sin­cere ef­fort of man to be­come a mech­a­nist rep­re­sents the tragic phe­nom­e­non of that man’s fu­tile ef­fort to com­mit in­tel­lec­tual and moral sui­cide. But he can­not do it.

195:7.11If the uni­verse were only ma­te­rial and man only a ma­chine, there would be no sci­ence to em­bolden the sci­en­tist to pos­tu­late this mech­a­niza­tion of the uni­verse. Ma­chines can­not mea­sure, clas­sify, nor eval­u­ate them­selves. Such a sci­en­tific piece of work could be ex­e­cuted only by some en­tity of super­ma­chine sta­tus.

195:7.12If uni­verse re­al­ity is only one vast ma­chine, then man must be out­side of the uni­verse and apart from it in or­der to rec­og­nize such a fact and be­come con­scious of the in­sight of such an eval­u­a­tion.

195:7.13If man is only a ma­chine, by what tech­nique does this man come to be­lieve or claim to know that he is only a ma­chine? The ex­pe­ri­ence of self-con­scious eval­u­a­tion of one’s self is never an at­tri­bute of a mere ma­chine. A self-con­scious and avowed mech­a­nist is the best pos­si­ble an­swer to mech­a­nism. If ma­te­ri­al­ism were a fact, there could be no self-con­scious mech­a­nist. It is also true that one must first be a moral per­son be­fore one can per­form im­moral acts.

195:7.14The very claim of ma­te­ri­al­ism im­plies a super­ma­te­rial con­scious­ness of the mind which pre­sumes to as­sert such dog­mas. A mech­a­nism might de­te­ri­o­rate, but it could never pro­gress. Ma­chines do not think, cre­ate, dream, as­pire, ide­al­ize, hunger for truth, or thirst for righ­teous­ness. They do not mo­ti­vate their lives with the pas­sion to serve other ma­chines and to choose as their goal of eter­nal pro­gres­sion the sub­lime task of find­ing God and striv­ing to be like him. Ma­chines are never in­tel­lec­tual, emo­tional, aes­thetic, eth­i­cal, moral, or spir­i­tual.

195:7.15Art proves that man is not mech­a­nis­tic, but it does not prove that he is spir­i­tu­ally im­mor­tal. Art is mor­tal mor­ontia, the in­ter­ven­ing field be­tween man, the ma­te­rial, and man, the spir­i­tual. Po­etry is an ef­fort to es­cape from ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties to spir­i­tual val­ues.

195:7.16In a high civ­i­liza­tion, art hu­man­izes sci­ence, while in turn it is spir­i­tu­al­ized by true re­li­gion—in­sight into spir­i­tual and eter­nal val­ues. Art rep­re­sents the hu­man and time-space eval­u­a­tion of re­al­ity. Re­li­gion is the di­vine em­brace of cos­mic val­ues and con­notes eter­nal pro­gres­sion in spir­i­tual as­cen­sion and ex­pan­sion. The art of time is dan­ger­ous only when it be­comes blind to the spirit stan­dards of the di­vine pat­terns which eter­nity re­flects as the re­al­ity shad­ows of time. True art is the ef­fec­tive ma­nip­u­la­tion of the ma­te­rial things of life; re­li­gion is the en­nobling trans­for­ma­tion of the ma­te­rial facts of life, and it never ceases in its spir­i­tual eval­u­a­tion of art.

195:7.17How fool­ish to pre­sume that an au­toma­ton could con­ceive a phi­los­o­phy of au­toma­tism, and how ridicu­lous that it should pre­sume to form such a con­cept of other and fel­low au­toma­tons!

195:7.18Any sci­en­tific in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the ma­te­rial uni­verse is val­ue­less un­less it pro­vides due rec­og­ni­tion for the sci­en­tist. No ap­pre­ci­a­tion of art is gen­uine un­less it ac­cords rec­og­ni­tion to the artist. No eval­u­a­tion of morals is worth while un­less it in­cludes the moral­ist. No rec­og­ni­tion of phi­los­o­phy is ed­i­fy­ing if it ig­nores the philoso­pher, and re­li­gion can­not ex­ist with­out the real ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­li­gion­ist who, in and through this very ex­pe­ri­ence, is seek­ing to find God and to know him. Like­wise is the uni­verse of uni­verses with­out sig­nif­i­cance apart from the I AM, the in­fi­nite God who made it and un­ceas­ingly man­ages it.

195:7.19Mech­a­nists—hu­man­ists—tend to drift with the ma­te­rial cur­rents. Ide­al­ists and spiri­tists dare to use their oars with in­tel­li­gence and vigor in or­der to mod­ify the ap­par­ently purely ma­te­rial course of the en­ergy streams.

195:7.20Sci­ence lives by the math­e­mat­ics of the mind; mu­sic ex­presses the tempo of the emo­tions. Re­li­gion is the spir­i­tual rhythm of the soul in time-space har­mony with the higher and eter­nal mel­ody mea­sure­ments of In­fin­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing in hu­man life which is truly super­math­e­mat­i­cal.

195:7.21In lan­guage, an al­pha­bet rep­re­sents the mech­a­nism of ma­te­ri­al­ism, while the words ex­pres­sive of the mean­ing of a thou­sand thoughts, grand ideas, and no­ble ide­als—of love and hate, of cow­ardice and cour­age—rep­re­sent the per­for­mances of mind within the scope de­fined by both ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual law, di­rected by the as­ser­tion of the will of per­son­al­ity, and lim­ited by the in­her­ent sit­u­a­tional en­dow­ment.

195:7.22The uni­verse is not like the laws, mech­a­nisms, and the uni­for­mi­ties which the sci­en­tist dis­cov­ers, and which he comes to re­gard as sci­ence, but rather like the cu­ri­ous, think­ing, choos­ing, cre­ative, com­bin­ing, and dis­crim­i­nat­ing sci­en­tist who thus ob­serves uni­verse phe­nom­ena and clas­si­fies the math­e­mat­i­cal facts in­her­ent in the mech­a­nis­tic phases of the ma­te­rial side of cre­ation. Nei­ther is the uni­verse like the art of the artist, but rather like the striv­ing, dream­ing, as­pir­ing, and ad­vanc­ing artist who seeks to tran­scend the world of ma­te­rial things in an ef­fort to achieve a spir­i­tual goal.

195:7.23The sci­en­tist, not sci­ence, per­ceives the re­al­ity of an evolv­ing and ad­vanc­ing uni­verse of en­ergy and mat­ter. The artist, not art, demon­strates the ex­is­tence of the tran­sient mor­ontia world in­ter­ven­ing be­tween ma­te­rial ex­is­tence and spir­i­tual lib­erty. The re­li­gion­ist, not re­li­gion, proves the ex­is­tence of the spirit re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues which are to be en­coun­tered in the prog­ress of eter­nity.