religion

• explained › mortals crave to symbolize concepts of God

0:2.1Evolv­ing mor­tal crea­tures ex­pe­ri­ence an ir­re­sistible urge to sym­bol­ize their fi­nite con­cepts of God. Man’s con­scious­ness of moral duty and his spir­i­tual ide­al­ism rep­re­sent a value level—an ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­ity—which is dif­fi­cult of sym­bol­iza­tion.

• explained › truth and maturity of r. proportional to concepts of personality and unity of God

1:5.10The idea of the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is an en­larged and truer con­cept of God which has come to man­kind chiefly through rev­e­la­tion. Rea­son, wis­dom, and re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence all in­fer and im­ply the per­son­al­ity of God, but they do not al­to­gether val­i­date it. Even the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster is preper­sonal. The truth and ma­tu­rity of any re­li­gion is di­rectly pro­por­tional to its con­cept of the in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity of God and to its grasp of the ab­so­lute unity of De­ity. The idea of a per­sonal De­ity be­comes, then, the mea­sure of re­li­gious ma­tu­rity af­ter re­li­gion has first for­mu­lated the con­cept of the unity of God.

• primitive religion › gods of › conceived in likeness of man

1:5.11Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had many per­sonal gods, and they were fash­ioned in the im­age of man. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the va­lid­ity of the per­son­al­ity con­cept of God which is merely pos­si­ble in the sci­en­tific pos­tu­late of a First Cause and is only pro­vi­sion­ally sug­gested in the philo­sophic idea of Uni­ver­sal Unity. Only by per­son­al­ity ap­proach can any per­son be­gin to com­pre­hend the unity of God. To deny the per­son­al­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter leaves one only the choice of two philo­sophic dilem­mas: ma­te­ri­al­ism or pan­the­ism.

• defined as › faith-trust in goodness of God

2:6.1In the phys­i­cal uni­verse we may see the di­vine beauty, in the in­tel­lec­tual world we may dis­cern eter­nal truth, but the good­ness of God is found only in the spir­i­tual world of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In its true essence, re­li­gion is a faith-trust in the good­ness of God. God could be great and ab­so­lute, some­how even in­tel­li­gent and per­sonal, in phi­los­o­phy, but in re­li­gion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This good­ness of God is a part of the per­son­al­ity of God, and its full rev­e­la­tion ap­pears only in the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of the be­liev­ing sons of God.

• explained › implies spirit world responsive to human need

2:6.2Re­li­gion im­plies that the super­world of spirit na­ture is cog­nizant of, and re­spon­sive to, the fun­da­men­tal needs of the hu­man world. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion may be­come eth­i­cal, but only re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes truly and spir­i­tu­ally moral. The olden con­cept that God is a De­ity dom­i­nated by kingly moral­ity was up­stepped by Je­sus to that af­fec­tion­ately touch­ing level of in­ti­mate fam­ily moral­ity of the par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship, than which there is none more ten­der and beau­ti­ful in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• overstressed and isolated morality of modern r.
• warnings › dangers of religion are › abstract and dissociated concept of goodness
• warnings › dangers of religion are › neglecting science, art, spiritual experience

2:7.9The great mis­take of the He­brew re­li­gion was its fail­ure to as­so­ciate the good­ness of God with the fac­tual truths of sci­ence and the ap­peal­ing beauty of art. As civ­i­liza­tion pro­gressed, and since re­li­gion con­tin­ued to pur­sue the same un­wise course of overem­pha­siz­ing the good­ness of God to the rel­a­tive ex­clu­sion of truth and ne­glect of beauty, there de­vel­oped an in­creas­ing ten­dency for cer­tain types of men to turn away from the ab­stract and dis­so­ci­ated con­cept of iso­lated good­ness. The over­stressed and iso­lated moral­ity of mod­ern re­li­gion, which fails to hold the de­vo­tion and loy­alty of many twen­ti­eth-cen­tury men, would re­ha­bil­i­tate it­self if, in ad­di­tion to its moral man­dates, it would give equal con­sid­er­a­tion to the truths of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, and to the beau­ties of the phys­i­cal cre­ation, the charm of in­tel­lec­tual art, and the grandeur of gen­uine char­ac­ter achieve­ment.

• challenge is to construct new and appealing philosophy of living

2:7.10The re­li­gious chal­lenge of this age is to those farsee­ing and for­ward-look­ing men and women of spir­i­tual in­sight who will dare to con­struct a new and ap­peal­ing phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing out of the en­larged and ex­qui­sitely in­te­grated mod­ern con­cepts of cos­mic truth, uni­verse beauty, and di­vine good­ness. Such a new and righ­teous vi­sion of moral­ity will at­tract all that is good in the mind of man and chal­lenge that which is best in the hu­man soul. Truth, beauty, and good­ness are di­vine re­al­i­ties, and as man as­cends the scale of spir­i­tual liv­ing, these su­preme qual­i­ties of the Eter­nal be­come in­creas­ingly co-or­di­nated and uni­fied in God, who is love.

• primitive religion › gods of › inflict displeasure by famine and flood

4:5.3The peo­ple of Uran­tia con­tinue to suf­fer from the in­flu­ence of prim­i­tive con­cepts of God. The gods who go on a ram­page in the storm; who shake the earth in their wrath and strike down men in their anger; who in­flict their judg­ments of dis­plea­sure in times of famine and flood—these are the gods of prim­i­tive re­li­gion; they are not the Gods who live and rule the uni­verses. Such con­cepts are a relic of the times when men sup­posed that the uni­verse was un­der the guid­ance and dom­i­na­tion of the whims of such imag­i­nary gods. But mor­tal man is be­gin­ning to re­al­ize that he lives in a realm of com­par­a­tive law and or­der as far as con­cerns the ad­min­is­tra­tive poli­cies and con­duct of the Su­preme Cre­ators and the Su­preme Con­trol­lers.

• defined as › living love, a life of service
• explained › what r. is not
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

5:4.1The moral­ity of the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion drives men for­ward in the God quest by the mo­tive power of fear. The re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion al­lure men to seek for a God of love be­cause they crave to be­come like him. But re­li­gion is not merely a pas­sive feel­ing of “ab­so­lute de­pen­dence” and “surety of sur­vival”; it is a liv­ing and dy­namic ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vin­ity at­tain­ment pred­i­cated on hu­man­ity ser­vice.

• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

5:4.2The great and im­me­di­ate ser­vice of true re­li­gion is the es­tab­lish­ment of an en­dur­ing unity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, a last­ing peace and a pro­found as­sur­ance. With prim­i­tive man, even poly­the­ism is a rel­a­tive uni­fi­ca­tion of the evolv­ing con­cept of De­ity; poly­the­ism is mono­the­ism in the mak­ing. Sooner or later, God is des­tined to be com­pre­hended as the re­al­ity of val­ues, the sub­stance of mean­ings, and the life of truth.

• defined as › identification of self with universe

5:4.3God is not only the de­ter­miner of des­tiny; he is man’s eter­nal des­ti­na­tion. All non­re­li­gious hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties seek to bend the uni­verse to the dis­tort­ing ser­vice of self; the truly re­li­gious in­di­vid­ual seeks to iden­tify the self with the uni­verse and then to ded­i­cate the ac­tiv­i­ties of this uni­fied self to the ser­vice of the uni­verse fam­ily of fel­low be­ings, hu­man and super­hu­man.

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.

• defined as › r. of Jesus is salvation from self
• explained › all teach worship of Deity, human salvation

5:4.5All re­li­gions teach the wor­ship of De­ity and some doc­trine of hu­man sal­va­tion. The Bud­dhist re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from suf­fer­ing, un­end­ing peace; the Jew­ish re­li­gion promises sal­va­tion from dif­fi­cul­ties, pros­per­ity pred­i­cated on righ­teous­ness; the Greek re­li­gion prom­ised sal­va­tion from dishar­mony, ug­li­ness, by the re­al­iza­tion of beauty; Chris­tian­ity promises sal­va­tion from sin, sanc­tity; Mo­hammedanism pro­vides de­liv­er­ance from the rig­or­ous moral stan­dards of Ju­daism and Chris­tian­ity. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is sal­va­tion from self, de­liv­er­ance from the evils of crea­ture iso­la­tion in time and in eter­nity.

5:4.6The He­brews based their re­li­gion on good­ness; the Greeks on beauty; both re­li­gions sought truth. Je­sus re­vealed a God of love, and love is all-em­brac­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness.

• defined as › spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true
• explained › religions of morals, metaphysics, and ethics are valid approaches to r. of Jesus

5:4.7The Zoroas­tri­ans had a re­li­gion of morals; the Hin­dus a re­li­gion of meta­physics; the Con­fu­cian­ists a re­li­gion of ethics. Je­sus lived a re­li­gion of ser­vice. All these re­li­gions are of value in that they are valid ap­proaches to the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the re­al­ity of the spir­i­tual uni­fi­ca­tion of all that is good, beau­ti­ful, and true in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• defined as › knowing God as Father, yourself as son of God, and man as brother
• explained › spiritual status determined by nature of its prayers

5:4.8The Greek re­li­gion had a watch­word “Know your­self”; the He­brews cen­tered their teach­ing on “Know your God”; the Chris­tians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowl­edge of the Lord Je­sus Christ”; Je­sus pro­claimed the good news of “know­ing God, and your­self as a son of God.” These dif­fer­ing con­cepts of the pur­pose of re­li­gion de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual’s at­ti­tude in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions and fore­shadow the depth of wor­ship and the na­ture of his per­sonal habits of prayer. The spir­i­tual sta­tus of any re­li­gion may be de­ter­mined by the na­ture of its prayers.

• primitive religion › highest level is exalted anthropomorphism

5:4.9The con­cept of a semi­hu­man and jeal­ous God is an in­ev­i­ta­ble tran­si­tion be­tween poly­the­ism and sub­lime mono­the­ism. An ex­alted an­thro­po­mor­phism is the high­est at­tain­ment level of purely evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Chris­tian­ity has el­e­vated the con­cept of an­thro­po­mor­phism from the ideal of the hu­man to the tran­scen­dent and di­vine con­cept of the per­son of the glo­ri­fied Christ. And this is the high­est an­thro­po­mor­phism that man can ever con­ceive.

5:4.10The Chris­tian con­cept of God is an at­tempt to com­bine three sep­a­rate teach­ings:

5:4.111. The He­brew con­cept—God as a vin­di­ca­tor of moral val­ues, a righ­teous God.

5:4.122. The Greek con­cept—God as a uni­fier, a God of wis­dom.

5:4.133. Je­sus’ con­cept—God as a liv­ing friend, a lov­ing Fa­ther, the di­vine pres­ence.

5:4.14It must there­fore be ev­i­dent that com­pos­ite Chris­tian the­ol­ogy en­coun­ters great dif­fi­culty in at­tain­ing con­sis­tency. This dif­fi­culty is fur­ther ag­gra­vated by the fact that the doc­trines of early Chris­tian­ity were gen­er­ally based on the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of three dif­fer­ent per­sons: Philo of Alexan­dria, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, and Paul of Tar­sus.

5:4.15In the study of the re­li­gious life of Je­sus, view him pos­i­tively. Think not so much of his sin­less­ness as of his righ­teous­ness, his lov­ing ser­vice. Je­sus up­stepped the pas­sive love dis­closed in the He­brew con­cept of the heav­enly Fa­ther to the higher ac­tive and crea­ture-lov­ing af­fec­tion of a God who is the Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, even of the wrong­doer.

• explained › independent realm of human response; not grounded in science, society, philosophy, or morality

5:5.2Re­li­gion is not grounded in the facts of sci­ence, the obli­ga­tions of so­ci­ety, the as­sump­tions of phi­los­o­phy, or the im­plied du­ties of moral­ity. Re­li­gion is an in­de­pen­dent realm of hu­man re­sponse to life sit­u­a­tions and is un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited at all stages of hu­man de­vel­op­ment which are post­moral. Re­li­gion may per­me­ate all four lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of val­ues and the en­joy­ment of uni­verse fel­low­ship: the phys­i­cal or ma­te­rial level of self-preser­va­tion; the so­cial or emo­tional level of fel­low­ship; the moral or duty level of rea­son; the spir­i­tual level of the con­scious­ness of uni­verse fel­low­ship through di­vine wor­ship.

• morality always antecedent to evolved r.
• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

5:5.4Moral con­duct is al­ways an an­te­ced­ent of evolved re­li­gion and a part of even re­vealed re­li­gion, but never the whole of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. So­cial ser­vice is the re­sult of moral think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing. Moral­ity does not bi­o­log­i­cally lead to the higher spir­i­tual lev­els of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The ado­ra­tion of the ab­stract beau­ti­ful is not the wor­ship of God; nei­ther is ex­al­ta­tion of na­ture nor the rev­er­ence of unity the wor­ship of God.

• explained › normal and natural, but optional
• primitive religion › mother of science, art, and philosophy

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.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › being a thing apart from human experience
• warnings › discipline by constructive criticism, amplify by philosophy, purify by science, and nourish by loyal fellowship

5:5.12The ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness re­mains the same from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but with each ad­vanc­ing epoch in hu­man knowl­edge the philo­sophic con­cept and the the­o­logic def­i­ni­tions of God must change. God-know­ing­ness, re­li­gious con­scious­ness, is a uni­verse re­al­ity, but no mat­ter how valid (real) re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is, it must be will­ing to sub­ject it­self to in­tel­li­gent crit­i­cism and rea­son­able philo­sophic in­ter­pre­ta­tion; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the to­tal­ity of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

• defined as › hunger quest for divine reality and spiritual values

16:9.9Self-con­scious­ness is in essence a com­mu­nal con­scious­ness: God and man, Fa­ther and son, Cre­ator and crea­ture. In hu­man self-con­scious­ness four uni­verse-re­al­ity re­al­iza­tions are la­tent and in­her­ent:

16:9.101. The quest for knowl­edge, the logic of sci­ence.

16:9.112. The quest for moral val­ues, the sense of duty.

16:9.123. The quest for spir­i­tual val­ues, the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

16:9.134. The quest for per­son­al­ity val­ues, the abil­ity to rec­og­nize the re­al­ity of God as a per­son­al­ity and the con­cur­rent re­al­iza­tion of our fra­ter­nal re­la­tion­ship with fel­low per­son­al­i­ties.

• explained › encouraged by improving social morality and ethical culture

34:7.4The Uran­tia peo­ples are suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences of a dou­ble de­pri­va­tion of help in this task of pro­gres­sive plan­e­tary spir­i­tual at­tain­ment. The Cali­gas­tia up­heaval pre­cip­i­tated world-wide con­fu­sion and robbed all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of the moral as­sis­tance which a well-or­dered so­ci­ety would have pro­vided. But even more dis­as­trous was the Adamic de­fault in that it de­prived the races of that su­pe­rior type of phys­i­cal na­ture which would have been more con­so­nant with spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tions.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Enoch

45:4.1311. Enoch, the first of the mor­tals of Uran­tia to fuse with the Thought Ad­juster dur­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Elijah

45:4.1715. John the Bap­tist, the fore­run­ner of Mi­chael’s mis­sion on Uran­tia and, in the flesh, dis­tant cousin of the Son of Man.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces
• primitive religion › man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution
• primitive religion › subdues fiery tempers of primitive creatures

52:1.7All mor­tals who are in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers are po­ten­tial wor­shipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they pos­sess ca­pac­ity for seek­ing re­cip­ro­cal con­tact with di­vin­ity. Nev­er­the­less, the early or bi­o­logic re­li­gion of prim­i­tive man is largely a per­sis­tence of an­i­mal fear cou­pled with ig­no­rant awe and tribal su­per­sti­tion. The sur­vival of su­per­sti­tion in the Uran­tia races is hardly com­pli­men­tary to your evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment nor com­pat­i­ble with your oth­er­wise splen­did achieve­ments in ma­te­rial prog­ress. But this early fear re­li­gion serves a very valu­able pur­pose in sub­du­ing the fiery tem­pers of these prim­i­tive crea­tures. It is the fore­run­ner of civ­i­liza­tion and the soil for the sub­se­quent plant­ing of the seeds of re­vealed re­li­gion by the Plan­e­tary Prince and his min­is­ters.

• history of religion › wholly evolutionary until arrival of Planetary Prince

52:2.3When the Plan­e­tary Prince ar­rives on a prim­i­tive world, the evolved re­li­gion of fear and ig­no­rance pre­vails. The prince and his staff make the first rev­e­la­tions of higher truth and uni­verse or­ga­ni­za­tion. These ini­tial pre­sen­ta­tions of re­vealed re­li­gion are very sim­ple, and they usu­ally per­tain to the af­fairs of the lo­cal sys­tem. Re­li­gion is wholly an evo­lu­tion­ary pro­cess prior to the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince. Sub­se­quently, re­li­gion pro­gresses by grad­u­ated rev­e­la­tion as well as by evo­lu­tion­ary growth. Each dis­pen­sa­tion, each mor­tal epoch, re­ceives an en­larged pre­sen­ta­tion of spir­i­tual truth and re­li­gious ethics. The evo­lu­tion of the re­li­gious ca­pac­ity of re­cep­tiv­ity in the in­hab­i­tants of a world largely de­ter­mines their rate of spir­i­tual ad­vance­ment and the ex­tent of re­li­gious rev­e­la­tion.

• explained › truth is intellectual foundation of

56:10.10Truth is the ba­sis of sci­ence and phi­los­o­phy, pre­sent­ing the in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of re­li­gion. Beauty spon­sors art, mu­sic, and the mean­ing­ful rhythms of all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Good­ness em­braces the sense of ethics, moral­ity, and re­li­gion—ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­fec­tion-hunger.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

62:5.4Many new emo­tions early ap­peared in these hu­man twins. They ex­pe­ri­enced ad­mi­ra­tion for both ob­jects and other be­ings and ex­hib­ited con­sid­er­able van­ity. But the most re­mark­able ad­vance in emo­tional de­vel­op­ment was the sud­den ap­pear­ance of a new group of re­ally hu­man feel­ings, the wor­ship­ful group, em­brac­ing awe, rev­er­ence, hu­mil­ity, and even a prim­i­tive form of grat­i­tude. Fear, joined with ig­no­rance of nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena, is about to give birth to prim­i­tive re­li­gion.

63:6.1As the An­donic dis­per­sion ex­tended, the cul­tural and spir­i­tual sta­tus of the clans ret­ro­gressed for nearly ten thou­sand years un­til the days of On­a­gar, who as­sumed the lead­er­ship of these tribes, brought peace among them, and for the first time, led all of them in the wor­ship of the “Breath Giver to men and an­i­mals.”

63:6.2An­don’s phi­los­o­phy had been most con­fused; he had barely es­caped be­com­ing a fire wor­shiper be­cause of the great com­fort de­rived from his ac­ci­den­tal dis­cov­ery of fire. Rea­son, how­ever, di­rected him from his own dis­cov­ery to the sun as a su­pe­rior and more awe-in­spir­ing source of heat and light, but it was too re­mote, and so he failed to be­come a sun wor­shiper.

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

63:6.5That food was the all-im­por­tant thing in the lives of these prim­i­tive hu­man be­ings is shown by the prayer taught these sim­ple folks by On­a­gar, their great teacher. And this prayer was:

63:6.6“O Breath of Life, give us this day our daily food, de­liver us from the curse of the ice, save us from our for­est en­e­mies, and with mercy re­ceive us into the Great Be­yond.”

63:6.7On­a­gar main­tained head­quar­ters on the north­ern shores of the an­cient Med­i­ter­ra­nean in the re­gion of the pres­ent Caspian Sea at a set­tle­ment called Oban, the tar­ry­ing place on the west­ward turn­ing of the travel trail lead­ing up north­ward from the Mes­o­po­ta­mian south­land. From Oban he sent out teach­ers to the re­mote set­tle­ments to spread his new doc­trines of one De­ity and his con­cept of the here­after, which he called the Great Be­yond. These emis­saries of On­a­gar were the world’s first mis­sion­ar­ies; they were also the first hu­man be­ings to cook meat, the first reg­u­larly to use fire in the prepa­ra­tion of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their de­scen­dants al­most en­tirely re­verted to the use of raw flesh.

63:6.8On­a­gar was born 983,323 years ago (from A.D. 1934), and he lived to be sixty-nine years of age. The rec­ord of the achieve­ments of this mas­ter mind and spir­i­tual leader of the pre-Plan­e­tary Prince days is a thrilling recital of the or­ga­ni­za­tion of these prim­i­tive peo­ples into a real so­ci­ety. He in­sti­tuted an ef­fi­cient tribal gov­ern­ment, the like of which was not at­tained by suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions in many mil­len­ni­ums. Never again, un­til the ar­rival of the Plan­e­tary Prince, was there such a high spir­i­tual civ­i­liza­tion on earth. These sim­ple peo­ple had a real though prim­i­tive re­li­gion, but it was sub­se­quently lost to their de­te­ri­o­rat­ing de­scen­dants.

63:6.9Al­though both An­don and Fonta had re­ceived Thought Ad­justers, as had many of their de­scen­dants, it was not un­til the days of On­a­gar that the Ad­justers and guard­ian ser­a­phim came in great num­bers to Uran­tia. This was, in­deed, the golden age of prim­i­tive man.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › fear led to attempts to placate invisible forces

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Onamonalonton

64:6.7Be­cause of this great ret­ro­gres­sion the red men seemed doomed when, about sixty-five thou­sand years ago, Ona­mo­na­lon­ton ap­peared as their leader and spir­i­tual de­liv­erer. He brought tem­po­rary peace among the Amer­i­can red men and re­vived their wor­ship of the “Great Spirit.” Ona­mo­na­lon­ton lived to be ninety-six years of age and main­tained his head­quar­ters among the great red­wood trees of Cal­i­for­nia. Many of his later de­scen­dants have come down to mod­ern times among the Black­foot In­di­ans.

64:6.8As time passed, the teach­ings of Ona­mo­na­lon­ton be­came hazy tra­di­tions. In­ternecine wars were re­sumed, and never af­ter the days of this great teacher did an­other leader suc­ceed in bring­ing uni­ver­sal peace among them. In­creas­ingly the more in­tel­li­gent strains per­ished in these tribal strug­gles; oth­er­wise a great civ­i­liza­tion would have been built upon the North Amer­i­can con­ti­nent by these able and in­tel­li­gent red men.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Porshunta

64:6.12Be­fore the end came, this peo­ple lost much cul­tural and spir­i­tual ground. But there was a great re­vival of higher liv­ing as a re­sult of the wise lead­er­ship of Por­shunta, the mas­ter mind of this un­for­tu­nate race, who min­is­tered to them when their head­quar­ters was at Ar­maged­don some three hun­dred thou­sand years ago.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Fantad

64:6.174. The green man. The green race was one of the less able groups of prim­i­tive men, and they were greatly weak­ened by ex­ten­sive mi­gra­tions in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. Be­fore their dis­per­sion these tribes ex­pe­ri­enced a great re­vival of cul­ture un­der the lead­er­ship of Fan­tad, some three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years ago.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Orlandof

64:6.23About five hun­dred years af­ter Cali­gas­tia’s down­fall a wide­spread re­vival of learn­ing and re­li­gion of a prim­i­tive sort—but none the less real and ben­e­fi­cial—oc­curred. Or­landof be­came a great teacher among the blue race and led many of the tribes back to the wor­ship of the true God un­der the name of the “Su­preme Chief.” This was the great­est ad­vance of the blue man un­til those later times when this race was so greatly up­stepped by the ad­mix­ture of the Adamic stock.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Orvonon

64:6.26Iso­lated in Africa, the in­digo peo­ples, like the red man, re­ceived lit­tle or none of the race el­e­va­tion which would have been de­rived from the in­fu­sion of the Adamic stock. Alone in Africa, the in­digo race made lit­tle ad­vance­ment un­til the days of Or­vonon, when they ex­pe­ri­enced a great spir­i­tual awak­en­ing. While they later al­most en­tirely for­got the “God of Gods” pro­claimed by Or­vonon, they did not en­tirely lose the de­sire to wor­ship the Un­known; at least they main­tained a form of wor­ship up to a few thou­sand years ago.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Mansant
• history of religion › long, dark ages between Caligastia rebellion and Adam

64:6.29From time to time all of these dif­fer­ent peo­ples ex­pe­ri­enced cul­tural and spir­i­tual re­vivals. Mansant was a great teacher of the post-Plan­e­tary Prince days. But men­tion is made only of those out­stand­ing lead­ers and teach­ers who markedly in­flu­enced and in­spired a whole race. With the pass­ing of time, many lesser teach­ers arose in dif­fer­ent re­gions; and in the ag­gre­gate they con­tributed much to the sum to­tal of those sav­ing in­flu­ences which pre­vented the to­tal col­lapse of cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion, es­pe­cially dur­ing the long and dark ages be­tween the Cali­gas­tia re­bel­lion and the ar­rival of Adam.

• history of religion › teachings of Prince’s staff

66:5.136. The col­lege of re­vealed re­li­gion. This body was slow in func­tion­ing. Uran­tia civ­i­liza­tion was lit­er­ally forged out be­tween the anvil of ne­ces­sity and the ham­mers of fear. But this group had made con­sid­er­able prog­ress in their at­tempt to sub­sti­tute Cre­ator fear for crea­ture fear (ghost wor­ship) be­fore their labors were in­ter­rupted by the later con­fu­sion at­ten­dant upon the se­ces­sion up­heaval. The head of this coun­cil was Hap.

66:5.14None of the Prince’s staff would pre­sent rev­e­la­tion to com­pli­cate evo­lu­tion; they pre­sented rev­e­la­tion only as the cli­max of their ex­haus­tion of the forces of evo­lu­tion. But Hap did yield to the de­sire of the in­hab­i­tants of the city for the es­tab­lish­ment of a form of re­li­gious ser­vice. His group pro­vided the Dala­ma­tians with the seven chants of wor­ship and also gave them the daily praise-phrase and even­tu­ally taught them “the Fa­ther’s prayer,” which was:

66:5.15“Fa­ther of all, whose Son we honor, look down upon us with fa­vor. De­liver us from the fear of all save you. Make us a plea­sure to our di­vine teach­ers and for­ever put truth on our lips. De­liver us from vi­o­lence and anger; give us re­spect for our el­ders and that which be­longs to our neigh­bors. Give us this sea­son green pas­tures and fruit­ful flocks to glad­den our hearts. We pray for the has­ten­ing of the com­ing of the prom­ised up­lifter, and we would do your will on this world as oth­ers do on worlds be­yond.”

66:5.16Al­though the Prince’s staff were lim­ited to nat­u­ral means and or­di­nary meth­ods of race im­prove­ment, they held out the prom­ise of the Adamic gift of a new race as the goal of sub­se­quent evo­lu­tion­ary growth upon the at­tain­ment of the height of bi­o­logic de­vel­op­ment.

• primitive religion › preserved mores inviolate from generation to generation; novelty always sacrilege

68:4.3Ghost fear drove prim­i­tive man to en­vi­sion the super­nat­u­ral and thus se­curely laid the foun­da­tions for those pow­er­ful so­cial in­flu­ences of ethics and re­li­gion which in turn pre­served in­vi­o­late the mores and cus­toms of so­ci­ety from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. The one thing which early es­tab­lished and crys­tal­lized the mores was the be­lief that the dead were jeal­ous of the ways by which they had lived and died; there­fore would they visit dire pun­ish­ment upon those liv­ing mor­tals who dared to treat with care­less dis­dain the rules of liv­ing which they had hon­ored when in the flesh. All this is best il­lus­trated by the pres­ent rev­er­ence of the yel­low race for their an­ces­tors. Later de­vel­op­ing prim­i­tive re­li­gion greatly re­in­forced ghost fear in sta­bi­liz­ing the mores, but ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion has in­creas­ingly lib­er­ated man­kind from the bond­age of fear and the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion.

• primitive religion › many reverted to ideal of idleness

69:2.5La­bor, the ef­forts of de­sign, dis­tin­guishes man from the beast, whose ex­er­tions are largely in­stinc­tive. The ne­ces­sity for la­bor is man’s paramount bless­ing. The Prince’s staff all worked; they did much to en­no­ble phys­i­cal la­bor on Uran­tia. Adam was a gar­dener; the God of the He­brews la­bored—he was the cre­ator and up­holder of all things. The He­brews were the first tribe to put a su­preme pre­mium on in­dus­try; they were the first peo­ple to de­cree that “he who does not work shall not eat.” But many of the re­li­gions of the world re­verted to the early ideal of idle­ness. Jupiter was a rev­eler, and Bud­dha be­came a re­flec­tive devo­tee of leisure.

• primitive religion › primitives saved up property as nucleus for starting life in next existence

69:9.42. Re­li­gious ten­den­cies. Prim­i­tive man also wanted to save up prop­erty as a nu­cleus for start­ing life in the next ex­is­tence. This mo­tive ex­plains why it was so long the cus­tom to bury a man’s per­sonal be­long­ings with him. The an­cients be­lieved that only the rich sur­vived death with any im­me­di­ate plea­sure and dig­nity. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion, more es­pe­cially the Chris­tian teach­ers, were the first to pro­claim that the poor could have sal­va­tion on equal terms with the rich.

• history of religion › desire to make converts was early cause of war
• warnings › separate church and state

70:1.147. Re­li­gion—the de­sire to make con­verts to the cult. The prim­i­tive re­li­gions all sanc­tioned war. Only in re­cent times has re­li­gion be­gun to frown upon war. The early priest­hoods were, un­for­tu­nately, usu­ally al­lied with the mil­i­tary power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the at­tempt to sep­a­rate church and state.

• explained › powerless apart from normal heredity

70:8.18But these mea­sures can bear their true fruits only in the dis­tant mil­len­ni­ums of the fu­ture, al­though much so­cial im­prove­ment will im­me­di­ately re­sult from the in­tel­li­gent, wise, and pa­tient ma­nip­u­la­tion of these ac­cel­er­a­tion fac­tors of cul­tural prog­ress. Re­li­gion is the mighty lever that lifts civ­i­liza­tion from chaos, but it is pow­er­less apart from the ful­crum of sound and nor­mal mind rest­ing se­curely on sound and nor­mal hered­ity.

• warnings › separate church and state

70:12.1711. Union of church and state.

• leaders receive their rewards in another world

71:3.12In ad­vanced states, po­lit­i­cal ser­vice is es­teemed as the high­est de­vo­tion of the cit­i­zenry. The great­est am­bi­tion of the wis­est and no­blest of cit­i­zens is to gain civil rec­og­ni­tion, to be elected or ap­pointed to some po­si­tion of gov­ern­men­tal trust, and such gov­ern­ments con­fer their high­est hon­ors of rec­og­ni­tion for ser­vice upon their civil and so­cial ser­vants. Hon­ors are next be­stowed in the or­der named upon philoso­phers, ed­u­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and mil­i­tarists. Par­ents are duly re­warded by the ex­cel­lency of their chil­dren, and purely re­li­gious lead­ers, be­ing am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, re­ceive their real re­wards in an­other world.

• warnings › separate church and state

71:8.42. The free­dom of so­cial, po­lit­i­cal, and re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties.

• defined as › worship of God and service of man
• training at home in continental nation

72:3.5All sex in­struc­tion is ad­min­is­tered in the home by par­ents or by le­gal guard­i­ans. Moral in­struc­tion is of­fered by teach­ers dur­ing the rest pe­ri­ods in the school shops, but not so with re­li­gious train­ing, which is deemed to be the ex­clu­sive priv­i­lege of par­ents, re­li­gion be­ing looked upon as an in­te­gral part of home life. Purely re­li­gious in­struc­tion is given pub­licly only in the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy, no such ex­clu­sively re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions as the Uran­tia churches hav­ing de­vel­oped among this peo­ple. In their phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion is the striv­ing to know God and to man­i­fest love for one’s fel­lows through ser­vice for them, but this is not typ­i­cal of the re­li­gious sta­tus of the other na­tions on this planet. Re­li­gion is so en­tirely a fam­ily mat­ter among these peo­ple that there are no pub­lic places de­voted ex­clu­sively to re­li­gious as­sem­bly. Po­lit­i­cally, church and state, as Uran­tians are wont to say, are en­tirely sep­a­rate, but there is a strange over­lap­ping of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

• warnings › separate church and state

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

• history of religion › training was duty of parents in Garden of Eden

74:7.2The en­tire pur­pose of the west­ern school sys­tem of the Gar­den was so­cial­iza­tion. The forenoon pe­ri­ods of re­cess were de­voted to prac­ti­cal hor­ti­cul­ture and agri­cul­ture, the af­ter­noon pe­ri­ods to com­pet­i­tive play. The evenings were em­ployed in so­cial in­ter­course and the cul­ti­va­tion of per­sonal friend­ships. Re­li­gious and sex­ual train­ing were re­garded as the prov­ince of the home, the duty of par­ents.

• defined as › eternal foundation and guiding star of enduring civilization

79:4.9Cul­ture does rest on a bi­o­logic foun­da­tion, but caste alone could not per­pet­u­ate the Aryan cul­ture, for re­li­gion, true re­li­gion, is the in­dis­pens­able source of that higher en­ergy which drives men to es­tab­lish a su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion based on hu­man broth­er­hood.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Singlangton
• often decisive factor in cultural development

79:6.103. Spir­i­tual. Dur­ing the age of And­ite mi­gra­tions the Chi­nese were among the more spir­i­tual peo­ples of earth. Long ad­her­ence to the wor­ship of the One Truth pro­claimed by Singlang­ton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stim­u­lus of a pro­gres­sive and ad­vanced re­li­gion is of­ten a de­ci­sive fac­tor in cul­tural de­vel­op­ment; as In­dia lan­guished, so China forged ahead un­der the in­vig­o­rat­ing stim­u­lus of a re­li­gion in which truth was en­shrined as the su­preme De­ity.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Singlangton

79:8.4The be­lief in, and wor­ship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlang­ton never en­tirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth be­came over­shad­owed by a grow­ing ten­dency to ven­er­ate that which was al­ready es­tab­lished. Slowly the ge­nius of the yel­low race be­came di­verted from the pur­suit of the un­known to the preser­va­tion of the known. And this is the rea­son for the stag­na­tion of what had been the world’s most rapidly pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• history of religion › disappearance of religious standards and decadence of Andite civilization left world’s races spiritually impoverished

80:7.8By about 6500 B.C. there had oc­curred a great de­cline in the spir­i­tual her­itage of the And­ites. The de­scen­dants of Adam were widespreadly dis­persed and had been vir­tu­ally swal­lowed up in the older and more nu­mer­ous hu­man races. And this deca­dence of And­ite civ­i­liza­tion, to­gether with the dis­ap­pear­ance of their re­li­gious stan­dards, left the spir­i­tu­ally im­pov­er­ished races of the world in a de­plorable con­di­tion.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › search for supernatural explanation for all phenomena

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

• institutional religion › science purifies r. by destroying superstition

81:6.10Sci­ence teaches man to speak the new lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics and trains his thoughts along lines of ex­act­ing pre­ci­sion. And sci­ence also sta­bi­lizes phi­los­o­phy through the elim­i­na­tion of er­ror, while it pu­ri­fies re­li­gion by the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion.

• institutional religion › women degraded under several Oriental religions

84:5.6The early Chi­nese and the Greeks treated women bet­ter than did most sur­round­ing peo­ples. But the He­brews were ex­ceed­ingly dis­trust­ful of them. In the Oc­ci­dent woman has had a dif­fi­cult climb un­der the Pauline doc­trines which be­came at­tached to Chris­tian­ity, al­though Chris­tian­ity did ad­vance the mores by im­pos­ing more strin­gent sex obli­ga­tions upon man. Woman’s es­tate is lit­tle short of hope­less un­der the pe­cu­liar degra­da­tion which at­taches to her in Mo­hammedanism, and she fares even worse un­der the teach­ings of sev­eral other Ori­en­tal re­li­gions.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › arises as biologic reaction of mind
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › man created primitive r. out of his fears and by means of his illusions

85:0.1Prim­i­tive re­li­gion had a bi­o­logic ori­gin, a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, aside from moral as­so­ci­a­tions and apart from all spir­i­tual in­flu­ences. The higher an­i­mals have fears but no il­lu­sions, hence no re­li­gion. Man cre­ates his prim­i­tive re­li­gions out of his fears and by means of his il­lu­sions.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › predicated on associational circumstances

85:0.2In the evo­lu­tion of the hu­man species, wor­ship in its prim­i­tive man­i­fes­ta­tions ap­pears long be­fore the mind of man is ca­pa­ble of for­mu­lat­ing the more com­plex con­cepts of life now and in the here­after which de­serve to be called re­li­gion. Early re­li­gion was wholly in­tel­lec­tual in na­ture and was en­tirely pred­i­cated on as­so­ci­a­tional cir­cum­stances. The ob­jects of wor­ship were al­to­gether sug­ges­tive; they con­sisted of the things of na­ture which were close at hand, or which loomed large in the com­mon­place ex­pe­ri­ence of the sim­ple-minded prim­i­tive Uran­tians.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

85:0.4At one time or an­other mor­tal man has wor­shiped ev­ery­thing on the face of the earth, in­clud­ing him­self. He has also wor­shiped about ev­ery­thing imag­in­able in the sky and be­neath the sur­face of the earth. Prim­i­tive man feared all man­i­fes­ta­tions of power; he wor­shiped ev­ery nat­u­ral phe­nom­e­non he could not com­pre­hend. The ob­ser­va­tion of pow­er­ful nat­u­ral forces, such as storms, floods, earth­quakes, land­slides, vol­ca­noes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly im­pressed the ex­pand­ing mind of man. The in­ex­pli­ca­ble things of life are still termed “acts of God” and “mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence.”

• primitive religion › gods of › conceived in likeness of man

85:6.3Tribal chiefs died and were de­i­fied. Later, dis­tin­guished souls passed on and were sainted. Un­aided evo­lu­tion never orig­i­nated gods higher than the glo­ri­fied, ex­alted, and evolved spir­its of de­ceased hu­mans. In early evo­lu­tion re­li­gion cre­ates its own gods. In the course of rev­e­la­tion the Gods for­mu­late re­li­gion. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion cre­ates its gods in the im­age and like­ness of mor­tal man; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion seeks to evolve and trans­form mor­tal man into the im­age and like­ness of God.

86:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion from the pre­ced­ing and prim­i­tive wor­ship urge is not de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion. The nor­mal func­tion­ing of the hu­man mind un­der the di­rec­tive in­flu­ence of the sixth and sev­enth mind-ad­ju­tants of uni­ver­sal spirit be­stowal is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure such de­vel­op­ment.

86:0.2Man’s ear­li­est pre­re­li­gious fear of the forces of na­ture grad­u­ally be­came re­li­gious as na­ture be­came per­son­al­ized, spir­i­tized, and even­tu­ally de­i­fied in hu­man con­scious­ness. Re­li­gion of a prim­i­tive type was there­fore a nat­u­ral bi­o­logic con­se­quence of the psy­cho­logic in­er­tia of evolv­ing an­i­mal minds af­ter such minds had once en­ter­tained con­cepts of the super­nat­u­ral.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

86:2.2The strug­gle for life is so painful that cer­tain back­ward tribes even yet howl and lament over each new sun­rise. Prim­i­tive man con­stantly asked, “Who is tor­ment­ing me?” Not find­ing a ma­te­rial source for his mis­eries, he set­tled upon a spirit ex­pla­na­tion. And so was re­li­gion born of the fear of the mys­te­ri­ous, the awe of the un­seen, and the dread of the un­known. Na­ture fear thus be­came a fac­tor in the strug­gle for ex­is­tence first be­cause of chance and then be­cause of mys­tery.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › fostered by shock of death

86:3.1Death was the su­preme shock to evolv­ing man, the most per­plex­ing com­bi­na­tion of chance and mys­tery. Not the sanc­tity of life but the shock of death in­spired fear and thus ef­fec­tively fos­tered re­li­gion. Among sav­age peo­ples death was or­di­nar­ily due to vi­o­lence, so that non­vi­o­lent death be­came in­creas­ingly mys­te­ri­ous. Death as a nat­u­ral and ex­pected end of life was not clear to the con­scious­ness of prim­i­tive peo­ple, and it has re­quired age upon age for man to re­al­ize its in­evitabil­ity.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › man created primitive r. out of his fears and by means of his illusions

86:6.1Man in­her­ited a nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment, ac­quired a so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, and imag­ined a ghost en­vi­ron­ment. The state is man’s re­ac­tion to his nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment, the home to his so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, the church to his il­lu­sory ghost en­vi­ron­ment.

86:6.2Very early in the his­tory of man­kind the re­al­i­ties of the imag­i­nary world of ghosts and spir­its be­came uni­ver­sally be­lieved, and this newly imag­ined spirit world be­came a power in prim­i­tive so­ci­ety. The men­tal and moral life of all man­kind was mod­i­fied for all time by the ap­pear­ance of this new fac­tor in hu­man think­ing and act­ing.

86:6.3Into this ma­jor premise of il­lu­sion and ig­no­rance, mor­tal fear has packed all of the sub­se­quent su­per­sti­tion and re­li­gion of prim­i­tive peo­ples. This was man’s only re­li­gion up to the times of rev­e­la­tion, and to­day many of the world’s races have only this crude re­li­gion of evo­lu­tion.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › slowly grew from innate worship urge and misconception of chance

86:6.4As evo­lu­tion pro­gressed, good luck be­came as­so­ci­ated with good spir­its and bad luck with bad spir­its. The dis­com­fort of en­forced adap­ta­tion to a chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment was re­garded as ill luck, the dis­plea­sure of the spirit ghosts. Prim­i­tive man slowly evolved re­li­gion out of his in­nate wor­ship urge and his mis­con­cep­tion of chance. Civ­i­lized man pro­vides schemes of in­sur­ance to over­come these chance oc­cur­rences; mod­ern sci­ence puts an ac­tu­ary with math­e­mat­i­cal reck­on­ing in the place of fic­ti­tious spir­its and whim­si­cal gods.

• primitive religion › long waste upon tombs, temples, sacrifices, and priesthoods was worth all it cost

86:6.7With the emer­gence of these con­cepts, there was ini­ti­ated the long and waste­ful strug­gle to ap­pease the ever-dis­pleased spir­its, the slav­ish bond­age to evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gious fear, that long waste of hu­man ef­fort upon tombs, tem­ples, sac­ri­fices, and priest­hoods. It was a ter­ri­ble and fright­ful price to pay, but it was worth all it cost, for man therein achieved a nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of rel­a­tive right and wrong; hu­man ethics was born!

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › insurance against perils of forest; bad luck; misfortune

86:7.1The sav­age felt the need of in­sur­ance, and he there­fore will­ingly paid his bur­den­some pre­mi­ums of fear, su­per­sti­tion, dread, and priest gifts to­ward his pol­icy of magic in­sur­ance against ill luck. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was sim­ply the pay­ment of pre­mi­ums on in­sur­ance against the per­ils of the forests; civ­i­lized man pays ma­te­rial pre­mi­ums against the ac­ci­dents of in­dus­try and the ex­i­gen­cies of mod­ern modes of liv­ing.

• explained › life insurance beyond the grave

86:7.2Mod­ern so­ci­ety is re­mov­ing the busi­ness of in­sur­ance from the realm of priests and re­li­gion, plac­ing it in the do­main of eco­nomics. Re­li­gion is con­cern­ing it­self in­creas­ingly with the in­sur­ance of life be­yond the grave. Mod­ern men, at least those who think, no longer pay waste­ful pre­mi­ums to con­trol luck. Re­li­gion is slowly as­cend­ing to higher philo­sophic lev­els in con­trast with its for­mer func­tion as a scheme of in­sur­ance against bad luck.

86:7.3But these an­cient ideas of re­li­gion pre­vented men from be­com­ing fa­tal­is­tic and hope­lessly pes­simistic; they be­lieved they could at least do some­thing to in­flu­ence fate. The re­li­gion of ghost fear im­pressed upon men that they must reg­u­late their con­duct, that there was a super­ma­te­rial world which was in con­trol of hu­man des­tiny.

• primitive religion › erroneous in concept; utterly illogical
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › man created primitive r. out of his fears and by means of his illusions

86:7.5In­dus­try, war, slav­ery, and civil gov­ern­ment arose in re­sponse to the so­cial evo­lu­tion of man in his nat­u­ral en­vi­ron­ment; re­li­gion sim­i­larly arose as his re­sponse to the il­lu­sory en­vi­ron­ment of the imag­i­nary ghost world. Re­li­gion was an evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment of self-main­te­nance, and it has worked, not­with­stand­ing that it was orig­i­nally er­ro­neous in con­cept and ut­terly il­log­i­cal.

• primitive religion › progress when man conceived of supermortal forces consistent in behavior

87:4.5When the doc­trine of good and bad spir­its fi­nally ma­tured, it be­came the most wide­spread and per­sis­tent of all re­li­gious be­liefs. This du­al­ism rep­re­sented a great re­li­gio-philo­sophic ad­vance be­cause it en­abled man to ac­count for both good luck and bad luck while at the same time be­liev­ing in super­mor­tal be­ings who were to some ex­tent con­sis­tent in their be­hav­ior. The spir­its could be counted on to be ei­ther good or bad; they were not thought of as be­ing com­pletely tem­per­a­men­tal as the early ghosts of the monospiritism of most prim­i­tive re­li­gions had been con­ceived to be. Man was at last able to con­ceive of super­mor­tal forces that were con­sis­tent in be­hav­ior, and this was one of the most mo­men­tous dis­cov­er­ies of truth in the en­tire his­tory of the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion and in the ex­pan­sion of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › insurance against perils of forest; bad luck; misfortune

87:5.2And now the sim­ple ghost cult is fol­lowed by the prac­tices of the more ad­vanced and rel­a­tively com­plex spirit-ghost cult, the ser­vice and wor­ship of the higher spir­its as they evolved in man’s prim­i­tive imag­i­na­tion. Re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial must keep pace with spirit evo­lu­tion and prog­ress. The ex­panded cult was but the art of self-main­te­nance prac­ticed in re­la­tion to be­lief in super­nat­u­ral be­ings, self-ad­just­ment to spirit en­vi­ron­ment. In­dus­trial and mil­i­tary or­ga­ni­za­tions were ad­just­ments to nat­u­ral and so­cial en­vi­ron­ments. And as mar­riage arose to meet the de­mands of bi­sex­u­al­ity, so did re­li­gious or­ga­ni­za­tion evolve in re­sponse to the be­lief in higher spirit forces and spir­i­tual be­ings. Re­li­gion rep­re­sents man’s ad­just­ment to his il­lu­sions of the mys­tery of chance. Spirit fear and sub­se­quent wor­ship were adopted as in­sur­ance against mis­for­tune, as pros­per­ity poli­cies.

• explained › must grow around a cult

87:7.10But a cult—a sym­bol­ism of rit­u­als, slo­gans, or goals—will not func­tion if it is too com­plex. And there must be the de­mand for de­vo­tion, the re­sponse of loy­alty. Ev­ery ef­fec­tive re­li­gion unerringly de­vel­ops a wor­thy sym­bol­ism, and its devo­tees would do well to pre­vent the crys­tal­liza­tion of such a rit­ual into cramp­ing, de­form­ing, and sti­fling stereo­typed cer­e­mo­ni­als which can only hand­i­cap and re­tard all so­cial, moral, and spir­i­tual prog­ress. No cult can sur­vive if it re­tards moral growth and fails to fos­ter spir­i­tual prog­ress. The cult is the skele­tal struc­ture around which grows the liv­ing and dy­namic body of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence—true re­li­gion.

• explained › doctrine is most terrible tyrant which enslaves men

88:2.7In olden times the fe­tish word of au­thor­ity was a fear-in­spir­ing doc­trine, the most ter­ri­ble of all tyrants which en­slave men. A doc­tri­nal fe­tish will lead mor­tal man to be­tray him­self into the clutches of big­otry, fa­nati­cism, su­per­sti­tion, in­tol­er­ance, and the most atro­cious of bar­barous cru­el­ties. Mod­ern re­spect for wis­dom and truth is but the re­cent es­cape from the fe­tish-mak­ing ten­dency up to the higher lev­els of think­ing and rea­son­ing. Con­cern­ing the ac­cu­mu­lated fe­tish writ­ings which var­i­ous re­li­gion­ists hold as sa­cred books, it is not only be­lieved that what is in the book is true, but also that ev­ery truth is con­tained in the book. If one of these sa­cred books hap­pens to speak of the earth as be­ing flat, then, for long gen­er­a­tions, oth­er­wise sane men and women will refuse to ac­cept pos­i­tive ev­i­dence that the planet is round.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › belief man in debt to spirits

89:0.1Prim­i­tive man re­garded him­self as be­ing in debt to the spir­its, as stand­ing in need of re­demp­tion. As the sav­ages looked at it, in jus­tice the spir­its might have vis­ited much more bad luck upon them. As time passed, this con­cept de­vel­oped into the doc­trine of sin and sal­va­tion. The soul was looked upon as com­ing into the world un­der for­feit—orig­i­nal sin. The soul must be ran­somed; a scape­goat must be pro­vided. The head-hunter, in ad­di­tion to prac­tic­ing the cult of skull wor­ship, was able to pro­vide a sub­sti­tute for his own life, a scape­man.

• primitive religion › achievements of self-control were real progress

89:1.7There would, how­ever, be no civ­i­lized so­ci­ety to sit in crit­i­cism upon prim­i­tive man ex­cept for these far-flung and mul­ti­far­i­ous taboos, and the taboo would never have en­dured but for the up­hold­ing sanc­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Many of the es­sen­tial fac­tors in man’s evo­lu­tion have been highly ex­pen­sive, have cost vast trea­sure in ef­fort, sac­ri­fice, and self-de­nial, but these achieve­ments of self-con­trol were the real rungs on which man climbed civ­i­liza­tion’s as­cend­ing lad­der.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › insurance against perils of forest; bad luck; misfortune

89:2.1The fear of chance and the dread of bad luck lit­er­ally drove man into the in­ven­tion of prim­i­tive re­li­gion as sup­posed in­sur­ance against these calami­ties. From magic and ghosts, re­li­gion evolved through spir­its and fe­tishes to taboos. Ev­ery prim­i­tive tribe had its tree of for­bid­den fruit, lit­er­ally the ap­ple but fig­u­ra­tively con­sist­ing of a thou­sand branches hang­ing heavy with all sorts of taboos. And the for­bid­den tree al­ways said, “Thou shalt not.”

• institutional religion › present-day forms are ritualization of ancient positive propitiation

89:4.7Gifts and bribes are given to men; but when ten­dered to the gods, they are de­scribed as be­ing ded­i­cated, made sa­cred, or are called sac­ri­fices. Re­nun­ci­a­tion was the neg­a­tive form of pro­pi­ti­a­tion; sac­ri­fice be­came the pos­i­tive form. The act of pro­pi­ti­a­tion in­cluded praise, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, flat­tery, and even en­ter­tain­ment. And it is the rem­nants of these pos­i­tive prac­tices of the olden pro­pi­ti­a­tion cult that con­sti­tute the mod­ern forms of di­vine wor­ship. Pres­ent-day forms of wor­ship are sim­ply the rit­u­al­iza­tion of these an­cient sac­ri­fi­cial tech­niques of pos­i­tive pro­pi­ti­a­tion.

• defined as › realization of an all-powerful love
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

90:0.3Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is born of a sim­ple and all-pow­er­ful fear, the fear which surges through the hu­man mind when con­fronted with the un­known, the in­ex­pli­ca­ble, and the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble. Re­li­gion even­tu­ally achieves the pro­foundly sim­ple re­al­iza­tion of an all-pow­er­ful love, the love which sweeps ir­re­sistibly through the hu­man soul when awak­ened to the con­cep­tion of the lim­it­less af­fec­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther for the sons of the uni­verse. But in be­tween the be­gin­ning and the con­sum­ma­tion of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, there in­ter­vene the long ages of the shamans, who pre­sume to stand be­tween man and God as in­ter­me­di­aries, in­ter­preters, and in­ter­ces­sors.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › belief environment responsive to ghost whims

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

• primitive religion › largely technique for disease prevention

90:4.1The en­tire life of an­cient men was pro­phy­lac­tic; their re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure a tech­nique for dis­ease pre­ven­tion. And re­gard­less of the er­ror in their the­o­ries, they were whole­hearted in putting them into ef­fect; they had un­bounded faith in their meth­ods of treat­ment, and that, in it­self, is a pow­er­ful rem­edy.

• explained › chief agency of r. is prayer

91:1.2Re­li­gion and its agen­cies, the chief of which is prayer, are al­lied only with those val­ues which have gen­eral so­cial rec­og­ni­tion, group ap­proval. There­fore, when prim­i­tive man at­tempted to grat­ify his baser emo­tions or to achieve un­mit­i­gated self­ish am­bi­tions, he was de­prived of the con­so­la­tion of re­li­gion and the as­sis­tance of prayer. If the in­di­vid­ual sought to ac­com­plish any­thing an­ti­so­cial, he was obliged to seek the aid of non­re­li­gious magic, re­sort to sor­cer­ers, and thus be de­prived of the as­sis­tance of prayer. Prayer, there­fore, very early be­came a mighty pro­moter of so­cial evo­lu­tion, moral prog­ress, and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

• explained › chief agency of r. is prayer

91:3.3As it is con­ceived by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions of pray­ing mor­tals, the al­ter ego evolves up through ghosts, fe­tishes, and spir­its to poly­the­is­tic gods, and even­tu­ally to the One God, a di­vine be­ing em­body­ing the high­est ide­als and the lofti­est as­pi­ra­tions of the pray­ing ego. And thus does prayer func­tion as the most po­tent agency of re­li­gion in the con­ser­va­tion of the high­est val­ues and ide­als of those who pray. From the mo­ment of the con­ceiv­ing of an al­ter ego to the ap­pear­ance of the con­cept of a di­vine and heav­enly Fa­ther, prayer is al­ways a so­cial­iz­ing, mor­al­iz­ing, and spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing prac­tice.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › arises as biologic reaction of mind

92:0.1Man pos­sessed a re­li­gion of nat­u­ral ori­gin as a part of his evo­lu­tion­ary ex­pe­ri­ence long be­fore any sys­tem­atic rev­e­la­tions were made on Uran­tia. But this re­li­gion of nat­u­ral ori­gin was, in it­self, the prod­uct of man’s super­an­i­mal en­dow­ments. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion arose slowly through­out the mil­len­ni­ums of man­kind’s ex­pe­ri­en­tial ca­reer through the min­istry of the fol­low­ing in­flu­ences op­er­at­ing within, and im­ping­ing upon, sav­age, bar­bar­ian, and civ­i­lized man:

92:0.21. The ad­ju­tant of wor­ship—the ap­pear­ance in an­i­mal con­scious­ness of super­an­i­mal po­ten­tials for re­al­ity per­cep­tion. This might be termed the pri­mor­dial hu­man in­stinct for De­ity.

92:0.32. The ad­ju­tant of wis­dom—the man­i­fes­ta­tion in a wor­ship­ful mind of the ten­dency to di­rect its ado­ra­tion in higher chan­nels of ex­pres­sion and to­ward ever-ex­pand­ing con­cepts of De­ity re­al­ity.

92:0.43. The Holy Spirit—this is the ini­tial super­mind be­stowal, and it un­fail­ingly ap­pears in all bona fide hu­man per­son­al­i­ties. This min­istry to a wor­ship-crav­ing and wis­dom-de­sir­ing mind cre­ates the ca­pac­ity to self-re­al­ize the pos­tu­late of hu­man sur­vival, both in the­o­logic con­cept and as an ac­tual and fac­tual per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence.

92:0.5The co-or­di­nate func­tion­ing of these three di­vine min­is­tra­tions is quite suf­fi­cient to ini­ti­ate and pros­e­cute the growth of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. These in­flu­ences are later aug­mented by Thought Ad­justers, ser­a­phim, and the Spirit of Truth, all of which ac­cel­er­ate the rate of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment. These agen­cies have long func­tioned on Uran­tia, and they will con­tinue here as long as this planet re­mains an in­hab­ited sphere. Much of the po­ten­tial of these di­vine agen­cies has never yet had op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion; much will be re­vealed in the ages to come as mor­tal re­li­gion as­cends, level by level, to­ward the su­per­nal heights of mor­ontia value and spirit truth.

• defined as › adjustment to the mysterious, and to paradoxes
• institutional religion › most rigid human institution
• institutional religion › practices
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › arises as biologic reaction of mind

92:1.3Re­li­gion arises as a bi­o­logic re­ac­tion of mind to spir­i­tual be­liefs and the en­vi­ron­ment; it is the last thing to per­ish or change in a race. Re­li­gion is so­ci­ety’s ad­just­ment, in any age, to that which is mys­te­ri­ous. As a so­cial in­sti­tu­tion it em­braces rites, sym­bols, cults, scrip­tures, al­tars, shrines, and tem­ples. Holy wa­ter, relics, fe­tishes, charms, vest­ments, bells, drums, and priest­hoods are com­mon to all re­li­gions. And it is im­pos­si­ble en­tirely to di­vorce purely evolved re­li­gion from ei­ther magic or sor­cery.

• institutional religion › most rigid human institution

92:2.1Re­li­gion is the most rigid and un­yield­ing of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions, but it does tardily ad­just to chang­ing so­ci­ety. Even­tu­ally, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion does re­flect the chang­ing mores, which, in turn, may have been af­fected by re­vealed re­li­gion. Slowly, surely, but grudg­ingly, does re­li­gion (wor­ship) fol­low in the wake of wis­dom—knowl­edge di­rected by ex­pe­ri­en­tial rea­son and il­lu­mi­nated by di­vine rev­e­la­tion.

• primitive religion › preserved mores inviolate from generation to generation; novelty always sacrilege

92:2.2Re­li­gion clings to the mores; that which was is an­cient and sup­pos­edly sa­cred. For this rea­son and no other, stone im­ple­ments per­sisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This state­ment is of rec­ord: “And if you will make me an al­tar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in mak­ing it, you have pol­luted it.” Even to­day, the Hin­dus kin­dle their al­tar fires by us­ing a prim­i­tive fire drill. In the course of evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, nov­elty has al­ways been re­garded as sac­ri­lege. The sacra­ment must con­sist, not of new and man­u­fac­tured food, but of the most prim­i­tive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and un­leav­ened bread served with bit­ter herbs.” All types of so­cial us­age and even le­gal pro­ce­dures cling to the old forms.

• explained › men only superficially accept a new religion

92:2.5Races of men only su­per­fi­cially ac­cept a strange and new re­li­gion; they ac­tu­ally ad­just it to their mores and old ways of be­liev­ing. This is well il­lus­trated by the ex­am­ple of a cer­tain New Zealand tribe whose priests, af­ter nom­i­nally ac­cept­ing Chris­tian­ity, pro­fessed to have re­ceived di­rect rev­e­la­tions from Ga­briel to the ef­fect that this self­same tribe had be­come the cho­sen peo­ple of God and di­rect­ing that they be per­mit­ted freely to in­dulge in loose sex re­la­tions and nu­mer­ous other of their olden and rep­re­hen­si­ble cus­toms. And im­me­di­ately all of the new-made Chris­tians went over to this new and less ex­act­ing ver­sion of Chris­tian­ity.

• institutional religion › cardinal ideas

92:3.2Re­li­gion has al­ways been largely a mat­ter of rites, rit­u­als, ob­ser­vances, cer­e­monies, and dog­mas. It has usu­ally be­come tainted with that per­sis­tently mis­chief-mak­ing er­ror, the cho­sen-peo­ple delu­sion. The car­di­nal re­li­gious ideas of in­can­ta­tion, in­spi­ra­tion, rev­e­la­tion, pro­pi­ti­a­tion, re­pen­tance, atone­ment, in­ter­ces­sion, sac­ri­fice, prayer, con­fes­sion, wor­ship, sur­vival af­ter death, sacra­ment, rit­ual, ran­som, sal­va­tion, re­demp­tion, covenant, un­clean­ness, pu­rifi­ca­tion, prophecy, orig­i­nal sin—they all go back to the early times of pri­mor­dial ghost fear.

• institutional religion › adherents believe they have final infallible Truth
• institutional religion › does not provide for its progressive correction

92:3.4Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion makes no pro­vi­sion for change or re­vi­sion; un­like sci­ence, it does not pro­vide for its own pro­gres­sive cor­rec­tion. Evolved re­li­gion com­mands re­spect be­cause its fol­low­ers be­lieve it is The Truth; “the faith once de­liv­ered to the saints” must, in the­ory, be both fi­nal and in­fal­li­ble. The cult re­sists de­vel­op­ment be­cause real prog­ress is cer­tain to mod­ify or de­stroy the cult it­self; there­fore must re­vi­sion al­ways be forced upon it.

• defined as › eternal foundation and guiding star of enduring civilization

92:3.6Re­li­gion has hand­i­capped so­cial de­vel­op­ment in many ways, but with­out re­li­gion there would have been no en­dur­ing moral­ity nor ethics, no worth-while civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion en­moth­ered much non­re­li­gious cul­ture: Sculp­ture orig­i­nated in idol mak­ing, ar­chi­tec­ture in tem­ple build­ing, po­etry in in­can­ta­tions, mu­sic in wor­ship chants, drama in the act­ing for spirit guid­ance, and danc­ing in the sea­sonal wor­ship fes­ti­vals.

• primitive religion › man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution

92:3.7But while call­ing at­ten­tion to the fact that re­li­gion was es­sen­tial to the de­vel­op­ment and preser­va­tion of civ­i­liza­tion, it should be re­corded that nat­u­ral re­li­gion has also done much to crip­ple and hand­i­cap the very civ­i­liza­tion which it oth­er­wise fos­tered and main­tained. Re­li­gion has ham­pered in­dus­trial ac­tiv­i­ties and eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment; it has been waste­ful of la­bor and has squan­dered cap­i­tal; it has not al­ways been help­ful to the fam­ily; it has not ad­e­quately fos­tered peace and good will; it has some­times ne­glected ed­u­ca­tion and re­tarded sci­ence; it has un­duly im­pov­er­ished life for the pre­tended en­rich­ment of death. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, hu­man re­li­gion, has in­deed been guilty of all these and many more mis­takes, er­rors, and blun­ders; nev­er­the­less, it did main­tain cul­tural ethics, civ­i­lized moral­ity, and so­cial co­her­ence, and made it pos­si­ble for later re­vealed re­li­gion to com­pen­sate for these many evo­lu­tion­ary short­com­ings.

92:3.8Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion has been man’s most ex­pen­sive but in­com­pa­ra­bly ef­fec­tive in­sti­tu­tion. Hu­man re­li­gion can be jus­ti­fied only in the light of evo­lu­tion­ary civ­i­liza­tion. If man were not the as­cen­dant prod­uct of an­i­mal evo­lu­tion, then would such a course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment stand with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

• primitive religion › ruthlessly drove indolent suffering humanity forward

92:3.9Re­li­gion fa­cil­i­tated the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of cap­i­tal; it fos­tered work of cer­tain kinds; the leisure of the priests pro­moted art and knowl­edge; the race, in the end, gained much as a re­sult of all these early er­rors in eth­i­cal tech­nique. The shamans, hon­est and dis­hon­est, were ter­ri­bly ex­pen­sive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned pro­fes­sions and sci­ence it­self emerged from the par­a­sit­i­cal priest­hoods. Re­li­gion fos­tered civ­i­liza­tion and pro­vided so­ci­etal con­ti­nu­ity; it has been the moral po­lice force of all time. Re­li­gion pro­vided that hu­man dis­ci­pline and self-con­trol which made wis­dom pos­si­ble. Re­li­gion is the ef­fi­cient scourge of evo­lu­tion which ruth­lessly drives in­do­lent and suf­fer­ing hu­man­ity from its nat­u­ral state of in­tel­lec­tual in­er­tia for­ward and up­ward to the higher lev­els of rea­son and wis­dom.

• primitive religion › sentimental, not logical

92:4.3Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is sen­ti­men­tal, not log­i­cal. It is man’s re­ac­tion to be­lief in a hy­po­thet­i­cal ghost-spirit world—the hu­man be­lief-re­flex, ex­cited by the re­al­iza­tion and fear of the un­known. Rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is pro­pounded by the real spir­i­tual world; it is the re­sponse of the super­in­tel­lec­tual cos­mos to the mor­tal hunger to be­lieve in, and de­pend upon, the uni­ver­sal De­i­ties. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion pic­tures the cir­cuitous grop­ings of hu­man­ity in quest of truth; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is that very truth.

• primitive religion › gods of › conceived in likeness of man

92:5.1In evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion, the gods are con­ceived to ex­ist in the like­ness of man’s im­age; in rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion, men are taught that they are God’s sons—even fash­ioned in the fi­nite im­age of di­vin­ity; in the syn­the­sized be­liefs com­pounded from the teach­ings of rev­e­la­tion and the prod­ucts of evo­lu­tion, the God con­cept is a blend of:

92:5.21. The pre-ex­is­tent ideas of the evo­lu­tion­ary cults.

92:5.32. The sub­lime ide­als of re­vealed re­li­gion.

92:5.43. The per­sonal view­points of the great re­li­gious lead­ers, the proph­ets and teach­ers of man­kind.

• history of religion › men venerate leaders of r. at expense of teachings
• primitive religion › teachers and leaders invested with legends of supernatural origins, careers, expected returns

92:5.5Most great re­li­gious epochs have been in­au­gu­rated by the life and teach­ings of some out­stand­ing per­son­al­ity; lead­er­ship has orig­i­nated a ma­jor­ity of the worth-while moral move­ments of his­tory. And men have al­ways tended to ven­er­ate the leader, even at the ex­pense of his teach­ings; to re­vere his per­son­al­ity, even though los­ing sight of the truths which he pro­claimed. And this is not with­out rea­son; there is an in­stinc­tive long­ing in the heart of evo­lu­tion­ary man for help from above and be­yond. This crav­ing is de­signed to an­tic­i­pate the ap­pear­ance on earth of the Plan­e­tary Prince and the later Ma­te­rial Sons. On Uran­tia man has been de­prived of these super­hu­man lead­ers and rulers, and there­fore does he con­stantly seek to make good this loss by en­shroud­ing his hu­man lead­ers with leg­ends per­tain­ing to super­nat­u­ral ori­gins and mirac­u­lous ca­reers.

92:5.6Many races have con­ceived of their lead­ers as be­ing born of vir­gins; their ca­reers are lib­er­ally sprin­kled with mirac­u­lous episodes, and their re­turn is al­ways ex­pected by their re­spec­tive groups. In cen­tral Asia the tribes­men still look for the re­turn of Genghis Khan; in Ti­bet, China, and In­dia it is Bud­dha; in Is­lam it is Mo­hammed; among the Amerinds it was Hes­unanin Ona­mo­na­lon­ton; with the He­brews it was, in gen­eral, Adam’s re­turn as a ma­te­rial ruler. In Baby­lon the god Mar­duk was a per­pet­u­a­tion of the Adam leg­end, the son-of-God idea, the con­nect­ing link be­tween man and God. Fol­low­ing the ap­pear­ance of Adam on earth, so-called sons of God were com­mon among the world races.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › personality fulcrums on which levers of revealed truth depended

92:5.7But re­gard­less of the su­per­sti­tious awe in which they were of­ten held, it re­mains a fact that these teach­ers were the tem­po­ral per­son­al­ity ful­crums on which the levers of re­vealed truth de­pended for the ad­vance­ment of the moral­ity, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion of man­kind.

• history of religion › 7 major epochs of post-Adamic Urantia

92:5.8There have been hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of re­li­gious lead­ers in the mil­lion-year hu­man his­tory of Uran­tia from On­a­gar to Guru Nanak. Dur­ing this time there have been many ebbs and flows of the tide of re­li­gious truth and spir­i­tual faith, and each re­nais­sance of Uran­tian re­li­gion has, in the past, been iden­ti­fied with the life and teach­ings of some re­li­gious leader. In con­sid­er­ing the teach­ers of re­cent times, it may prove help­ful to group them into the seven ma­jor re­li­gious epochs of post-Adamic Uran­tia:

92:5.91. The Sethite pe­riod. The Sethite priests, as re­gen­er­ated un­der the lead­er­ship of Amo­sad, be­came the great post-Adamic teach­ers. They func­tioned through­out the lands of the And­ites, and their in­flu­ence per­sisted longest among the Greeks, Sume­ri­ans, and Hin­dus. Among the lat­ter they have con­tin­ued to the pres­ent time as the Brah­mans of the Hindu faith. The Sethites and their fol­low­ers never en­tirely lost the Trin­ity con­cept re­vealed by Adam.

92:5.102. Era of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies. Uran­tia re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure re­gen­er­ated by the ef­forts of those teach­ers who were com­mis­sioned by Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek when he lived and taught at Salem al­most two thou­sand years be­fore Christ. These mis­sion­ar­ies pro­claimed faith as the price of fa­vor with God, and their teach­ings, though un­pro­duc­tive of any im­me­di­ately ap­pear­ing re­li­gions, nev­er­the­less formed the foun­da­tions on which later teach­ers of truth were to build the re­li­gions of Uran­tia.

92:5.113. The post-Mel­chiz­e­dek era. Though Amen­emope and Ikh­na­ton both taught in this pe­riod, the out­stand­ing re­li­gious ge­nius of the post-Mel­chiz­e­dek era was the leader of a group of Lev­an­tine Bed­ou­ins and the founder of the He­brew re­li­gion—Moses. Moses taught mono­the­ism. Said he: “Hear, O Is­rael, the Lord our God is one God.” “The Lord he is God. There is none be­side him.” He per­sis­tently sought to up­root the rem­nants of the ghost cult among his peo­ple, even pre­scrib­ing the death penalty for its prac­ti­tion­ers. The mono­the­ism of Moses was adul­ter­ated by his suc­ces­sors, but in later times they did re­turn to many of his teach­ings. The great­ness of Moses lies in his wis­dom and sagac­ity. Other men have had greater con­cepts of God, but no one man was ever so suc­cess­ful in in­duc­ing large num­bers of peo­ple to adopt such ad­vanced be­liefs.

92:5.124. The sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ. Many men arose to pro­claim truth in this, one of the great­est cen­turies of re­li­gious awak­en­ing ever wit­nessed on Uran­tia. Among these should be re­corded Gau­tama, Con­fu­cius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jain­ist teach­ers. The teach­ings of Gau­tama have be­come wide­spread in Asia, and he is revered as the Bud­dha by mil­lions. Con­fu­cius was to Chi­nese moral­ity what Plato was to Greek phi­los­o­phy, and while there were re­li­gious reper­cus­sions to the teach­ings of both, strictly speak­ing, nei­ther was a re­li­gious teacher; Lao-tse en­vi­sioned more of God in Tao than did Con­fu­cius in hu­man­ity or Plato in ide­al­ism. Zoroaster, while much af­fected by the preva­lent con­cept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time def­i­nitely ex­alted the idea of one eter­nal De­ity and of the ul­ti­mate vic­tory of light over dark­ness.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Paul

92:5.135. The first cen­tury af­ter Christ. As a re­li­gious teacher, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth started out with the cult which had been es­tab­lished by John the Bap­tist and pro­gressed as far as he could away from fasts and forms. Aside from Je­sus, Paul of Tar­sus and Philo of Alexan­dria were the great­est teach­ers of this era. Their con­cepts of re­li­gion have played a dom­i­nant part in the evo­lu­tion of that faith which bears the name of Christ.

92:5.146. The sixth cen­tury af­ter Christ. Mo­hammed founded a re­li­gion which was su­pe­rior to many of the creeds of his time. His was a protest against the so­cial de­mands of the faiths of for­eign­ers and against the in­co­her­ence of the re­li­gious life of his own peo­ple.

92:5.157. The fif­teenth cen­tury af­ter Christ. This pe­riod wit­nessed two re­li­gious move­ments: the dis­rup­tion of the unity of Chris­tian­ity in the Oc­ci­dent and the syn­the­sis of a new re­li­gion in the Ori­ent. In Eu­rope in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized Chris­tian­ity had at­tained that de­gree of in­elas­tic­ity which ren­dered fur­ther growth in­com­pat­i­ble with unity. In the Ori­ent the com­bined teach­ings of Is­lam, Hin­duism, and Bud­dhism were syn­the­sized by Nanak and his fol­low­ers into Sikhism, one of the most ad­vanced re­li­gions of Asia.

92:5.16The fu­ture of Uran­tia will doubt­less be char­ac­ter­ized by the ap­pear­ance of teach­ers of re­li­gious truth—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the fra­ter­nity of all crea­tures. But it is to be hoped that the ar­dent and sin­cere ef­forts of these fu­ture proph­ets will be di­rected less to­ward the strength­en­ing of in­ter­re­li­gious bar­ri­ers and more to­ward the aug­men­ta­tion of the re­li­gious broth­er­hood of spir­i­tual wor­ship among the many fol­low­ers of the dif­fer­ing in­tel­lec­tual the­olo­gies which so char­ac­ter­ize Uran­tia of Sa­ta­nia.

• primitive religion › basic belief was survival after death

92:6.1Twen­ti­eth-cen­tury Uran­tia re­li­gions pre­sent an in­ter­est­ing study of the so­cial evo­lu­tion of man’s wor­ship im­pulse. Many faiths have pro­gressed very lit­tle since the days of the ghost cult. The Pyg­mies of Africa have no re­li­gious re­ac­tions as a class, al­though some of them be­lieve slightly in a spirit en­vi­ron­ment. They are to­day just where prim­i­tive man was when the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion be­gan. The ba­sic be­lief of prim­i­tive re­li­gion was sur­vival af­ter death. The idea of wor­ship­ing a per­sonal God in­di­cates ad­vanced evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment, even the first stage of rev­e­la­tion. The Dyaks have evolved only the most prim­i­tive re­li­gious prac­tices. The com­par­a­tively re­cent Es­ki­mos and Amerinds had very mea­ger con­cepts of God; they be­lieved in ghosts and had an in­def­i­nite idea of sur­vival of some sort af­ter death. Pres­ent-day na­tive Aus­tralians have only a ghost fear, dread of the dark, and a crude an­ces­tor ven­er­a­tion. The Zu­lus are just evolv­ing a re­li­gion of ghost fear and sac­ri­fice. Many African tribes, ex­cept through mis­sion­ary work of Chris­tians and Mo­hammedans, are not yet be­yond the fe­tish stage of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion. But some groups have long held to the idea of mono­the­ism, like the one­time Thra­cians, who also be­lieved in im­mor­tal­ity.

• history of religion › of 20th century Urantia

92:6.2On Uran­tia, evo­lu­tion­ary and rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion are pro­gress­ing side by side while they blend and co­a­lesce into the di­ver­si­fied the­o­logic sys­tems found in the world in the times of the in­dite­ment of these pa­pers. These re­li­gions, the re­li­gions of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury Uran­tia, may be enu­mer­ated as fol­lows:

92:6.31. Hin­duism—the most an­cient.

92:6.42. The He­brew re­li­gion.

92:6.53. Bud­dhism.

92:6.64. The Con­fu­cian teach­ings.

92:6.75. The Taoist be­liefs.

92:6.86. Zoroas­tri­an­ism.

92:6.97. Shinto.

92:6.108. Jain­ism.

92:6.119. Chris­tian­ity.

92:6.1210. Is­lam.

92:6.1311. Sikhism—the most re­cent.

92:6.14The most ad­vanced re­li­gions of an­cient times were Hin­duism and Ju­daism, and each re­spec­tively has greatly in­flu­enced the course of re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment in Ori­ent and Oc­ci­dent. Both Hin­dus and He­brews be­lieved that their re­li­gions were in­spired and re­vealed, and they be­lieved all oth­ers to be deca­dent forms of the one true faith.

92:6.15In­dia is di­vided among Hindu, Sikh, Mo­hammedan, and Jain, each pic­tur­ing God, man, and the uni­verse as these are var­i­ously con­ceived. China fol­lows the Taoist and the Con­fu­cian teach­ings; Shinto is revered in Japan.

92:6.16The great in­ter­na­tional, in­ter­ra­cial faiths are the He­braic, Bud­dhist, Chris­tian, and Is­lamic. Bud­dhism stretches from Cey­lon and Burma through Ti­bet and China to Japan. It has shown an adapt­abil­ity to the mores of many peo­ples that has been equaled only by Chris­tian­ity.

92:6.17The He­brew re­li­gion en­com­passes the philo­sophic tran­si­tion from poly­the­ism to mono­the­ism; it is an evo­lu­tion­ary link be­tween the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion and the re­li­gions of rev­e­la­tion. The He­brews were the only west­ern peo­ple to fol­low their early evo­lu­tion­ary gods straight through to the God of rev­e­la­tion. But this truth never be­came widely ac­cepted un­til the days of Isa­iah, who once again taught the blended idea of a racial de­ity com­bined with a Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator: “O Lord of Hosts, God of Is­rael, you are God, even you alone; you have made heaven and earth.” At one time the hope of the sur­vival of Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion lay in the sub­lime He­braic con­cepts of good­ness and the ad­vanced Hel­lenic con­cepts of beauty.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Simon Peter

92:6.18The Chris­tian re­li­gion is the re­li­gion about the life and teach­ings of Christ based upon the the­ol­ogy of Ju­daism, mod­i­fied fur­ther through the as­sim­i­la­tion of cer­tain Zoroas­trian teach­ings and Greek phi­los­o­phy, and for­mu­lated pri­mar­ily by three in­di­vid­u­als: Philo, Pe­ter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evo­lu­tion since the time of Paul and has be­come so thor­oughly Oc­ci­den­tal­ized that many non-Eu­ro­pean peo­ples very nat­u­rally look upon Chris­tian­ity as a strange rev­e­la­tion of a strange God and for strangers.

92:6.19Is­lam is the re­li­gio-cul­tural con­nec­tive of North Africa, the Lev­ant, and south­east­ern Asia. It was Jew­ish the­ol­ogy in con­nec­tion with the later Chris­tian teach­ings that made Is­lam mono­the­is­tic. The fol­low­ers of Mo­hammed stum­bled at the ad­vanced teach­ings of the Trin­ity; they could not com­pre­hend the doc­trine of three di­vine per­son­al­i­ties and one De­ity. It is al­ways dif­fi­cult to in­duce evo­lu­tion­ary minds sud­denly to ac­cept ad­vanced re­vealed truth. Man is an evo­lu­tion­ary crea­ture and in the main must get his re­li­gion by evo­lu­tion­ary tech­niques.

• explained › what r. is not

92:6.20An­ces­tor wor­ship one­time con­sti­tuted a de­cided ad­vance in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, but it is both amaz­ing and re­gret­table that this prim­i­tive con­cept per­sists in China, Japan, and In­dia amidst so much that is rel­a­tively more ad­vanced, such as Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. In the Oc­ci­dent, an­ces­tor wor­ship de­vel­oped into the ven­er­a­tion of na­tional gods and re­spect for racial heroes. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury this hero-ven­er­at­ing na­tion­al­is­tic re­li­gion makes its ap­pear­ance in the var­i­ous rad­i­cal and na­tion­al­is­tic sec­u­larisms which char­ac­ter­ize many races and na­tions of the Oc­ci­dent. Much of this same at­ti­tude is also found in the great uni­ver­si­ties and the larger in­dus­trial com­mu­ni­ties of the En­glish-speak­ing peo­ples. Not very dif­fer­ent from these con­cepts is the idea that re­li­gion is but “a shared quest of the good life.” The “na­tional re­li­gions” are noth­ing more than a re­ver­sion to the early Ro­man em­peror wor­ship and to Shinto—wor­ship of the state in the im­pe­rial fam­ily.

• types of religion › either evolved or suddenly revealed

92:7.2New re­li­gions can­not be in­vented; they are ei­ther evolved, or else they are sud­denly re­vealed. All new evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions are merely ad­vanc­ing ex­pres­sions of the old be­liefs, new adap­ta­tions and ad­just­ments. The old does not cease to ex­ist; it is merged with the new, even as Sikhism bud­ded and blos­somed out of the soil and forms of Hin­duism, Bud­dhism, Is­lam, and other con­tem­po­rary cults. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was very demo­cratic; the sav­age was quick to bor­row or lend. Only with re­vealed re­li­gion did au­to­cratic and in­tol­er­ant the­o­logic ego­tism ap­pear.

• explained › all teach worship of Deity, human salvation
• institutional religion › good to extent it brings man to God and God to man

92:7.3The many re­li­gions of Uran­tia are all good to the ex­tent that they bring man to God and bring the re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther to man. It is a fal­lacy for any group of re­li­gion­ists to con­ceive of their creed as The Truth; such at­ti­tudes be­speak more of the­o­log­i­cal ar­ro­gance than of cer­tainty of faith. There is not a Uran­tia re­li­gion that could not prof­itably study and as­sim­i­late the best of the truths con­tained in ev­ery other faith, for all con­tain truth. Re­li­gion­ists would do bet­ter to bor­row the best in their neigh­bors’ liv­ing spir­i­tual faith rather than to de­nounce the worst in their lin­ger­ing su­per­sti­tions and out­worn rit­u­als.

• defined as › living love, a life of service
• defined as › wholehearted devotion to supreme values

92:7.5Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was largely a ma­te­rial-value con­scious­ness, but civ­i­liza­tion el­e­vates re­li­gious val­ues, for true re­li­gion is the de­vo­tion of the self to the ser­vice of mean­ing­ful and su­preme val­ues. As re­li­gion evolves, ethics be­comes the phi­los­o­phy of morals, and moral­ity be­comes the dis­ci­pline of self by the stan­dards of high­est mean­ings and su­preme val­ues—di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als. And thus re­li­gion be­comes a spon­ta­neous and ex­qui­site de­vo­tion, the liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the loy­alty of love.

• explained › factors indicating quality of r.

92:7.6The qual­ity of a re­li­gion is in­di­cated by:

92:7.71. Level of val­ues—loy­al­ties.

92:7.82. Depth of mean­ings—the sen­si­ti­za­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to the ide­al­is­tic ap­pre­ci­a­tion of these high­est val­ues.

92:7.93. Con­se­cra­tion in­ten­sity—the de­gree of de­vo­tion to these di­vine val­ues.

92:7.104. The un­fet­tered prog­ress of the per­son­al­ity in this cos­mic path of ide­al­is­tic spir­i­tual liv­ing, re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God and never-end­ing pro­gres­sive cit­i­zen­ship in the uni­verse.

• institutional religion › worship customs are confused and discredited

92:7.13Mod­ern man is ad­e­quately self-con­scious of re­li­gion, but his wor­ship­ful cus­toms are con­fused and dis­cred­ited by his ac­cel­er­ated so­cial meta­mor­pho­sis and un­prece­dented sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ments. Think­ing men and women want re­li­gion re­de­fined, and this de­mand will com­pel re­li­gion to re-eval­u­ate it­self.

• defined as › eternal foundation and guiding star of enduring civilization

92:7.15True re­li­gion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eter­nal foun­da­tion and the guid­ing star of all en­dur­ing civ­i­liza­tions.

• explained

94:4.10To­day, in In­dia, the great need is for the por­trayal of the Je­su­so­nian gospel—the Fa­ther­hood of God and the son­ship and con­se­quent broth­er­hood of all men, which is per­son­ally re­al­ized in lov­ing min­istry and so­cial ser­vice. In In­dia the phil­o­soph­i­cal frame­work is ex­is­tent, the cult struc­ture is pres­ent; all that is needed is the vi­tal­iz­ing spark of the dy­namic love por­trayed in the orig­i­nal gospel of the Son of Man, di­vested of the Oc­ci­den­tal dog­mas and doc­trines which have tended to make Mi­chael’s life be­stowal a white man’s re­li­gion.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Singlangton

94:5.31. The lin­ger­ing teach­ings of Singlang­ton, which per­sisted in the con­cept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlang­ton the Chi­nese peo­ple be­came vir­tu­ally mono­the­is­tic; they con­cen­trated their wor­ship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the uni­verse ruler. And the yel­low race never fully lost this early con­cept of De­ity, al­though in sub­se­quent cen­turies many sub­or­di­nate gods and spir­its in­sid­i­ously crept into their re­li­gion.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Lao-tse

94:6.2This unique cen­tury of spir­i­tual prog­ress was char­ac­ter­ized by great re­li­gious, moral, and philo­sophic teach­ers all over the civ­i­lized world. In China, the two out­stand­ing teach­ers were Lao-tse and Con­fu­cius.

94:6.3Lao-tse built di­rectly upon the con­cepts of the Salem tra­di­tions when he de­clared Tao to be the One First Cause of all cre­ation. Lao was a man of great spir­i­tual vi­sion. He taught that man’s eter­nal des­tiny was “ev­er­last­ing union with Tao, Su­preme God and Uni­ver­sal King.” His com­pre­hen­sion of ul­ti­mate cau­sa­tion was most dis­cern­ing, for he wrote: “Unity arises out of the Ab­so­lute Tao, and from Unity there ap­pears cos­mic Du­al­ity, and from such Du­al­ity, Trin­ity springs forth into ex­is­tence, and Trin­ity is the pri­mal source of all re­al­ity.” “All re­al­ity is ever in bal­ance be­tween the po­ten­tials and the ac­tu­als of the cos­mos, and these are eter­nally har­mo­nized by the spirit of di­vin­ity.”

94:6.4Lao-tse also made one of the ear­li­est pre­sen­ta­tions of the doc­trine of re­turn­ing good for evil: “Good­ness begets good­ness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets good­ness.”

94:6.5He taught the re­turn of the crea­ture to the Cre­ator and pic­tured life as the emer­gence of a per­son­al­ity from the cos­mic po­ten­tials, while death was like the re­turn­ing home of this crea­ture per­son­al­ity. His con­cept of true faith was un­usual, and he too likened it to the “at­ti­tude of a lit­tle child.”

94:6.6His un­der­stand­ing of the eter­nal pur­pose of God was clear, for he said: “The Ab­so­lute De­ity does not strive but is al­ways vic­to­ri­ous; he does not co­erce man­kind but al­ways stands ready to re­spond to their true de­sires; the will of God is eter­nal in pa­tience and eter­nal in the in­evitabil­ity of its ex­pres­sion.” And of the true re­li­gion­ist he said, in ex­press­ing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to re­ceive: “The good man seeks not to re­tain truth for him­self but rather at­tempts to be­stow these riches upon his fel­lows, for that is the re­al­iza­tion of truth. The will of the Ab­so­lute God al­ways ben­e­fits, never de­stroys; the pur­pose of the true be­liever is al­ways to act but never to co­erce.”

94:6.7Lao’s teach­ing of non­re­sis­tance and the dis­tinc­tion which he made be­tween ac­tion and co­er­cion be­came later per­verted into the be­liefs of “see­ing, do­ing, and think­ing noth­ing.” But Lao never taught such er­ror, al­beit his pre­sen­ta­tion of non­re­sis­tance has been a fac­tor in the fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of the pa­cific predilec­tions of the Chi­nese peo­ples.

94:6.8But the pop­u­lar Tao­ism of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury Uran­tia has very lit­tle in com­mon with the lofty sen­ti­ments and the cos­mic con­cepts of the old philoso­pher who taught the truth as he per­ceived it, which was: That faith in the Ab­so­lute God is the source of that di­vine en­ergy which will re­make the world, and by which man as­cends to spir­i­tual union with Tao, the Eter­nal De­ity and Cre­ator Ab­so­lute of the uni­verses.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Confucius

94:6.9Con­fu­cius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger con­tem­po­rary of Lao in sixth-cen­tury China. Con­fu­cius based his doc­trines upon the bet­ter moral tra­di­tions of the long his­tory of the yel­low race, and he was also some­what in­flu­enced by the lin­ger­ing tra­di­tions of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies. His chief work con­sisted in the com­pi­la­tion of the wise say­ings of an­cient philoso­phers. He was a re­jected teacher dur­ing his life­time, but his writ­ings and teach­ings have ever since ex­erted a great in­flu­ence in China and Japan. Con­fu­cius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put moral­ity in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fe­tish out of or­der and es­tab­lished a re­spect for an­ces­tral con­duct that is still ven­er­ated by the Chi­nese at the time of this writ­ing.

94:6.10The Con­fu­cian preach­ment of moral­ity was pred­i­cated on the the­ory that the earthly way is the dis­torted shadow of the heav­enly way; that the true pat­tern of tem­po­ral civ­i­liza­tion is the mir­ror re­flec­tion of the eter­nal or­der of heaven. The po­ten­tial God con­cept in Con­fu­cian­ism was al­most com­pletely sub­or­di­nated to the em­pha­sis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pat­tern of the cos­mos.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Mo Ti

94:6.11The teach­ings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Ori­ent, but the writ­ings of Con­fu­cius have ever since con­sti­tuted the ba­sis of the moral fab­ric of the cul­ture of al­most a third of Uran­tians. These Con­fu­cian pre­cepts, while per­pet­u­at­ing the best of the past, were some­what in­im­i­cal to the very Chi­nese spirit of in­ves­ti­ga­tion that had pro­duced those achieve­ments which were so ven­er­ated. The in­flu­ence of these doc­trines was un­suc­cess­fully com­bated both by the im­pe­rial ef­forts of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti and by the teach­ings of Mo Ti, who pro­claimed a broth­er­hood founded not on eth­i­cal duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekin­dle the an­cient quest for new truth, but his teach­ings failed be­fore the vig­or­ous op­po­si­tion of the dis­ci­ples of Con­fu­cius.

94:7.1Con­tem­po­rary with Lao-tse and Con­fu­cius in China, an­other great teacher of truth arose in In­dia. Gau­tama Sid­dhartha was born in the sixth cen­tury be­fore Christ in the north In­dian prov­ince of Nepal. His fol­low­ers later made it ap­pear that he was the son of a fab­u­lously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir ap­par­ent to the throne of a petty chief­tain who ruled by suf­fer­ance over a small and se­cluded moun­tain val­ley in the south­ern Hi­malayas.

94:7.2Gau­tama for­mu­lated those the­o­ries which grew into the phi­los­o­phy of Bud­dhism af­ter six years of the fu­tile prac­tice of Yoga. Sid­dhartha made a de­ter­mined but un­avail­ing fight against the grow­ing caste sys­tem. There was a lofty sin­cer­ity and a unique un­selfish­ness about this young prophet prince that greatly ap­pealed to the men of those days. He de­tracted from the prac­tice of seek­ing in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion through phys­i­cal af­flic­tion and per­sonal pain. And he ex­horted his fol­low­ers to carry his gospel to all the world.

94:7.3Amid the con­fu­sion and ex­treme cult prac­tices of In­dia, the saner and more mod­er­ate teach­ings of Gau­tama came as a re­fresh­ing re­lief. He de­nounced gods, priests, and their sac­ri­fices, but he too failed to per­ceive the per­son­al­ity of the One Uni­ver­sal. Not be­liev­ing in the ex­is­tence of in­di­vid­ual hu­man souls, Gau­tama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-hon­ored be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion of the soul. He made a no­ble ef­fort to de­liver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great uni­verse, but he failed to show them the path­way to that real and su­per­nal home of as­cend­ing mor­tals—Par­a­dise—and to the ex­pand­ing ser­vice of eter­nal ex­is­tence.

94:7.4Gau­tama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the in­struc­tion of the her­mit Go­dad, he might have aroused all In­dia by the in­spi­ra­tion of the re­vival of the Salem gospel of sal­va­tion by faith. Go­dad was de­scended through a fam­ily that had never lost the tra­di­tions of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies.

94:7.5At Benares Gau­tama founded his school, and it was dur­ing its sec­ond year that a pupil, Bau­tan, im­parted to his teacher the tra­di­tions of the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies about the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with Abra­ham; and while Sid­dhartha did not have a very clear con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, he took an ad­vanced stand on sal­va­tion through faith—sim­ple be­lief. He so de­clared him­self be­fore his fol­low­ers and be­gan send­ing his stu­dents out in groups of sixty to pro­claim to the peo­ple of In­dia “the glad tid­ings of free sal­va­tion; that all men, high and low, can at­tain bliss by faith in righ­teous­ness and jus­tice.”

94:7.6Gau­tama’s wife be­lieved her hus­band’s gospel and was the founder of an or­der of nuns. His son be­came his suc­ces­sor and greatly ex­tended the cult; he grasped the new idea of sal­va­tion through faith but in his later years wa­vered re­gard­ing the Salem gospel of di­vine fa­vor through faith alone, and in his old age his dy­ing words were, “Work out your own sal­va­tion.”

94:7.7When pro­claimed at its best, Gau­tama’s gospel of uni­ver­sal sal­va­tion, free from sac­ri­fice, tor­ture, rit­ual, and priests, was a rev­o­lu­tion­ary and amaz­ing doc­trine for its time. And it came sur­pris­ingly near to be­ing a re­vival of the Salem gospel. It brought suc­cor to mil­lions of de­spair­ing souls, and not­with­stand­ing its grotesque per­ver­sion dur­ing later cen­turies, it still per­sists as the hope of mil­lions of hu­man be­ings.

94:7.8Sid­dhartha taught far more truth than has sur­vived in the mod­ern cults bear­ing his name. Mod­ern Bud­dhism is no more the teach­ings of Gau­tama Sid­dhartha than is Chris­tian­ity the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• all Urantia waiting for unencumbered r. of Jesus

94:12.7All Uran­tia is wait­ing for the procla­ma­tion of the en­nobling mes­sage of Mi­chael, un­en­cum­bered by the ac­cu­mu­lated doc­trines and dog­mas of nine­teen cen­turies of con­tact with the re­li­gions of evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin. The hour is strik­ing for pre­sent­ing to Bud­dhism, to Chris­tian­ity, to Hin­duism, even to the peo­ples of all faiths, not the gospel about Je­sus, but the liv­ing, spir­i­tual re­al­ity of the gospel of Je­sus.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Amenemope
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Ikhnaton
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Moses
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Okhban

95:3.5Egypt was in­tel­lec­tual and moral but not overly spir­i­tual. In six thou­sand years only four great proph­ets arose among the Egyp­tians. Amen­emope they fol­lowed for a sea­son; Okhban they mur­dered; Ikh­na­ton they ac­cepted but half­heart­edly for one short gen­er­a­tion; Moses they re­jected. Again was it po­lit­i­cal rather than re­li­gious cir­cum­stances that made it easy for Abra­ham and, later on, for Joseph to ex­ert great in­flu­ence through­out Egypt in be­half of the Salem teach­ings of one God. But when the Salem mis­sion­ar­ies first en­tered Egypt, they en­coun­tered this highly eth­i­cal cul­ture of evo­lu­tion blended with the mod­i­fied moral stan­dards of Mes­o­po­ta­mian im­mi­grants. These early Nile val­ley teach­ers were the first to pro­claim con­science as the man­date of God, the voice of De­ity.

97:1.1Hos­tile pres­sure of the sur­round­ing peo­ples in Pales­tine soon taught the He­brew sheiks they could not hope to sur­vive un­less they con­fed­er­ated their tribal or­ga­ni­za­tions into a cen­tral­ized gov­ern­ment. And this cen­tral­iza­tion of ad­min­is­tra­tive au­thor­ity af­forded a bet­ter op­por­tu­nity for Samuel to func­tion as a teacher and re­former.

97:1.2Samuel sprang from a long line of the Salem teach­ers who had per­sisted in main­tain­ing the truths of Mel­chiz­e­dek as a part of their wor­ship forms. This teacher was a vir­ile and res­o­lute man. Only his great de­vo­tion, cou­pled with his ex­traor­di­nary de­ter­mi­na­tion, en­abled him to with­stand the al­most uni­ver­sal op­po­si­tion which he en­coun­tered when he started out to turn all Is­rael back to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh of Mo­saic times. And even then he was only par­tially suc­cess­ful; he won back to the ser­vice of the higher con­cept of Yah­weh only the more in­tel­li­gent half of the He­brews; the other half con­tin­ued in the wor­ship of the tribal gods of the coun­try and in the baser con­cep­tion of Yah­weh.

97:1.3Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of man, a prac­ti­cal re­former who could go out in one day with his as­so­ciates and over­throw a score of Baal sites. The prog­ress he made was by sheer force of com­pul­sion; he did lit­tle preach­ing, less teach­ing, but he did act. One day he was mock­ing the priest of Baal; the next, chop­ping in pieces a cap­tive king. He de­vot­edly be­lieved in the one God, and he had a clear con­cept of that one God as cre­ator of heaven and earth: “The pil­lars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he has set the world upon them.”

97:1.4But the great con­tri­bu­tion which Samuel made to the de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of De­ity was his ring­ing pro­nounce­ment that Yah­weh was change­less, for­ever the same em­bod­i­ment of unerring per­fec­tion and di­vin­ity. In these times Yah­weh was con­ceived to be a fit­ful God of jeal­ous whims, al­ways re­gret­ting that he had done thus and so; but now, for the first time since the He­brews sal­lied forth from Egypt, they heard these startling words, “The Strength of Is­rael will not lie nor re­pent, for he is not a man, that he should re­pent.” Sta­bil­ity in deal­ing with Di­vin­ity was pro­claimed. Samuel re­it­er­ated the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with Abra­ham and de­clared that the Lord God of Is­rael was the source of all truth, sta­bil­ity, and con­stancy. Al­ways had the He­brews looked upon their God as a man, a super­man, an ex­alted spirit of un­known ori­gin; but now they heard the one­time spirit of Ho­reb ex­alted as an un­chang­ing God of cre­ator per­fec­tion. Samuel was aid­ing the evolv­ing God con­cept to as­cend to heights above the chang­ing state of men’s minds and the vi­cis­si­tudes of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Un­der his teach­ing, the God of the He­brews was be­gin­ning the as­cent from an idea on the or­der of the tribal gods to the ideal of an all-pow­er­ful and change­less Cre­ator and Super­vi­sor of all cre­ation.

97:1.5And he preached anew the story of God’s sin­cer­ity, his covenant-keep­ing re­li­a­bil­ity. Said Samuel: “The Lord will not for­sake his peo­ple.” “He has made with us an ev­er­last­ing covenant, or­dered in all things and sure.” And so, through­out all Pales­tine there sounded the call back to the wor­ship of the su­preme Yah­weh. Ever this en­er­getic teacher pro­claimed, “You are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, nei­ther is there any God be­side you.”

97:1.6Thereto­fore the He­brews had re­garded the fa­vor of Yah­weh mainly in terms of ma­te­rial pros­per­ity. It was a great shock to Is­rael, and al­most cost Samuel his life, when he dared to pro­claim: “The Lord en­riches and im­pov­er­ishes; he de­bases and ex­alts. He raises the poor out of the dust and lifts up the beg­gars to set them among princes to make them in­herit the throne of glory.” Not since Moses had such com­fort­ing promises for the hum­ble and the less for­tu­nate been pro­claimed, and thou­sands of de­spair­ing among the poor be­gan to take hope that they could im­prove their spir­i­tual sta­tus.

97:1.7But Samuel did not pro­gress very far be­yond the con­cept of a tribal god. He pro­claimed a Yah­weh who made all men but was oc­cu­pied chiefly with the He­brews, his cho­sen peo­ple. Even so, as in the days of Moses, once more the God con­cept por­trayed a De­ity who is holy and up­right. “There is none as holy as the Lord. Who can be com­pared to this holy Lord God?”

97:1.8As the years passed, the griz­zled old leader pro­gressed in the un­der­stand­ing of God, for he de­clared: “The Lord is a God of knowl­edge, and ac­tions are weighed by him. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth, show­ing mercy to the mer­ci­ful, and with the up­right man he will also be up­right.” Even here is the dawn of mercy, al­beit it is lim­ited to those who are mer­ci­ful. Later he went one step fur­ther when, in their ad­ver­sity, he ex­horted his peo­ple: “Let us fall now into the hands of the Lord, for his mer­cies are great.” “There is no re­straint upon the Lord to save many or few.”

97:1.9And this grad­ual de­vel­op­ment of the con­cept of the char­ac­ter of Yah­weh con­tin­ued un­der the min­istry of Samuel’s suc­ces­sors. They at­tempted to pre­sent Yah­weh as a covenant-keep­ing God but hardly main­tained the pace set by Samuel; they failed to de­velop the idea of the mercy of God as Samuel had later con­ceived it. There was a steady drift back to­ward the rec­og­ni­tion of other gods, de­spite the main­te­nance that Yah­weh was above all. “Yours is the king­dom, O Lord, and you are ex­alted as head above all.”

97:1.10The keynote of this era was di­vine power; the proph­ets of this age preached a re­li­gion de­signed to fos­ter the king upon the He­brew throne. “Yours, O Lord, is the great­ness and the power and the glory and the vic­tory and the majesty. In your hand is power and might, and you are able to make great and to give strength to all.” And this was the sta­tus of the God con­cept dur­ing the time of Samuel and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Elijah

97:2.1In the tenth cen­tury be­fore Christ the He­brew na­tion be­came di­vided into two king­doms. In both of these po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions many truth teach­ers en­deav­ored to stem the re­ac­tionary tide of spir­i­tual deca­dence that had set in, and which con­tin­ued dis­as­trously af­ter the war of sep­a­ra­tion. But these ef­forts to ad­vance the He­braic re­li­gion did not pros­per un­til that de­ter­mined and fear­less war­rior for righ­teous­ness, Eli­jah, be­gan his teach­ing. Eli­jah re­stored to the north­ern king­dom a con­cept of God com­pa­ra­ble with that held in the days of Samuel. Eli­jah had lit­tle op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent an ad­vanced con­cept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been be­fore him, over­throw­ing the al­tars of Baal and de­mol­ish­ing the idols of false gods. And he car­ried for­ward his re­forms in the face of the op­po­si­tion of an idol­a­trous monarch; his task was even more gi­gan­tic and dif­fi­cult than that which Samuel had faced.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Amos

97:4.1A great step in the tran­si­tion of the tribal god—the god who had so long been served with sac­ri­fices and cer­e­monies, the Yah­weh of the ear­lier He­brews—to a God who would pun­ish crime and im­moral­ity among even his own peo­ple, was taken by Amos, who ap­peared from among the south­ern hills to de­nounce the crim­i­nal­ity, drunk­en­ness, op­pres­sion, and im­moral­ity of the north­ern tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ring­ing truths been pro­claimed in Pales­tine.

97:4.2Amos was not merely a re­storer or re­former; he was a dis­cov­erer of new con­cepts of De­ity. He pro­claimed much about God that had been an­nounced by his pre­de­ces­sors and coura­geously at­tacked the be­lief in a Di­vine Be­ing who would coun­te­nance sin among his so-called cho­sen peo­ple. For the first time since the days of Mel­chiz­e­dek the ears of man heard the de­nun­ci­a­tion of the dou­ble stan­dard of na­tional jus­tice and moral­ity. For the first time in their his­tory He­brew ears heard that their own God, Yah­weh, would no more tol­er­ate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other peo­ple. Amos en­vi­sioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Eli­jah, but he also saw a God who thought no dif­fer­ently of the He­brews than of any other na­tion when it came to the pun­ish­ment of wrong­do­ing. This was a di­rect at­tack on the ego­is­tic doc­trine of the “cho­sen peo­ple,” and many He­brews of those days bit­terly re­sented it.

97:4.3Said Amos: “He who formed the moun­tains and cre­ated the wind, seek him who formed the seven stars and Orion, who turns the shadow of death into the morn­ing and makes the day dark as night.” And in de­nounc­ing his half-re­li­gious, time­serv­ing, and some­times im­moral fel­lows, he sought to por­tray the in­ex­orable jus­tice of an un­chang­ing Yah­weh when he said of the evil­do­ers: “Though they dig into hell, thence shall I take them; though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down.” “And though they go into cap­tiv­ity be­fore their en­e­mies, thence will I di­rect the sword of jus­tice, and it shall slay them.” Amos fur­ther star­tled his hear­ers when, point­ing a re­prov­ing and ac­cus­ing fin­ger at them, he de­clared in the name of Yah­weh: “Surely I will never for­get any of your works.” “And I will sift the house of Is­rael among all na­tions as wheat is sifted in a sieve.”

97:4.4Amos pro­claimed Yah­weh the “God of all na­tions” and warned the Is­raelites that rit­ual must not take the place of righ­teous­ness. And be­fore this coura­geous teacher was stoned to death, he had spread enough leaven of truth to save the doc­trine of the su­preme Yah­weh; he had in­sured the fur­ther evo­lu­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek rev­e­la­tion.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Hosea

97:4.5Hosea fol­lowed Amos and his doc­trine of a uni­ver­sal God of jus­tice by the res­ur­rec­tion of the Mo­saic con­cept of a God of love. Hosea preached for­give­ness through re­pen­tance, not by sac­ri­fice. He pro­claimed a gospel of lov­ing-kind­ness and di­vine mercy, say­ing: “I will be­troth you to me for­ever; yes, I will be­troth you to me in righ­teous­ness and judg­ment and in lov­ing-kind­ness and in mer­cies. I will even be­troth you to me in faith­ful­ness.” “I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.”

97:4.6Hosea faith­fully con­tin­ued the moral warn­ings of Amos, say­ing of God, “It is my de­sire that I chas­tise them.” But the Is­raelites re­garded it as cru­elty bor­der­ing on trea­son when he said: “I will say to those who were not my peo­ple, ‘you are my peo­ple’; and they will say, ‘you are our God.’” He con­tin­ued to preach re­pen­tance and for­give­ness, say­ing, “I will heal their back­slid­ing; I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.” Al­ways Hosea pro­claimed hope and for­give­ness. The bur­den of his mes­sage ever was: “I will have mercy upon my peo­ple. They shall know no God but me, for there is no sav­ior be­side me.”

97:5.1These were the times when some were pro­claim­ing threat­en­ings of pun­ish­ment against per­sonal sins and na­tional crime among the north­ern clans while oth­ers pre­dicted calamity in ret­ri­bu­tion for the trans­gres­sions of the south­ern king­dom. It was in the wake of this arousal of con­science and con­scious­ness in the He­brew na­tions that the first Isa­iah made his ap­pear­ance.

97:5.2Isa­iah went on to preach the eter­nal na­ture of God, his in­fi­nite wis­dom, his un­chang­ing per­fec­tion of re­li­a­bil­ity. He rep­re­sented the God of Is­rael as say­ing: “Judg­ment also will I lay to the line and righ­teous­ness to the plum­met.” “The Lord will give you rest from your sor­row and from your fear and from the hard bond­age wherein man has been made to serve.” “And your ears shall hear a word be­hind you, say­ing, ‘this is the way, walk in it.’” “Be­hold God is my sal­va­tion; I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord is my strength and my song.” “‘Come now and let us rea­son to­gether,’ says the Lord, ‘though your sins be as scar­let, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like the crim­son, they shall be as wool.’”

97:5.3Speak­ing to the fear-rid­den and soul-hun­gry He­brews, this prophet said: “Arise and shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” “The spirit of the Lord is upon me be­cause he has anointed me to preach good tid­ings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives and the open­ing of the prison to those who are bound.” “I will greatly re­joice in the Lord, my soul shall be joy­ful in my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with his robe of righ­teous­ness.” “In all their af­flic­tions he was af­flicted, and the an­gel of his pres­ence saved them. In his love and in his pity he re­deemed them.”

97:5.4This Isa­iah was fol­lowed by Micah and Oba­diah, who con­firmed and em­bel­lished his soul-sat­is­fy­ing gospel. And these two brave mes­sen­gers boldly de­nounced the priest-rid­den rit­ual of the He­brews and fear­lessly at­tacked the whole sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem.

97:5.5Micah de­nounced “the rulers who judge for re­ward and the priests who teach for hire and the proph­ets who di­vine for money.” He taught of a day of free­dom from su­per­sti­tion and priestcraft, say­ing: “But ev­ery man shall sit un­der his own vine, and no one shall make him afraid, for all peo­ple will live, each one ac­cord­ing to his un­der­stand­ing of God.”

97:5.6Ever the bur­den of Micah’s mes­sage was: “Shall I come be­fore God with burnt of­fer­ings? Will the Lord be pleased with a thou­sand rams or with ten thou­sand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my trans­gres­sion, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown me, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord re­quire of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God?” And it was a great age; these were in­deed stir­ring times when mor­tal man heard, and some even be­lieved, such eman­ci­pat­ing mes­sages more than two and a half mil­len­ni­ums ago. And but for the stub­born re­sis­tance of the priests, these teach­ers would have over­thrown the whole bloody cer­e­mo­nial of the He­brew rit­ual of wor­ship.

97:6.1While sev­eral teach­ers con­tin­ued to ex­pound the gospel of Isa­iah, it re­mained for Jeremiah to take the next bold step in the in­ter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of Yah­weh, God of the He­brews.

97:6.2Jeremiah fear­lessly de­clared that Yah­weh was not on the side of the He­brews in their mil­i­tary strug­gles with other na­tions. He as­serted that Yah­weh was God of all the earth, of all na­tions and of all peo­ples. Jeremiah’s teach­ing was the crescendo of the ris­ing wave of the in­ter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the God of Is­rael; fi­nally and for­ever did this in­trepid preacher pro­claim that Yah­weh was God of all na­tions, and that there was no Osiris for the Egyp­tians, Bel for the Baby­lo­ni­ans, Ashur for the As­syr­i­ans, or Dagon for the Phil­is­tines. And thus did the re­li­gion of the He­brews share in that re­nais­sance of mono­the­ism through­out the world at about and fol­low­ing this time; at last the con­cept of Yah­weh had as­cended to a De­ity level of plan­e­tary and even cos­mic dig­nity. But many of Jeremiah’s as­so­ciates found it dif­fi­cult to con­ceive of Yah­weh apart from the He­brew na­tion.

97:6.3Jeremiah also preached of the just and lov­ing God de­scribed by Isa­iah, declar­ing: “Yes, I have loved you with an ev­er­last­ing love; there­fore with lov­ing-kind­ness have I drawn you.” “For he does not af­flict will­ingly the chil­dren of men.”

97:6.4Said this fear­less prophet: “Righ­teous is our Lord, great in coun­sel and mighty in work. His eyes are open upon all the ways of all the sons of men, to give ev­ery one ac­cord­ing to his ways and ac­cord­ing to the fruit of his do­ings.” But it was con­sid­ered blas­phe­mous trea­son when, dur­ing the siege of Je­ru­sa­lem, he said: “And now have I given these lands into the hand of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, the king of Baby­lon, my ser­vant.” And when Jeremiah coun­seled the sur­ren­der of the city, the priests and civil rulers cast him into the miry pit of a dis­mal dun­geon.

97:7.1The de­struc­tion of the He­brew na­tion and their cap­tiv­ity in Mes­o­po­ta­mia would have proved of great ben­e­fit to their ex­pand­ing the­ol­ogy had it not been for the de­ter­mined ac­tion of their priest­hood. Their na­tion had fallen be­fore the armies of Baby­lon, and their na­tion­al­is­tic Yah­weh had suf­fered from the in­ter­na­tional preach­ments of the spir­i­tual lead­ers. It was re­sent­ment of the loss of their na­tional god that led the Jew­ish priests to go to such lengths in the in­ven­tion of fa­bles and the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of mirac­u­lous ap­pear­ing events in He­brew his­tory in an ef­fort to re­store the Jews as the cho­sen peo­ple of even the new and ex­panded idea of an in­ter­na­tion­al­ized God of all na­tions.

97:7.2Dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity the Jews were much in­flu­enced by Baby­lo­nian tra­di­tions and leg­ends, al­though it should be noted that they un­fail­ingly im­proved the moral tone and spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of the Chaldean sto­ries which they adopted, not­with­stand­ing that they in­vari­ably dis­torted these leg­ends to re­flect honor and glory upon the an­ces­try and his­tory of Is­rael.

97:7.3These He­brew priests and scribes had a sin­gle idea in their minds, and that was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the Jew­ish na­tion, the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of He­brew tra­di­tions, and the ex­al­ta­tion of their racial his­tory. If there is re­sent­ment of the fact that these priests have fas­tened their er­ro­neous ideas upon such a large part of the Oc­ci­den­tal world, it should be re­mem­bered that they did not in­ten­tion­ally do this; they did not claim to be writ­ing by in­spi­ra­tion; they made no pro­fes­sion to be writ­ing a sa­cred book. They were merely prepar­ing a text­book de­signed to bol­ster up the dwin­dling cour­age of their fel­lows in cap­tiv­ity. They were def­i­nitely aim­ing at im­prov­ing the na­tional spirit and morale of their com­pa­tri­ots. It re­mained for later-day men to as­sem­ble these and other writ­ings into a guide book of sup­pos­edly in­fal­li­ble teach­ings.

97:7.4The Jew­ish priest­hood made lib­eral use of these writ­ings sub­se­quent to the cap­tiv­ity, but they were greatly hin­dered in their in­flu­ence over their fel­low cap­tives by the pres­ence of a young and in­domitable prophet, Isa­iah the sec­ond, who was a full con­vert to the el­der Isa­iah’s God of jus­tice, love, righ­teous­ness, and mercy. He also be­lieved with Jeremiah that Yah­weh had be­come the God of all na­tions. He preached these the­o­ries of the na­ture of God with such telling ef­fect that he made con­verts equally among the Jews and their cap­tors. And this young preacher left on rec­ord his teach­ings, which the hos­tile and un­for­giv­ing priests sought to di­vorce from all as­so­ci­a­tion with him, al­though sheer re­spect for their beauty and grandeur led to their in­cor­po­ra­tion among the writ­ings of the ear­lier Isa­iah. And thus may be found the writ­ings of this sec­ond Isa­iah in the book of that name, em­brac­ing chap­ters forty to fifty-five in­clu­sive.

97:7.5No prophet or re­li­gious teacher from Ma­chi­venta to the time of Je­sus at­tained the high con­cept of God that Isa­iah the sec­ond pro­claimed dur­ing these days of the cap­tiv­ity. It was no small, an­thro­po­mor­phic, man-made God that this spir­i­tual leader pro­claimed. “Be­hold he takes up the isles as a very lit­tle thing.” “And as the heav­ens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

97:7.6At last Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek be­held hu­man teach­ers pro­claim­ing a real God to mor­tal man. Like Isa­iah the first, this leader preached a God of uni­ver­sal cre­ation and up­hold­ing. “I have made the earth and put man upon it. I have cre­ated it not in vain; I formed it to be in­hab­ited.” “I am the first and the last; there is no God be­side me.” Speak­ing for the Lord God of Is­rael, this new prophet said: “The heav­ens may van­ish and the earth wax old, but my righ­teous­ness shall en­dure for­ever and my sal­va­tion from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.” “Fear you not, for I am with you; be not dis­mayed, for I am your God.” “There is no God be­side me—a just God and a Sav­ior.”

97:7.7And it com­forted the Jew­ish cap­tives, as it has thou­sands upon thou­sands ever since, to hear such words as: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I have cre­ated you, I have re­deemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine.’” “When you pass through the wa­ters, I will be with you since you are pre­cious in my sight.” “Can a woman for­get her suck­ling child that she should not have com­pas­sion on her son? Yes, she may for­get, yet will I not for­get my chil­dren, for be­hold I have graven them upon the palms of my hands; I have even cov­ered them with the shadow of my hands.” “Let the wicked for­sake his ways and the un­righ­teous man his thoughts, and let him re­turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abun­dantly par­don.”

97:7.8Lis­ten again to the gospel of this new rev­e­la­tion of the God of Salem: “He shall feed his flock like a shep­herd; he shall gather the lambs in his arms and carry them in his bo­som. He gives power to the faint, and to those who have no might he in­creases strength. Those who wait upon the Lord shall re­new their strength; they shall mount up with wings as ea­gles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

97:7.9This Isa­iah con­ducted a far-flung pro­pa­ganda of the gospel of the en­larg­ing con­cept of a su­preme Yah­weh. He vied with Moses in the elo­quence with which he por­trayed the Lord God of Is­rael as the Uni­ver­sal Cre­ator. He was po­etic in his por­trayal of the in­fi­nite at­tri­butes of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. No more beau­ti­ful pro­nounce­ments about the heav­enly Fa­ther have ever been made. Like the Psalms, the writ­ings of Isa­iah are among the most sub­lime and true pre­sen­ta­tions of the spir­i­tual con­cept of God ever to greet the ears of mor­tal man prior to the ar­rival of Mi­chael on Uran­tia. Lis­ten to his por­trayal of De­ity: “I am the high and lofty one who in­hab­its eter­nity.” “I am the first and the last, and be­side me there is no other God.” “And the Lord’s hand is not short­ened that it can­not save, nei­ther his ear heavy that it can­not hear.” And it was a new doc­trine in Jewry when this be­nign but com­mand­ing prophet per­sisted in the preach­ment of di­vine con­stancy, God’s faith­ful­ness. He de­clared that “God would not for­get, would not for­sake.”

97:7.10This dar­ing teacher pro­claimed that man was very closely re­lated to God, say­ing: “Ev­ery one who is called by my name I have cre­ated for my glory, and they shall show forth my praise. I, even I, am he who blots out their trans­gres­sions for my own sake, and I will not re­mem­ber their sins.”

97:7.11Hear this great He­brew de­mol­ish the con­cept of a na­tional God while in glory he pro­claims the di­vin­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, of whom he says, “The heav­ens are my throne, and the earth is my foot­stool.” And Isa­iah’s God was none the less holy, ma­jes­tic, just, and un­search­able. The con­cept of the an­gry, venge­ful, and jeal­ous Yah­weh of the desert Bed­ou­ins has al­most van­ished. A new con­cept of the su­preme and uni­ver­sal Yah­weh has ap­peared in the mind of mor­tal man, never to be lost to hu­man view. The re­al­iza­tion of di­vine jus­tice has be­gun the de­struc­tion of prim­i­tive magic and bi­o­logic fear. At last, man is in­tro­duced to a uni­verse of law and or­der and to a uni­ver­sal God of de­pend­able and fi­nal at­tri­butes.

97:7.12And this preacher of a su­per­nal God never ceased to pro­claim this God of love. “I dwell in the high and holy place, also with him who is of a con­trite and hum­ble spirit.” And still fur­ther words of com­fort did this great teacher speak to his con­tem­po­raries: “And the Lord will guide you con­tin­u­ally and sat­isfy your soul. You shall be like a wa­tered gar­den and like a spring whose wa­ters fail not. And if the en­emy shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a de­fense against him.” And once again did the fear-de­stroy­ing gospel of Mel­chiz­e­dek and the trust-breed­ing re­li­gion of Salem shine forth for the bless­ing of man­kind.

97:7.13The farsee­ing and coura­geous Isa­iah ef­fec­tively ec­lipsed the na­tion­al­is­tic Yah­weh by his sub­lime por­trai­ture of the majesty and uni­ver­sal om­nipo­tence of the su­preme Yah­weh, God of love, ruler of the uni­verse, and af­fec­tion­ate Fa­ther of all man­kind. Ever since those event­ful days the high­est God con­cept in the Oc­ci­dent has em­braced uni­ver­sal jus­tice, di­vine mercy, and eter­nal righ­teous­ness. In su­perb lan­guage and with match­less grace this great teacher por­trayed the all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator as the all-lov­ing Fa­ther.

97:7.14This prophet of the cap­tiv­ity preached to his peo­ple and to those of many na­tions as they lis­tened by the river in Baby­lon. And this sec­ond Isa­iah did much to coun­ter­act the many wrong and racially ego­is­tic con­cepts of the mis­sion of the prom­ised Mes­siah. But in this ef­fort he was not wholly suc­cess­ful. Had the priests not ded­i­cated them­selves to the work of build­ing up a mis­con­ceived na­tion­al­ism, the teach­ings of the two Isa­iahs would have pre­pared the way for the rec­og­ni­tion and re­cep­tion of the prom­ised Mes­siah.

• institutional religion › blunder to miraculously interpret certain epochs of history

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

• explained › survives because it conserves followers’ highest values

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.

• warnings › despite evils, error to destroy technique of group functioning
• warnings › rarely survives as private practice of isolated individuals

97:10.7The Jew­ish re­li­gion per­sisted also be­cause of its in­sti­tu­tions. It is dif­fi­cult for re­li­gion to sur­vive as the pri­vate prac­tice of iso­lated in­di­vid­u­als. This has ever been the er­ror of the re­li­gious lead­ers: See­ing the evils of in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized re­li­gion, they seek to de­stroy the tech­nique of group func­tion­ing. In place of de­stroy­ing all rit­ual, they would do bet­ter to re­form it. In this re­spect Eze­kiel was wiser than his con­tem­po­raries; though he joined with them in in­sist­ing on per­sonal moral re­spon­si­bil­ity, he also set about to es­tab­lish the faith­ful ob­ser­vance of a su­pe­rior and pu­ri­fied rit­ual.

• result of religion › cures man’s isolation, soul hunger, moral despair

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.

• institutional religion › usually detracts from spiritual quality
• warnings › rarely survives as private practice of isolated individuals

98:6.1Prior to the com­ing of the mys­tery cults and Chris­tian­ity, per­sonal re­li­gion hardly de­vel­oped as an in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tion in the civ­i­lized lands of North Africa and Eu­rope; it was more of a fam­ily, city-state, po­lit­i­cal, and im­pe­rial af­fair. The Hel­lenic Greeks never evolved a cen­tral­ized wor­ship sys­tem; the rit­ual was lo­cal; they had no priest­hood and no “sa­cred book.” Much as the Ro­mans, their re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions lacked a pow­er­ful driv­ing agency for the preser­va­tion of higher moral and spir­i­tual val­ues. While it is true that the in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion has usu­ally de­tracted from its spir­i­tual qual­ity, it is also a fact that no re­li­gion has thus far suc­ceeded in sur­viv­ing with­out the aid of in­sti­tu­tional or­ga­ni­za­tion of some de­gree, greater or lesser.

• defined as › knowing God as Father, yourself as son of God, and man as brother

98:7.11As the orig­i­nal teach­ings of Je­sus pen­e­trated the Oc­ci­dent, they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, and as they be­came Oc­ci­den­tal­ized, they be­gan to lose their po­ten­tially uni­ver­sal ap­peal to all races and kinds of men. Chris­tian­ity, to­day, has be­come a re­li­gion well adapted to the so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the re­li­gion of Je­sus, al­though it still valiantly por­trays a beau­ti­ful re­li­gion about Je­sus to such in­di­vid­u­als as sin­cerely seek to fol­low in the way of its teach­ing. It has glo­ri­fied Je­sus as the Christ, the Mes­sianic anointed one from God, but has largely for­got­ten the Mas­ter’s per­sonal gospel: the Fa­ther­hood of God and the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of all men.

• institutional religion › perpetuates established order of society
• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:0.1Re­li­gion achieves its high­est so­cial min­istry when it has least con­nec­tion with the sec­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions of so­ci­ety. In past ages, since so­cial re­forms were largely con­fined to the moral realms, re­li­gion did not have to ad­just its at­ti­tude to ex­ten­sive changes in eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems. The chief prob­lem of re­li­gion was the en­deavor to re­place evil with good within the ex­ist­ing so­cial or­der of po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic cul­ture. Re­li­gion has thus in­di­rectly tended to per­pet­u­ate the es­tab­lished or­der of so­ci­ety, to fos­ter the main­te­nance of the ex­is­tent type of civ­i­liza­tion.

• explained › opposes violence

99:0.2But re­li­gion should not be di­rectly con­cerned ei­ther with the cre­ation of new so­cial or­ders or with the preser­va­tion of old ones. True re­li­gion does op­pose vi­o­lence as a tech­nique of so­cial evo­lu­tion, but it does not op­pose the in­tel­li­gent ef­forts of so­ci­ety to adapt its us­ages and ad­just its in­sti­tu­tions to new eco­nomic con­di­tions and cul­tural re­quire­ments.

• warnings › must quicken its adaptation to ever-changing social order

99:0.3Re­li­gion did ap­prove the oc­ca­sional so­cial re­forms of past cen­turies, but in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury it is of ne­ces­sity called upon to face ad­just­ment to ex­ten­sive and con­tin­u­ing so­cial re­con­struc­tion. Con­di­tions of liv­ing al­ter so rapidly that in­sti­tu­tional mod­i­fi­ca­tions must be greatly ac­cel­er­ated, and re­li­gion must ac­cord­ingly quicken its adap­ta­tion to this new and ever-chang­ing so­cial or­der.

• defined as › eternal foundation and guiding star of enduring civilization

99:1.2Re­li­gion must be­come a force­ful in­flu­ence for moral sta­bil­ity and spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion func­tion­ing dy­nam­i­cally in the midst of these ever-chang­ing con­di­tions and never-end­ing eco­nomic ad­just­ments.

• explained › mission is to stabilize ideals during dangerous times of transition

99:1.3Uran­tia so­ci­ety can never hope to set­tle down as in past ages. The so­cial ship has steamed out of the shel­tered bays of es­tab­lished tra­di­tion and has be­gun its cruise upon the high seas of evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny; and the soul of man, as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory, needs care­fully to scru­ti­nize its charts of moral­ity and painstak­ingly to ob­serve the com­pass of re­li­gious guid­ance. The paramount mis­sion of re­li­gion as a so­cial in­flu­ence is to sta­bi­lize the ide­als of man­kind dur­ing these dan­ger­ous times of tran­si­tion from one phase of civ­i­liza­tion to an­other, from one level of cul­ture to an­other.

• no new duties to perform

99:1.4Re­li­gion has no new du­ties to per­form, but it is ur­gently called upon to func­tion as a wise guide and ex­pe­ri­enced coun­selor in all of these new and rapidly chang­ing hu­man sit­u­a­tions. So­ci­ety is be­com­ing more me­chan­i­cal, more com­pact, more com­plex, and more crit­i­cally in­ter­de­pen­dent. Re­li­gion must func­tion to pre­vent these new and in­ti­mate in­teras­so­ci­a­tions from be­com­ing mu­tu­ally ret­ro­gres­sive or even de­struc­tive. Re­li­gion must act as the cos­mic salt which pre­vents the fer­ments of pro­gres­sion from de­stroy­ing the cul­tural sa­vor of civ­i­liza­tion. These new so­cial re­la­tions and eco­nomic up­heavals can re­sult in last­ing broth­er­hood only by the min­istry of re­li­gion.

• result of religion › only power which lastingly increases altruism

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices
• warnings › form of expression must be continually restated

99:1.6Re­li­gion must not be­come or­gan­i­cally in­volved in the sec­u­lar work of so­cial re­con­struc­tion and eco­nomic re­or­ga­ni­za­tion. But it must ac­tively keep pace with all these ad­vances in civ­i­liza­tion by mak­ing clear-cut and vig­or­ous re­state­ments of its moral man­dates and spir­i­tual pre­cepts, its pro­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy of hu­man liv­ing and tran­scen­dent sur­vival. The spirit of re­li­gion is eter­nal, but the form of its ex­pres­sion must be re­stated ev­ery time the dic­tio­nary of hu­man lan­guage is re­vised.

• institutional religion › cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself

99:2.1In­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion can­not af­ford in­spi­ra­tion and pro­vide lead­er­ship in this im­pend­ing world-wide so­cial re­con­struc­tion and eco­nomic re­or­ga­ni­za­tion be­cause it has un­for­tu­nately be­come more or less of an or­ganic part of the so­cial or­der and the eco­nomic sys­tem which is des­tined to un­dergo re­con­struc­tion. Only the real re­li­gion of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence can func­tion help­fully and cre­atively in the pres­ent cri­sis of civ­i­liza­tion.

99:2.2In­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion is now caught in the stale­mate of a vi­cious cir­cle. It can­not re­con­struct so­ci­ety with­out first re­con­struct­ing it­self; and be­ing so much an in­te­gral part of the es­tab­lished or­der, it can­not re­con­struct it­self un­til so­ci­ety has been rad­i­cally re­con­structed.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:2.3Re­li­gion­ists must func­tion in so­ci­ety, in in­dus­try, and in pol­i­tics as in­di­vid­u­als, not as groups, par­ties, or in­sti­tu­tions. A re­li­gious group which pre­sumes to func­tion as such, apart from re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties, im­me­di­ately be­comes a po­lit­i­cal party, an eco­nomic or­ga­ni­za­tion, or a so­cial in­sti­tu­tion. Re­li­gious col­lec­tivism must con­fine its ef­forts to the fur­ther­ance of re­li­gious causes.

99:2.4Re­li­gion­ists are of no more value in the tasks of so­cial re­con­struc­tion than non­re­li­gion­ists ex­cept in so far as their re­li­gion has con­ferred upon them en­hanced cos­mic fore­sight and en­dowed them with that su­pe­rior so­cial wis­dom which is born of the sin­cere de­sire to love God su­premely and to love ev­ery man as a brother in the heav­enly king­dom. An ideal so­cial or­der is that in which ev­ery man loves his neigh­bor as he loves him­self.

• explained › opposes violence
• institutional religion › perpetuates established order of society
• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:2.5The in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church may have ap­peared to serve so­ci­ety in the past by glo­ri­fy­ing the es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic or­ders, but it must speed­ily cease such ac­tion if it is to sur­vive. Its only proper at­ti­tude con­sists in the teach­ing of non­vi­o­lence, the doc­trine of peace­ful evo­lu­tion in the place of vi­o­lent rev­o­lu­tion—peace on earth and good will among all men.

• defined as › experience of knowing God; striving to be like him

99:2.6Mod­ern re­li­gion finds it dif­fi­cult to ad­just its at­ti­tude to­ward the rapidly shift­ing so­cial changes only be­cause it has per­mit­ted it­self to be­come so thor­oughly tra­di­tion­al­ized, dog­ma­tized, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. The re­li­gion of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence finds no dif­fi­culty in keep­ing ahead of all these so­cial de­vel­op­ments and eco­nomic up­heavals, amid which it ever func­tions as a moral sta­bi­lizer, so­cial guide, and spir­i­tual pi­lot. True re­li­gion car­ries over from one age to an­other the worth-while cul­ture and that wis­dom which is born of the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God and striv­ing to be like him.

• result of religion › influences social reconstruction through spiritualizing the individual

99:3.3The re­li­gion­ist is not un­sym­pa­thetic with so­cial suf­fer­ing, not un­mind­ful of civil in­jus­tice, not in­su­lated from eco­nomic think­ing, nei­ther in­sen­si­ble to po­lit­i­cal tyranny. Re­li­gion in­flu­ences so­cial re­con­struc­tion di­rectly be­cause it spir­i­tu­al­izes and ide­al­izes the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen. In­di­rectly, cul­tural civ­i­liza­tion is in­flu­enced by the at­ti­tude of these in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists as they be­come ac­tive and in­flu­en­tial mem­bers of var­i­ous so­cial, moral, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal groups.

• social reconstructionists show unrecognized religious motivation

99:3.6Many in­di­vid­ual so­cial re­con­struc­tion­ists, while ve­he­mently re­pu­di­at­ing in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized re­li­gion, are, af­ter all, zeal­ously re­li­gious in the prop­a­ga­tion of their so­cial re­forms. And so it is that re­li­gious mo­ti­va­tion, per­sonal and more or less un­rec­og­nized, is play­ing a great part in the pres­ent-day pro­gram of so­cial re­con­struc­tion.

• warnings › discipline by constructive criticism, amplify by philosophy, purify by science, and nourish by loyal fellowship

99:3.7The great weak­ness of all this un­rec­og­nized and un­con­scious type of re­li­gious ac­tiv­ity is that it is un­able to profit from open re­li­gious crit­i­cism and thereby at­tain to prof­itable lev­els of self-cor­rec­tion. It is a fact that re­li­gion does not grow un­less it is dis­ci­plined by con­struc­tive crit­i­cism, am­pli­fied by phi­los­o­phy, pu­ri­fied by sci­ence, and nour­ished by loyal fel­low­ship.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › loveless zeal

99:3.8There is al­ways the great dan­ger that re­li­gion will be­come dis­torted and per­verted into the pur­suit of false goals, as when in times of war each con­tend­ing na­tion pros­ti­tutes its re­li­gion into mil­i­tary pro­pa­ganda. Love­less zeal is al­ways harm­ful to re­li­gion, while per­se­cu­tion di­verts the ac­tiv­i­ties of re­li­gion into the achieve­ment of some so­ci­o­logic or the­o­logic drive.

• warnings › discipline by constructive criticism, amplify by philosophy, purify by science, and nourish by loyal fellowship

99:3.9Re­li­gion can be kept free from un­holy sec­u­lar al­liances only by:

99:3.101. A crit­i­cally cor­rec­tive phi­los­o­phy.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:3.112. Free­dom from all so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal al­liances.

99:3.123. Cre­ative, com­fort­ing, and love-ex­pand­ing fel­low­ships.

99:3.134. Pro­gres­sive en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual in­sight and the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of cos­mic val­ues.

99:3.145. Pre­ven­tion of fa­nati­cism by the com­pen­sa­tions of the sci­en­tific men­tal at­ti­tude.

• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance
• result of religion › inspires cosmic loyalty

99:3.16It is the busi­ness of re­li­gion to cre­ate, sus­tain, and in­spire such a cos­mic loy­alty in the in­di­vid­ual cit­i­zen as will di­rect him to the achieve­ment of suc­cess in the ad­vance­ment of all these dif­fi­cult but de­sir­able so­cial ser­vices.

• result of religion › renders religionist socially fragrant
• warnings › dangers of religion are › standardization or formalization

99:4.1Gen­uine re­li­gion ren­ders the re­li­gion­ist so­cially fra­grant and cre­ates in­sights into hu­man fel­low­ship. But the for­mal­iza­tion of re­li­gious groups many times de­stroys the very val­ues for the pro­mo­tion of which the group was or­ga­nized. Hu­man friend­ship and di­vine re­li­gion are mu­tu­ally help­ful and sig­nif­i­cantly il­lu­mi­nat­ing if the growth in each is equal­ized and har­mo­nized. Re­li­gion puts new mean­ing into all group as­so­ci­a­tions—fam­i­lies, schools, and clubs. It im­parts new val­ues to play and ex­alts all true hu­mor.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › standardization or formalization

99:4.3True re­li­gion is a mean­ing­ful way of liv­ing dy­nam­i­cally face to face with the com­mon­place re­al­i­ties of ev­ery­day life. But if re­li­gion is to stim­u­late in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter and aug­ment in­te­gra­tion of per­son­al­ity, it must not be stan­dard­ized. If it is to stim­u­late eval­u­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence and serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereo­typed. If re­li­gion is to pro­mote su­preme loy­al­ties, it must not be for­mal­ized.

• result of religion › fosters sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness

99:4.4No mat­ter what up­heavals may at­tend the so­cial and eco­nomic growth of civ­i­liza­tion, re­li­gion is gen­uine and worth while if it fos­ters in the in­di­vid­ual an ex­pe­ri­ence in which the sov­er­eignty of truth, beauty, and good­ness pre­vails, for such is the true spir­i­tual con­cept of su­preme re­al­ity. And through love and wor­ship this be­comes mean­ing­ful as fel­low­ship with man and son­ship with God.

• explained › activation is superemotional

99:4.5Af­ter all, it is what one be­lieves rather than what one knows that de­ter­mines con­duct and dom­i­nates per­sonal per­for­mances. Purely fac­tual knowl­edge ex­erts very lit­tle in­flu­ence upon the av­er­age man un­less it be­comes emo­tion­ally ac­ti­vated. But the ac­ti­va­tion of re­li­gion is super­emo­tional, uni­fy­ing the en­tire hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on tran­scen­dent lev­els through con­tact with, and re­lease of, spir­i­tual en­er­gies in the mor­tal life.

• needed now as never before

99:4.6Dur­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cally un­set­tled times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, amid the eco­nomic up­heavals, the moral cross­cur­rents, and the so­ci­o­logic rip tides of the cy­clonic tran­si­tions of a sci­en­tific era, thou­sands upon thou­sands of men and women have be­come hu­manly dis­lo­cated; they are anx­ious, rest­less, fear­ful, un­cer­tain, and un­set­tled; as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory they need the con­so­la­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of sound re­li­gion. In the face of un­prece­dented sci­en­tific achieve­ment and me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ment there is spir­i­tual stag­na­tion and philo­sophic chaos.

• history of religion › has suffered from many secondary influences

99:4.7There is no dan­ger in re­li­gion’s be­com­ing more and more of a pri­vate mat­ter—a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—pro­vided it does not lose its mo­ti­va­tion for un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice. Re­li­gion has suf­fered from many sec­ondary in­flu­ences: sud­den mix­ing of cul­tures, in­ter­min­gling of creeds, diminu­tion of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, chang­ing of fam­ily life, to­gether with ur­ban­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion.

• types of religion › 3 modern contending philosophies of

99:4.9Tran­si­tion is al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by con­fu­sion, and there will be lit­tle tran­quil­lity in the re­li­gious world un­til the great strug­gle be­tween the three con­tend­ing philoso­phies of re­li­gion is ended:

99:4.101. The spiri­tis­tic be­lief (in a prov­i­den­tial De­ity) of many re­li­gions.

99:4.112. The hu­man­is­tic and ide­al­is­tic be­lief of many philoso­phies.

99:4.123. The mech­a­nis­tic and nat­u­ral­is­tic con­cep­tions of many sci­ences.

• explained › conserves, exalts, and spiritualizes morals and values
• explained › validated by personal experience

99:5.1While re­li­gion is ex­clu­sively a per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence—know­ing God as a Fa­ther—the corol­lary of this ex­pe­ri­ence—know­ing man as a brother—en­tails the ad­just­ment of the self to other selves, and that in­volves the so­cial or group as­pect of re­li­gious life. Re­li­gion is first an in­ner or per­sonal ad­just­ment, and then it be­comes a mat­ter of so­cial ser­vice or group ad­just­ment. The fact of man’s gre­gar­i­ous­ness per­force de­ter­mines that re­li­gious groups will come into ex­is­tence. What hap­pens to these re­li­gious groups de­pends very much on in­tel­li­gent lead­er­ship. In prim­i­tive so­ci­ety the re­li­gious group is not al­ways very dif­fer­ent from eco­nomic or po­lit­i­cal groups. Re­li­gion has al­ways been a con­ser­va­tor of morals and a sta­bi­lizer of so­ci­ety. And this is still true, not­with­stand­ing the con­trary teach­ing of many mod­ern so­cial­ists and hu­man­ists.

• defined as › knowing God as Father, yourself as son of God, and man as brother

99:5.2Al­ways keep in mind: True re­li­gion is to know God as your Fa­ther and man as your brother. Re­li­gion is not a slav­ish be­lief in threats of pun­ish­ment or mag­i­cal promises of fu­ture mys­ti­cal re­wards.

• most dynamic influence ever

99:5.3The re­li­gion of Je­sus is the most dy­namic in­flu­ence ever to ac­ti­vate the hu­man race. Je­sus shat­tered tra­di­tion, de­stroyed dogma, and called man­kind to the achieve­ment of its high­est ide­als in time and eter­nity—to be per­fect, even as the Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.

• little chance to function until religious group becomes separated from all other groups

99:5.4Re­li­gion has lit­tle chance to func­tion un­til the re­li­gious group be­comes sep­a­rated from all other groups—the so­cial as­so­ci­a­tion of the spir­i­tual mem­ber­ship of the king­dom of heaven.

• explained › validated by personal experience

99:5.7Just as cer­tainly as men share their re­li­gious be­liefs, they cre­ate a re­li­gious group of some sort which even­tu­ally cre­ates com­mon goals. Some­day re­li­gion­ists will get to­gether and ac­tu­ally ef­fect co-op­er­a­tion on the ba­sis of unity of ide­als and pur­poses rather than at­tempt­ing to do so on the ba­sis of psy­cho­log­i­cal opin­ions and the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify re­li­gion­ists. Since true re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that each in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist must have his own and per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of that spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Let the term “faith” stand for the in­di­vid­ual’s re­la­tion to God rather than for the creedal for­mu­la­tion of what some group of mor­tals have been able to agree upon as a com­mon re­li­gious at­ti­tude. “Have you faith? Then have it to your­self.”

• primitive religion › primitives danced out their r.

99:5.9Prim­i­tive man made lit­tle ef­fort to put his re­li­gious con­vic­tions into words. His re­li­gion was danced out rather than thought out. Mod­ern men have thought out many creeds and cre­ated many tests of re­li­gious faith. Fu­ture re­li­gion­ists must live out their re­li­gion, ded­i­cate them­selves to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man. It is high time that man had a re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence so per­sonal and so sub­lime that it could be re­al­ized and ex­pressed only by “feel­ings that lie too deep for words.”

• warnings › dangers of religion are › sectarianism

99:6.1Sec­tar­i­an­ism is a dis­ease of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion, and dog­ma­tism is an en­slave­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture. It is far bet­ter to have a re­li­gion with­out a church than a church with­out re­li­gion. The re­li­gious tur­moil of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury does not, in and of it­self, be­to­ken spir­i­tual deca­dence. Con­fu­sion goes be­fore growth as well as be­fore de­struc­tion.

• purposes of group activities

99:6.2There is a real pur­pose in the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion. It is the pur­pose of group re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties to dra­ma­tize the loy­al­ties of re­li­gion; to mag­nify the lures of truth, beauty, and good­ness; to fos­ter the at­trac­tions of su­preme val­ues; to en­hance the ser­vice of un­selfish fel­low­ship; to glo­rify the po­ten­tials of fam­ily life; to pro­mote re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion; to pro­vide wise coun­sel and spir­i­tual guid­ance; and to en­cour­age group wor­ship. And all live re­li­gions en­cour­age hu­man friend­ship, con­serve moral­ity, pro­mote neigh­bor­hood wel­fare, and fa­cil­i­tate the spread of the es­sen­tial gospel of their re­spec­tive mes­sages of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• institutional religion › gradually loses saving message
• warnings › dangers of religion are › accumulation of vested interests
• warnings › dangers of religion are › aristocratic chosen-people attitude
• warnings › dangers of religion are › evil discrimination of religious castes
• warnings › dangers of religion are › failure to make up-to-date interpretations
• warnings › dangers of religion are › false ideas of sacredness
• warnings › dangers of religion are › fixation of beliefs
• warnings › dangers of religion are › leaders becoming administrators instead of ministers
• warnings › dangers of religion are › oppressive ecclesiastical authority
• warnings › dangers of religion are › petrification of worship
• warnings › dangers of religion are › service of church rather than of God
• warnings › dangers of religion are › tendency to form competitive divisions
• warnings › dangers of religion are › tendency to standardize and fossilize truth
• warnings › dangers of religion are › tendency to venerate the past over present
• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:6.3But as re­li­gion be­comes in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized, its power for good is cur­tailed, while the pos­si­bil­i­ties for evil are greatly mul­ti­plied. The dan­gers of for­mal­ized re­li­gion are: fix­a­tion of be­liefs and crys­tal­liza­tion of sen­ti­ments; ac­cu­mu­la­tion of vested in­ter­ests with in­crease of sec­u­lar­iza­tion; ten­dency to stan­dard­ize and fos­silize truth; di­ver­sion of re­li­gion from the ser­vice of God to the ser­vice of the church; in­cli­na­tion of lead­ers to be­come ad­min­is­tra­tors in­stead of min­is­ters; ten­dency to form sects and com­pet­i­tive di­vi­sions; es­tab­lish­ment of op­pres­sive ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity; cre­ation of the aris­to­cratic “cho­sen-peo­ple” at­ti­tude; fos­ter­ing of false and ex­ag­ger­ated ideas of sa­cred­ness; the rou­tiniz­ing of re­li­gion and the pet­ri­fi­ca­tion of wor­ship; ten­dency to ven­er­ate the past while ig­nor­ing pres­ent de­mands; fail­ure to make up-to-date in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­li­gion; en­tan­gle­ment with func­tions of sec­u­lar in­sti­tu­tions; it cre­ates the evil dis­crim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious castes; it be­comes an in­tol­er­ant judge of or­tho­doxy; it fails to hold the in­ter­est of ad­ven­tur­ous youth and grad­u­ally loses the sav­ing mes­sage of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

99:7.1Though churches and all other re­li­gious groups should stand aloof from all sec­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, at the same time re­li­gion must do noth­ing to hin­der or re­tard the so­cial co-or­di­na­tion of hu­man in­sti­tu­tions. Life must con­tinue to grow in mean­ing­ful­ness; man must go on with his ref­or­ma­tion of phi­los­o­phy and his clar­i­fi­ca­tion of re­li­gion.

• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

99:7.2Po­lit­i­cal sci­ence must ef­fect the re­con­struc­tion of eco­nomics and in­dus­try by the tech­niques it learns from the so­cial sci­ences and by the in­sights and mo­tives sup­plied by re­li­gious liv­ing. In all so­cial re­con­struc­tion re­li­gion pro­vides a sta­bi­liz­ing loy­alty to a tran­scen­dent ob­ject, a steady­ing goal be­yond and above the im­me­di­ate and tem­po­ral ob­jec­tive. In the midst of the con­fu­sions of a rapidly chang­ing en­vi­ron­ment mor­tal man needs the sus­te­nance of a far-flung cos­mic per­spec­tive.

• result of religion › joins patience with passion, insight to zeal, sympathy with power, ideals with energy

99:7.3Re­li­gion in­spires man to live coura­geously and joy­fully on the face of the earth; it joins pa­tience with pas­sion, in­sight to zeal, sym­pa­thy with power, and ide­als with en­ergy.

• result of religion › transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power

100:0.1The ex­pe­ri­ence of dy­namic re­li­gious liv­ing trans­forms the mediocre in­di­vid­ual into a per­son­al­ity of ide­al­is­tic power. Re­li­gion min­is­ters to the prog­ress of all through fos­ter­ing the prog­ress of each in­di­vid­ual, and the prog­ress of each is aug­mented through the achieve­ment of all.

• result of religion › ennobles commonplace drudgery

100:0.2Spir­i­tual growth is mu­tu­ally stim­u­lated by in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with other re­li­gion­ists. Love sup­plies the soil for re­li­gious growth—an ob­jec­tive lure in the place of sub­jec­tive grat­i­fi­ca­tion—yet it yields the su­preme sub­jec­tive sat­is­fac­tion. And re­li­gion en­no­bles the com­mon­place drudgery of daily liv­ing.

• explained › cannot be bestowed, received, loaned, learned, or lost
• result of religion › grows in quest for final values

100:1.7Re­li­gion can­not be be­stowed, re­ceived, loaned, learned, or lost. It is a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which grows pro­por­tion­ally to the grow­ing quest for fi­nal val­ues. Cos­mic growth thus at­tends on the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mean­ings and the ever-ex­pand­ing el­e­va­tion of val­ues. But no­bil­ity it­self is al­ways an un­con­scious growth.

• defined as › wise spiritual reaction to universe

100:2.3Re­li­gion can pro­gress to that level of ex­pe­ri­ence whereon it be­comes an en­light­ened and wise tech­nique of spir­i­tual re­ac­tion to the uni­verse. Such a glo­ri­fied re­li­gion can func­tion on three lev­els of hu­man per­son­al­ity: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, and the spir­i­tual; upon the mind, in the evolv­ing soul, and with the in­dwelling spirit.

• defined as › impulse for organizing soul for service
• defined as › worship of God and service of man
• explained › pays any price essential
• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

100:3.1Re­li­gion is not a tech­nique for at­tain­ing a static and bliss­ful peace of mind; it is an im­pulse for or­ga­niz­ing the soul for dy­namic ser­vice. It is the en­list­ment of the to­tal­ity of self­hood in the loyal ser­vice of lov­ing God and serv­ing man. Re­li­gion pays any price es­sen­tial to the at­tain­ment of the su­preme goal, the eter­nal prize. There is a con­se­crated com­plete­ness in re­li­gious loy­alty which is su­perbly sub­lime. And these loy­al­ties are so­cially ef­fec­tive and spir­i­tu­ally pro­gres­sive.

• institutional religion › symbols of socialized religion are not to be despised as channels of growth

100:5.1The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the the­o­logic sense but lost in the di­rec­tional mean­ing, wan­der­ing about in con­fu­sion among the isms and cults of a frus­trated philo­sophic era. Too few have learned how to in­stall a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing in the place of re­li­gious au­thor­ity. (The sym­bols of so­cial­ized re­li­gion are not to be de­spised as chan­nels of growth, al­beit the river bed is not the river.)

• defined as › wholehearted devotion to supreme values

100:6.1Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions and rev­e­la­tory re­li­gions may dif­fer markedly in method, but in mo­tive there is great sim­i­lar­ity. Re­li­gion is not a spe­cific func­tion of life; rather is it a mode of liv­ing. True re­li­gion is a whole­hearted de­vo­tion to some re­al­ity which the re­li­gion­ist deems to be of su­preme value to him­self and for all man­kind. And the out­stand­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of all re­li­gions are: un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty and whole­hearted de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues. This re­li­gious de­vo­tion to su­preme val­ues is shown in the re­la­tion of the sup­pos­edly ir­re­li­gious mother to her child and in the fer­vent loy­alty of non­re­li­gion­ists to an es­poused cause.

100:6.2The ac­cepted su­preme value of the re­li­gion­ist may be base or even false, but it is nev­er­the­less re­li­gious. A re­li­gion is gen­uine to just the ex­tent that the value which is held to be su­preme is truly a cos­mic re­al­ity of gen­uine spir­i­tual worth.

100:6.3The marks of hu­man re­sponse to the re­li­gious im­pulse em­brace the qual­i­ties of no­bil­ity and grandeur. The sin­cere re­li­gion­ist is con­scious of uni­verse cit­i­zen­ship and is aware of mak­ing con­tact with sources of super­hu­man power. He is thrilled and en­er­gized with the as­sur­ance of be­long­ing to a su­pe­rior and en­no­bled fel­low­ship of the sons of God. The con­scious­ness of self-worth has be­come aug­mented by the stim­u­lus of the quest for the high­est uni­verse ob­jec­tives—su­preme goals.

100:6.4The self has sur­ren­dered to the in­trigu­ing drive of an all-en­com­pass­ing mo­ti­va­tion which im­poses height­ened self-dis­ci­pline, lessens emo­tional con­flict, and makes mor­tal life truly worth liv­ing. The mor­bid rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions is changed to the nat­u­ral con­scious­ness of mor­tal short­com­ings, as­so­ci­ated with moral de­ter­mi­na­tion and spir­i­tual as­pi­ra­tion to at­tain the high­est uni­verse and super­uni­verse goals. And this in­tense striv­ing for the at­tain­ment of super­mor­tal ide­als is al­ways char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing pa­tience, for­bear­ance, for­ti­tude, and tol­er­ance.

• defined as › living love, a life of service
• result of religion › should not destroy sense of humor

100:6.5But true re­li­gion is a liv­ing love, a life of ser­vice. The re­li­gion­ist’s de­tach­ment from much that is purely tem­po­ral and triv­ial never leads to so­cial iso­la­tion, and it should not de­stroy the sense of hu­mor. Gen­uine re­li­gion takes noth­ing away from hu­man ex­is­tence, but it does add new mean­ings to all of life; it gen­er­ates new types of en­thu­si­asm, zeal, and cour­age. It may even en­gen­der the spirit of the cru­sader, which is more than dan­ger­ous if not con­trolled by spir­i­tual in­sight and loyal de­vo­tion to the com­mon­place so­cial obli­ga­tions of hu­man loy­al­ties.

100:6.6One of the most amaz­ing ear­marks of re­li­gious liv­ing is that dy­namic and sub­lime peace, that peace which passes all hu­man un­der­stand­ing, that cos­mic poise which be­to­kens the ab­sence of all doubt and tur­moil. Such lev­els of spir­i­tual sta­bil­ity are im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment. Such re­li­gion­ists are like the Apos­tle Paul, who said: “I am per­suaded that nei­ther death, nor life, nor an­gels, nor prin­ci­pal­i­ties, nor pow­ers, nor things pres­ent, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any­thing else shall be able to sep­a­rate us from the love of God.”

100:6.7There is a sense of se­cu­rity, as­so­ci­ated with the re­al­iza­tion of tri­umph­ing glory, res­i­dent in the con­scious­ness of the re­li­gion­ist who has grasped the re­al­ity of the Su­preme, and who pur­sues the goal of the Ul­ti­mate.

100:6.8Even evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is all of this in loy­alty and grandeur be­cause it is a gen­uine ex­pe­ri­ence. But rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion is ex­cel­lent as well as gen­uine. The new loy­al­ties of en­larged spir­i­tual vi­sion cre­ate new lev­els of love and de­vo­tion, of ser­vice and fel­low­ship; and all this en­hanced so­cial out­look pro­duces an en­larged con­scious­ness of the Fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

100:6.9The char­ac­ter­is­tic dif­fer­ence be­tween evolved and re­vealed re­li­gion is a new qual­ity of di­vine wis­dom which is added to purely ex­pe­ri­en­tial hu­man wis­dom. But it is ex­pe­ri­ence in and with the hu­man re­li­gions that de­vel­ops the ca­pac­ity for sub­se­quent re­cep­tion of in­creased be­stowals of di­vine wis­dom and cos­mic in­sight.

100:7.1Al­though the av­er­age mor­tal of Uran­tia can­not hope to at­tain the high per­fec­tion of char­ac­ter which Je­sus of Naz­a­reth ac­quired while so­journ­ing in the flesh, it is al­to­gether pos­si­ble for ev­ery mor­tal be­liever to de­velop a strong and uni­fied per­son­al­ity along the per­fected lines of the Je­sus per­son­al­ity. The unique fea­ture of the Mas­ter’s per­son­al­ity was not so much its per­fec­tion as its sym­me­try, its ex­qui­site and bal­anced uni­fi­ca­tion. The most ef­fec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of Je­sus con­sists in fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of the one who said, as he ges­tured to­ward the Mas­ter stand­ing be­fore his ac­cusers, “Be­hold the man!”

100:7.2The un­fail­ing kind­ness of Je­sus touched the hearts of men, but his stal­wart strength of char­ac­ter amazed his fol­low­ers. He was truly sin­cere; there was noth­ing of the hyp­ocrite in him. He was free from af­fec­ta­tion; he was al­ways so re­fresh­ingly gen­uine. He never stooped to pre­tense, and he never re­sorted to sham­ming. He lived the truth, even as he taught it. He was the truth. He was con­strained to pro­claim sav­ing truth to his gen­er­a­tion, even though such sin­cer­ity some­times caused pain. He was un­ques­tion­ingly loyal to all truth.

100:7.3But the Mas­ter was so rea­son­able, so ap­proach­able. He was so prac­ti­cal in all his min­istry, while all his plans were char­ac­ter­ized by such sanc­ti­fied com­mon sense. He was so free from all freak­ish, er­ratic, and ec­cen­tric ten­den­cies. He was never capri­cious, whim­si­cal, or hys­ter­i­cal. In all his teach­ing and in ev­ery­thing he did there was al­ways an ex­qui­site dis­crim­i­na­tion as­so­ci­ated with an ex­traor­di­nary sense of pro­pri­ety.

100:7.4The Son of Man was al­ways a well-poised per­son­al­ity. Even his en­e­mies main­tained a whole­some re­spect for him; they even feared his pres­ence. Je­sus was un­afraid. He was sur­charged with di­vine en­thu­si­asm, but he never be­came fa­nat­i­cal. He was emo­tion­ally ac­tive but never flighty. He was imag­i­na­tive but al­ways prac­ti­cal. He frankly faced the re­al­i­ties of life, but he was never dull or pro­saic. He was coura­geous but never reck­less; pru­dent but never cow­ardly. He was sym­pa­thetic but not sen­ti­men­tal; unique but not ec­cen­tric. He was pi­ous but not sanc­ti­mo­nious. And he was so well-poised be­cause he was so per­fectly uni­fied.

100:7.5Je­sus’ orig­i­nal­ity was un­sti­fled. He was not bound by tra­di­tion or hand­i­capped by en­slave­ment to nar­row con­ven­tion­al­ity. He spoke with un­doubted con­fi­dence and taught with ab­so­lute au­thor­ity. But his su­perb orig­i­nal­ity did not cause him to over­look the gems of truth in the teach­ings of his pre­de­ces­sors and con­tem­po­raries. And the most orig­i­nal of his teach­ings was the em­pha­sis of love and mercy in the place of fear and sac­ri­fice.

100:7.6Je­sus was very broad in his out­look. He ex­horted his fol­low­ers to preach the gospel to all peo­ples. He was free from all nar­row-mind­ed­ness. His sym­pa­thetic heart em­braced all man­kind, even a uni­verse. Al­ways his in­vi­ta­tion was, “Whoso­ever will, let him come.”

100:7.7Of Je­sus it was truly said, “He trusted God.” As a man among men he most sub­limely trusted the Fa­ther in heaven. He trusted his Fa­ther as a lit­tle child trusts his earthly par­ent. His faith was per­fect but never pre­sump­tu­ous. No mat­ter how cruel na­ture might ap­pear to be or how in­dif­fer­ent to man’s wel­fare on earth, Je­sus never fal­tered in his faith. He was im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment and im­per­vi­ous to per­se­cu­tion. He was un­touched by ap­par­ent fail­ure.

100:7.8He loved men as broth­ers, at the same time rec­og­niz­ing how they dif­fered in in­nate en­dow­ments and ac­quired qual­i­ties. “He went about do­ing good.”

100:7.9Je­sus was an un­usu­ally cheer­ful per­son, but he was not a blind and un­rea­son­ing op­ti­mist. His con­stant word of ex­hor­ta­tion was, “Be of good cheer.” He could main­tain this con­fi­dent at­ti­tude be­cause of his unswerv­ing trust in God and his un­shak­able con­fi­dence in man. He was al­ways touch­ingly con­sid­er­ate of all men be­cause he loved them and be­lieved in them. Still he was al­ways true to his con­vic­tions and mag­nif­i­cently firm in his de­vo­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will.

100:7.10The Mas­ter was al­ways gen­er­ous. He never grew weary of say­ing, “It is more blessed to give than to re­ceive.” Said he, “Freely you have re­ceived, freely give.” And yet, with all of his un­bounded gen­eros­ity, he was never waste­ful or ex­trav­a­gant. He taught that you must be­lieve to re­ceive sal­va­tion. “For ev­ery one who seeks shall re­ceive.”

100:7.11He was can­did, but al­ways kind. Said he, “If it were not so, I would have told you.” He was frank, but al­ways friendly. He was out­spo­ken in his love for the sin­ner and in his ha­tred for sin. But through­out all this amaz­ing frank­ness he was unerringly fair.

100:7.12Je­sus was con­sis­tently cheer­ful, not­with­stand­ing he some­times drank deeply of the cup of hu­man sor­row. He fear­lessly faced the re­al­i­ties of ex­is­tence, yet was he filled with en­thu­si­asm for the gospel of the king­dom. But he con­trolled his en­thu­si­asm; it never con­trolled him. He was un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to “the Fa­ther’s busi­ness.” This di­vine en­thu­si­asm led his un­spir­i­tual breth­ren to think he was be­side him­self, but the on­look­ing uni­verse ap­praised him as the model of san­ity and the pat­tern of su­preme mor­tal de­vo­tion to the high stan­dards of spir­i­tual liv­ing. And his con­trolled en­thu­si­asm was con­ta­gious; his as­so­ciates were con­strained to share his di­vine op­ti­mism.

100:7.13This man of Gal­i­lee was not a man of sor­rows; he was a soul of glad­ness. Al­ways was he say­ing, “Re­joice and be ex­ceed­ingly glad.” But when duty re­quired, he was will­ing to walk coura­geously through the “val­ley of the shadow of death.” He was glad­some but at the same time hum­ble.

100:7.14His cour­age was equaled only by his pa­tience. When pressed to act pre­ma­turely, he would only re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.” He was never in a hurry; his com­po­sure was sub­lime. But he was of­ten in­dig­nant at evil, in­tol­er­ant of sin. He was of­ten might­ily moved to re­sist that which was in­im­i­cal to the wel­fare of his chil­dren on earth. But his in­dig­na­tion against sin never led to anger at the sin­ner.

100:7.15His cour­age was mag­nif­i­cent, but he was never fool­hardy. His watch­word was, “Fear not.” His brav­ery was lofty and his cour­age of­ten heroic. But his cour­age was linked with dis­cre­tion and con­trolled by rea­son. It was cour­age born of faith, not the reck­less­ness of blind pre­sump­tion. He was truly brave but never au­da­cious.

100:7.16The Mas­ter was a pat­tern of rev­er­ence. The prayer of even his youth be­gan, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven, hal­lowed be your name.” He was even re­spect­ful of the faulty wor­ship of his fel­lows. But this did not de­ter him from mak­ing at­tacks on re­li­gious tra­di­tions or as­sault­ing er­rors of hu­man be­lief. He was rev­er­en­tial of true ho­li­ness, and yet he could justly ap­peal to his fel­lows, say­ing, “Who among you con­victs me of sin?”

100:7.17Je­sus was great be­cause he was good, and yet he frat­er­nized with the lit­tle chil­dren. He was gen­tle and unas­sum­ing in his per­sonal life, and yet he was the per­fected man of a uni­verse. His as­so­ciates called him Mas­ter un­bid­den.

100:7.18Je­sus was the per­fectly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity. And to­day, as in Gal­i­lee, he con­tin­ues to unify mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence and to co-or­di­nate hu­man en­deav­ors. He uni­fies life, en­no­bles char­ac­ter, and sim­pli­fies ex­pe­ri­ence. He en­ters the hu­man mind to el­e­vate, trans­form, and trans­fig­ure it. It is lit­er­ally true: “If any man has Christ Je­sus within him, he is a new crea­ture; old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

100:7.19[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]

• defined as › faith, hope, love, assurance, mercy
• explained › certitude of r. springs from foundations of entire personality
• explained › lives and prospers by faith and insight, not sight and feelings
• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

101:0.3Re­li­gion, the con­vic­tion-faith of the per­son­al­ity, can al­ways tri­umph over the su­per­fi­cially con­tra­dic­tory logic of de­spair born in the un­be­liev­ing ma­te­rial mind. There re­ally is a true and gen­uine in­ner voice, that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.” And this spirit lead­ing is dis­tinct from the eth­i­cal prompt­ing of hu­man con­science. The feel­ing of re­li­gious as­sur­ance is more than an emo­tional feel­ing. The as­sur­ance of re­li­gion tran­scends the rea­son of the mind, even the logic of phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion is faith, trust, and as­sur­ance.

• defined as › experiencing of divinity
• explained › not the product of reason, but reasonable

101:1.1True re­li­gion is not a sys­tem of philo­sophic be­lief which can be rea­soned out and sub­stan­ti­ated by nat­u­ral proofs, nei­ther is it a fan­tas­tic and mys­tic ex­pe­ri­ence of in­de­scrib­able feel­ings of ec­stasy which can be en­joyed only by the ro­man­tic devo­tees of mys­ti­cism. Re­li­gion is not the prod­uct of rea­son, but viewed from within, it is al­to­gether rea­son­able. Re­li­gion is not de­rived from the logic of hu­man phi­los­o­phy, but as a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence it is al­to­gether log­i­cal. Re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of di­vin­ity in the con­scious­ness of a moral be­ing of evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin; it rep­re­sents true ex­pe­ri­ence with eter­nal re­al­i­ties in time, the re­al­iza­tion of spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions while yet in the flesh.

101:1.2The Thought Ad­juster has no spe­cial mech­a­nism through which to gain self-ex­pres­sion; there is no mys­tic re­li­gious fac­ulty for the re­cep­tion or ex­pres­sion of re­li­gious emo­tions. These ex­pe­ri­ences are made avail­able through the nat­u­rally or­dained mech­a­nism of mor­tal mind. And therein lies one ex­pla­na­tion of the Ad­juster’s dif­fi­culty in en­gag­ing in di­rect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the ma­te­rial mind of its con­stant in­dwelling.

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

• defined as › discovery of spiritual meanings to well-known facts
• defined as › spiritual communion with spirit influences resident within human mind
• explained › lives and prospers by faith and insight, not sight and feelings

101:1.4Re­li­gion lives and pros­pers, then, not by sight and feel­ing, but rather by faith and in­sight. It con­sists not in the dis­cov­ery of new facts or in the find­ing of a unique ex­pe­ri­ence, but rather in the dis­cov­ery of new and spir­i­tual mean­ings in facts al­ready well known to man­kind. The high­est re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is not de­pen­dent on prior acts of be­lief, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity; nei­ther is re­li­gion the off­spring of sub­lime feel­ings and purely mys­ti­cal emo­tions. It is, rather, a pro­foundly deep and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with the spirit in­flu­ences res­i­dent within the hu­man mind, and as far as such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­fin­able in terms of psy­chol­ogy, it is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the re­al­ity of be­liev­ing in God as the re­al­ity of such a purely per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.

• explained › always indefinable in terms of reason and logic

101:1.5While re­li­gion is not the prod­uct of the ra­tio­nal­is­tic spec­u­la­tions of a ma­te­rial cos­mol­ogy, it is, nonethe­less, the cre­ation of a wholly ra­tio­nal in­sight which orig­i­nates in man’s mind-ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion is born nei­ther of mys­tic med­i­ta­tions nor of iso­lated con­tem­pla­tions, al­beit it is ever more or less mys­te­ri­ous and al­ways in­de­fin­able and in­ex­pli­ca­ble in terms of purely in­tel­lec­tual rea­son and philo­sophic logic. The germs of true re­li­gion orig­i­nate in the do­main of man’s moral con­scious­ness, and they are re­vealed in the growth of man’s spir­i­tual in­sight, that fac­ulty of hu­man per­son­al­ity which ac­crues as a con­se­quence of the pres­ence of the God-re­veal­ing Thought Ad­juster in the God-hun­gry mor­tal mind.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › faith, discrimination of values, and sense of duty are ancestry of
• result of religion › certain consciousness of God, assurance of survival

101:1.6Faith unites moral in­sight with con­sci­en­tious dis­crim­i­na­tions of val­ues, and the pre-ex­is­tent evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty com­pletes the an­ces­try of true re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion even­tu­ally re­sults in the cer­tain con­scious­ness of God and in the un­doubted as­sur­ance of the sur­vival of the be­liev­ing per­son­al­ity.

101:1.7Thus it may be seen that re­li­gious long­ings and spir­i­tual urges are not of such a na­ture as would merely lead men to want to be­lieve in God, but rather are they of such na­ture and power that men are pro­foundly im­pressed with the con­vic­tion that they ought to be­lieve in God. The sense of evo­lu­tion­ary duty and the obli­ga­tions con­se­quent upon the il­lu­mi­na­tion of rev­e­la­tion make such a pro­found im­pres­sion upon man’s moral na­ture that he fi­nally reaches that po­si­tion of mind and that at­ti­tude of soul where he con­cludes that he has no right not to be­lieve in God. The higher and super­phil­o­sophic wis­dom of such en­light­ened and dis­ci­plined in­di­vid­u­als ul­ti­mately in­structs them that to doubt God or dis­trust his good­ness would be to prove un­true to the realest and deep­est thing within the hu­man mind and soul—the di­vine Ad­juster.

• result of religion › yields happiness

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.

• defined as › faith-child of moral consciousness
• defined as › insight into reality

101:2.13True re­li­gion is an in­sight into re­al­ity, the faith-child of the moral con­scious­ness, and not a mere in­tel­lec­tual as­sent to any body of dog­matic doc­trines. True re­li­gion con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence that “the Spirit it­self bears wit­ness with our spirit that we are the chil­dren of God.” Re­li­gion con­sists not in the­o­logic propo­si­tions but in spir­i­tual in­sight and the sub­lim­ity of the soul’s trust.

• defined as › faith recognition of urge to divine attainment

101:2.14Your deep­est na­ture—the di­vine Ad­juster—cre­ates within you a hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, a cer­tain crav­ing for di­vine per­fec­tion. Re­li­gion is the faith act of the rec­og­ni­tion of this in­ner urge to di­vine at­tain­ment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and as­sur­ance of which you be­come con­scious as the way of sal­va­tion, the tech­nique of the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity and all those val­ues which you have come to look upon as be­ing true and good.

• explained › not dependent on learning or clever logic
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › many virtually unlettered

101:2.15The re­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion never has been, and never will be, de­pen­dent on great learn­ing or clever logic. It is spir­i­tual in­sight, and that is just the rea­son why some of the world’s great­est re­li­gious teach­ers, even the proph­ets, have some­times pos­sessed so lit­tle of the wis­dom of the world. Re­li­gious faith is avail­able alike to the learned and the un­learned.

• explained › can never be understood from outside

101:2.16Re­li­gion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be ob­served, much less un­der­stood, from the out­side. Your only as­sur­ance of a per­sonal God con­sists in your own in­sight as to your be­lief in, and ex­pe­ri­ence with, things spir­i­tual. To all of your fel­lows who have had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence, no ar­gu­ment about the per­son­al­ity or re­al­ity of God is nec­es­sary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no pos­si­ble ar­gu­ment could ever be truly con­vinc­ing.

• explained › not dependent on learning or clever logic
• explained › persists in absence of learning

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.

• explained › judge by its fruits, its inherent and divine excellence

101:4.4In the last anal­y­sis, re­li­gion is to be judged by its fruits, ac­cord­ing to the man­ner and the ex­tent to which it ex­hibits its own in­her­ent and di­vine ex­cel­lence.

• defined as › wholehearted devotion to supreme values

101:5.2Sci­ence deals with facts; re­li­gion is con­cerned only with val­ues. Through en­light­ened phi­los­o­phy the mind en­deav­ors to unite the mean­ings of both facts and val­ues, thereby ar­riv­ing at a con­cept of com­plete re­al­ity. Re­mem­ber that sci­ence is the do­main of knowl­edge, phi­los­o­phy the realm of wis­dom, and re­li­gion the sphere of the faith ex­pe­ri­ence. But re­li­gion, nonethe­less, pre­sents two phases of man­i­fes­ta­tion:

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › mind derivative; concerned with ethics, morals, duty

101:5.31. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of prim­i­tive wor­ship, the re­li­gion which is a mind deriva­tive.

• warnings › feeling and emotion are not r.

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.

• institutional religion › concerned with ethics and morals, sense of duty
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › mind derivative; concerned with ethics, morals, duty
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › outworking of adjutant mind-spirits
• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › slowly grew from innate worship urge and misconception of chance

101:5.10Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the out­work­ing of the en­dow­ment of the lo­cal uni­verse mind ad­ju­tant charged with the cre­ation and fos­ter­ing of the wor­ship trait in evolv­ing man. Such prim­i­tive re­li­gions are di­rectly con­cerned with ethics and morals, the sense of hu­man duty. Such re­li­gions are pred­i­cated on the as­sur­ance of con­science and re­sult in the sta­bi­liza­tion of rel­a­tively eth­i­cal civ­i­liza­tions.

• explained › rests wholly on faith and the confirmation of conscience

101:5.12Evolved re­li­gion rests wholly on faith. Rev­e­la­tion has the ad­di­tional as­sur­ance of its ex­panded pre­sen­ta­tion of the truths of di­vin­ity and re­al­ity and the still more valu­able tes­ti­mony of the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence which ac­cu­mu­lates in con­se­quence of the prac­ti­cal work­ing union of the faith of evo­lu­tion and the truth of rev­e­la­tion. Such a work­ing union of hu­man faith and di­vine truth con­sti­tutes the pos­ses­sion of a char­ac­ter well on the road to the ac­tual ac­quire­ment of a mor­ontial per­son­al­ity.

• morontia r. relates to experience of survival; firmer grasp of mota

101:5.13Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion pro­vides only the as­sur­ance of faith and the con­fir­ma­tion of con­science; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion pro­vides the as­sur­ance of faith plus the truth of a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. The third step in re­li­gion, or the third phase of the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion, has to do with the mor­ontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. In­creas­ingly in the mor­ontia pro­gres­sion the truths of re­vealed re­li­gion are ex­panded; more and more you will know the truth of su­preme val­ues, di­vine good­nesses, uni­ver­sal re­la­tion­ships, eter­nal re­al­i­ties, and ul­ti­mate des­tinies.

• morontia r. relates to experience of survival; firmer grasp of mota

101:6.1The mor­ontia phase of re­vealed re­li­gion has to do with the ex­pe­ri­ence of sur­vival, and its great urge is the at­tain­ment of spirit per­fec­tion. There also is pres­ent the higher urge of wor­ship, as­so­ci­ated with an im­pelling call to in­creased eth­i­cal ser­vice. Mor­ontia in­sight en­tails an ever-ex­pand­ing con­scious­ness of the Sev­en­fold, the Su­preme, and even the Ul­ti­mate.

101:7.1An idea is only a the­o­ret­i­cal plan for ac­tion, while a pos­i­tive de­ci­sion is a val­i­dated plan of ac­tion. A stereo­type is a plan of ac­tion ac­cepted with­out val­i­da­tion. The ma­te­ri­als out of which to build a per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion are de­rived from both the in­ner and the en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual. The so­cial sta­tus, eco­nomic con­di­tions, ed­u­ca­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties, moral trends, in­sti­tu­tional in­flu­ences, po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ments, racial ten­den­cies, and the re­li­gious teach­ings of one’s time and place all be­come fac­tors in the for­mu­la­tion of a per­sonal phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion. Even the in­her­ent tem­per­a­ment and in­tel­lec­tual bent markedly de­ter­mine the pat­tern of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy. Vo­ca­tion, mar­riage, and kin­dred all in­flu­ence the evo­lu­tion of one’s per­sonal stan­dards of life.

101:7.2A phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion evolves out of a ba­sic growth of ideas plus ex­per­i­men­tal liv­ing as both are mod­i­fied by the ten­dency to im­i­tate as­so­ciates. The sound­ness of philo­sophic con­clu­sions de­pends on keen, hon­est, and dis­crim­i­nat­ing think­ing in con­nec­tion with sen­si­tiv­ity to mean­ings and ac­cu­racy of eval­u­a­tion. Moral cow­ards never achieve high planes of philo­sophic think­ing; it re­quires cour­age to in­vade new lev­els of ex­pe­ri­ence and to at­tempt the ex­plo­ration of un­known realms of in­tel­lec­tual liv­ing.

101:7.3Pres­ently new sys­tems of val­ues come into ex­is­tence; new for­mu­la­tions of prin­ci­ples and stan­dards are achieved; habits and ide­als are re­shaped; some idea of a per­sonal God is at­tained, fol­lowed by en­larg­ing con­cepts of re­la­tion­ship thereto.

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.

101:7.5The acid test for any re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy con­sists in whether or not it dis­tin­guishes be­tween the re­al­i­ties of the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual worlds while at the same mo­ment rec­og­niz­ing their uni­fi­ca­tion in in­tel­lec­tual striv­ing and in so­cial serv­ing. A sound re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy does not con­found the things of God with the things of Cae­sar. Nei­ther does it rec­og­nize the aes­thetic cult of pure won­der as a sub­sti­tute for re­li­gion.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › fairy tale of conscience

101:7.6Phi­los­o­phy trans­forms that prim­i­tive re­li­gion which was largely a fairy tale of con­science into a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the as­cend­ing val­ues of cos­mic re­al­ity.

• warnings › false when it denies realities or confers assumed knowledge

101:8.3Faith has fal­si­fied its trust when it pre­sumes to deny re­al­i­ties and to con­fer upon its devo­tees as­sumed knowl­edge. Faith is a traitor when it fos­ters be­trayal of in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity and be­lit­tles loy­alty to su­preme val­ues and di­vine ide­als. Faith never shuns the prob­lem-solv­ing duty of mor­tal liv­ing. Liv­ing faith does not fos­ter big­otry, per­se­cu­tion, or in­tol­er­ance.

• institutional religion › revelation recognizes duty demands of

101:9.1No pro­fessed rev­e­la­tion of re­li­gion could be re­garded as au­then­tic if it failed to rec­og­nize the duty de­mands of eth­i­cal obli­ga­tion which had been cre­ated and fos­tered by pre­ced­ing evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion. Rev­e­la­tion un­fail­ingly en­larges the eth­i­cal hori­zon of evolved re­li­gion while it si­mul­ta­ne­ously and un­fail­ingly ex­pands the moral obli­ga­tions of all prior rev­e­la­tions.

• defined as › loyalty to highest dictates of spiritual consciousness

101:9.3True re­li­gion is that sub­lime and pro­found con­vic­tion within the soul which com­pellingly ad­mon­ishes man that it would be wrong for him not to be­lieve in those mor­ontial re­al­i­ties which con­sti­tute his high­est eth­i­cal and moral con­cepts, his high­est in­ter­pre­ta­tion of life’s great­est val­ues and the uni­verse’s deep­est re­al­i­ties. And such a re­li­gion is sim­ply the ex­pe­ri­ence of yield­ing in­tel­lec­tual loy­alty to the high­est dic­tates of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness.

• explained › judge by its fruits, its inherent and divine excellence

101:9.6Though rec­og­niz­ing that re­li­gion is im­per­fect, there are at least two prac­ti­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of its na­ture and func­tion:

101:9.71. The spir­i­tual urge and philo­sophic pres­sure of re­li­gion tend to cause man to project his es­ti­ma­tion of moral val­ues di­rectly out­ward into the af­fairs of his fel­lows—the eth­i­cal re­ac­tion of re­li­gion.

• defined as › confidence in reality

101:9.82. Re­li­gion cre­ates for the hu­man mind a spir­i­tu­al­ized con­scious­ness of di­vine re­al­ity based on, and by faith de­rived from, an­te­ced­ent con­cepts of moral val­ues and co-or­di­nated with super­im­posed con­cepts of spir­i­tual val­ues. Re­li­gion thereby be­comes a cen­sor of mor­tal af­fairs, a form of glo­ri­fied moral trust and con­fi­dence in re­al­ity, the en­hanced re­al­i­ties of time and the more en­dur­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nity.

• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

101:10.5The pur­pose of re­li­gion is not to sat­isfy cu­rios­ity about God but rather to af­ford in­tel­lec­tual con­stancy and philo­sophic se­cu­rity, to sta­bi­lize and en­rich hu­man liv­ing by blend­ing the mor­tal with the di­vine, the par­tial with the per­fect, man and God. It is through re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence that man’s con­cepts of ide­al­ity are en­dowed with re­al­ity.

• result of religion › cures man’s isolation, soul hunger, moral despair

101:10.7Re­li­gion ef­fec­tu­ally cures man’s sense of ide­al­is­tic iso­la­tion or spir­i­tual lone­li­ness; it en­fran­chises the be­liever as a son of God, a cit­i­zen of a new and mean­ing­ful uni­verse. Re­li­gion as­sures man that, in fol­low­ing the gleam of righ­teous­ness dis­cern­i­ble in his soul, he is thereby iden­ti­fy­ing him­self with the plan of the In­fi­nite and the pur­pose of the Eter­nal. Such a lib­er­ated soul im­me­di­ately be­gins to feel at home in this new uni­verse, his uni­verse.

• result of religion › the more r. one has, the more certain one is

102:1.3Ow­ing to the iso­la­tion of re­bel­lion, the rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia has all too of­ten been mixed up with the state­ments of par­tial and tran­sient cos­molo­gies. Truth re­mains un­changed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but the as­so­ci­ated teach­ings about the phys­i­cal world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eter­nal truth should not be slighted be­cause it chances to be found in com­pany with ob­so­lete ideas re­gard­ing the ma­te­rial world. The more of sci­ence you know, the less sure you can be; the more of re­li­gion you have, the more cer­tain you are.

• explained › certitude of r. springs from foundations of entire personality

102:1.4The cer­tain­ties of sci­ence pro­ceed en­tirely from the in­tel­lect; the cer­ti­tudes of re­li­gion spring from the very foun­da­tions of the en­tire per­son­al­ity. Sci­ence ap­peals to the un­der­stand­ing of the mind; re­li­gion ap­peals to the loy­alty and de­vo­tion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole per­son­al­ity.

• explained › judge by its fruits, its inherent and divine excellence
• explained › not dependent on learning or clever logic

102:2.1Ob­serv­ing minds and dis­crim­i­nat­ing souls know re­li­gion when they find it in the lives of their fel­lows. Re­li­gion re­quires no def­i­ni­tion; we all know its so­cial, in­tel­lec­tual, moral, and spir­i­tual fruits. And this all grows out of the fact that re­li­gion is the prop­erty of the hu­man race; it is not a child of cul­ture. True, one’s per­cep­tion of re­li­gion is still hu­man and there­fore sub­ject to the bond­age of ig­no­rance, the slav­ery of su­per­sti­tion, the de­cep­tions of so­phis­ti­ca­tion, and the delu­sions of false phi­los­o­phy.

• explained › compellingly authoritative when true, undefiled
• explained › poised spirit of expression, without self-assertion or egoistic exaltation

102:2.2One of the char­ac­ter­is­tic pe­cu­liar­i­ties of gen­uine re­li­gious as­sur­ance is that, not­with­stand­ing the ab­so­lute­ness of its af­fir­ma­tions and the stanch­ness of its at­ti­tude, the spirit of its ex­pres­sion is so poised and tem­pered that it never con­veys the slight­est im­pres­sion of self-as­ser­tion or ego­is­tic ex­al­ta­tion. The wis­dom of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing of a para­dox in that it is both hu­manly orig­i­nal and Ad­juster deriva­tive. Re­li­gious force is not the prod­uct of the in­di­vid­ual’s per­sonal pre­rog­a­tives but rather the out­work­ing of that sub­lime part­ner­ship of man and the ev­er­last­ing source of all wis­dom. Thus do the words and acts of true and un­de­filed re­li­gion be­come com­pellingly au­thor­i­ta­tive for all en­light­ened mor­tals.

• explained › endowments of r. immediately available

102:2.4Time is an in­vari­able el­e­ment in the at­tain­ment of knowl­edge; re­li­gion makes its en­dow­ments im­me­di­ately avail­able, al­beit there is the im­por­tant fac­tor of growth in grace, def­i­nite ad­vance­ment in all phases of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Knowl­edge is an eter­nal quest; al­ways are you learn­ing, but never are you able to ar­rive at the full knowl­edge of ab­so­lute truth. In knowl­edge alone there can never be ab­so­lute cer­tainty, only in­creas­ing prob­a­bil­ity of ap­prox­i­ma­tion; but the re­li­gious soul of spir­i­tual il­lu­mi­na­tion knows, and knows now. And yet this pro­found and pos­i­tive cer­ti­tude does not lead such a sound-minded re­li­gion­ist to take any less in­ter­est in the ups and downs of the prog­ress of hu­man wis­dom, which is bound up on its ma­te­rial end with the de­vel­op­ments of slow-mov­ing sci­ence.

• explained › must act; no r. apart from a highly active personality
• institutional religion › spiritually indolent souls crave ancient and authoritative r.

102:2.7Evo­lu­tion­ary man does not nat­u­rally rel­ish hard work. To keep pace in his life ex­pe­ri­ence with the im­pelling de­mands and the com­pelling urges of a grow­ing re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence means in­ces­sant ac­tiv­ity in spir­i­tual growth, in­tel­lec­tual ex­pan­sion, fac­tual en­large­ment, and so­cial ser­vice. There is no real re­li­gion apart from a highly ac­tive per­son­al­ity. There­fore do the more in­do­lent of men of­ten seek to es­cape the rig­ors of truly re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties by a species of in­ge­nious self-de­cep­tion through re­sort­ing to a re­treat to the false shel­ter of stereo­typed re­li­gious doc­trines and dog­mas. But true re­li­gion is alive. In­tel­lec­tual crys­tal­liza­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts is the equiv­a­lent of spir­i­tual death. You can­not con­ceive of re­li­gion with­out ideas, but when re­li­gion once be­comes re­duced only to an idea, it is no longer re­li­gion; it has be­come merely a species of hu­man phi­los­o­phy.

• result of religion › prepares man bravely to face vicissitudes of life

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

• explained › often acts unwisely, but it acts

102:2.9We are not blind to the fact that re­li­gion of­ten acts un­wisely, even ir­re­li­giously, but it acts. Aber­ra­tions of re­li­gious con­vic­tion have led to bloody per­se­cu­tions, but al­ways and ever re­li­gion does some­thing; it is dy­namic!

• intellectual deficiency handicaps higher attainment; intellectual overdevelopment sometimes embarrassing

102:3.1In­tel­lec­tual de­fi­ciency or ed­u­ca­tional pov­erty un­avoid­ably hand­i­caps higher re­li­gious at­tain­ment be­cause such an im­pov­er­ished en­vi­ron­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture robs re­li­gion of its chief chan­nel of philo­sophic con­tact with the world of sci­en­tific knowl­edge. The in­tel­lec­tual fac­tors of re­li­gion are im­por­tant, but their overde­vel­op­ment is like­wise some­times very hand­i­cap­ping and em­bar­rass­ing. Re­li­gion must con­tin­u­ally la­bor un­der a para­dox­i­cal ne­ces­sity: the ne­ces­sity of mak­ing ef­fec­tive use of thought while at the same time dis­count­ing the spir­i­tual ser­vice­able­ness of all think­ing.

• defined as › adjustment to the mysterious, and to paradoxes
• explained › should stand in contrast with temporal world

102:3.2Re­li­gious spec­u­la­tion is in­ev­i­ta­ble but al­ways detri­men­tal; spec­u­la­tion in­vari­ably fal­si­fies its ob­ject. Spec­u­la­tion tends to trans­late re­li­gion into some­thing ma­te­rial or hu­man­is­tic, and thus, while di­rectly in­ter­fer­ing with the clar­ity of log­i­cal thought, it in­di­rectly causes re­li­gion to ap­pear as a func­tion of the tem­po­ral world, the very world with which it should ev­er­last­ingly stand in con­trast. There­fore will re­li­gion al­ways be char­ac­ter­ized by para­doxes, the para­doxes re­sult­ing from the ab­sence of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial con­nec­tion be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual lev­els of the uni­verse—mor­ontia mota, the super­phil­o­sophic sen­si­tiv­ity for truth dis­cern­ment and unity per­cep­tion.

• defined as › hunger quest for divine reality and spiritual values
• defined as › living love, a life of service

102:3.4Re­li­gious de­sire is the hunger quest for di­vine re­al­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of the con­scious­ness of hav­ing found God. And when a hu­man be­ing does find God, there is ex­pe­ri­enced within the soul of that be­ing such an in­de­scrib­able rest­less­ness of tri­umph in dis­cov­ery that he is im­pelled to seek lov­ing ser­vice-con­tact with his less il­lu­mi­nated fel­lows, not to dis­close that he has found God, but rather to al­low the over­flow of the welling-up of eter­nal good­ness within his own soul to re­fresh and en­no­ble his fel­lows. Real re­li­gion leads to in­creased so­cial ser­vice.

• result of religion › leads to value 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.

• explained › leads to serving men, creates ethics and altruism

102:3.6Knowl­edge leads to plac­ing men, to orig­i­nat­ing so­cial strata and castes. Re­li­gion leads to serv­ing men, thus cre­at­ing ethics and al­tru­ism. Wis­dom leads to the higher and bet­ter fel­low­ship of both ideas and one’s fel­lows. Rev­e­la­tion lib­er­ates men and starts them out on the eter­nal ad­ven­ture.

• defined as › loving God
• defined as › unqualified dependence upon love of Father

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.

• primitive religion › tends to make God manlike

102:3.14In evo­lu­tion, re­li­gion of­ten leads to man’s cre­at­ing his con­cepts of God; rev­e­la­tion ex­hibits the phe­nom­e­non of God’s evolv­ing man him­self, while in the earth life of Christ Mi­chael we be­hold the phe­nom­e­non of God’s re­veal­ing him­self to man. Evo­lu­tion tends to make God man­like; rev­e­la­tion tends to make man God­like.

• warnings › error in r. proportional to materialism

102:4.4The el­e­ment of er­ror pres­ent in hu­man re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the con­tent of ma­te­ri­al­ism which con­tam­i­nates the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Man’s pre­spirit pro­gres­sion in the uni­verse con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence of di­vest­ing him­self of these er­ro­neous ideas of the na­ture of God and of the re­al­ity of pure and true spirit. De­ity is more than spirit, but the spir­i­tual ap­proach is the only one pos­si­ble to as­cend­ing man.

• explained › conserves, exalts, and spiritualizes morals and values
• explained › is to morality as love is to duty
• institutional religion › status best judged by moral and ethical standards

102:5.3You can psy­chol­o­gize evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion but not the per­sonal-ex­pe­ri­ence re­li­gion of spir­i­tual ori­gin. Hu­man moral­ity may rec­og­nize val­ues, but only re­li­gion can con­serve, ex­alt, and spir­i­tu­al­ize such val­ues. But not­with­stand­ing such ac­tions, re­li­gion is some­thing more than emo­tion­al­ized moral­ity. Re­li­gion is to moral­ity as love is to duty, as son­ship is to servi­tude, as essence is to sub­stance. Moral­ity dis­closes an al­mighty Con­trol­ler, a De­ity to be served; re­li­gion dis­closes an all-lov­ing Fa­ther, a God to be wor­shiped and loved. And again this is be­cause the spir­i­tual po­ten­tial­ity of re­li­gion is dom­i­nant over the duty ac­tu­al­ity of the moral­ity of evo­lu­tion.

• explained › cannot be isolated from life

102:6.1The philo­sophic elim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious fear and the steady prog­ress of sci­ence add greatly to the mor­tal­ity of false gods; and even though these ca­su­al­ties of man-made de­i­ties may mo­men­tar­ily be­fog the spir­i­tual vi­sion, they even­tu­ally de­stroy that ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion which so long ob­scured the liv­ing God of eter­nal love. The re­la­tion be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a dy­namic re­li­gious faith, which is not sub­ject to pre­cise def­i­ni­tion. To iso­late part of life and call it re­li­gion is to dis­in­te­grate life and to dis­tort re­li­gion. And this is just why the God of wor­ship claims all al­le­giance or none.

• defined as › love

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

• explained › without God is an invention of man; an absurdity

102:7.3Those who would in­vent a re­li­gion with­out God are like those who would gather fruit with­out trees, have chil­dren with­out par­ents. You can­not have ef­fects with­out causes; only the I AM is cause­less. The fact of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies God, and such a God of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence must be a per­sonal De­ity. You can­not pray to a chem­i­cal for­mula, sup­pli­cate a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion, wor­ship a hy­poth­e­sis, con­fide in a pos­tu­late, com­mune with a pro­cess, serve an ab­strac­tion, or hold lov­ing fel­low­ship with a law.

• explained › apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots
• explained › without God is devoid of survival values

102:7.4True, many ap­par­ently re­li­gious traits can grow out of non­re­li­gious roots. Man can, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, fil­ial, hon­est, and even ide­al­is­tic. Man may graft many purely hu­man­is­tic branches onto his ba­sic spir­i­tual na­ture and thus ap­par­ently prove his con­tentions in be­half of a god­less re­li­gion, but such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­void of sur­vival val­ues, God-know­ing­ness and God-as­cen­sion. In such a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence only so­cial fruits are forth­com­ing, not spir­i­tual. The graft de­ter­mines the na­ture of the fruit, not­with­stand­ing that the liv­ing sus­te­nance is drawn from the roots of orig­i­nal di­vine en­dow­ment of both mind and spirit.

• explained › earmarks are certainty, consistency, love, service
• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

102:7.5The in­tel­lec­tual ear­mark of re­li­gion is cer­tainty; the phil­o­soph­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tic is con­sis­tency; the so­cial fruits are love and ser­vice.

• defined as › trusting one’s present and future to God
• explained › validated by personal experience

102:8.1The high­est ev­i­dence of the re­al­ity and ef­fi­cacy of re­li­gion con­sists in the fact of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; namely, that man, nat­u­rally fear­ful and sus­pi­cious, in­nately en­dowed with a strong in­stinct of self-preser­va­tion and crav­ing sur­vival af­ter death, is will­ing fully to trust the deep­est in­ter­ests of his pres­ent and fu­ture to the keep­ing and di­rec­tion of that power and per­son des­ig­nated by his faith as God. That is the one cen­tral truth of all re­li­gion. As to what that power or per­son re­quires of man in re­turn for this watch­care and fi­nal sal­va­tion, no two re­li­gions agree; in fact, they all more or less dis­agree.

• explained › encouraged by improving social morality and ethical culture
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › many virtually unlettered
• institutional religion › status best judged by moral and ethical standards

102:8.2Re­gard­ing the sta­tus of any re­li­gion in the evo­lu­tion­ary scale, it may best be judged by its moral judg­ments and its eth­i­cal stan­dards. The higher the type of any re­li­gion, the more it en­cour­ages and is en­cour­aged by a con­stantly im­prov­ing so­cial moral­ity and eth­i­cal cul­ture. We can­not judge re­li­gion by the sta­tus of its ac­com­pa­ny­ing civ­i­liza­tion; we had bet­ter es­ti­mate the real na­ture of a civ­i­liza­tion by the pu­rity and no­bil­ity of its re­li­gion. Many of the world’s most no­table re­li­gious teach­ers have been vir­tu­ally un­let­tered. The wis­dom of the world is not nec­es­sary to an ex­er­cise of sav­ing faith in eter­nal re­al­i­ties.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › primitive r. created its God conceptions out of the highest recognized values

102:8.4Ethics is the ex­ter­nal so­cial or racial mir­ror which faith­fully re­flects the oth­er­wise un­ob­serv­able prog­ress of in­ter­nal spir­i­tual and re­li­gious de­vel­op­ments. Man has al­ways thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deep­est ideas and high­est ide­als. Even his­toric re­li­gion has al­ways cre­ated its God con­cep­tions out of its high­est rec­og­nized val­ues. Ev­ery in­tel­li­gent crea­ture gives the name of God to the best and high­est thing he knows.

• institutional religion › lags behind slowly changing mores

102:8.6While per­sonal re­li­gion pre­cedes the evo­lu­tion of hu­man morals, it is re­gret­fully re­corded that in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion has in­vari­ably lagged be­hind the slowly chang­ing mores of the hu­man races. Or­ga­nized re­li­gion has proved to be con­ser­va­tively tardy. The proph­ets have usu­ally led the peo­ple in re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment; the the­olo­gians have usu­ally held them back. Re­li­gion, be­ing a mat­ter of in­ner or per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, can never de­velop very far in ad­vance of the in­tel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion of the races.

• explained › validated by personal experience
• warnings › dangers of religion are › appeal to the miraculous

102:8.7But re­li­gion is never en­hanced by an ap­peal to the so-called mirac­u­lous. The quest for mir­a­cles is a hark­ing back to the prim­i­tive re­li­gions of magic. True re­li­gion has noth­ing to do with al­leged mir­a­cles, and never does re­vealed re­li­gion point to mir­a­cles as proof of au­thor­ity. Re­li­gion is ever and al­ways rooted and grounded in per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. And your high­est re­li­gion, the life of Je­sus, was just such a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence: man, mor­tal man, seek­ing God and find­ing him to the full­ness dur­ing one short life in the flesh, while in the same hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence there ap­peared God seek­ing man and find­ing him to the full sat­is­fac­tion of the per­fect soul of in­fi­nite su­prem­acy. And that is re­li­gion, even the high­est yet re­vealed in the uni­verse of Neb­a­don—the earth life of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › arises as biologic reaction of mind

103:0.2The re­li­gious ten­den­cies of the hu­man races are in­nate; they are uni­ver­sally man­i­fested and have an ap­par­ently nat­u­ral ori­gin; prim­i­tive re­li­gions are al­ways evo­lu­tion­ary in their gen­e­sis. As nat­u­ral re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­tin­ues to pro­gress, pe­ri­odic rev­e­la­tions of truth punc­tu­ate the oth­er­wise slow-mov­ing course of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion.

• types of religion › evolutionary r., revelatory r., philosophic r., and admixtures

103:0.3On Uran­tia, to­day, there are four kinds of re­li­gion:

103:0.41. Nat­u­ral or evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion.

103:0.52. Super­nat­u­ral or rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion.

103:0.63. Prac­ti­cal or cur­rent re­li­gion, vary­ing de­grees of the ad­mix­ture of nat­u­ral and super­nat­u­ral re­li­gions.

103:0.74. Philo­sophic re­li­gions, man-made or phil­o­soph­i­cally thought-out the­o­logic doc­trines and rea­son-cre­ated re­li­gions.

• explained › 500 definitions by theologians

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.

• warnings › prevent egocentricity by exposing oneself to vast number of other religions

103:1.3While your re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, it is most im­por­tant that you should be ex­posed to the knowl­edge of a vast num­ber of other re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences (the di­verse in­ter­pre­ta­tions of other and di­verse mor­tals) to the end that you may pre­vent your re­li­gious life from be­com­ing ego­cen­tric—cir­cum­scribed, self­ish, and unso­cial.

• explained › persists despite revolutionary changes in beliefs
• result of religion › grows in quest for final values

103:1.4Ra­tio­nal­ism is wrong when it as­sumes that re­li­gion is at first a prim­i­tive be­lief in some­thing which is then fol­lowed by the pur­suit of val­ues. Re­li­gion is pri­mar­ily a pur­suit of val­ues, and then there for­mu­lates a sys­tem of in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs. It is much eas­ier for men to agree on re­li­gious val­ues—goals—than on be­liefs—in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this ex­plains how re­li­gion can agree on val­ues and goals while ex­hibit­ing the con­fus­ing phe­nom­e­non of main­tain­ing a be­lief in hun­dreds of con­flict­ing be­liefs—creeds. This also ex­plains why a given per­son can main­tain his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the face of giv­ing up or chang­ing many of his re­li­gious be­liefs. Re­li­gion per­sists in spite of rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in re­li­gious be­liefs. The­ol­ogy does not pro­duce re­li­gion; it is re­li­gion that pro­duces the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy.

• explained › not invalidated because religionists have believed so much that was false
• explained › validated by personal experience

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.

• explained › birth of r. not sudden, rather gradually emerges
• explained › never a passive experience, a negative attitude

103:2.1Re­li­gion is func­tional in the hu­man mind and has been re­al­ized in ex­pe­ri­ence prior to its ap­pear­ance in hu­man con­scious­ness. A child has been in ex­is­tence about nine months be­fore it ex­pe­ri­ences birth. But the “birth” of re­li­gion is not sud­den; it is rather a grad­ual emer­gence. Nev­er­the­less, sooner or later there is a “birth day.” You do not en­ter the king­dom of heaven un­less you have been “born again”—born of the Spirit. Many spir­i­tual births are ac­com­pa­nied by much an­guish of spirit and marked psy­cho­log­i­cal per­tur­ba­tions, as many phys­i­cal births are char­ac­ter­ized by a “stormy la­bor” and other ab­nor­mal­i­ties of “de­liv­ery.” Other spir­i­tual births are a nat­u­ral and nor­mal growth of the rec­og­ni­tion of su­preme val­ues with an en­hance­ment of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, al­beit no re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment oc­curs with­out con­scious ef­fort and pos­i­tive and in­di­vid­ual de­ter­mi­na­tions. Re­li­gion is never a pas­sive ex­pe­ri­ence, a neg­a­tive at­ti­tude. What is termed the “birth of re­li­gion” is not di­rectly as­so­ci­ated with so-called con­ver­sion ex­pe­ri­ences which usu­ally char­ac­ter­ize re­li­gious episodes oc­cur­ring later in life as a re­sult of men­tal con­flict, emo­tional re­pres­sion, and tem­per­a­men­tal up­heavals.

• explained › impulse originates in spirit presences activating will to be unselfish
• primitive religion › influence of tribal spirit of solidarity

103:3.1While the be­lief in spir­its, dreams, and di­verse other su­per­sti­tions all played a part in the evo­lu­tion­ary ori­gin of prim­i­tive re­li­gions, you should not over­look the in­flu­ence of the clan or tribal spirit of sol­i­dar­ity. In the group re­la­tion­ship there was pre­sented the ex­act so­cial sit­u­a­tion which pro­vided the chal­lenge to the ego­is­tic-al­tru­is­tic con­flict in the moral na­ture of the early hu­man mind. In spite of their be­lief in spir­its, prim­i­tive Aus­tralians still fo­cus their re­li­gion upon the clan. In time, such re­li­gious con­cepts tend to per­son­al­ize, first, as an­i­mals, and later, as a super­man or as a God. Even such in­fe­rior races as the African Bush­men, who are not even totemic in their be­liefs, do have a rec­og­ni­tion of the dif­fer­ence be­tween the self-in­ter­est and the group-in­ter­est, a prim­i­tive dis­tinc­tion be­tween the val­ues of the sec­u­lar and the sa­cred. But the so­cial group is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­gard­less of the in­flu­ence of all these prim­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to man’s early re­li­gion, the fact re­mains that the true re­li­gious im­pulse has its ori­gin in gen­uine spirit pres­ences ac­ti­vat­ing the will to be un­selfish.

• defined as › worship of God and service of man
• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

103:3.2Later re­li­gion is fore­shad­owed in the prim­i­tive be­lief in nat­u­ral won­ders and mys­ter­ies, the im­per­sonal mana. But sooner or later the evolv­ing re­li­gion re­quires that the in­di­vid­ual should make some per­sonal sac­ri­fice for the good of his so­cial group, should do some­thing to make other peo­ple hap­pier and bet­ter. Ul­ti­mately, re­li­gion is des­tined to be­come the ser­vice of God and of man.

• explained › feeling regarding morals paramount, not theological thinking

103:3.4Re­mem­ber that in the re­li­gion of all ages the ex­pe­ri­ence which is paramount is the feel­ing re­gard­ing moral val­ues and so­cial mean­ings, not the think­ing re­gard­ing the­o­logic dog­mas or philo­sophic the­o­ries. Re­li­gion evolves fa­vor­ably as the el­e­ment of magic is re­placed by the con­cept of morals.

• primitive religion › summary of evolutionary growth

103:3.5Man evolved through the su­per­sti­tions of mana, magic, na­ture wor­ship, spirit fear, and an­i­mal wor­ship to the var­i­ous cer­e­mo­ni­als whereby the re­li­gious at­ti­tude of the in­di­vid­ual be­came the group re­ac­tions of the clan. And then these cer­e­monies be­came fo­cal­ized and crys­tal­lized into tribal be­liefs, and even­tu­ally these fears and faiths be­came per­son­al­ized into gods. But in all of this re­li­gious evo­lu­tion the moral el­e­ment was never wholly ab­sent. The im­pulse of the God within man was al­ways po­tent. And these pow­er­ful in­flu­ences—one hu­man and the other di­vine—in­sured the sur­vival of re­li­gion through­out the vi­cis­si­tudes of the ages and that not­with­stand­ing it was so of­ten threat­ened with ex­tinc­tion by a thou­sand sub­ver­sive ten­den­cies and hos­tile an­tag­o­nisms.

• defined as › awareness of insideness of human experience

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.

103:7.1Sci­ence 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.

• warnings › often altogether too self-confident and dogmatic

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.

• result of religion › enables men to live together in complex civilization

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.

• explained › may be genuine despite erroneous theology

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.

• explained › feeling regarding morals paramount, not theological thinking

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.

• explained › without God is an invention of man; an absurdity

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.

• defined as › faith in supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love of one’s fellows
• defined as › trusting one’s present and future to God
• defined as › unqualified dependence upon love of Father

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.

• explained › founded on Adjuster assumption that faith is valid

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.

• defined as › Father life predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, dominated by goodness

106:9.12To ma­te­rial, evo­lu­tion­ary, fi­nite crea­tures, a life pred­i­cated on the liv­ing of the Fa­ther’s will leads di­rectly to the at­tain­ment of spirit su­prem­acy in the per­son­al­ity arena and brings such crea­tures one step nearer the com­pre­hen­sion of the Fa­ther-In­fi­nite. Such a Fa­ther life is one pred­i­cated on truth, sen­si­tive to beauty, and dom­i­nated by good­ness. Such a God-know­ing per­son is in­wardly il­lu­mi­nated by wor­ship and out­wardly de­voted to the whole­hearted ser­vice of the uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of all per­son­al­i­ties, a ser­vice min­istry which is filled with mercy and mo­ti­vated by love, while all these life qual­i­ties are uni­fied in the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity on ever-as­cend­ing lev­els of cos­mic wis­dom, self-re­al­iza­tion, God-find­ing, and Fa­ther wor­ship.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Paul

108:6.3The Mys­tery Mon­i­tors are un­doubt­edly the be­stowal of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, the re­flec­tion of the im­age of God abroad in the uni­verse. A great teacher once ad­mon­ished men that they should be re­newed in the spirit of their minds; that they be­come new men who, like God, are cre­ated in righ­teous­ness and in the com­ple­tion of truth. The Ad­juster is the mark of di­vin­ity, the pres­ence of God. The “im­age of God” does not re­fer to phys­i­cal like­ness nor to the cir­cum­scribed lim­i­ta­tions of ma­te­rial crea­ture en­dow­ment but rather to the gift of the spirit pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in the su­per­nal be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers upon the hum­ble crea­tures of the uni­verses.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › many exerted their influence because of previous experience of Adjusters

109:4.3The type of Ad­juster has much to do with the po­ten­tial for ex­pres­sion of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. On down through the ages, many of the great in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual lead­ers of Uran­tia have ex­erted their in­flu­ence chiefly be­cause of the su­pe­ri­or­ity and pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of their in­dwelling Ad­justers.

• warnings › many isms have arisen from garbled Adjuster communications

110:4.5There ex­ists a vast gulf be­tween the hu­man and the di­vine, be­tween man and God. The Uran­tia races are so largely elec­tri­cally and chem­i­cally con­trolled, so highly an­i­mallike in their com­mon be­hav­ior, so emo­tional in their or­di­nary re­ac­tions, that it be­comes ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the Mon­i­tors to guide and di­rect them. You are so de­void of coura­geous de­ci­sions and con­se­crated co-op­er­a­tion that your in­dwelling Ad­justers find it next to im­pos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate di­rectly with the hu­man mind. Even when they do find it pos­si­ble to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolv­ing mor­tal soul, this spir­i­tual rev­e­la­tion of­ten so blinds the crea­ture as to pre­cip­i­tate a con­vul­sion of fa­nati­cism or to ini­ti­ate some other in­tel­lec­tual up­heaval which re­sults dis­as­trously. Many a new re­li­gion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, im­per­fect, mis­un­der­stood, and gar­bled com­mu­ni­ca­tions of the Thought Ad­justers.

• defined as › faith in survival of supreme values
• result of religion › grows in quest for final values

111:3.5The mor­tal ca­reer, the soul’s evo­lu­tion, is not so much a pro­ba­tion as an ed­u­ca­tion. Faith in the sur­vival of su­preme val­ues is the core of re­li­gion; gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in the union of su­preme val­ues and cos­mic mean­ings as a re­al­iza­tion of uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• civilization in danger when youth not interested in

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.

• warnings › promoting smugness in the fortunate or stoical resignation in victims of social deprivation

116:0.1If man rec­og­nized that his Cre­ators—his im­me­di­ate super­vi­sors—while be­ing di­vine were also fi­nite, and that the God of time and space was an evolv­ing and non­ab­so­lute De­ity, then would the in­con­sis­ten­cies of tem­po­ral in­equal­i­ties cease to be pro­found re­li­gious para­doxes. No longer would re­li­gious faith be pros­ti­tuted to the pro­mo­tion of so­cial smug­ness in the for­tu­nate while serv­ing only to en­cour­age sto­ical res­ig­na­tion in the un­for­tu­nate vic­tims of so­cial de­pri­va­tion.

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

118:10.142. Man’s in­creas­ing con­trol—the grad­ual ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the knowl­edge of the laws of the ma­te­rial world, the pur­poses of spir­i­tual ex­is­tence, and the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the philo­sophic co-or­di­na­tion of these two re­al­i­ties. Man, the sav­age, was help­less be­fore the on­slaughts of nat­u­ral forces, was slav­ish be­fore the cruel mas­tery of his own in­ner fears. Semi­civ­i­lized man is be­gin­ning to un­lock the store­house of the se­crets of the nat­u­ral realms, and his sci­ence is slowly but ef­fec­tively de­stroy­ing his su­per­sti­tions while at the same time pro­vid­ing a new and en­larged fac­tual ba­sis for the com­pre­hen­sion of the mean­ings of phi­los­o­phy and the val­ues of true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Man, the civ­i­lized, will some­day achieve rel­a­tive mas­tery of the phys­i­cal forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be ef­fec­tively out­poured as love for his fel­low men, while the val­ues of hu­man ex­is­tence will be near­ing the lim­its of mor­tal ca­pac­ity.

• institutional religion › Jesus avoided establishment of

120:3.6“5. As you may see fit, you are to iden­tify your­self with ex­ist­ing re­li­gious and spir­i­tual move­ments as they may be found on Uran­tia but in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner seek to avoid the for­mal es­tab­lish­ment of an or­ga­nized cult, a crys­tal­lized re­li­gion, or a seg­re­gated eth­i­cal group­ing of mor­tal be­ings. Your life and teach­ings are to be­come the com­mon her­itage of all re­li­gions and all peo­ples.

121:4.1The gen­tiles were, from a moral stand­point, some­what in­fe­rior to the Jews, but there was pres­ent in the hearts of the no­bler gen­tiles abun­dant soil of nat­u­ral good­ness and po­ten­tial hu­man af­fec­tion in which it was pos­si­ble for the seed of Chris­tian­ity to sprout and bring forth an abun­dant har­vest of moral char­ac­ter and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. The gen­tile world was then dom­i­nated by four great philoso­phies, all more or less de­rived from the ear­lier Pla­ton­ism of the Greeks. These schools of phi­los­o­phy were:

121:4.21. The Epi­curean. This school of thought was ded­i­cated to the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. The bet­ter Epi­cure­ans were not given to sen­sual ex­cesses. At least this doc­trine helped to de­liver the Ro­mans from a more deadly form of fa­tal­ism; it taught that men could do some­thing to im­prove their ter­res­trial sta­tus. It did ef­fec­tu­ally com­bat ig­no­rant su­per­sti­tion.

121:4.32. The Stoic. Sto­icism was the su­pe­rior phi­los­o­phy of the bet­ter classes. The Sto­ics be­lieved that a con­trol­ling Rea­son-Fate dom­i­nated all na­ture. They taught that the soul of man was di­vine; that it was im­pris­oned in the evil body of phys­i­cal na­ture. Man’s soul achieved lib­erty by liv­ing in har­mony with na­ture, with God; thus virtue came to be its own re­ward. Sto­icism as­cended to a sub­lime moral­ity, ide­als never since tran­scended by any purely hu­man sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy. While the Sto­ics pro­fessed to be the “off­spring of God,” they failed to know him and there­fore failed to find him. Sto­icism re­mained a phi­los­o­phy; it never be­came a re­li­gion. Its fol­low­ers sought to at­tune their minds to the har­mony of the Uni­ver­sal Mind, but they failed to en­vis­age them­selves as the chil­dren of a lov­ing Fa­ther. Paul leaned heav­ily to­ward Sto­icism when he wrote, “I have learned in what­so­ever state I am, there­with to be con­tent.”

121:4.43. The Cynic. Al­though the Cyn­ics traced their phi­los­o­phy to Dio­genes of Athens, they de­rived much of their doc­trine from the rem­nants of the teach­ings of Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek. Cyn­i­cism had for­merly been more of a re­li­gion than a phi­los­o­phy. At least the Cyn­ics made their re­li­gio-phi­los­o­phy demo­cratic. In the fields and in the mar­ket places they con­tin­u­ally preached their doc­trine that “man could save him­self if he would.” They preached sim­plic­ity and virtue and urged men to meet death fear­lessly. These wan­der­ing Cynic preach­ers did much to pre­pare the spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry pop­u­lace for the later Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. Their plan of pop­u­lar preach­ing was much af­ter the pat­tern, and in ac­cor­dance with the style, of Paul’s Epis­tles.

121:4.54. The Skep­tic. Skep­ti­cism as­serted that knowl­edge was fal­la­cious, and that con­vic­tion and as­sur­ance were im­pos­si­ble. It was a purely neg­a­tive at­ti­tude and never be­came wide­spread.

121:4.6These philoso­phies were semire­li­gious; they were of­ten in­vig­o­rat­ing, eth­i­cal, and en­nobling but were usu­ally above the com­mon peo­ple. With the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of Cyn­i­cism, they were philoso­phies for the strong and the wise, not re­li­gions of sal­va­tion for even the poor and the weak.

121:5.1Through­out pre­ced­ing ages re­li­gion had chiefly been an af­fair of the tribe or na­tion; it had not of­ten been a mat­ter of con­cern to the in­di­vid­ual. Gods were tribal or na­tional, not per­sonal. Such re­li­gious sys­tems af­forded lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion for the in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual long­ings of the av­er­age per­son.

121:5.2In the times of Je­sus the re­li­gions of the Oc­ci­dent in­cluded:

121:5.31. The pa­gan cults. These were a com­bi­na­tion of Hel­lenic and Latin mythol­ogy, pa­tri­o­tism, and tra­di­tion.

121:5.42. Em­peror wor­ship. This de­ifi­ca­tion of man as the sym­bol of the state was very se­ri­ously re­sented by the Jews and the early Chris­tians and led di­rectly to the bit­ter per­se­cu­tions of both churches by the Ro­man gov­ern­ment.

121:5.53. As­trol­ogy. This pseudo sci­ence of Baby­lon de­vel­oped into a re­li­gion through­out the Greco-Ro­man Em­pire. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury man has not been fully de­liv­ered from this su­per­sti­tious be­lief.

121:5.64. The mys­tery re­li­gions. Upon such a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry world a flood of mys­tery cults had bro­ken, new and strange re­li­gions from the Lev­ant, which had en­am­ored the com­mon peo­ple and had prom­ised them in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion. These re­li­gions rapidly be­came the ac­cepted be­lief of the lower classes of the Greco-Ro­man world. And they did much to pre­pare the way for the rapid spread of the vastly su­pe­rior Chris­tian teach­ings, which pre­sented a ma­jes­tic con­cept of De­ity, as­so­ci­ated with an in­trigu­ing the­ol­ogy for the in­tel­li­gent and a pro­found prof­fer of sal­va­tion for all, in­clud­ing the ig­no­rant but spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry av­er­age man of those days.

121:5.7The mys­tery re­li­gions spelled the end of na­tional be­liefs and re­sulted in the birth of the nu­mer­ous per­sonal cults. The mys­ter­ies were many but were all char­ac­ter­ized by:

121:5.81. Some myth­i­cal leg­end, a mys­tery—whence their name. As a rule this mys­tery per­tained to the story of some god’s life and death and re­turn to life, as il­lus­trated by the teach­ings of Mith­ra­ism, which, for a time, were con­tem­po­rary with, and a com­peti­tor of, Paul’s ris­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

121:5.92. The mys­ter­ies were non­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial. They were per­sonal and fra­ter­nal, giv­ing rise to re­li­gious broth­er­hoods and nu­mer­ous sec­tar­ian so­ci­eties.

121:5.103. They were, in their ser­vices, char­ac­ter­ized by elab­o­rate cer­e­monies of ini­ti­a­tion and im­pres­sive sacra­ments of wor­ship. Their se­cret rites and rit­u­als were some­times grue­some and re­volt­ing.

121:5.114. But no mat­ter what the na­ture of their cer­e­monies or the de­gree of their ex­cesses, these mys­ter­ies in­vari­ably prom­ised their devo­tees sal­va­tion, “de­liv­er­ance from evil, sur­vival af­ter death, and en­dur­ing life in bliss­ful realms be­yond this world of sor­row and slav­ery.”

121:5.12But do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus with the mys­ter­ies. The pop­u­lar­ity of the mys­ter­ies re­veals man’s quest for sur­vival, thus por­tray­ing a real hunger and thirst for per­sonal re­li­gion and in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness. Al­though the mys­ter­ies failed ad­e­quately to sat­isfy this long­ing, they did pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Je­sus, who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the wa­ter thereof.

121:5.13Paul, in an ef­fort to uti­lize the wide­spread ad­her­ence to the bet­ter types of the mys­tery re­li­gions, made cer­tain adap­ta­tions of the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to ren­der them more ac­cept­able to a larger num­ber of prospec­tive con­verts. But even Paul’s com­pro­mise of Je­sus’ teach­ings (Chris­tian­ity) was su­pe­rior to the best in the mys­ter­ies in that:

121:5.141. Paul taught a moral re­demp­tion, an eth­i­cal sal­va­tion. Chris­tian­ity pointed to a new life and pro­claimed a new ideal. Paul for­sook magic rites and cer­e­mo­nial en­chant­ments.

121:5.152. Chris­tian­ity pre­sented a re­li­gion which grap­pled with fi­nal so­lu­tions of the hu­man prob­lem, for it not only of­fered sal­va­tion from sor­row and even from death, but it also prom­ised de­liv­er­ance from sin fol­lowed by the en­dow­ment of a righ­teous char­ac­ter of eter­nal sur­vival qual­i­ties.

121:5.163. The mys­ter­ies were built upon myths. Chris­tian­ity, as Paul preached it, was founded upon a his­toric fact: the be­stowal of Mi­chael, the Son of God, upon man­kind.

121:5.17Moral­ity among the gen­tiles was not nec­es­sar­ily re­lated to ei­ther phi­los­o­phy or re­li­gion. Out­side of Pales­tine it not al­ways oc­curred to peo­ple that a priest of re­li­gion was sup­posed to lead a moral life. Jew­ish re­li­gion and sub­se­quently the teach­ings of Je­sus and later the evolv­ing Chris­tian­ity of Paul were the first Eu­ro­pean re­li­gions to lay one hand upon morals and the other upon ethics, in­sist­ing that re­li­gion­ists pay some at­ten­tion to both.

121:5.18Into such a gen­er­a­tion of men, dom­i­nated by such in­com­plete sys­tems of phi­los­o­phy and per­plexed by such com­plex cults of re­li­gion, Je­sus was born in Pales­tine. And to this same gen­er­a­tion he sub­se­quently gave his gospel of per­sonal re­li­gion—son­ship with God.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Gautama Siddhartha
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Lao-tse
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Moses
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Paul
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Philo
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Sethard
• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Zoroaster

121:6.4Philo was a great teacher; not since Moses had there lived a man who ex­erted such a pro­found in­flu­ence on the eth­i­cal and re­li­gious thought of the Oc­ci­den­tal world. In the mat­ter of the com­bi­na­tion of the bet­ter el­e­ments in con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous sys­tems of eth­i­cal and re­li­gious teach­ings, there have been seven out­stand­ing hu­man teach­ers: Sethard, Moses, Zoroaster, Lao-tse, Bud­dha, Philo, and Paul.

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › commercialization

125:1.1Ev­ery­where Je­sus went through­out the tem­ple courts, he was shocked and sick­ened by the spirit of ir­rev­er­ence which he ob­served. He deemed the con­duct of the tem­ple throngs to be in­con­sis­tent with their pres­ence in “his Fa­ther’s house.” But he re­ceived the shock of his young life when his fa­ther es­corted him into the court of the gen­tiles with its noisy jar­gon, loud talk­ing and curs­ing, min­gled in­dis­crim­i­nately with the bleat­ing of sheep and the bab­ble of noises which be­trayed the pres­ence of the money-chang­ers and the ven­dors of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry other com­mer­cial com­modi­ties.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › commercialization

125:5.64. Since the tem­ple is ded­i­cated to the wor­ship of the Fa­ther in heaven, is it con­sis­tent to per­mit the pres­ence of those who en­gage in sec­u­lar barter and trade?

• explained › r. of Jesus vs. r. about Jesus

128:4.6One pur­pose which Je­sus had in mind, when he sought to seg­re­gate cer­tain fea­tures of his earthly ex­pe­ri­ence, was to pre­vent the build­ing up of such a ver­sa­tile and spec­tac­u­lar ca­reer as would cause sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions to ven­er­ate the teacher in place of obey­ing the truth which he had lived and taught. Je­sus did not want to build up such a hu­man rec­ord of achieve­ment as would at­tract at­ten­tion from his teach­ing. Very early he rec­og­nized that his fol­low­ers would be tempted to for­mu­late a re­li­gion about him which might be­come a com­peti­tor of the gospel of the king­dom that he in­tended to pro­claim to the world. Ac­cord­ingly, he con­sis­tently sought to sup­press ev­ery­thing dur­ing his event­ful ca­reer which he thought might be made to serve this nat­u­ral hu­man ten­dency to ex­alt the teacher in place of pro­claim­ing his teach­ings.

• result of religion › leads to union with righteousness

131:5.4“Lord, teach us how to live this life in the flesh while prepar­ing for the next life of the spirit. Speak to us, Lord, and we will do your bid­ding. Teach us the good paths, and we will go right. Grant us that we may at­tain union with you. We know that the re­li­gion is right which leads to union with righ­teous­ness. God is our wise na­ture, best thought, and righ­teous act. May God grant us unity with the di­vine spirit and im­mor­tal­ity in him­self!

• result of religion › believer cleansed from every evil thought and sinful deed

131:5.5“This re­li­gion of the Wise One cleanses the be­liever from ev­ery evil thought and sin­ful deed. I bow be­fore the God of heaven in re­pen­tance if I have of­fended in thought, word, or act—in­ten­tion­ally or un­in­ten­tion­ally—and I of­fer prayers for mercy and praise for for­give­ness. I know when I make con­fes­sion, if I pur­pose not to do again the evil thing, that sin will be re­moved from my soul. I know that for­give­ness takes away the bonds of sin. Those who do evil shall re­ceive pun­ish­ment, but those who fol­low truth shall en­joy the bliss of an eter­nal sal­va­tion. Through grace lay hold upon us and min­is­ter sav­ing power to our souls. We claim mercy be­cause we as­pire to at­tain per­fec­tion; we would be like God.”

131:10.1Af­ter the ar­du­ous la­bor of ef­fect­ing this com­pi­la­tion of the teach­ings of the world re­li­gions con­cern­ing the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, Ga­nid set him­self to the task of for­mu­lat­ing what he deemed to be a sum­mary of the be­lief he had ar­rived at re­gard­ing God as a re­sult of Je­sus’ teach­ing. This young man was in the habit of re­fer­ring to such be­liefs as “our re­li­gion.” This was his rec­ord:

131:10.2“The Lord our God is one Lord, and you should love him with all your mind and heart while you do your very best to love all his chil­dren as you love your­self. This one God is our heav­enly Fa­ther, in whom all things con­sist, and who dwells, by his spirit, in ev­ery sin­cere hu­man soul. And we who are the chil­dren of God should learn how to com­mit the keep­ing of our souls to him as to a faith­ful Cre­ator. With our heav­enly Fa­ther all things are pos­si­ble. Since he is the Cre­ator, hav­ing made all things and all be­ings, it could not be oth­er­wise. Though we can­not see God, we can know him. And by daily liv­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, we can re­veal him to our fel­low men.

131:10.3“The di­vine riches of God’s char­ac­ter must be in­finitely deep and eter­nally wise. We can­not search out God by knowl­edge, but we can know him in our hearts by per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. While his jus­tice may be past find­ing out, his mercy may be re­ceived by the hum­blest be­ing on earth. While the Fa­ther fills the uni­verse, he also lives in our hearts. The mind of man is hu­man, mor­tal, but the spirit of man is di­vine, im­mor­tal. God is not only all-pow­er­ful but also all-wise. If our earth par­ents, be­ing of evil ten­dency, know how to love their chil­dren and be­stow good gifts on them, how much more must the good Fa­ther in heaven know how wisely to love his chil­dren on earth and to be­stow suit­able bless­ings upon them.

131:10.4“The Fa­ther in heaven will not suf­fer a sin­gle child on earth to per­ish if that child has a de­sire to find the Fa­ther and truly longs to be like him. Our Fa­ther even loves the wicked and is al­ways kind to the un­grate­ful. If more hu­man be­ings could only know about the good­ness of God, they would cer­tainly be led to re­pent of their evil ways and for­sake all known sin. All good things come down from the Fa­ther of light, in whom there is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing. The spirit of the true God is in man’s heart. He in­tends that all men should be broth­ers. When men be­gin to feel af­ter God, that is ev­i­dence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowl­edge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

131:10.5“I will no longer be sat­is­fied to be­lieve that God is the Fa­ther of all my peo­ple; I will hence­forth be­lieve that he is also my Fa­ther. Al­ways will I try to wor­ship God with the help of the Spirit of Truth, which is my helper when I have be­come re­ally God-know­ing. But first of all I am go­ing to prac­tice wor­ship­ing God by learn­ing how to do the will of God on earth; that is, I am go­ing to do my best to treat each of my fel­low mor­tals just as I think God would like to have him treated. And when we live this sort of a life in the flesh, we may ask many things of God, and he will give us the de­sire of our hearts that we may be the bet­ter pre­pared to serve our fel­lows. And all of this lov­ing ser­vice of the chil­dren of God en­larges our ca­pac­ity to re­ceive and ex­pe­ri­ence the joys of heaven, the high plea­sures of the min­istry of the spirit of heaven.

131:10.6“I will ev­ery day thank God for his un­speak­able gifts; I will praise him for his won­der­ful works to the chil­dren of men. To me he is the Al­mighty, the Cre­ator, the Power, and the Mercy, but best of all, he is my spirit Fa­ther, and as his earth child I am some­time go­ing forth to see him. And my tu­tor has said that by search­ing for him I shall be­come like him. By faith in God I have at­tained peace with him. This new re­li­gion of ours is very full of joy, and it gen­er­ates an en­dur­ing hap­pi­ness. I am con­fi­dent that I shall be faith­ful even to death, and that I will surely re­ceive the crown of eter­nal life.

131:10.7“I am learn­ing to prove all things and ad­here to that which is good. What­so­ever I would that men should do to me, that I will do to my fel­lows. By this new faith I know that man may be­come the son of God, but it some­times ter­ri­fies me when I stop to think that all men are my broth­ers, but it must be true. I do not see how I can re­joice in the fa­ther­hood of God while I refuse to ac­cept the broth­er­hood of man. Whoso­ever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If that is true, then all men must be my broth­ers.

131:10.8“Hence­forth will I do my good deeds in se­cret; I will also pray most when by my­self. I will judge not that I may not be un­fair to my fel­lows. I am go­ing to learn to love my en­e­mies; I have not truly mas­tered this prac­tice of be­ing God­like. Though I see God in these other re­li­gions, I find him in ‘our re­li­gion’ as be­ing more beau­ti­ful, lov­ing, mer­ci­ful, per­sonal, and pos­i­tive. But most of all, this great and glo­ri­ous Be­ing is my spir­i­tual Fa­ther; I am his child. And by no other means than my hon­est de­sire to be like him, I am even­tu­ally to find him and eter­nally to serve him. At last I have a re­li­gion with a God, a mar­velous God, and he is a God of eter­nal sal­va­tion.”

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Simon Peter

132:0.61. The choos­ing and hold­ing of Si­mon Pe­ter as an apos­tle.

• warnings › on trial before the bar of human need

132:1.4The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic sci­en­tist and the ex­treme ide­al­ist are des­tined al­ways to be at log­ger­heads. This is not true of those sci­en­tists and ide­al­ists who are in pos­ses­sion of a com­mon stan­dard of high moral val­ues and spir­i­tual test lev­els. In ev­ery age sci­en­tists and re­li­gion­ists must rec­og­nize that they are on trial be­fore the bar of hu­man need. They must es­chew all war­fare be­tween them­selves while they strive valiantly to jus­tify their con­tin­ued sur­vival by en­hanced de­vo­tion to the ser­vice of hu­man prog­ress. If the so-called sci­ence or re­li­gion of any age is false, then must it ei­ther pu­rify its ac­tiv­i­ties or pass away be­fore the emer­gence of a ma­te­rial sci­ence or spir­i­tual re­li­gion of a truer and more wor­thy or­der.

• warnings › no peace when one r. presumes exclusive authority over others

134:4.3If dif­fer­ent re­li­gions rec­og­nize the spirit sov­er­eignty of God the Fa­ther, then will all such re­li­gions re­main at peace. Only when one re­li­gion as­sumes that it is in some way su­pe­rior to all oth­ers, and that it pos­sesses ex­clu­sive au­thor­ity over other re­li­gions, will such a re­li­gion pre­sume to be in­tol­er­ant of other re­li­gions or dare to per­se­cute other re­li­gious be­liev­ers.

134:4.4Re­li­gious peace—broth­er­hood—can never ex­ist un­less all re­li­gions are will­ing to com­pletely di­vest them­selves of all ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity and fully sur­ren­der all con­cept of spir­i­tual sov­er­eignty. God alone is spirit sov­er­eign.

• warnings › no peace when one r. presumes exclusive authority over others

134:4.8But the mo­ment you lose sight of the spirit sov­er­eignty of God the Fa­ther, some one re­li­gion will be­gin to as­sert its su­pe­ri­or­ity over other re­li­gions; and then, in­stead of peace on earth and good will among men, there will start dis­sen­sions, re­crim­i­na­tions, even re­li­gious wars, at least wars among re­li­gion­ists.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › John the Baptist

136:0.1Je­sus be­gan his pub­lic work at the height of the pop­u­lar in­ter­est in John’s preach­ing and at a time when the Jew­ish peo­ple of Pales­tine were ea­gerly look­ing for the ap­pear­ance of the Mes­siah. There was a great con­trast be­tween John and Je­sus. John was an ea­ger and earnest worker, but Je­sus was a calm and happy la­borer; only a few times in his en­tire life was he ever in a hurry. Je­sus was a com­fort­ing con­so­la­tion to the world and some­what of an ex­am­ple; John was hardly a com­fort or an ex­am­ple. He preached the king­dom of heaven but hardly en­tered into the hap­pi­ness thereof. Though Je­sus spoke of John as the great­est of the proph­ets of the old or­der, he also said that the least of those who saw the great light of the new way and en­tered thereby into the king­dom of heaven was in­deed greater than John.

• result of religion › seeks to win all, not be of any

137:7.5In this time of wait­ing Je­sus en­deav­ored to teach his as­so­ciates what their at­ti­tude should be to­ward the var­i­ous re­li­gious groups and the po­lit­i­cal par­ties of Pales­tine. Je­sus’ words al­ways were, “We are seek­ing to win all of them, but we are not of any of them.”

• result of religion › seeks to win all, not be of any

137:7.12All of these par­ties and sects, in­clud­ing the smaller Nazarite broth­er­hood, be­lieved in the some­time com­ing of the Mes­siah. They all looked for a na­tional de­liv­erer. But Je­sus was very pos­i­tive in mak­ing it clear that he and his dis­ci­ples would not be­come al­lied to any of these schools of thought or prac­tice. The Son of Man was to be nei­ther a Nazarite nor an Es­sene.

• explained › validated by personal experience

138:2.1This first mis­sion­ary tour of the six was em­i­nently suc­cess­ful. They all dis­cov­ered the great value of di­rect and per­sonal con­tact with men. They re­turned to Je­sus more fully re­al­iz­ing that, af­ter all, re­li­gion is purely and wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. They be­gan to sense how hun­gry were the com­mon peo­ple to hear words of re­li­gious com­fort and spir­i­tual good cheer. When they as­sem­bled about Je­sus, they all wanted to talk at once, but An­drew as­sumed charge, and as he called upon them one by one, they made their for­mal re­ports to the Mas­ter and pre­sented their nom­i­na­tions for the six new apos­tles.

• explained › r. of Jesus vs. r. about Jesus

138:6.3Je­sus en­deav­ored to make clear to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween his teach­ings and his life among them and the teach­ings which might sub­se­quently spring up about him. Said Je­sus: “My king­dom and the gospel re­lated thereto shall be the bur­den of your mes­sage. Be not side­tracked into preach­ing about me and about my teach­ings. Pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and por­tray my rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven but do not be mis­led into the by­paths of cre­at­ing leg­ends and build­ing up a cult hav­ing to do with be­liefs and teach­ings about my be­liefs and teach­ings.” But again they did not un­der­stand why he thus spoke, and no man dared to ask why he so taught them.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › negativity

140:4.7“By their fruits you shall know them.” Per­son­al­ity is ba­si­cally change­less; that which changes—grows—is the moral char­ac­ter. The ma­jor er­ror of mod­ern re­li­gions is neg­a­tivism. The tree which bears no fruit is “hewn down and cast into the fire.” Moral worth can­not be de­rived from mere re­pres­sion—obey­ing the in­junc­tion “Thou shalt not.” Fear and shame are un­wor­thy mo­ti­va­tions for re­li­gious liv­ing. Re­li­gion is valid only when it re­veals the fa­ther­hood of God and en­hances the broth­er­hood of men.

• explained › no provision for spiritual self-examination in Jesus’ religion

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › purchasing social harmony by sacrifice of free personality

141:5.1One of the most event­ful of all the evening con­fer­ences at Am­athus was the ses­sion hav­ing to do with the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual unity. James Zeb­e­dee had asked, “Mas­ter, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby en­joy more har­mony among our­selves?” When Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he was stirred within his spirit, so much so that he replied: “James, James, when did I teach you that you should all see alike? I have come into the world to pro­claim spir­i­tual lib­erty to the end that mor­tals may be em­pow­ered to live in­di­vid­ual lives of orig­i­nal­ity and free­dom be­fore God. I do not de­sire that so­cial har­mony and fra­ter­nal peace shall be pur­chased by the sac­ri­fice of free per­son­al­ity and spir­i­tual orig­i­nal­ity. What I re­quire of you, my apos­tles, is spirit unity—and that you can ex­pe­ri­ence in the joy of your united ded­i­ca­tion to the whole­hearted do­ing of the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in or­der spir­i­tu­ally to be alike. Spir­i­tual unity is de­rived from the con­scious­ness that each of you is in­dwelt, and in­creas­ingly dom­i­nated, by the spirit gift of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Your apos­tolic har­mony must grow out of the fact that the spirit hope of each of you is iden­ti­cal in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › formulating creeds and traditions in order to control believers

141:5.4Many times dur­ing the train­ing of the twelve Je­sus re­verted to this theme. Re­peat­edly he told them it was not his de­sire that those who be­lieved in him should be­come dog­ma­tized and stan­dard­ized in ac­cor­dance with the re­li­gious in­ter­pre­ta­tions of even good men. Again and again he warned his apos­tles against the for­mu­la­tion of creeds and the es­tab­lish­ment of tra­di­tions as a means of guid­ing and con­trol­ling be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom.

• defined as › self-conscious relation of soul with Creator

143:7.2True re­li­gion is the act of an in­di­vid­ual soul in its self-con­scious re­la­tions with the Cre­ator; or­ga­nized re­li­gion is man’s at­tempt to so­cial­ize the wor­ship of in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists.

• balance by humor

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.

• history of religion › apostles of John and Jesus attempted socialization of

144:6.10And this is the story of the first at­tempt of Je­sus’ fol­low­ers to co-or­di­nate di­ver­gent ef­forts, com­pose dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, or­ga­nize group un­der­tak­ings, leg­is­late on out­ward ob­ser­vances, and so­cial­ize per­sonal re­li­gious prac­tices.

144:6.11Many other mi­nor mat­ters were con­sid­ered and their so­lu­tions unan­i­mously agreed upon. These twenty-four men had a truly re­mark­able ex­pe­ri­ence these two weeks when they were com­pelled to face prob­lems and com­pose dif­fi­cul­ties with­out Je­sus. They learned to dif­fer, to de­bate, to con­tend, to pray, and to com­pro­mise, and through­out it all to re­main sym­pa­thetic with the other per­son’s view­point and to main­tain at least some de­gree of tol­er­ance for his hon­est opin­ions.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › John the Baptist

144:8.4“Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, among those born of women there has not arisen a greater than John the Bap­tist; yet he who is but small in the king­dom of heaven is greater be­cause he has been born of the spirit and knows that he has be­come a son of God.”

• explained › validated by personal experience

145:2.3This ser­mon was an ef­fort on Je­sus’ part to make clear the fact that re­li­gion is a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. Among other things, the Mas­ter said:

145:2.4“You well know that, while a kind­hearted fa­ther loves his fam­ily as a whole, he so re­gards them as a group be­cause of his strong af­fec­tion for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of that fam­ily. No longer must you ap­proach the Fa­ther in heaven as a child of Is­rael but as a child of God. As a group, you are in­deed the chil­dren of Is­rael, but as in­di­vid­u­als, each one of you is a child of God. I have come, not to re­veal the Fa­ther to the chil­dren of Is­rael, but rather to bring this knowl­edge of God and the rev­e­la­tion of his love and mercy to the in­di­vid­ual be­liever as a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. The proph­ets have all taught you that Yah­weh cares for his peo­ple, that God loves Is­rael. But I have come among you to pro­claim a greater truth, one which many of the later proph­ets also grasped, that God loves you—ev­ery one of you—as in­di­vid­u­als. All these gen­er­a­tions have you had a na­tional or racial re­li­gion; now have I come to give you a per­sonal re­li­gion.

145:2.5“But even this is not a new idea. Many of the spir­i­tu­ally minded among you have known this truth, inas­much as some of the proph­ets have so in­structed you. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where the Prophet Jeremiah says: ‘In those days they shall no more say, the fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge. Ev­ery man shall die for his own in­iq­uity; ev­ery man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge. Be­hold, the days shall come when I will make a new covenant with my peo­ple, not ac­cord­ing to the covenant which I made with their fa­thers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, but ac­cord­ing to the new way. I will even write my law in their hearts. I will be their God, and they shall be my peo­ple. In that day they shall not say, one man to his neigh­bor, do you know the Lord? Nay! For they shall all know me per­son­ally, from the least to the great­est.’

145:2.6“Have you not read these promises? Do you not be­lieve the Scrip­tures? Do you not un­der­stand that the prophet’s words are ful­filled in what you be­hold this very day? And did not Jeremiah ex­hort you to make re­li­gion an af­fair of the heart, to re­late your­selves to God as in­di­vid­u­als? Did not the prophet tell you that the God of heaven would search your in­di­vid­ual hearts? And were you not warned that the nat­u­ral hu­man heart is de­ceit­ful above all things and of­ten­times des­per­ately wicked?

145:2.7“Have you not read also where Eze­kiel taught even your fa­thers that re­li­gion must be­come a re­al­ity in your in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ences? No more shall you use the proverb which says, ‘The fa­thers have eaten sour grapes and the chil­dren’s teeth are set on edge.’ ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘be­hold all souls are mine; as the soul of the fa­ther, so also the soul of the son. Only the soul that sins shall die.’ And then Eze­kiel fore­saw even this day when he spoke in be­half of God, say­ing: ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.’

145:2.8“No more should you fear that God will pun­ish a na­tion for the sin of an in­di­vid­ual; nei­ther will the Fa­ther in heaven pun­ish one of his be­liev­ing chil­dren for the sins of a na­tion, al­beit the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of any fam­ily must of­ten suf­fer the ma­te­rial con­se­quences of fam­ily mis­takes and group trans­gres­sions. Do you not re­al­ize that the hope of a bet­ter na­tion—or a bet­ter world—is bound up in the prog­ress and en­light­en­ment of the in­di­vid­ual?”

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › search for supernatural explanation for all phenomena

148:5.4“Na­than­iel, it is our mis­sion to help men solve their spir­i­tual prob­lems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the bet­ter pre­pared and in­spired to go about solv­ing their man­i­fold ma­te­rial prob­lems. I know of your con­fu­sion as you have read the Scrip­tures. All too of­ten there has pre­vailed a ten­dency to as­cribe to God the re­spon­si­bil­ity for ev­ery­thing which ig­no­rant man fails to un­der­stand. The Fa­ther is not per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for all you may fail to com­pre­hend. Do not doubt the love of the Fa­ther just be­cause some just and wise law of his or­dain­ing chances to af­flict you be­cause you have in­no­cently or de­lib­er­ately trans­gressed such a di­vine or­di­nance.

• primitive religion › gods of › inflict displeasure by famine and flood

148:6.4“The first of Job’s friends, Elip­haz, ex­horted the suf­ferer to ex­hibit in his af­flic­tions the same for­ti­tude he had pre­scribed for oth­ers dur­ing the days of his pros­per­ity. Said this false com­forter: ‘Trust in your re­li­gion, Job; re­mem­ber that it is the wicked and not the righ­teous who suf­fer. You must de­serve this pun­ish­ment, else you would not be af­flicted. You well know that no man can be righ­teous in God’s sight. You know that the wicked never re­ally pros­per. Any­way, man seems pre­des­tined to trou­ble, and per­haps the Lord is only chastis­ing you for your own good.’ No won­der poor Job failed to get much com­fort from such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the prob­lem of hu­man suf­fer­ing.

• approach others with recognition of common truths

149:2.5The teach­ers of the re­li­gion of Je­sus should ap­proach other re­li­gions with the rec­og­ni­tion of the truths which are held in com­mon (many of which come di­rectly or in­di­rectly from Je­sus’ mes­sage) while they re­frain from plac­ing so much em­pha­sis on the dif­fer­ences.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › Jesus was the only founder of a r. who performed supermaterial acts

149:2.7When the Cre­ator him­self was on earth, in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that some ex­traor­di­nary things should hap­pen. But you should never ap­proach Je­sus through these so-called mirac­u­lous oc­cur­rences. Learn to ap­proach the mir­a­cle through Je­sus, but do not make the mis­take of ap­proach­ing Je­sus through the mir­a­cle. And this ad­mo­ni­tion is war­ranted, not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth is the only founder of a re­li­gion who per­formed super­ma­te­rial acts on earth.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › commercialization

149:6.12“Well did the Prophet Jeremiah de­scribe many mor­tals when he said: ‘You are near God in the mouth but far from him in the heart.’ And have you not also read that dire­ful warn­ing of the prophet who said: ‘The priests thereof teach for hire, and the proph­ets thereof di­vine for money. At the same time they pro­fess piety and pro­claim that the Lord is with them.’ Have you not been well warned against those who ‘speak peace to their neigh­bors when mis­chief is in their hearts,’ those who ‘flat­ter with the lips while the heart is given to dou­ble-deal­ing’? Of all the sor­rows of a trust­ing man, none are so ter­ri­ble as to be ‘wounded in the house of a trusted friend.’”

• defined as › loyalty to highest dictates of spiritual consciousness
• warnings › dangers of religion are › false ideas of sacredness

155:3.5One of the great lessons of this so­journ at Cae­sarea had to do with the ori­gin of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, with the grave dan­ger of al­low­ing a sense of sa­cred­ness to be­come at­tached to non­sa­cred things, com­mon ideas, or ev­ery­day events. From one con­fer­ence they emerged with the teach­ing that true re­li­gion was man’s heart­felt loy­alty to his high­est and truest con­vic­tions.

• result of religion › releases faith and courage for daily living

155:3.7They learned that, when re­li­gion is wholly spir­i­tual in mo­tive, it makes all life more worth while, fill­ing it with high pur­poses, dig­ni­fy­ing it with tran­scen­dent val­ues, in­spir­ing it with su­perb mo­tives, all the while com­fort­ing the hu­man soul with a sub­lime and sus­tain­ing hope. True re­li­gion is de­signed to lessen the strain of ex­is­tence; it re­leases faith and cour­age for daily liv­ing and un­selfish serv­ing. Faith pro­motes spir­i­tual vi­tal­ity and righ­teous fruit­ful­ness.

• thawing out frozen forms of r.

155:3.8Je­sus re­peat­edly taught his apos­tles that no civ­i­liza­tion could long sur­vive the loss of the best in its re­li­gion. And he never grew weary of point­ing out to the twelve the great dan­ger of ac­cept­ing re­li­gious sym­bols and cer­e­monies in the place of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. His whole earth life was con­sis­tently de­voted to the mis­sion of thaw­ing out the frozen forms of re­li­gion into the liq­uid lib­er­ties of en­light­ened son­ship.

155:5.1This mem­o­rable dis­course on re­li­gion, sum­ma­rized and re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, gave ex­pres­sion to the fol­low­ing truths:

• types of religion › 3 distinct forms

155:5.2While the re­li­gions of the world have a dou­ble ori­gin—nat­u­ral and rev­e­la­tory—at any one time and among any one peo­ple there are to be found three dis­tinct forms of re­li­gious de­vo­tion. And these three man­i­fes­ta­tions of the re­li­gious urge are:

• primitive religion › influences in creation of primitive religion › born of all-powerful fear of unknown, ignorance, superstition, awe, and dread; feeling of helplessness before onslaught of natural forces

155:5.31. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion. The sem­i­nat­u­ral and in­stinc­tive urge to fear mys­te­ri­ous en­er­gies and wor­ship su­pe­rior forces, chiefly a re­li­gion of the phys­i­cal na­ture, the re­li­gion of fear.

155:5.42. The re­li­gion of civ­i­liza­tion. The ad­vanc­ing re­li­gious con­cepts and prac­tices of the civ­i­liz­ing races—the re­li­gion of the mind—the in­tel­lec­tual the­ol­ogy of the au­thor­ity of es­tab­lished re­li­gious tra­di­tion.

155:5.53. True re­li­gion—the re­li­gion of rev­e­la­tion. The rev­e­la­tion of super­nat­u­ral val­ues, a par­tial in­sight into eter­nal re­al­i­ties, a glimpse of the good­ness and beauty of the in­fi­nite char­ac­ter of the Fa­ther in heaven—the re­li­gion of the spirit as demon­strated in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

155:5.6The re­li­gion of the phys­i­cal senses and the su­per­sti­tious fears of nat­u­ral man, the Mas­ter re­fused to be­lit­tle, though he de­plored the fact that so much of this prim­i­tive form of wor­ship should per­sist in the re­li­gious forms of the more in­tel­li­gent races of man­kind. Je­sus made it clear that the great dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­li­gion of the mind and the re­li­gion of the spirit is that, while the for­mer is up­held by ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, the lat­ter is wholly based on hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

155:5.7And then the Mas­ter, in his hour of teach­ing, went on to make clear these truths:

• explained › must act; no r. apart from a highly active personality

155:5.8Un­til the races be­come highly in­tel­li­gent and more fully civ­i­lized, there will per­sist many of those child­like and su­per­sti­tious cer­e­monies which are so char­ac­ter­is­tic of the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gious prac­tices of prim­i­tive and back­ward peo­ples. Un­til the hu­man race pro­gresses to the level of a higher and more gen­eral rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­i­ties of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, large num­bers of men and women will con­tinue to show a per­sonal pref­er­ence for those re­li­gions of au­thor­ity which re­quire only in­tel­lec­tual as­sent, in con­trast to the re­li­gion of the spirit, which en­tails ac­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of mind and soul in the faith ad­ven­ture of grap­pling with the rig­or­ous re­al­i­ties of pro­gres­sive hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

155:5.9The ac­cep­tance of the tra­di­tional re­li­gions of au­thor­ity pre­sents the easy way out for man’s urge to seek sat­is­fac­tion for the long­ings of his spir­i­tual na­ture. The set­tled, crys­tal­lized, and es­tab­lished re­li­gions of au­thor­ity af­ford a ready refuge to which the dis­tracted and dis­traught soul of man may flee when ha­rassed by fear and tor­mented by un­cer­tainty. Such a re­li­gion re­quires of its devo­tees, as the price to be paid for its sat­is­fac­tions and as­sur­ances, only a pas­sive and purely in­tel­lec­tual as­sent.

155:5.10And for a long time there will live on earth those timid, fear­ful, and hes­i­tant in­di­vid­u­als who will pre­fer thus to se­cure their re­li­gious con­so­la­tions, even though, in so cast­ing their lot with the re­li­gions of au­thor­ity, they com­pro­mise the sov­er­eignty of per­son­al­ity, de­base the dig­nity of self-re­spect, and ut­terly sur­ren­der the right to par­tic­i­pate in that most thrilling and in­spir­ing of all pos­si­ble hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences: the per­sonal quest for truth, the ex­hil­a­ra­tion of fac­ing the per­ils of in­tel­lec­tual dis­cov­ery, the de­ter­mi­na­tion to ex­plore the re­al­i­ties of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the per­sonal tri­umph of the ac­tual re­al­iza­tion of the vic­tory of spir­i­tual faith over in­tel­lec­tual doubt as it is hon­estly won in the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all hu­man ex­is­tence—man seek­ing God, for him­self and as him­self, and find­ing him.

• defined as › effort, conflict, faith, determination, love, loyalty, progress

155:5.11The re­li­gion of the spirit means ef­fort, strug­gle, con­flict, faith, de­ter­mi­na­tion, love, loy­alty, and prog­ress. The re­li­gion of the mind—the the­ol­ogy of au­thor­ity—re­quires lit­tle or none of these ex­er­tions from its for­mal be­liev­ers. Tra­di­tion is a safe refuge and an easy path for those fear­ful and half­hearted souls who in­stinc­tively shun the spirit strug­gles and men­tal un­cer­tain­ties as­so­ci­ated with those faith voy­ages of dar­ing ad­ven­ture out upon the high seas of un­ex­plored truth in search for the far­ther shores of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties as they may be dis­cov­ered by the pro­gres­sive hu­man mind and ex­pe­ri­enced by the evolv­ing hu­man soul.

• explained › derives authority from fruits of its acceptance
• warnings › r. of spirit in deadly conflict with institutional r.

155:5.12And Je­sus went on to say: “At Je­ru­sa­lem the re­li­gious lead­ers have for­mu­lated the var­i­ous doc­trines of their tra­di­tional teach­ers and the proph­ets of other days into an es­tab­lished sys­tem of in­tel­lec­tual be­liefs, a re­li­gion of au­thor­ity. The ap­peal of all such re­li­gions is largely to the mind. And now are we about to en­ter upon a deadly con­flict with such a re­li­gion since we will so shortly be­gin the bold procla­ma­tion of a new re­li­gion—a re­li­gion which is not a re­li­gion in the pres­ent-day mean­ing of that word, a re­li­gion that makes its chief ap­peal to the di­vine spirit of my Fa­ther which re­sides in the mind of man; a re­li­gion which shall de­rive its au­thor­ity from the fruits of its ac­cep­tance that will so cer­tainly ap­pear in the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of all who re­ally and truly be­come be­liev­ers in the truths of this higher spir­i­tual com­mu­nion.”

• warnings › difficulties and persecutions attendant upon proclaiming gospel

155:5.13Point­ing out each of the twenty-four and call­ing them by name, Je­sus said: “And now, which one of you would pre­fer to take this easy path of con­for­mity to an es­tab­lished and fos­silized re­li­gion, as de­fended by the Phar­isees at Je­ru­sa­lem, rather than to suf­fer the dif­fi­cul­ties and per­se­cu­tions at­ten­dant upon the mis­sion of pro­claim­ing a bet­ter way of sal­va­tion to men while you re­al­ize the sat­is­fac­tion of dis­cov­er­ing for your­selves the beau­ties of the re­al­i­ties of a liv­ing and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the eter­nal truths and su­preme grandeurs of the king­dom of heaven? Are you fear­ful, soft, and ease-seek­ing? Are you afraid to trust your fu­ture in the hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are? Are you dis­trust­ful of the Fa­ther, whose chil­dren you are? Will you go back to the easy path of the cer­tainty and in­tel­lec­tual set­tled­ness of the re­li­gion of tra­di­tional au­thor­ity, or will you gird your­selves to go for­ward with me into that un­cer­tain and trou­blous fu­ture of pro­claim­ing the new truths of the re­li­gion of the spirit, the king­dom of heaven in the hearts of men?”

155:5.14All twenty-four of his hear­ers rose to their feet, in­tend­ing to sig­nify their united and loyal re­sponse to this, one of the few emo­tional ap­peals which Je­sus ever made to them, but he raised his hand and stopped them, say­ing: “Go now apart by your­selves, each man alone with the Fa­ther, and there find the un­emo­tional an­swer to my ques­tion, and hav­ing found such a true and sin­cere at­ti­tude of soul, speak that an­swer freely and boldly to my Fa­ther and your Fa­ther, whose in­fi­nite life of love is the very spirit of the re­li­gion we pro­claim.”

155:5.15The evan­ge­lists and apos­tles went apart by them­selves for a short time. Their spir­its were up­lifted, their minds were in­spired, and their emo­tions might­ily stirred by what Je­sus had said. But when An­drew called them to­gether, the Mas­ter said only: “Let us re­sume our jour­ney. We go into Phoeni­cia to tarry for a sea­son, and all of you should pray the Fa­ther to trans­form your emo­tions of mind and body into the higher loy­al­ties of mind and the more sat­is­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ences of the spirit.”

155:5.16As they jour­neyed on down the road, the twenty-four were silent, but pres­ently they be­gan to talk one with an­other, and by three o’clock that af­ter­noon they could not go far­ther; they came to a halt, and Pe­ter, go­ing up to Je­sus, said: “Mas­ter, you have spo­ken to us the words of life and truth. We would hear more; we be­seech you to speak to us fur­ther con­cern­ing these mat­ters.”

155:6.1And so, while they paused in the shade of the hill­side, Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach them re­gard­ing the re­li­gion of the spirit, in sub­stance say­ing:

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Elijah
• institutional religion › most rigid human institution

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.

• result of religion › builds up in souls as eternal endowment

155:6.3I have called upon you to be born again, to be born of the spirit. I have called you out of the dark­ness of au­thor­ity and the lethargy of tra­di­tion into the tran­scen­dent light of the re­al­iza­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity of mak­ing for your­selves the great­est dis­cov­ery pos­si­ble for the hu­man soul to make—the su­per­nal ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God for your­self, in your­self, and of your­self, and of do­ing all this as a fact in your own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. And so may you pass from death to life, from the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion to the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God; thus will you pass from dark­ness to light, from a racial faith in­her­ited to a per­sonal faith achieved by ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence; and thereby will you pro­gress from a the­ol­ogy of mind handed down by your an­ces­tors to a true re­li­gion of spirit which shall be built up in your souls as an eter­nal en­dow­ment.

155:6.4Your re­li­gion shall change from the mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief in tra­di­tional au­thor­ity to the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of that liv­ing faith which is able to grasp the re­al­ity of God and all that re­lates to the di­vine spirit of the Fa­ther. The re­li­gion of the mind ties you hope­lessly to the past; the re­li­gion of the spirit con­sists in pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion and ever beck­ons you on to­ward higher and holier achieve­ments in spir­i­tual ide­als and eter­nal re­al­i­ties.

• institutional religion › price for adherence is loss of spiritual freedom
• result of religion › leaves believer forever free to follow truth wherever it leads

155:6.5While the re­li­gion of au­thor­ity may im­part a pres­ent feel­ing of set­tled se­cu­rity, you pay for such a tran­sient sat­is­fac­tion the price of the loss of your spir­i­tual free­dom and re­li­gious lib­erty. My Fa­ther does not re­quire of you as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom of heaven that you should force your­self to sub­scribe to a be­lief in things which are spir­i­tu­ally re­pug­nant, un­holy, and un­truth­ful. It is not re­quired of you that your own sense of mercy, jus­tice, and truth should be out­raged by sub­mis­sion to an out­worn sys­tem of re­li­gious forms and cer­e­monies. The re­li­gion of the spirit leaves you for­ever free to fol­low the truth wher­ever the lead­ings of the spirit may take you. And who can judge—per­haps this spirit may have some­thing to im­part to this gen­er­a­tion which other gen­er­a­tions have re­fused to hear?

• institutional religion › adherents frightened by every new discovery

155:6.6Shame on those false re­li­gious teach­ers who would drag hun­gry souls back into the dim and dis­tant past and there leave them! And so are these un­for­tu­nate per­sons doomed to be­come fright­ened by ev­ery new dis­cov­ery, while they are dis­com­fited by ev­ery new rev­e­la­tion of truth. The prophet who said, “He will be kept in per­fect peace whose mind is stayed on God,” was not a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­liever in au­thor­i­ta­tive the­ol­ogy. This truth-know­ing hu­man had dis­cov­ered God; he was not merely talk­ing about God.

155:6.7I ad­mon­ish you to give up the prac­tice of al­ways quot­ing the proph­ets of old and prais­ing the heroes of Is­rael, and in­stead as­pire to be­come liv­ing proph­ets of the Most High and spir­i­tual heroes of the com­ing king­dom. To honor the God-know­ing lead­ers of the past may in­deed be worth while, but why, in so do­ing, should you sac­ri­fice the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man ex­is­tence: find­ing God for your­selves and know­ing him in your own souls?

• institutional religion › various religions can never come to unification

155:6.8Ev­ery race of man­kind has its own men­tal out­look upon hu­man ex­is­tence; there­fore must the re­li­gion of the mind ever run true to these var­i­ous racial view­points. Never can the re­li­gions of au­thor­ity come to uni­fi­ca­tion. Hu­man unity and mor­tal broth­er­hood can be achieved only by and through the super­en­dow­ment of the re­li­gion of the spirit. Racial minds may dif­fer, but all man­kind is in­dwelt by the same di­vine and eter­nal spirit. The hope of hu­man broth­er­hood can only be re­al­ized when, and as, the di­ver­gent mind re­li­gions of au­thor­ity be­come im­preg­nated with, and over­shad­owed by, the uni­fy­ing and en­nobling re­li­gion of the spirit—the re­li­gion of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

• institutional religion › requires uniformity of belief

155:6.9The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity can only di­vide men and set them in con­sci­en­tious ar­ray against each other; the re­li­gion of the spirit will pro­gres­sively draw men to­gether and cause them to be­come un­der­stand­ingly sym­pa­thetic with one an­other. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity re­quire of men uni­for­mity in be­lief, but this is im­pos­si­ble of re­al­iza­tion in the pres­ent state of the world. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only unity of ex­pe­ri­ence—uni­for­mity of des­tiny—mak­ing full al­lowance for di­ver­sity of be­lief. The re­li­gion of the spirit re­quires only uni­for­mity of in­sight, not uni­for­mity of view­point and out­look. The re­li­gion of the spirit does not de­mand uni­for­mity of in­tel­lec­tual views, only unity of spirit feel­ing. The re­li­gions of au­thor­ity crys­tal­lize into life­less creeds; the re­li­gion of the spirit grows into the in­creas­ing joy and lib­erty of en­nobling deeds of lov­ing ser­vice and mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tion.

155:6.10But watch, lest any of you look with dis­dain upon the chil­dren of Abra­ham be­cause they have fallen on these evil days of tra­di­tional bar­ren­ness. Our fore­fa­thers gave them­selves up to the per­sis­tent and pas­sion­ate search for God, and they found him as no other whole race of men have ever known him since the times of Adam, who knew much of this as he was him­self a Son of God. My Fa­ther has not failed to mark the long and un­tir­ing strug­gle of Is­rael, ever since the days of Moses, to find God and to know God. For weary gen­er­a­tions the Jews have not ceased to toil, sweat, groan, tra­vail, and en­dure the suf­fer­ings and ex­pe­ri­ence the sor­rows of a mis­un­der­stood and de­spised peo­ple, all in or­der that they might come a lit­tle nearer the dis­cov­ery of the truth about God. And, not­with­stand­ing all the fail­ures and fal­ter­ings of Is­rael, our fa­thers pro­gres­sively, from Moses to the times of Amos and Hosea, did re­veal in­creas­ingly to the whole world an ever clearer and more truth­ful pic­ture of the eter­nal God. And so was the way pre­pared for the still greater rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther which you have been called to share.

155:6.11Never for­get there is only one ad­ven­ture which is more sat­is­fy­ing and thrilling than the at­tempt to dis­cover the will of the liv­ing God, and that is the su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence of hon­estly try­ing to do that di­vine will. And fail not to re­mem­ber that the will of God can be done in any earthly oc­cu­pa­tion. Some call­ings are not holy and oth­ers sec­u­lar. All things are sa­cred in the lives of those who are spirit led; that is, sub­or­di­nated to truth, en­no­bled by love, dom­i­nated by mercy, and re­strained by fair­ness—jus­tice. The spirit which my Fa­ther and I shall send into the world is not only the Spirit of Truth but also the spirit of ide­al­is­tic beauty.

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

155:6.13When you once be­gin to find God in your soul, pres­ently you will be­gin to dis­cover him in other men’s souls and even­tu­ally in all the crea­tures and cre­ations of a mighty uni­verse. But what chance does the Fa­ther have to ap­pear as a God of su­preme loy­al­ties and di­vine ide­als in the souls of men who give lit­tle or no time to the thought­ful con­tem­pla­tion of such eter­nal re­al­i­ties? While the mind is not the seat of the spir­i­tual na­ture, it is in­deed the gate­way thereto.

155:6.14But do not make the mis­take of try­ing to prove to other men that you have found God; you can­not con­sciously pro­duce such valid proof, al­beit there are two pos­i­tive and pow­er­ful demon­stra­tions of the fact that you are God-know­ing, and they are:

155:6.151. The fruits of the spirit of God show­ing forth in your daily rou­tine life.

155:6.162. The fact that your en­tire life plan fur­nishes pos­i­tive proof that you have un­re­servedly risked ev­ery­thing you are and have on the ad­ven­ture of sur­vival af­ter death in the pur­suit of the hope of find­ing the God of eter­nity, whose pres­ence you have fore­tasted in time.

• primitive religion › Father takes note of superstitious emotions of primitive men

155:6.17Now, mis­take not, my Fa­ther will ever re­spond to the faintest flicker of faith. He takes note of the phys­i­cal and su­per­sti­tious emo­tions of the prim­i­tive man. And with those hon­est but fear­ful souls whose faith is so weak that it amounts to lit­tle more than an in­tel­lec­tual con­for­mity to a pas­sive at­ti­tude of as­sent to re­li­gions of au­thor­ity, the Fa­ther is ever alert to honor and fos­ter even all such fee­ble at­tempts to reach out for him. But you who have been called out of dark­ness into the light are ex­pected to be­lieve with a whole heart; your faith shall dom­i­nate the com­bined at­ti­tudes of body, mind, and spirit.

155:6.18You are my apos­tles, and to you re­li­gion shall not be­come a the­o­logic shel­ter to which you may flee in fear of fac­ing the rugged re­al­i­ties of spir­i­tual prog­ress and ide­al­is­tic ad­ven­ture; but rather shall your re­li­gion be­come the fact of real ex­pe­ri­ence which tes­ti­fies that God has found you, ide­al­ized, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized you, and that you have en­listed in the eter­nal ad­ven­ture of find­ing the God who has thus found and son­shipped you.

155:6.19And when Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, he beck­oned to An­drew and, point­ing to the west to­ward Phoeni­cia, said: “Let us be on our way.”

• result of religion › brings peace and progress

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• warnings › dangers of religion are › false ideas of sacredness
• warnings › safeguard by common sense

159:4.9“But the great­est er­ror of the teach­ing about the Scrip­tures is the doc­trine of their be­ing sealed books of mys­tery and wis­dom which only the wise minds of the na­tion dare to in­ter­pret. The rev­e­la­tions of di­vine truth are not sealed ex­cept by hu­man ig­no­rance, big­otry, and nar­row-minded in­tol­er­ance. The light of the Scrip­tures is only dimmed by prej­u­dice and dark­ened by su­per­sti­tion. A false fear of sa­cred­ness has pre­vented re­li­gion from be­ing safe­guarded by com­mon sense. The fear of the au­thor­ity of the sa­cred writ­ings of the past ef­fec­tively pre­vents the hon­est souls of to­day from ac­cept­ing the new light of the gospel, the light which these very God-know­ing men of an­other gen­er­a­tion so in­tensely longed to see.

159:5.1At Phil­a­del­phia, where James was work­ing, Je­sus taught the dis­ci­ples about the pos­i­tive na­ture of the gospel of the king­dom. When, in the course of his re­marks, he in­ti­mated that some parts of the Scrip­ture were more truth-con­tain­ing than oth­ers and ad­mon­ished his hear­ers to feed their souls upon the best of the spir­i­tual food, James in­ter­rupted the Mas­ter, ask­ing: “Would you be good enough, Mas­ter, to sug­gest to us how we may choose the bet­ter pas­sages from the Scrip­tures for our per­sonal ed­i­fi­ca­tion?” And Je­sus replied: “Yes, James, when you read the Scrip­tures look for those eter­nally true and di­vinely beau­ti­ful teach­ings, such as:

159:5.2“Cre­ate in me a clean heart, O Lord.

159:5.3“The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want.

159:5.4“You should love your neigh­bor as your­self.

159:5.5“For I, the Lord your God, will hold your right hand, say­ing, fear not; I will help you.

159:5.6“Nei­ther shall the na­tions learn war any more.”

• defined as › worship of God and service of man

159:5.7And this is il­lus­tra­tive of the way Je­sus, day by day, ap­pro­pri­ated the cream of the He­brew scrip­tures for the in­struc­tion of his fol­low­ers and for in­clu­sion in the teach­ings of the new gospel of the king­dom. Other re­li­gions had sug­gested the thought of the near­ness of God to man, but Je­sus made the care of God for man like the so­lic­i­tude of a lov­ing fa­ther for the wel­fare of his de­pen­dent chil­dren and then made this teach­ing the cor­ner­stone of his re­li­gion. And thus did the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God make im­per­a­tive the prac­tice of the broth­er­hood of man. The wor­ship of God and the ser­vice of man be­came the sum and sub­stance of his re­li­gion. Je­sus took the best of the Jew­ish re­li­gion and trans­lated it to a wor­thy set­ting in the new teach­ings of the gospel of the king­dom.

• defined as › believing and doing what gospel requires

159:5.8Je­sus put the spirit of pos­i­tive ac­tion into the pas­sive doc­trines of the Jew­ish re­li­gion. In the place of neg­a­tive com­pli­ance with cer­e­mo­nial re­quire­ments, Je­sus en­joined the pos­i­tive do­ing of that which his new re­li­gion re­quired of those who ac­cepted it. Je­sus’ re­li­gion con­sisted not merely in be­liev­ing, but in ac­tu­ally do­ing, those things which the gospel re­quired. He did not teach that the essence of his re­li­gion con­sisted in so­cial ser­vice, but rather that so­cial ser­vice was one of the cer­tain ef­fects of the pos­ses­sion of the spirit of true re­li­gion.

159:5.9Je­sus did not hes­i­tate to ap­pro­pri­ate the bet­ter half of a Scrip­ture while he re­pu­di­ated the lesser por­tion. His great ex­hor­ta­tion, “Love your neigh­bor as your­self,” he took from the Scrip­ture which reads: “You shall not take vengeance against the chil­dren of your peo­ple, but you shall love your neigh­bor as your­self.” Je­sus ap­pro­pri­ated the pos­i­tive por­tion of this Scrip­ture while re­ject­ing the neg­a­tive part. He even op­posed neg­a­tive or purely pas­sive non­re­sis­tance. Said he: “When an en­emy smites you on one cheek, do not stand there dumb and pas­sive but in pos­i­tive at­ti­tude turn the other; that is, do the best thing pos­si­ble ac­tively to lead your brother in er­ror away from the evil paths into the bet­ter ways of righ­teous liv­ing.” Je­sus re­quired his fol­low­ers to re­act pos­i­tively and ag­gres­sively to ev­ery life sit­u­a­tion. The turn­ing of the other cheek, or what­ever act that may typ­ify, de­mands ini­tia­tive, ne­ces­si­tates vig­or­ous, ac­tive, and coura­geous ex­pres­sion of the be­liever’s per­son­al­ity.

159:5.10Je­sus did not ad­vo­cate the prac­tice of neg­a­tive sub­mis­sion to the in­dig­ni­ties of those who might pur­posely seek to im­pose upon the prac­ti­tion­ers of non­re­sis­tance to evil, but rather that his fol­low­ers should be wise and alert in the quick and pos­i­tive re­ac­tion of good to evil to the end that they might ef­fec­tively over­come evil with good. For­get not, the truly good is in­vari­ably more pow­er­ful than the most ma­lig­nant evil. The Mas­ter taught a pos­i­tive stan­dard of righ­teous­ness: “Whoso­ever wishes to be my dis­ci­ple, let him dis­re­gard him­self and take up the full mea­sure of his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily to fol­low me.” And he so lived him­self in that “he went about do­ing good.” And this as­pect of the gospel was well il­lus­trated by many para­bles which he later spoke to his fol­low­ers. He never ex­horted his fol­low­ers pa­tiently to bear their obli­ga­tions but rather with en­ergy and en­thu­si­asm to live up to the full mea­sure of their hu­man re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­vine priv­i­leges in the king­dom of God.

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

159:5.121. To re­turn evil for evil—the pos­i­tive but un­righ­teous method.

159:5.132. To suf­fer evil with­out com­plaint and with­out re­sis­tance—the purely neg­a­tive method.

159:5.143. To re­turn good for evil, to as­sert the will so as to be­come mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion, to over­come evil with good—the pos­i­tive and righ­teous method.

159:5.15One of the apos­tles once asked: “Mas­ter, what should I do if a stranger forced me to carry his pack for a mile?” Je­sus an­swered: “Do not sit down and sigh for re­lief while you be­rate the stranger un­der your breath. Righ­teous­ness comes not from such pas­sive at­ti­tudes. If you can think of noth­ing more ef­fec­tively pos­i­tive to do, you can at least carry the pack a sec­ond mile. That will of a cer­tainty chal­lenge the un­righ­teous and un­godly stranger.”

159:5.16The Jews had heard of a God who would for­give re­pen­tant sin­ners and try to for­get their mis­deeds, but not un­til Je­sus came, did men hear about a God who went in search of lost sheep, who took the ini­tia­tive in look­ing for sin­ners, and who re­joiced when he found them will­ing to re­turn to the Fa­ther’s house. This pos­i­tive note in re­li­gion Je­sus ex­tended even to his prayers. And he con­verted the neg­a­tive golden rule into a pos­i­tive ad­mo­ni­tion of hu­man fair­ness.

159:5.17In all his teach­ing Je­sus un­fail­ingly avoided dis­tract­ing de­tails. He shunned flow­ery lan­guage and avoided the mere po­etic im­agery of a play upon words. He ha­bit­u­ally put large mean­ings into small ex­pres­sions. For pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion Je­sus re­versed the cur­rent mean­ings of many terms, such as salt, leaven, fish­ing, and lit­tle chil­dren. He most ef­fec­tively em­ployed the an­tithe­sis, com­par­ing the minute to the in­fi­nite and so on. His pic­tures were strik­ing, such as, “The blind lead­ing the blind.” But the great­est strength to be found in his il­lus­tra­tive teach­ing was its nat­u­ral­ness. Je­sus brought the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion from heaven down to earth. He por­trayed the el­e­men­tal needs of the soul with a new in­sight and a new be­stowal of af­fec­tion.

• explained › validated by personal experience

160:4.1While you have an eye sin­gle to the at­tain­ment of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, you must also make pro­vi­sion for the ne­ces­si­ties of tem­po­ral liv­ing. While the spirit is our goal, the flesh is a fact. Oc­ca­sion­ally the ne­ces­si­ties of liv­ing may fall into our hands by ac­ci­dent, but in gen­eral, we must in­tel­li­gently work for them. The two ma­jor prob­lems of life are: mak­ing a tem­po­ral liv­ing and the achieve­ment of eter­nal sur­vival. And even the prob­lem of mak­ing a liv­ing re­quires re­li­gion for its ideal so­lu­tion. These are both highly per­sonal prob­lems. True re­li­gion, in fact, does not func­tion apart from the in­di­vid­ual.

160:5.1You have told me that your Mas­ter re­gards gen­uine hu­man re­li­gion as the in­di­vid­ual’s ex­pe­ri­ence with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. I have re­garded re­li­gion as man’s ex­pe­ri­ence of re­act­ing to some­thing which he re­gards as be­ing wor­thy of the homage and de­vo­tion of all man­kind. In this sense, re­li­gion sym­bol­izes our su­preme de­vo­tion to that which rep­re­sents our high­est con­cept of the ide­als of re­al­ity and the far­thest reach of our minds to­ward eter­nal pos­si­bil­i­ties of spir­i­tual at­tain­ment.

160:5.2When men re­act to re­li­gion in the tribal, na­tional, or racial sense, it is be­cause they look upon those with­out their group as not be­ing truly hu­man. We al­ways look upon the ob­ject of our re­li­gious loy­alty as be­ing wor­thy of the rev­er­ence of all men. Re­li­gion can never be a mat­ter of mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief or philo­sophic rea­son­ing; re­li­gion is al­ways and for­ever a mode of re­act­ing to the sit­u­a­tions of life; it is a species of con­duct. Re­li­gion em­braces think­ing, feel­ing, and act­ing rev­er­ently to­ward some re­al­ity which we deem wor­thy of uni­ver­sal ado­ra­tion.

• explained › can be either good or evil
• institutional religion › based on fear, emotion, tradition, and philosophy
• result of religion › seeks to convert individual and transform world
• warnings › one is self-deceived if not a missionary evangel of one’s own

160:5.3If some­thing has be­come a re­li­gion in your ex­pe­ri­ence, it is self-ev­i­dent that you al­ready have be­come an ac­tive evan­gel of that re­li­gion since you deem the su­preme con­cept of your re­li­gion as be­ing wor­thy of the wor­ship of all man­kind, all uni­verse in­tel­li­gences. If you are not a pos­i­tive and mis­sion­ary evan­gel of your re­li­gion, you are self-de­ceived in that what you call a re­li­gion is only a tra­di­tional be­lief or a mere sys­tem of in­tel­lec­tual phi­los­o­phy. If your re­li­gion is a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, your ob­ject of wor­ship must be the uni­ver­sal spirit re­al­ity and ideal of all your spir­i­tu­al­ized con­cepts. All re­li­gions based on fear, emo­tion, tra­di­tion, and phi­los­o­phy I term the in­tel­lec­tual re­li­gions, while those based on true spirit ex­pe­ri­ence I would term the true re­li­gions. The ob­ject of re­li­gious de­vo­tion may be ma­te­rial or spir­i­tual, true or false, real or un­real, hu­man or di­vine. Re­li­gions can there­fore be ei­ther good or evil.

160:5.4Moral­ity and re­li­gion are not nec­es­sar­ily the same. A sys­tem of morals, by grasp­ing an ob­ject of wor­ship, may be­come a re­li­gion. A re­li­gion, by los­ing its uni­ver­sal ap­peal to loy­alty and su­preme de­vo­tion, may evolve into a sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy or a code of morals. This thing, be­ing, state, or or­der of ex­is­tence, or pos­si­bil­ity of at­tain­ment which con­sti­tutes the su­preme ideal of re­li­gious loy­alty, and which is the re­cip­i­ent of the re­li­gious de­vo­tion of those who wor­ship, is God. Re­gard­less of the name ap­plied to this ideal of spirit re­al­ity, it is God.

• explained › without God is an invention of man; an absurdity
• warnings › one is self-deceived if not a missionary evangel of one’s own

160:5.5The so­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of a true re­li­gion con­sist in the fact that it in­vari­ably seeks to con­vert the in­di­vid­ual and to trans­form the world. Re­li­gion im­plies the ex­is­tence of undis­cov­ered ide­als which far tran­scend the known stan­dards of ethics and moral­ity em­bod­ied in even the high­est so­cial us­ages of the most ma­ture in­sti­tu­tions of civ­i­liza­tion. Re­li­gion reaches out for undis­cov­ered ide­als, un­ex­plored re­al­i­ties, super­hu­man val­ues, di­vine wis­dom, and true spirit at­tain­ment. True re­li­gion does all of this; all other be­liefs are not wor­thy of the name. You can­not have a gen­uine spir­i­tual re­li­gion with­out the su­preme and su­per­nal ideal of an eter­nal God. A re­li­gion with­out this God is an in­ven­tion of man, a hu­man in­sti­tu­tion of life­less in­tel­lec­tual be­liefs and mean­ing­less emo­tional cer­e­monies. A re­li­gion might claim as the ob­ject of its de­vo­tion a great ideal. But such ide­als of un­re­al­ity are not at­tain­able; such a con­cept is il­lu­sion­ary. The only ide­als sus­cep­ti­ble of hu­man at­tain­ment are the di­vine re­al­i­ties of the in­fi­nite val­ues res­i­dent in the spir­i­tual fact of the eter­nal God.

160:5.6The word God, the idea of God as con­trasted with the ideal of God, can be­come a part of any re­li­gion, no mat­ter how puerile or false that re­li­gion may chance to be. And this idea of God can be­come any­thing which those who en­ter­tain it may choose to make it. The lower re­li­gions shape their ideas of God to meet the nat­u­ral state of the hu­man heart; the higher re­li­gions de­mand that the hu­man heart shall be changed to meet the de­mands of the ide­als of true re­li­gion.

• explained › declares divine source of values personally attainable

160:5.7The re­li­gion of Je­sus tran­scends all our for­mer con­cepts of the idea of wor­ship in that he not only por­trays his Fa­ther as the ideal of in­fi­nite re­al­ity but pos­i­tively de­clares that this di­vine source of val­ues and the eter­nal cen­ter of the uni­verse is truly and per­son­ally at­tain­able by ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture who chooses to en­ter the king­dom of heaven on earth, thereby ac­knowl­edg­ing the ac­cep­tance of son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man. That, I sub­mit, is the high­est con­cept of re­li­gion the world has ever known, and I pro­nounce that there can never be a higher since this gospel em­braces the in­fin­ity of re­al­i­ties, the di­vin­ity of val­ues, and the eter­nity of uni­ver­sal at­tain­ments. Such a con­cept con­sti­tutes the achieve­ment of the ex­pe­ri­ence of the ide­al­ism of the su­preme and the ul­ti­mate.

160:5.8I am not only in­trigued by the con­sum­mate ide­als of this re­li­gion of your Mas­ter, but I am might­ily moved to pro­fess my be­lief in his an­nounce­ment that these ide­als of spirit re­al­i­ties are at­tain­able; that you and I can en­ter upon this long and eter­nal ad­ven­ture with his as­sur­ance of the cer­tainty of our ul­ti­mate ar­rival at the por­tals of Par­a­dise. My breth­ren, I am a be­liever, I have em­barked; I am on my way with you in this eter­nal ven­ture. The Mas­ter says he came from the Fa­ther, and that he will show us the way. I am fully per­suaded he speaks the truth. I am fi­nally con­vinced that there are no at­tain­able ide­als of re­al­ity or val­ues of per­fec­tion apart from the eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• primitive religion › gods of › self-deceptive idols; wishful fancy

160:5.9I come, then, to wor­ship, not merely the God of ex­is­tences, but the God of the pos­si­bil­ity of all fu­ture ex­is­tences. There­fore must your de­vo­tion to a su­preme ideal, if that ideal is real, be de­vo­tion to this God of past, pres­ent, and fu­ture uni­verses of things and be­ings. And there is no other God, for there can­not pos­si­bly be any other God. All other gods are fig­ments of the imag­i­na­tion, il­lu­sions of mor­tal mind, dis­tor­tions of false logic, and the self-de­cep­tive idols of those who cre­ate them. Yes, you can have a re­li­gion with­out this God, but it does not mean any­thing. And if you seek to sub­sti­tute the word God for the re­al­ity of this ideal of the liv­ing God, you have only de­luded your­self by putting an idea in the place of an ideal, a di­vine re­al­ity. Such be­liefs are merely re­li­gions of wish­ful fancy.

160:5.10I see in the teach­ings of Je­sus, re­li­gion at its best. This gospel en­ables us to seek for the true God and to find him. But are we will­ing to pay the price of this en­trance into the king­dom of heaven? Are we will­ing to be born again? to be re­made? Are we will­ing to be sub­ject to this ter­ri­ble and test­ing pro­cess of self-de­struc­tion and soul re­con­struc­tion? Has not the Mas­ter said: “Whoso would save his life must lose it. Think not that I have come to bring peace but rather a soul strug­gle”? True, af­ter we pay the price of ded­i­ca­tion to the Fa­ther’s will, we do ex­pe­ri­ence great peace pro­vided we con­tinue to walk in these spir­i­tual paths of con­se­crated liv­ing.

160:5.11Now are we truly for­sak­ing the lures of the known or­der of ex­is­tence while we un­re­servedly ded­i­cate our quest to the lures of the un­known and un­ex­plored or­der of the ex­is­tence of a fu­ture life of ad­ven­ture in the spirit worlds of the higher ide­al­ism of di­vine re­al­ity. And we seek for those sym­bols of mean­ing where­with to con­vey to our fel­low men these con­cepts of the re­al­ity of the ide­al­ism of the re­li­gion of Je­sus, and we will not cease to pray for that day when all man­kind shall be thrilled by the com­mu­nal vi­sion of this su­preme truth. Just now, our fo­cal­ized con­cept of the Fa­ther, as held in our hearts, is that God is spirit; as con­veyed to our fel­lows, that God is love.

160:5.12The re­li­gion of Je­sus de­mands liv­ing and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Other re­li­gions may con­sist in tra­di­tional be­liefs, emo­tional feel­ings, philo­sophic con­scious­ness, and all of that, but the teach­ing of the Mas­ter re­quires the at­tain­ment of ac­tual lev­els of real spirit pro­gres­sion.

• explained › has reference to destiny and reality of attainment

160:5.13The con­scious­ness of the im­pulse to be like God is not true re­li­gion. The feel­ings of the emo­tion to wor­ship God are not true re­li­gion. The knowl­edge of the con­vic­tion to for­sake self and serve God is not true re­li­gion. The wis­dom of the rea­son­ing that this re­li­gion is the best of all is not re­li­gion as a per­sonal and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. True re­li­gion has ref­er­ence to des­tiny and re­al­ity of at­tain­ment as well as to the re­al­ity and ide­al­ism of that which is whole­heart­edly faith-ac­cepted. And all of this must be made per­sonal to us by the rev­e­la­tion of the Spirit of Truth.

160:5.14And thus ended the dis­ser­ta­tions of the Greek philoso­pher, one of the great­est of his race, who had be­come a be­liever in the gospel of Je­sus.

• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

170:3.8It there­fore is ev­i­dent that the true and in­ner re­li­gion of the king­dom un­fail­ingly and in­creas­ingly tends to man­i­fest it­self in prac­ti­cal av­enues of so­cial ser­vice. Je­sus taught a liv­ing re­li­gion that im­pelled its be­liev­ers to en­gage in the do­ing of lov­ing ser­vice. But Je­sus did not put ethics in the place of re­li­gion. He taught re­li­gion as a cause and ethics as a re­sult.

• result of religion › social fruits are love and service

170:3.9The righ­teous­ness of any act must be mea­sured by the mo­tive; the high­est forms of good are there­fore un­con­scious. Je­sus was never con­cerned with morals or ethics as such. He was wholly con­cerned with that in­ward and spir­i­tual fel­low­ship with God the Fa­ther which so cer­tainly and di­rectly man­i­fests it­self as out­ward and lov­ing ser­vice for man. He taught that the re­li­gion of the king­dom is a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence which no man can con­tain within him­self; that the con­scious­ness of be­ing a mem­ber of the fam­ily of be­liev­ers leads in­evitably to the prac­tice of the pre­cepts of the fam­ily con­duct, the ser­vice of one’s broth­ers and sis­ters in the ef­fort to en­hance and en­large the broth­er­hood.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › commercialization

173:1.11This cleans­ing of the tem­ple dis­closes the Mas­ter’s at­ti­tude to­ward com­mer­cial­iz­ing the prac­tices of re­li­gion as well as his de­tes­ta­tion of all forms of un­fair­ness and prof­i­teer­ing at the ex­pense of the poor and the un­learned. This episode also demon­strates that Je­sus did not look with ap­proval upon the re­fusal to em­ploy force to pro­tect the ma­jor­ity of any given hu­man group against the un­fair and en­slav­ing prac­tices of un­just mi­nori­ties who may be able to en­trench them­selves be­hind po­lit­i­cal, fi­nan­cial, or ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal power. Shrewd, wicked, and de­sign­ing men are not to be per­mit­ted to or­ga­nize them­selves for the ex­ploita­tion and op­pres­sion of those who, be­cause of their ide­al­ism, are not dis­posed to re­sort to force for self-pro­tec­tion or for the fur­ther­ance of their laud­able life projects.

• warnings › r. of spirit in deadly conflict with institutional r.

173:3.3Je­sus did not de­spise the Phar­isees and Sad­ducees per­son­ally. It was their sys­tems of teach­ing and prac­tice which he sought to dis­credit. He was hos­tile to no man, but here was oc­cur­ring the in­ev­i­ta­ble clash be­tween a new and liv­ing re­li­gion of the spirit and the older re­li­gion of cer­e­mony, tra­di­tion, and au­thor­ity.

• result of religion › enhances home life

177:2.6It is our sin­cere be­lief that the gospel of Je­sus’ teach­ing, founded as it is on the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship, can hardly en­joy a world-wide ac­cep­tance un­til such a time as the home life of the mod­ern civ­i­lized peo­ples em­braces more of love and more of wis­dom. Not­with­stand­ing that par­ents of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury pos­sess great knowl­edge and in­creased truth for im­prov­ing the home and en­nobling the home life, it re­mains a fact that very few mod­ern homes are such good places in which to nur­ture boys and girls as Je­sus’ home in Gal­i­lee and John Mark’s home in Judea, al­beit the ac­cep­tance of Je­sus’ gospel will re­sult in the im­me­di­ate im­prove­ment of home life. The love life of a wise home and the loyal de­vo­tion of true re­li­gion ex­ert a pro­found re­cip­ro­cal in­flu­ence upon each other. Such a home life en­hances re­li­gion, and gen­uine re­li­gion al­ways glo­ri­fies the home.

• warnings › separate church and state

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

• institutional religion › cup of remembrance is emblem of emergence from bondage of

179:5.2The apos­tles all sensed that some­thing out of the or­di­nary was tran­spir­ing as they drank of this cup of bless­ing in pro­found rev­er­ence and per­fect si­lence. The old Pass­over com­mem­o­rated the emer­gence of their fa­thers from a state of racial slav­ery into in­di­vid­ual free­dom; now the Mas­ter was in­sti­tut­ing a new re­mem­brance sup­per as a sym­bol of the new dis­pen­sa­tion wherein the en­slaved in­di­vid­ual emerges from the bond­age of cer­e­mo­ni­al­ism and self­ish­ness into the spir­i­tual joy of the broth­er­hood and fel­low­ship of the lib­er­ated faith sons of the liv­ing God.

• defined as › loving neighbor as oneself
• result of religion › fellows receive highest good from believer’s contact with them

180:5.7In the king­dom of the be­liev­ing broth­er­hood of God-know­ing truth lovers, this golden rule takes on liv­ing qual­i­ties of spir­i­tual re­al­iza­tion on those higher lev­els of in­ter­pre­ta­tion which cause the mor­tal sons of God to view this in­junc­tion of the Mas­ter as re­quir­ing them so to re­late them­selves to their fel­lows that they will re­ceive the high­est pos­si­ble good as a re­sult of the be­liever’s con­tact with them. This is the essence of true re­li­gion: that you love your neigh­bor as your­self.

• explained › self-forgetful, not self-sacrificial
• institutional religion › based on fear, emotion, tradition, and philosophy

180:5.12And all this clearly in­di­cates the dif­fer­ence be­tween the old re­li­gion and the new. The old re­li­gion taught self-sac­ri­fice; the new re­li­gion teaches only self-for­get­ful­ness, en­hanced self-re­al­iza­tion in con­joined so­cial ser­vice and uni­verse com­pre­hen­sion. The old re­li­gion was mo­ti­vated by fear-con­scious­ness; the new gospel of the king­dom is dom­i­nated by truth-con­vic­tion, the spirit of eter­nal and uni­ver­sal truth. And no amount of piety or creedal loy­alty can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of king­dom be­liev­ers of that spon­ta­neous, gen­er­ous, and sin­cere friend­li­ness which char­ac­ter­izes the spirit-born sons of the liv­ing God. Nei­ther tra­di­tion nor a cer­e­mo­nial sys­tem of for­mal wor­ship can atone for the lack of gen­uine com­pas­sion for one’s fel­lows.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › doctrinal finality
• warnings › dangers of religion are › superiority of group consciousness

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

• explained › validated by personal experience
• institutional religion › based on false security of authority
• warnings › r. of spirit in deadly conflict with institutional r.

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

192:2.1When they had fin­ished break­fast, and while the oth­ers sat by the fire, Je­sus beck­oned to Pe­ter and to John that they should come with him for a stroll on the beach. As they walked along, Je­sus said to John, “John, do you love me?” And when John an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, with all my heart,” the Mas­ter said: “Then, John, give up your in­tol­er­ance and learn to love men as I have loved you. De­vote your life to prov­ing that love is the great­est thing in the world. It is the love of God that im­pels men to seek sal­va­tion. Love is the an­ces­tor of all spir­i­tual good­ness, the essence of the true and the beau­ti­ful.”

192:2.2Je­sus then turned to­ward Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you love me?” Pe­ter an­swered, “Lord, you know I love you with all my soul.” Then said Je­sus: “If you love me, Pe­ter, feed my lambs. Do not ne­glect to min­is­ter to the weak, the poor, and the young. Preach the gospel with­out fear or fa­vor; re­mem­ber al­ways that God is no re­specter of per­sons. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you; for­give your fel­low mor­tals even as I have for­given you. Let ex­pe­ri­ence teach you the value of med­i­ta­tion and the power of in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.”

192:2.3Af­ter they had walked along a lit­tle far­ther, the Mas­ter turned to Pe­ter and asked, “Pe­ter, do you re­ally love me?” And then said Si­mon, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And again said Je­sus: “Then take good care of my sheep. Be a good and a true shep­herd to the flock. Be­tray not their con­fi­dence in you. Be not taken by sur­prise at the en­emy’s hand. Be on guard at all times—watch and pray.”

192:2.4When they had gone a few steps far­ther, Je­sus turned to Pe­ter and, for the third time, asked, “Pe­ter, do you truly love me?” And then Pe­ter, be­ing slightly grieved at the Mas­ter’s seem­ing dis­trust of him, said with con­sid­er­able feel­ing, “Lord, you know all things, and there­fore do you know that I re­ally and truly love you.” Then said Je­sus: “Feed my sheep. Do not for­sake the flock. Be an ex­am­ple and an in­spi­ra­tion to all your fel­low shep­herds. Love the flock as I have loved you and de­vote your­self to their wel­fare even as I have de­voted my life to your wel­fare. And fol­low af­ter me even to the end.”

192:2.5Pe­ter took this last state­ment lit­er­ally—that he should con­tinue to fol­low af­ter him—and turn­ing to Je­sus, he pointed to John, ask­ing, “If I fol­low on af­ter you, what shall this man do?” And then, per­ceiv­ing that Pe­ter had mis­un­der­stood his words, Je­sus said: “Pe­ter, be not con­cerned about what your breth­ren shall do. If I will that John should tarry af­ter you are gone, even un­til I come back, what is that to you? Only make sure that you fol­low me.”

192:2.6This re­mark spread among the breth­ren and was re­ceived as a state­ment by Je­sus to the ef­fect that John would not die be­fore the Mas­ter re­turned, as many thought and hoped, to es­tab­lish the king­dom in power and glory. It was this in­ter­pre­ta­tion of what Je­sus said that had much to do with get­ting Si­mon Ze­lo­tes back into ser­vice, and keep­ing him at work.

192:2.7When they re­turned to the oth­ers, Je­sus went for a walk and talk with An­drew and James. When they had gone a short dis­tance, Je­sus said to An­drew, “An­drew, do you trust me?” And when the for­mer chief of the apos­tles heard Je­sus ask such a ques­tion, he stood still and an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, of a cer­tainty I trust you, and you know that I do.” Then said Je­sus: “An­drew, if you trust me, trust your breth­ren more—even Pe­ter. I once trusted you with the lead­er­ship of your breth­ren. Now must you trust oth­ers as I leave you to go to the Fa­ther. When your breth­ren be­gin to scat­ter abroad be­cause of bit­ter per­se­cu­tions, be a con­sid­er­ate and wise coun­selor to James my brother in the flesh when they put heavy bur­dens upon him which he is not qual­i­fied by ex­pe­ri­ence to bear. And then go on trust­ing, for I will not fail you. When you are through on earth, you shall come to me.”

192:2.8Then Je­sus turned to James, ask­ing, “James, do you trust me?” And of course James replied, “Yes, Mas­ter, I trust you with all my heart.” Then said Je­sus: “James, if you trust me more, you will be less im­pa­tient with your breth­ren. If you will trust me, it will help you to be kind to the broth­er­hood of be­liev­ers. Learn to weigh the con­se­quences of your say­ings and your do­ings. Re­mem­ber that the reap­ing is in ac­cor­dance with the sow­ing. Pray for tran­quil­lity of spirit and cul­ti­vate pa­tience. These graces, with liv­ing faith, shall sus­tain you when the hour comes to drink the cup of sac­ri­fice. But never be dis­mayed; when you are through on earth, you shall also come to be with me.”

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

192:2.10Then said the Mas­ter to Na­than­iel, “Na­than­iel, do you serve me?” And the apos­tle an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, and with an un­di­vided af­fec­tion.” Then said Je­sus: “If, there­fore, you serve me with a whole heart, make sure that you are de­voted to the wel­fare of my breth­ren on earth with tire­less af­fec­tion. Ad­mix friend­ship with your coun­sel and add love to your phi­los­o­phy. Serve your fel­low men even as I have served you. Be faith­ful to men as I have watched over you. Be less crit­i­cal; ex­pect less of some men and thereby lessen the ex­tent of your dis­ap­point­ment. And when the work down here is over, you shall serve with me on high.”

192:2.11Af­ter this the Mas­ter talked with Mat­thew and Philip. To Philip he said, “Philip, do you obey me?” Philip an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I will obey you even with my life.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would obey me, go then into the lands of the gen­tiles and pro­claim this gospel. The proph­ets have told you that to obey is bet­ter than to sac­ri­fice. By faith have you be­come a God-know­ing king­dom son. There is but one law to obey—that is the com­mand to go forth pro­claim­ing the gospel of the king­dom. Cease to fear men; be un­afraid to preach the good news of eter­nal life to your fel­lows who lan­guish in dark­ness and hunger for the light of truth. No more, Philip, shall you busy your­self with money and goods. You now are free to preach the glad tid­ings just as are your breth­ren. And I will go be­fore you and be with you even to the end.”

192:2.12And then, speak­ing to Mat­thew, the Mas­ter asked, “Mat­thew, do you have it in your heart to obey me?” Mat­thew an­swered, “Yes, Lord, I am fully ded­i­cated to do­ing your will.” Then said the Mas­ter: “Mat­thew, if you would obey me, go forth to teach all peo­ples this gospel of the king­dom. No longer will you serve your breth­ren the ma­te­rial things of life; hence­forth you are also to pro­claim the good news of spir­i­tual sal­va­tion. From now on have an eye sin­gle only to obey­ing your com­mis­sion to preach this gospel of the Fa­ther’s king­dom. As I have done the Fa­ther’s will on earth, so shall you ful­fill the di­vine com­mis­sion. Re­mem­ber, both Jew and gen­tile are your breth­ren. Fear no man when you pro­claim the sav­ing truths of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. And where I go, you shall pres­ently come.”

192:2.13Then he walked and talked with the Al­pheus twins, James and Ju­das, and speak­ing to both of them, he asked, “James and Ju­das, do you be­lieve in me?” And when they both an­swered, “Yes, Mas­ter, we do be­lieve,” he said: “I will soon leave you. You see that I have al­ready left you in the flesh. I tarry only a short time in this form be­fore I go to my Fa­ther. You be­lieve in me—you are my apos­tles, and you al­ways will be. Go on be­liev­ing and re­mem­ber­ing your as­so­ci­a­tion with me, when I am gone, and af­ter you have, per­chance, re­turned to the work you used to do be­fore you came to live with me. Never al­low a change in your out­ward work to in­flu­ence your al­le­giance. Have faith in God to the end of your days on earth. Never for­get that, when you are a faith son of God, all up­right work of the realm is sa­cred. Noth­ing which a son of God does can be com­mon. Do your work, there­fore, from this time on, as for God. And when you are through on this world, I have other and bet­ter worlds where you shall like­wise work for me. And in all of this work, on this world and on other worlds, I will work with you, and my spirit shall dwell within you.”

192:2.14It was al­most ten o’clock when Je­sus re­turned from his visit with the Al­pheus twins, and as he left the apos­tles, he said: “Farewell, un­til I meet you all on the mount of your or­di­na­tion to­mor­row at noon­time.” When he had thus spo­ken, he van­ished from their sight.

• explained › r. of Jesus vs. r. about Jesus

192:4.7On Thurs­day night the apos­tles had a won­der­ful meet­ing in this up­per cham­ber and all pledged them­selves to go forth in the pub­lic preach­ing of the new gospel of the risen Lord ex­cept Thomas, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and the Al­pheus twins. Al­ready had be­gun the first steps of chang­ing the gospel of the king­dom—son­ship with God and broth­er­hood with man—into the procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion of Je­sus. Na­than­iel op­posed this shift in the bur­den of their pub­lic mes­sage, but he could not with­stand Pe­ter’s elo­quence, nei­ther could he over­come the en­thu­si­asm of the dis­ci­ples, es­pe­cially the women be­liev­ers.

192:4.8And so, un­der the vig­or­ous lead­er­ship of Pe­ter and ere the Mas­ter as­cended to the Fa­ther, his well-mean­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­gan that sub­tle pro­cess of grad­u­ally and cer­tainly chang­ing the re­li­gion of Je­sus into a new and mod­i­fied form of re­li­gion about Je­sus.

• defined as › faith, hope, love, assurance, mercy
• explained › does not seek to escape this life
• primitive religion › craves extinction in endless slumber and rest
• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

194:3.3To Je­sus, mor­tal life had dealt its hard­est, cru­elest, and bit­ter­est blows; and this man met these min­is­tra­tions of de­spair with faith, cour­age, and the unswerv­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion to do his Fa­ther’s will. Je­sus met life in all its ter­ri­ble re­al­ity and mas­tered it—even in death. He did not use re­li­gion as a re­lease from life. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does not seek to es­cape this life in or­der to en­joy the wait­ing bliss of an­other ex­is­tence. The re­li­gion of Je­sus pro­vides the joy and peace of an­other and spir­i­tual ex­is­tence to en­hance and en­no­ble the life which men now live in the flesh.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

194:3.9The man­i­fes­ta­tions as­so­ci­ated with the be­stowal of the “new teacher,” and the re­cep­tion of the apos­tles’ preach­ing by the men of var­i­ous races and na­tions gath­ered to­gether at Je­ru­sa­lem, in­di­cate the uni­ver­sal­ity of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. The gospel of the king­dom was to be iden­ti­fied with no par­tic­u­lar race, cul­ture, or lan­guage. This day of Pen­te­cost wit­nessed the great ef­fort of the spirit to lib­er­ate the re­li­gion of Je­sus from its in­her­ited Jew­ish fet­ters. Even af­ter this dem­on­stra­tion of pour­ing out the spirit upon all flesh, the apos­tles at first en­deav­ored to im­pose the re­quire­ments of Ju­daism upon their con­verts. Even Paul had trou­ble with his Je­ru­sa­lem breth­ren be­cause he re­fused to sub­ject the gen­tiles to these Jew­ish prac­tices. No re­vealed re­li­gion can spread to all the world when it makes the se­ri­ous mis­take of be­com­ing per­me­ated with some na­tional cul­ture or as­so­ci­ated with es­tab­lished racial, so­cial, or eco­nomic prac­tices.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Simon Peter

194:4.12Stephen, the leader of the Greek colony of Je­sus’ be­liev­ers in Je­ru­sa­lem, thus be­came the first mar­tyr to the new faith and the spe­cific cause for the for­mal or­ga­ni­za­tion of the early Chris­tian church. This new cri­sis was met by the rec­og­ni­tion that be­liev­ers could not longer go on as a sect within the Jew­ish faith. They all agreed that they must sep­a­rate them­selves from un­be­liev­ers; and within one month from the death of Stephen the church at Je­ru­sa­lem had been or­ga­nized un­der the lead­er­ship of Pe­ter, and James the brother of Je­sus had been in­stalled as its tit­u­lar head.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Simon Peter

195:0.1The re­sults of Pe­ter’s preach­ing on the day of Pen­te­cost were such as to de­cide the fu­ture poli­cies, and to de­ter­mine the plans, of the ma­jor­ity of the apos­tles in their ef­forts to pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom. Pe­ter was the real founder of the Chris­tian church; Paul car­ried the Chris­tian mes­sage to the gen­tiles, and the Greek be­liev­ers car­ried it to the whole Ro­man Em­pire.

• history of religion › great teachers and leaders › named › Paul

195:0.61. Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Paul was a great or­ga­nizer and his suc­ces­sors kept up the pace he set.

• explained › revelation, embrace of supernatural values, divine destiny

195:5.3Re­li­gion is the rev­e­la­tion to man of his di­vine and eter­nal des­tiny. Re­li­gion is a purely per­sonal and spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and must for­ever be dis­tin­guished from man’s other high forms of thought, such as:

• result of religion › calls forth faith, trust, unity, peace, and assurance

195:5.8Re­li­gion is de­signed to find those val­ues in the uni­verse which call forth faith, trust, and as­sur­ance; re­li­gion cul­mi­nates in wor­ship. Re­li­gion dis­cov­ers for the soul those su­preme val­ues which are in con­trast with the rel­a­tive val­ues dis­cov­ered by the mind. Such super­hu­man in­sight can be had only through gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

• explained › not concerned with material things

195:6.2No mat­ter what the ap­par­ent con­flict be­tween ma­te­ri­al­ism and the teach­ings of Je­sus may be, you can rest as­sured that, in the ages to come, the teach­ings of the Mas­ter will fully tri­umph. In re­al­ity, true re­li­gion can­not be­come in­volved in any con­tro­versy with sci­ence; it is in no way con­cerned with ma­te­rial things. Re­li­gion is sim­ply in­dif­fer­ent to, but sym­pa­thetic with, sci­ence, while it su­premely con­cerns it­self with the sci­en­tist.

• explained › qualitative experience

195:6.5Sci­ence is a quan­ti­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, re­li­gion a qual­i­ta­tive ex­pe­ri­ence, as re­gards man’s life on earth. Sci­ence deals with phe­nom­ena; re­li­gion, with ori­gins, val­ues, and goals. To as­sign causes as an ex­pla­na­tion of phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena is to con­fess ig­no­rance of ul­ti­mates and in the end only leads the sci­en­tist straight back to the first great cause—the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther of Par­a­dise.

• warnings › r. must have up-to-date slogans

195:6.10But re­li­gious lead­ers are mak­ing a great mis­take when they try to call mod­ern man to spir­i­tual bat­tle with the trum­pet blasts of the Mid­dle Ages. Re­li­gion must pro­vide it­self with new and up-to-date slo­gans. Nei­ther democ­racy nor any other po­lit­i­cal panacea will take the place of spir­i­tual prog­ress. False re­li­gions may rep­re­sent an eva­sion of re­al­ity, but Je­sus in his gospel in­tro­duced mor­tal man to the very en­trance upon an eter­nal re­al­ity of spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion.

• defined as › wholehearted devotion to supreme 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.

• needs new leaders who will depend solely on Jesus

195:9.4Re­li­gion does need new lead­ers, spir­i­tual men and women who will dare to de­pend solely on Je­sus and his in­com­pa­ra­ble teach­ings. If Chris­tian­ity per­sists in ne­glect­ing its spir­i­tual mis­sion while it con­tin­ues to busy it­self with so­cial and ma­te­rial prob­lems, the spir­i­tual re­nais­sance must await the com­ing of these new teach­ers of Je­sus’ re­li­gion who will be ex­clu­sively de­voted to the spir­i­tual re­gen­er­a­tion of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly sup­ply the lead­er­ship and in­spi­ra­tion req­ui­site for the so­cial, moral, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the world.

• modern men fear what r. of Jesus will do to them and with them
• warnings › man invariably tries to institutionalize his r.

195:9.6Prim­i­tive man lived a life of su­per­sti­tious bond­age to re­li­gious fear. Mod­ern, civ­i­lized men dread the thought of falling un­der the dom­i­nance of strong re­li­gious con­vic­tions. Think­ing man has al­ways feared to be held by a re­li­gion. When a strong and mov­ing re­li­gion threat­ens to dom­i­nate him, he in­vari­ably tries to ra­tio­nal­ize, tra­di­tion­al­ize, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ize it, thereby hop­ing to gain con­trol of it. By such pro­ce­dure, even a re­vealed re­li­gion be­comes man-made and man-dom­i­nated. Mod­ern men and women of in­tel­li­gence evade the re­li­gion of Je­sus be­cause of their fears of what it will do to them—and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The re­li­gion of Je­sus does, in­deed, dom­i­nate and trans­form its be­liev­ers, de­mand­ing that men ded­i­cate their lives to seek­ing for a knowl­edge of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven and re­quir­ing that the en­er­gies of liv­ing be con­se­crated to the un­selfish ser­vice of the broth­er­hood of man.

• institutional religion › barren

195:9.7Self­ish men and women sim­ply will not pay such a price for even the great­est spir­i­tual trea­sure ever of­fered mor­tal man. Only when man has be­come suf­fi­ciently dis­il­lu­sioned by the sor­row­ful dis­ap­point­ments at­ten­dant upon the fool­ish and de­cep­tive pur­suits of self­ish­ness, and sub­se­quent to the dis­cov­ery of the bar­ren­ness of for­mal­ized re­li­gion, will he be dis­posed to turn whole­heart­edly to the gospel of the king­dom, the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• world needs more firsthand r.

195:9.8The world needs more first­hand re­li­gion. Even Chris­tian­ity—the best of the re­li­gions of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury—is not only a re­li­gion about Je­sus, but it is so largely one which men ex­pe­ri­ence sec­ond­hand. They take their re­li­gion wholly as handed down by their ac­cepted re­li­gious teach­ers. What an awak­en­ing the world would ex­pe­ri­ence if it could only see Je­sus as he re­ally lived on earth and know, first­hand, his life-giv­ing teach­ings! De­scrip­tive words of things beau­ti­ful can­not thrill like the sight thereof, nei­ther can creedal words in­spire men’s souls like the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing the pres­ence of God. But ex­pec­tant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man’s soul open for the en­trance of the eter­nal spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the di­vine val­ues of the worlds be­yond.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › defense of outgrown systems
• warnings › ecclesiasticism incompatible with living faith

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

195:10.13But there is no ex­cuse for the in­volve­ment of the church in com­merce and pol­i­tics; such un­holy al­liances are a fla­grant be­trayal of the Mas­ter. And the gen­uine lovers of truth will be slow to for­get that this pow­er­ful in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church has of­ten dared to smother new­born faith and per­se­cute truth bear­ers who chanced to ap­pear in un­ortho­dox rai­ment.

• institutional religion › spiritually indolent souls crave ancient and authoritative r.

195:10.14It is all too true that such a church would not have sur­vived un­less there had been men in the world who pre­ferred such a style of wor­ship. Many spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent souls crave an an­cient and au­thor­i­ta­tive re­li­gion of rit­ual and sa­cred tra­di­tions. Hu­man evo­lu­tion and spir­i­tual prog­ress are hardly suf­fi­cient to en­able all men to dis­pense with re­li­gious au­thor­ity. And the in­vis­i­ble broth­er­hood of the king­dom may well in­clude these fam­ily groups of var­i­ous so­cial and tem­per­a­men­tal classes if they are only will­ing to be­come truly spirit-led sons of God. But in this broth­er­hood of Je­sus there is no place for sec­tar­ian ri­valry, group bit­ter­ness, nor as­ser­tions of moral su­pe­ri­or­ity and spir­i­tual in­fal­li­bil­ity.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › unholy secular alliances; established social or economic practices

195:10.21The hope of mod­ern Chris­tian­ity is that it should cease to spon­sor the so­cial sys­tems and in­dus­trial poli­cies of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion while it humbly bows it­self be­fore the cross it so valiantly ex­tols, there to learn anew from Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the great­est truths mor­tal man can ever hear—the liv­ing gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man.

• explained › validated by personal experience

196:0.4In the Mas­ter’s life on Uran­tia, this and all other worlds of the lo­cal cre­ation dis­cover a new and higher type of re­li­gion, re­li­gion based on per­sonal spir­i­tual re­la­tions with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and wholly val­i­dated by the su­preme au­thor­ity of gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. This liv­ing faith of Je­sus was more than an in­tel­lec­tual re­flec­tion, and it was not a mys­tic med­i­ta­tion.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › fanaticism, exaggeration of ego

196:0.6In a re­li­gious ge­nius, strong spir­i­tual faith so many times leads di­rectly to dis­as­trous fa­nati­cism, to ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the re­li­gious ego, but it was not so with Je­sus. He was not un­fa­vor­ably af­fected in his prac­ti­cal life by his ex­traor­di­nary faith and spirit at­tain­ment be­cause this spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion was a wholly un­con­scious and spon­ta­neous soul ex­pres­sion of his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God.

• warnings › dangers of religion are › superficial frothiness of religious egotist

196:0.8The faith of Je­sus vi­su­al­ized all spirit val­ues as be­ing found in the king­dom of God; there­fore he said, “Seek first the king­dom of heaven.” Je­sus saw in the ad­vanced and ideal fel­low­ship of the king­dom the achieve­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “will of God.” The very heart of the prayer which he taught his dis­ci­ples was, “Your king­dom come; your will be done.” Hav­ing thus con­ceived of the king­dom as com­pris­ing the will of God, he de­voted him­self to the cause of its re­al­iza­tion with amaz­ing self-for­get­ful­ness and un­bounded en­thu­si­asm. But in all his in­tense mis­sion and through­out his ex­traor­di­nary life there never ap­peared the fury of the fa­natic nor the su­per­fi­cial froth­i­ness of the re­li­gious ego­tist.

• result of religion › dissolves, absorbs, illuminates, and transcends troubles

196:3.1Per­sonal, spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is an ef­fi­cient sol­vent for most mor­tal dif­fi­cul­ties; it is an ef­fec­tive sorter, eval­u­a­tor, and ad­juster of all hu­man prob­lems. Re­li­gion does not re­move or de­stroy hu­man trou­bles, but it does dis­solve, ab­sorb, il­lu­mi­nate, and tran­scend them. True re­li­gion uni­fies the per­son­al­ity for ef­fec­tive ad­just­ment to all mor­tal re­quire­ments. Re­li­gious faith—the pos­i­tive lead­ing of the in­dwelling di­vine pres­ence—un­fail­ingly en­ables the God-know­ing man to bridge that gulf ex­ist­ing be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual logic which rec­og­nizes the Uni­ver­sal First Cause as It and those pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heav­enly Fa­ther of Je­sus’ gospel, the per­sonal God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

196:3.2There are just three el­e­ments in uni­ver­sal re­al­ity: fact, idea, and re­la­tion. The re­li­gious con­scious­ness iden­ti­fies these re­al­i­ties as sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and truth. Phi­los­o­phy would be in­clined to view these ac­tiv­i­ties as rea­son, wis­dom, and faith—phys­i­cal re­al­ity, in­tel­lec­tual re­al­ity, and spir­i­tual re­al­ity. We are in the habit of des­ig­nat­ing these re­al­i­ties as thing, mean­ing, and value.

196:3.3The pro­gres­sive com­pre­hen­sion of re­al­ity is the equiv­a­lent of ap­proach­ing God. The find­ing of God, the con­scious­ness of iden­tity with re­al­ity, is the equiv­a­lent of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of self-com­ple­tion—self-en­tirety, self-to­tal­ity. The ex­pe­ri­enc­ing of to­tal re­al­ity is the full re­al­iza­tion of God, the fi­nal­ity of the God-know­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.4The full sum­ma­tion of hu­man life is the knowl­edge that man is ed­u­cated by fact, en­no­bled by wis­dom, and saved—jus­ti­fied—by re­li­gious faith.

196:3.5Phys­i­cal cer­tainty con­sists in the logic of sci­ence; moral cer­tainty, in the wis­dom of phi­los­o­phy; spir­i­tual cer­tainty, in the truth of gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.6The mind of man can at­tain high lev­els of spir­i­tual in­sight and cor­re­spond­ing spheres of di­vin­ity of val­ues be­cause it is not wholly ma­te­rial. There is a spirit nu­cleus in the mind of man—the Ad­juster of the di­vine pres­ence. There are three sep­a­rate ev­i­dences of this spirit in­dwelling of the hu­man mind:

196:3.71. Hu­man­i­tar­ian fel­low­ship—love. The purely an­i­mal mind may be gre­gar­i­ous for self-pro­tec­tion, but only the spirit-in­dwelt in­tel­lect is un­selfishly al­tru­is­tic and un­con­di­tion­ally lov­ing.

196:3.82. In­ter­pre­ta­tion of the uni­verse—wis­dom. Only the spirit-in­dwelt mind can com­pre­hend that the uni­verse is friendly to the in­di­vid­ual.

196:3.93. Spir­i­tual eval­u­a­tion of life—wor­ship. Only the spirit-in­dwelt man can re­al­ize the di­vine pres­ence and seek to at­tain a fuller ex­pe­ri­ence in and with this fore­taste of di­vin­ity.

196:3.10The hu­man mind does not cre­ate real val­ues; hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence does not yield uni­verse in­sight. Con­cern­ing in­sight, the rec­og­ni­tion of moral val­ues and the dis­cern­ment of spir­i­tual mean­ings, all that the hu­man mind can do is to dis­cover, rec­og­nize, in­ter­pret, and choose.

196:3.11The moral val­ues of the uni­verse be­come in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sions by the ex­er­cise of the three ba­sic judg­ments, or choices, of the mor­tal mind:

196:3.121. Self-judg­ment—moral choice.

196:3.132. So­cial-judg­ment—eth­i­cal choice.

196:3.143. God-judg­ment—re­li­gious choice.

196:3.15Thus it ap­pears that all hu­man prog­ress is ef­fected by a tech­nique of con­joint rev­e­la­tional evo­lu­tion.

196:3.16Un­less a di­vine lover lived in man, he could not un­selfishly and spir­i­tu­ally love. Un­less an in­ter­preter lived in the mind, man could not truly re­al­ize the unity of the uni­verse. Un­less an eval­u­a­tor dwelt with man, he could not pos­si­bly ap­praise moral val­ues and rec­og­nize spir­i­tual mean­ings. And this lover hails from the very source of in­fi­nite love; this in­ter­preter is a part of Uni­ver­sal Unity; this eval­u­a­tor is the child of the Cen­ter and Source of all ab­so­lute val­ues of di­vine and eter­nal re­al­ity.

• explained › discovery in mind, revelation by Adjuster

196:3.17Moral eval­u­a­tion with a re­li­gious mean­ing—spir­i­tual in­sight—con­notes the in­di­vid­ual’s choice be­tween good and evil, truth and er­ror, ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual, hu­man and di­vine, time and eter­nity. Hu­man sur­vival is in great mea­sure de­pen­dent on con­se­crat­ing the hu­man will to the choos­ing of those val­ues se­lected by this spirit-value sorter—the in­dwelling in­ter­preter and uni­fier. Per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in two phases: dis­cov­ery in the hu­man mind and rev­e­la­tion by the in­dwelling di­vine spirit. Through over­so­phis­ti­ca­tion or as a re­sult of the ir­re­li­gious con­duct of pro­fessed re­li­gion­ists, a man, or even a gen­er­a­tion of men, may elect to sus­pend their ef­forts to dis­cover the God who in­dwells them; they may fail to pro­gress in and at­tain the di­vine rev­e­la­tion. But such at­ti­tudes of spir­i­tual non­pro­gres­sion can­not long per­sist be­cause of the pres­ence and in­flu­ence of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers.

196:3.18This pro­found ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­ity of the di­vine in­dwelling for­ever tran­scends the crude ma­te­ri­al­is­tic tech­nique of the phys­i­cal sci­ences. You can­not put spir­i­tual joy un­der a mi­cro­scope; you can­not weigh love in a bal­ance; you can­not mea­sure moral val­ues; nei­ther can you es­ti­mate the qual­ity of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

• defined as › worship of God and service of man

196:3.19The He­brews had a re­li­gion of moral sub­lim­ity; the Greeks evolved a re­li­gion of beauty; Paul and his con­fer­ees founded a re­li­gion of faith, hope, and char­ity. Je­sus re­vealed and ex­em­pli­fied a re­li­gion of love: se­cu­rity in the Fa­ther’s love, with joy and sat­is­fac­tion con­se­quent upon shar­ing this love in the ser­vice of the hu­man broth­er­hood.

• defined as › subjectivity in response to total objectivity

196:3.20Ev­ery time man makes a re­flec­tive moral choice, he im­me­di­ately ex­pe­ri­ences a new di­vine in­va­sion of his soul. Moral choos­ing con­sti­tutes re­li­gion as the mo­tive of in­ner re­sponse to outer con­di­tions. But such a real re­li­gion is not a purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. It sig­ni­fies the whole of the sub­jec­tiv­ity of the in­di­vid­ual en­gaged in a mean­ing­ful and in­tel­li­gent re­sponse to to­tal ob­jec­tiv­ity—the uni­verse and its Maker.

196:3.21The ex­qui­site and tran­scen­dent ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing and be­ing loved is not just a psy­chic il­lu­sion be­cause it is so purely sub­jec­tive. The one truly di­vine and ob­jec­tive re­al­ity that is as­so­ci­ated with mor­tal be­ings, the Thought Ad­juster, func­tions to hu­man ob­ser­va­tion ap­par­ently as an ex­clu­sively sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non. Man’s con­tact with the high­est ob­jec­tive re­al­ity, God, is only through the purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing him, of wor­ship­ing him, of re­al­iz­ing son­ship with him.

196:3.22True re­li­gious wor­ship is not a fu­tile mono­logue of self-de­cep­tion. Wor­ship is a per­sonal com­mu­nion with that which is di­vinely real, with that which is the very source of re­al­ity. Man as­pires by wor­ship to be bet­ter and thereby even­tu­ally at­tains the best.

196:3.23The ide­al­iza­tion and at­tempted ser­vice of truth, beauty, and good­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence—spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Psy­chol­ogy and ide­al­ism are not the equiv­a­lent of re­li­gious re­al­ity. The pro­jec­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect may in­deed orig­i­nate false gods—gods in man’s im­age—but the true God-con­scious­ness does not have such an ori­gin. The God-con­scious­ness is res­i­dent in the in­dwelling spirit. Many of the re­li­gious sys­tems of man come from the for­mu­la­tions of the hu­man in­tel­lect, but the God-con­scious­ness is not nec­es­sar­ily a part of these grotesque sys­tems of re­li­gious slav­ery.

196:3.24God is not the mere in­ven­tion of man’s ide­al­ism; he is the very source of all such super­an­i­mal in­sights and val­ues. God is not a hy­poth­e­sis for­mu­lated to unify the hu­man con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness; he is the per­son­al­ity of love from whom all of these uni­verse man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. The truth, beauty, and good­ness of man’s world are uni­fied by the in­creas­ing spir­i­tu­al­ity of the ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tals as­cend­ing to­ward Par­a­dise re­al­i­ties. The unity of truth, beauty, and good­ness can only be re­al­ized in the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the God-know­ing per­son­al­ity.

196:3.25Moral­ity is the es­sen­tial pre-ex­is­tent soil of per­sonal God-con­scious­ness, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the Ad­juster’s in­ner pres­ence, but such moral­ity is not the source of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and the re­sul­tant spir­i­tual in­sight. The moral na­ture is super­an­i­mal but sub­spir­i­tual. Moral­ity is equiv­a­lent to the rec­og­ni­tion of duty, the re­al­iza­tion of the ex­is­tence of right and wrong. The moral zone in­ter­venes be­tween the an­i­mal and the hu­man types of mind as mor­ontia func­tions be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual spheres of per­son­al­ity at­tain­ment.

196:3.26The evo­lu­tion­ary mind is able to dis­cover law, morals, and ethics; but the be­stowed spirit, the in­dwelling Ad­juster, re­veals to the evolv­ing hu­man mind the law­giver, the Fa­ther-source of all that is true, beau­ti­ful, and good; and such an il­lu­mi­nated man has a re­li­gion and is spir­i­tu­ally equipped to be­gin the long and ad­ven­tur­ous search for God.

196:3.27Moral­ity is not nec­es­sar­ily spir­i­tual; it may be wholly and purely hu­man, al­beit real re­li­gion en­hances all moral val­ues, makes them more mean­ing­ful. Moral­ity with­out re­li­gion fails to re­veal ul­ti­mate good­ness, and it also fails to pro­vide for the sur­vival of even its own moral val­ues. Re­li­gion pro­vides for the en­hance­ment, glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, and as­sured sur­vival of ev­ery­thing moral­ity rec­og­nizes and ap­proves.

• explained › stands above science, art, philosophy, ethics, and morals, but not independent of them

196:3.28Re­li­gion stands above sci­ence, art, phi­los­o­phy, ethics, and morals, but not in­de­pen­dent of them. They are all in­dis­sol­ubly in­ter­re­lated in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, per­sonal and so­cial. Re­li­gion is man’s su­preme ex­pe­ri­ence in the mor­tal na­ture, but fi­nite lan­guage makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for the­ol­ogy ever ad­e­quately to de­pict real re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

196:3.29Re­li­gious in­sight pos­sesses the power of turn­ing de­feat into higher de­sires and new de­ter­mi­na­tions. Love is the high­est mo­ti­va­tion which man may uti­lize in his uni­verse as­cent. But love, di­vested of truth, beauty, and good­ness, is only a sen­ti­ment, a philo­sophic dis­tor­tion, a psy­chic il­lu­sion, a spir­i­tual de­cep­tion. Love must al­ways be re­de­fined on suc­ces­sive lev­els of mor­ontia and spirit pro­gres­sion.

• defined as › determination to find God and be like him

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.

196:3.31In the realm of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, spir­i­tual pos­si­bil­ity is po­ten­tial re­al­ity. Man’s for­ward spir­i­tual urge is not a psy­chic il­lu­sion. All of man’s uni­verse ro­manc­ing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth.

196:3.32Some men’s lives are too great and no­ble to de­scend to the low level of be­ing merely suc­cess­ful. The an­i­mal must adapt it­self to the en­vi­ron­ment, but the re­li­gious man tran­scends his en­vi­ron­ment and in this way es­capes the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent ma­te­rial world through this in­sight of di­vine love. This con­cept of love gen­er­ates in the soul of man that super­an­i­mal ef­fort to find truth, beauty, and good­ness; and when he does find them, he is glo­ri­fied in their em­brace; he is con­sumed with the de­sire to live them, to do righ­teous­ness.

196:3.33Be not dis­cour­aged; hu­man evo­lu­tion is still in prog­ress, and the rev­e­la­tion of God to the world, in and through Je­sus, shall not fail.

196:3.34The great chal­lenge to mod­ern man is to achieve bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor that dwells within the hu­man mind. Man’s great­est ad­ven­ture in the flesh con­sists in the well-bal­anced and sane ef­fort to ad­vance the bor­ders of self-con­scious­ness out through the dim realms of em­bry­onic soul-con­scious­ness in a whole­hearted ef­fort to reach the bor­der­land of spirit-con­scious­ness—con­tact with the di­vine pres­ence. Such an ex­pe­ri­ence con­sti­tutes God-con­scious­ness, an ex­pe­ri­ence might­ily con­fir­ma­tive of the pre-ex­is­tent truth of the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God. Such spirit-con­scious­ness is the equiv­a­lent of the knowl­edge of the ac­tu­al­ity of son­ship with God. Oth­er­wise, the as­sur­ance of son­ship is the ex­pe­ri­ence of faith.

196:3.35And God-con­scious­ness is equiv­a­lent to the in­te­gra­tion of the self with the uni­verse, and on its high­est lev­els of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. Only the spirit con­tent of any value is im­per­ish­able. Even that which is true, beau­ti­ful, and good may not per­ish in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. If man does not choose to sur­vive, then does the sur­viv­ing Ad­juster con­serve those re­al­i­ties born of love and nur­tured in ser­vice. And all these things are a part of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Fa­ther is liv­ing love, and this life of the Fa­ther is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Fa­ther is in his Sons’ sons—mor­tal men. When all is said and done, the Fa­ther idea is still the high­est hu­man con­cept of God.