-
Messages
-
Michael – As you suggest it is not unfriendly at a Urantia Book study group to compare and contrast all posts, opinions, and beliefs shared with the text we consider and discuss here.
The UB clearly teaches there are no lost souls or stuck or wandering souls. There are no malevolent or evil forces or spirits of darkness to fear or overcome either in this friendly universe of ours. And mortals do not become angels or any other celestial beings and do not experience the ascendant adventure and return to the world of origin as a material mortal being.
Whether true or not, these are the claims of the UB. The UB also describes why and how we might have such visions and beliefs and that having or not having those is irrelevant to the true faith experience, our Divine Assurance, and our spiritization.
Best wishes to all in the eternal adventure!
You well know Bradly that I greatly value the UB itself and your comments. And I naturally compare and contrast what I have learned (or blindly accepted) throughout my life. But it will take a quite a while for me to be fully convinced that neither wandering souls nor malevolent/evil forces exist. All I can say at this point is that I never personally encountered such beings, nor have I experienced anything like what Flower24 described. Thus, similar to what you pointed out in your final comments, I had already concluded a long time ago that such wild experiences must not be absolutely needed to make progress.
Goodnight all.
Michael – I think both issues are relevant to the topic here and should be considered.
Regarding evil spirits, the UB teaches that the primitive mind creates those to explain bad luck and curses and punishment from the gods, delivered in the form of sickness, accident, darkness, shortening days, floods, lightening, wild fire, locusts, famine, drought, birth defects, disease, and death itself.
This is the origin of amulets, priests, witchcraft, etc. to bribe, confuse, ward off, and protect them from such bad outcomes.
Those interested should study Papers 85-90.
These ancient fear based anxieties resulted in superstitious beliefs that still thrive today and have been a significant part of every evolutionary religion – most especially and essentially so in Christianity.
The belief in evil spirits and satanic powers and eternal suffering and temptations by some devil or another is a modern-primitive cultural and religious superstition that defies universe reality and the very nature of God and creation. According to the Papers.
Wandering souls presupposes and requires a personal abandonment of selfhood by the Guardian Angels AND the God Fragment AND the disconnection from the Deity Gravity Circuits of the Father’s Personality Gravity Circuit and Son’s Spirit Gravity Circuit and the Mother’s Mind Gravity Circuit.
That’s a lot of failure and indifference and incompetence required of Deity and celestials to actually happen, don’t you think??
Do souls wander off at death before the slumber? During the slumber?? Or are they lost in transit to the Mansion World?? Are they hiding? Or escaping something or someone? Are the Guardians searching? Or must unfused, material mortals be converted to angels to find them and save them? Save them from who or what I wonder?
Lost and wandering souls? Really?
Hmmm….
A rather peculiar superstition in my opinion. Knock on wood!!
https://www.urantia.org/urantia-book/search?keys=Evil+spirits+&op=Search
100:5.6 (1099.4) If one is disposed to recognize a theoretical subconscious mind as a practical working hypothesis in the otherwise unified intellectual life, then, to be consistent, one should postulate a similar and corresponding realm of ascending intellectual activity as the superconscious level, the zone of immediate contact with the indwelling spirit entity, the Thought Adjuster. The great danger in all these psychic speculations is that visions and other so-called mystic experiences, along with extraordinary dreams, may be regarded as divine communications to the human mind. In times past, divine beings have revealed themselves to certain God-knowing persons, not because of their mystic trances or morbid visions, but in spite of all these phenomena.
100:5.7 (1099.5) In contrast with conversion-seeking, the better approach to the morontia zones of possible contact with the Thought Adjuster would be through living faith and sincere worship, wholehearted and unselfish prayer. Altogether too much of the uprush of the memories of the unconscious levels of the human mind has been mistaken for divine revelations and spirit leadings.
100:5.8 (1099.6) There is great danger associated with the habitual practice of religious daydreaming; mysticism may become a technique of reality avoidance, albeit it has sometimes been a means of genuine spiritual communion. Short seasons of retreat from the busy scenes of life may not be seriously dangerous, but prolonged isolation of personality is most undesirable. Under no circumstances should the trancelike state of visionary consciousness be cultivated as a religious experience.
100:5.9 (1099.7) The characteristics of the mystical state are diffusion of consciousness with vivid islands of focal attention operating on a comparatively passive intellect. All of this gravitates consciousness toward the subconscious rather than in the direction of the zone of spiritual contact, the superconscious. Many mystics have carried their mental dissociation to the level of abnormal mental manifestations.
100:5.10 (1100.1) The more healthful attitude of spiritual meditation is to be found in reflective worship and in the prayer of thanksgiving. The direct communion with one’s Thought Adjuster, such as occurred in the later years of Jesus’ life in the flesh, should not be confused with these so-called mystical experiences. The factors which contribute to the initiation of mystic communion are indicative of the danger of such psychic states. The mystic status is favored by such things as: physical fatigue, fasting, psychic dissociation, profound aesthetic experiences, vivid sex impulses, fear, anxiety, rage, and wild dancing. Much of the material arising as a result of such preliminary preparation has its origin in the subconscious mind.
100:5.11 (1100.2) However favorable may have been the conditions for mystic phenomena, it should be clearly understood that Jesus of Nazareth never resorted to such methods for communion with the Paradise Father. Jesus had no subconscious delusions or superconscious illusions.
Wow Bradly, I had read those sections of the UB but had forgotten that it clearly states where so much of those wild experiences come from! And your logical questions prove that the angels and Adjusters would not be so careless to lose souls. Thanks again for the education! And yes, I laughed at your « knock on wood » reference 😀
By the way, my view of this page 38 in this forum suddenly shows all the headings in Spanish whereas all the prior page headings still appear in English. Was just wondering how that occurred. Bye for now.
Greetings Michael!!
Glad to help.
But I want to be very clear here. I do not wish to challenge the fact and meanings of flower24’s experience. The UB does give us fair warning of certain dangers of the material mind at mischief and describes the potential sources and causes of self delusion. However, the UB also clearly teaches that « picturizations » are a tool of Adjusters for personal revelation, and that the Adjuster has more and more success with this format as the mortal becomes more spiritized and mature and progresses through the 7 Circles.
The Papers describe John’s visions for a very specific purpose I think. John’s visions were real but his descriptions were garbled and distorted by his own lack of experience, context, and references (and of course, his were edited and rewritten by priests). He could not truly communicate his personal revelation and picturizations in any meaningful way.
I am not claiming and do not know or believe that flower24’s experience is not real or invalid in any way. I know her descriptions of some aspects certainly contradict the Revelation. But I am impressed by the sincerity and motive and aroma of the stories shared here by flower24!!
110:6.5 (1209.5) The Adjusters are always near you and of you, but rarely can they speak directly, as another being, to you. Circle by circle your intellectual decisions, moral choosings, and spiritual development add to the ability of the Adjuster to function in your mind; circle by circle you thereby ascend from the lower stages of Adjuster association and mind attunement, so that the Adjuster is increasingly enabled to register his picturizations of destiny with augmenting vividness and conviction upon the evolving consciousness of this God-seeking mind-soul.
hello bradley,
bradly wrote:
« I am not claiming and do not know or believe that flower24’s experience is not real or invalid in any way. I know her descriptions of some aspects certainly contradict the Revelation. But I am impressed by the sincerity and motive and aroma of the stories shared here by flower24!! »
thanks for this comment; I would like to add that this special experience made forgiveness with my parents possible in the first place (God helped me there) and that such experiences happen, among other things, so that more compassion, mercy and tolerance is brought to people. That this » birth experience with kundalini » went so « wildly » as you put it is because in my mortal mind the resistance to relinquishing control for such moments was too strong. I then came across a text in the university library that really touched me; the thing with the neighbor actually happened to me afterwards.
100:4.4 (1098.1) 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 someone 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 (1098.2) 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 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 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 (1098.3) 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.
Best regards
I’m glad Flower24 reminded us of those UB quotes. When first read those, I thought about how true they have been in my life, especially in the past few years. A better understanding of my parents’ marriage problems, and a better understanding of my own marital issues helped me not to remain brokenhearted or angry as I have watched both marriages crumble in several parallel ways! Btw, the stages of grief that Elizabeth Kubler Ross identified years ago was quite similar to my own natural way processing of the symbolic « death » of both marriages. Eventually, I accepted both failed marriages, which helped me to maintain friendly relationships with each person involved. Goodnight for now.
Login to reply to this topic.
Not registered? Sign up here.