MYTH AND MEN IN INDONESIA

.

.

Although Western visitors now travel

there by the millions, the East still offers

rewards of mystery to the adventuresome.

In 1972 Lawrence Blair and his brother Lorne

left England to film the greater bird of paradise,

long an Asian symbol of transformation and

immortality. They found an elusive specimen,

like the one above, high in a Javanese forest.

But it was certainly not their most

exotic discovery.

.

In their Indonesian travels they came upon

a world of myths, rites, and beliefs that had

existed unchanged since before recorded

time. In Bali, a newborn is thought to remain

close to the heavenly Upper World for its

first 105 days and thus is not allowed to

touch the earth; after this period the baby's

foot is ritually placed on the ground.

.

.
The ancient belief of the Toraja people

is almost futuristic; that their ancestors

arrived in starships from the star cluster

Pleiades. The swamp-dwelling Asmat have

a pre-Stone Age culture. They believe their

creator carved their bodies from trees and

drummed them into life. Cannibals as well

as headhunters, the Asmat drum the spirits

of their slain kinfolk into wooden totems;

there the spirits await the release that

comes when someone from the enemy tribe

is killed, beheaded, and eaten.

.

.
The Blairs claimed they encountered

phenomena not easily explainable in

Western terms. On an island in the

Banda Sea, they saw a man in a trance

they described as an "example of pure

animist possession." A boulder was

slammed into his back but left neither

blemish nor injury.

*

From Eastern Mysteries

A volume from the Time-Life Series

Mysteries of the Unknown

.

.
From THE URANTIA BOOK, Part III, 101, 9
.
When you presume to sit in

critical judgement on the primitive religion

of man (or on the religion of primitive man),

you should remember to judge such savages

and to evaluate their religious experience

in accordance with their enlightenment

and status of conscience. Do not make the

mistake of judging another's religion by

your own standards of knowledge

and truth. .

.

FAROUT FIRE FACTS

.

.

.

 .

.

FIRE IN RELATION TO CIVILIZATION

.

Primitive society with its four divisions — industrial, regulative, religious, and military — rose through the instrumentality of fire, animals, slaves, and property.

Fire building, by a single bound, forever separated man from animal;
 it is the basic human invention, or discovery. Fire enabled man
 to stay on the ground at night as all animals are afraid of it.
 Fire encouraged eventide social intercourse; it not only
 protected against cold and wild beasts but was also employed
 as security against ghosts. It was at first used more for light
 than heat; many backward tribes refuse to sleep
 unless a flame burns all night.

.

.
Fire was a great civilizer, providing man with his

 first means of being altruistic without loss by enabling 

him to give live coals to a neighbor without depriving himself.

 The household fire, which was attended by the mother

 or eldest daughter, was the first educator, requiring 

watchfulness and dependability. The early home was not a

 building but the family gathered about the fire, 

the family hearth. When a son founded a new home, 

he carried a firebrand from the family hearth.

Though Andon, the discoverer of fire, avoided treating it as an object of worship, many of his descendants regarded the flame as a fetish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the sanitary benefits of fire because they would not burn refuse. Primitive man feared fire and always sought to keep it in good humor, hence the sprinkling of incense. Under no circumstances would the ancients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass between anyone and a burning fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in striking fire were held sacred by early mankind. 

.

.

It was a sin to extinguish a flame; if a hut caught fire,

 it was allowed to burn. The fires of the temples and shrines

 were sacred and were never permitted to go out except that

 it was the custom to kindle new flames annually or after some

 calamity. Women were selected as priests because they

 were custodians of the home fires.

.

.

.
The early myths about how fire came down from the gods
 grew out of the observations of fire caused by lightning.
 These ideas of supernatural origin led directly to fire worship,
 and fire worship led to the custom of “passing through fire,”
 a practice carried on up to the times of Moses.
 And there still persists the idea of passing through fire
 after death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times
 and still persists in the symbolism of the Parsees. 
 . 

 .
Fire led to cooking, and “raw eaters” became a term of derision.
 And cooking lessened the expenditure of vital energy necessary 
for the digestion of food and so left early man some strength for
 social culture, while animal husbandry, by reducing the effort
 necessary to secure food, provided time for social activities.

It should be remembered that fire opened
 the doors to metalwork
 and led to the subsequent discovery of
 steam power and the 
 present-day uses of electricity.

.
From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part III, 69, 6

.
A brief description of THE URANTIA BOOK is available
 on The Urantia Foundation's website - see it here:
http://www.urantia.org/en/urantia-book
.

.

.

THOUGHTS ON PRAYER - 1

.

Children, when first learning to make use

of language, are prone to think out loud,

to express their thoughts in words,

even if no one is present to hear them.

With the dawn of creative imagination

they evince a tendency to converse

with imaginary companions. In this way

a budding ego seeks to hold communion

with a fictitious alter ego.

By this technique the child early learns

to convert his monologue conversations

into pseudo dialogues in which this

alter ego makes replies to his verbal

thinking and wish expression.

Very much of an adult's thinking

is mentally carried on in

conversational form.

.

.

The early and primitive form of prayer was

much like the semimagical recitations of the

present-day Toda tribe [of India], prayers

that were not addressed to anyone in

particular. But such techniques of praying

tend to evolve into the dialogue type of

communication by the emergence of the

idea of an alter ego. In time the alter-ego

concept is exalted to a superior status of

divine dignity, and prayer as an agency of

religion has appeared. Through many

phases and during long ages this

primitive type of praying is destined

to evolve before attaining the level

of intelligent and truly ethical prayer.

.

.

.
The simple prayer of faith evidences
a mighty evolution in human experience
whereby the ancient conversations
with the fictitious symbol of the
alter ego in primitive religion have
become exalted to the level of
communion with the spirit of the
Infinite and to that of a bona fide
consciousness of the reality of
the eternal God and Paradise Father
of all intelligent creation.
*

The Urantia Book

Part III, 91, 3