The goal of this course is to become like God, to develop the grandeur of genuine character achievement, the beautiful wholeness of righteousness. These three expressions are equivalent and complementary. In university terms, this is an ethics course, since the main goal is character growth, but, like a full philosophy course, the reading deals largely with two of philosophy’s disciplines in the realm of truth, philosophy of science and philosophy of religion, and it also contains a section and more on aesthetics.
“In all that you do, become not one-sided and overspecialized. The Pharisees who seek our destruction verily think they are doing God’s service. They have become so narrowed by tradition that they are blinded by prejudice and hardened by fear. Consider the Greeks, who have a science without religion, while the Jews have a religion without science. And when men become thus misled into accepting a narrow and confused disintegration of truth, their only hope of salvation is to become truth-co-ordinated — converted.
“Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness . . . .
Week 4. Biologically Responsible Living
The Stop and Ponder quote for the week
(1209.4) 110:6.4 When the development of the intellectual nature proceeds faster than that of the spiritual, such a situation renders communication with the Thought Adjuster both difficult and dangerous. Likewise, overspiritual development tends to produce a fanatical and perverted interpretation of the spirit leadings of the divine indweller. Lack of spiritual capacity makes it very difficult to transmit to such a material intellect the spiritual truths resident in the higher superconsciousness. It is to the mind of perfect poise, housed in a body of clean habits, stabilized neural energies, and balanced chemical function — when the physical, mental, and spiritual powers are in triune harmony of development — that a maximum of light and truth can be imparted with a minimum of temporal danger or risk to the real welfare of such a being. By such a balanced growth does man ascend the circles of planetary progression one by one, from the seventh to the first.
The coming week’s themes
This week we are to pay some extra attention to health, ecological responsibilities, and healing; and we will probe one question in greater depth: How shall we acquire the mind of perfect poise as we interpret our religious experience more wisely, strengthening our scientific realism regarding the electro-chemical, neurological processes that support the mind in which we become conscious of such experience? (I assume that the mind of perfect poise—a mental virtue—presupposes a body of clean habits, stabilized neural energies, and balanced chemical function, and that lack of mental poise is symptomatic, in part, of a lack of these physical prerequisites). If we address this question effectively, we shall sharpen our capacity for spiritual intuition and progress in integrating the three functions of cosmic mind in our character.
Health and the Human Body
2:7.11 (43.4) Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. Such levels of efficient living come about through the unification of energy systems, idea systems, and spirit systems.
We look forward in faith to surviving this life and arriving on mansion world number one, where a primary attention is paid to a diverse array of front-burner issues, deficiencies in character and experience, with a special focus on “biological deficiencies,” broadly understood to include “sex life, family association, and parental function” (47:4.7/535.3). This week we will revert to the human convention of interpreting biology less holistically.
The Foreword sets forth the aspects of the human person with stunning clarity. I give only the portion that pertains to the body.
0:5.5 (8.5) The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality. The Eternal Son is the absolute personality, the secret of spiritual energy, morontia spirits, and perfected spirits. The Conjoint Actor is the spirit-mind personality, the source of intelligence, reason, and the universal mind. But the Isle of Paradise is nonpersonal and extraspiritual, being the essence of the universal body, the source and center of physical matter, and the absolute master pattern of universal material reality.
These qualities of universal reality are manifest in Urantian human experience on the following levels:
1. Body. The material or physical organism of man. The living electrochemical mechanism of animal nature and origin.
Understanding the significance of the body, we naturally want to take good care of it.
The Adjuster remains with you in all disaster and through every sickness which does not wholly destroy the mentality. But how unkind knowingly to defile or otherwise deliberately to pollute the physical body, which must serve as the earthly tabernacle of this marvelous gift from God. All physical poisons greatly retard the efforts of the Adjuster to exalt the material mind, while the mental poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance likewise tremendously interfere with the spiritual progress of the evolving soul. (110:1.5/1204.3)
“It is not a duty but rather your exalted privilege to cleanse yourselves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for perfection in the love of God” (143:2.6/1610.1).
194:3.19 (2065.7) The coming of the Spirit of Truth purifies the human heart and leads the recipient to formulate a life purpose single to the will of God and the welfare of men. The material spirit of selfishness has been swallowed up in this new spiritual bestowal of selflessness. Pentecost, then and now, signifies that the Jesus of history has become the divine Son of living experience. The joy of this outpoured spirit, when it is consciously experienced in human life, is a tonic for health, a stimulus for mind, and an unfailing energy for the soul.
(1229.1) 112:2.14 The possibility of the unification of the evolving self is inherent in the qualities of its constitutive factors: the basic energies, the master tissues, the fundamental chemical overcontrol, the supreme ideas, the supreme motives, the supreme goals, and the divine spirit of Paradise bestowal — the secret of the self-consciousness of man’s spiritual nature.
(299.2) 27:1.2 Rest is of a sevenfold nature: There is the rest of sleep and of play in the lower life orders, discovery in the higher beings, and worship in the highest type of spirit personality. There is also the normal rest of energy intake, the recharging of beings with physical or with spiritual energy.
(733.6) 65:2.16 In this way the life that was planted on Urantia evolved until the ice age, when man himself first appeared and began his eventful planetary career. And this appearance of primitive man on earth during the ice age was not just an accident; it was by design. The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.
(382.5) 34:7.5 Urantia mortals are compelled to undergo such marked struggling between the spirit and the flesh because their remote ancestors were not more fully Adamized by the Edenic bestowal. . . .
(382.6) 34:7.6 Notwithstanding this double disaster to man’s nature and his environment, present-day mortals would experience less of this apparent warfare between the flesh and the spirit if they would enter the spirit kingdom, wherein the faith sons of God enjoy comparative deliverance from the slave-bondage of the flesh in the enlightened and liberating service of wholehearted devotion to doing the will of the Father in heaven. Jesus showed mankind the new way of mortal living whereby human beings may very largely escape the dire consequences of the Caligastic rebellion and most effectively compensate for the deprivations resulting from the Adamic default. “The spirit of the life of Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of animal living and the temptations of evil and sin.” “This is the victory that overcomes the flesh, even your faith.”
(383.1) 34:7.7 Those God-knowing men and women who have been born of the Spirit experience no more conflict with their mortal natures than do the inhabitants of the most normal of worlds, planets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by rebellion. Faith sons work on intellectual levels and live on spiritual planes far above the conflicts produced by unrestrained or unnatural physical desires. The normal urges of animal beings and the natural appetites and impulses of the physical nature are not in conflict with even the highest spiritual attainment except in the minds of ignorant, mistaught, or unfortunately overconscientious persons.
Ecology
The Urantia Book does not explicitly discuss problems of ecological conservation, restoration, and sustainability, though there are occasional relevant remarks about “the wise nation that knows when to cease growing” (in population), the inspiring details of Adamic life during the first Garden, and, this profoundly sad observation:
4:2.8 (57.5) Nature is marred, her beautiful face is scarred, her features are seared, by the rebellion, the misconduct, the misthinking of the myriads of creatures who are a part of nature, but who have contributed to her disfigurement in time.
And we may want to apply the following quote to the present ecological crisis:
92:7.14 (1013.9) Modern man is confronted with the task of making more readjustments of human values in one generation than have been made in two thousand years.
After we break through our own resistance to beginning an honest inquiry into our ecological responsibilities, we want to remember that the readjustments called for in this quote are first and foremost on the level of values. We shall avoid panic and self-righteous anger. Especially during this week we shall cultivate, receive, and preserve “the mind of perfect poise”; and then perhaps we may graciously take up a course of action that may lead to one more new, clean, ecological habit. Every moral decision enhances the whole system of the personality, so that our electrochemical mechanism (body) feels more calm and solid.
Healing
(1658.4) 148:2.1 In connection with the seaside encampment, Elman, the Syrian physician, with the assistance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, organized and conducted for four months what should be regarded as the kingdom’s first hospital. At this infirmary, located a short distance to the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in accordance with all known material methods as well as by the spiritual practices of prayer and faith encouragement. Jesus visited the sick of this encampment not less than three times a week and made personal contact with each sufferer. . . .
(1658.5) 148:2.2 Many of the cures effected by Jesus in connection with his ministry in behalf of Elman’s patients did, indeed, appear to resemble the working of miracles, but we were instructed that they were only just such transformations of mind and spirit as may occur in the experience of expectant and faith-dominated persons who are under the immediate and inspirational influence of a strong, positive, and beneficent personality whose ministry banishes fear and destroys anxiety.
Notice the combination of scientific and spiritual methods, prayer and faith encouragement, and the kind of person that we are becoming who can do this blessed work: a strong, positive, beneficient person whose ministry banishes fear and destroys anxiety. Perhaps this week will bring you an occasion for service-discovery or ministry-revelation.
Neuroscience and religious experience
We are given the glorious adventure of sharpening our capacities for intuition in the realms of cosmic mind: causation, duty, and worship. This conjunction of topics is designed to help us to sharpen our capacity for spiritual intuition through a dutiful awareness of neurological causation as it may affect our spiritual experience. I will argue for more caution in interpreting what we understand to be our spiritual experiences; but some of us need more faith-confidence and trust to venture wholeheartedly into spiritual experience. So let me emphasize the first truth of spiritual experience: YOU CAN!
Your very mind is graced by the spirit of worship, that level of Mother’s consciousness that inherently gives you the capacity for spiritual experience (see the expansive definition of worship as a function of cosmic mind on 16:6/192!). Your sincerity guarantees success. The activation of the spirit of worship was implicit in the episode that culminated in your first personal and wholehearted moral decision.
Your soul, which craves and initiates worship, is created by the Thought Adjuster, who conducts your worship. The activities of the soul become conscious to us in the mind; and though we rarely hear the voice of the indwelling presence of the Universal Father’s indwelling presence, we do well to rejoicein what we know is going on, however little we may perceive it.
OK. On the basis of this prelude, I enter my topic.
Every pulse of sincere devotion makes contact with Deity, no matter what unfortunate ideas may be associated with that experience. Mercifully, we don’t need a world-class concept of God to make wonderful spiritual progress. Religious experience is typically the product of a mix of various inputs from all levels: body, conscious and unconscious mind, soul, and spirit. This is how it is possible for persons to pray and “receive” what they regard as confirmation for the most diverse array of beliefs and practices. We should not imagine that we are superior to other mortals in that our religious experience is free of the mixture of sub-spiritual inputs. True, we may at times have spiritual experiences that are so decisively transcendent that it is unthinkable that any biological or mental input has tainted the gift that originated in spirit. However, I propose that it is wise to assume that a majority of our ventures into prayer, communion, and worship are blended experiences.
We are incapable of sorting out the proportions of input sources in a given experience. Sub-conscious or superconscious, the inputs enter consciousness as something foreign, something from outside. And there is no reason to regard the sub-conscious as a mere Freudian cesspool of unbeautifulness, no reason to assume that if the input is beautiful or insightful, then it must come from the superconscious. A subconscious mind, stuffed full of Urantia Book teachings, may synthesize an impressive imitation of divinity.
I propose that the solution to the problem of discernment is to abandon the effort to discern origins and to classify inputs. Rather, we do well to take responsibility for our own interpretations and evaluate our experiences in terms of our progressive understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness.
I am proposing that we develop discipline in interpreting what we take for spiritual experience. The rigors of that discipline extend to hermeneutics, which concerns the interpretation of texts such as The Urantia Book, which serves, in our imperfect understanding, as the framework within which we interpret, for example, answers to prayer, urges to act, and so on. Inadequate study of key topics may conduce to poor interpretation of spiritual experience and unfortunate courses of action with consequences for all within the affect range. My concern along those lines is what motivated my week one assignment of “Getting the Gospel Movement Back on Track.” Here in week four the concern is for health and wise interpretation of religious experience.
I have pasted below a number of quotes to help you balance scientific realism and spiritual idealism in yourself or in ministering to someone else. Any of us may find ourselves becoming complacent with our spiritual progress and neglecting the relevant cautions. We forget that we are still little children, indeed, embryos.
Additional Resources (not assigned)
Extensive resources on scientific living are available in a research document that I have put on line. I have accumulated and sorted, but not organized them for service, nor have I added comments or questions. Here are the categories the quotes are gathered: Scientific living (acting on the truths of science); Fact, knowledge, reason, law, accidents, and superstition; Causation; Science; Physics and chemistry; Biology; The body; Healing [it’s better to look at the last link in this paragraph for that topic]; Psychology; Jesus as a pattern of life-long (scientific) learning; Psychology of religion; Sociology;Sociology of religion; Modern society; Political science; History/evolution/civilization; Cosmic perspectives; Scientism. https://sites.google.com/site/ubquestionsandstudies/a-philosophy-of-living/truths-of-science
See also the document on healing: https://sites.google.com/site/ubquestionsandstudies/a-gospel-school/healing
Assignments
In addition to the Urantia Book quotes below, please go to the Supplemental Materials section in our wiki and read Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, pp. 18–23. If you have your own copy of the book, pp. 83–90, the sections on “A Recipe for Spiritual Intuition” and “Three Theories of Spiritual Truth” are recommended. Regarding the project, let me repeat a general reminder about continuing your journaling to record what you tried, what happened, and what you have learned from your efforts at truth-coordinated living.
Exercise 1. Please write in your homeroom discussion area your answers to a few questions about your experience of the relation between the mind of perfect poise (more or less perfect poise—smile!) and spiritual experience. Is the mental poise part of your preparation for the experience? Does this poise undergird your spiritual experience itself? After the experience has peaked, does poise tend to rise or decline?
Exercise 2. What do you do when you notice, perhaps because of emotional excitement, that your neural energies are not stabilized (implying that your chemical function may be unbalanced)? How do you stabilize your mind when you need to do so?
Exercise 3. When you reflect on your spiritual experience, what happens when you think realistically about the likelihood that there may be other-than-spiritual factors entering into that experience?
Urantia Book quotes which illuminate
this week’s central topic: Neuroscience and religious experience
(1207.5) 110:4.5 There exists a vast gulf between the human and the divine, between man and God. The Urantia races are so largely electrically and chemically controlled, so highly animallike in their common behavior, so emotional in their ordinary reactions, that it becomes exceedingly difficult for the Monitors to guide and direct them. You are so devoid of courageous decisions and consecrated co-operation that your indwelling Adjusters find it next to impossible to communicate directly with the human mind. Even when they do find it possible to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolving mortal soul, this spiritual revelation often so blinds the creature as to precipitate a convulsion of fanaticism or to initiate some other intellectual upheaval which results disastrously. Many a new religion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, imperfect, misunderstood, and garbled communications of the Thought Adjusters.
(1199.4) 109:5.3 Your unsteady and rapidly shifting mental attitudes often result in thwarting the plans and interrupting the work of the Adjusters. Their work is not only interfered with by the innate natures of the mortal races, but this ministry is also greatly retarded by your own preconceived opinions, settled ideas, and long-standing prejudices. Because of these handicaps, many times only their unfinished creations emerge into consciousness, and confusion of concept is inevitable. Therefore, in scrutinizing mental situations, safety lies only in the prompt recognition of each and every thought and experience for just what it actually and fundamentally is, disregarding entirely what it might have been.
See if you agree with me: To “recognize every thought and experience for just what it actually and fundamentally is,” means to recognize it as in fact a thought that has arisen in the mind. To “disregard entirely what it might have been” means to pay no attention to the possibility that it was an input from the Adjuster. Who is ready to follow the recommendation of the author?
(1138.5) 103:7.7 What both developing science and religion need is more searching and fearless self-criticism, a greater awareness of incompleteness in evolutionary status. The teachers of both science and religion are often altogether too self-confident and dogmatic. Science and religion can only be self-critical of their facts. The moment departure is made from the stage of facts, reason abdicates or else rapidly degenerates into a consort of false logic.
(1207.2) 110:4.2 You are quite incapable of distinguishing the product of your own material intellect from that of the conjoint activities of your soul and the Adjuster.
(1207.3) 110:4.3 Certain abrupt presentations of thoughts, conclusions, and other pictures of mind are sometimes the direct or indirect work of the Adjuster; but far more often they are the sudden emergence into consciousness of ideas which have been grouping themselves together in the submerged mental levels, natural and everyday occurrences of normal and ordinary psychic function inherent in the circuits of the evolving animal mind. (In contrast with these subconscious emanations, the revelations of the Adjuster appear through the realms of the superconscious.)
(1207.4) 110:4.4 Trust all matters of mind beyond the dead level of consciousness to the custody of the Adjusters. . . .
(1208.4) 110:5.5 It is extremely dangerous to postulate as to the Adjuster content of the dream life.The Adjusters do work during sleep, but your ordinary dream experiences are purely physiologic and psychologic phenomena. Likewise, it is hazardous to attempt the differentiation of the Adjusters’ concept registry from the more or less continuous and conscious reception of the dictations of mortal conscience. These are problems which will have to be solved through individual discrimination and personal decision. But a human being would do better to err in rejecting an Adjuster’s expression through believing it to be a purely human experience than to blunder into exalting a reaction of the mortal mind to the sphere of divine dignity. Remember, the influence of a Thought Adjuster is for the most part, though not wholly, a superconscious experience.
(1208.5) 110:5.6 In varying degrees and increasingly as you ascend the psychic circles, sometimes directly, but more often indirectly, you do communicate with your Adjusters. But it is dangerous to entertain the idea that every new concept originating in the human mind is the dictation of the Adjuster. More often, in beings of your order, that which you accept as the Adjuster’s voice is in reality the emanation of your own intellect. This is dangerous ground, and every human being must settle these problems for himself in accordance with his natural human wisdom and superhuman insight.
(1213.1) 110:7.6 But with the vast majority of Urantians 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.
16:6.9 (192.5) These scientific, moral, and spiritual insights, these cosmic responses, are innate in the cosmic mind, which endows all will creatures. The experience of living never fails to develop these three cosmic intuitions; they are constitutive in the self-consciousness of reflective thinking. But it is sad to record that so few persons on Urantia take delight in cultivating these qualities of courageous and independent cosmic thinking.
16:6.10 (192.6) In the local universe mind bestowals, these three insights of the cosmic mind constitute the a priori assumptions which make it possible for man to function as a rational and self-conscious personality in the realms of science, philosophy, and religion. Stated otherwise, the recognition of the reality of these three manifestations of the Infinite is by a cosmic technique of self-revelation. Matter-energy is recognized by the mathematical logic of the senses; mind-reason intuitively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (worship) is the religion of the reality of spiritual experience. These three basic factors in reflective thinking may be unified and co-ordinated in personality development, or they may become disproportionate and virtually unrelated in their respective functions. But when they become unified, they produce a strong character consisting in the correlation of a factual science, a moral philosophy, and a genuine religious experience. And it is these three cosmic intuitions that give objective validity, reality, to man’s experience in and with things, meanings, and values.
16:6.11 (192.7) It is the purpose of education to develop and sharpen these innate endowments of the human mind; of civilization to express them; of life experience to realize them; of religion to ennoble them; and of personality to unify them.
