Religious Experience

   

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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

I. GOD-CONSCIOUSNESS

1. God-consciousness progresses from the idea of God to the ideal of God and ends with the spirit reality of God. (69.6) 5:5.11

2. God-consciousness leads to increased social service. (1121.6) 102:3.4

3. Finding God is consciousness of identity with reality. (2094.2) 196:3.3

II. TRUTH, BEAUTY, AND GOODNESS

1. The goodness of God is found only in personal religious experience. (40.5) 2:6.1

2. Jesus revealed a God of love—all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness. (67.4) 5:4.6

3. Truth relates to science, beauty to art, goodness embraces ethics, morality, and religion. (647.1) 56:10.10

4. Truth, beauty, and goodness represent man’s approach to mind, matter, and spirit. (647.6) 56:10.15

5. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, truth in meanings, and goodness in values. (1096.1) 100:2.4

III. RELIGION AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS

1. Religion is not directly concerned with creating new social orders or with preserving old ones. (1086.2) 99:0.2

2. The primary mission of religion is the stabilization of ideals. (1086.6) 99:1.3

3. Religion is the cosmic salt which prevents the destruction of the cultural savor of civilization. (1087.1) 99:1.4

4. Religionists function in human affairs as individuals—not as religious groups. (1087.6) 99:2.3

5. The kingdom of heaven is neither social nor economic—it is an exclusively spiritual brotherhood.  (1088.3) 99:3.2

6. Sectarianism is a disease of institutional religion. (1092.1) 99:6.1

7. Religion is always dynamic. (1121.2) 102:2.9

8. Religion leads to service and revelation to the eternal adventure. (1122.2) 102:3.6

IV. TRUE RELIGION

1. The chief inhibitors of spiritual growth are prejudice and ignorance. (1094.4) 100:1.2

2. Growth is indicated not by products but by progress. (1094.5) 100:1.3

3. Progress is meaningful, but growth is not mere progress. (1097.3) 100:3.6

4. Religion takes nothing away from life—but it does add new meanings to all of it. (1100.7) 100:6.5

5. Evolutionary religion drives men, revelation allures them. (66.5) 5:4.1

6. It requires faith and revelation to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation. (1106.2) 101:2.3

7. The first promptings of a child’s moral nature have to do with justice, fairness, and kindness. (1131.2) 103:2.3

V. MARKS OF RELIGIOUS LIVING

1. The religionist is conscious of universe citizenship and aware of contact with the supernatural. (1100.5) 100:6.3

2. The most amazing earmarks of religion are dynamic peace and cosmic poise. (1101.1) 100:6.6

3. Genuine religious experience is evidenced by twelve characteristics.

1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent animalistic tendencies.

2. Produces sublime trust in the goodness of God in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.

3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.

4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquility notwithstanding baffling diseases and acute physical suffering.

5. Maintains a mysterious composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.

6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare.

7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.

8. Exhibits undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.

9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.

10. Contributes to the survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.

11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.

12. Goes right on worshipping God in spite of anything and everything. Declares: “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.” (1108.3) 101:3.4

VI. FAITH AND BELIEF

1. Our senses tell us of things, mind discovers meanings, but spiritual experience reveals true values. (1098.1) 100:4.4

2. You must have faith as well as feeling. (1099.3) 100:5.5

3. In the morontia, the assurance of truth replaces the assurance of faith. (1111.4) 101:5.14

4. Belief has become faith when it motivates life. Belief fixates, faith liberates. (1114.6) 101:8.2

5. Faith is the bridge between moral consciousness and spiritual reality. (1116.1) 101:9.9

6. There is a great difference between the will-to-believe and the will that believes. (1122.9) 102:3.13

7. Faith transforms a God of probability into a God of certainty. (1124.6) 102:6.4

8. The individual becomes God-knowing only by faith. (1124.7) 102:6.5

9. Man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved by faith. (2094.3) 196:3.4

VII. RELIGIOUS INSIGHT

1. Religion persists in the absence of learning. (1107.8) 101:3.1

2. Religion may be the feeling of experience, but it is not the experience of feeling. (1110.12) 101:5.9

3. The liberated religious soul begins to feel at home in the universe.(1117.1) 101:10.7

4. Contrast spiritual liberation with the despair of materialism. (1118.1) 102:0.1

VIII. FACT OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

1. Religious experience can never be fully understood by the material mind. (69.1) 5:5.6

2. Religious experience ranges from the primitive to the superb consciousness of sonship with God. (1104.1) 101:0.1

3. Avoid allowing your religious experience to become egocentric. (1130.2) 103:1.3

4. Spiritual birth may be either complacent or “stormy.” (1130.6) 103:2.1

5. The experiencing of God may be valid, even when its theology is fallacious. (1140.2) 103:8.2

6. The reality of religious experience transcends reason, science, philosophy, and wisdom. (1142.3) 103:9.12

7. Personal religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties. (2093.6) 196:3.1

8. Religious experience knows God as a Father, and man as a brother. (1090.10) 99:5.1

9. Dynamic religion transforms the mediocre individual into a person of idealistic power. (1094.1) 100:0.1

10. Religion is the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God. (1105.1) 101:1.4

11. Reason and logic can never validate the values of religious experience. (1116.7) 101:10.6

12. In the triumphant struggle of the faith son, “Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space.” (1117.3) 101:10.9

13. Religionists live as if already in the presence of the Eternal. (1119.8) 102:2.3

IX. SCIENCE AND RELIGION

1. Neither science nor philosophy can validate the personality of God, only the personal experience of faith sons. (31.5) 1:7.5

2. However men view God, the religionist believes in a God who fosters survival. (68.6) 5:5.3

3. Nature does not afford ground for believing in human survival. (1106.8) 101:2.9

4. To science and philosophy God may be possible and probable, but to religion he is a certainty. (1125.3) 102:6.8

X. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

1. Religion becomes the unification of all that is good, true, and beautiful in human experience. (67.5) 5:4.7

2. Religion becomes real as it emerges from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition. (141.6) 12:9.5

3. Philosophy transforms primitive religion into ascending values of reality. (1114.4) 101:7.6

4. Mortals can experience spiritual unity, but not philosophical uniformity. (1129.8) 103:1.1

5. When theology masters religion, religion dies. Reason, wisdom, and faith introduce man to facts, truth, and religion. (1141.4) 103:9.6

6. The religious soul of spiritual illumination knows and knows now. (1120.1) 102:2.4

7. It is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely and heroically facing the vicissitudes of life. (1121.1) 102:2.8

XI. THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH

1. Jesus said that it was better that he leave his followers in the flesh, that he might more fully be with them in spirit. (1948.2) 180:4.1

2. This new teacher is the living conviction of truth. (1949.3) 180:5.1

3. It is the work of the spirit to personalize truth and destroy all feelings of orphanhood. (2060.7) 194:2.2

4. Bestowal of the Son’s spirit prepares normal minds for the reception of Adjusters. (2061.1) 194:2.3

5. The spirit leads into all truth and enhances the realities of Jesus’ teachings. (2061.4) 194:2.6

6. The Spirit of Truth completes the sevenfold spirit bestowal.

1. Spirit of the Universal Father—Thought Adjusters.

2. Spirit of the Eternal Son—spirit gravity circuit.

3. Spirit of the Infinite Spirit—the universal mind.

4. Spirit of the Father and Son—the Spirit of Truth.

5. Spirit of the Infinite Spirit and the Universe Mother Spirit—the Holy Spirit.

6. The Mind-spirit of the Universe Mother Spirit—the adjutant mind-spirits.

7. The spirit of the Father, Sons, and Spirits—the new-name spirit bestowed at fusion with the Adjuster. (2062.1) 194:2.12

7. Pentecost signifies that the Jesus of history has become the divine Son of living experience. (2065.7) 194:3.19

8. Influence of the Spirit of Truth continues beyond the local universe. (1286.7) 117:5.9