41:1. Philosophy
of Religion
41:2. Religion
and the Individual
41:3. Religion
and the Human Race
41:4. Nature of
the Soul
41:5. The
Evolving Soul
41:6. The Inner
Life
41:7. The
Consecration of Choice
41:8. The Human
Paradox
P1129:1, 103:0.1 All of man's truly religious reactions are
sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by
the adjutant of wisdom. Man's first supermind endowment is that of personality
encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and long the
universal bestowal of the Adjusters, this influence functions to enlarge man's
viewpoint of ethics, religion, and spirituality. The liberated Spirit of Truth
makes mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human capacity to perceive
religious truths. As evolution advances on an inhabited world, the Thought
Adjusters increasingly participate in the development of the higher types of
human religious insight. The Thought Adjuster is the cosmic window through which
the finite creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and divinities of
limitless Deity, the Universal Father.
P1129:2, 103:0.2 The religious tendencies of the human races are
innate; they are universally manifested and have an apparently natural origin;
primitive religions are always evolutionary in their genesis. As natural
religious experience continues to progress, periodic revelations of truth
punctuate the otherwise slow-moving course of planetary evolution.
P1129:3, 103:0.3 On Earth, today, there are four kinds of religion:
P1129:8, 103:1.1 The unity of religious experience among a
social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment
indwelling the individual. It is this divine in man that gives origin to his
unselfish interest in the welfare of other men. But since personality is unique
-- no two mortals being alike -- it inevitably follows that no two human beings
can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit of divinity which
lives within their minds. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but
they can never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity of the
interpretation of religious thought and experience is shown by the fact that
twentieth-century theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of five
hundred different definitions of religion. In reality, every human being defines
religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine
impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells him, and therefore must
such an interpretation be unique and wholly different from the religious
philosophy of all other human beings.
P1130:1, 103:1.2 When one mortal is in full agreement with the
religious philosophy of a fellow mortal, that phenomenon indicates that these
two beings have had a similar religious experience touching the matters
concerned in their similarity of philosophic religious interpretation.
P1130:2, 103:1.3 While your religion is a matter of personal
experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of
a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of
other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life
from becoming egocentric -- circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.
P1130:3, 103:1.4 Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that
religion is at first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by
the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily a pursuit of values, and then there
formulates a system of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to
agree on religious values -- goals -- than on beliefs -- interpretations. And
this explains how religion can agree on values and goals while exhibiting the
confusing phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of conflicting beliefs
-- creeds. This also explains why a given person can maintain his religious
experience in the face of giving up or changing many of his religious beliefs.
Religion persists in spite of revolutionary changes in religious beliefs.
Theology does not produce religion; it is religion that produces theological
philosophy.
P1130:4, 103:1.5 That religionists have believed so much that
was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the
recognition of values and is validated by the faith of personal religious
experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought;
theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that
experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of
truth and error.
P1130:5, 103:1.6 The realization of the recognition of spiritual
values is an experience which is super-ideational. There is no word in any human
language which can be employed to designate this "sense,"
"feeling," "intuition," or "experience" which we
have elected to call God-consciousness. The spirit of God that dwells in man is
not personal -- the Adjuster is prepersonal -- but this Monitor presents a
value, exudes a flavor of divinity, which is personal in the highest and
infinite sense. If God were not at least personal, he could not be conscious,
and if not conscious, then would he be infrahuman.
P1130:6, 103:2.1 Many spiritual births are accompanied by much
anguish of spirit and marked psychological perturbations. Other spiritual births
are a natural and normal growth of the recognition of supreme values with an
enhancement of spiritual experience, albeit no religious development occurs
without conscious effort and positive and individual determinations. Religion is
never a passive experience, a negative attitude. What is termed the "birth
of religion" is not directly associated with so-called conversion
experiences which usually characterize religious episodes occurring later in
life as a result of mental conflict, emotional repression, and temperamental
upheavals.
P1131:1, 103:2.2 But those persons who were so reared by their
parents that they grew up in the consciousness of being children of a loving
heavenly Father, should not look askance at their fellow mortals who could only
attain such consciousness of fellowship with God through a psychological crisis,
an emotional upheaval.
P1131:2, 103:2.3 The evolutionary soil in the mind of man in
which the seed of revealed religion germinates is the moral nature that so early
gives origin to a social consciousness. The first promptings of a child's moral
nature have not to do with sex, guilt, or personal pride, but rather with
impulses of justice, fairness, and urges to kindness -- helpful ministry to
one's fellows. And when such early moral awakenings are nurtured, there occurs a
gradual development of the religious life which is comparatively free from
conflicts, upheavals, and crises.
P1131:3, 103:2.4 Every human being very early experiences
something of a conflict between his self-seeking and his altruistic impulses,
and many times the first experience of God-consciousness may be attained as the
result of seeking for superhuman help in the task of resolving such moral
conflicts.
P1131:4, 103:2.5 The psychology of a child is naturally
positive, not negative. So many mortals are negative because they were so
trained. When it is said that the child is positive, reference is made to his
moral impulses, those powers of mind whose emergence signals the arrival of the
Thought Adjuster.
P1131:5, 103:2.6 In the absence of wrong teaching, the mind of
the normal child moves positively, in the emergence of religious consciousness,
toward moral righteousness and social ministry, rather than negatively, away
from sin and guilt. There may or may not be conflict in the development of
religious experience, but there are always present the inevitable decisions,
effort, and function of the human will.
P1131:6, 103:2.7 Moral choosing is usually accompanied by more
or less moral conflict. And this very first conflict in the child mind is
between the urges of egoism and the impulses of altruism. The Thought Adjuster
does not disregard the personality values of the egoistic motive but does
operate to place a slight preference upon the altruistic impulse as leading to
the goal of human happiness and to the joys of the kingdom of heaven.
P1131:7, 103:2.8 When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when
confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience. No
animal can make such a choice; such a decision is both human and religious. It
embraces the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse of social
service, the basis of the brotherhood of man. When mind chooses a right moral
judgment by an act of the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious
experience.
P1131:8, 103:2.9 But before a child has developed sufficiently
to acquire moral capacity and therefore to be able to choose altruistic service,
he has already developed a strong and well-unified egoistic nature. And it is
this factual situation that gives rise to the theory of the struggle between the
"higher" and the "lower" natures, between the "old man
of sin" and the "new nature" of grace. Very early in life the
normal child begins to learn that it is "more blessed to give than to
receive."
P1131:9, 103:2.10 Man tends to identify the urge to be self-serving with his ego -- himself. In contrast he is inclined to identify the will to be altruistic with some influence outside himself -- God. And indeed is such a judgment right, for all such non-self desires do actually have their origin in the leadings of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, and this Adjuster is a fragment of God. The impulse of the spirit Monitor is realized in human consciousness as the urge to be altruistic, fellow-creature minded. At least this is the early and fundamental experience of the child mind. When the growing child fails of personality unification, the altruistic drive may become so overdeveloped as to work serious injury to the welfare of the self. A misguided conscience can become responsible for much conflict, worry, sorrow, and no end of human unhappiness.
P1132:1, 103:3.1 While the belief in spirits, dreams, and diverse other superstitions all played a part in the evolutionary origin of primitive religions, you should not overlook the influence of the clan or tribal spirit of solidarity. In the group relationship there was presented the exact social situation which provided the challenge to the egoistic-altruistic conflict in the moral nature of the early human mind. In spite of their belief in spirits, primitive Australians focused their religion upon the clan. In time, such religious concepts tend to personalize, first, as animals, and later, as a superman or as a God. Even such races as the African Bushmen, who were not even totemic in their beliefs, had a recognition of the difference between the self-interest and the group-interest, a primitive distinction between the values of the secular and the sacred. But the social group is not the source of religious experience. Regardless of the influence of all these primitive contributions to man's early religion, the fact remains that the true religious impulse has its origin in genuine spirit presences activating the will to be unselfish.
P1132:2, 103:3.2 Later religion is foreshadowed in the primitive belief in natural wonders and mysteries, the impersonal mana. But sooner or later the evolving religion requires that the individual should make some personal sacrifice for the good of his social group, should do something to make other people happier and better. Ultimately, religion is destined to become the service of God and of man.
P1132:3, 103:3.3 Religion is designed to change man's
environment, but much of the religion found among mortals today has become
helpless to do this. Environment has all too often mastered religion.
P1132:4, 103:3.4 Remember that in the religion of all ages the
experience which is paramount is the feeling regarding moral values and social
meanings, not the thinking regarding theological dogmas or philosophic theories.
Religion evolves favorably as the element of magic is replaced by the concept of
morals.
P1132:5, 103:3.5 Man evolved through the superstitions of mana, magic, nature worship, spirit fear, and animal worship to the various ceremonials whereby the religious attitude of the individual became the group reactions of the clan. And then these ceremonies became focalized and crystallized into tribal beliefs, and eventually these fears and faiths became personalized into gods. But in all of this religious evolution the moral element was never wholly absent. The impulse of the God within man was always potent. And these powerful influences -- one human and the other divine -- insured the survival of religion throughout the vicissitudes of the ages and that notwithstanding it was so often threatened with extinction by a thousand subversive tendencies and hostile antagonisms.
P1217:5, 111:2.1
Throughout the mind functions of cosmic intelligence, the totality of mind is
dominant over the parts of intellectual function. Mind, in its essence, is
functional unity; therefore does mind never fail to manifest this constitutive
unity, even when hampered and hindered by the unwise actions and choices of a
misguided self. And this unity of mind invariably seeks for spirit co-ordination
on all levels of its association with selves of will dignity and ascension
prerogatives.
P1217:6, 111:2.2
The material mind of mortal man is the cosmic loom that carries the morontia
fabrics on which the indwelling Thought Adjuster threads the spirit patterns of
a universe character of enduring values and divine meanings -- a surviving soul
of ultimate destiny and unending career, a potential finaliter.
P1218:1, 111:2.3
The human personality is identified with mind and spirit held together in
functional relationship by life in a material body. This functioning
relationship of such mind and spirit does not result in some combination of the
qualities or attributes of mind and spirit but rather in an entirely new,
original, and unique universe value of potentially eternal endurance, the soul.
P1218:2, 111:2.4 There are three and not two factors in the evolutionary creation of such an immortal soul. These three antecedents of the morontia human soul are:
P1218:3, 111:2.5 1. The human mind and all cosmic influences antecedent thereto and impinging thereon.
P1218:4, 111:2.6 2. The divine spirit indwelling this human mind and all potentials inherent in such a fragment of absolute spirituality together with all associated spiritual influences and factors in human life.
P1218:5, 111:2.7 3. The relationship between material mind and divine spirit, which connotes a value and carries a meaning not found in either of the contributing factors to such an association. The reality of this unique relationship is neither material nor spiritual but morontial. It is the soul.
P1218:6, 111:2.8 The mid-mind is really a morontia phenomenon
since it exists in the realm between the material and the spiritual. The
potential of such a morontia evolution is inherent in the two universal urges of
mind: the impulse of the finite mind of the creature to know God and attain the
divinity of the Creator, and the impulse of the infinite mind of the Creator to
know man and attain the experience of the creature.
P1218:7, 111:2.9 This supernal transaction of evolving the
immortal soul is made possible because the mortal mind is first personal and
second is in contact with superanimal realities; it possesses a supermaterial
endowment of cosmic ministry which insures the evolution of a moral nature
capable of making moral decisions, thereby effecting a bona fide creative
contact with the associated spiritual ministries and with the indwelling Thought
Adjuster.
P1218:8, 111:2.10 The inevitable result of such a contactual
spiritualization of the human mind is the gradual birth of a soul, the joint
offspring of an adjutant mind dominated by a human will that craves to know God,
working in liaison with the spiritual forces of the universe which are under the
overcontrol of an actual fragment of the very God of all creation -- the Mystery
Monitor. And thus does the material and mortal reality of the self transcend the
temporal limitations of the physical-life machine and attain a new expression
and a new identification in the evolving vehicle for selfhood continuity, the
morontia and immortal soul.
P1218:9, 111:3.1 The mistakes of mortal mind and the errors of
human conduct may markedly delay the evolution of the soul, although they cannot
inhibit such a morontia phenomenon when once it has been initiated by the
indwelling Adjuster with the consent of the creature will. But at any time prior
to mortal death this same material and human will is empowered to rescind such a
choice and to reject survival. Even after survival the ascending mortal still
retains this prerogative of choosing to reject eternal life; at any time before
fusion with the Adjuster the evolving and ascending creature can choose to
forsake the will of the Paradise Father. Fusion with the Adjuster signalizes the
fact that the ascending mortal has eternally and unreservedly chosen to be with
the Father.
P1219:1, 111:3.2 During the life in the flesh the evolving soul
is enabled to reinforce the supermaterial decisions of the mortal mind. The
soul, being supermaterial, does not of itself function on the material level of
human experience. Neither can this sub-spiritual soul, without the collaboration
of some spirit of Deity function above the morontia level. Neither does the soul
make final decisions until death or translation divorces it from material
association with the mortal mind except when and as this material mind delegates
such authority freely and willingly to such a morontia soul of associated
function. During life the mortal will, the personality power of decision-choice,
is resident in the material mind circuits; as terrestrial mortal growth
proceeds, this self, with its priceless powers of choice, becomes increasingly
identified with the emerging morontia-soul entity; after death and following the
mansion world resurrection, the human personality is completely identified with
the morontia self. The soul is thus the embryo of the future morontia vehicle of
personality identity.
P1219:2, 111:3.3 This immortal soul is at first wholly morontia
in nature, but it possesses such a capacity for development that it invariably
ascends to the true spirit levels of fusion value with the spirits of Deity,
usually with the same spirit of the Universal Father that initiated such a
creative phenomenon in the creature mind.
P1219:3, 111:3.4 Both the human mind and the divine Adjuster are
conscious of the presence and differential nature of the evolving soul -- the
Adjuster fully, the mind partially. The soul becomes increasingly conscious of
both the mind and the Adjuster as associated identities, proportional to its own
evolutionary growth. The soul partakes of the qualities of both the human mind
and the divine spirit but persistently evolves toward augmentation of spirit
control and divine dominance through the fostering of a mind function whose
meanings seek to co-ordinate with true spirit value.
P1219:4, 111:3.5 The mortal career, the soul's evolution, is not
so much a probation as an education. Faith in the survival of supreme values is
the core of religion; genuine religious experience consists in the union of
supreme values and cosmic meanings as a realization of universal reality.
P1219:5, 111:3.6 Mind knows quantity, reality, meanings. But
quality -- values -- is felt. That which feels is the mutual creation of
mind, which knows, and the associated spirit, which reality-izes.
P1219:6, 111:3.7 In so far as man's evolving morontia soul
becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of
God-consciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no
survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is
without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true:
What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity -- if it is worth
finishing.
P1220:1, 111:4.2
Meanings are derived from a combination of recognition and understanding.
Meanings are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. Meanings and
values are only perceived in the inner or supermaterial spheres of human
experience.
P1220:2, 111:4.3 The advances of true civilization are all born
in this inner world of mankind. It is only the inner life that is truly
creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any
generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of
the sensory or outer world.
P1220:3, 111:4.4 The inner and the outer worlds have a different
set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth
enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the
sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth
neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the
fine arts, religion, and cosmology.
P1220:4, 111:4.5 Only in the higher levels of the
super-conscious mind as it impinges upon the spirit realm of human experience
can you find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns
which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring
civilization. Personality is inherently creative, but it thus functions only in
the inner life of the individual.
P1220:5, 111:4.6 Snow crystals are always hexagonal in form, but no two are ever alike. Children conform to types, but no two are exactly alike, even in the case of twins. Personality follows types but is always unique.
P1220:6, 111:4.7 Happiness and joy take origin in the inner life. You cannot experience real joy all by yourself. A solitary life is fatal to happiness. Even families and nations will enjoy life more if they share it with others.
P1220:7, 111:4.8 You cannot completely control the external
world -- environment. It is the creativity of the inner world that is most
subject to your direction because there your personality is so largely liberated
from the fetters of the laws of antecedent causation. There is associated with
personality a limited sovereignty of will.
P1220:9, 111:4.10 Ideas may take origin in the stimuli of the
outer world, but ideals are born only in the creative realms of the inner world.
Today the nations of the world are directed by men who have a superabundance of
ideas, but they are poverty-stricken in ideals. That is the explanation of
poverty, divorce, war, and racial hatreds.
P1220:10, 111:4.11 This is the problem: If freewill man is
endowed with the powers of creativity in the inner man, then must we recognize
that freewill creativity embraces the potential of freewill destructivity. And
when creativity is turned to destructivity, you are face to face with the
devastation of evil and sin -- oppression, war, and destruction. Evil is a
partiality of creativity which tends toward disintegration and eventual
destruction. All conflict is evil in that it inhibits the creative function of
the inner life -- it is a species of civil war in the personality.
P1221:1, 111:4.12 Inner creativity contributes to ennoblement of character through personality integration and selfhood unification. It is forever true: The past is unchangeable; only the future can be changed by the ministry of the present creativity of the inner self.
P1221:2, 111:5.1
Doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature
willingness to share the inner life with God -- with the very God who has made
such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible. Sharing is Godlike --
divine. God shares all with the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, while they,
in turn, share all things with the divine Sons and spirit Daughters of the
universes.
P1221:3, 111:5.2
The imitation of God is the key to perfection; the doing of his will is the
secret of survival and of perfection in survival.
P1221:4, 111:5.3
Mortals live in God, and so God has willed to live in mortals. As men trust
themselves to him, so has he -- and first -- trusted a part of himself to be
with men; has consented to live in men and to indwell men subject to the human
will.
P1221:5, 111:5.4
Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in
eternity -- all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the creature
personality consents -- chooses -- to subject the creature will to the Father's
will. And already has the Father chosen to make a fragment of himself subject to
the will of the creature personality.
P1221:6, 111:5.5
Such a creature choice is not a surrender of will. It is a consecration of will,
an expansion of will, a glorification of will, a perfecting of will; and such
choosing raises the creature will from the level of temporal significance to
that higher estate wherein the personality of the creature son communes with the
personality of the spirit Father.
P1221:7, 111:5.6
This choosing of the Father's will is the spiritual finding of the spirit Father
by mortal man, even though an age must pass before the creature son may actually
stand in the factual presence of God on Paradise. This choosing does not so much
consist in the negation of creature will -- "Not my will but yours be
done" -- as it consists in the creature's positive affirmation: "It is
my will that your will be done." And if this choice is made,
sooner or later will the God-choosing child find inner union (fusion) with the
indwelling God fragment, while this same perfecting son will find supreme
personality satisfaction in the worship communion of the personality of man and
the personality of his Maker, two personalities whose creative attributes have
eternally joined in self-willed mutuality of expression -- the birth of another
eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God.
P1221:8, 111:6.1
Many of the temporal troubles of mortal man grow out of his twofold relation to
the cosmos. Man is a part of nature -- he exists in nature -- and yet he is able
to transcend nature. Man is finite, but he is indwelt by a spark of infinity.
Such a dual situation not only provides the potential for evil but also
engenders many social and moral situations fraught with much uncertainty and not
a little anxiety.
P1222:1, 111:6.2
The courage required to effect the conquest of nature and to transcend one's
self is a courage that might succumb to the temptations of self-pride. The
mortal who can transcend self might yield to the temptation to deify his own
self-consciousness. The mortal dilemma consists in the double fact that man is
in bondage to nature while at the same time he possesses a unique liberty --
freedom of spiritual choice and action. On material levels man finds himself
subservient to nature, while on spiritual levels he is triumphant over nature
and over all things temporal and finite.
P1222:3, 111:6.4 The spirit can dominate mind; so mind can control energy. But mind can control energy only through its own intelligent manipulation of the metamorphic potentials inherent in the mathematical level of the causes and effects of the physical domains. Our mind does not inherently control energy; that is a Deity prerogative. But our mind can and does manipulate energy just in so far as it has become master of the energy secrets of the physical universe.
P1222:4, 111:6.5 When man wishes to modify physical reality, be
it himself or his environment, he succeeds to the extent that he has discovered
the ways and means of controlling matter and directing energy. Unaided mind is
impotent to influence anything material save its own physical mechanism, with
which it is inescapably linked. But through the intelligent use of the body
mechanism, mind can create other mechanisms, even energy relationships and
living relationships, by the utilization of which this mind can increasingly
control and even dominate its physical level in the universe.
P1222:7, 111:6.8 It is only natural that mortal man should be harassed by feelings of insecurity as he views himself inextricably bound to nature while he possesses spiritual powers wholly transcendent to all things temporal and finite. Only religious confidence -- living faith -- can sustain man amid such difficult and perplexing problems.
P1234:1, 112:5.12
There is something real, something of human evolution that survives death. This
is the soul, and it survives the death of both the physical body and the
material mind. A person of
human and divine parentage constitutes the surviving element of terrestrial
origin; it is the morontia self, the immortal soul.
P1235:3, 112:5.21 When you awaken, you will be so changed, the spiritual transformation will be so great that you would at first have difficulty in connecting the new morontia consciousness with the reviving memory of your previous identity. Notwithstanding the continuity of personal selfhood, much of the mortal life would at first seem to be a vague and hazy dream. But time will clarify many mortal associations.
P1235:5, 112:6.1 Just as a butterfly emerges from the caterpillar stage, so will the true personalities of human beings emerge in Heaven, for the first time revealed apart from their onetime enshroudment in the material flesh.
P1236:1, 112:6.3 To a certain extent, the appearance of the material body-form is responsive to the character of the personality identity; the physical body does, to a limited degree, reflect something of the inherent nature of the personality. Still more so does the spiritual form. In the physical life, mortals may be outwardly beautiful though inwardly unlovely; in the spiritual life the personality form will vary directly in accordance with the nature of the inner person. On the spiritual level, outward form and inner nature begin to approximate complete identification, and the ultimate perfection.
P1235:4, 112:5.22 You will recall those memories and experiences which you were a part of and all of the pleasant experiences of your life on Earth. All worth-while experiences survive in the eternal consciousness. But much of your unpleasant past life and its memories, having neither spiritual meaning nor morontia value, will perish with the material brain; much of material experience will pass away as onetime scaffolding which, having bridged you over to the spiritual level, no longer serves a purpose in the universe. But personality and the relationships between personalities are never scaffolding; mortal memory of personality relationships has cosmic value and will persist. In Heaven you will know and be known, and more, you will remember, and be remembered by, your onetime associates in your short but intriguing life on Earth.