Paper 103 Overview: The Reality of Religious Experience

Religious experience stems from several divine influences working within the human mind, including the adjutant of worship, the Spirit of Truth, and the Thought Adjuster. These influences enhance human capacity for religious insight and spiritual perception, creating a natural tendency toward religious expression that is universally present across all human races. Religious development follows evolutionary patterns, occasionally enhanced by revelatory interventions that accelerate spiritual growth.

On Urantia today, religion manifests in four distinct forms: natural or evolutionary religion arising from human development, supernatural or revelatory religion delivered by divine intervention, practical religion that blends elements of both previous types, and philosophic religions created through human intellectual reasoning. Each form offers different pathways for humans to connect with spiritual reality, though they all serve to enhance understanding of the relationship between humanity and deity.

Human religious reactions are guided by the adjutant of worship and supervised by the adjutant of wisdom, with the first supermind endowment being personality connection to the Holy Spirit. This influence expands human perspectives on ethics, religion, and spirituality even before divine Sons are bestowed or Thought Adjusters arrive. As evolutionary development continues on inhabited worlds, the Spirit of Truth and Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in developing higher types of religious insight, with the Thought Adjuster serving as a cosmic window through which finite creatures can glimpse the certainties of limitless Deity.

Religious tendencies appear naturally across all human races, manifesting universally and developing through evolutionary processes. As natural religious experience progresses, periodic revelations of truth enhance the otherwise slow advancement of planetary evolution. Currently on Urantia, four types of religion exist: natural or evolutionary religion, supernatural or revelatory religion, practical religion (which combines natural and supernatural elements in varying degrees), and philosophic religions created through human theological reasoning.

The unity of religious experience within social or racial groups stems from the identical nature of the God fragment dwelling within each individual, which creates an unselfish interest in others' welfare. Because each personality is unique, no two humans can interpret the leadings of the divine spirit identically, resulting in diverse interpretations of religious experience. This diversity explains why theologians and philosophers have formulated more than five hundred different definitions of religion, as each person defines religion according to their personal experiential interpretation of the divine impulses from the indwelling God spirit.

While religion remains deeply personal, exposure to diverse religious experiences prevents one's religious life from becoming self-centered or isolated. Religion primarily involves pursuing values before forming interpretative belief systems, which explains how religion can persist despite changing beliefs. Theology doesn't produce religion; rather, religion produces theological philosophy through the recognition of values validated by personal religious experience. Even when religionists have believed falsehoods, this doesn't invalidate religion itself because religion is founded on recognizing values and is validated through personal faith experience.

Religion functions in the human mind and is experienced before it appears in human consciousness, similar to how a child exists for nine months before experiencing birth. The "birth" of religion isn't sudden but emerges gradually, often with spiritual perturbations comparable to physical birth complications. Other spiritual births occur through natural growth in recognizing supreme values with enhanced spiritual experience, though all religious development requires conscious effort and positive individual determinations rather than passive experience.

The moral nature that gives rise to social consciousness provides the evolutionary soil where revealed religion germinates. A child's first moral promptings involve justice, fairness, and kindness rather than concerns about guilt or pride, and when nurtured properly, religious life develops with fewer conflicts or crises. When a moral being chooses altruism over selfishness, they make a primitive religious decision that demonstrates God-consciousness and social service impulses, forming the foundation of human brotherhood. The indwelling Thought Adjuster creates a slight preference for altruistic impulses that lead toward happiness and spiritual growth, though misguided consciences can sometimes create conflict and unhappiness.

While spirits, dreams, and superstitions contributed to primitive religions, the clan spirit of solidarity provided the social context that challenged early human moral development. Despite their spiritual beliefs, primitive peoples like Australian aborigines focused their religion on clan cohesion, while even less developed groups like African Bushmen recognized the distinction between self-interest and group interest. Regardless of these primitive contributions, true religious impulse originates from genuine spirit presences activating unselfish willingness.

Later religion appears in primitive beliefs about natural wonders and mysteries, but eventually evolving religion requires personal sacrifice for social good and happiness of others. Religion is designed to transform human environments, though sometimes environments master religion instead. Throughout religious evolution, the moral element was never completely absent, with both human and divine influences ensuring religion's survival despite numerous threats. The impulse of God within humans has always been powerful enough to help religion endure through historical challenges and hostile opposition.

The key difference between social gatherings and religious meetings is the atmosphere of communion that pervades religious assemblies. This communion generates fellowship with divine reality and begins group worship, with shared meals serving as the earliest form of social communion. Early religions incorporated ceremonial sacrifices that worshipers partially consumed, and even Christianity maintains this tradition through the Lord's Supper, providing a refreshing pause in the conflict between selfish ego and the altruistic urges of the indwelling spirit.

When primitive humans felt their communion with God was interrupted, they used sacrifices to restore friendly relationships. Jesus eliminated all ceremonial sacrifices and atonement rituals by declaring that humans are children of God, placing the creator-creature relationship on a parent-child foundation. This shift removed the basis for guilt and isolation in the universe, with God becoming a loving Father to his mortal children rather than a distant deity requiring payment. In this relationship, God deals with his children based on their motivations and intentions rather than their actual virtue or worthiness.

Early evolutionary minds develop feelings of social duty and moral obligation primarily from emotional fear, while the more positive urges toward social service and altruism come directly from the divine spirit dwelling within the human mind. This impulse to do good for others begins in a limited way, with primitive humans considering as neighbors only those close to them who treat them well. As religious civilization advances, the concept of neighbor expands to include clan, tribe, and nation, with Jesus ultimately extending it to embrace all humanity, even enemies.

Human happiness is achieved only when ego desires and altruistic urges from the higher self are coordinated by the unified will of an integrated personality. The mind of evolving humans constantly faces the challenge of balancing emotional impulses with moral growth based on spiritual insight. Jesus addressed this paradox when he said, "Whoever saves his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for the kingdom shall find it." The pursuit of becoming godlike continues after death, with everything good accomplished in mortal life directly contributing to the enrichment of immortal experience. True religion energizes people by helping them realize that higher urges come from spiritual forces dwelling within them.

Theology studies the actions and reactions of the human spirit but cannot become a science because it always combines with psychology in personal expression and with philosophy in systematic presentation. Theology always examines one's own religion, while studying another's religion constitutes psychology. When humans approach the universe from external observation, they create physical sciences; when they look inward, they develop theology and metaphysics, with philosophy attempting to harmonize discrepancies between these approaches.

Religion deals with the spiritual perspective, viewing the universe from the inside out, while scientific analysis examines reality from the outside in. Neither materialism nor spiritism alone can build a consistent philosophical understanding of the universe, as both systems distort cosmic reality when universally applied. Material experiences are colored by mind interpretation, while spiritual values are similarly affected. The morontia world—largely unknown to humans—bridges these perspectives, with revelation compensating for humanity's inability to perceive this middle realm. Science studies physical environments, religion explores spirit values, and philosophy attempts to organize these concepts into a unified cosmic understanding.

Science builds on reason while religion depends on faith, though faith isn't predicated on reason, it remains reasonable and encouraged by sound logic. Faith cannot be nourished by philosophy alone, as faith and science together form the source of philosophy. Religious insight can only be properly guided by revelation and personal experience with the divine Adjuster presence. True salvation involves the divine evolution of the mortal mind from material identification through morontia connection to spiritual correlation, with material instinct preceding reasoned knowledge just as spiritual insight precedes morontia and spirit reason.

The union of scientific attitude and religious insight through experiential philosophy forms part of humanity's long Paradise-ascension experience. Both logic and spiritual insight require mind harmonization at all experience levels before reaching the Supreme. For science and religion to harmonize, the scientific and religious aspects of personality must be truth-dominated and sincerely committed to following truth regardless of conclusions reached. Logic confirms both the inward and outward views of the universe, stabilizing science and religion. Both science and religion need greater self-criticism and awareness of their incompleteness, as their teachers tend to be overconfident and dogmatic despite the limitations of current understanding.

Although science and philosophy may assume God's probability through reason and logic, only personal religious experience can confirm the certainty of such a supreme and personal Deity. The confusion surrounding the experience of God's certainty stems from different interpretations and explanations of that experience by individuals and races. A good and noble person can be deeply in love with their spouse yet unable to pass a formal examination on the psychology of marital love, while someone with little love for their spouse might excel at such an examination. These imperfections in understanding don't invalidate the reality or sincerity of love.

Those who truly believe in God through faith should not allow their experience to be diminished by scientific doubts, logical challenges, philosophical theories, or well-meaning suggestions about creating a religion without God. The certainty of God-knowing believers should not be disturbed by the uncertainty of doubting materialists, but rather the uncertainty of unbelievers should be challenged by the profound faith and unshakable certainty of experiential believers. Philosophy serves religion best when it recognizes the reality of personality—permanence amid change—which can serve as a connection between material science and spiritual religion.

Theology addresses the intellectual content of religion, metaphysics deals with philosophical aspects, and religious experience constitutes the spiritual content. Despite intellectual errors, philosophical mistakes, or psychological illusions that may accompany religion, the spiritual experience of personal religion remains genuine and valid. Religion involves feeling, acting, and living, not merely thinking, with thinking more connected to material life and appropriately influenced by reason, science, and truth.

Religious experience embraces a positive, living faith attitude toward the highest realms of universal objective reality, with the ideal religious philosophy leading to unqualified dependence on the infinite Father's absolute love. Such experience transcends philosophical objectification of idealistic desire by taking salvation for granted and focusing on learning and doing the Father's will. Faith carries reason and wisdom to their limits before venturing into the boundless universal journey with truth. The full 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 that cannot be materially demonstrated.