PAPER 102: Section 3.
Knowledge, Wisdom, And Insight
P1121:3, 102:3.1 Intellectual deficiency or educational poverty unavoidably handicaps higher religious attainment because such an impoverished environment of the spiritual nature robs religion of its chief channel of philosophic contact with the world of scientific knowledge. The intellectual factors of religion are important, but their overdevelopment is likewise sometimes very handicapping and embarrassing. Religion must continually labor under a paradoxical necessity: the necessity of making effective use of thought while at the same time discounting the spiritual serviceableness of all thinking.
P1121:4, 102:3.2 Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its object. Speculation tends to translate religion into something material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering with the clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very world with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast. Therefore will religion always be characterized by paradoxes, the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the experiential connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the universe -- morontia mota, the superphilosophic sensitivity for truth discernment and unity perception.
P1121:5, 102:3.3 Material feelings, human emotions, lead directly to material actions, selfish acts. Religious insights, spiritual motivations, lead directly to religious actions, unselfish acts of social service and altruistic benevolence.
P1121:6, 102:3.4 Religious desire is the hunger quest for divine reality. Religious experience is the realization of the consciousness of having found God. And when a human being does find God, there is experienced within the soul of that being such an indescribable restlessness of triumph in discovery that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows, not to disclose that he has found God, but rather to allow the overflow of the welling-up of eternal goodness within his own soul to refresh and ennoble his fellows. Real religion leads to increased social service.
P1122:1, 102:3.5
Science, knowledge, leads to fact consciousness; religion, experience,
leads to value consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate
consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to
the consciousness of true reality; while the co-ordination of the consciousness
of fact, value, and true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality,
maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival
of that very personality.
P1122:2, 102:3.6
Knowledge leads to placing men, to originating social strata and castes. Religion
leads to serving men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads to the
higher and better fellowship of both ideas and one's fellows. Revelation liberates
men and starts them out on the eternal adventure.
P1122:3, 102:3.7
Science sorts men; religion loves men, even as yourself; wisdom does justice
to differing men; but revelation glorifies man and discloses his capacity
for partnership with God.
P1122:4, 102:3.8
Science vainly strives to create the brotherhood of culture; religion brings
into being the brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy strives for the brotherhood
of wisdom; revelation portrays the eternal brotherhood, the Paradise Corps
of the Finality.
P1122:5, 102:3.9
Knowledge yields pride in the fact of personality; wisdom is the consciousness
of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of
the value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality survival.
P1122:6, 102:3.10
Science seeks to identify, analyze, and classify the segmented parts of the
limitless cosmos. Religion grasps the
idea-of-the-whole, the entire cosmos.
Philosophy attempts the identification of the material segments of science
with the
spiritual-insight concept of the whole. Wherein philosophy fails
in this attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is
universal, eternal, absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I
AM is therefore endless, limitless, and all-inclusive -- timeless, spaceless,
and unqualified. And we bear testimony that the Infinite I AM is also the
Father of Michael of Nebadon and the God of human salvation.
P1122:7, 102:3.11 
Science indicates Deity as a fact; philosophy presents the idea
of an Absolute; religion envisions God as a loving spiritual personality.
Revelation affirms the unity of the fact of Deity, the idea of the
Absolute, and the spiritual personality of God and, further, presents this
concept as our Father -- the universal fact of existence, the eternal idea
of mind, and the infinite spirit of life.
P1122:8, 102:3.12
The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is philosophy;
the love for God is religion; the hunger for truth is a revelation.
But it is the indwelling Thought Adjuster that attaches the feeling of reality
to man's spiritual insight into the cosmos.
P1122:9, 102:3.13
In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion,
the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is
a vast difference between the evolutionary
will-to-believe and the product
of enlightened reason, religious insight, and revelation -- the will that
believes.
P1122:10, 102:3.14
In evolution, religion often leads to man's creating his concepts of God;
revelation exhibits the phenomenon of God's evolving man himself, while in
the earth life of Christ Michael we behold the phenomenon of God's revealing
himself to man. Evolution tends to make God manlike; revelation tends to make
man Godlike.
P1122:11, 102:3.15
Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality,
and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and
that all are good. The eternal real is the good of the universe and
not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities,
always is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.