| Broadly speaking religious life may be divided into | | | | sense is known by the unfortunate name of |
| three periods. These may be described as the | | | | Mysticism, which is supposed to be a life-denying, |
| periods of ‘Faith’, ‘Thought’, and | | | | fact-avoiding attitude of mind directly opposed to the |
| ‘Discovery.’ In the first period religious life | | | | radically empirical outlook of our times. Yet higher |
| appears as a form of discipline which the individual or | | | | religion, which is only a search for a larger life, is |
| a whole people must accept as an unconditional | | | | essentially experience and recognized the necessity |
| command without any rational understanding of the | | | | of experience as its foundation long before science |
| ultimate meaning and purpose of that command. This | | | | learnt to do so. It is a genuine effort to clarify human |
| attitude may be of great consequence in the social | | | | consciousness, and is, as such, as critical of its level |
| and political history of a people, but is not of much | | | | of experience as Naturalism is of its own level. |
| consequence in so far as the individual’s inner | | | | As we all know, it was Kant who first raised the |
| growth and expansion are concerned. Perfect | | | | question: ‘Is metaphysics possible? He answered |
| submission to discipline is followed by a rational | | | | this question in the negative; and his argument applies |
| understanding of the discipline and the ultimate source | | | | with equal force to the realities in which religion is |
| of its authority. In this period religious life seeks its | | | | especially interested. The manifold of sense, |
| foundation in a kind of metaphysics - a logically | | | | according to him, must fulfil certain formal conditions |
| consistent view of the world with God as a part of | | | | in order to constitute knowledge. The thing-in-itself is |
| that view. In the third period metaphysics is displaced | | | | only a limiting idea. Its function is merely regulative. If |
| by psychology, and religious life develops the ambition | | | | there is some actuality corresponding to the idea, it |
| to come into direct contact with the Ultimate Reality. | | | | falls outside the boundaries of experience, and |
| It is here that religion becomes a matter of personal | | | | consequently its existence cannot be rationally |
| assimilation of life and power; and the individual | | | | demonstrated. This verdict of Kant cannot be easily |
| achieves a free personality, not by releasing himself | | | | accepted. It may fairly be argued that in view of the |
| from the fetters of the law, but by discovering the | | | | more recent developments of science, such as the |
| ultimate source of the law within the depths of his | | | | nature of matter as ‘bottled-up light waves’, |
| own consciousness. As in the words of a Muslim Sufi | | | | the idea of the universe as an act of thought, |
| - ‘no understanding of the Holy Book is possible | | | | finiteness of space and time and Heisenberg’s |
| until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it | | | | principle of indeterminacy3 in Nature, the case for a |
| was revealed to the Prophet.’1 It is, then, in the | | | | system of rational theology is not so bad as Kant |
| sense of this last phase in the development of | | | | was led to think. But for our present purposes it is |
| religious life that I use the word religion in the | | | | unnecessary to consider this point in detail. |
| question that I now propose to raise. Religion in this | | | | |