metaphysics

• Greeks vainly sought solace in

98:2.2This was the sit­u­a­tion when, dur­ing the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ, the Ori­ent and the Lev­ant ex­pe­ri­enced a re­vival of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness and a new awak­en­ing to the rec­og­ni­tion of mono­the­ism. But the West did not share in this new de­vel­op­ment; nei­ther Eu­rope nor north­ern Africa ex­ten­sively par­tic­i­pated in this re­li­gious re­nais­sance. The Greeks, how­ever, did en­gage in a mag­nif­i­cent in­tel­lec­tual ad­vance­ment. They had be­gun to mas­ter fear and no longer sought re­li­gion as an an­ti­dote there­for, but they did not per­ceive that true re­li­gion is the cure for soul hunger, spir­i­tual dis­quiet, and moral de­spair. They sought for the so­lace of the soul in deep think­ing—phi­los­o­phy and meta­physics. They turned from the con­tem­pla­tion of self-preser­va­tion—sal­va­tion—to self-re­al­iza­tion and self-un­der­stand­ing.

98:2.3By rig­or­ous thought the Greeks at­tempted to at­tain that con­scious­ness of se­cu­rity which would serve as a sub­sti­tute for the be­lief in sur­vival, but they ut­terly failed. Only the more in­tel­li­gent among the higher classes of the Hel­lenic peo­ples could grasp this new teach­ing; the rank and file of the progeny of the slaves of for­mer gen­er­a­tions had no ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of this new sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

• confusion of

101:2.7Sci­ence ends its rea­son-search in the hy­poth­e­sis of a First Cause. Re­li­gion does not stop in its flight of faith un­til it is sure of a God of sal­va­tion. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of sci­ence log­i­cally sug­gests the re­al­ity and ex­is­tence of an Ab­so­lute. Re­li­gion be­lieves un­re­servedly in the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of a God who fos­ters per­son­al­ity sur­vival. What meta­physics fails ut­terly in do­ing, and what even phi­los­o­phy fails par­tially in do­ing, rev­e­la­tion does; that is, af­firms that this First Cause of sci­ence and re­li­gion’s God of sal­va­tion are one and the same De­ity.

• confusion of

101:3.1Re­li­gion is so vi­tal that it per­sists in the ab­sence of learn­ing. It lives in spite of its con­tam­i­na­tion with er­ro­neous cos­molo­gies and false philoso­phies; it sur­vives even the con­fu­sion of meta­physics. In and through all the his­toric vi­cis­si­tudes of re­li­gion there ever per­sists that which is in­dis­pens­able to hu­man prog­ress and sur­vival: the eth­i­cal con­science and the moral con­scious­ness.

• approaches universe from inside

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.

• futile attempt to compensate for absence of mota

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.

• futile attempt to compensate for absence of mota

103:7.8The truth—an un­der­stand­ing of cos­mic re­la­tion­ships, uni­verse facts, and spir­i­tual val­ues—can best be had through the min­istry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be crit­i­cized by rev­e­la­tion. But rev­e­la­tion orig­i­nates nei­ther a sci­ence nor a re­li­gion; its func­tion is to co-or­di­nate both sci­ence and re­li­gion with the truth of re­al­ity. Al­ways, in the ab­sence of rev­e­la­tion or in the fail­ure to ac­cept or grasp it, has mor­tal man re­sorted to his fu­tile ges­ture of meta­physics, that be­ing the only hu­man sub­sti­tute for the rev­e­la­tion of truth or for the mota of mor­ontia per­son­al­ity.

103:7.9The sci­ence of the ma­te­rial world en­ables man to con­trol, and to some ex­tent dom­i­nate, his phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. The re­li­gion of the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence is the source of the fra­ter­nity im­pulse which en­ables men to live to­gether in the com­plex­i­ties of the civ­i­liza­tion of a sci­en­tific age. Meta­physics, but more cer­tainly rev­e­la­tion, af­fords a com­mon meet­ing ground for the dis­cov­er­ies of both sci­ence and re­li­gion and makes pos­si­ble the hu­man at­tempt log­i­cally to cor­re­late these sep­a­rate but in­ter­de­pen­dent do­mains of thought into a well-bal­anced phi­los­o­phy of sci­en­tific sta­bil­ity and re­li­gious cer­tainty.