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Religion stands above science, art, philosophy, ethics, and morals, but not independent of them.
They are all indissolubly interrelated in human experience, personal and social. Religion is
man‘s supreme experience in the mortal nature, but finite language makes it forever impossible
for theology ever adequately to depict real religious experience.
Religious insight possesses the power of turning defeat into higher desires and new
determinations. Love is the highest motivation which man may utilize in his universe ascent. But
love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a
psychic illusion, a spiritual deception. Love must always be redefined on successive levels of
morontia and spirit progression.
Art results from man‘s attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it
is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man‘s effort to solve the apparent riddles of the
material universe. Philosophy is man‘s attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion
is man‘s supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God
and to be like him.
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In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man‘s forward
spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man‘s universe romancing may not be fact, but
much, very much, is truth.
The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor
that dwells within the human mind. Man‘s greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the wellbalanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms
of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spiritconsciousness — contact with the divine presence. Such an experience constitutes Godconsciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious
experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the
actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.
And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its
highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that
which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to
survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in
service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this
life of the Father is in his Sons. And the spirit of the Father is in his Sons‘ sons — mortal men.
When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.