science, philosophy, and religion

• compared and contrasted

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.

• compared and contrasted

1:6.2God is to sci­ence a cause, to phi­los­o­phy an idea, to re­li­gion a per­son, even the lov­ing heav­enly Fa­ther. God is to the sci­en­tist a pri­mal force, to the philoso­pher a hy­poth­e­sis of unity, to the re­li­gion­ist a liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Man’s in­ad­e­quate con­cept of the per­son­al­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can be im­proved only by man’s spir­i­tual prog­ress in the uni­verse and will be­come truly ad­e­quate only when the pil­grims of time and space fi­nally at­tain the di­vine em­brace of the liv­ing God on Par­a­dise.

• compared and contrasted

4:4.7In sci­ence, God is the First Cause; in re­li­gion, the uni­ver­sal and lov­ing Fa­ther; in phi­los­o­phy, the one be­ing who ex­ists by him­self, not de­pen­dent on any other be­ing for ex­is­tence but benef­i­cently con­fer­ring re­al­ity of ex­is­tence on all things and upon all other be­ings. But it re­quires rev­e­la­tion to show that the First Cause of sci­ence and the self-ex­is­tent Unity of phi­los­o­phy are the God of re­li­gion, full of mercy and good­ness and pledged to ef­fect the eter­nal sur­vival of his chil­dren on earth.

• compared and contrasted

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

• relationship among, also referred to as › energy, mind, and spirit
• relationship among, also referred to as › thing, meaning, and value

9:4.5Cos­mic force re­sponds to mind even as cos­mic mind re­sponds to spirit. Spirit is di­vine pur­pose, and spirit mind is di­vine pur­pose in ac­tion. En­ergy is thing, mind is mean­ing, spirit is value. Even in time and space, mind es­tab­lishes those rel­a­tive re­la­tion­ships be­tween en­ergy and spirit which are sug­ges­tive of mu­tual kin­ship in eter­nity.

• reality response delivers us from false a priori assumptions

16:6.4There ex­ists in all per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tions of the cos­mic mind a qual­ity which might be de­nom­i­nated the “re­al­ity re­sponse.” It is this uni­ver­sal cos­mic en­dow­ment of will crea­tures which saves them from be­com­ing help­less vic­tims of the im­plied a pri­ori as­sump­tions of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. This re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity of the cos­mic mind re­sponds to cer­tain phases of re­al­ity just as en­ergy-ma­te­rial re­sponds to grav­ity. It would be still more cor­rect to say that these super­ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties so re­spond to the mind of the cos­mos.

• relationship among, also referred to as › causation, duty, and worship

16:6.5The cos­mic mind un­fail­ingly re­sponds (rec­og­nizes re­sponse) on three lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. These re­sponses are self-ev­i­dent to clear-rea­son­ing and deep-think­ing minds. These lev­els of re­al­ity are:

16:6.61. Cau­sa­tion—the re­al­ity do­main of the phys­i­cal senses, the sci­en­tific realms of log­i­cal uni­for­mity, the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the fac­tual and the non­fac­tual, re­flec­tive con­clu­sions based on cos­mic re­sponse. This is the math­e­mat­i­cal form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.72. Duty—the re­al­ity do­main of morals in the philo­sophic realm, the arena of rea­son, the rec­og­ni­tion of rel­a­tive right and wrong. This is the ju­di­cial form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.83. Wor­ship—the spir­i­tual do­main of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of di­vine fel­low­ship, the rec­og­ni­tion of spirit val­ues, the as­sur­ance of eter­nal sur­vival, the as­cent from the sta­tus of ser­vants of God to the joy and lib­erty of the sons of God. This is the high­est in­sight of the cos­mic mind, the rev­er­en­tial and wor­ship­ful form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.9These sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sights, these cos­mic re­sponses, are in­nate in the cos­mic mind, which en­dows all will crea­tures. The ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing never fails to de­velop these three cos­mic in­tu­itions; they are con­sti­tu­tive in the self-con­scious­ness of re­flec­tive think­ing. But it is sad to re­cord that so few per­sons on Uran­tia take de­light in cul­ti­vat­ing these qual­i­ties of coura­geous and in­de­pen­dent cos­mic think­ing.

• relationship among, also referred to as › thing, meaning, and value

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

• 3 basic mind reactions

16:8.15The Uran­tia type of hu­man per­son­al­ity may be viewed as func­tion­ing in a phys­i­cal mech­a­nism con­sist­ing of the plan­e­tary mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Neb­a­don type of or­gan­ism be­long­ing to the elec­tro­chem­i­cal or­der of life ac­ti­va­tion and en­dowed with the Neb­a­don or­der of the Or­von­ton se­ries of the cos­mic mind of pa­ren­tal re­pro­duc­tive pat­tern. The be­stowal of the di­vine gift of per­son­al­ity upon such a mind-en­dowed mor­tal mech­a­nism con­fers the dig­nity of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship and en­ables such a mor­tal crea­ture forth­with to be­come re­ac­tive to the con­sti­tu­tive rec­og­ni­tion of the three ba­sic mind re­al­i­ties of the cos­mos:

16:8.161. The math­e­mat­i­cal or log­i­cal rec­og­ni­tion of the uni­for­mity of phys­i­cal cau­sa­tion.

16:8.172. The rea­soned rec­og­ni­tion of the obli­ga­tion of moral con­duct.

16:8.183. The faith-grasp of the fel­low­ship wor­ship of De­ity, as­so­ci­ated with the lov­ing ser­vice of hu­man­ity.

• 3 basic mind reactions
• relationship among, also referred to as › fact, law, and love of God

16:9.1The cos­mic-mind-en­dowed, Ad­juster-in­dwelt, per­sonal crea­ture pos­sesses in­nate rec­og­ni­tion-re­al­iza­tion of en­ergy re­al­ity, mind re­al­ity, and spirit re­al­ity. The will crea­ture is thus equipped to dis­cern the fact, the law, and the love of God. Aside from these three in­alien­ables of hu­man con­scious­ness, all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is re­ally sub­jec­tive ex­cept that in­tu­itive re­al­iza­tion of va­lid­ity at­taches to the uni­fi­ca­tion of these three uni­verse re­al­ity re­sponses of cos­mic rec­og­ni­tion.

• constitutive responses; survive crash of civilizations

16:9.4Hu­man self-con­scious­ness im­plies the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of selves other than the con­scious self and fur­ther im­plies that such aware­ness is mu­tual; that the self is known as it knows. This is shown in a purely hu­man man­ner in man’s so­cial life. But you can­not be­come so ab­so­lutely cer­tain of a fel­low be­ing’s re­al­ity as you can of the re­al­ity of the pres­ence of God that lives within you. The so­cial con­scious­ness is not in­alien­able like the God-con­scious­ness; it is a cul­tural de­vel­op­ment and is de­pen­dent on knowl­edge, sym­bols, and the con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive en­dow­ments of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. And these cos­mic gifts, so­cial­ized, con­sti­tute civ­i­liza­tion.

16:9.5Civ­i­liza­tions are un­sta­ble be­cause they are not cos­mic; they are not in­nate in the in­di­vid­u­als of the races. They must be nur­tured by the com­bined con­tri­bu­tions of the con­sti­tu­tive fac­tors of man—sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion. Civ­i­liza­tions come and go, but sci­ence, moral­ity, and re­li­gion al­ways sur­vive the crash.

• science, philosophy, and religion

100:4.4In phys­i­cal life the senses tell of the ex­is­tence of things; mind dis­cov­ers the re­al­ity of mean­ings; but the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence re­veals to the in­di­vid­ual the true val­ues of life. These high lev­els of hu­man liv­ing are at­tained in the su­preme love of God and in the un­selfish love of man. If you love your fel­low men, you must have dis­cov­ered their val­ues. Je­sus loved men so much be­cause he placed such a high value upon them. You can best dis­cover val­ues in your as­so­ciates by dis­cov­er­ing their mo­ti­va­tion. If some­one ir­ri­tates you, causes feel­ings of re­sent­ment, you should sym­pa­thet­i­cally seek to dis­cern his view­point, his rea­sons for such ob­jec­tion­able con­duct. If once you un­der­stand your neigh­bor, you will be­come tol­er­ant, and this tol­er­ance will grow into friend­ship and ripen into love.

• compared and contrasted

101:2.2Rea­son is the method of sci­ence; faith is the method of re­li­gion; logic is the at­tempted tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy. Rev­e­la­tion com­pen­sates for the ab­sence of the mor­ontia view­point by pro­vid­ing a tech­nique for achiev­ing unity in the com­pre­hen­sion of the re­al­ity and re­la­tion­ships of mat­ter and spirit by the me­di­a­tion of mind. And true rev­e­la­tion never ren­ders sci­ence un­nat­u­ral, re­li­gion un­rea­son­able, or phi­los­o­phy il­log­i­cal.

101:2.3Rea­son, through the study of sci­ence, may lead back through na­ture to a First Cause, but it re­quires re­li­gious faith to trans­form the First Cause of sci­ence into a God of sal­va­tion; and rev­e­la­tion is fur­ther re­quired for the val­i­da­tion of such a faith, such spir­i­tual in­sight.

101:2.4There are two ba­sic rea­sons for be­liev­ing in a God who fos­ters hu­man sur­vival:

101:2.51. Hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, per­sonal as­sur­ance, the some­how reg­is­tered hope and trust ini­ti­ated by the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

101:2.62. The rev­e­la­tion of truth, whether by di­rect per­sonal min­istry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world be­stowal of di­vine Sons, or through the rev­e­la­tions of the writ­ten word.

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

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.

• compared and contrasted

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:

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

101:5.42. Re­vealed re­li­gion. The uni­verse at­ti­tude which is a spirit deriva­tive; the as­sur­ance of, and be­lief in, the con­ser­va­tion of eter­nal re­al­i­ties, the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity, and the even­tual at­tain­ment of the cos­mic De­ity, whose pur­pose has made all this pos­si­ble. It is a part of the plan of the uni­verse that, sooner or later, evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is des­tined to re­ceive the spir­i­tual ex­pan­sion of rev­e­la­tion.

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

101:5.61. The ma­te­rial body.

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

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

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.

• compared and contrasted

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.

101:8.4Faith does not shackle the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion, nei­ther does it main­tain an un­rea­son­ing prej­u­dice to­ward the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­en­tific in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Faith vi­tal­izes re­li­gion and con­strains the re­li­gion­ist hero­ically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is ac­cord­ing to knowl­edge, and its striv­ings are the pre­ludes to sub­lime peace.

• compared and contrasted

102:1.2The rea­son of sci­ence is based on the ob­serv­able facts of time; the faith of re­li­gion ar­gues from the spirit pro­gram of eter­nity. What knowl­edge and rea­son can­not do for us, true wis­dom ad­mon­ishes us to al­low faith to ac­com­plish through re­li­gious in­sight and spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

102:3.3Ma­te­rial feel­ings, hu­man emo­tions, lead di­rectly to ma­te­rial ac­tions, self­ish acts. Re­li­gious in­sights, spir­i­tual mo­ti­va­tions, lead di­rectly to re­li­gious ac­tions, un­selfish acts of so­cial ser­vice and al­tru­is­tic benev­o­lence.

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.

• compared and contrasted

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.

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.

102:3.7Sci­ence sorts men; re­li­gion loves men, even as your­self; wis­dom does jus­tice to dif­fer­ing men; but rev­e­la­tion glo­ri­fies man and dis­closes his ca­pac­ity for part­ner­ship with God.

102:3.8Sci­ence vainly strives to cre­ate the broth­er­hood of cul­ture; re­li­gion brings into be­ing the broth­er­hood of the spirit. Phi­los­o­phy strives for the broth­er­hood of wis­dom; rev­e­la­tion por­trays the eter­nal broth­er­hood, the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

102:3.9Knowl­edge yields pride in the fact of per­son­al­ity; wis­dom is the con­scious­ness of the mean­ing of per­son­al­ity; re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­ence of cog­nizance of the value of per­son­al­ity; rev­e­la­tion is the as­sur­ance of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

102:3.10Sci­ence seeks to iden­tify, an­a­lyze, and clas­sify the seg­mented parts of the lim­it­less cos­mos. Re­li­gion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the en­tire cos­mos. Phi­los­o­phy at­tempts the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ma­te­rial seg­ments of sci­ence with the spir­i­tual-in­sight con­cept of the whole. Wherein phi­los­o­phy fails in this at­tempt, rev­e­la­tion suc­ceeds, af­firm­ing that the cos­mic cir­cle is uni­ver­sal, eter­nal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite. This cos­mos of the In­fi­nite I AM is there­fore end­less, lim­it­less, and all-in­clu­sive—time­less, space­less, and un­qual­i­fied. And we bear tes­ti­mony that the In­fi­nite I AM is also the Fa­ther of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don and the God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

102:3.11Sci­ence in­di­cates De­ity as a fact; phi­los­o­phy pre­sents the idea of an Ab­so­lute; re­li­gion en­vi­sions God as a lov­ing spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the unity of the fact of De­ity, the idea of the Ab­so­lute, and the spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity of God and, fur­ther, pre­sents this con­cept as our Fa­ther—the uni­ver­sal fact of ex­is­tence, the eter­nal idea of mind, and the in­fi­nite spirit of life.

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.

102:3.13In sci­ence, the idea pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of its re­al­iza­tion; in re­li­gion, the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­al­iza­tion pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of the idea. There is a vast dif­fer­ence be­tween the evo­lu­tion­ary will-to-be­lieve and the prod­uct of en­light­ened rea­son, re­li­gious in­sight, and rev­e­la­tion—the will that be­lieves.

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.

102:3.15Sci­ence is only sat­is­fied with first causes, re­li­gion with su­preme per­son­al­ity, and phi­los­o­phy with unity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eter­nal real is the good of the uni­verse and not the time il­lu­sions of space evil. In the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of all per­son­al­i­ties, al­ways is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.

• compared and contrasted

102:6.8To sci­ence God is a pos­si­bil­ity, to psy­chol­ogy a de­sir­abil­ity, to phi­los­o­phy a prob­a­bil­ity, to re­li­gion a cer­tainty, an ac­tu­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Rea­son de­mands that a phi­los­o­phy which can­not find the God of prob­a­bil­ity should be very re­spect­ful of that re­li­gious faith which can and does find the God of cer­ti­tude. Nei­ther should sci­ence dis­count re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence on grounds of credulity, not so long as it per­sists in the as­sump­tion that man’s in­tel­lec­tual and philo­sophic en­dow­ments emerged from in­creas­ingly lesser in­tel­li­gences the fur­ther back they go, fi­nally tak­ing ori­gin in prim­i­tive life which was ut­terly de­void of all think­ing and feel­ing.

103:6.1The­ol­ogy is the study of the ac­tions and re­ac­tions of the hu­man spirit; it can never be­come a sci­ence since it must al­ways be com­bined more or less with psy­chol­ogy in its per­sonal ex­pres­sion and with phi­los­o­phy in its sys­tem­atic por­trayal. The­ol­ogy is al­ways the study of your re­li­gion; the study of an­other’s re­li­gion is psy­chol­ogy.

103:6.2When man ap­proaches the study and ex­am­i­na­tion of his uni­verse from the out­side, he brings into be­ing the var­i­ous phys­i­cal sci­ences; when he ap­proaches the re­search of him­self and the uni­verse from the in­side, he gives ori­gin to the­ol­ogy and meta­physics. The later art of phi­los­o­phy de­vel­ops in an ef­fort to har­mo­nize the many dis­crep­an­cies which are des­tined at first to ap­pear be­tween the find­ings and teach­ings of these two di­a­met­ri­cally op­po­site av­enues of ap­proach­ing the uni­verse of things and be­ings.

103:6.3Re­li­gion has to do with the spir­i­tual view­point, the aware­ness of the in­si­d­e­ness of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Man’s spir­i­tual na­ture af­fords him the op­por­tu­nity of turn­ing the uni­verse out­side in. It is there­fore true that, viewed ex­clu­sively from the in­si­d­e­ness of per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence, all cre­ation ap­pears to be spir­i­tual in na­ture.

103:6.4When man an­a­lyt­i­cally in­spects the uni­verse through the ma­te­rial en­dow­ments of his phys­i­cal senses and as­so­ci­ated mind per­cep­tion, the cos­mos ap­pears to be me­chan­i­cal and en­ergy-ma­te­rial. Such a tech­nique of study­ing re­al­ity con­sists in turn­ing the uni­verse in­side out.

103:6.5A log­i­cal and con­sis­tent philo­sophic con­cept of the uni­verse can­not be built up on the pos­tu­la­tions of ei­ther ma­te­ri­al­ism or spiritism, for both of these sys­tems of think­ing, when uni­ver­sally ap­plied, are com­pelled to view the cos­mos in dis­tor­tion, the for­mer con­tact­ing with a uni­verse turned in­side out, the lat­ter re­al­iz­ing the na­ture of a uni­verse turned out­side in. Never, then, can ei­ther sci­ence or re­li­gion, in and of them­selves, stand­ing alone, hope to gain an ad­e­quate un­der­stand­ing of uni­ver­sal truths and re­la­tion­ships with­out the guid­ance of hu­man phi­los­o­phy and the il­lu­mi­na­tion of di­vine rev­e­la­tion.

103:6.6Al­ways must man’s in­ner spirit de­pend for its ex­pres­sion and self-re­al­iza­tion upon the mech­a­nism and tech­nique of the mind. Like­wise must man’s outer ex­pe­ri­ence of ma­te­rial re­al­ity be pred­i­cated on the mind con­scious­ness of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing per­son­al­ity. There­fore are the spir­i­tual and the ma­te­rial, the in­ner and the outer, hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences al­ways cor­re­lated with the mind func­tion and con­di­tioned, as to their con­scious re­al­iza­tion, by the mind ac­tiv­ity. Man ex­pe­ri­ences mat­ter in his mind; he ex­pe­ri­ences spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the soul but be­comes con­scious of this ex­pe­ri­ence in his mind. The in­tel­lect is the har­mo­nizer and the ever-pres­ent con­di­tioner and qual­i­fier of the sum to­tal of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. Both en­ergy-things and spirit val­ues are col­ored by their in­ter­pre­ta­tion through the mind me­dia of con­scious­ness.

103:6.7Your dif­fi­culty in ar­riv­ing at a more har­mo­nious co-or­di­na­tion be­tween sci­ence and re­li­gion is due to your ut­ter ig­no­rance of the in­ter­ven­ing do­main of the mor­ontia world of things and be­ings. The lo­cal uni­verse con­sists of three de­grees, or stages, of re­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion: mat­ter, mor­ontia, and spirit. The mor­ontia an­gle of ap­proach erases all di­ver­gence be­tween the find­ings of the phys­i­cal sci­ences and the func­tion­ing of the spirit of re­li­gion. Rea­son is the un­der­stand­ing tech­nique of the sci­ences; faith is the in­sight tech­nique of re­li­gion; mota is the tech­nique of the mor­ontia level. Mota is a super­ma­te­rial re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity which is be­gin­ning to com­pen­sate in­com­plete growth, hav­ing for its sub­stance knowl­edge-rea­son and for its essence faith-in­sight. Mota is a super­phil­o­soph­i­cal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of di­ver­gent re­al­ity per­cep­tion which is nonat­tain­able by ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties; it is pred­i­cated, in part, on the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing sur­vived the ma­te­rial life of the flesh. But many mor­tals have rec­og­nized the de­sir­abil­ity of hav­ing some method of rec­on­cil­ing the in­ter­play be­tween the widely sep­a­rated do­mains of sci­ence and re­li­gion; and meta­physics is the re­sult of man’s un­avail­ing at­tempt to span this well-rec­og­nized chasm. But hu­man meta­physics has proved more con­fus­ing than il­lu­mi­nat­ing. Meta­physics stands for man’s well-meant but fu­tile ef­fort to com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the mota of mor­ontia.

103:6.8Meta­physics has proved a fail­ure; mota, man can­not per­ceive. Rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique which can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the truth sen­si­tiv­ity of mota in a ma­te­rial world. Rev­e­la­tion au­thor­i­ta­tively clar­i­fies the mud­dle of rea­son-de­vel­oped meta­physics on an evo­lu­tion­ary sphere.

103:6.9Sci­ence is man’s at­tempted study of his phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, the world of en­ergy-mat­ter; re­li­gion is man’s ex­pe­ri­ence with the cos­mos of spirit val­ues; phi­los­o­phy has been de­vel­oped by man’s mind ef­fort to or­ga­nize and cor­re­late the find­ings of these widely sep­a­rated con­cepts into some­thing like a rea­son­able and uni­fied at­ti­tude to­ward the cos­mos. Phi­los­o­phy, clar­i­fied by rev­e­la­tion, func­tions ac­cept­ably in the ab­sence of mota and in the pres­ence of the break­down and fail­ure of man’s rea­son sub­sti­tute for mota—meta­physics.

103:6.10Early man did not dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween the en­ergy level and the spirit level. It was the vi­o­let race and their And­ite suc­ces­sors who first at­tempted to di­vorce the math­e­mat­i­cal from the vo­li­tional. In­creas­ingly has civ­i­lized man fol­lowed in the foot­steps of the ear­li­est Greeks and the Sume­ri­ans who dis­tin­guished be­tween the inan­i­mate and the an­i­mate. And as civ­i­liza­tion pro­gresses, phi­los­o­phy will have to bridge ever-widen­ing gulfs be­tween the spirit con­cept and the en­ergy con­cept. But in the time of space these di­ver­gen­cies are at one in the Su­preme.

103:6.11Sci­ence must al­ways be grounded in rea­son, al­though imag­i­na­tion and con­jec­ture are help­ful in the ex­ten­sion of its bor­ders. Re­li­gion is for­ever de­pen­dent on faith, al­beit rea­son is a sta­bi­liz­ing in­flu­ence and a help­ful hand­maid. And al­ways there have been, and ever will be, mis­lead­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the phe­nom­ena of both the nat­u­ral and the spir­i­tual worlds, sci­ences and re­li­gions falsely so called.

103:6.12Out of his in­com­plete grasp of sci­ence, his faint hold upon re­li­gion, and his abortive at­tempts at meta­physics, man has at­tempted to con­struct his for­mu­la­tions of phi­los­o­phy. And mod­ern man would in­deed build a wor­thy and en­gag­ing phi­los­o­phy of him­self and his uni­verse were it not for the break­down of his all-im­por­tant and in­dis­pens­able meta­phys­i­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the worlds of mat­ter and spirit, the fail­ure of meta­physics to bridge the mor­ontia gulf be­tween the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual. Mor­tal man lacks the con­cept of mor­ontia mind and ma­te­rial; and rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique for aton­ing for this de­fi­ciency in the con­cep­tual data which man so ur­gently needs in or­der to con­struct a log­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse and to ar­rive at a sat­is­fy­ing un­der­stand­ing of his sure and set­tled place in that uni­verse.

103:6.13Rev­e­la­tion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s only hope of bridg­ing the mor­ontia gulf. Faith and rea­son, un­aided by mota, can­not con­ceive and con­struct a log­i­cal uni­verse. With­out the in­sight of mota, mor­tal man can­not dis­cern good­ness, love, and truth in the phe­nom­ena of the ma­te­rial world.

103:6.14When the phi­los­o­phy of man leans heav­ily to­ward the world of mat­ter, it be­comes ra­tio­nal­is­tic or nat­u­ral­is­tic. When phi­los­o­phy in­clines par­tic­u­larly to­ward the spir­i­tual level, it be­comes ide­al­is­tic or even mys­ti­cal. When phi­los­o­phy is so un­for­tu­nate as to lean upon meta­physics, it un­fail­ingly be­comes skep­ti­cal, con­fused. In past ages, most of man’s knowl­edge and in­tel­lec­tual eval­u­a­tions have fallen into one of these three dis­tor­tions of per­cep­tion. Phi­los­o­phy dare not project its in­ter­pre­ta­tions of re­al­ity in the lin­ear fash­ion of logic; it must never fail to reckon with the el­lip­tic sym­me­try of re­al­ity and with the es­sen­tial cur­va­ture of all re­la­tion con­cepts.

103:6.15The high­est at­tain­able phi­los­o­phy of mor­tal man must be log­i­cally based on the rea­son of sci­ence, the faith of re­li­gion, and the truth in­sight af­forded by rev­e­la­tion. By this union man can com­pen­sate some­what for his fail­ure to de­velop an ad­e­quate meta­physics and for his in­abil­ity to com­pre­hend the mota of the mor­ontia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

103:9.1The­ol­ogy deals with the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, meta­physics (rev­e­la­tion) with the philo­sophic as­pects. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the spir­i­tual con­tent of re­li­gion. Not­with­stand­ing the mytho­logic va­garies and the psy­cho­logic il­lu­sions of the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, the meta­phys­i­cal as­sump­tions of er­ror and the tech­niques of self-de­cep­tion, the po­lit­i­cal dis­tor­tions and the so­cioe­co­nomic per­ver­sions of the philo­sophic con­tent of re­li­gion, the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of per­sonal re­li­gion re­mains gen­uine and valid.

103:9.2Re­li­gion has to do with feel­ing, act­ing, and liv­ing, not merely with think­ing. Think­ing is more closely re­lated to the ma­te­rial life and should be in the main, but not al­to­gether, dom­i­nated by rea­son and the facts of sci­ence and, in its non­ma­te­rial reaches to­ward the spirit realms, by truth. No mat­ter how il­lu­sory and er­ro­neous one’s the­ol­ogy, one’s re­li­gion may be wholly gen­uine and ev­er­last­ingly true.

103:9.3Bud­dhism in its orig­i­nal form is one of the best re­li­gions with­out a God which has arisen through­out all the evo­lu­tion­ary his­tory of Uran­tia, al­though, as this faith de­vel­oped, it did not re­main god­less. Re­li­gion with­out faith is a con­tra­dic­tion; with­out God, a philo­sophic in­con­sis­tency and an in­tel­lec­tual ab­sur­dity.

103:9.4The mag­i­cal and mytho­log­i­cal parent­age of nat­u­ral re­li­gion does not in­val­i­date the re­al­ity and truth of the later rev­e­la­tional re­li­gions and the con­sum­mate sav­ing gospel of the re­li­gion of Je­sus. Je­sus’ life and teach­ings fi­nally di­vested re­li­gion of the su­per­sti­tions of magic, the il­lu­sions of mythol­ogy, and the bond­age of tra­di­tional dog­ma­tism. But this early magic and mythol­ogy very ef­fec­tively pre­pared the way for later and su­pe­rior re­li­gion by as­sum­ing the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of super­ma­te­rial val­ues and be­ings.

103:9.5Al­though re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is a purely spir­i­tual sub­jec­tive phe­nom­e­non, such an ex­pe­ri­ence em­braces a pos­i­tive and liv­ing faith at­ti­tude to­ward the high­est realms of uni­verse ob­jec­tive re­al­ity. The ideal of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy is such a faith-trust as would lead man un­qual­i­fiedly to de­pend upon the ab­so­lute love of the in­fi­nite Fa­ther of the uni­verse of uni­verses. Such a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence far tran­scends the philo­sophic ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of ide­al­is­tic de­sire; it ac­tu­ally takes sal­va­tion for granted and con­cerns it­self only with learn­ing and do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. The ear­marks of such a re­li­gion are: faith in a su­preme De­ity, hope of eter­nal sur­vival, and love, es­pe­cially of one’s fel­lows.

103:9.6When the­ol­ogy mas­ters re­li­gion, re­li­gion dies; it be­comes a doc­trine in­stead of a life. The mis­sion of the­ol­ogy is merely to fa­cil­i­tate the self-con­scious­ness of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The­ol­ogy con­sti­tutes the re­li­gious ef­fort to de­fine, clar­ify, ex­pound, and jus­tify the ex­pe­ri­en­tial claims of re­li­gion, which, in the last anal­y­sis, can be val­i­dated only by liv­ing faith. In the higher phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse, wis­dom, like rea­son, be­comes al­lied to faith. Rea­son, wis­dom, and faith are man’s high­est hu­man at­tain­ments. Rea­son in­tro­duces man to the world of facts, to things; wis­dom in­tro­duces him to a world of truth, to re­la­tion­ships; faith ini­ti­ates him into a world of di­vin­ity, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:9.7Faith most will­ingly car­ries rea­son along as far as rea­son can go and then goes on with wis­dom to the full philo­sophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the lim­it­less and never-end­ing uni­verse jour­ney in the sole com­pany of TRUTH.

103:9.8Sci­ence (knowl­edge) is founded on the in­her­ent (ad­ju­tant spirit) as­sump­tion that rea­son is valid, that the uni­verse can be com­pre­hended. Phi­los­o­phy (co-or­di­nate com­pre­hen­sion) is founded on the in­her­ent (spirit of wis­dom) as­sump­tion that wis­dom is valid, that the ma­te­rial uni­verse can be co-or­di­nated with the spir­i­tual. Re­li­gion (the truth of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence) is founded on the in­her­ent (Thought Ad­juster) as­sump­tion that faith is valid, that God can be known and at­tained.

103:9.9The full re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of mor­tal life con­sists in a pro­gres­sive will­ing­ness to be­lieve these as­sump­tions of rea­son, wis­dom, and faith. Such a life is one mo­ti­vated by truth and dom­i­nated by love; and these are the ide­als of ob­jec­tive cos­mic re­al­ity whose ex­is­tence can­not be ma­te­ri­ally demon­strated.

103:9.10When rea­son once rec­og­nizes right and wrong, it ex­hibits wis­dom; when wis­dom chooses be­tween right and wrong, truth and er­ror, it demon­strates spirit lead­ing. And thus are the func­tions of mind, soul, and spirit ever closely united and func­tion­ally in­teras­so­ci­ated. Rea­son deals with fac­tual knowl­edge; wis­dom, with phi­los­o­phy and rev­e­la­tion; faith, with liv­ing spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Through truth man at­tains beauty and by spir­i­tual love as­cends to good­ness.

103:9.11Faith leads to know­ing God, not merely to a mys­ti­cal feel­ing of the di­vine pres­ence. Faith must not be over­much in­flu­enced by its emo­tional con­se­quences. True re­li­gion is an ex­pe­ri­ence of be­liev­ing and know­ing as well as a sat­is­fac­tion of feel­ing.

103:9.12There is a re­al­ity in re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence that is pro­por­tional to the spir­i­tual con­tent, and such a re­al­ity is tran­scen­dent to rea­son, sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, and all other hu­man achieve­ments. The con­vic­tions of such an ex­pe­ri­ence are unas­sail­able; the logic of re­li­gious liv­ing is in­con­tro­vert­ible; the cer­tainty of such knowl­edge is super­hu­man; the sat­is­fac­tions are su­perbly di­vine, the cour­age in­domitable, the de­vo­tions un­ques­tion­ing, the loy­al­ties su­preme, and the des­tinies fi­nal—eter­nal, ul­ti­mate, and uni­ver­sal.

103:9.13[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of Neb­a­don.]

• compared and contrasted

112:2.11As mind pur­sues re­al­ity to its ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, mat­ter van­ishes to the ma­te­rial senses but may still re­main real to mind. When spir­i­tual in­sight pur­sues that re­al­ity which re­mains af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of mat­ter and pur­sues it to an ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, it van­ishes to mind, but the in­sight of spirit can still per­ceive cos­mic re­al­i­ties and su­preme val­ues of a spir­i­tual na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly does sci­ence give way to phi­los­o­phy, while phi­los­o­phy must sur­ren­der to the con­clu­sions in­her­ent in gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Think­ing sur­ren­ders to wis­dom, and wis­dom is lost in en­light­ened and re­flec­tive wor­ship.

112:2.12In sci­ence the hu­man self ob­serves the ma­te­rial world; phi­los­o­phy is the ob­ser­va­tion of this ob­ser­va­tion of the ma­te­rial world; re­li­gion, true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, is the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic re­al­ity of the ob­ser­va­tion of the ob­ser­va­tion of all this rel­a­tive syn­the­sis of the en­ergy ma­te­ri­als of time and space. To build a phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse on an ex­clu­sive ma­te­ri­al­ism is to ig­nore the fact that all things ma­te­rial are ini­tially con­ceived as real in the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man con­scious­ness. The ob­server can­not be the thing ob­served; eval­u­a­tion de­mands some de­gree of tran­scen­dence of the thing which is eval­u­ated.

• compared and contrasted

132:3.2Truth can­not be de­fined with words, only by liv­ing. Truth is al­ways more than knowl­edge. Knowl­edge per­tains to things ob­served, but truth tran­scends such purely ma­te­rial lev­els in that it con­sorts with wis­dom and em­braces such im­pon­der­ables as hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, even spir­i­tual and liv­ing re­al­i­ties. Knowl­edge orig­i­nates in sci­ence; wis­dom, in true phi­los­o­phy; truth, in the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual liv­ing. Knowl­edge deals with facts; wis­dom, with re­la­tion­ships; truth, with re­al­ity val­ues.

132:3.3Man tends to crys­tal­lize sci­ence, for­mu­late phi­los­o­phy, and dog­ma­tize truth be­cause he is men­tally lazy in ad­just­ing to the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of liv­ing, while he is also ter­ri­bly afraid of the un­known. Nat­u­ral man is slow to ini­ti­ate changes in his habits of think­ing and in his tech­niques of liv­ing.

132:3.4Re­vealed truth, per­son­ally dis­cov­ered truth, is the su­preme de­light of the hu­man soul; it is the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the in­dwelling spirit. The eter­nal sal­va­tion of this truth-dis­cern­ing and beauty-lov­ing soul is as­sured by that hunger and thirst for good­ness which leads this mor­tal to de­velop a sin­gle­ness of pur­pose to do the Fa­ther’s will, to find God and to be­come like him. There is never con­flict be­tween true knowl­edge and truth. There may be con­flict be­tween knowl­edge and hu­man be­liefs, be­liefs col­ored with prej­u­dice, dis­torted by fear, and dom­i­nated by the dread of fac­ing new facts of ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• compared and contrasted

133:5.4Sci­en­tists may some day mea­sure the en­ergy, or force man­i­fes­ta­tions, of grav­i­ta­tion, light, and elec­tric­ity, but these same sci­en­tists can never (sci­en­tif­i­cally) tell you what these uni­verse phe­nom­ena are. Sci­ence deals with phys­i­cal-en­ergy ac­tiv­i­ties; re­li­gion deals with eter­nal val­ues. True phi­los­o­phy grows out of the wis­dom which does its best to cor­re­late these quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive ob­ser­va­tions. There al­ways ex­ists the dan­ger that the purely phys­i­cal sci­en­tist may be­come af­flicted with math­e­mat­i­cal pride and sta­tis­ti­cal ego­tism, not to men­tion spir­i­tual blind­ness.

195:6.1Sci­en­tists have un­in­ten­tion­ally pre­cip­i­tated man­kind into a ma­te­ri­al­is­tic panic; they have started an un­think­ing run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence has vast spir­i­tual re­sources; it can stand the de­mands be­ing made upon it. Only un­think­ing men be­come pan­icky about the spir­i­tual as­sets of the hu­man race. When the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic-sec­u­lar panic is over, the re­li­gion of Je­sus will not be found bankrupt. The spir­i­tual bank of the king­dom of heaven will be pay­ing out faith, hope, and moral se­cu­rity to all who draw upon it “in His name.”

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.

195:6.3The pur­suit of mere knowl­edge, with­out the at­ten­dant in­ter­pre­ta­tion of wis­dom and the spir­i­tual in­sight of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, even­tu­ally leads to pes­simism and hu­man de­spair. A lit­tle knowl­edge is truly dis­con­cert­ing.

195:6.4At the time of this writ­ing the worst of the ma­te­ri­al­is­tic age is over; the day of a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing is al­ready be­gin­ning to dawn. The higher minds of the sci­en­tific world are no longer wholly ma­te­ri­al­is­tic in their phi­los­o­phy, but the rank and file of the peo­ple still lean in that di­rec­tion as a re­sult of for­mer teach­ings. But this age of phys­i­cal re­al­ism is only a pass­ing episode in man’s life on earth. Mod­ern sci­ence has left true re­li­gion—the teach­ings of Je­sus as trans­lated in the lives of his be­liev­ers—un­touched. All sci­ence has done is to de­stroy the child­like il­lu­sions of the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions of life.

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.

195:6.6The vi­o­lent swing from an age of mir­a­cles to an age of ma­chines has proved al­to­gether up­set­ting to man. The clev­er­ness and dex­ter­ity of the false philoso­phies of mech­a­nism be­lie their very mech­a­nis­tic con­tentions. The fa­tal­is­tic agility of the mind of a ma­te­ri­al­ist for­ever dis­proves his as­ser­tions that the uni­verse is a blind and pur­pose­less en­ergy phe­nom­e­non.

195:6.7The mech­a­nis­tic nat­u­ral­ism of some sup­pos­edly ed­u­cated men and the thought­less sec­u­lar­ism of the man in the street are both ex­clu­sively con­cerned with things; they are bar­ren of all real val­ues, sanc­tions, and sat­is­fac­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture, as well as be­ing de­void of faith, hope, and eter­nal as­sur­ances. One of the great trou­bles with mod­ern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion and re­li­gious de­vo­tion.

195:6.8Ma­te­ri­al­ism re­duces man to a soul­less au­toma­ton and con­sti­tutes him merely an arith­meti­cal sym­bol find­ing a help­less place in the math­e­mat­i­cal for­mula of an un­ro­man­tic and mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse. But whence comes all this vast uni­verse of math­e­mat­ics with­out a Mas­ter Math­e­mati­cian? Sci­ence may ex­pa­ti­ate on the con­ser­va­tion of mat­ter, but re­li­gion val­i­dates the con­ser­va­tion of men’s souls—it con­cerns their ex­pe­ri­ence with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and eter­nal val­ues.

195:6.9The ma­te­ri­al­is­tic so­ci­ol­o­gist of to­day sur­veys a com­mu­nity, makes a re­port thereon, and leaves the peo­ple as he found them. Nine­teen hun­dred years ago, un­learned Galileans sur­veyed Je­sus giv­ing his life as a spir­i­tual con­tri­bu­tion to man’s in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence and then went out and turned the whole Ro­man Em­pire up­side down.

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.

195:6.11To say that mind “emerged” from mat­ter ex­plains noth­ing. If the uni­verse were merely a mech­a­nism and mind were un­a­part from mat­ter, we would never have two dif­fer­ing in­ter­pre­ta­tions of any ob­served phe­nom­e­non. The con­cepts of truth, beauty, and good­ness are not in­her­ent in ei­ther physics or chem­istry. A ma­chine can­not know, much less know truth, hunger for righ­teous­ness, and cher­ish good­ness.

195:6.12Sci­ence may be phys­i­cal, but the mind of the truth-dis­cern­ing sci­en­tist is at once super­ma­te­rial. Mat­ter knows not truth, nei­ther can it love mercy nor de­light in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Moral con­vic­tions based on spir­i­tual en­light­en­ment and rooted in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence are just as real and cer­tain as math­e­mat­i­cal de­duc­tions based on phys­i­cal ob­ser­va­tions, but on an­other and higher level.

195:6.13If men were only ma­chines, they would re­act more or less uni­formly to a ma­te­rial uni­verse. In­di­vid­u­al­ity, much less per­son­al­ity, would be nonex­is­tent.

195:6.14The fact of the ab­so­lute mech­a­nism of Par­a­dise at the cen­ter of the uni­verse of uni­verses, in the pres­ence of the un­qual­i­fied vo­li­tion of the Sec­ond Source and Cen­ter, makes for­ever cer­tain that de­ter­min­ers are not the ex­clu­sive law of the cos­mos. Ma­te­ri­al­ism is there, but it is not ex­clu­sive; mech­a­nism is there, but it is not un­qual­i­fied; de­ter­min­ism is there, but it is not alone.

195:6.15The fi­nite uni­verse of mat­ter would even­tu­ally be­come uni­form and de­ter­min­is­tic but for the com­bined pres­ence of mind and spirit. The in­flu­ence of the cos­mic mind con­stantly in­jects spon­tane­ity into even the ma­te­rial worlds.

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.

195:6.17The sin­cere pur­suit of good­ness, beauty, and truth leads to God. And ev­ery sci­en­tific dis­cov­ery demon­strates the ex­is­tence of both free­dom and uni­for­mity in the uni­verse. The dis­cov­erer was free to make the dis­cov­ery. The thing dis­cov­ered is real and ap­par­ently uni­form, or else it could not have be­come known as a thing.

• relationship among, also referred to as › fact, idea, and relation
• relationship among, also referred to as › thing, meaning, and value

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.