balance

97:10.5As a na­tion the Jews even­tu­ally lost their po­lit­i­cal iden­tity, but the He­brew re­li­gion of sin­cere be­lief in the one and uni­ver­sal God con­tin­ues to live in the hearts of the scat­tered ex­iles. And this re­li­gion sur­vives be­cause it has ef­fec­tively func­tioned to con­serve the high­est val­ues of its fol­low­ers. The Jew­ish re­li­gion did pre­serve the ide­als of a peo­ple, but it failed to fos­ter prog­ress and en­cour­age philo­sophic cre­ative dis­cov­ery in the realms of truth. The Jew­ish re­li­gion had many faults—it was de­fi­cient in phi­los­o­phy and al­most de­void of aes­thetic qual­i­ties—but it did con­serve moral val­ues; there­fore it per­sisted. The su­preme Yah­weh, as com­pared with other con­cepts of De­ity, was clear-cut, vivid, per­sonal, and moral.

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

98:2.8In Greece, be­liev­ing was sub­or­di­nated to think­ing; in Pales­tine, think­ing was held sub­ject to be­liev­ing. Much of the strength of Chris­tian­ity is due to its hav­ing bor­rowed heav­ily from both He­brew moral­ity and Greek thought.

98:2.9In Pales­tine, re­li­gious dogma be­came so crys­tal­lized as to jeop­ar­dize fur­ther growth; in Greece, hu­man thought be­came so ab­stract that the con­cept of God re­solved it­self into a misty va­por of pan­the­is­tic spec­u­la­tion not at all un­like the im­per­sonal In­fin­ity of the Brah­man philoso­phers.

98:1.6The Olympian gods il­lus­trate man’s typ­i­cal an­thro­po­mor­phism. But the Greek mythol­ogy was more aes­thetic than ethic. The Greek re­li­gion was help­ful in that it por­trayed a uni­verse gov­erned by a de­ity group. But Greek morals, ethics, and phi­los­o­phy pres­ently ad­vanced far be­yond the god con­cept, and this im­bal­ance be­tween in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual growth was as haz­ardous to Greece as it had proved to be in In­dia.

98:2.12Re­li­gions have long en­dured with­out phil­o­soph­i­cal sup­port, but few philoso­phies, as such, have long per­sisted with­out some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with re­li­gion. Phi­los­o­phy is to re­li­gion as con­cep­tion is to ac­tion. But the ideal hu­man es­tate is that in which phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion, and sci­ence are welded into a mean­ing­ful unity by the con­joined ac­tion of wis­dom, faith, and ex­pe­ri­ence.

16:7.7Man’s choos­ing be­tween good and evil is in­flu­enced, not only by the keen­ness of his moral na­ture, but also by such in­flu­ences as ig­no­rance, im­ma­tu­rity, and delu­sion. A sense of pro­por­tion is also con­cerned in the ex­er­cise of virtue be­cause evil may be per­pe­trated when the lesser is cho­sen in the place of the greater as a re­sult of dis­tor­tion or de­cep­tion. The art of rel­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion or com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment en­ters into the prac­tice of the virtues of the moral realm.

110:6.4When the de­vel­op­ment of the in­tel­lec­tual na­ture pro­ceeds faster than that of the spir­i­tual, such a sit­u­a­tion ren­ders com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the Thought Ad­juster both dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous. Like­wise, over­spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment tends to pro­duce a fa­nat­i­cal and per­verted in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the spirit lead­ings of the di­vine in­dweller. Lack of spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity makes it very dif­fi­cult to trans­mit to such a ma­te­rial in­tel­lect the spir­i­tual truths res­i­dent in the higher super­con­scious­ness. It is to the mind of per­fect poise, housed in a body of clean habits, sta­bi­lized neu­ral en­er­gies, and bal­anced chem­i­cal func­tion—when the phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual pow­ers are in tri­une har­mony of de­vel­op­ment—that a max­i­mum of light and truth can be im­parted with a min­i­mum of tem­po­ral dan­ger or risk to the real wel­fare of such a be­ing. By such a bal­anced growth does man as­cend the cir­cles of plan­e­tary pro­gres­sion one by one, from the sev­enth to the first.

16:6.10In the lo­cal uni­verse mind be­stowals, these three in­sights of the cos­mic mind con­sti­tute the a pri­ori as­sump­tions which make it pos­si­ble for man to func­tion as a ra­tio­nal and self-con­scious per­son­al­ity in the realms of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. Stated oth­er­wise, the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of these three man­i­fes­ta­tions of the In­fi­nite is by a cos­mic tech­nique of self-rev­e­la­tion. Mat­ter-en­ergy is rec­og­nized by the math­e­mat­i­cal logic of the senses; mind-rea­son in­tu­itively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (wor­ship) is the re­li­gion of the re­al­ity of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. These three ba­sic fac­tors in re­flec­tive think­ing may be uni­fied and co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment, or they may be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and vir­tu­ally un­re­lated in their re­spec­tive func­tions. But when they be­come uni­fied, they pro­duce a strong char­ac­ter con­sist­ing in the cor­re­la­tion of a fac­tual sci­ence, a moral phi­los­o­phy, and a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. And it is these three cos­mic in­tu­itions that give ob­jec­tive va­lid­ity, re­al­ity, to man’s ex­pe­ri­ence in and with things, mean­ings, and val­ues.