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DEATH - THE INEXPLICABLE
Death was the supreme shock to evolving man, the most perplexing combination of chance and mystery. Not the sanctity of life but the shock of death inspired fear and thus effectively fostered religion. Among savage peoples death was ordinarily due to violence, so that nonviolent death became increasingly mysterious. Death as a natural and expected end of life was not clear to the consciousness of primitive people, and it has required age upon age for man to realize its inevitability. Early man accepted life as a fact, while he regarded death as a visitation of some sort. All races have their legends of men who did not die, vestigial traditions of the early attitude toward death. Allready in the human mind there existed the nebulous concept of a hazy and unorganized spirit world, a domain whence came all that is inexplicable in human life, and death was added to this long list of unexplained phenomena. All human disease and natural death was at first believed to be due to spirit influence. Even at the preset time some civilized races regard disease as having been produced by "the enemy" and depend upon religious ceremonies to effect healing. Later and more complex systems of theology still ascribe death to the action of the spirit world, all of which has led to doctrines as original sin and the fall of man. It was the realization of impotency before the mighty forces of nature, together with the recognition of human weakness before the visitiation of sickness and death, that impelled the savage to seek for help from the supermaterial world, which he vaguely visualized as the source of these mysterious vicissitudes of life. |
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THE MYSTERY OF GOD The infinity of the perfection of God is such that it eternally constitutes him mystery. And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojuorns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries. The physical bodies of mortals are "the temples of God." Notwithstanding that the Sovereign Creator Sons come near the creatures of their inhabited worlds and "draw all men to themselves" though they "stand at the door" of consciousness "and knock" and delight to come in to all who will "open the doors of their hearts"; although there does exist this intimate personal communion between the Creator Sons and their mortal creatures, neverthelesss, mortal men have something from God himself which actually dwells within them; their bodies are the temples thereof. When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, When the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came"; then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." There sojourns within each mortal being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designadly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence. |
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These qualities of universal reality are manifest in Urantia human Experience on the following levels:
1.BODY. The material or physical organism of man. The living electrochemical mechanism of animal nature and origin. 2. Mind. The thinking, perceiving, and feeling mechanism of the human organism. The total conscious and unconscious experience. The intelligence associated with the emotional life reaching upward through worship and wisdom to the spirit level. 3. Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man--not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature. 4. Soul. The soul of man is an experiential aquirement. As a mortal creature chooses to "do the will of the Father in heaven," so the indwelling spirit becomes the father of a 'new reality in human experience. The mortal and material mind is the mother of this same emerging reality. The substance of this new reality is neither material nor spiritual-- it is 'morontial'. This is the emerging and immortal soul which is destined to survive mortal death and begin the Paradise ascension. 03:06-10 Personality. The personality of mortal man is neither body, mind, nor spirit; neither is it the soul. Personality is the one changeless reality in an otherwise ever-changing creature experience; and it unifies all other associated factors of individuality. The personality is the unique bestowal which the Universal Father makes upon the living and associated energies of matter, mind, and spirit, and which survives with the survival of the morontial soul. Morontia is a term designating a vast level intervening between the material and the spiritual. It may designate personal or impersonal realities, living or nonliving energies. The warp of morontia is spiritual; its woof is physical. 9:1-2 |
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