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Greetings to all and welcome to consideration and study of Paper 103 – The Reality of Religious Experience !
Here are links to the studies of Papers 100 & 101 & 102 previously begun and posted, all of which remain open for students’ comments, discussion, insights, questions, and continuation….
The study of these middle Papers has always been fruitful for me and delivered insight and a growing appreciation for the religious experiences of myself, other people, and all of humanity. I learned long ago the truth and the real fact that everyone has a very personal and unique religious experience and that is because so much of that is relational or relationship based with God within. While taught this truth from a young age, to truly appreciate this functional reality is a profoundly important element to so many lessons taught by the Master and reinforced by the UB. We cannot and should not attempt to measure the spiritization of others based upon beliefs or affiliations as compared to our own! The Reality of Religious Experience in mortals is not measured by the beliefs or the knowledge or even the lack of beliefs and knowledge of the religionist.
103:1.5 (1130.4) That religionists have believed so much that was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the recognition of values and is validated by the faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought; theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.
My own mixture of truth and error has changed over time which helps me to identify my own ignorance and prejudice and the beams in my own eye more and more while becoming more tolerant and empathetic to the saw dust I may behold in the eye of another. Indeed the view and experience of the Spirit within by others is a resource and opportunity to gain greater perspective in my own religious experience….if I will but let that happen and appreciate that truth. Religious Experience is natural and inherent or innate in people – universally manifested and natural in origin. We are designed for and created for and hard wired for the Reality of Religious Experience!
Paper 103
The Reality of Religious Experience
103:0.1 (1129.1) ALL of man’s truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by the adjutant of wisdom. Man’s first supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and long before either the bestowals of the divine Sons or the universal bestowal of the Adjusters, this influence functions to enlarge man’s viewpoint of ethics, religion, and spirituality. Subsequent to the bestowals of the Paradise Sons the liberated Spirit of Truth makes mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human capacity to perceive religious truths. As evolution advances on an inhabited world, the Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in the development of the higher types of human religious insight. The Thought Adjuster is the cosmic window through which the finite creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and divinities of limitless Deity, the Universal Father.
103:0.2 (1129.2) The religious tendencies of the human races are innate; they are universally manifested and have an apparently natural origin; primitive religions are always evolutionary in their genesis. As natural religious experience continues to progress, periodic revelations of truth punctuate the otherwise slow-moving course of planetary evolution.
103:0.3 (1129.3) On Urantia, today, there are four kinds of religion:
103:0.4 (1129.4) 1. Natural or evolutionary religion.
103:0.5 (1129.5) 2. Supernatural or revelatory religion.
103:0.6 (1129.6) 3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
103:0.7 (1129.7) 4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created religions.
103:0.1 (1129.1) ALL of man’s truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the adjutant of worship and are censored by the adjutant of wisdom. Man’s first supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; . . .
Note that adjutant #6 sponsors and adjutant #7 censors reactions; and the Holy Spirit encircles personality. The personality then has two options, adjutant mind or Holy Spirit mind. This is where the dual nature becomes an allegiance issue for the personality who can choose which one to identify with. Identity is part of mind and personality chooses between material adjutant mind or soul supermind for its identity. (112:5.4) It should be easier for the personality to identify with the Holy Spirit because it is also the personality presence of the Creative Spirit. The adjutants are impersonal.
Another reason (besides identity), it’s so important to note that it is the personality which is encircuited by the Holy Spirit involves the cosmic mind reality responses. Reality responses occur in the mind and they are supermaterial (16:6.4); they are part of a technique called self-revelation. Self-revelation is a feature of personality as is self-consciousness. (1:7.6) Revelation can only happen in the soul because it requires the aid of a supermaterial revelatory source in contact with cosmic mind.
Reality recognition is like truth recognition (101:5.9), it is made possible by a personality who engages in reflective thought. Reflective thought begins with reactions to the material life environment sponsored by adjutant #6 and censored by #7. Protoplasmic ideas are transformed by association and recombination into supernal ideals which are presented to the encircuited supermind where truth lives and where divine reality illuminates. (101:6.4; 101:6.7) Reality recognition initially begins by the sponsorship and censorship of the adjutants, but the actual reality recognition response phenomenon is an experience of the personality within the soul described as self-revelation. And when chosen by the personality, it becomes validated as a personality experience within the material world as triune fruit – all three levels of reality actuated in love. (101:2.8) True reality realization is a personality reality (102:3.5), and personality reality is part of a divinity relationship (54:1.4) resulting in psychic circle progression (10:6.10).
RELATED QUOTES
1.7.6 The higher concepts of universe personality imply: identity, self-consciousness, self-will, and possibility for self-revelation.
10:6.10 Personality reality. The degree of selfhood reality is directly determined by circle conquest. Persons become more real as they ascend from the seventh to the first level of mortal existence.
16:6.4 There exists in all personality associations of the cosmic mind a quality which might be denominated the “reality response.” It is this universal cosmic endowment of will creatures which saves them from becoming helpless victims of the implied a priori assumptions of science, philosophy, and religion. This reality sensitivity of the cosmic mind responds to certain phases of reality just as energy-material responds to gravity. It would be still more correct to say that these supermaterial realities so respond to the mind of the cosmos.
16:6.10 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.
54:1.4 Liberty is suicidal when divorced from material justice, intellectual fairness, social forbearance, moral duty, and spiritual values. Liberty is nonexistent apart from cosmic reality, and all personality reality is proportional to its divinity relationships.
101:2.8 Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality.
101:5.9 Evolved religion rests wholly on faith. Revelation has the additional assurance of its expanded presentation of the truths of divinity and reality and the still more valuable testimony of the actual experience which accumulates in consequence of the practical working union of the faith of evolution and the truth of revelation. Such a working union of human faith and divine truth constitutes the possession of a character well on the road to the actual acquirement of a morontial personality.
101:6.4 The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness. Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.
101:6.7 Revelation teaches mortal man that, to start such a magnificent and intriguing adventure through space by means of the progression of time, he should begin by the organization of knowledge into idea-decisions; next, mandate wisdom to labor unremittingly at its noble task of transforming self-possessed ideas into increasingly practical but nonetheless supernal ideals, even those concepts which are so reasonable as ideas and so logical as ideals that the Adjuster dares so to combine and spiritize them as to render them available for such association in the finite mind as will constitute them the actual human complement thus made ready for the action of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space manifestations of Paradise truth—universal truth. The co-ordination of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession of a righteous character, the prerequisite for mortal admission to the ever-expanding and increasingly spiritual realities of the morontia worlds.
102:3.5 Science, knowledge, leads to fact consciousness; religion, experience, leads to value consciousness; philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinate consciousness; revelation (the substitute for morontia mota) leads to the consciousness of true reality; while the co-ordination of the consciousness of fact, value, and true reality constitutes awareness of personality reality, maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of that very personality.
112.5.4 Human beings possess identity only in the material sense. Such qualities of the self are expressed by the material mind as it functions in the energy system of the intellect. When it is said that man has identity, it is recognized that he is in possession of a mind circuit which has been placed in subordination to the acts and choosing of the will of the human personality. But this is a material and purely temporary manifestation, just as the human embryo is a transient parasitic stage of human life. Human beings, from a cosmic perspective, are born, live, and die in a relative instant of time; they are not enduring. But mortal personality, through its own choosing, possesses the power of transferring its seat of identity from the passing material-intellect system to the higher morontia-soul system which, in association with the Thought Adjuster, is created as a new vehicle for personality manifestation.
103:0.6 3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
103:0.7 4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created religions.
What’s the difference between these two types of religion and what’s an example of each?
103:0.6 3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
103:0.7 4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created religions.
What’s the difference between these two types of religion and what’s an example of each?
as for man made or philosophically thought out religions: I have been reading “meditations of Marcus Aurelius” .
A wonderful insight into Stoicism. The contributing philosophers date back quite a long time but the virtues, morals and self control/development still have value today imho.
but then; how does philosophy happen? Paper 28:5.11 describes the “soul of philosophy” – secondary Seconaphim – that reflect or incarnate philosophy appropriate to practical application.
“The Soul of Philosophy. These wonderful teachers are also attached to the Perfectors of Wisdom and, when not otherwise directionized, remain in focal synchrony with the masters of philosophy on Paradise. Think of stepping up to a huge living mirror, as it were, but instead of beholding the likeness of your finite and material self, of perceiving a reflection of the wisdom of divinity and the philosophy of Paradise. And if it becomes desirable to “incarnate” this philosophy of perfection, so to dilute it as to make it practical of application to, and assimilation by, the lowly peoples of the lower worlds, these living mirrors have only to turn their faces downward to reflect the standards and needs of an- other world or universe.
By these very techniques do the Perfectors of Wisdom adapt decisions and recommendations to the real needs and actual status of the peoples and worlds under consideration, and always do they act in concert with the Divine Coun- selors and the Universal Censors. But the sublime repleteness of these transac- tions is beyond even my ability to comprehend”Do you think this is what inspires our worlds philosophers?
what do you think they mean by “incarnate this philosophy of perfection”?
. . . but then; how does philosophy happen?
Are you asking how TUB explains it? How you and I are able to philosophize? How the mind works?
Do you think this is what inspires our worlds philosophers?
As far as I understand it, humans don’t participate in reflectivity. So no, not directly. Perhaps indirectly.
. . . what do you think they mean by “incarnate this philosophy of perfection”?
I think the quote explains that it is a way to water it down in order to make it easier for the “lowly people” to assimilate. I think they do this as a service for the angels serving the “lowly people” on the “lower worlds”. Humans would not have direct access to reflectivity in order to assimilate it themselves. It would be something promoted by the various groups of angels serving the “lower world” in question, like the planetary helpers and the twelve corps of planetary supervision. At least that’s how I currently see it, for what it’s worth.
Oops. Forgot to comment on this:
as for man made or philosophically thought out religions: I have been reading “meditations of Marcus Aurelius” . A wonderful insight into Stoicism. The contributing philosophers date back quite a long time but the virtues, morals and self control/development still have value today imho.
I was thinking along the same lines. TUB says there were four great philosophies around the 1st Century: Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism and Skepticism. But later they list Cynicism as a religion, so it must be a philosophy which overlaps religion. In the paper about the neighboring planet, the author says they have a strange overlapping of philosophy and religion. Not sure I know exactly what they mean by that. Perhaps it’s best explained in this quote:
p1080:2 98:2.12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience.
There’s a whole section in TUB about the purpose of philosophy to unify the material and the spiritual realms of mental activity and how it should be wedded to wisdom. Not sure if we should go there or not. Maybe a separate topic. Up to Bradly.
103:0.6 3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
103:0.7 4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created religions.
What’s the difference between these two types of religion and what’s an example of each?
6.3 reminds me of those 19th century religions which sprang from the evolutionary protestant religions molded and shaped by a singular personality that was likely responding to personal revelation and religious experience which founded many smaller congregations, some of which have survived the originator and grown into more mainstream or more radical religions today. I’m thinking Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, the Witnesses and other mainstream churches but also the more cultish Jim Jones and Koresh Davidians and Reverend Moon-ites.
Regarding 7.4 – I had a personal season, after tossing God out with the Baptist bathwater, where I studied Zen and The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff. Then there is TM and also the Ram Das crowd and the ethical/moral based but godless and so called New Age practices and beliefs. The UB teaches that philosophy is that which binds practical realism and the religious natures of our perception – no matter how little or how much knowledge or truth might be involved. The “religions” of philosophy…
Gene’s post of 28:5 is a wonderful inference of how personal revelation might be enhanced and shaped to form groups and seasons of like minded insight I think. The UB says that one way or factor of the acceleration of humanity’s progressive evolution is by applying pressure from above. Other than the work and ministry of the Spirits within, what other agents and agencies affect the Reality of Religious Experience? Specifically, but not limited to, the Seraphim and Guardians? Consider the Planetary Helpers and the Master Seraphim of Planetary Supervision.
114:6.6 (1255.5) 2. The progress angels. These seraphim are intrusted with the task of initiating the evolutionary progress of the successive social ages. They foster the development of the inherent progressive trend of evolutionary creatures; they labor incessantly to make things what they ought to be. The group now on duty is the second to be assigned to the planet.
114:6.7 (1255.6) 3. The religious guardians. These are the “angels of the churches,” the earnest contenders for that which is and has been. They endeavor to maintain the ideals of that which has survived for the sake of the safe transit of moral values from one epoch to another. They are the checkmates of the angels of progress, all the while seeking to translate from one generation to another the imperishable values of the old and passing forms into the new and therefore less stabilized patterns of thought and conduct. These angels do contend for spiritual forms, but they are not the source of ultrasectarianism and meaningless controversial divisions of professed religionists. The corps now functioning on Urantia is the fifth thus to serve.
More from Paper 28:
28:5.8 (310.10) It is written, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask.” On Uversa, when it becomes necessary to arrive at the decisions of wisdom in the perplexing situations of the complex affairs of the superuniverse government, when both the wisdom of perfection and of practicability must be forthcoming, then do the Perfectors of Wisdom summon a battery of the Voices of Wisdom and, by the consummate skill of their order, so attune and directionize these living receivers of the enminded and circulating wisdom of the universe of universes that presently, from these secoraphic voices, there ensues a stream of the wisdom of divinity from the universe above and a flood of the wisdom of practicality from the higher minds of the universes below.
(from 28:5.11) “…And if it becomes desirable to “incarnate” this philosophy of perfection, so to dilute it as to make it practical of application to, and assimilation by, the lowly peoples of the lower worlds, these living mirrors have only to turn their faces downward to reflect the standards and needs of another world or universe.”
28:5.12 (311.4) By these very techniques do the Perfectors of Wisdom adapt decisions and recommendations to the real needs and actual status of the peoples and worlds under consideration, and always do they act in concert with the Divine Counselors and the Universal Censors. But the sublime repleteness of these transactions is beyond even my ability to comprehend.
52:6.7 (598.2) 5. Spiritual insight. The brotherhood of man is, after all, predicated on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.
So many agents and agencies attending to our individual and collective needs and progress and the functional Reality of Religious Experience !!
1. Philosophy of Religion
103:1.1 (1129.8) The unity of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment indwelling the individual. It is this divine in man that gives origin to his unselfish interest in the welfare of other men. But since personality is unique—no two mortals being alike—it inevitably follows that no two human beings can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit of divinity which lives within their minds. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity of the interpretation of religious thought and experience is shown by the fact that twentieth-century theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of five hundred different definitions of religion. In reality, every human being defines religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells him, and therefore must such an interpretation be unique and wholly different from the religious philosophy of all other human beings.
103:1.2 (1130.1) When one mortal is in full agreement with the religious philosophy of a fellow mortal, that phenomenon indicates that these two beings have had a similar religious experience touching the matters concerned in their similarity of philosophic religious interpretation.
103:1.3 (1130.2) While your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming egocentric—circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.
103:1.4 (1130.3) Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that religion is at first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily a pursuit of values, and then there formulates a system of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to agree on religious values—goals—than on beliefs—interpretations. And this explains how religion can agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of conflicting beliefs—creeds. This also explains why a given person can maintain his religious experience in the face of giving up or changing many of his religious beliefs. Religion persists in spite of revolutionary changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce religion; it is religion that produces theologic philosophy.
103:1.5 (1130.4) That religionists have believed so much that was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the recognition of values and is validated by the faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought; theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.
Bradly wrote:6.3 reminds me of those 19th century religions which sprang from the evolutionary protestant religions molded and shaped by a singular personality that was likely responding to personal revelation and religious experience which founded many smaller congregations, some of which have survived the originator and grown into more mainstream or more radical religions today. I’m thinking Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, the Witnesses and other mainstream churches but also the more cultish Jim Jones and Koresh Davidians and Reverend Moon-ites.
I was thinking Christianity itself fits into this category. It’s part natural and part revelatory, or supernatural – a mix of man-made myth and truth. The same applies to Judaism and Islam which have varying degrees of admixture. As for the cults you mentioned last, I think they’re pure man-made myth with no truth – but I admit I’m a harsh skeptic when it comes to the fanatically self-delusioned.
103:0.6 3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
Oops. Forgot to comment on this:
as for man made or philosophically thought out religions: I have been reading “meditations of Marcus Aurelius” . A wonderful insight into Stoicism. The contributing philosophers date back quite a long time but the virtues, morals and self control/development still have value today imho.
I was thinking along the same lines. TUB says there were four great philosophies around the 1st Century: Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism and Skepticism. But later they list Cynicism as a religion, so it must be a philosophy which overlaps religion. In the paper about the neighboring planet, the author says they have a strange overlapping of philosophy and religion. Not sure I know exactly what they mean by that. Perhaps it’s best explained in this quote:
p1080:2 98:2.12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience.
There’s a whole section in TUB about the purpose of philosophy to unify the material and the spiritual realms of mental activity and how it should be wedded to wisdom. Not sure if we should go there or not. Maybe a separate topic. Up to Bradly.
Go for it! Here…or on its own. I love to study this tool of integration, harmonization, and utilization of both the material and spiritual realities of our dual nature. Certainly worthy of its own topic and yet so relevant to this thread on religious experience and reality.
Dealer’s choice!
Go for it! Here…or on its own. I love to study this tool of integration, harmonization, and utilization of both the material and spiritual realities of our dual nature. Certainly worthy of its own topic and yet so relevant to this thread on religious experience and reality.
OK, I’ll try to put something together. It ties into my first post on this topic about the adjutants, the cosmic mind intuitions, personality and self-revelation. Philosophy is the purview of the spirit of wisdom and the cosmic mind intuition of Duty which provides a reality reflex when discriminating between right and wrong on higher levels of reflective thinking. That’s where truth consorts with wisdom because the spirit of wisdom is overlapped by the Holy Spirit of the soul. It’s all very cool the way it fits into the elliptical symmetry of reality.
132:3.2 Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values.
. . . but then; how does philosophy happen?
Are you asking how TUB explains it? How you and I are able to philosophize? How the mind works?
“yeah- what or who is it that inspires us to philosophize?”
Do you think this is what inspires our worlds philosophers?
As far as I understand it, humans don’t participate in reflectivity. So no, not directly. Perhaps indirectly.
“True but philosophy is sort of a ministry, it originates with the Trinity, no? Then starts it’s journy to us with the Masters of Philosophy (primary seconaphem on Paradise I believe) and makes its way to us.”
. . . what do you think they mean by “incarnate this philosophy of perfection”?
I think the quote explains that it is a way to water it down in order to make it easier for the “lowly people” to assimilate. I think they do this as a service for the angels serving the “lowly people” on the “lower worlds”. Humans would not have direct access to reflectivity in order to assimilate it themselves. It would be something promoted by the various groups of angels serving the “lower world” in question, like the planetary helpers and the twelve corps of planetary supervision. At least that’s how I currently see it, for what it’s worth.
“As philosophy is watered down in order to reach us lower world mortals, what is it do you suppose that helps us sort out the sophists? Pre and post Pentecost??”
“yeah- what or who is it that inspires us to philosophize?”
The spirit of wisdom, the 7th adjutant. Philosophy and wisdom are essentially the same thing. Or, to be more exact, philosophy is the search for wisdom. That being said, there are different levels of wisdom, different levels of philosophy and different avenues of searching. I’ll try to develop that later. Working on an essay of sorts.
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.
Here’s another quote which states that the urge to philosophize comes from the spirit of wisdom.
(1141.6) 103:9.8 Science (knowledge) is founded on the inherent (adjutant spirit) assumption that reason is valid, that the universe can be comprehended. Philosophy (co-ordinate comprehension) is founded on the inherent (spirit of wisdom) assumption that wisdom is valid, that the material universe can be co-ordinated with the spiritual. Religion (the truth of personal spiritual experience) is founded on the inherent (Thought Adjuster) assumption that faith is valid, that God can be known and attained.
I thought about how to approach this then slept on it. I think a long-winded essay may not be the best approach because there is so much to say on the subject.“True but philosophy is sort of a ministry, it originates with the Trinity, no? Then starts it’s journy to us with the Masters of Philosophy (primary seconaphem on Paradise I believe) and makes its way to us.”
This sounds like you’re saying that philosophy is perfect in Paradise but in order to get down to us it needs to be watered down and turned into pap so it can be spoon fed to us by celestials. That’s not how it works. Philosophy is not a ministry separate from mind ministry, it’s actually a level of reality and in the finite world, there are three levels of reality: material, mindal and spiritual. (196:3.2) Philosophy is mindal and therefore in the middle, the cosmic connection between the other two.
Breaking down quote 196:3.2 those three levels of reality are explained in greater detail with five equivalents each:
- Fact, science, reason, physical reality, thing.
- Idea, philosophy, wisdom, intellectual reality, meaning.
- Relation, truth, faith, spiritual reality, value.
First let me say that there are definitely ascending levels of philosophy just as there are ascending levels of wisdom. In fact, wisdom has two origins, one is existential, the other is experiential. (19:2.4) We humans begin at the experiential bottom of both wisdom and philosophy, and our goal is to develop the ability to transfer our wisdom and philosophy from the adjutant level to the higher level of philosophy in the soul, which is provided by the Spirit of Truth. (101:3.2) The cosmic mind ministry also provides a reaction, like gravity, which helps us recognize the reality of a philosophical ideal (16:6.7), but again, this recognition requires the higher discriminatory ability of the soul.
Philosophy cannot be ready-made for us because it must be something we develop through our own experience. Philosophy is not philosophy without some level of comprehension of one’s existence within a given environment. Existential philosophies would be useless out here in the words of time and space. Here in the finite world our personalities must gather together every observation then reflect upon its meaning, and then form a philosophy. Philosophy, as described in TUB, is the personality observing its own observations.(112:2.12) In other words, reflective thinking on one’s own experience. This is essentially the same definition for wisdom which adds meaning to those observations. (102:3.9)
Without the comprehension of meaning there can be no philosophy. This means wisdom plays a critical role in its development. Philosophy actually grows out of wisdom. (133:5.4) Essentially wisdom and philosophy are the same thing and it all begins with mind ministry to the individual personality, starting at the adjutant level and working its way up to the superadjutant, superphilosophical level of mota sensitivity in the soul. (102:3.2)
Philosophy is all about meanings and meanings evolve from a purely material philosophy up to a spiritual philosophy. But meanings are dependent upon wisdom which is defined as, ” – knowledge directed by experiential reason and illuminated by divine revelation.” (92:2.1) So, before I go any further, please let me know if you have any problems or questions with what I’ve said so far.
RELATED QUOTES
16:6.7 2. Duty — the reality domain of morals in the philosophic realm, the arena of reason, the recognition of relative right and wrong. This is the judicial form of the cosmic discrimination.
19:2.4 Wisdom is twofold in origin, being derived from the perfection of divine insight inherent in perfect beings and from the personal experience acquired by evolutionary creatures.
101.3.2 Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny.
102.3.2 Religious speculation is inevitable but always detrimental; speculation invariably falsifies its object. Speculation tends to translate religion into something material or humanistic, and thus, while directly interfering with the clarity of logical thought, it indirectly causes religion to appear as a function of the temporal world, the very world with which it should everlastingly stand in contrast. Therefore will religion always be characterized by paradoxes, the paradoxes resulting from the absence of the experiential connection between the material and the spiritual levels of the universe — morontia mota, the superphilosophic sensitivity for truth discernment and unity perception.
102:3.9 Knowledge yields pride in the fact of personality; wisdom is the consciousness of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of cognizance of the value of personality; revelation is the assurance of personality survival.
112:2.12 In science the human self observes the material world; philosophy is the observation of this observation of the material world; religion, true spiritual experience, is the experiential realization of the cosmic reality of the observation of the observation of all this relative synthesis of the energy materials of time and space. To build a philosophy of the universe on an exclusive materialism is to ignore the fact that all things material are initially conceived as real in the experience of human consciousness. The observer cannot be the thing observed; evaluation demands some degree of transcendence of the thing which is evaluated.
196.3.2 There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith — physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.
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