Teacher-Brother Dave's Compilation

of TOPICAL STUDIES from

The New Epochal Revelation of Truth, Page 331

Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2020 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies.

[My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets]

Topical Study 127

“True Religion is Personal God-consciousness in our loving Creator Father here in Spirit", Part 1

Compiled Oct. 07, 2020 by Dave@PureChristians.org

The Urantia Book

0. The Foreword

Section 12. The Trinities

0:12.13 We [the Divine Revelators] are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, [your Thought Adjuster, God's will] and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; [Jesus Christ here always with us] and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience — God-consciousness.

PART I. The Central And Superuniverses, Papers 1 - 3

PAPER 1. The Universal Father

5. Personality of the Universal Father

[PAPER:Section.Paragraph (numbers)]

1:5.10 The idea of the personality of the Universal Father is an enlarged and truer concept of God which has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Reason, wisdom, and religious experience all infer and imply the personality of God, but they do not altogether validate it. Even the indwelling Thought Adjuster [the will of God within; the future Spirit-perfected you !] is prepersonal. The truth and maturity of any religion is directly proportional to its concept of the infinite personality of God and to its grasp of the absolute unity of Deity. The idea of a personal Deity becomes, then, the measure of religious maturity after religion has first formulated the concept of the unity of God.

PAPER 2. The Nature of God

0. Introduction

2:0.1 Inasmuch as man’s highest possible concept of God is embraced within the human idea and ideal of a primal and infinite personality, it is permissible, and may prove helpful, to study certain characteristics of the divine nature which constitute the character of Deity. The nature of God can best be understood by the revelation of the Father which [Jesus Christ] Michael of [our local universe named] Nebadon unfolded in his manifold teachings and in his superb mortal life in the flesh. The divine nature can also be better understood by man if he regards himself as a child of God and looks up to the Paradise Creator as a true spiritual Father. [God the Universal Father on Paradise and also fully within us as our Nebadon local universe Creator Jesus Christ Michael !!]

6. The Goodness of God

2:6.1 In the physical universe we may see the divine beauty, in the intellectual world we may discern eternal truth, but the goodness of God is found only in the spiritual world of personal religious experience. In its true essence, religion is a faith-trust in the goodness of God. God could be great and absolute, somehow even intelligent and personal, in philosophy, but in religion God must also be moral; he must be good. Man might fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a good God. This goodness of God is a part of the personality of God, and its full revelation appears only in the personal religious experience of the believing sons of God.

2:7.6 Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. [I explain: The Universal Father and our Universe Creator Son Jesus as One Combined Spirit always here as He the Spirit of All Truth.] Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor.

PAPER 5. God's Relation to the Individual

4. God In Religion

5:4.1 The morality of the religions of evolution drives men forward in the God quest by the motive power of fear. The religions of revelation allure men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute dependence" and "surety of survival"; it is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.

5:4.2 The great and immediate service of true religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience, a lasting peace and a profound assurance. With primitive man, even polytheism is a relative unification of the evolving concept of Deity; polytheism is monotheism in the making. Sooner or later, God is destined to be comprehended as the reality of values, the substance of meanings, and the life of truth.

5:4.6 The Hebrews based their religion on goodness; the Greeks on beauty; both religions sought truth. Jesus revealed a God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness.

5:4.7 The Zoroastrians had a religion of morals; the Hindus a religion of metaphysics; the Confucianists a religion of ethics. Jesus lived a religion of service. All these religions are of value in that they are valid approaches to the religion of Jesus. Religion is destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience.

5. The Consciousness of God

5:5.1 Morality has its origin in the reason of self-consciousness; it is superanimal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of the Adjusters and to the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth. But the attainment of levels of morality does not deliver man from the real struggles of mortal living. Man’s physical environment entails the battle for existence; the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely strive to be like him.

5:5.2 Religion is not grounded in the facts of science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages of human development which are postmoral. Religion may permeate all four levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.

5:5.5 Evolutionary religion is the mother of the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity to revealed religion, including the bestowal of [Thought] Adjusters and the coming of the Spirit of Truth. [Sent by Jesus Christ worldwide May 18, A.D. 30 -on. He leads us into all Truth: God !] The evolutionary picture of human existence begins and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one evolutional and biological, [human religions] the other revelational and periodical. [Epochal Revelation. The Urantia Book is our Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth to help our still-confused planet.] And so, while religion is normal and natural to man, it is also optional. Man does not have to be religious against his will.

PAPER 12. The Universe of Universes

9. Personal Realities

12:9.5 Your religion is becoming real because it is emerging from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition. Your philosophy struggles for emancipation from dogma and tradition. Your science is engaged in the agelong contest between truth and error while it fights for deliverance from the bondage of abstraction, the slavery of mathematics, and the relative blindness of mechanistic materialism.

PAPER 14. The Central and Divine Universe

5. Life in Havona

[Havona is one billion high Spirit-level Heavens in seven circuits surrounding the nuclear Isle of Paradise. That will Spirit-perfect each of us to then enter Paradise as permanent Residents]

14:5.1 (158.4) On Urantia [Earth] you pass through a short and intense test during your initial life of material existence. On the mansion worlds and up through your system, constellation, and local universe, you traverse the morontia [soul reality Heavens] phases of ascension. On the training worlds of the superuniverse you pass through the true spirit stages of progression and are prepared for eventual transit to Havona. On the [aeven billion ultimate-absolute Spirit Spheres of the] seven circuits of Havona your attainment is intellectual, spiritual, and experiential. And there is a definite task to be achieved on each of the worlds of each of these circuits.

PAPER 15. The Seven Superuniverses

9. Circuits of the Superuniverses

15:9.11 The Local Universe Circuits:

15:9.12 #1. The bestowal spirit of the Paradise Sons, the Comforter of the bestowal worlds. The Spirit of Truth, the spirit of [our Creator Son Jesus Christ] Michael on Urantia.

15:9.13 #2. The circuit of the Divine Ministers, the local universe Mother Spirits, the Holy Spirit of your world.

15:9.14 #3. The intelligence-ministry circuit of a local universe, including the diversely functioning presence of the adjutant mind-spirits.

PAPER 16. The Seven Master Spirits

4. Attributes and Functions of the Master Spirits

16:4.14 #6. The subsequent bestowal of the spirit of the bestowal Sons, on Urantia called the Comforter or the Spirit of Truth.

PAPER 20. The Paradise Sons of God

5. Bestowal of the Paradise Sons of God

20:5.3 Some order of [high] Paradise Son [as our Sovereign Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael. He is the highest type of bestowal Son, a sevenfold Master Son ! The fullnes of God to all of us !] must be bestowed upon each mortal-inhabited world [of seven trillion human-inhabited worlds in this first Supreme level age] in order to make it possible for Thought Adjusters to indwell the minds of all normal human beings on that sphere, for the Adjusters do not come to all bona fide human beings until the Spirit of Truth has been poured out upon all flesh; and the sending of the Spirit of Truth is dependent upon the return to universe headquarters of a Paradise Son who has successfully executed a mission of mortal bestowal upon an evolving world. [Your Thought Adjuster, also called a Mystery Monitor, is God's pure Spirit Essence -- God's will --indwelling your mind. As you seek to know and to do God's will, the Adjuster and you co-create within you, a more spiritual you -- you as an unique soul -- who can survive physical death and be continually resurrected into higher soul and then more high Spirit forms and have eternal Life in the Family of God as His divinely beloved Son ! All humans, males and females equally, are spiritually classified as sons of God; the many types of angels are called the daughters of God.]

PAPER 21. The Paradise Creator Sons

5. Relation of Master Sons to the Universe

21:5.10 The Master Sons seem to be in perfect communication with their bestowal worlds, not only the worlds of their personal sojourn but all worlds whereon a Magisterial [Avonal] Son has bestowed himself. [up to ten million human-inhabited worlds.] This contact is maintained by their own spiritual presence, the Spirit of Truth, which they are able to “pour out upon all flesh.” These Master Sons also maintain an unbroken connection with the Eternal Mother Son at the center of all things. They possess a sympathetic reach which extends from the Universal Father on high to the lowly races of planetary life in the realms of time. [Our Master Son Jesus Christ Michael is now a Member of the Trinity Ultimate in control of the higher and much larger Master Universe. We start out here in the lower, smaller Grand Universe Age in space and in time.]

PART II. The Local Universe

PAPER 34. The Local Universe Mother Spirit

[First, I will briefly explain, as Revealed in the Urantia Book and in the Christian Bible: The Holy Spirit is not HE the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit is SHE -- feminine, our source of Wisdom and the Spirit Source of our minds, and of all living creatures. But The Spirit of Truth is HE, as in John chapter 16. He is Jesus Christ Michael now always here as our Spirit of All Truth. "Michael" is a high Title meaning: HE Who IS Just Like GOD. Jesus Christ IS our True God and our local Universe Creator Son of God. The Spirit of Truth is the Co-equal Spirit Partner with the Holy Spirit. They are our Nebadon local universe Creator Father and Creative Mother; and they are always here as One in Spirit. In the Bible, the Comforter is also Jesus, the Spirit of Truth. Since Jesus Christ,our Universe Creator Son of God, is always One in Spirit and in perfect will Union with God the Universal Father, the Spirit of Truth is BOTH God the Father and God the Son. Jesus has declared: "He who sees Me, sees Him Who sent me. The Father and I are One. I AM The Way, The Truth, The Light, and The Life Eternal."]

4. The Local Universe Circuits

34:4.2 #1. The bestowal spirit of the Creator Son, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth.

34:4.3 #2. The spirit circuit of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit.

34:4.4 #3. The intelligence-ministry circuit, including the more or less unified activities but diverse functioning of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. [From our Creative Mother Spirit, known as the Holy Spirit, the co-equal Spirit Partner of Jesus, His Bride.]

34:4.5 The Creator Sons are endowed with a spirit of universe presence in many ways analogous to that of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise. This is the Spirit of Truth which is poured out upon a world by a bestowal Son [Jesus Christ did this May 18, A.D. 30 - on] after he receives spiritual title to such a sphere. This bestowed Comforter is the spiritual force which ever draws all truth seekers towards Him [Jesus Christ Michael] who is the personification of truth in the local universe. This spirit is an inherent endowment of the Creator Son, emerging from his divine nature just as the master circuits of the grand universe are derived from the personality presences of the Paradise Deities. [God the Universal Father, God the Eternal Son, and God the Infinite Spirit]

34:4.6 The Creator Son may come and go; his personal presence may be in the local universe or elsewhere; yet the Spirit of Truth functions undisturbed, for this divine presence, while derived from the personality of the Creator Son, is functionally centered in the person of the Divine Minister. [Our Creator Son and our Creative Spirit are as One combined Spirit Unity. Together, they transcend all space and time limitations.]

34:4.7 The Universe Mother Spirit, however, never leaves the local universe headquarters world. The spirit of the Creator Son may and does function independently of the personal presence of the Son, but not so with her personal spirit. The Holy Spirit of the Divine Minister would become nonfunctional if her personal presence should be removed from Salvington. [The Spirit headquarters of our local universe of Nebadon] Her spirit presence seems to be fixed on the universe headquarters world, [Salvington] and it is this very fact that enables the spirit of the Creator Son to function independently of the whereabouts of the Son. The Universe Mother Spirit acts as the universe focus and center of the Spirit of Truth as well as of her own personal influence, the Holy Spirit.

5. The Ministry of the Spirit

34:5.4 When mind is thus endowed with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, it possesses the capacity for (consciously or unconsciously) choosing the spiritual presence of the Universal Father — the Thought Adjuster. But it is not until a bestowal Son has liberated the Spirit of Truth for planetary ministry to all mortals that all normal minds are automatically prepared for the reception of the Thought Adjusters. The Spirit of Truth works as one with the presence of the spirit of the Divine Minister. This dual spirit liaison hovers over the worlds, seeking to teach truth and to spiritually enlighten the minds of men, to inspire the souls of the creatures of the ascending races, and to lead the peoples dwelling on the evolutionary planets ever towards their Paradise goal of divine destiny.

34:5.5 Though the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all flesh, this spirit of the Son [Jesus Christ] is almost wholly limited in function and power by man’s personal reception of that which constitutes the sum and substance of the mission of the bestowal Son. [The Incarnate life and teachings of Jesus then and his Spirit Guidance now and always] The Holy Spirit is partly independent of human attitude and partially conditioned by the decisions and co-operation of the will of man. Nevertheless, the ministry of the Holy Spirit becomes increasingly effective in the sanctification and spiritualization of the inner life of those mortals who the more fully obey the divine leadings.

34:5.7 The presence of the Holy Spirit of the Universe Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, of the Spirit of Truth of the Universe Son of the Eternal Son, and of the Adjuster-spirit of the Paradise Father in or with an evolutionary mortal, denotes symmetry of spiritual endowment and ministry and qualifies such a mortal consciously to realize the faith-fact of sonship with God.

7. The Spirit and the Flesh

34:7.1 The flesh, the inherent nature derived from the animal-origin races, does not naturally bear the fruits of the divine Spirit. When the mortal nature has been upstepped by the addition of the nature of the Material Sons of God, as the Urantia races were in a measure advanced by the bestowal of Adam, [and Eve, 38,000 years ago] then is the way better prepared for the Spirit of Truth to co-operate with the indwelling Adjuster to bring forth the beautiful harvest of the character fruits of the spirit. If you do not reject this spirit, even though eternity may be required to fulfill the commission, “he will guide you into all truth.”

34:7.8 Having started out on the way of life everlasting, having accepted the assignment and received your orders to advance, do not fear the dangers of human forgetfulness and mortal inconstancy, do not be troubled with doubts of failure or by perplexing confusion, do not falter and question your status and standing, for in every dark hour, at every crossroad in the forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always speak, saying, “This is the way.”

PART II. The Local Universe, Papers 32-56

PAPER 50. The Planetary Princes

5. Progressive Civilization

50:5.9 #6. The age of spiritual striving. When evolving mortals have passed through the physical, intellectual, and social stages of development, sooner or later they attain those levels of personal insight which impel them to seek for spiritual satisfactions and cosmic understandings. Religion is completing the ascent from the emotional domains of fear and superstition to the high levels of cosmic wisdom and personal spiritual experience. Education aspires to the attainment of meanings, and culture grasps at cosmic relationships and true values. Such evolving mortals are genuinely cultured, truly educated, and exquisitely God-knowing.

PAPER 52. Planetary Mortal Epochs

2. Post-Planetary Prince Man

52:2.3 b ... Subsequently, [after the arrival of the first bestowal Son of God to a human-inhabited world,] religion progresses by graduated revelation as well as by evolutionary growth. [That was 500,000 years ago here on earth.] Each dispensation, each mortal epoch, receives an enlarged presentation of spiritual truth and religious ethics. The evolution of the religious capacity of receptivity in the inhabitants of a world largely determines their rate of spiritual advancement and the extent of religious revelation.

5. Post-Bestowal Son Man

52:5.4 The bestowal Son lives and dies for the spiritual uplift of the mortal races of a world. He establishes the “new and living way”; his life is an incarnation of Paradise truth in mortal flesh, that very truth — even the Spirit of Truth — in the knowledge of which men shall be free. [Our Sovereign Michael Creator Son of God bestowed Himself on Urantia by being born as the babe Joshua (Jesus) on August 21, 7 B.C. He was crucified by sinful humans on April 07, A.D. 30; then He easily resurrected Himself April 09, A.D. 30 and continued to teach more spiritual Truth until Pentecost, May 18, A.D. 30; when He instantly ascended back to the Paradise Universal Father; and They returned here the same day as our Father-Son Union Spirit of All Truth; so, from that date on, They are always fully here with us in Spirit. Human Truth-seekers now have all three Spirits of God indwelling themselves: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, and all as One in human spiritual experiences. Eternally, we will be growing in personal spiritual God-consciousness of the infinite significences of God's Gifts to us ! Thank You, our Master God-Man Jesus Christ Michael !]

52:5.5 On Urantia the establishment of this “new and living way” was a matter of fact as well as of truth. The isolation of Urantia in the Lucifer rebellion [about 200,000 years ago, he was just a junior-level (in our System) Son of God in charge of only 1/10,000th of Jesus' and our large local universe of Nebadon,] had suspended the procedure whereby mortals can pass, upon death, directly to the shores of the mansion worlds. [of higher soul reality.] Before the days of [Jesus] Christ Michael on Urantia all souls slept on until the dispensational or special millennial resurrections. Even Moses was not permitted to go over to the other side until the occasion of a special resurrection, the fallen Planetary Prince, Caligastia, [who was under Satan who was under Lucifer,] contesting such a deliverance. But ever since the day of Pentecost, Urantia mortals again may proceed directly to the morontia [570 higher soul training] spheres. [in Nebadon. Then we are made a 1st-stage Spirit by Jesus to continue to ascend up through just over one billion ever higher Spirit Reality Spheres, and then begin our paradise residence and higher training and service work without end !]

PAPER 53. The Lucifer Rebellion

8. The Son of Man on Urantia

53:8.7 Before the bestowal of [Jesus Christ] Michael these [lesser, rebel Sons of God] rulers of darkness [Lucifer, Satan, and Caligastia] sought to maintain their authority on Urantia, and they persistently withstood the minor and subordinate celestial personalities. But since the day of Pentecost [May 18, A.D. 30 - on] this traitorous Caligastia and his equally contemptible associate, Daligastia, are servile before the divine majesty of the Paradise Thought Adjusters [God's pure Spirit Essence - God's will indwelling all, slightly or better, normal, moral humans] and the protective Spirit of Truth, the spirit of [Jesus Christ] Michael, which has been poured out upon all flesh.

PAPER 56. Universal Unity

3. Spiritual Unification

56:3.3 No matter on what level of universe activities you may encounter spiritual phenomena or contact with spirit beings, you may know that they are all derived from the God who is spirit by the ministry of the Spirit Son and the Infinite Mind Spirit. And this far-flung spirit functions as a phenomenon on the evolutionary worlds of time as it is directed from the headquarters of the local universes. From these capitals of the Creator Sons come the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Truth, together with the ministry of the adjutant mind-spirits, to the lower and evolving levels of material minds. [The seven adjutant mind-spirits from our Holy Mother Spirit enter our brain to allow it to function. There are, stated highest to lowest, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of worship, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of courage, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of intuition — of quick perception. Normal humans have all seven, the other living creatures have only up to the lower five, they lack, in this stage of progressive evolution, the mind-spirits of worship and wisdom.]

10. Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

56:10.13 The recognition of true relations implies a mind competent to discriminate between truth and error. The bestowal Spirit of Truth which invests the human minds of Urantia is unerringly responsive to truth — the living spirit relationship of all things and all beings as they are co-ordinated in the eternal ascent Godward.

56:10.17 Universal beauty is the recognition of the reflection of the Isle of Paradise in the material creation, while eternal truth is the special ministry of the Paradise Sons who not only bestow themselves upon the mortal races but even pour out their Spirit of Truth upon all peoples. Divine goodness is more fully shown forth in the loving ministry of the manifold personalities of the Infinite Spirit. But love, the sum total of these three qualities, is man’s perception of God as his spirit Father.

Topical Study 127

“True Religion is Personal God-consciousness in our loving Creator Father here in Spirit", Part 2

Compiled Oct. 09, 2020 by Dave@PureChristians.org

The Urantia Book

PART III. The History of Urantia, Papers 57 - 119

PAPER 72. Government on a Neighboring Planet

12. The Other Nations

72:12.5 The pouring out of the Spirit of Truth [Our local universe Sovereign Creator Son Jesus Christ and God the Paradise Universal Father here as One Combined Father-Son Spirit of Truth] provides the spiritual foundation for the realization of great achievements in the interests of the human race of the bestowal world. Urantia is therefore far better prepared for the more immediate realization of a planetary government with its laws, mechanisms, symbols, conventions, and language — all of which could contribute so mightily to the establishment of world-wide peace under law and could lead to the sometime dawning of a real age of spiritual striving; and such an age is the planetary threshold to the utopian ages of light and life [in seven stages.]

PAPER 77. The Midway Creatures

7. The Rebel Midwayers

[Now, loyal midwayers bridge the gap between higher seraphim angels here and lower humans]

77:7.2 The original number of secondary midwayers was 1,984, and of these 873 failed to align themselves with the rule of [Christ] Michael and were duly interned [by Jesus, up on a higher spiritual prison world] in connection with the planetary adjudication of Urantia on the day of Pentecost. [May 18, A.D. 30 - on] No one can forecast the future of these fallen creatures.

77:7.7 Even prior to Pentecost no rebel spirit could dominate a normal human mind, and since that day even the weak minds of inferior mortals are free from such possibilities. The supposed casting out of devils since the arrival of the Spirit of Truth has been a matter of confounding a belief in demoniacal possession with hysteria, insanity, and feeble-mindedness. But just because Michael’s bestowal has forever liberated all human minds on Urantia from the possibility of demoniacal possession, do not imagine that such was not a reality in former ages.[some weak-willed humans were possessed by these few spiritual rebels from 200,000 years ago up until Pentecost]

77:7.8 The entire group of rebel midwayers is at present held prisoner by order of the Most Highs of Edentia. No more do they roam this world on mischief bent. Regardless of the presence of the Thought Adjusters, [God's pure Spirit will indwelling you] the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth upon all flesh forever made it impossible for disloyal spirits of any sort or description ever again to invade even the most feeble of human minds. Since the day of Pentecost there never again can be such a thing as demoniacal possession.

8. The United Midwayers

77:8.1 At the last adjudication of this world, when [in A.D. 30, Jesus Christ] Michael removed the slumbering survivors of time, the midway creatures were left behind, left to assist in the spiritual and semispiritual work on the planet. They now function as a single corps, embracing both orders and numbering 10,992. The United Midwayers of Urantia are at present governed alternately by the senior member of each order. This regime has obtained since their amalgamation into one group shortly after Pentecost.

PAPER 85. The Origins of Worship

7. The Adjutants of Worship and Wisdom

85:7.3 When the worship urge is admonished and directed by wisdom -- meditative and experiential thinking -- it then begins to develop into the phenomenon of real religion. When the seventh adjutant spirit, the spirit of wisdom, achieves effective ministration, then in worship man begins to turn away from nature and natural objects to the God of nature and to the eternal Creator of all things natural.[ God is Spirit; and He does not change his laws of nature or physics. Pray in Spirit to know God's will and to have the wisdom and self-control to do his will. Do not pray for material things.]

PAPER 87. The Ghost Cults

4. Good and Bad Spirit Ghosts

87:4.7 [The are no ghosts; and Jesus removed all bad spirits here in A. D. 30 - on] The tragedy of all this lies in the fact that, when these ideas were taking root in the primitive mind of man, [nearly one million years ago to 200,000 years ago,] there really were no bad or disharmonious spirits in all the world. Such an unfortunate situation did not develop until after the Caligastic rebellion [200,000 years ago] and only persisted until Pentecost. [May 18, A.D. 30] The concept of good and evil as cosmic co-ordinates is, even in the twentieth century, very much alive in human philosophy; most of the world’s religions still carry this cultural birthmark of the long-gone days of the emerging ghost cults. [No Dualism, God is the only and all power: Monism ! Jesus states: "I AM the True Light; and the darkness is not."]

7. Nature of Cultism

87:7.10 [The proper meaning of a "cult" today should be neutral, and just referring to a small religious group, often a family fellowship or home church.] But a cult -- a symbolism of rituals, slogans, or goals -- will not function if it is too complex. And there must be the demand for devotion, the response of loyalty. Every effective religion unerringly develops a worthy symbolism, and its devotees would do well to prevent the crystallization of such a ritual into cramping, deforming, and stifling stereotyped ceremonials which can only handicap and retard all social, moral, and spiritual progress. No cult can survive if it retards moral growth and fails to foster spiritual progress. The cult is the skeletal structure around which grows the living and dynamic body of personal spiritual experience -- true religion.

PAPER 91. The Evolution of Prayer

1. Primitive Prayer

91:1.1 The function of early evolutionary religion is to conserve and augment the essential social, moral, and spiritual values which are slowly taking form. This mission of religion is not consciously observed by mankind, but it is chiefly effected by the function of prayer. The practice of prayer represents the unintended, but nonetheless personal and collective, effort of any group to secure (to actualize) this conservation of higher values. [The Spirit Values are: Love, mercy, service ministry, truth, beauty, and goodness] But for the safeguarding of prayer, all holy days would speedily revert to the status of mere holidays.

2. Evolving Prayer

91:2.5 (996.3) When religion is divested of a personal God, its prayers translate to the levels of theology and philosophy. When the highest God concept of a religion is that of an impersonal Deity, such as in pantheistic idealism, although affording the basis for certain forms of mystic communion, it proves fatal to the potency of true prayer, which always stands for man's communion with a personal and superior being. [Our Sovereign Universal Paradise Creator Father God I AM is fully in our Sovereign Universe of Nebadon Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael fully in our Nebadon Universe Creative Mother (Holy) Spirit. They are all here as One Combined Spirit Presence.]

PAPER 92. The Later Evolution of Religion

0. Introduction

92:0.1 Man possessed a religion of natural origin as a part of his evolutionary experience long before any systematic revelations were made on Urantia. [Earth] But this religion of natural origin was, in itself, the product of man’s superanimal endowments. [Personality, Spirit, soul, higher mind] Evolutionary religion arose slowly throughout the millenniums of mankind’s experiential career through the ministry of the following influences operating within, and impinging upon, savage, barbarian, and civilized man:

92:0.2 #1. The adjutant of worship — the appearance in animal consciousness of superanimal potentials for reality perception. This might be termed the primordial human instinct for Deity.

92:0.3 #2. The adjutant of wisdom — the manifestation in a worshipful mind of the tendency to direct its adoration in higher channels of expression and toward ever-expanding concepts of Deity reality.

92:0.4 #3. The Holy Spirit — this is the initial supermind bestowal, and it unfailingly appears in all bona fide human personalities. This ministry to a worship-craving and wisdom-desiring mind creates the capacity to self-realize the postulate of human survival, both in theologic concept and as an actual and factual personality experience.

92:0.5 The co-ordinate functioning of these three divine ministrations is quite sufficient to initiate and prosecute the growth of evolutionary religion. These influences are later augmented by Thought Adjusters, seraphim, and the Spirit of Truth, all of which accelerate the rate of religious development. These agencies have long functioned on Urantia, and they will continue here as long as this planet remains an inhabited sphere. Much of the potential of these divine agencies has never yet had opportunity for expression; much will be revealed in the ages to come as mortal religion ascends, level by level, toward the supernal heights of morontia [soul] value and spirit truth.

1. The Evolutionary Nature of Religion

92:1.2 Religion progressed from nature worship up through ghost worship to fetishism throughout the savage [about 980,000 year long] childhood of the races. With the [recent] dawn of civilization the human race espoused the more mystic and symbolic beliefs, while now, with approaching maturity, mankind is ripening for the appreciation of real religion, even a beginning of the revelation of truth itself.

2. Religion And The Mores

92:2.1 Religion is the most rigid and unyielding of all human institutions, but it does tardily adjust to changing society. Eventually, evolutionary religion does reflect the changing mores, which, in turn, may have been affected by revealed religion. Slowly, surely, but grudgingly, does religion (worship) follow in the wake of wisdom -- knowledge directed by experiential reason and illuminated by [ever continuing] divine revelation.

4. The Gift of Revelation

92:4.3 Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man's reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world -- the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal Deities. [The Paradise Trinity] Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous [roundabout, indirect] gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth.

6. The Composite Religions

92:6.18 The Christian religion is the religion about the life and teachings of Christ based upon the theology of Judaism, modified further through the assimilation of certain Zoroastrian teachings and Greek philosophy, and formulated primarily by three individuals: Philo, Peter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evolution since the time of Paul and has become so thoroughly Occidentalized that many non-European peoples very naturally look upon Christianity as a strange revelation of a strange God and for strangers. [Soon, more humans here of all religions will grow to directly and personally follow God in Jesus in Spirit here worldwide and beyond !]

7. The Further Evolution of Religion

92:7.5 Primitive religion was largely a material-value consciousness, but civilization elevates religious values, for true religion is the devotion of the self to the service of meaningful and supreme values. As religion evolves, ethics becomes the philosophy of morals, and morality becomes the discipline of self by the standards of highest meanings and supreme values -- divine and spiritual ideals. And thus religion becomes a spontaneous and exquisite devotion, the living experience of the loyalty of love. [of God and all mankind]

92:7.6 The quality of a religion is indicated by:

92:7.7 #1. Level values -- loyalties.

92:7.8 #2. Depth of meanings -- the sensitization of the individual to the idealistic appreciation of these highest values.

92:7.9 #3. Consecration intensity -- the degree of devotion to these divine values.

92:7.10 #4. The unfettered progress of the personality in this cosmic path of idealistic spiritual living, realization of sonship with God and never-ending progressive citizenship in the universe.

92:7.14 Modern man is confronted with the task of making more readjustments of human values in one generation [year 1935 - on] than have been made in two thousand years. And this all influences the social attitude toward religion, for religion is a way of living as well as a technique of thinking.

92:7.15 True religion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eternal foundation and the guiding star of all enduring civilizations.

PAPER 98. The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

2. Greek Philosophic Thought

98:2.2 ... The Greeks, however, did engage in a magnificent intellectual advancement. They had begun to master fear and no longer sought religion as an antidote therefor, but they did not perceive that true religion is the cure for soul hunger, spiritual disquiet, and moral despair. ...

7. The Christian Religion

98:7.1 A Creator Son did not incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and bestow himself upon the humanity of Earth to reconcile an angry God but rather to win all mankind to the recognition of the Father's love and to the realization of their sonship with God. After all, even [the apostle Paul] the great advocate of the [barbaric, false] atonement doctrine realized something of this truth, for he declared that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."

PAPER 99. The Social Problems of Religion

0. Introduction

99:0.2 But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements.

1. Religion and Social Reconstruction

99:1.5 A godless humanitarianism is, humanly speaking, a noble gesture, but true religion is the only power which can lastingly increase the responsiveness of one social group to the needs and sufferings of other groups. In the past, institutional [church, ecclesiastical] religion could remain passive while the upper strata of society turned a deaf ear to the sufferings and oppression of the helpless lower strata, but in modern times these lower social orders are no longer so abjectly ignorant nor so politically helpless. [Today, the computer, fax, cell phone, internet with cheap multimedia websites with free language translation software applications, smart phones with cameras, and other rapidly evolving technologies are educating the whole world more reliably as to what is happening and evolving ! Humans in all nations are rejecting state oppresions. True faith sons of God -- true religionists -- can help in this spiritual Renaissance by promoting peace and true brotherhood of all mankind under the loving rule of our same One Creator Father-Son-Spirit !]

99:1.6 Religion must not become organically involved in the secular work of social reconstruction and economic reorganization. But it must actively keep pace with all these advances in civilization by making clear-cut and vigorous restatements of its moral mandates and spiritual precepts, its progressive philosophy of human living and transcendent survival. The spirit of religion is eternal, but the form of its expression must be restated every time the dictionary of human language is revised.

2. Weakness Of Institutional Religion

99:2.1 Institutional religion cannot afford inspiration and provide leadership in this impending world-wide social reconstruction and economic reorganization because it has unfortunately become more or less of an organic part of the social order and the economic system which is destined to undergo reconstruction. Only the real religion of personal spiritual experience can function helpfully and creatively in the present crisis of civilization. [That was stated in A.D. 1935; today, in A.D. 2020, this crisis of not seeking and not following God is more extreme worldwide !]

99:2.2 Institutional religion is now caught in the stalemate of a vicious circle. It cannot reconstruct society without first reconstructing itself; and being so much an integral part of the established order, it cannot reconstruct itself until society has been radically reconstructed. [That is now in process; some good trends and some bad.]

99:2.6 Modern religion finds it difficult to adjust its attitude toward the rapidly shifting social changes only because it has permitted itself to become so thoroughly traditionalized, dogmatized, and institutionalized. The religion of living experience finds no difficulty in keeping ahead of all these social developments and economic upheavals, amid which it ever functions as a moral stabilizer, social guide, and spiritual pilot. True religion carries over from one age to another the worth-while culture and that wisdom which is born of the experience of knowing God and striving to be like him. [What would Jesus think and do?]

4. Transition Difficulties

99:4.2 Social leadership is transformed by spiritual insight; religion prevents all collective movements from losing sight of their true objectives. Together with children, religion is the great unifier of family life, provided it is a living and growing faith. Family life cannot be had without children; it can be lived without religion, but such a handicap enormously multiplies the difficulties of this intimate human association. During the early decades of the twentieth century, family life, next to personal religious experience, suffers most from the decadence consequent upon the transition from old religious loyalties to the emerging new meanings and values.

99:4.3 True religion is a meaningful way of living dynamically face to face with the commonplace realities of everyday life. But if religion is to stimulate individual development of character and augment integration of personality, it must not be standardized. If it is to stimulate evaluation of experience and serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereotyped. If religion is to promote supreme loyalties, it must not be formalized. [The good goal is each reflective human living in personal God-consciousness at all times and at all places worldwide and beyond!]

99:4.4 No matter what upheavals may attend the social and economic growth of civilization, religion is genuine and worth while if it fosters in the individual an experience in which the sovereignty of truth, beauty, and goodness prevails, for such is the true spiritual concept of supreme reality. And through love and worship this becomes meaningful as fellowship with man and sonship with God.

99:4.5 After all, it is what one believes rather than what one knows that determines conduct and dominates personal performances. Purely factual knowledge exerts very little influence upon the average man unless it becomes emotionally activated. But the activation of religion is superemotional, unifying the entire human experience on transcendent levels through contact with, and release of, spiritual energies in the mortal life.

5. Social Aspects Of Religion

99:5.1 While religion is exclusively a personal spiritual experience -- knowing God as a Father -- the corollary of this experience -- knowing man as a brother -- entails the adjustment of the self to other selves, and that involves the social or group aspect of religious life. Religion is first an inner or personal adjustment, and then it becomes a matter of social service or group adjustment. The fact of man's gregariousness [wanting to socialize and group with like-minded humans] perforce determines that religious groups will come into existence. [Today, there are over 40,000 different church and religious groups with different beliefs and and practices !] What happens to these religious groups depends very much on intelligent leadership. In primitive society the religious group is not always very different from economic or political groups. Religion has always been a conservator of morals and a stabilizer of society. And this is still true, notwithstanding the contrary teaching of many modern socialists and humanists.

99:5.2 [very important !] Always keep in mind: True religion is to know God as your Father and man as your brother. [HERE and NOW !] Religion is not a slavish belief in threats of punishment or magical promises of future mystical rewards.

99:5.3 The religion of Jesus is the most dynamic influence ever to activate the human race. Jesus shattered tradition, destroyed dogma, and called mankind to the achievement of its highest ideals in time and eternity -- to be perfect, even as the Father in heaven is perfect.

99:5.7 Just as certainly as men share their religious beliefs, they create a religious group of some sort which eventually creates common goals. Someday religionists will get together and actually effect co-operation on the basis of unity of ideals and purposes rather than attempting to do so on the basis of psychological opinions and theological beliefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify religionists. Since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience. Let the term "faith" stand for the individual's relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude. "Have you faith? Then have it to yourself." [True individual, personal God-consciousness, everywhere and at all times !]

PAPER 100. Religion in Human Experience

2. Spiritual Growth

100:2.1 Spiritual development depends, first, on the maintenance of a living spiritual connection with true spiritual forces and, second, on the continuous bearing of spiritual fruit: yielding the ministry to one’s fellows of that which has been received from one’s spiritual benefactors. Spiritual progress is predicated on intellectual recognition of spiritual poverty coupled with the self-consciousness of perfection-hunger, the desire to know God and be like him, the wholehearted purpose to do the will of the Father in heaven.

100:2.2 Spiritual growth is first an awakening to needs, next a discernment of meanings, and then a discovery of values. The evidence of true spiritual development consists in the exhibition of a human personality motivated by love, activated by unselfish ministry, and dominated by the wholehearted worship of the perfection ideals of divinity. And this entire experience constitutes the reality of religion as contrasted with mere theological beliefs.

3. Concepts Of Supreme Value

100:3.1Religion is not a technique for attaining a static and blissful peace of mind; it is an impulse for organizing the soul for dynamic service. It is the enlistment of the totality of selfhood in the loyal service of loving God and serving man. Religion pays any price essential to the attainment of the supreme goal, the eternal prize. There is a consecrated completeness in religious loyalty which is superbly sublime. And these loyalties are socially effective and spiritually progressive.

100:3.2 To the religionist the word God becomes a symbol signifying the approach to supreme reality and the recognition of divine value. Human likes and dislikes do not determine good and evil; moral values do not grow out of wish fulfillment or emotional frustration.

6. Marks Of Religious Living

100:6.1 Evolutionary religions and revelatory religions may differ markedly in method, but in motive there is great similarity. Religion is not a specific function of life; rather is it a mode of living. True religion is a wholehearted devotion to some reality which the religionist deems to be of supreme value to himself and for all mankind. And the outstanding characteristics of all religions are: unquestioning loyalty and wholehearted devotion to supreme values. This religious devotion to supreme values is shown in the relation of the supposedly irreligious mother to her child and in the fervent loyalty of nonreligionists to an espoused cause.

100:6.2 The accepted supreme value of the religionist may be base or even false, but it is nevertheless religious. A religion is genuine to just the extent that the value which is held to be supreme is truly a cosmic reality of genuine spiritual worth. 100:6.5 But true religion is a living love, a life of service. The religionist's detachment from much that is purely temporal and trivial never leads to social isolation, and it should not destroy the sense of humor. Genuine religion takes nothing away from human existence, but it does add new meanings to all of life; it generates new types of enthusiasm, zeal, and courage. It may even engender the spirit of the crusader, which is more than dangerous if not controlled by spiritual insight and loyal devotion to the commonplace social obligations of human loyalties.

100:6.8 Even evolutionary religion is all of this in loyalty and grandeur because it is a genuine experience. But revelatory religion is excellent as well as genuine. The new loyalties of enlarged spiritual vision create new levels of love and devotion, of service and fellowship; and all this enhanced social outlook produces an enlarged consciousness of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

100:6.9 The characteristic difference between evolved and revealed religion is a new quality of divine wisdom which is added to purely experiential human wisdom. But it is experience in and with the human religions that develops the capacity for subsequent reception of increased bestowals of divine wisdom and cosmic insight.

Topical Study 127

“True Religion is Personal God-consciousness in our loving Creator Father here in Spirit", Part 3

Compiled Oct. 12, 2020 by Dave@PureChristians.org

The Urantia Book

PAPER 101. The Real Nature of Religion

Introduction

[PAPER:Section.Paragraph (numbers)]

101:0.2 Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive social evolution. But religion, as such, is not merely a moral movement, albeit the outward and social manifestations of religion are mightily influenced by the ethical and moral momentum of human society. Always is religion the inspiration of man's evolving nature, but it is not the secret of that evolution.

101:0.3 Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that " true light which lights every man who comes into the world. " And this spirit leading is distinct from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is faith, trust, and assurance.

1. TRUE RELIGION

101:1.1 True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh.

101:1.3 The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. “Without holiness no man may see the Lord.” All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster [God's Spirit will in our mind] and the Spirit of Truth [Jesus Christ in our soul] as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God.

101:1.5 While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational insight which originates in man's mind-experience. Religion is born neither of mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man's moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man's spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster [the pure spirit Essence of God within each moral human, the will of God, your eternal Integrity: the future spirit-perfected You !] in the God-hungry mortal mind.

101:1.6 Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the believing personality.

2. The Fact of Religion

101:2.4 There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival:

101:2.5 #1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster.

101:2.6 #2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word. [some in the Bible, and more in this Urantia Book newest Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth]

101:2.12 Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. [!!] Divinity functions in mortal personality as the Adjuster gift of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit, while these three supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme. [In all human spiritual experience, all Spirits of God appear as One]

101:2.13 True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that "the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the soul's trust.

101:2.14 Your deepest nature -- the divine Adjuster -- creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good.

3. The Characteristics of Religion

101:3.1 Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies; it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral consciousness.

101:3.2 Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny.

4. The Limitations of Revelation

101:4.3 Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.

101:4.4 In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine excellence.

5. Religion Expanded by Revelation

101:5.1 Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths of spirit acquirement.

101:5.2 Science deals with facts; religion is concerned only with values. Through enlightened philosophy the mind endeavors to unite the meanings of both facts and values, thereby arriving at a concept of complete reality. Remember that science is the domain of knowledge, philosophy the realm of wisdom, and religion the sphere of the faith experience. But religion, nonetheless, presents two phases of manifestation:

101:5.3 #1. Evolutionary religion. The experience of primitive worship, the religion which is a mind derivative.

101:5.4 #2. Revealed religion. The universe attitude which is a spirit derivative; the assurance of, and belief in, the conservation of eternal realities, the survival of personality, and the eventual attainment of the cosmic Deity, whose purpose has made all this possible. It is a part of the plan of the universe that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the spiritual expansion of revelation.

6. Progressive Religious Experience

101:6.3 Moral will embraces decisions based on reasoned knowledge, augmented by wisdom, and sanctioned by religious faith. Such choices are acts of moral nature and evidence the existence of moral personality, the forerunner of morontia [soul reality level] personality and eventually of true spirit [personality] status.

101:6.4 The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness. Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, [our Creator Son Jesus Christ Michael,] the Thought Adjuster [of the Father] and the Spirit of Truth. [of Jesus here]

9. Religion and Morality

101:9.3 True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in those morontial [soul] realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral concepts, his highest interpretation of life's greatest values and the universe's deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual consciousness.

101:9.6 Though recognizing that religion is imperfect, there are at least two practical manifestations of its nature and function:

101:9.7 #1. The spiritual urge and philosophic pressure of religion tend to cause man to project his estimation of moral values directly outward into the affairs of his fellows -- the ethical reaction of religion.

101:9.8 #2. Religion creates for the human mind a spiritualized consciousness of divine reality based on, and by faith derived from, antecedent concepts of moral values and co-ordinated with superimposed concepts of spiritual values. Religion thereby becomes a censor of mortal affairs, a form of glorified moral trust and confidence in reality, the enhanced realities of time and the more enduring realities of eternity.

10. Religion as Man’s Liberator

101:10.5 The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man's concepts of ideality are endowed with reality.

PAPER 102. The Foundations of Religious Faith

2. Religion and Reality

102:2.1 Observing minds and discriminating souls know religion when they find it in the lives of their fellows. Religion requires no definition; we all know its social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual fruits. And this all grows out of the fact that religion is the property of the human race; it is not a child of culture. True, one's perception of religion is still human and therefore subject to the bondage of ignorance, the slavery of superstition, the deceptions of sophistication, and the delusions of false philosophy.

102:2.7 Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive. Intellectual crystallization of religious concepts is the equivalent of spiritual death. You cannot conceive of religion without ideas, but when religion once becomes reduced only to an idea, it is no longer religion; it has become merely a species of human philosophy.

102:2.8 Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man's supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and "endure as seeing Him who is invisible." Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must act. Conduct will be the result of religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or unacting feeling.

3. Knowledge, Wisdom, and Insight

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.

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. [I am a divinely beloved son of I AM; I am of I AM; in Jesus Christ here as I AM, I am eternally Certain ! Thank You, our loving and ever-Present Father !]

4. The Fact of Experience

102:4.4 The element of error present in human religious experience is directly proportional to the content of materialism which contaminates the spiritual concept of the Universal Father. Man’s prespirit progression in the universe consists in the experience of divesting himself of these erroneous ideas of the nature of God and of the reality of pure and true spirit. Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritual approach is the only one possible to ascending man.

102:4.5 Prayer is indeed a part of religious experience, but it has been wrongly emphasized by modern religions, much to the neglect of the more essential communion of worship. The reflective powers of the mind are deepened and broadened by worship. Prayer may enrich the life, but worship illuminates destiny.

102:4.6 Revealed religion is the unifying element of human existence. Revelation unifies history, co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and psychology. Spiritual experience is the real soul of man's cosmos. [We may realize that we live and progress in the unified Cosmos of the Presence and Spirit Luminosity (Divine Light) of our Father God ! One Holy Father-Son-Spirit of all Truth !]

5. The Supremacy of Purposive Potential

102:5.3 You can psychologize evolutionary religion but not the personal-experience religion of spiritual origin. Human morality may recognize values, but only religion can conserve, exalt, and spiritualize such values. But notwithstanding such actions, religion is something more than emotionalized morality. Religion is to morality as love is to duty, as sonship is to servitude, as essence is to substance. Morality discloses an almighty Controller, a Deity to be served; religion discloses an all-loving Father, a God to be worshiped and loved. And again this is because the spiritual potentiality of religion is dominant over the duty actuality of the morality of evolution.

6. The Certainty of Religious Faith

102:6.1 The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none. [All of a human son of God's life should be personally God-conscious, not just an isolated one hour per week in an ecclesiastically run church !]

7. The Certitude of the Divine

102:7.4 True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.

102:7.5 The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.

102:7.7 If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of personal spiritual experience, "I know what I have experienced because I am a son of I AM." If the personal experience of a faither is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with the Universal Father.

8. The Evidences of Religion 102:8.7 But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so-called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in the same human experience there appeared God seeking man and finding him to the full satisfaction of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy. And that is religion, even the highest yet revealed in the universe of Nebadon -- the earth life of Jesus of Nazareth. [Nebadon is the name of our local universe made, being ever maintained, and always progressing by our Creator Father-Son of God -- our good Master Jesus Christ Michael]

PAPER 103. The Reality of Religious Experience

0. Introduction

103:0.1 All of man’s truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by the adjutant of wisdom. [the highest two of the seven adjutant mind-spirits from our Creative Mother (Holy) Spirit Partner of our Father-Son Jesus Christ Nebadon Universe Co-equal Sovereigns] Man’s first supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and long before either the bestowals of the divine Sons or the universal bestowal of the Adjusters, this influence functions to enlarge man’s viewpoint of ethics, religion, and spirituality. Subsequent to the bestowals of the Paradise Sons the liberated Spirit of Truth makes mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human capacity to perceive religious truths. As evolution advances on an inhabited world, the Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in the development of the higher types of human religious insight. The Thought Adjuster is the cosmic window through which the finite creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and divinities of limitless Deity, the Universal Father.

1. Philosophy of Religion

103:1.3 While your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming egocentric -- circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.

103:1.4 Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that religion is at first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily a pursuit of values, and then there formulates a system of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to agree on religious values -- goals -- than on beliefs -- interpretations. And this explains how religion can agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of conflicting beliefs -- creeds. This also explains why a given person can maintain his religious experience in the face of giving up or changing many of his religious beliefs. Religion persists in spite of revolutionary changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce religion; it is religion that produces theologic philosophy.

103:1.5 That religionists have believed so much that was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the recognition of values [of love, mercy, service ministry, truth, beauty and goodness] and is validated by the faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought; theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.

2. Religion and the Individual [very important!]

103:2.1Religion is functional in the human mind and has been realized in experience prior to its appearance in human consciousness. A child has been in existence about nine months before it experiences birth.[Yes ! a living child -- a beloved son or daughter of God ! Not a mere "product of conception to be disposed by premeditated murder of a real human being !] But the "birth" of religion is not sudden; it is rather a gradual emergence. Nevertheless, sooner or later there is a "birth day." You do not enter the kingdom of heaven unless you have been "born again" -- born of the Spirit. Many spiritual births are accompanied by much anguish of spirit and marked psychological perturbations, as many physical births are characterized by a "stormy labor" and other abnormalities of "delivery." Other spiritual births are a natural and normal growth of the recognition of supreme values with an enhancement of spiritual experience, albeit no religious development occurs without conscious effort and positive and individual determinations. Religion is never a passive experience, a negative attitude. What is termed the "birth of religion" is not directly associated with so-called conversion experiences which usually characterize religious episodes occurring later in life as a result of mental conflict, emotional repression, and temperamental upheavals.

3. Religion and the Human Race

103:3.2 ...Ultimately, religion is destined to become the service of God and of man.

103:3.3 Religion is designed to change man's environment, but much of the religion found among mortals today has become helpless to do this. Environment has all too often mastered religion. [Today, some ministers promoting a "green gospel" or "environmental religion" is getting away from the True Good News (Gospel) of Jesus: The loving Fatherhood of God and the perfecting brotherhood of all humans worldwide, and later on, universe-wide.]

5. The Origin of Ideals

103:5.7 The pursuit of the ideal -- the striving to be Godlike -- is a continuous effort before death and after. The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life. Real religion does not foster moral indolence and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon one as a result of passing through the portals of natural death. True religion does not belittle man's efforts to progress during the mortal lease on life. Every mortal gain is a direct contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of the immortal survival experience.

6. Philosophic Co-ordination

103:6.1 Theology is the study of the actions and reactions of the human spirit; it can never become a science since it must always be combined more or less with psychology in its personal expression and with philosophy in its systematic portrayal. Theology is always the study of your religion; the study of another's religion is psychology.

103:6.7 Your difficulty in arriving at a more harmonious co-ordination between science and religion is due to your utter ignorance of the intervening domain of the morontia [soul reality] world of things and beings. The local universe consists of three degrees, or stages, of reality manifestation: matter, morontia, [soul,] and spirit. The morontia angle of approach erases all divergence between the findings of the physical sciences and the functioning of the spirit of religion. Reason is the understanding technique of the sciences; faith is the insight technique of religion; mota is the technique of the morontia level. Mota is a supermaterial reality sensitivity which is beginning to compensate incomplete growth, having for its substance knowledge-reason and for its essence faith-insight. Mota is a superphilosophical reconciliation of divergent reality perception which is nonattainable by material personalities; it is predicated, in part, on the experience of having survived the material life of the flesh. But many mortals have recognized the desirability of having some method of reconciling the interplay between the widely separated domains of science and religion; and metaphysics is the result of man's unavailing attempt to span this well-recognized chasm. But human metaphysics has proved more confusing than illuminating. Metaphysics stands for man's well-meant but futile effort to compensate for the absence of the mota of morontia.

103:6.9 Science is man's attempted study of his physical environment, the world of energy-matter; religion is man's experience with the cosmos of spirit values; philosophy has been developed by man's mind effort to organize and correlate the findings of these widely separated concepts into something like a reasonable and unified attitude toward the cosmos. Philosophy, clarified by revelation, functions acceptably in the absence of mota and in the presence of the breakdown and failure of man's reason substitute for mota -- metaphysics.

103:6.11 Science must always be grounded in reason, although imagination and conjecture are helpful in the extension of its borders. Religion is forever dependent on faith, albeit reason is a stabilizing influence and a helpful handmaid. And always there have been, and ever will be, misleading interpretations of the phenomena of both the natural and the spiritual worlds, sciences and religions falsely so called.

7. Science and Religion

103:7.6 Logic is the technique of philosophy, its method of expression. Within the domain of true science, reason is always amenable to genuine logic; within the domain of true religion, faith is always logical from the basis of an inner viewpoint, even though such faith may appear to be quite unfounded from the inlooking viewpoint of the scientific approach. From outward, looking within, the universe may appear to be material; from within, looking out, the same universe appears to be wholly spiritual. Reason grows out of material awareness, faith out of spiritual awareness, but through the mediation of a philosophy strengthened by revelation, logic may confirm both the inward and the outward view, thereby effecting the stabilization of both science and religion. Thus, through common contact with the logic of philosophy, may both science and religion become increasingly tolerant of each other, less and less skeptical.

103:7.8 The truth — an understanding of cosmic relationships, universe facts, and spiritual values — can best be had through the ministry of the Spirit of Truth and can best be criticized by revelation. [The Urantia Book is our Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth, 2097 pages, and having 725 pages on the Life and Teachings of Jesus and about 300 more pages on Jesus Christ Michael's Divine-Human Eternal nature.] But revelation originates neither a science nor a religion; its function is to co-ordinate both science and religion with the truth of reality. Always, in the absence of revelation or in the failure to accept or grasp it, has mortal man resorted to his futile gesture of metaphysics, that being the only human substitute for the revelation of truth or for the mota [super-philosophy] of [our later] morontia [soul] personality.

9. The Essence of Religion

103:9.11 Faith leads to knowing God, not merely to a mystical feeling of the divine presence. Faith must not be overmuch influenced by its emotional consequences. True religion is an experience of believing and knowing as well as a satisfaction of feeling.