The Discourse On True Religion

155:5.1 This memorable discourse on religion, summarized and restated in modern phraseology, gave expression to the following truths:

155:5.2 While the religions of the  world have a double origin—natural and revelatory—at any one time and  among any one people there are to be found three distinct forms of  religious devotion. And these three manifestations of the religious urge are:

1. Primitive religion. The seminatural  and instinctive urge to fear mysterious energies and worship superior  forces, chiefly a religion of the physical nature, the religion of fear.
 2. The religion of civilization. The  advancing religious concepts and practices of the civilizing races—the  religion of the mind—the intellectual theology of the authority of  established religious tradition.
 3. True religion—the religion of revelation.  The revelation of supernatural values, a partial insight into eternal realities, a glimpse of the goodness and beauty of the infinite character of the Father in heaven—the religion of the spirit as demonstrated in human experience.
 

155:5.6 The religion of the physical senses and the superstitious fears of  natural man, the Master refused to belittle, though he deplored the fact  that so much of this primitive form of worship should persist in the  religious forms of the more intelligent races of mankind. Jesus made it  clear that the great difference between the religion of the mind and the  religion of the spirit is that, while the former is upheld by  ecclesiastical authority, the latter is wholly based on human  experience.

155:5.7 And then the Master, in his hour of teaching, went on to make clear these truths:

155:5.8 Until the races become  highly intelligent and more fully civilized, there will persist many of  those childlike and superstitious ceremonies which are so characteristic  of the evolutionary religious practices of primitive and backward peoples. Until the human  race progresses to the level of a higher and more general recognition of  the realities of spiritual experience, large numbers of men and women  will continue to show a personal preference for those religions of  authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to the  religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and  soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of  progressive human experience.

155:5.9 The acceptance of the  traditional religions of authority presents the easy way out for man’s  urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his spiritual nature. The  settled, crystallized, and established religions of authority afford a  ready refuge to which the distracted and distraught soul of man may flee  when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty. Such a religion  requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its satisfactions  and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent.

155:5.10 And for a long time there  will live on earth those timid, fearful, and hesitant individuals who  will prefer thus to secure their religious consolations, even though, in  so casting their lot with the religions of authority, they compromise  the sovereignty of personality, debase the dignity of self-respect, and  utterly surrender the right to participate in that most thrilling and  inspiring of all possible human experiences: the personal quest for  truth, the exhilaration of facing the perils of intellectual discovery,  the determination to explore the realities of personal religious  experience, the supreme satisfaction of experiencing the personal  triumph of the actual realization of the victory of spiritual faith over  intellectual doubt as it is honestly won in the supreme adventure of  all human existence—man seeking God, for himself and as himself, and  finding him.

155:5.11 The religion of the spirit  means effort, struggle, conflict, faith, determination, love, loyalty,  and progress. The religion of the mind—the theology of  authority—requires little or none of these exertions from its formal  believers. Tradition is a safe refuge and an easy path for those fearful  and halfhearted souls who instinctively shun the spirit struggles and  mental uncertainties associated with those faith voyages of daring  adventure out upon the high seas of unexplored truth in search for the  farther shores of spiritual realities as they may be discovered by the  progressive human mind and experienced by the evolving human soul.

155:5.12 And Jesus went on to say: “At  Jerusalem the religious leaders have formulated the various doctrines  of their traditional teachers and the prophets of other days into an  established system of intellectual beliefs, a religion of authority. The  appeal of all such religions is largely to the mind. And now are we  about to enter upon a deadly conflict with such a religion since we will  so shortly begin the bold proclamation of a new religion—a religion  which is not a religion in the present-day meaning of that word, a  religion that makes its chief appeal to the divine spirit of my Father  which resides in the mind of man; a religion which shall derive its  authority from the fruits of its acceptance that will so certainly  appear in the personal experience of all who really and truly become  believers in the truths of this higher spiritual communion.”

155:5.13 Pointing out each of the twenty-four and calling them by name, Jesus said: “And  now, which one of you would prefer to take this easy path of conformity  to an established and fossilized religion, as defended by the Pharisees  at Jerusalem, rather than to suffer the difficulties and persecutions  attendant upon the mission of proclaiming a better way of salvation to  men while you realize the satisfaction of discovering for yourselves the  beauties of the realities of a living and personal experience in the  eternal truths and supreme grandeurs of the kingdom of heaven? Are you  fearful, soft, and ease-seeking? Are you afraid to trust your future in  the hands of the God of truth, whose sons you are? Are you distrustful  of the Father, whose children you are? Will you go back to the easy path  of the certainty and intellectual settledness of the religion of  traditional authority, or will you gird yourselves to go forward with me  into that uncertain and troublous future of proclaiming the new truths  of the religion of the spirit, the kingdom of heaven in the hearts of  men?”

155:5.14 All twenty-four of his  hearers rose to their feet, intending to signify their united and loyal  response to this, one of the few emotional appeals which Jesus ever made  to them, but he raised his hand and stopped them, saying: “Go  now apart by yourselves, each man alone with the Father, and there find  the unemotional answer to my question, and having found such a true and  sincere attitude of soul, speak that answer freely and boldly to my  Father and your Father, whose infinite life of love is the very spirit  of the religion we proclaim.”

155:5.15 The evangelists and  apostles went apart by themselves for a short time. Their spirits were  uplifted, their minds were inspired, and their emotions mightily stirred  by what Jesus had said. But when Andrew called them together, the Master said only: “Let  us resume our journey. We go into Phoenicia to tarry for a season, and  all of you should pray the Father to transform your emotions of mind and  body into the higher loyalties of mind and the more satisfying  experiences of the spirit.”

155:5.16 As they journeyed on down  the road, the twenty-four were silent, but presently they began to talk  one with another, and by three o’clock that afternoon they could not go  farther; they came to a halt, and Peter, going up to Jesus, said:  “Master, you have spoken to us the words of life and truth. We would  hear more; we beseech you to speak to us further concerning these  matters.”