Greetings to All who are following along and those who might post questions, comments, insights, stories, and/or additional supporting and illuminating text for sharing!
It is true, or so I have it found it so, that there are no superfluous or unimportant or uninteresting contents in the Papers. But I think each person and mind does find those concepts and contents that are of greater importance to us relative to our personal religious experience and progress in the Spirit…at the time of reading and study. Those concepts which leap from the page to mind in confirmation of belief and experience and those which trigger insights of connection, completion, and profound truth realizations lead each mind forward further and further into the text for more and greater discoveries!! This curiosity cycle of hunger and its satisfaction is a natural function of the human mind.
The Holy Spirit through the Adjutants and the Thought Adjusters and Son’s Spirit each and all utilize this same mind circuitry – we feel the yearn and the hunger and the thirst – and our personal response to the Spirit within brings us satisfaction. Science teaches us that the brain – the electro/chemical aspect of mind or the host of our mind if you will – has similar craving and satisfaction centers and neuro response mechanisms, pleasure centers which trigger/cause certain behaviors and respond/effects to certain stimuli. This pattern of our physiology is also very present and active in-mind, the host of belief, faith, emotion, feelings, trusts, loyalties, insight, religion, and Spirit; mind, the arena of choice.
1. The Mind Arena of Choice
111:1.1 (1216.2) Though the work of Adjusters is spiritual in nature, they must, perforce, do all their work upon an intellectual foundation. Mind is the human soil from which the spirit Monitor must evolve the morontia soul with the co-operation of the indwelt personality.
111:1.3 (1216.4) Material mind is the arena in which human personalities live, are self-conscious, make decisions, choose God or forsake him, eternalize or destroy themselves.
111:1.6 (1217.1) Mind is the cosmic instrument on which the human will can play the discords of destruction, or upon which this same human will can bring forth the exquisite melodies of God identification and consequent eternal survival. The Adjuster bestowed upon man is, in the last analysis, impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can actually be twisted, distorted, and rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will. Likewise can this mind be made noble, beautiful, true, and good — actually great — in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being.
111:2.2 (1217.6) The material mind of mortal man is the cosmic loom that carries the morontia fabrics on which the indwelling Thought Adjuster threads the spirit patterns of a universe character of enduring values and divine meanings — a surviving soul of ultimate destiny and unending career, a potential finaliter.
Me here: Sometimes I feel like the UB is also a loom which manages to weave a very unique fabric and pattern of color and texture for each student – each of us has a very unique student experience by our studies and in our mind. Knowledge is personalized based on prior experience and our appreciation, cognition/discernment, and integration with other knowledge. So….all the tens of thousands of facts or bits of knowledge within this Epochal Revelation result in a very personalized appreciation of them and utilization of them in our own experience and expressions of understanding and realization. Even more amazing is the ability of these Papers and Teachings to stimulate and deliver ever-new and expanding conceptualizations, understandings, appreciation, integrations, and the enhanced and expanded perspective of the student with each reading or study of the text.
The reading and study of the UB is sort of metaphorical in its effects and results compared to the spiritualization of mind and growth of soul I think – meaning only that it is also transformative in its effects over time and experience…it is dynamic and responsive to experience and the growth of wisdom over time. Now this is only true of course if one actually applies the information and the teachings and truly gains insights and realizes truths by the experience of such applications….reading, like mere believing delivers no true or valid or useful effects. Reading and/or believing are truly the causes of little or no effect!
My own experience with the Papers has been very accumulative over time whereby I enjoy a growing appreciation and expanding perspective that seems both greater in content and also in integration and harmonization of its contents and of the universe of universes it factually describes….it’s not just that’s there more content but that there is more meaning and value too….more and more effect from the same source of cause, the same facts, the same knowledge – both source and content delivers new meanings to discover and values to apply in the daily walk of mortal life. It reminds me of the feedback loop of potential and its realization leading always to ever more potential by its ever greater realization…ad infintum!
This describes the human condition…and our adventure to come. The universes we are told are a vast university….learning, adapting to learning, and harmonizing our experience with others also learning in loving service to one another is the grand wheel of our destiny. This will never end…this perfecting of wisdom by experience as we and once we have perfected our will and inner natures regarding motive, intention, and priority. These 3 realities and causes we may perfect…but I doubt if we might ever exhaust the potential of experiential wisdom and the cause and effect potential of the unintended and unexpected outcomes NO MATTER our perfected motives, intention, and priorities??!! Will we ever experience an end to surprise? Or uncertainty? Or adventure? I have my doubts about such an eventuation of outcomes for those born/created in time and space. I think our destiny is endless and eternal….but it will be an eternally endless adventure!
Of course the cause of this transformative and transcendent experience I describe above, related to the study of the Urantia Papers (whether one comes to believe its claims for itself or not), is a function of the mind and its truth recognition role related to: 1). Evolutionary religion, science, and philosophy, 2). Personal experience with all those, and 3). Epochal Revelation. Each of these three realities have there own limitations and each depends upon the other two for greatest effect.
Naturally we must first have curiosity and a mind which seeks understanding and truth in general, and we must have enough self control and will that we seek to overcome personal ignorance and the ego attachments which deliver prejudice (the love of our current beliefs and knowledge), and it helps if we have sufficient hope and faith and trust that we can lay aside anxieties in such pursuits. By this WAY may the mind be transformed by the transcendent experience for which it is designed and created!
It takes the personal poise and trust of a faith child to overcome the limitations of revelation while gaining the full harvest of its potential fruits!
4. The Limitations of Revelation
101:4.1 (1109.2) Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented.
101:4.2 (1109.3) Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve.
101:4.3 (1109.4) Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.
101:4.4 (1109.5) In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine excellence.
"Live loyally today—grow—and tomorrow will attend to itself. The quickest way for a tadpole to become a frog is to live loyally each moment as a tadpole."
