Something to Think for Those Seriously Concerned with Science, Humanity and Religion !

[The following are some concluding remarks made by the authors of my favorite book of life guidance, which I reproduce below in part and with some minor editing. Click on the book link to visit the site which gives more information on the book and its authors. This book's original manuscript in English was provided some time in the beginning of the 20th century while it got printed in 1955. The passages below may not be illuminating the ordinary people, but it should do so for a few of those with a superior mind level concerned with science, humanity and religion who happen to read these. Those few of the latter kind may also be inclined to find the book and read it in whole. The link above would help them to find the book for an online reading. You would also find many blogs based on this book which you can find and read by clicking the Blog Archive on the right side of this page.]

The twentieth century has brought new problems for Christianity and all other religions to solve.

The higher a civilization climbs, the more it  becomes the duty of man to 'seek first the realities of the Kingdom of God' which means putting efforts to stabilize the society and facilitate the solutions for its material problems.

Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker accurately only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art.

Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be distinguished from man’s other high forms of thought, such as:

1. His logical attitude toward the things of material reality.
2. His aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.
3. His ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.

Even his sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.

Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.

A lasting social system without a morality founded on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.

Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent adventure that rise up within your mind in one short life in the flesh. Be patient! Do not get tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure. Harness your energies and restrain your passions; be calm while you await the majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling discovery (awaiting you ahead, even after your short life in your material world)

In confusion over man’s origin, do not lose sight of his eternal destiny. Forget not that Jesus (the sovereign of this universe when he lived among you as one of you)  loved even little children, and that he forever made clear the great worth of human personality.

As you view (your) world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil.

When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.

In religion, Jesus advocated and followed the method of experience, even as modern science pursues the technique of experiment. We find God through the leading of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to real insight.

(Your) scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race.

No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of Jesus will fully triumph. 

In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things. 

Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.

The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting (or a cause of emotional disturbances).

At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings.

But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.

Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of the ultimate and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause—the Universal Father  (God).

The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. 

The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. 

One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion.

Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. 

But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls—it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.

But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages. 

Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. 

Neither democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress. 

False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual progression.

To say that mind “emerged” from matter explains nothing. If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were not separated from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. 

The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.

Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once super-material. 

Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. 

Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.

 Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing 'the Father’s will' (God's will).  And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.

The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. 

And every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity in the universe. 

The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become known as a thing.

Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be devoted to the destruction of superstition rather than attempting the overthrow of religious faith—human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.

Science should do for man materially what religion does for him spiritually: extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality. 

True science can have no lasting quarrel with true religion. 

The 'scientific method' is merely an intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material adventures and physical achievements. But being material and wholly intellectual, it is utterly useless in the evaluation of spiritual realities and religious experiences.

Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious experience is something in human life which is truly super-mathematical.

 In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism, while the words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas, and noble ideals—of love and hate, of cowardice and courage—represent the performances of mind within the scope defined by both material and spiritual law, directed by the assertion of the will of personality, and limited by the inherent ability as per situation.

The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities which the scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but rather like the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and discriminating scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies the mathematical facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side of creation.

The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and advancing universe of energy and matter.  The religionist, not religion, proves the existence of the spirit realities and divine values which are to be encountered in the progress of eternity.

Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.

The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century humans killed more human beings (e.g the first and second world wars)  than were killed during the whole of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible destruction is yet to come.

Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth. 

But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus’ teachings will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.