I often find myself confused, even confounded, by many of the complexities and relational aspects of many concepts in the UB. Besides some college, I am mostly self taught by endless reading driven by keen curiosity, not to be confused with “educated” or having great intellect!! Hahaha. So I do find myself in deep water once in awhile and even “in over my head” time to time. I’ve been there for some time now, in this Paper especially and what comes next.
Just because I have the confidence and nerve to begin these studies and posts of these Middle Papers does not indicate any confidence in my own understanding…which tends to be very evolutionary the more often I study them. I always find new concepts hiding in the rough and the weeds which I find myself in so frequently conceptually. But new meanings from prior understanding and perception deliver endless “Ah-Ha” moments….juicy and delectable tidbits and occasional brilliant moments of insight (moments of satori) – the great reward for the sincere and earnest truth seeker!! Discovery and Discernment!! I am sure you know what I mean.
I look forward to the insights of others and the meanings discovered by others within these incredible teachings about The Reality of Religious Experience!! I have come to depend upon and take delight in others’ discoveries and descriptions of truth and meaning which help me to attain ever more insight and perception of reality. Thanks to all who so share here.
Before we continue in Paper 103, I discovered this little gem in my reading today, which helped me understand and accept my own lack of understanding. It is the second quote I’ve found that teaches that the mind will invent facts and reality constructs and do so in complete or partial ignorance of reality itself. The mind requires frames of reference and will construct its own when facts are unavailable or unknown or disbelieved!! Incredible! And the very reason we are provided Epochal Revelation to clarify, specify, and articulate universe reality to reduce confusions and eliminate the errors that mind will boldly embrace without the facts and knowledge presented by such Epochal Revelation. So reasonable and logical don’t you think??!!
1. Relativity of Concept Frames
115:1.1 (1260.2) Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree.
115:1.2 (1260.3) Conceptual frames of the universe are only relatively true; they are serviceable scaffolding which must eventually give way before the expansions of enlarging cosmic comprehension. The understandings of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time, space, even Deity, are only relatively true. God is much, much more than a Father, but the Father is man’s highest concept of God; nonetheless, the Father-Son portrayal of Creator-creature relationship will be augmented by those supermortal conceptions of Deity which will be attained in Orvonton, in Havona, and on Paradise. Man must think in a mortal universe frame, but that does not mean that he cannot envision other and higher frames within which thought can take place.
And back to our reading and study of Paper 103:
103:6.11 (1137.1) Science must always be grounded in reason, although imagination and conjecture are helpful in the extension of its borders. Religion is forever dependent on faith, albeit reason is a stabilizing influence and a helpful handmaid. And always there have been, and ever will be, misleading interpretations of the phenomena of both the natural and the spiritual worlds, sciences and religions falsely so called.
103:6.12 (1137.2) Out of his incomplete grasp of science, his faint hold upon religion, and his abortive attempts at metaphysics, man has attempted to construct his formulations of philosophy. And modern man would indeed build a worthy and engaging philosophy of himself and his universe were it not for the breakdown of his all-important and indispensable metaphysical connection between the worlds of matter and spirit, the failure of metaphysics to bridge the morontia gulf between the physical and the spiritual. Mortal man lacks the concept of morontia mind and material; and revelation is the only technique for atoning for this deficiency in the conceptual data which man so urgently needs in order to construct a logical philosophy of the universe and to arrive at a satisfying understanding of his sure and settled place in that universe.
103:6.13 (1137.3) Revelation is evolutionary man’s only hope of bridging the morontia gulf. Faith and reason, unaided by mota, 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.
103:6.14 (1137.4) When the philosophy of man leans heavily toward the world of matter, it becomes rationalistic or naturalistic. When philosophy inclines particularly toward the spiritual level, it becomes idealistic or even mystical. When philosophy is so unfortunate as to lean upon metaphysics, it unfailingly becomes skeptical, confused. In past ages, most of man’s knowledge and intellectual evaluations have fallen into one of these three distortions of perception. Philosophy dare not project its interpretations of reality in the linear fashion of logic; it must never fail to reckon with the elliptic symmetry of reality and with the essential curvature of all relation concepts.
103:6.15 (1137.5) The highest attainable philosophy of mortal man must be logically based on the reason of science, the faith of religion, and the truth insight afforded by revelation. By this union man can compensate somewhat for his failure to develop an adequate metaphysics and for his inability to comprehend the mota of the morontia.
Please note 6.13 above…this, I think, explains all those in the world, (and among UB students in particular!!!) who wallow in doom and gloom and cannot seem to see the brilliance of reality and progress and the religious light and love of 7 billion souls on our world. All that some can see is the evil and suffering and dark patches on the glorious white background of truth, beauty, and goodness. It is as if they are blind or unable to focus or perceive the realities of the spirit in the world today, yesterday, and every day….no matter the calamities and tragedies that are the repercussions of evil and error. I say UB students in particular because they/we have this Revelation of fact and knowledge and truth which clearly tells us – over and over again! – how wonderful is reality and how friendly is the universe and how certain in our progress on Urantia and how inevitable is our planetary destiny! Still do they fail to perceive it!!
Personal revelation AND epochal revelation deliver the insights needed to “see” and to “hear” and to “believe” in those realities that mota will make clear to us as we mature in the Spirit. But, we are taught, the evidence of reality is truly all around us…but some of us simply do not and cannot perceive it….we lack the faith and are blinded to reality by our fears and lack of personal Circle Progress which prevents us from discerning the truth and beauty and goodness all around us IN the MATERIAL world and life. Jesus certainly saw it and took great delight in the people of this world and found the light of the Spirit everywhere he traveled. Some of us are blinded by the beams in our eyes while we judge others and the world around us so harshly. Some of us starve at the banquet table and thirst at the edge of the fountain of life.
Yet so many of us 7 billion mortals take delight in life and serve one another and love others and lead the blinded ones forward toward inevitable Light and Life!! Glorious!!
"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."
