Paper 103 Overview: The Reality of Religious Experience

The authentic nature of religious experience derives from multiple divine influences functioning within human consciousness, including the adjutant of worship, the Spirit of Truth, and most significantly, the indwelling Thought Adjuster. These divine presences incrementally elevate human religious perception from primitive evolutionary beginnings toward increasingly spiritualized insight. Religious tendencies, being innate and universal across all human races, manifest through natural development but are periodically accelerated through revelatory interventions that punctuate the otherwise gradual progression of planetary religious evolution.

Contemporary religious expression manifests in four distinct categories: natural evolutionary religion arising from innate human spiritual promptings, supernatural revelatory religion delivered through divine agencies, practical religion combining elements of both evolutionary and revelatory sources, and philosophic religion developed through human intellectual reasoning processes. The paper delineates how these forms interact with human consciousness, examining the relationship between religion and individual identity, group association, scientific inquiry, and philosophic coordination, ultimately affirming that genuine religious experience—despite being frequently obscured by intellectual errors, philosophical misconceptions, or psychological illusions—remains transcendently valid as the most authentic domain of human spiritual consciousness.

All authentic religious reactions originate through the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and undergo refinement through the adjutant of wisdom, with humanity's first supermind endowment being personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit. This foundational spiritual influence functions to expand human perspectives regarding ethics, religion, and spirituality even before the bestowals of divine Sons or the universal gift of Thought Adjusters. Following these divine bestowals, the liberated Spirit of Truth significantly contributes to enlarging human capacity for perceiving religious truths, while the Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in developing higher forms of religious insight as planetary evolution advances. Through these divine agencies, particularly the Thought Adjuster, finite creatures gain a cosmic window through which they may glimpse by faith the certainties and divinities of limitless Deity.

Religious tendencies among human races exhibit inherent universality, manifesting across all cultures with apparently natural origins and always displaying evolutionary development patterns. As natural religious experience progresses, periodic revelations of truth strategically punctuate the otherwise gradual advancement of planetary evolution, providing accelerated access to spiritual understanding. In contemporary Urantia, religious expression manifests through four distinctive categories: natural or evolutionary religion arising from human development, supernatural or revelatory religion introduced through divine intervention, practical or current religion combining varying degrees of natural and supernatural elements, and philosophic religions constructed through human theological reasoning and rational inquiry. Each form provides different pathways for human spiritual expression and development.

The unifying cohesion of religious experience within social or racial groups derives from the identical nature of the divine fragment indwelling each individual, which engenders unselfish interest in others' welfare. However, since personality constitutes a unique reality—with no two mortals being identical—it inevitably follows that no two human beings can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the divine spirit residing within their minds. This diversity of interpretation regarding religious thought and experience manifests in the proliferation of theological and philosophical definitions, with twentieth-century scholars having formulated more than five hundred distinct definitions of religion. Each human being necessarily defines religion through the lens of personal experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the indwelling God spirit, resulting in interpretations that are unavoidably unique and distinctly different from the religious philosophy of all other individuals.

While religion fundamentally remains a matter of personal experience, exposure to diverse religious experiences prevents one's religious life from becoming egocentric, circumscribed, selfish, or unsocial. Religion primarily constitutes a pursuit of values before formulating interpretative belief systems, which explains religion's ability to persevere despite maintaining seemingly contradictory belief systems. This dynamic clarifies how religion can simultaneously agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing phenomenon of numerous conflicting beliefs and creeds, allowing religious experience to persist despite revolutionary changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce religion; rather, religion produces theological philosophy through the recognition of values validated through personal faith experience. Even when religionists have embraced falsehoods, this does not invalidate religion itself, as religion fundamentally arises from value recognition and gains validation through the faith of personal religious experience: an experience that transcends ideational categorization and defies linguistic designation.

Religion functions within the human mind and manifests in experience prior to its emergence in human consciousness, similar to how a child exists for approximately nine months before experiencing birth. However, unlike physical birth, religious birth rarely occurs suddenly but emerges gradually through developmental stages. Nevertheless, spiritual births frequently involve conscious struggles comparable to physical birth complications, with some spiritual births characterized by psychological perturbations and emotional upheavals. Other religious developments occur through natural growth in recognizing supreme values accompanied by enhanced spiritual experience, although no religious development occurs without conscious effort and positive individual determinations. Religion never manifests as passive experience or negative attitude; what scholars term the "birth of religion" is not directly associated with conversion experiences that typically characterize later-life religious episodes resulting from mental conflict, emotional repression, or temperamental disturbances.

The evolutionary foundation for revealed religion resides in the moral nature that gives rise to early social consciousness, with a child's first moral promptings involving impulses toward justice, fairness, and kindness rather than concerns about sex, guilt, or pride. When properly nurtured, this moral awakening facilitates gradual religious development relatively free from conflict or crisis. Every human experiences conflict between self-seeking and altruistic impulses, with God-consciousness often emerging through seeking superhuman assistance in resolving these moral tensions. When a moral being chooses altruism over selfishness when confronted with selfish urges, they make a primitive religious decision that no animal could make—a choice demonstrating God-consciousness and social service impulses that form the foundation of human brotherhood. The Thought Adjuster, without disregarding egoistic personality values, places slight preference on altruistic impulses that lead toward human happiness and kingdom joys, though improperly balanced altruistic development can potentially damage self-welfare through misguided conscience, creating unnecessary conflict and unhappiness.

While spirits, dreams, and various superstitions contributed to primitive religion's evolutionary origins, the clan or tribal spirit of solidarity provided the precise social context that challenged the egoistic-altruistic conflict within early human moral nature. Despite their belief in spirits, primitive Australian aborigines focused their religion primarily on clan cohesion, while even less developed races like African Bushmen recognized the fundamental distinction between self-interest and group-interest—a primitive differentiation between secular and sacred values. However, the social group itself does not constitute the source of religious experience; regardless of these primitive contributions to early human religion, genuine religious impulse originates from authentic spirit presences activating the will toward unselfishness. Later religious development appears foreshadowed in primitive beliefs regarding natural wonders and mysteries, but eventually evolving religion requires personal sacrifice for social welfare and collective happiness.

Religion is fundamentally designed to transform human environments rather than merely adapt to them, though in many historical instances, environments have mastered religion instead of being transformed by it. Throughout religious evolution, the moral element has never been entirely absent from religious expression, with both human impulses and divine influences ensuring religion's survival despite historical vicissitudes and numerous subversive tendencies. The divine impulse within humanity has always remained potent, allowing religion to endure through ages of uncertainty and opposition. Man evolved through progressive stages, including mana, magic, nature worship, spirit fear, and animal worship, eventually developing ceremonials that transformed individual religious attitudes into collective clan reactions. These ceremonies gradually focused into tribal beliefs, with fears and faiths becoming personalized into gods. Yet throughout this evolutionary progression, the moral element remained present: the impulse of God within humanity has always existed alongside human influences, ensuring religion's survival despite countless threats to its continuation.

The fundamental distinction between social gatherings and religious assemblies lies in the pervading atmosphere of communion that characterizes religious meetings in contrast to secular events. This communion generates a sense of fellowship with divine reality and initiates group worship, with shared meals representing the earliest manifestation of social communion. Early religions incorporated ceremonial sacrifices partially consumed by worshipers, and even Christianity maintains this communal tradition through the Lord's Supper. This communion atmosphere provides refreshing respite from the perpetual conflict between self-seeking ego and altruistic impulses from the indwelling spirit, serving as prelude to true worship: the practice of God's presence that culminates in the emergence of human brotherhood.

When primitive humans perceived interruption in divine communion, they resorted to sacrificial offerings to restore favorable relationships. The hunger and thirst for righteousness drives truth discovery, and truth augments ideals, creating new challenges for religious individuals as ideals grow geometrically while practical implementation abilities advance only arithmetically. Guilt sensations arise from interrupted spiritual communion or lowered moral ideals, with deliverance coming through realizing that personal moral ideals may not perfectly align with divine will, allowing sincere pursuit of God despite imperfect ideal attainment. Jesus eliminated all ceremonial sacrifices and atonement rituals by declaring humans as children of God, transforming the creator-creature relationship into a parent-child foundation. This paradigm shift removed the basis for guilt and isolation, with God becoming a loving Father to his mortal children. God relates to his children based on their motivations and intentions rather than actual virtue or worthiness, creating a relationship actuated by divine love rather than performance metrics.

The early evolutionary mind develops sensations of social duty and moral obligation primarily through emotional fear, while more positive urges toward social service and altruistic idealism derive directly from the divine spirit's impulse within the human mind. The concept of doing good to others, denying self-benefit for a neighbor's advantage, begins in highly restricted contexts, with primitive humans recognizing as neighbors only those in close proximity who demonstrate neighborly behavior. As religious civilization advances, the neighbor concept expands to encompass clan, tribe, and nation, with Jesus ultimately extending this scope to embrace all humanity and instructing followers to love even enemies. This teaching resonates with something inherent in every normal person that recognizes its moral rightness, even when individuals fail to practice this ideal.

Human happiness emerges only through coordinating ego desires with altruistic urges from the higher self (divine spirit) through the unified will of an integrating and supervising personality. The evolving human mind constantly confronts the complex challenge of arbitrating between natural emotional impulses and moral growth based on spiritual insight. Jesus addressed this apparent paradox in stating, "Whoever saves his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for the kingdom shall find it." The pursuit of the ideal, becoming Godlike, constitutes continuous effort both before and after death, with the post-mortem existence differing little in essential character from mortal life. Every positive mortal achievement directly enhances the initial stages of immortal survival experience. True religion energizes individuals by revealing that higher urges emanate from spiritual forces dwelling within them, lifting consciousness beyond self-consciousness through realizing that something eternal and divine strives within the human personality. This realization validates belief in divine sonship and confirms altruistic convictions regarding human brotherhood.

Theology examines the actions and reactions of the human spirit but cannot achieve scientific status because it invariably combines with psychology in personal expression and with philosophy in systematic presentation. Theology always constitutes the study of one's own religion, while examining another's religion represents psychological inquiry. When humans approach the universe externally, they develop physical sciences; when investigating themselves and the universe internally, they create theology and metaphysics. Philosophy subsequently emerges as an attempt to harmonize discrepancies between these diametrically opposite approaches to universal reality, with their inherent perceptual limitations and distortions.

Religion concerns the spiritual perspective, awareness of the inner dimension of human experience, allowing humans to perceive the universe "outside-in," with all creation appearing spiritually constituted from this internal vantage point. Conversely, analytical examination through physical senses and mind perception presents the cosmos as mechanical and material, turning the universe "inside-out." Neither materialism nor spiritism alone can establish a consistent philosophical concept of the universe, as both systems distort cosmic reality when universally applied. Mental function conditions and qualifies all human experiences, with spiritual and material realities colored by mind consciousness interpretation. The intervening domain of the morontia world, largely unknown to humans, bridges material and spiritual realities, with revelation compensating for this perceptual limitation by providing a technique for achieving unity in comprehending matter and spirit relationships through mind. Science studies physical environments through reason, religion explores spiritual values through faith, and philosophy attempts to organize these conceptions into a unified cosmic understanding, while revelation clarifies philosophical confusion.

Science maintains its foundation in reason, while religion depends on faith. However, while not predicated on reason, faith remains reasonable and encouraged by sound logic despite its independence from logical constraints. Faith cannot be nourished by philosophy alone, as faith and science together constitute the source of such philosophy, with religious insight properly guided only through revelation and personal experience with the divine Adjuster presence. True salvation encompasses the divine evolution of the mortal mind from material identification through morontia liaison to spiritual correlation, with material intuitive instinct preceding reasoned knowledge in terrestrial evolution just as spiritual intuitive insight presages morontia and spirit reason in celestial evolution, the process of transforming temporal human potential into eternal divine actuality.

The union of scientific attitude and religious insight through experiential philosophy forms an essential component of humanity's lengthy Paradise-ascension experience. Mathematical approximations and insight certainties require mind logic harmonization at all experiential levels before achieving the Supreme. For science and religion to harmonize, both scientific and religious aspects of personality must be truth-dominated and sincerely committed to following truth regardless of conclusions reached. Logic can never successfully harmonize science and religion unless both aspects are truth-dominated and sincerely devoted to truth pursuit regardless of implications. The universe appears material from external observation but wholly spiritual from internal perspective, with reason emerging from material awareness and faith from spiritual consciousness. Through philosophical mediation strengthened by revelation, logic confirms both perspectives, stabilizing science and religion and fostering mutual tolerance. Both scientific and religious teachers require greater self-criticism and awareness of their incompleteness in evolutionary status, as they frequently display excessive confidence and dogmatism despite their limited understanding and development.

Although science and philosophy may postulate the probability of God through reason and logic, only the personal religious experience of a spirit-led individual can authenticate the certainty of such a supreme and personal Deity. The incarnation of living truth transforms a philosophical hypothesis regarding God's probability into spiritual reality, though confusion about experiencing God's certainty stems from divergent interpretations by different individuals and races. The discourse about God, being intellectual and philosophical, exhibits divergence and occasional fallacious reasoning, though this imperfection does not invalidate the reality or sincerity of the experiential relationship. A good and noble person may be completely devoted to their spouse yet unable to provide satisfactory written analysis of marital love psychology, while another individual with minimal spousal affection might excel at such theoretical examination.

The imperfection of a lover's insight regarding the beloved does not diminish the reality or sincerity of their love, and similarly, genuine believers should not permit their faith experience to be undermined by scientific skepticism, logical challenges, philosophical postulates, or well-intentioned suggestions about developing religion without God. The certainty of God-knowing religionists should remain undisturbed by the uncertainty of doubting materialists; rather, the unbeliever's uncertainty should face challenge from the profound faith and unshakable certainty of experiential believers. Philosophy provides maximum service to both science and religion when it recognizes personality reality, permanence amid change, which can serve as a connecting influence between material science and spiritual religion, compensating for evolutionary philosophy's inherent weaknesses. Revelation compensates for the limitations of evolving philosophy, bridging the gap between theories of material science and spiritual religion's God of salvation.

Theology addresses the intellectual content of religion, metaphysics (revelation) engages the philosophical aspects, and religious experience constitutes the spiritual content. Despite mythological vagaries, psychological illusions within intellectual religious content, metaphysical error assumptions, self-deception techniques, political distortions, or socioeconomic perversions of religion's philosophical content, the spiritual experience of personal religion remains genuine and valid. Religion encompasses feeling, acting, and living rather than merely thinking, with thinking more closely connected to material existence and appropriately influenced by reason, science, and truth. Notwithstanding illusory or erroneous theology, genuine religion maintains authenticity and eternal truth through actual spiritual experience that transcends the limitations of intellectual formulations.

Religious experience embraces a positive and living faith attitude toward ultimate realms of universal objective reality, with the ideal religious philosophy leading to unqualified dependence on the absolute love of the infinite Father. Such experience transcends philosophical objectification of idealistic desire by taking salvation for granted and focusing exclusively on learning and implementing the Paradise Father's will. The distinguishing characteristics of such religion include supreme Deity faith, eternal survival hope, and love, particularly toward fellow beings. When theology dominates religion, religion dies, becoming doctrine rather than life, while theology's proper function involves facilitating self-consciousness of personal spiritual experience and clarifying experiential religious claims that ultimately find validation only through living faith. Faith willingly accompanies reason to its limits, then proceeds with wisdom to the philosophical boundary before venturing into the limitless universal journey with truth alone. The complete realization of mortal life involves progressive willingness to believe the assumptions of reason, wisdom, and faith, creating a life motivated by truth and dominated by love: the ideals of objective cosmic reality whose existence defies material demonstration.