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 number 133
"LOVE -- A New
Comprehensive Revelation",
Part 6
Compiled Jan. 25, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PART III THE HISTORY OF URANTIA [EARTH]
PAPER 62. THE DAWN RACES OF EARLY MAN
5. THE FIRST HUMAN BEINGS
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
62:5.5 Not only were such human feelings manifested in these primitive humans, but many more highly evolved sentiments were also present in rudimentary form. They were mildly cognizant of pity, shame, and reproach and were acutely conscious of love, hate, and revenge, being also susceptible to marked feelings of jealousy.
PAPER 63. THE FIRST HUMAN FAMILY
0. INTRODUCTION
63:0.3 Andon is the Nebadon name which signifies “the first Fatherlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger.” Fonta signifies “the first Sonlike creature to exhibit human perfection hunger.” Andon and Fonta never knew these names until they were bestowed upon them at the time of fusion with their Thought Adjusters. Throughout their mortal sojourn on Urantia they called each other Sonta-an and Sonta-en, Sonta-an meaning “loved by mother,” Sonta-en signifying “loved by father.” They gave themselves these names, and the meanings are significant of their mutual regard and affection.
PAPER 66. THE PLANETARY PRINCE OF URANTIA
1. PRINCE CALIGASTIA
[The former, evil rebel prince of Urantia. [Earth] Jesus removed him and all other spiritual rebels in A.D. 30 - on when Jesus Christ was Incarnate God-Man here.]
66:1.5 I was present on Jerusem when the brilliant Caligastia departed from the system capital. No prince of the planets ever embarked upon a career of world rulership with a richer preparatory experience or with better prospects than did Caligastia on that eventful day one-half million years ago. One thing is certain: As I executed my assignment of putting the narrative of that event on the broadcasts of the local universe, I never for one moment entertained even in the slightest degree any idea that this noble Lanonandek would so shortly betray his sacred trust of planetary custody and so horribly stain the fair name of his exalted order of universe sonship. I really regarded Urantia as being among the five or six most fortunate planets in all Satania in that it was to have such an experienced, brilliant, and original mind at the helm of world affairs. I did not then comprehend that Caligastia was insidiously falling in love with himself; I did not then so fully understand the subtleties of personality pride.
7. LIFE IN DALAMATIA
66:7.4 The definite order of family life and the living of one family together in one residence of comparatively settled location date from these times of Dalamatia and were chiefly due to the example and teachings of the one hundred and their pupils. The home as a social unit never became a success until the supermen and superwomen of Dalamatia led mankind to love and plan for their grandchildren and their grandchildren’s children. Savage man loves his child, but civilized man loves also his grandchild.
8. MISFORTUNES OF CALIGASTIA
66:8.2 It should be noted that both Lucifer and Caligastia had been patiently instructed and lovingly warned respecting their critical tendencies and the subtle development of their pride of self and its associated exaggeration of the feeling of self-importance. But all of these attempts to help had been misconstrued as unwarranted criticism and as unjustified interference with personal liberties. Both Caligastia and Lucifer judged their friendly advisers as being actuated by the very reprehensible motives which were beginning to dominate their own distorted thinking and misguided planning. They judged their unselfish advisers by their own evolving selfishness.
PAPER 68. THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
2. FACTORS IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION
68:2.4 The herd instinct in natural man is hardly sufficient to account for the development of such a social organization as now exists on Urantia. Though this innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom of human society, much of man’s sociability is an acquirement. Two great influences which contributed to the early association of human beings were food hunger and sex love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal world. Two other emotions which drove human beings together and held them together were vanity and fear, more particularly ghost fear.
68:2.6 Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive men and women to assume the heavy burdens of home maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent gratification and upon that devoted mother love of the human female, which in measure she shares with the females of all the higher animals. The presence of a helpless baby determined the early differentiation of male and female activities; the woman had to maintain a settled residence where she could cultivate the soil. And from earliest times, where woman was has always been regarded as the home.
3. SOCIALIZING INFLUENCE OF GHOST FEAR
68:3.4 Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain limits, and these very influences of social mobilization — hunger, love, vanity, and fear — conspire to plunge mankind into war and bloodshed.
PAPER 68 THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
5. LAND TECHNIQUES — MAINTENANCE ARTS
68:5.8 Prepastoral society was one of sex cooperation, but the spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths of social slavery. In earlier times it was man’s duty to secure the animal food, woman’s business to provide the vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man entered the pastoral era of his existence, woman’s dignity fell greatly. She must still toil to produce the vegetable necessities of life, whereas the man need only go to his herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus became relatively independent of woman; throughout the entire pastoral age woman’s status steadily declined. By the close of this era she had become scarcely more than a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected to labor and bring forth young. The men of the pastoral ages had great love for their cattle; all the more pity they could not have developed a deeper affection for their wives. [!!]
6. EVOLUTION OF CULTURE
68:6.9 Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried. It was long the custom for a maiden to kill her offspring, but among more civilized groups these illegitimate children became the wards of the girl’s mother. Many primitive clans were virtually exterminated by the practice of both abortion and infanticide. But regardless of the dictates of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed after having once been suckled — maternal affection is too strong.
PAPER 75 THE DEFAULT OF ADAM AND EVE
5. REPERCUSSIONS OF DEFAULT
75:5.2 [Biologically uplifting to mankind, Adam and Eve came down to Earth about 38,000 years ago. Deceived by Lucifer, Satan and Caligastia, they became impatient and blended with selected humans (Nodites) long before they had reproduced far more of their superior race as God had desired to further uplift us.] It was in the despair of the realization of failure that Adam, the day after Eve’s misstep, (of mating too soon with humans) sought out Laotta, the brilliant Nodite woman who was head of the western schools of the Garden, and with premeditation committed the folly of Eve. But do not misunderstand; Adam was not beguiled; he knew exactly what he was about; he deliberately chose to share the fate of Eve. He loved his mate with a supermortal affection, and the thought of the possibility of a lonely vigil on Earth without her was more than he could endure. [Today, in a higher Heaven, Adam and Eve remain fully rehabilitated by our Nebadon Universe Sovereign Creator Jesus Christ Michael ! They did not deliberately sin; they were very sinfully misled. Hard for many to believe, but the added physical burdens on all mankind here actually work to promote more faith, trust and soul growth. We will be thankful for that later, if not immediately now !]
PAPER 77 THE MIDWAY CREATURES
9. THE PERMANENT CITIZENS OF EARTH
77:9.12 [Important !] The entire organization of high Spirits, angelic hosts, and midway fellows [superhuman permanent Earth residents on a level midway between purely spiritual seraphim angels and physical mankind here. They know our true history on Earth; and they work diligently for the realized and appreciated Sovereignty of our Master Jesus in the minds of mankind,] is enthusiastically devoted to the furtherance of the Paradise plan for the progressive ascension and perfection attainment of evolutionary mortals, one of the supernal businesses of the universe — the superb survival plan of bringing God down to man [in and as Jesus ! and as God's will within each moral human !] and then, by a sublime sort of [Father-Son-human-sons of God, Family] partnership, carrying man up to God and on to eternity of service and divinity of attainment — alike for mortal and midwayer.
PAPER 82 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
1. THE MATING INSTINCT
82:1.1 Notwithstanding the personality gulf between men and women, [male and female natures and attitudes remain forever different even up on the many soul and Spirit Heavens and also eternally on Paradise ! Spirit male-Spirit female working pairs will continue, and that is good, beautiful and true !] the sex urge is sufficient to insure their coming together for the reproduction of the species. This instinct operated effectively long before humans experienced much of what was later called love, devotion, and marital loyalty. Mating is an innate propensity, and marriage is its evolutionary social repercussion.
PAPER 83 THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
1. MARRIAGE AS A SOCIETAL INSTITUTION
83:1.5 Primitive marriage was primarily industrial; and even in modern times it is often a social or business affair. Through the influence of the mixture of the Andite stock [Adamic and Nodite mixed race] and as a result of the mores of advancing civilization, marriage is slowly becoming mutual, romantic, parental, poetical, affectionate, ethical, and even idealistic. Selection and so-called romantic love, however, were at a minimum in primitive mating. During early times husband and wife were not much together; they did not even eat together very often. But among the ancients, personal affection was not strongly linked to sex attraction; they became fond of one another largely because of living and working together. [If today's selfish pleasure mania is not soon controlled, society will again collapse for decades or centuries. The Godly nuclear family is the social foundation of civilization.]
2. COURTSHIP AND BETROTHAL
83:2.5 [Much earlier human history, many thousands of years ago] Increasing love, romance, and personal selection in premarital courtship are an Andite contribution to the world races. The relations between the sexes are evolving favorably; many advancing peoples are gradually substituting somewhat idealized concepts of sex attraction for those older motives of utility and ownership. Sex impulse and feelings of affection are beginning to displace cold calculation in the choosing of life partners.
6. TRUE MONOGAMY — PAIR MARRIAGE
83:6.7 Monogamy is the yardstick which measures the advance of social civilization as distinguished from purely biologic evolution. Monogamy is not necessarily biologic or natural, but it is indispensable to the immediate maintenance and further development of social civilization. It contributes to a delicacy of sentiment, a refinement of moral character, and a spiritual growth which are utterly impossible in polygamy. A woman never can become an ideal mother when she is all the while compelled to engage in rivalry for her husband’s affections.
PAPER 84 MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
0. INTRODUCTION
84:0.1 Material necessity founded marriage, sex hunger embellished it, religion sanctioned and exalted it, the state demanded and regulated it, while in later times [up to about A.D. 1950 or so] evolving love is beginning to justify and glorify marriage as the ancestor and creator of civilization's most useful and sublime institution, the home. And home building should be the center and essence of all educational effort. [!! How many grade-school, high-school and colleges focus on the need for marriage, family and home training ? This is a serious problem - the breakdown of the moral family with proper child raising to adulthood !]
1. PRIMITIVE PAIR ASSOCIATIONS
84:1.1 Marriage was not founded on sex relations; they were incidental thereto. Marriage was not needed by primitive man, who indulged his sex appetite freely without encumbering himself with the responsibilities of wife, children, and home. ["Party animals" today are primitive men; and today, even some women are also devolving socially and morally back to selfish "herd sex" until ever-more deadly STD's eliminate that problem. Wise humans count the costs before acting irresponsibly.]
84:1.2 Woman, because of physical and emotional attachment to her offspring, is dependent on cooperation with the male, and this urges her into the sheltering protection of marriage. But no direct biologic urge led man into marriage — much less held him in. It was not love that made marriage attractive to man, but food hunger [!] which first attracted savage man to woman and the primitive shelter shared by her children.
84:1.6 A family of some simple sort was insured by the fact that the reproductive function entails the mother-child relationship. Mother love is instinctive; it did not originate in the mores as did marriage. All mammalian mother love is the inherent endowment of the adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe [our Creative Mother {Holy} Spirit who gives us all seven adjutant mind-spirits] and is in strength and devotion always directly proportional to the length of the helpless infancy of the species.
84:1.7 The mother and child relation is natural, strong, and instinctive, and one which, therefore, constrained primitive women to submit to many strange conditions and to endure untold hardships. This compelling mother love is the handicapping emotion which has always placed woman at such a tremendous disadvantage in all her struggles with man. Even at that, maternal instinct in the human species is not overpowering; it may be thwarted by ambition, selfishness, and religious conviction.
5. WOMAN UNDER THE DEVELOPING MORES
84:5.13 Civilization never [!] can obliterate the behavior gulf between the sexes. From age to age the mores change, but instinct never. [!] Innate maternal affection will never permit emancipated woman to become man’s serious rival in industry. Forever [!] each sex will remain supreme in its own domain, domains determined by biologic differentiation and by mental dissimilarity. ["Unisex" is a delusion. As I stated above, even after we are all Spirit-perfected for about one trillion years of spiritual ascension and granted eternal Paradise Residence, all Divine-Human Spirits will differ with either masculine or feminine characteristics; and they will work better together. As with magnets, opposite polarities always attract and do not repel.]
7. THE IDEALS OF FAMILY LIFE
84:7.10 Love of offspring is almost universal and is of distinct survival value. The ancients always sacrificed the mother’s interests for the welfare of the child; an Eskimo mother even yet licks her baby in lieu of washing. But primitive mothers only nourished and cared for their children when very young; like the animals, they discarded them as soon as they grew up. Enduring and continuous human associations have never been founded on biologic affection alone. The animals love their children; man — civilized man — loves his children’s children. The higher the civilization, the greater the joy of parents in the children’s advancement and success; thus the new and higher realization of name pride comes into existence.
84:7.26 Civilization regards the parents as assuming all duties, the child as having all the rights. Respect of the child for his parents arises, not in knowledge of the obligation implied in parental procreation, but naturally grows as a result of the care, training, and affection which are lovingly displayed in assisting the child to win the battle of life. The true parent is engaged in a continuous service-ministry which the wise child comes to recognize and appreciate.
84:7.29 Human society would be greatly improved if the civilized races would more generally return to the family-council practices of the Andites. They did not maintain the patriarchal or autocratic form of family government. They were very brotherly and associative, freely and frankly discussing every proposal and regulation of a family nature. They were ideally fraternal in all their family government. In an ideal family filial and parental affection are both augmented by fraternal devotion.
[If you are interested in learning much more about the evolution and current importance of marriage-home-family life, please peruse all of Papers 82, 83, and 84 given by a very high Paradise-level Primary Supernaphim. (Super-Angel.) She is now here on our confused planet as the Chief of all of Earth's many Seraphim !]
PAPER 85 THE ORIGINS OF WORSHIP
2. WORSHIP OF PLANTS AND TREES
85:2.3 The cults of tree worship are among the oldest religious groups. All early marriages were held under the trees, and when women desired children, they would sometimes be found out in the forest affectionately embracing a sturdy oak. [!] Many plants and trees were venerated because of their real or fancied medicinal powers. The savage believed that all chemical effects were due to the direct activity of supernatural forces. [Thus, many still call alcoholic drinks, like whiskey, "spirits". Much delusion and errors remain in a large number of humans on Earth ! More true education is urgently needed; thus we are gifted with this supernal Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth !!]
PAPER 90 SHAMANISM — MEDICINE MEN AND PRIESTS
0. INTRODUCTION
90:0.3 Evolutionary religion is born of a simple and all-powerful fear, the fear which surges through the human mind when confronted with the unknown, the inexplicable, and the incomprehensible. Religion eventually achieves the profoundly simple realization of an all-powerful love, the love which sweeps irresistibly through the human soul when awakened to the conception of the limitless affection of the Universal Father for the sons of the universe. But in between the beginning and the consummation of religious evolution, there intervene the long ages of the shamans, [of shame ! such as popes, prelates, priests, pastors, psychics, belief in 'saints', gurus, temple tycoons, mediums, etc.] who presume to stand between man and God as intermediaries, interpreters, and intercessors. [God and you are directly related in Jesus and in Their combined Spirits around and within you, and all humans ! Enjoy direct personal God-consciousness at all times and in all places ! Amen !]
PAPER 91 THE EVOLUTION OF PRAYER
4. ETHICAL PRAYING
91:4.1 No prayer can be ethical when the petitioner seeks for selfish advantage over his fellows. Selfish and materialistic praying is incompatible with the ethical religions which are predicated on unselfish and divine love. All such unethical praying reverts to the primitive levels of pseudo magic and is unworthy of advancing civilizations and enlightened religions. Selfish praying transgresses the spirit of all ethics founded on loving justice.
91:4.3 In all your praying be fair; do not expect God to show partiality, to love you more than his other children, your friends, neighbors, even enemies. [Jesus commands us to love our (so-called) enemies; because they are equal sons of God as you are ! We are all in one spiritual Family of God, thanks to the actions of Jesus Christ Michael here in Spirit and as God the Father, from A.D. 30 -on !!] But the prayer of the natural or evolved religions is not at first ethical, as it is in the later revealed religions. All praying, whether individual or communal, may be either egoistic or altruistic. That is, the prayer may be centered upon the self or upon others. When the prayer seeks nothing for the one who prays nor anything for his fellows, then such attitudes of the soul tend to the levels of true worship. Egoistic prayers involve confessions and petitions and often consist in requests for material favors. Prayer is somewhat more ethical when it deals with forgiveness and seeks wisdom for enhanced self-control.
5. SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS OF PRAYER
91:5.2 But prayer need not always be individual. Group or congregational praying is very effective in that it is highly socializing in its repercussions. [in the worldwide and universe-wide perfecting brotherhood of man under God our loving Father !] When a group engages in community prayer for moral enhancement and spiritual uplift, such devotions are reactive upon the individuals composing the group; they are all made better because of participation. Even a whole city or an entire nation can be helped by such prayer devotions. Confession, repentance, and prayer have led individuals, cities, nations, and whole races to mighty efforts of reform and courageous deeds of valorous achievement.
91:5.7 But the minds of greater spiritual illumination should be patient with, and tolerant of, those less endowed intellects that crave symbolism for the mobilization of their feeble spiritual insight. The strong must not look with disdain upon the weak. Those who are God-conscious without symbolism must not deny the grace-ministry of the symbol to those who find it difficult to worship Deity and to revere truth, beauty, and goodness without form and ritual. In prayerful worship, most mortals envision some symbol of the object-goal of their devotions. [The realization of the Glorious Infinite, Eternal, Universal Spirit Luminosity (Divine Light) OmniPresence of God should be fully sufficient over all mere physical or intellectual symbols.]
7. MYSTICISM, ECSTASY, AND INSPIRATION
91:7.1 Mysticism, as the technique of the cultivation of the consciousness of the presence of God, is altogether praiseworthy, but when such practices lead to social isolation and culminate in religious fanaticism, they are all but reprehensible. Altogether too frequently that which the overwrought mystic evaluates as divine inspiration is the uprisings of his own deep mind. The contact of the mortal mind with its indwelling Adjuster, while often favored by devoted meditation, is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish ministry to one’s fellow creatures.
91:7.5 The practical test of all these strange religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:
91:7.6 #1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health.
91:7.7 #2. To function more efficiently and practically in his mental life.
91:7.8 #3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his religious experience.
91:7.9 #4. More completely to spiritualize his day-by-day living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence.
91:7.10 #5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness.
91:7.11 #6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
91:7.12 #7. To increase his spiritual insight — God-consciousness.
91:7.13 But prayer has no real association with these exceptional religious experiences. When prayer becomes overmuch aesthetic, when it consists almost exclusively in beautiful and blissful contemplation of paradisiacal divinity, it loses much of its socializing influence and tends toward mysticism and the isolation of its devotees. There is a certain danger associated with overmuch private praying which is corrected and prevented by group praying, community devotions. [That could be a private spiritual fellowship in various homes or outdoors in nature as well as in larger churches]
8. PRAYING AS A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
91:8.4 To some individuals prayer is the calm expression of gratitude; to others, a group expression of praise, social devotions; sometimes it is the imitation of another’s religion, while in true praying it is the sincere and trusting communication of the spiritual nature of the creature with the anywhere presence of the spirit of the Creator.
91:8.12 Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely autosuggestive in private devotions and sociosuggestive in group devotions. God answers the soul’s attitude, not the words.
PAPER 92 THE LATER EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
1. THE EVOLUTIONARY NATURE OF RELIGION
92:1.5 One Asiatic people taught that “God is a great fear”; that is the outgrowth of purely evolutionary religion. Jesus, the Revelation of the highest type of religious living, proclaimed that “God is love.”
4. THE GIFT OF REVELATION
92:4.8 #4. Jesus of Nazareth. Christ Michael presented for the fourth time to Earth the concept of God as the Universal Father, and this teaching has generally persisted ever since. The essence of his teaching was love and service, the loving worship which a creature son voluntarily gives in recognition of, and response to, the loving ministry of God his Father; the freewill service which such creature sons bestow upon their brethren in the joyous realization that in this service they are likewise serving God the Father.
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. [Fatherly and brotherly love in divine service ministry]
92:7.11 Religious meanings progress in self-consciousness when the child transfers his ideas of omnipotence from his parents to God. And the entire religious experience of such a child is largely dependent on whether fear or love has dominated the parent-child relationship. Slaves have always experienced great difficulty in transferring their master-fear into concepts of God-love. Civilization, science, and advanced religions must deliver mankind from those fears born of the dread of natural phenomena. And so should greater enlightenment deliver educated mortals from all dependence on intermediaries in communion with Deity. [Personal God-consciousness is now beginning to replace priests and pastors in the pervasive man-made dogmatic churches.]
Topical Study number 133
"LOVE -- A New
Comprehensive Revelation",
Part 7
Compiled Jan. 27, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 94 THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS IN THE ORIENT
4. THE HINDU RELIGION
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
94:4.10 Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian gospel — the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all men, which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service. In India the philosophical framework is existent, the cult structure is present; all that is needed is the vitalizing spark of the dynamic love portrayed in the original gospel of the Son of Man, divested of the Occidental dogmas and doctrines which have tended to make [Jesus Christ's] Michael’s life bestowal a white man’s religion. [Today, Christianity is making strong gains in India !]
6. LAO-TSE AND CONFUCIUS
94:6.11 The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric of the culture of almost a third of Earth's humans. These Confucian precepts, while perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by the imperial efforts of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius.
8. THE BUDDHIST FAITH
94:8.8 Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama’s intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one’s fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future.
9. THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM
94:9.2 The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama’s gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be.
12. THE GOD CONCEPT OF BUDDHISM
94:12.3 Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise. [Some Trinity concepts are now evolving in Buddhism.The Truth Spirit of God is worldwide ever-teaching all truth-seekers and Truth-lovers !]
PAPER 95 THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS IN THE LEVANT
3. EVOLUTION OF MORAL CONCEPTS
95:3.4 In the soil of these evolving ethical ideas and moral ideals the surviving doctrines of the Salem religion flourished. The concepts of good and evil found ready response in the hearts of a people who believed that “Life is given to the peaceful and death to the guilty.” “The peaceful is he who does what is loved; the guilty is he who does what is hated.” For centuries the inhabitants of the Nile valley had lived by these emerging ethical and social standards before they ever entertained the later concepts of right and wrong — good and bad.
PAPER 96 YAHWEH — GOD OF THE HEBREWS
1. DEITY CONCEPTS AMONG THE SEMITES
96:1.15 The idea of Yahweh has undergone the most extensive development of all the mortal theories of God. Its progressive evolution can only be compared with the metamorphosis of the Buddha concept in Asia, which in the end led to the concept of the Universal Absolute even as the Yahweh concept finally led to the idea of the Universal Father. But as a matter of historic fact, it should be understood that, while the Jews thus changed their views of Deity from the [savage volcano fire] tribal god of Mount Horeb to the loving and merciful Creator Father of later times, they did not change his name; they continued all the way along to call this evolving concept of Deity, Yahweh. [God has never been revealed by name; but in and by our Universe Crteator Sovereign Jesus and his true love and lavish mercy !!]
4. THE PROCLAMATION OF YAHWEH
96:4.6 Moses proclaimed that Yahweh was the Lord God of Israel, who had singled out the Hebrews as his chosen people; he was building a new nation, and he wisely nationalized his religious teachings, [even though not true in Spirit !] telling his followers that Yahweh was a hard taskmaster, a “jealous God.” But nonetheless he sought to enlarge their concept of divinity when he taught them that Yahweh was the “God of the spirits of all flesh,” and when he said, “The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.” Moses taught that Yahweh was a covenant-keeping God; that he “will not forsake you, neither destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers because the Lord loves you and will not forget the oath by which he swore to your fathers.” [that salvation is by faith in God's loving Father nature, and not merely by works !Many Christians today remain confused on that !]
96:4.9 The most unique and amazing feature of the religious history of the Hebrews concerns this continuous evolution of the concept of Deity from the primitive god of Mount Horeb up through the teachings of their successive spiritual leaders to the high level of development depicted in the Deity doctrines of the [two] Isaiahs, who proclaimed that magnificent concept of the loving and merciful Creator Father.
5. THE TEACHINGS OF MOSES
96:5.4 Moses was a believer in Providence; he had become thoroughly tainted with the doctrines of Egypt concerning the supernatural control of the Nile and the other elements of nature. He had a great vision of God, but he was thoroughly sincere [and in spiritual errors] when he taught the Hebrews that, if they would obey God, “He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will multiply the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land — the corn, wine, oil, and your flocks. You shall be prospered above all people, and the Lord your God will take away from you all sickness and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt upon you.” He even said: “Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the power to get wealth.” “You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. You shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.”
96:5.7 Little of the mercy of God was taught the Hebrews during these early times. They learned of God as “the Almighty; the Lord is a man of war, God of battles, glorious in power, who dashes in pieces his enemies.” “The Lord your God walks in the midst of the camp to deliver you.” The Israelites thought of their God as one who loved them, but who also “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” and “cursed their enemies.” [Many humans today greatly sin with desires of a chosen people, race and nation; and murdering wars being "God's will of terrible wrath, destruction and eternal burning hellfire" The U.S. military today has "hellfire missiles". When will Godly religionists rise up and demand the end to all wars by having a strong international Peace Army ? The United Nations and NATO are just feeble attempts to date.]
6. THE GOD CONCEPT AFTER MOSES’ DEATH
96:6.2 The spell of the extraordinary personality of Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his followers the inspiration of an increasingly enlarged concept of God; but when they once reached the fertile lands of Palestine, they quickly evolved from nomadic herders into settled and somewhat sedate farmers. And this evolution of life practices and change of religious viewpoint demanded a more or less complete change in the character of their conception of the nature of their God, Yahweh. During the times of the beginning of the transmutation of the austere, crude, exacting, and thunderous desert god of Sinai into the later appearing concept of a God of love, justice, and mercy, the Hebrews almost lost sight of Moses' lofty teachings. They came near losing all concept of monotheism; they nearly lost their opportunity of becoming the people who would serve as a vital link in the spiritual evolution of Earth, the group who would conserve the Melchizedek [about 4,000 years ago] teaching of one God until the times of the incarnation of a bestowal Son of that Father of all. [Jesus Christ Incarnated here 7 B.C - A.D. 30, and returned back here in Spirit as He the Spirit of All Truth and as our God, May 18, A.D. 30 - on !]
7. PSALMS AND THE BOOK OF JOB
96:7.3 No collection of religious writings gives expression to such a wealth of devotion and inspirational ideas of God as the Book of Psalms. And it would be very helpful if, in the perusal of this wonderful collection of worshipful literature, consideration could be given to the source and chronology of each separate hymn of praise and adoration, bearing in mind that no other single collection covers such a great range of time. This Book of Psalms is the record of the varying concepts of God entertained by the believers of the Salem religion throughout the Levant and embraces the entire period from Amenemope to Isaiah. In the Psalms God is depicted in all phases of conception, from the crude idea of a tribal deity to the vastly expanded ideal of the later Hebrews, wherein Yahweh is pictured as a loving ruler and merciful Father.
96:7.4 And when thus regarded, this group of Psalms constitutes the most valuable and helpful assortment of devotional sentiments ever assembled by man up to the times of the twentieth century. The worshipful spirit of this collection of hymns transcends that of all other sacred books of the world. [Stated as of A.D. 1935. Now we have superior writings and even this supernal Revelation !]
96:7.6 In Palestine the wisdom and all-pervasiveness of God was often grasped but seldom his love and mercy. The Yahweh of these times “sends evil spirits to dominate the souls of his enemies”; he prospers his own and obedient children, while he curses and visits dire judgments upon all others. “He disappoints the devices of the crafty; he takes the wise in their own deceit.” [It is true that your Theology largely determines your actions. Believing in a god of hate, wrath, destruction,blood and hell causes many humans to try copy their sinful and blasphemous concepts of God !]
PAPER 97 EVOLUTION OF THE GOD CONCEPT AMONG THE HEBREWS
1. SAMUEL — FIRST OF THE HEBREW PROPHETS
97:1.2 Samuel sprang from a long line of the Salem teachers who had persisted in maintaining the truths of Melchizedek [a Son of God who appeared here 4,000 years ago to keep the Light of Truth alive and to prepare the way for the incarnation here of our Creator Son of God Jesus Christ Michael about 2,000 years later] as a part of their worship forms. This teacher was a virile and resolute man. Only his great devotion, coupled with his extraordinary determination, enabled him to withstand the almost universal opposition which he encountered when he started out to turn all Israel back to the worship of the supreme Yahweh of Mosaic times. And even then he was only partially successful; he won back to the service of the higher concept of Yahweh only the more intelligent half of the Hebrews; the other half continued in the worship of the tribal gods of the country and in the baser conception of Yahweh.
97:1.3 Samuel was a rough-and-ready type of man, a practical reformer who could go out in one day with his associates and overthrow a score of Baal sites. The progress he made was by sheer force of compulsion; he did little preaching, less teaching, but he did act. One day he was mocking the priest of Baal; the next, chopping in pieces a captive king. He devotedly believed in the one God, and he had a clear concept of that one God as creator of heaven and earth: “The pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he has set the world upon them.”
4. AMOS AND HOSEA
97:4.1 A great step in the transition of the tribal god -- the god who had so long been served with sacrifices and ceremonies, the Yahweh of the earlier Hebrews -- to a God who would punish crime and immorality among even his own people, was taken by Amos, who appeared from among the southern hills to denounce the criminality, drunkenness, oppression, and immorality of the northern tribes. Not since the times of Moses had such ringing truths been proclaimed in Palestine.
97:4.2 Amos was not merely a restorer or reformer; he was a discoverer of new concepts of Deity. He proclaimed much about God that had been announced by his predecessors and courageously attacked the belief in a Divine Being who would countenance sin among his so-called chosen people. For the first time since the days of Melchizedek the ears of man heard the denunciation of the double standard of national justice and morality. For the first time in their history Hebrew ears heard that their own God, Yahweh, would no more tolerate crime and sin in their lives than he would among any other people. Amos [falsely] envisioned the stern and just God of Samuel and Elijah, but he also saw a God who thought no differently of the Hebrews than of any other nation when it came to the punishment of wrongdoing. This was a direct attack on the egoistic doctrine of the "chosen people," and many Hebrews of those days bitterly resented it.
97:4.5 Hosea followed Amos and his doctrine of a universal God of justice by the resurrection of the Mosaic concept of a God of love. Hosea preached forgiveness through repentance, not by sacrifice. He proclaimed a gospel of loving-kindness and divine mercy, saying: "I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and judgment and in loving-kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness." "I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away."
[Of course, God never has anger or wrath; those are even sub-human, animal-level emotions ! God is Infinite, Absolute, Eternal, all-perfect and thus forever unchanging; but human views on the perfect nature of God will ever evolve without end ! Periodic Epochal Revelations also upstep human Theology and much more.]
97:4.6 Hosea faithfully continued the moral warnings of Amos, saying of God, “It is my desire that I chastise them.” But the Israelites regarded it as cruelty bordering on treason when he said: “I will say to those who were not my people, ‘you are my people’; and they will say, ‘you are our God.’” He continued to preach repentance and forgiveness, saying, “I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely, for my anger is turned away.” Always Hosea proclaimed hope and forgiveness. The burden of his message ever was: “I will have mercy upon my people. They shall know no God but me, for there is no savior beside me.”
97:4.7 Amos quickened the national conscience of the Hebrews to the recognition that Yahweh would not condone crime and sin among them because they were supposedly the chosen people, while Hosea struck the opening notes in the later merciful chords of divine compassion and loving-kindness which were so exquisitely sung by Isaiah and his associates.
5. THE FIRST ISAIAH [There were two Isaiah prophets]
97:5.1 These were the times when some were proclaiming threatenings of punishment against personal sins and national crime among the northern clans while others predicted calamity in retribution for the transgressions of the southern kingdom. It was in the wake of this arousal of conscience and consciousness in the Hebrew nations that the first Isaiah made his appearance.
97:5.3 Speaking to the fear-ridden and soul-hungry Hebrews, this prophet said: “Arise and shine, for your Light [of God] has come, and the Glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation and has covered me with his robe of righteousness.” “In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the Angel of his Presence saved them. In his love and in his pity he redeemed them.”
97:5.6 Ever the burden of Micah’s message was: “Shall I come before God with burnt offerings? Will the Lord be pleased with a thousand rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? [No, No, No, No !] He has shown me, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” And it was a great age; these were indeed stirring times when mortal man heard, and some even believed, such emancipating messages more than two and a half millenniums ago. And but for the stubborn resistance of the priests, these teachers would have overthrown the whole bloody ceremonial of the Hebrew ritual of worship. [Even today, many Christians do not yet realize the terrible blasphemy of our all-loving, merciful Father God by their "blood atonement - blood sacrifice - sacrificial Lamb"doctrines !! They will realize this, in a few more decades or less ! Amen !]
6. JEREMIAH THE FEARLESS
97:6.3 Jeremiah also preached of the just and loving God described by Isaiah, declaring: “Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn you.” “For he does not afflict willingly the children of men.”
7. THE SECOND ISAIAH
97:7.4 The Jewish priesthood made liberal use of these [Jewish altered Babylonian and Chaldean] writings subsequent to the captivity, but they were greatly hindered in their influence over their fellow captives by the presence of a young and indomitable prophet, Isaiah the second, who was a full convert to the elder Isaiah’s God of justice, love, righteousness, and mercy. He also believed with Jeremiah that Yahweh had become the God of all nations. He preached these theories of the nature of God with such telling effect that he made converts equally among the Jews and their captors. And this young preacher left on record his teachings, which the hostile and unforgiving priests sought to divorce from all association with him, although sheer respect for their beauty and grandeur led to their incorporation among the writings of the earlier Isaiah. And thus may be found the writings of this second Isaiah in the book of that name, embracing chapters forty to fifty-five inclusive.
97:7.12 And this preacher of a supernal [high, heavenly] God never ceased to proclaim this God of love. “I dwell in the high and holy place, also with him who is of a contrite and humble spirit.” And still further words of comfort did this great teacher speak to his contemporaries: “And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your soul. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring whose waters fail not. And if the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord will lift up a defense against him.” And once again did the fear-destroying gospel of Melchizedek and the trust-breeding religion of Salem shine forth for the blessing of mankind.
97:7.13 The farseeing and courageous Isaiah effectively eclipsed the nationalistic Yahweh by his sublime portraiture of the majesty and universal omnipotence of the Supreme Yahweh, God of love, Ruler of the universe, and affectionate Father of all mankind. Ever since those eventful days the highest God concept in the Occident has embraced universal justice, divine mercy, and eternal righteousness. In superb language and with matchless grace this great teacher portrayed the all-powerful Creator as the all-loving Father.
10. THE HEBREW RELIGION
97:10.8 And thus the successive teachers of Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be effected on Earth: the gradual but continuous transformation of the barbaric concept of the savage demon Yahweh, the jealous and cruel spirit god of the fulminating Sinai volcano, to the later exalted and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh, Creator of all things and the loving and merciful Father of all mankind. And this Hebraic concept of God was the highest human visualization of the Universal Father up to that time when it was further enlarged and so exquisitely amplified by the personal Teachings and Life example of his Son, [Jesus Christ] Michael of Nebadon. [our local universe Created over 400 billion years ago by our Christ Michael and continuously upheld and still evolving for maybe 600 billion more years in this first, Supreme Grand Universe Age. Now, there are just over 3.8 million human-inhabited evolving planets and always 570 higher soul reality Heavens for our further ascension and soul perfection to then continue on in even higher and many more Spirit-ascension Heavens, and then eternal Paradise Residence and Ultimate-level adventures ... and on higher and higher without end !!]
PAPER 98 THE MELCHIZEDEK TEACHINGS IN THE OCCIDENT
1. THE SALEM RELIGION AMONG THE GREEKS
98:1.4 As a consequence of these factors in religious evolution, there presently developed the popular belief in the happy-go-lucky gods of Mount Olympus, gods more human than divine, and gods which the intelligent Greeks never did regard very seriously. They neither greatly loved nor greatly feared these divinities of their own creation. They had a patriotic and racial feeling for Zeus and his family of half men and half gods, but they hardly reverenced or worshiped them.
2. GREEK PHILOSOPHIC THOUGHT
98:2.1 A lightly regarded and superficial religion cannot endure, especially when it has no priesthood to foster its forms and to fill the hearts of the devotees with fear and awe. The Olympian religion did not promise salvation, nor did it quench the spiritual thirst of its believers; therefore was it doomed to perish. Within a millennium of its inception it had nearly vanished, and the Greeks were without a national religion, the gods of Olympus having lost their hold upon the better minds.
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 great advocate of the [false] atonement doctrine [Paul] 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
2. WEAKNESS OF INSTITUTIONAL RELIGION
99:2.4 Religionists are of no more value in the tasks of social reconstruction than nonreligionists except in so far as their religion has conferred upon them enhanced cosmic foresight and endowed them with that superior social wisdom which is born of the sincere desire to love God supremely and to love every man as a brother in the heavenly kingdom. An ideal social order is that in which every man loves his neighbor as he loves himself.
4. TRANSITION DIFFICULTIES
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.
99:4.7 There is no danger in religion’s becoming more and more of a private matter — a personal experience — provided it does not lose its motivation for unselfish and loving social service. Religion has suffered from many secondary influences: sudden mixing of cultures, intermingling of creeds, diminution of ecclesiastical authority, changing of family life, together with urbanization and mechanization.
99:4.8 Man’s greatest spiritual jeopardy consists in partial progress, the predicament of unfinished growth: forsaking the evolutionary religions of fear without immediately grasping the revelatory religion of love. Modern science, particularly psychology, has weakened only those religions which are so largely dependent upon fear, superstition, and emotion.
5. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF RELIGION
99:5.2 [Two important paragraphs:] Always keep in mind: True religion is to know God as your [loving and merciful] Father and man as your brother. [in the Family of God !] 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. [Amen !]
Topical Study number 133
"LOVE -- A New
Comprehensive Revelation",
Part 8
Compiled Jan. 29, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 100 RELIGION IN HUMAN EXPERIENCE
0. INTRODUCTION
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
100:0.2 Spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists. Love supplies the soil for religious growth — an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification — yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfaction. And religion ennobles the commonplace drudgery of daily living.
1. RELIGIOUS GROWTH
100:1.6 Religious experience is markedly influenced by physical health, inherited temperament, and social environment. But these temporal conditions do not inhibit inner spiritual progress by a soul dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven. There are present in all normal mortals certain innate drives toward growth and self-realization which function if they are not specifically inhibited. The certain technique of fostering this constitutive endowment of the potential of spiritual growth is to maintain an attitude of wholehearted devotion to supreme values.
2. SPIRITUAL GROWTH
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.
100:2.4 Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one’s nearness to God and the measure of one’s usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love.
100:2.6 The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal. [Love is the highest spiritual value !] Mortal man is entitled to the enjoyment of physical pleasures and to the satisfaction of human affections; he is benefited by loyalty to human associations and temporal institutions; but these are not the eternal foundations upon which to build the immortal personality which must transcend space, vanquish time, and achieve the eternal destiny of divine perfection and [Paradise] finaliter service.
3. CONCEPTS OF SUPREME VALUE
100:3.1 Religion 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.
100:3.7 Man cannot cause growth, but he can supply favorable conditions. Growth is always unconscious, be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual. Love thus grows; it cannot be created, manufactured, or purchased; it must grow. Evolution is a cosmic technique of growth. Social growth cannot be secured by legislation, and moral growth is not had by improved administration. Man may manufacture a machine, but its real value must be derived from human culture and personal appreciation. Man’s sole contribution to growth is the mobilization of the total powers of his personality — living faith. [!! And our faith is a free gift from God !!]
4. PROBLEMS OF GROWTH
[GROWTH IN LOVING WITH UNDERSTANDING, share this with others worldwide !]
100:4.1 Religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous. New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings.
100:4.2 Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving.
100:4.3 But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of LOVE. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding. [Even the perfect Paradise Peace of our Master-Maker Jesus Christ is freely given by Him to all believers!]
100:4.4 In physical life the senses tell of the existence of things; mind discovers the reality of meanings; but the spiritual experience reveals to the individual the true values of life. These high levels of human living are attained in the supreme love of God and in the unselfish love of man. If you love your fellow men, you must have discovered their values. Jesus loved men so much because he placed such a high value upon them. You can best discover values in your associates by discovering their motivation. If some one irritates you, causes feelings of resentment, you should sympathetically seek to discern his viewpoint, his reasons for such objectionable conduct. If once you understand your neighbor, you will become tolerant, and this tolerance will grow into friendship and ripen into love.
100:4.5 [a powerful story, please share !] In the mind's eye conjure up a picture of one of your primitive ancestors of cave-dwelling times -- a short, misshapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man standing, legs spread, club upraised, breathing hate and animosity as he looks fiercely just ahead. Such a picture hardly depicts the divine dignity of man. But allow us [Melchizedek Revelators under Jesus here in Spirit] to enlarge the picture. In front of this animated human crouches a saber-toothed tiger. Behind him, a woman and two children. Immediately you recognize that such a picture stands for the beginnings of much that is fine and noble in the human race, but the man is the same in both pictures. Only in the second sketch you are favored with a widened horizon. You therein discern the motivation of this evolving [perfecting in Spirit] mortal. His attitude becomes praiseworthy because you understand him. If you could only fathom the motives of your associates, how much better you would understand them. If you could only know your fellows, you would eventually fall in love with them.
100:4.6 You cannot truly love your fellows by a mere act of the will. Love is only born of thoroughgoing understanding of your neighbor's motives and sentiments. It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being. If each day or each week you achieve an understanding of one more of your fellows, and if this is the limit of your ability, then you are certainly socializing and truly spiritualizing your personality. Love is infectious, and when human devotion is intelligent and wise, love is more catching than hate. But only genuine and unselfish love is truly contagious. If each mortal could only become a focus of dynamic affection, this benign virus of love would soon pervade the sentimental emotion-stream of humanity to such an extent that all civilization would be encompassed by love, and that would be the realization of the brotherhood of man. [Amen ! In seeking and in following Jesus as He the Spirit of Truth of God, we will, within His love, help transform this needly world into its destiny of Divine Light and progressing Life, one Beloved person at a time !]
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.
100:6.5 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.
100:6.6 One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment. Such religionists are like the Apostle Paul, who said: “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
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 [from above, supernal] 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.
7. THE ACME OF RELIGIOUS LIVING [Our Master Jesus !]
[a few selections]
100:7.5 Jesus’ originality was unstifled. He was not bound by tradition or handicapped by enslavement to narrow conventionality. He spoke with undoubted confidence and taught with absolute authority. But his superb originality did not cause him to overlook the gems of truth in the teachings of his predecessors and contemporaries. And the most original of his teachings was the emphasis of love and mercy in the place of fear and sacrifice.
100:7.8 He loved men as brothers, at the same time recognizing how they differed in innate endowments and acquired qualities. “He went about doing good.”
100:7.9 Jesus was an unusually cheerful person, but he was not a blind and unreasoning optimist. His constant word of exhortation was, “Be of good cheer.” He could maintain this confident attitude because of his unswerving trust in God and his unshakable confidence in man. He was always touchingly considerate of all men because he loved them and believed in them. Still he was always true to his convictions and magnificently firm in his devotion to the doing of his Father’s will.
100:7.12 Jesus was consistently cheerful, notwithstanding he sometimes drank deeply of the cup of human sorrow. He fearlessly faced the realities of existence, yet was he filled with enthusiasm for the gospel of the kingdom. But he controlled his enthusiasm; it never controlled him. He was unreservedly dedicated to “the Father’s business.” This divine enthusiasm led his unspiritual brethren to think he was beside himself, but the onlooking universe appraised him as the model of sanity and the pattern of supreme mortal devotion to the high standards of spiritual living. And his controlled enthusiasm was contagious; his associates were constrained to share his divine optimism.
PAPER 101 THE REAL NATURE OF RELIGION
5. RELIGION EXPANDED BY REVELATION
101:5.11 Personally revealed religions are sponsored by the bestowal Spirits representing the three persons of the Paradise Trinity and are especially concerned with the expansion of truth. Evolutionary religion drives home to the individual the idea of personal duty; revealed religion lays increasing emphasis on loving, the golden rule.
6. PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
101:6.8 The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Earth religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for: [All of this is important, and will be presented here:]
101:6.9 #1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is Spirit.
101:6.10 #2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.
101:6.11 #3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian [soul wisdom] awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of Spirit values. [of love, mercy, servive ministry, truth, beauty and goodness]
101:6.12 #4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the Spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona [the one billion ultimate-absolute-level high spheres-Heavens around Paradise] and the perfection of Paradise.
101:6.13 #5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.
101:6.14 #6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service.
101:6.15 #7. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite. [a higher transcendental levdel]
101:6.16 Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human experience of religion. [tremendous !] And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe Absolute in so far as such is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space.
101:6.17 Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, [a Gift to all humans !] mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of Eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience, of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus as he was. New potentials were actualized in the [our local] universe of Nebadon consequent upon the terminal bestowal of [Jesus Christ] Michael, and one of these was the new illumination of the path of Eternity that leads to the Father of all, and which can be traversed even by the mortals of material flesh and blood in the initial life on the planets of space. Jesus was and IS the New and Living Way whereby man can come into the divine inheritance which the Father has decreed shall be his for but the asking. In Jesus there is abundantly demonstrated both the beginnings and endings of the faith experience of humanity, even of Divine Humanity. [as our good God-Man Creator-Savior Spirit Person Jesus Christ Michael IS ...]
10. RELIGION AS MAN’S LIBERATOR
101:10.6 Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.
PAPER 102 THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
0. INTRODUCTION
102:0.1 To the unbelieving materialist, man is simply an evolutionary accident. His hopes of survival are strung on a figment of mortal imagination; his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs are but the reaction of the incidental juxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms of matter. No display of energy nor expression of trust can carry him beyond the grave. The devotional labors and inspirational genius of the best of men are doomed to be extinguished by death, the long and lonely night of eternal oblivion and soul extinction. Nameless despair is man’s only reward for living and toiling under the temporal sun of mortal existence. Each day of life slowly and surely tightens the grasp of a pitiless doom which a hostile and relentless universe of matter has decreed shall be the crowning insult to everything in human desire which is beautiful, noble, lofty, and good.
102:0.2 But such is not man’s end and eternal destiny; such a vision is but the cry of despair uttered by some wandering soul who has become lost in spiritual darkness, and who bravely struggles on in the face of the mechanistic sophistries of a material philosophy, blinded by the confusion and distortion of a complex learning. And all this doom of darkness and all this destiny of despair are forever dispelled by one brave stretch of faith on the part of the most humble and unlearned of God’s children on Earth.
102:0.3 This saving faith has its birth in the human heart when the moral consciousness of man realizes that human values may be translated in mortal experience from the material to the Spiritual, from the human to the Divine, from time to Eternity.
1. ASSURANCES OF FAITH
102:1.1 The work of the Thought Adjuster [the pure Spirit Essence of God within you ! God's will !] constitutes the explanation of the translation of man’s primitive and evolutionary sense of duty into that higher and more certain faith in the eternal realities of [continuous Spirit] Revelation. There must be perfection hunger in man’s heart to insure capacity for comprehending the faith paths to supreme attainment. If any man chooses to do the divine will, he shall know the Way of Truth. It is literally true, “Human things must be known in order to be loved, but divine things must be loved in order to be known.” But honest doubts and sincere questionings are not sin; such attitudes merely spell delay in the progressive journey toward perfection attainment. Childlike trust secures man’s entrance into the kingdom of heavenly ascent, but progress is wholly dependent on the vigorous exercise of the robust and confident faith of the full-grown man.
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.
PAPER 102 THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
3. KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, AND INSIGHT
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. [Beautiful, true and good !]
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.
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.
PAPER 102 THE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
5. THE SUPREMACY OF PURPOSIVE POTENTIAL [!!]
02:5.3 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. [!! Tremendous Revelation !!]
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.
102:6.2 The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the Living God is the Divine Light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows of all space. [Very profound ! Stated otherwise, Something only comes from Something ! Creation from nothing is a serious error.]
102:6.3 The religionist of philosophic attainment has faith in a personal God of personal salvation, something more than a reality, a value, a level of achievement, an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space, an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of gravity, a human projection, the idealization of self, nature’s upthrust, the inclination to goodness, the forward impulse of evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The religionist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization.
102:6.7 Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience overlities over the isolated facts of time and space. The convincing evidence of this spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits of the Spirit which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this genuine spiritual experience. Said Jesus: “If you love your fellows as I have loved you, then shall all men now that you are my disciples.”
7. THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE
102:7.3 Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, [!] have children without parents. [!] You cannot have effects without causes; only the [Universal Eternal Father-Infinite] I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
102:7.5 The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.
102:7.8 Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth, and the Infinite of love. [!!! Our gracious, all-loving Father God !!!]
102:7.10 Of God, the most inescapable of all Presences, the most Real of all facts, the most Living of all truths, the most Loving of all Friends, and the most Divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences.
Topical Study number 133
"LOVE -- A New
Comprehensive Revelation",
Part 9
Compiled Feb. 01, 2021 by Dave@PureChristians.org
The Urantia Book
PAPER 103 THE REALITY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
2. RELIGION AND THE INDIVIDUAL
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
103:2.2 But those persons who were so reared by their parents that they grew up in the consciousness of being children of a loving heavenly Father, should not look askance at their fellow mortals who could only attain such consciousness of fellowship with God through a psychological crisis, an emotional upheaval.
4. SPIRITUAL COMMUNION
103:4.4 Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and atonement. He destroyed the basis of all this fictitious guilt and sense of isolation in the universe by declaring that man is a child of God; the creature-Creator relationship was placed on a child-parent basis. God becomes a loving Father to his mortal sons and daughters. All ceremonials not a legitimate part of such an intimate family relationship are forever abrogated.
103:4.5 God the Father deals with man his child on the basis, not of actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition of the child’s motivation — the creature purpose and intent. The relationship is one of parent-child association and is actuated by divine love.
5. THE ORIGIN OF IDEALS
103:5.2 This idea-ideal of doing good to others — the impulse to deny the ego something for the benefit of one’s neighbor — is very circumscribed at first. Primitive man regards as neighbor only those very close to him, those who treat him neighborly; as religious civilization advances, one’s neighbor expands in concept to embrace the clan, the tribe, the nation. And then Jesus enlarged the neighbor scope to embrace the whole of humanity, even that we should love our enemies. And there is something inside of every normal human being that tells him this teaching is moral — right. Even those who practice this ideal least, admit that it is right in theory.
6. PHILOSOPHIC COORDINATION
103:6.13 [Divine] Revelation is evolutionary man’s only hope of bridging the morontia [soul-level] gulf. Faith and reason, unaided by mota, [soul super-philosophy] cannot conceive and construct a logical universe. Without the insight of mota, mortal man cannot discern goodness, love, and truth in the phenomena of the material world.
7. SCIENCE AND RELIGION
103:7.14 There is a real proof of spiritual reality in the presence of the Thought Adjuster, [God's pure Spirit Essence within you,] but the validity of this presence is not demonstrable to the external world, only to the one who thus experiences the indwelling of God. The consciousness of the Adjuster is based on the intellectual reception of truth, the supermind [soul's morality] perception of goodness, and the personality motivation to love.
8. PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
103:8.3 A good and noble man may be consummately in love with his wife but utterly unable to pass a satisfactory written examination on the psychology of marital love. Another man, having little or no love for his spouse, might pass such an examination most acceptably. The imperfection of the lover’s insight into the true nature of the beloved does not in the least invalidate either the reality or sincerity of his love. [We can personally receive, know and deeply appreciate in our souls the lavish love of our Father God without being able to intellectually understand hardly anything about God's infinite and eternal nature and attributes !!]
103:8.4 If you truly believe in God — by faith know him and love him — do not permit the reality of such an experience to be in any way lessened or detracted from by the doubting insinuations of science, the caviling of logic, the postulates of philosophy, or the clever suggestions of well-meaning souls who would create a religion without God.
9. THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION
103:9.5 Although religious experience is a purely spiritual subjective phenomenon, such an experience embraces a positive and living faith attitude toward the highest realms of universe objective reality. The ideal of religious philosophy is such a faith-trust as would lead man unqualifiedly to depend upon the absolute love of the infinite Father of the universe of universes. Such a genuine religious experience far transcends the philosophic objectification of idealistic desire; it actually takes salvation for granted and concerns itself only with learning and doing the will of the Father in Paradise. The earmarks of such a religion are: faith in a supreme Deity, hope of eternal survival, and love, especially of one’s fellows.
103:9.9 The full realization of the reality of mortal life consists in a progressive willingness to believe these assumptions of reason, wisdom, and faith. Such a life is one motivated by truth and dominated by love; and these are the ideals of objective cosmic reality whose existence cannot be materially demonstrated.
103:9.10 When reason once recognizes right and wrong, it exhibits wisdom; when wisdom chooses between right and wrong, truth and error, it demonstrates spirit leading. And thus are the functions of mind, soul, and spirit ever closely united and functionally interassociated. Reason deals with factual knowledge; wisdom, with philosophy and revelation; faith, with living spiritual experience. Through truth man attains beauty and by spiritual love ascends to goodness.
PAPER 104 GROWTH OF THE TRINITY CONCEPT
2. TRINITY UNITY AND DEITY PLURALITY
104:2.3 Through the recognition of the Trinity concept the mind of man can hope to grasp something of the interrelationship of love and law in the time-space creations. Through spiritual faith man gains insight into the love of God but soon discovers that this spiritual faith has no influence on the ordained laws of the material universe. Irrespective of the firmness of man's belief in God as his Paradise Father, expanding cosmic horizons demand that he also give recognition to the reality of Paradise Deity as universal law, that he recognize the Trinity sovereignty extending outward from Paradise and overshadowing even the evolving local universes of the Creator Sons [our Universe Father-Son Jesus Christ] and Creative Daughters [our Creative Holy Spirit] of the three Eternal Persons whose deity union is the fact and reality and eternal indivisibility of the Paradise Trinity. [Three Deities in Paradise as Two Deities in our local universe and all as One in Spirit Will-Union.]
4. THE SEVEN TRIUNITIES
104:4.7 [The First Triunity of the Paradise Father, Son and Spirit:] This is the threefold union of love, mercy, and ministry — the purposive and personal association of the three eternal Paradise personalities. This is the divinely fraternal, creature-loving, fatherly-acting, and ascension-promoting association. The divine personalities of this first triunity are personality-bequeathing, spirit-bestowing, and mind-endowing Gods.
104:4.14 [The Second Triunity — the power-pattern triunity:] In religious experience, creatures make contact with the God who is love, but such spiritual insight must never eclipse the intelligent recognition of the universe fact of the pattern which is Paradise. The Paradise personalities enlist the freewill adoration of all creatures by the compelling power of divine love and lead all such Spirit-born personalities into the supernal delights of the unending service of the finaliter sons of God. The second triunity is the architect of the space stage whereon these transactions unfold; it determines the patterns of cosmic configuration.
104:4.15 Love may characterize the divinity of the first triunity, but pattern is the galactic manifestation of the second triunity. What the first triunity is to evolving personalities, the second triunity is to the evolving universes. Pattern and personality are two of the great manifestations of the acts of the First Source and Center; and no matter how difficult it may be to comprehend, it is nonetheless true that the power-pattern and the loving person are one and the same universal reality; the Paradise Isle and the Eternal Son are coordinate but antipodal revelations of the unfathomable nature of the Universal [I AM Infinite-] Father-Force.
PAPER 105 DEITY AND REALITY
1. THE PHILOSOPHIC CONCEPT OF THE I AM
105:1.8 [Important:] Infinity is indeed remote from the experience level of mortal comprehension, but even in this age on Earth your concepts of infinity are growing, and they will continue to grow throughout your endless careers stretching onward into future eternity. Unqualified infinity is meaningless to the finite creature, but infinity is capable of self-limitation and is susceptible of reality expression to all levels of universe existences. And the face which the Infinite turns toward all universe personalities is the face of a Father, the Universal Father of love.
2. THE I AM AS TRIUNE AND AS SEVENFOLD
105:2.3 [Very complex, only parts are presented here:] ... though infinite, is revealed as absolute in the presence of the First Source and Center and as personality in the limitless love of the Universal Father. [infinite, unconditional love !!]
105:2.6 2. The Universal Controller. I AM cause of eternal Paradise. This is the primal impersonal relationship of actualities, the original nonspiritual association. The Universal Father is God-as-love; the Universal Controller is God-as-pattern. This relationship establishes the potential of form — configuration — and determines the master pattern of impersonal and nonspiritual relationship — the master pattern from which all copies are made.
3. THE SEVEN ABSOLUTES OF INFINITY
105:3.2 1. The First Source and Center. First Person of Deity and primal nondeity pattern, God, the Universal Father, creator, controller, and upholder; universal love, eternal spirit, and infinite energy; potential of all potentials and source of all actuals; stability of all statics and dynamism of all change; source of pattern and Father of persons. Collectively, all seven Absolutes equivalate to infinity, but the Universal Father himself actually is infinite.
PAPER 106 UNIVERSE LEVELS OF REALITY
1. PRIMARY ASSOCIATION OF FINITE FUNCTIONALS
106:1.3 God the Sevenfold signifies the recognition by Paradise Deity of the barriers of time in the evolutionary universes of space. No matter how remote from Paradise, how deep in space, a material survival personality [humans] may take origin, God the Sevenfold will be found there present and engaged in the loving and merciful ministry of truth, beauty, and goodness to such an incomplete, struggling, and evolutionary creature. The divinity ministry of the Sevenfold reaches inward through the Eternal Son to the Paradise Father and outward through the Ancients of Days to the universe Fathers — the Creator Sons. [our universe Creator Son of God is Jesus Christ Michael]
3. TRANSCENDENTAL TERTIARY REALITY ASSOCIATION
106:3.5 Throughout all the gigantic universe developments of past and future eternity, we detect the expansion of the comprehensible elements of the Universal Father. As the I AM, we philosophically postulate his permeation of total infinity, but no creature is able experientially to encompass such a postulate. As the universes expand, and as gravity and love reach out into time-organizing space, we are able to understand more and more of the First Source and Center. [God in the largest sense of Personality-Pattern-Power and more !] We observe gravity action penetrating the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute, and we detect Spirit creatures evolving and expanding within the divinity presence of the Deity Absolute while both cosmic and spirit evolution are by mind and experience unifying on finite deity levels as the Supreme Being and are coordinating on transcendental levels as the Trinity Ultimate. [Our Sovereign God-Man Jesus is now a Member of the Trinity Ultimate !!]
9. EXISTENTIAL INFINITE UNIFICATION
106:9.12 [The closing paragraph in this section:] To material, evolutionary, finite creatures, a life predicated on the living of the Father’s will leads directly to the attainment of spirit supremacy in the personality arena and brings such creatures one step nearer the comprehension of the [I AM] Father-Infinite. Such a Father life is one predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, and dominated by goodness. Such a God-knowing person is inwardly illuminated by worship and outwardly devoted to the wholehearted service of the universal brotherhood of all personalities, a service ministry which is filled with mercy and motivated by love, while all these life qualities are unified in the evolving personality on ever-ascending levels of cosmic wisdom, self-realization, God-finding, and Father worship. [Profound truths !]
PAPER 107 ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THOUGHT ADJUSTERS
[Your Thought Adjuster, also called your Mystery Monitor, is the pure Spirit Essence of God indwelling you mind, the will of God, co-creating with you the higher soul you when you are trying to do and to achieve God's will.]
0. INTRODUCTION
107:0.2 The Adjusters are the actuality of the Father’s love incarnate in the souls of men; they are the veritable promise of man’s eternal career imprisoned within the mortal mind; they are the essence of man’s perfected finaliter personality, which he can foretaste in time as he progressively masters the divine technique of achieving the living of the Father’s will, step by step, through the ascension of universe upon universe until he actually attains the divine presence of his Paradise Father.
1. ORIGIN OF THOUGHT ADJUSTERS
107:1.6 In their relationship to fusion creatures they reveal a supernal love and spiritual ministry that is profoundly confirmative of the declaration that God is spirit. But there is much that takes place in addition to this transcendent ministry that has never been revealed to Urantia mortals. Neither do we fully understand just what really transpires when the Universal Father gives of himself to be a part of the personality of a creature of time. Nor has the ascending progression of the Paradise finaliters as yet disclosed the full possibilities inherent in this supernal partnership of man and God. In the last analysis, the Father fragments must be the gift of the absolute God to those creatures whose destiny encompasses the possibility of the attainment of God as absolute. [There are five ascending levels of Reality: Supreme, Ultimate, Absolute, Infinite, God the Universal Father I AM]
5. ADJUSTER MINDEDNESS
107:5.2 Since Adjusters can plan, work, and love, they must have powers of selfhood which are commensurate with mind. They are possessed of unlimited ability to communicate with each other, that is, all forms of Monitors above the first or virgin groups. As to the nature and purport of their intercommunications, we can reveal very little, for we do not know. And we further know that they must be minded in some manner else they could never be personalized.
6. ADJUSTERS AS PURE SPIRITS
107:6.2 The Adjuster is man’s eternity possibility; man is the Adjuster’s personality possibility. Your individual Adjusters work to spiritize you in the hope of eternalizing your temporal identity. The Adjusters are saturated with the beautiful and self-bestowing love of the Father of spirits. They truly and divinely love you; they are the prisoners of spirit hope confined within the minds of men. They long for the divinity attainment of your mortal minds that their loneliness may end, that they may be delivered with you from the limitations of material investiture and the habiliments of time.
7. ADJUSTERS AND PERSONALITY
107:7.2 If Thought Adjusters are not personalities having prerogatives of will and powers of choice, how then can they select mortal subjects and volunteer to indwell these creatures of the evolutionary worlds? This is a question easy to ask, but probably no being in the universe of universes has ever found the exact answer. Even my order of personality, the Solitary Messengers, does not fully understand the endowment of will, choice, and love in entities that are not personal.
107:7.5 Throughout a universe of created beings and nonpersonal energies we do not observe will, volition, choice, and love manifested apart from personality. Except in the Adjusters and other similar entities we do not witness these attributes of personality functioning in association with impersonal realities. It would not be correct to designate an Adjuster as subpersonal, neither would it be proper to allude to such an entity as superpersonal, but it would be entirely permissible to term such a being prepersonal.
PAPER 108 MISSION AND MINISTRY OF THOUGHT ADJUSTERS
2. PREREQUISITES OF ADJUSTER INDWELLING
108:2.9 4. The spirit of brotherhood. Regardless of the attainment of the psychic circles and the assignment of personal guardians — in the absence of anything resembling a crisis decision — when an evolving mortal becomes dominated by the love of his fellows and consecrated to unselfish ministry to his brethren in the flesh, the waiting Adjuster unvaryingly descends to indwell the mind of such a mortal minister. [The Thought Adjuster is the pre-personal Spirit Essence of God the Universal Father -- the perfect will of God -- and destined to eventually fuse as one with you, which makes you eternally perfect in Spirit. The pre-personal Adjuster then fully shares as one your personality. A win-win reality for both you and the Divine Thought Adjuster !!]
5. THE ADJUSTER’S MISSION
108:5.8 The Thought Adjusters would like to change your feelings of fear to convictions of love and confidence; but they cannot mechanically and arbitrarily do such things; that is your task. In executing those decisions which deliver you from the fetters of fear, you literally supply the psychic fulcrum on which the Adjuster may subsequently apply a spiritual lever of uplifting and advancing illumination.
PAPER 110 RELATION OF ADJUSTERS TO INDIVIDUAL MORTALS
0. Introduction
110:0.1 The endowment of imperfect beings with freedom entails inevitable tragedy, and it is the nature of the perfect ancestral Deity to universally and affectionately share these sufferings in loving companionship.
110:0.2 As far as I [a high Solitary Messenger directly created by the Paradise Infinite Spirit. There are over 50 quadrillion of them now in the whole Grand universe ! About 7,690 on average per human-inhabited planet. They travel through space at about 4 to 5 million times the speed of light ! over 800 billion miles per second ! That seems very impressive; but many high beings travel at infinite velocity; and some are omnipresent !] am conversant with the affairs of a universe, I regard the love and devotion of a Thought Adjuster as the most truly divine affection in all creation. The love of the Sons in their ministry to the races is superb, but the devotion of an Adjuster to the individual is touchingly sublime, divinely Fatherlike. The Paradise Father has apparently reserved this form of personal contact with his individual creatures as an exclusive Creator prerogative. And there is nothing in all the universe of universes exactly comparable to the marvelous ministry of these impersonal entities that so fascinatingly indwell the children of the evolutionary planets.
1. INDWELLING THE MORTAL MIND
110:1.2 I wish it were possible for me to help evolving mortals to achieve a better understanding and attain a fuller appreciation of the unselfish and superb work of the Adjusters living within them, who are so devoutly faithful to the task of fostering man’s spiritual welfare. These Monitors are efficient ministers to the higher phases of men’s minds; they are wise and experienced manipulators of the spiritual potential of the human intellect. These heavenly helpers are dedicated to the stupendous task of guiding you safely inward and upward to the celestial haven of happiness. These tireless toilers are consecrated to the future personification of the triumph of divine Truth in your life everlasting. They are the watchful workers who pilot the God-conscious human mind away from the shoals of evil while expertly guiding the evolving soul of man toward the divine harbors of perfection on far-distant and eternal shores. The Adjusters are loving leaders, your safe and sure guides through the dark and uncertain mazes of your short earthly career; they are the patient teachers who so constantly urge their subjects forward in the paths of progressive perfection. They are the careful custodians of the sublime values of creature character. I wish you could love them more, cooperate with them more fully, and cherish them more affectionately.
3. COOPERATION WITH THE ADJUSTER
110:3.4 I cannot but observe that so many of you spend so much time and thought on mere trifles of living, while you almost wholly overlook the more essential realities of everlasting import, those very accomplishments which are concerned with the development of a more harmonious working agreement between you and your Adjusters. The great goal of human existence is to attune to the divinity of the indwelling Adjuster; the great achievement of mortal life is the attainment of a true and understanding consecration to the eternal aims of the divine Spirit who waits and works within your mind. But a devoted and determined effort to realize eternal Destiny is wholly compatible with a lighthearted and joyous life and with a successful and honorable career on earth. Cooperation with the Thought Adjuster does not entail self-torture, mock piety, or hypocritical and ostentatious self-abasement; the ideal life is one of loving service rather than an existence of fearful apprehension.
110:3.5 Confusion, being puzzled, even sometimes discouraged and distracted, does not necessarily signify resistance to the leadings of the indwelling Adjuster. Such attitudes may sometimes connote lack of active co-operation with the divine Monitor and may, therefore, somewhat delay spiritual progress, but such intellectual emotional difficulties do not in the least interfere with the certain survival of the God-knowing soul. Ignorance alone can never prevent survival; neither can confusional doubts nor fearful uncertainty. Only conscious resistance to the Adjuster’s leading can prevent the survival of the evolving immortal soul.
110:3.6 You must not regard cooperation with your Adjuster as a particularly conscious process, for it is not; but your motives and your decisions, your faithful determinations and your supreme desires, do constitute real and effective cooperation. You can consciously augment Adjuster harmony by:
110:3.7 1. Choosing to respond to divine leading; sincerely basing the human life on the highest consciousness of truth, beauty, and goodness, and then co-ordinating these qualities of divinity through wisdom, worship, faith, and love.
110:3.8 2. Loving God and desiring to be like him — genuine recognition of the divine fatherhood and loving worship of the heavenly Parent.
110:3.9 3. Loving man and sincerely desiring to serve him — wholehearted recognition of the brotherhood of man coupled with an intelligent and wise affection for each of your fellow mortals.
110:3.10 4. Joyful acceptance of cosmic citizenship — honest recognition of your progressive obligations to the Supreme Being, awareness of the interdependence of evolutionary man and evolving Deity. This is the birth of cosmic morality and the dawning realization of universal duty.
7. THE ATTAINMENT OF IMMORTALITY
110:7.6 But with the vast majority of humans on Earth the Adjuster must patiently await the arrival of death deliverance; must await the liberation of the emerging soul from the well-nigh complete domination of the energy patterns and chemical forces inherent in your material order of existence. The chief difficulty you experience in contacting with your Adjusters consists in this very inherent material nature. So few mortals are real thinkers; you do not spiritually develop and discipline your minds to the point of favorable liaison with the divine Adjusters. The ear of the human mind is almost deaf to the spiritual pleas which the Adjuster translates from the manifold messages of the universal broadcasts of love proceeding from the Father of mercies. The Adjuster finds it almost impossible to register these inspiring Spirit leadings in an animal mind so completely dominated by the chemical and electrical forces inherent in your physical natures.
110:7.7 Adjusters rejoice to make contact with the mortal mind; but they must be patient through the long years of silent sojourn during which they are unable to break through animal resistance and directly communicate with you. The higher the Thought Adjusters ascend in the scale of service, the more efficient they become. But never can they greet you, in the flesh, with the same full, sympathetic, and expressionful affection as they will when you discern them mind to mind on the mansion worlds. [!! the next advancing series of soul-reality Heavens for us !]
110:7.10 During the making and breaking of a contact between the mortal mind of a destiny reservist and the planetary supervisors, sometimes the indwelling Adjuster is so situated that it becomes possible to transmit a message to the mortal partner. Not long since, on Earth, such a message was transmitted by a self-acting Adjuster to the human associate, a member of the reserve corps of destiny. This message was introduced by these words: “And now, without injury or jeopardy to the subject of my solicitous devotion and without intent to overchastise or discourage, for me, make record of this my plea to him.” Then followed a beautifully touching and appealing admonition. Among other things, the Adjuster pleaded “that he more faithfully give me his sincere cooperation, more cheerfully endure the tasks of my emplacement, more faithfully carry out the program of my arrangement, more patiently go through the trials of my selection, more persistently and cheerfully tread the path of my choosing, more humbly receive credit that may accrue as a result of my ceaseless endeavors [!!] — thus transmit my admonition to the man of my indwelling. Upon him I bestow the supreme devotion and affection of a divine Spirit. And say further to my beloved subject that I will function with wisdom and power until the very end, until the last earth struggle is over; I will be true to my personality trust. And I exhort him to survival, not to disappoint me, not to deprive me of the reward of my patient and intense struggle. On the human will our achievement of personality depends. Circle by circle I have patiently ascended this human mind, and I have testimony that I am meeting the approval of the chief of my kind. [The Personalized Thought Adjuster that our Creator son Jesus Christ Michael had when incarnate here is the Chief Adjuster of all Adjusters in Jesus' and our local universe of Nebadon !] Circle by circle I am passing on to judgment. I await with pleasure and without apprehension the roll call of destiny; I am prepared to submit all to the tribunals of the Ancients of Days.”
