philosophy

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.

103:7.1Sci­ence is sus­tained by rea­son, re­li­gion by faith. Faith, though not pred­i­cated on rea­son, is rea­son­able; though in­de­pen­dent of logic, it is nonethe­less en­cour­aged by sound logic. Faith can­not be nour­ished even by an ideal phi­los­o­phy; in­deed, it is, with sci­ence, the very source of such a phi­los­o­phy. Faith, hu­man re­li­gious in­sight, can be surely in­structed only by rev­e­la­tion, can be surely el­e­vated only by per­sonal mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with the spir­i­tual Ad­juster pres­ence of the God who is spirit.

103:7.2True sal­va­tion is the tech­nique of the di­vine evo­lu­tion of the mor­tal mind from mat­ter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion through the realms of mor­ontia li­ai­son to the high uni­verse sta­tus of spir­i­tual cor­re­la­tion. And as ma­te­rial in­tu­itive in­stinct pre­cedes the ap­pear­ance of rea­soned knowl­edge in ter­res­trial evo­lu­tion, so does the man­i­fes­ta­tion of spir­i­tual in­tu­itive in­sight presage the later ap­pear­ance of mor­ontia and spirit rea­son and ex­pe­ri­ence in the su­per­nal pro­gram of ce­les­tial evo­lu­tion, the busi­ness of trans­mut­ing the po­ten­tials of man the tem­po­ral into the ac­tu­al­ity and di­vin­ity of man the eter­nal, a Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter.

103:7.3But as as­cend­ing man reaches in­ward and Par­adis­e­ward for the God ex­pe­ri­ence, he will like­wise be reach­ing out­ward and space­ward for an en­ergy un­der­stand­ing of the ma­te­rial cos­mos. The pro­gres­sion of sci­ence is not lim­ited to the ter­res­trial life of man; his uni­verse and super­uni­verse as­cen­sion ex­pe­ri­ence will to no small de­gree be the study of en­ergy trans­mu­ta­tion and ma­te­rial meta­mor­pho­sis. God is spirit, but De­ity is unity, and the unity of De­ity not only em­braces the spir­i­tual val­ues of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son but is also cog­nizant of the en­ergy facts of the Uni­ver­sal Con­trol­ler and the Isle of Par­a­dise, while these two phases of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity are per­fectly cor­re­lated in the mind re­la­tion­ships of the Con­joint Ac­tor and uni­fied on the fi­nite level in the emerg­ing De­ity of the Su­preme Be­ing.

103:7.4The union of the sci­en­tific at­ti­tude and the re­li­gious in­sight by the me­di­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial phi­los­o­phy is part of man’s long Par­a­dise-as­cen­sion ex­pe­ri­ence. The ap­prox­i­ma­tions of math­e­mat­ics and the cer­tain­ties of in­sight will al­ways re­quire the har­mo­niz­ing func­tion of mind logic on all lev­els of ex­pe­ri­ence short of the max­i­mum at­tain­ment of the Su­preme.

103:7.5But logic can never suc­ceed in har­mo­niz­ing the find­ings of sci­ence and the in­sights of re­li­gion un­less both the sci­en­tific and the re­li­gious as­pects of a per­son­al­ity are truth dom­i­nated, sin­cerely de­sirous of fol­low­ing the truth wher­ever it may lead re­gard­less of the con­clu­sions which it may reach.

103:7.6Logic is the tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy, its method of ex­pres­sion. Within the do­main of true sci­ence, rea­son is al­ways amenable to gen­uine logic; within the do­main of true re­li­gion, faith is al­ways log­i­cal from the ba­sis of an in­ner view­point, even though such faith may ap­pear to be quite un­founded from the in­look­ing view­point of the sci­en­tific ap­proach. From out­ward, look­ing within, the uni­verse may ap­pear to be ma­te­rial; from within, look­ing out, the same uni­verse ap­pears to be wholly spir­i­tual. Rea­son grows out of ma­te­rial aware­ness, faith out of spir­i­tual aware­ness, but through the me­di­a­tion of a phi­los­o­phy strength­ened by rev­e­la­tion, logic may con­firm both the in­ward and the out­ward view, thereby ef­fect­ing the sta­bi­liza­tion of both sci­ence and re­li­gion. Thus, through com­mon con­tact with the logic of phi­los­o­phy, may both sci­ence and re­li­gion be­come in­creas­ingly tol­er­ant of each other, less and less skep­ti­cal.

103:7.7What both de­vel­op­ing sci­ence and re­li­gion need is more search­ing and fear­less self-crit­i­cism, a greater aware­ness of in­com­plete­ness in evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus. The teach­ers of both sci­ence and re­li­gion are of­ten al­to­gether too self-con­fi­dent and dog­matic. Sci­ence and re­li­gion can only be self-crit­i­cal of their facts. The mo­ment de­par­ture is made from the stage of facts, rea­son ab­di­cates or else rapidly de­gen­er­ates into a con­sort of false logic.

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.

103:7.10In the mor­tal state, noth­ing can be ab­so­lutely proved; both sci­ence and re­li­gion are pred­i­cated on as­sump­tions. On the mor­ontia level, the pos­tu­lates of both sci­ence and re­li­gion are ca­pa­ble of par­tial proof by mota logic. On the spir­i­tual level of max­i­mum sta­tus, the need for fi­nite proof grad­u­ally van­ishes be­fore the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of and with re­al­ity; but even then there is much be­yond the fi­nite that re­mains un­proved.

103:7.11All di­vi­sions of hu­man thought are pred­i­cated on cer­tain as­sump­tions which are ac­cepted, though un­proved, by the con­sti­tu­tive re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity of the mind en­dow­ment of man. Sci­ence starts out on its vaunted ca­reer of rea­son­ing by as­sum­ing the re­al­ity of three things: mat­ter, mo­tion, and life. Re­li­gion starts out with the as­sump­tion of the va­lid­ity of three things: mind, spirit, and the uni­verse—the Su­preme Be­ing.

103:7.12Sci­ence be­comes the thought do­main of math­e­mat­ics, of the en­ergy and ma­te­rial of time in space. Re­li­gion as­sumes to deal not only with fi­nite and tem­po­ral spirit but also with the spirit of eter­nity and su­prem­acy. Only through a long ex­pe­ri­ence in mota can these two ex­tremes of uni­verse per­cep­tion be made to yield anal­o­gous in­ter­pre­ta­tions of ori­gins, func­tions, re­la­tions, re­al­i­ties, and des­tinies. The max­i­mum har­mo­niza­tion of the en­ergy-spirit di­ver­gence is in the en­cir­cuit­ment of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its; the first uni­fi­ca­tion thereof, in the De­ity of the Su­preme; the fi­nal­ity unity thereof, in the in­fin­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter, the I AM.

103:7.13Rea­son is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the con­clu­sions of con­scious­ness with re­gard to the ex­pe­ri­ence in and with the phys­i­cal world of en­ergy and mat­ter. Faith is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness—some­thing which is in­ca­pable of other mor­tal proof. Logic is the syn­thetic truth-seek­ing pro­gres­sion of the unity of faith and rea­son and is founded on the con­sti­tu­tive mind en­dow­ments of mor­tal be­ings, the in­nate rec­og­ni­tion of things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

103:7.14There is a real proof of spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the pres­ence of the Thought Ad­juster, but the va­lid­ity of this pres­ence is not demon­stra­ble to the ex­ter­nal world, only to the one who thus ex­pe­ri­ences the in­dwelling of God. The con­scious­ness of the Ad­juster is based on the in­tel­lec­tual re­cep­tion of truth, the super­mind per­cep­tion of good­ness, and the per­son­al­ity mo­ti­va­tion to love.

103:7.15Sci­ence dis­cov­ers the ma­te­rial world, re­li­gion eval­u­ates it, and phi­los­o­phy en­deav­ors to in­ter­pret its mean­ings while co-or­di­nat­ing the sci­en­tific ma­te­rial view­point with the re­li­gious spir­i­tual con­cept. But his­tory is a realm in which sci­ence and re­li­gion may never fully agree.

103:8.1Al­though both sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy may as­sume the prob­a­bil­ity of God by their rea­son and logic, only the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of a spirit-led man can af­firm the cer­tainty of such a su­preme and per­sonal De­ity. By the tech­nique of such an in­car­na­tion of liv­ing truth the philo­sophic hy­poth­e­sis of the prob­a­bil­ity of God be­comes a re­li­gious re­al­ity.

103:8.2The con­fu­sion about the ex­pe­ri­ence of the cer­tainty of God arises out of the dis­sim­i­lar in­ter­pre­ta­tions and re­la­tions of that ex­pe­ri­ence by sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als and by dif­fer­ent races of men. The ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of God may be wholly valid, but the dis­course about God, be­ing in­tel­lec­tual and phil­o­soph­i­cal, is di­ver­gent and of­ten­times con­fus­ingly fal­la­cious.

103:8.3A good and no­ble man may be con­sum­mately in love with his wife but ut­terly un­able to pass a sat­is­fac­tory writ­ten ex­am­i­na­tion on the psy­chol­ogy of mar­i­tal love. An­other man, hav­ing lit­tle or no love for his spouse, might pass such an ex­am­i­na­tion most ac­cept­ably. The im­per­fec­tion of the lover’s in­sight into the true na­ture of the beloved does not in the least in­val­i­date ei­ther the re­al­ity or sin­cer­ity of his love.

103:8.4If you truly be­lieve in God—by faith know him and love him—do not per­mit the re­al­ity of such an ex­pe­ri­ence to be in any way less­ened or de­tracted from by the doubt­ing in­sin­u­a­tions of sci­ence, the cav­il­ing of logic, the pos­tu­lates of phi­los­o­phy, or the clever sug­ges­tions of well-mean­ing souls who would cre­ate a re­li­gion with­out God.

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

103:8.6Phi­los­o­phy, to be of the great­est ser­vice to both sci­ence and re­li­gion, should avoid the ex­tremes of both ma­te­ri­al­ism and pan­the­ism. Only a phi­los­o­phy which rec­og­nizes the re­al­ity of per­son­al­ity—per­ma­nence in the pres­ence of change—can be of moral value to man, can serve as a li­ai­son be­tween the the­o­ries of ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual re­li­gion. Rev­e­la­tion is a com­pen­sa­tion for the frail­ties of evolv­ing phi­los­o­phy.

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.]

101:7.4The great dif­fer­ence be­tween a re­li­gious and a non­re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing con­sists in the na­ture and level of rec­og­nized val­ues and in the ob­ject of loy­al­ties. There are four phases in the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy: Such an ex­pe­ri­ence may be­come merely con­for­ma­tive, re­signed to sub­mis­sion to tra­di­tion and au­thor­ity. Or it may be sat­is­fied with slight at­tain­ments, just enough to sta­bi­lize the daily liv­ing, and there­fore be­comes early ar­rested on such an ad­ven­ti­tious level. Such mor­tals be­lieve in let­ting well enough alone. A third group pro­gress to the level of log­i­cal in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity but there stag­nate in con­se­quence of cul­tural slav­ery. It is in­deed piti­ful to be­hold gi­ant in­tel­lects held so se­curely within the cruel grasp of cul­tural bond­age. It is equally pa­thetic to ob­serve those who trade their cul­tural bond­age for the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fet­ters of a sci­ence, falsely so called. The fourth level of phi­los­o­phy at­tains free­dom from all con­ven­tional and tra­di­tional hand­i­caps and dares to think, act, and live hon­estly, loy­ally, fear­lessly, and truth­fully.

103:1.5That re­li­gion­ists have be­lieved so much that was false does not in­val­i­date re­li­gion be­cause re­li­gion is founded on the rec­og­ni­tion of val­ues and is val­i­dated by the faith of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion, then, is based on ex­pe­ri­ence and re­li­gious thought; the­ol­ogy, the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion, is an hon­est at­tempt to in­ter­pret that ex­pe­ri­ence. Such in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs may be right or wrong, or a mix­ture of truth and er­ror.

101:5.5Both sci­ence and re­li­gion start out with the as­sump­tion of cer­tain gen­er­ally ac­cepted bases for log­i­cal de­duc­tions. So, also, must phi­los­o­phy start its ca­reer upon the as­sump­tion of the re­al­ity of three things:

101:5.61. The ma­te­rial body.

101:5.72. The super­ma­te­rial phase of the hu­man be­ing, the soul or even the in­dwelling spirit.

101:5.83. The hu­man mind, the mech­a­nism for in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion be­tween spirit and mat­ter, be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual.

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.

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

27:6.5The mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy take su­preme plea­sure in im­part­ing their in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses to those be­ings who have as­cended from the worlds of space. And while phi­los­o­phy can never be as set­tled in its con­clu­sions as the facts of knowl­edge and the truths of ex­pe­ri­ence, yet, when you have lis­tened to these pri­mary super­na­phim dis­course upon the un­solved prob­lems of eter­nity and the per­for­mances of the Ab­so­lutes, you will feel a cer­tain and last­ing sat­is­fac­tion con­cern­ing these un­mas­tered ques­tions.

111:4.4The in­ner and the outer worlds have a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. Any civ­i­liza­tion is in jeop­ardy when three quar­ters of its youth en­ter ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pro­fes­sions and de­vote them­selves to the pur­suit of the sen­sory ac­tiv­i­ties of the outer world. Civ­i­liza­tion is in dan­ger when youth ne­glect to in­ter­est them­selves in ethics, so­ci­ol­ogy, eu­gen­ics, phi­los­o­phy, the fine arts, re­li­gion, and cos­mol­ogy.

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.

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.

48:7.1The lower planes of mor­ontia mota join di­rectly with the higher lev­els of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. On the first man­sion world it is the prac­tice to teach the less ad­vanced stu­dents by the par­al­lel tech­nique; that is, in one col­umn are pre­sented the more sim­ple con­cepts of mota mean­ings, and in the op­po­site col­umn ci­ta­tion is made of anal­o­gous state­ments of mor­tal phi­los­o­phy.

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

143:5.7But Nalda would make one more ef­fort to avoid the dis­cus­sion of the em­bar­rass­ing ques­tion of her per­sonal life on earth and the sta­tus of her soul be­fore God. Once more she re­sorted to ques­tions of gen­eral re­li­gion, say­ing: “Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the com­ing of the Con­verter, he who will be called the De­liv­erer, and that, when he shall come, he will de­clare to us all things”—and Je­sus, in­ter­rupt­ing Nalda, said with startling as­sur­ance, “I who speak to you am he.”

5:5.3The fact-seek­ing sci­en­tist con­ceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emo­tional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aes­thet­ics. The rea­son­ing philoso­pher is some­times in­clined to posit a God of uni­ver­sal unity, even a pan­the­is­tic De­ity. The re­li­gion­ist of faith be­lieves in a God who fos­ters sur­vival, the Fa­ther in heaven, the God of love.

143:7.3Wor­ship—con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual—must al­ter­nate with ser­vice, con­tact with ma­te­rial re­al­ity. Work should al­ter­nate with play; re­li­gion should be bal­anced by hu­mor. Pro­found phi­los­o­phy should be re­lieved by rhyth­mic po­etry. The strain of liv­ing—the time ten­sion of per­son­al­ity—should be re­laxed by the rest­ful­ness of wor­ship. The feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity aris­ing from the fear of per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion in the uni­verse should be an­ti­doted by the faith con­tem­pla­tion of the Fa­ther and by the at­tempted re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme.

5:5.5Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the mother of the sci­ence, art, and phi­los­o­phy which el­e­vated man to the level of re­cep­tiv­ity to re­vealed re­li­gion, in­clud­ing the be­stowal of Ad­justers and the com­ing of the Spirit of Truth. The evo­lu­tion­ary pic­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence be­gins and ends with re­li­gion, al­beit very dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties of re­li­gion, one evo­lu­tional and bi­o­log­i­cal, the other rev­e­la­tional and pe­ri­od­i­cal. And so, while re­li­gion is nor­mal and nat­u­ral to man, it is also op­tional. Man does not have to be re­li­gious against his will.

72:8.42. Schools of phi­los­o­phy. These schools are af­fil­i­ated with the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy and are more or less as­so­ci­ated with re­li­gion as a pub­lic func­tion.

2:7.5Philoso­phers com­mit their gravest er­ror when they are mis­led into the fal­lacy of ab­strac­tion, the prac­tice of fo­cus­ing the at­ten­tion upon one as­pect of re­al­ity and then of pro­nounc­ing such an iso­lated as­pect to be the whole truth. The wise philoso­pher will al­ways look for the cre­ative de­sign which is be­hind, and pre-ex­is­tent to, all uni­verse phe­nom­ena. The cre­ator thought in­vari­ably pre­cedes cre­ative ac­tion.

71:7.2In the ideal state, ed­u­ca­tion con­tin­ues through­out life, and phi­los­o­phy some­time be­comes the chief pur­suit of its cit­i­zens. The cit­i­zens of such a com­mon­wealth pur­sue wis­dom as an en­hance­ment of in­sight into the sig­nif­i­cance of hu­man re­la­tions, the mean­ings of re­al­ity, the no­bil­ity of val­ues, the goals of liv­ing, and the glo­ries of cos­mic des­tiny.

71:7.4Ed­u­ca­tion re­cently passed from the con­trol of the clergy to that of lawyers and busi­ness­men. Even­tu­ally it must be given over to the philoso­phers and the sci­en­tists. Teach­ers must be free be­ings, real lead­ers, to the end that phi­los­o­phy, the search for wis­dom, may be­come the chief ed­u­ca­tional pur­suit.

102:2.6Unity is best found in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence through phi­los­o­phy. And while the body of philo­sophic thought must ever be founded on ma­te­rial facts, the soul and en­ergy of true philo­sophic dy­nam­ics is mor­tal spir­i­tual in­sight.

• inveigles man to contemplate spiritual reality

5:4.4The do­mains of phi­los­o­phy and art in­ter­vene be­tween the non­re­li­gious and the re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties of the hu­man self. Through art and phi­los­o­phy the ma­te­rial-minded man is in­vei­gled into the con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and uni­verse val­ues of eter­nal mean­ings.

• solves mysteries, problems

27:6.1Next to the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of wor­ship is the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of phi­los­o­phy. Never do you climb so high or ad­vance so far that there do not re­main a thou­sand mys­ter­ies which de­mand the em­ploy­ment of phi­los­o­phy in an at­tempted so­lu­tion.

27:6.2The mas­ter philoso­phers of Par­a­dise de­light to lead the minds of its in­hab­i­tants, both na­tive and as­cen­dant, in the ex­hil­a­rat­ing pur­suit of at­tempt­ing to solve uni­verse prob­lems. These super­aphic mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy are the “wise men of heaven,” the be­ings of wis­dom who make use of the truth of knowl­edge and the facts of ex­pe­ri­ence in their ef­forts to mas­ter the un­known. With them knowl­edge at­tains to truth and ex­pe­ri­ence as­cends to wis­dom. On Par­a­dise the as­cen­dant per­son­al­i­ties of space ex­pe­ri­ence the heights of be­ing: They have knowl­edge; they know the truth; they may phi­los­o­phize—think the truth; they may even seek to en­com­pass the con­cepts of the Ul­ti­mate and at­tempt to grasp the tech­niques of the Ab­so­lutes.

• co-ordinates experience and knowledge

27:6.3At the south­ern ex­trem­ity of the vast Par­a­dise do­main the mas­ters of phi­los­o­phy con­duct elab­o­rate courses in the sev­enty func­tional di­vi­sions of wis­dom. Here they dis­course upon the plans and pur­poses of In­fin­ity and seek to co-or­di­nate the ex­pe­ri­ences, and to com­pose the knowl­edge, of all who have ac­cess to their wis­dom. They have de­vel­oped a highly spe­cial­ized at­ti­tude to­ward var­i­ous uni­verse prob­lems, but their fi­nal con­clu­sions are al­ways in uni­form agree­ment.

• attempts integration of meanings and values

48:6.274. Mor­ontia Coun­selors. These min­is­ters re­ceive their name be­cause they are as­signed to teach, di­rect, and coun­sel the sur­viv­ing mor­tals from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin, souls in tran­sit to the higher schools of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They are the teach­ers of those who seek in­sight into the ex­pe­ri­en­tial unity of di­ver­gent life lev­els, those who are at­tempt­ing the in­te­gra­tion of mean­ings and the uni­fi­ca­tion of val­ues. This is the func­tion of phi­los­o­phy in mor­tal life, of mota on the mor­ontia spheres.

• best teaches unity

101:2.8Rea­son is the proof of sci­ence, faith the proof of re­li­gion, logic the proof of phi­los­o­phy, but rev­e­la­tion is val­i­dated only by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Sci­ence yields knowl­edge; re­li­gion yields hap­pi­ness; phi­los­o­phy yields unity; rev­e­la­tion con­firms the ex­pe­ri­en­tial har­mony of this tri­une ap­proach to uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• co-ordinates experience and knowledge

101:5.9Sci­en­tists as­sem­ble facts, philoso­phers co-or­di­nate ideas, while proph­ets ex­alt ide­als. Feel­ing and emo­tion are in­vari­able con­comi­tants of re­li­gion, but they are not re­li­gion. Re­li­gion may be the feel­ing of ex­pe­ri­ence, but it is hardly the ex­pe­ri­ence of feel­ing. Nei­ther logic (ra­tio­nal­iza­tion) nor emo­tion (feel­ing) is es­sen­tially a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, al­though both may var­i­ously be as­so­ci­ated with the ex­er­cise of faith in the fur­ther­ance of spir­i­tual in­sight into re­al­ity, all ac­cord­ing to the sta­tus and tem­per­a­men­tal ten­dency of the in­di­vid­ual mind.

• wisdom; leads to co-ordinate consciousness

102:3.5Sci­ence, knowl­edge, leads to fact con­scious­ness; re­li­gion, ex­pe­ri­ence, leads to value con­scious­ness; phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, leads to co-or­di­nate con­scious­ness; rev­e­la­tion (the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia mota) leads to the con­scious­ness of true re­al­ity; while the co-or­di­na­tion of the con­scious­ness of fact, value, and true re­al­ity con­sti­tutes aware­ness of per­son­al­ity re­al­ity, max­i­mum of be­ing, to­gether with the be­lief in the pos­si­bil­ity of the sur­vival of that very per­son­al­ity.

• search for wisdom

102:3.12The pur­suit of knowl­edge con­sti­tutes sci­ence; the search for wis­dom is phi­los­o­phy; the love for God is re­li­gion; the hunger for truth is a rev­e­la­tion. But it is the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster that at­taches the feel­ing of re­al­ity to man’s spir­i­tual in­sight into the cos­mos.

• harmonizes discrepancies; cannot be built on materialism or spiritism alone

160:4.14Suc­cess may gen­er­ate cour­age and pro­mote con­fi­dence, but wis­dom comes only from the ex­pe­ri­ences of ad­just­ment to the re­sults of one’s fail­ures. Men who pre­fer op­ti­mistic il­lu­sions to re­al­ity can never be­come wise. Only those who face facts and ad­just them to ide­als can achieve wis­dom. Wis­dom em­braces both the fact and the ideal and there­fore saves its devo­tees from both of those bar­ren ex­tremes of phi­los­o­phy—the man whose ide­al­ism ex­cludes facts and the ma­te­ri­al­ist who is de­void of spir­i­tual out­look. Those timid souls who can only keep up the strug­gle of life by the aid of con­tin­u­ous false il­lu­sions of suc­cess are doomed to suf­fer fail­ure and ex­pe­ri­ence de­feat as they ul­ti­mately awaken from the dream world of their own imag­i­na­tions.

• best teaches unity

196:3.30Art re­sults from man’s at­tempt to es­cape from the lack of beauty in his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment; it is a ges­ture to­ward the mor­ontia level. Sci­ence is man’s ef­fort to solve the ap­par­ent rid­dles of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Phi­los­o­phy is man’s at­tempt at the uni­fi­ca­tion of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion is man’s su­preme ges­ture, his mag­nif­i­cent reach for fi­nal re­al­ity, his de­ter­mi­na­tion to find God and to be like him.

12:9.5Your re­li­gion is be­com­ing real be­cause it is emerg­ing from the slav­ery of fear and the bond­age of su­per­sti­tion. Your phi­los­o­phy strug­gles for eman­ci­pa­tion from dogma and tra­di­tion. Your sci­ence is en­gaged in the age­long con­test be­tween truth and er­ror while it fights for de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of ab­strac­tion, the slav­ery of math­e­mat­ics, and the rel­a­tive blind­ness of mech­a­nis­tic ma­te­ri­al­ism.

103:1.1The unity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence among a so­cial or racial group de­rives from the iden­ti­cal na­ture of the God frag­ment in­dwelling the in­di­vid­ual. It is this di­vine in man that gives ori­gin to his un­selfish in­ter­est in the wel­fare of other men. But since per­son­al­ity is unique—no two mor­tals be­ing alike—it in­evitably fol­lows that no two hu­man be­ings can sim­i­larly in­ter­pret the lead­ings and urges of the spirit of di­vin­ity which lives within their minds. A group of mor­tals can ex­pe­ri­ence spir­i­tual unity, but they can never at­tain philo­sophic uni­for­mity. And this di­ver­sity of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­li­gious thought and ex­pe­ri­ence is shown by the fact that twen­ti­eth-cen­tury the­olo­gians and philoso­phers have for­mu­lated up­ward of five hun­dred dif­fer­ent def­i­ni­tions of re­li­gion. In re­al­ity, ev­ery hu­man be­ing de­fines re­li­gion in the terms of his own ex­pe­ri­en­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the di­vine im­pulses em­a­nat­ing from the God spirit that in­dwells him, and there­fore must such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion be unique and wholly dif­fer­ent from the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of all other hu­man be­ings.