SPIRITUAL COMMUNION

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part III, 103, 4 

 

Spiritual Communion

 

 The characteristic difference between a social occasion and a

 religious gathering is that in contrast with the secular the

 religious is pervaded by the atmosphere of communion. In this

 way human association generates a feeling of fellowship with

 the divine, and this is the beginning of group worship.

 Partaking of a common meal was the earliest type of social

 communion, and so did early religions provide that some

 portion of the ceremonial sacrifice should be eaten by the

 worshipers. Even in Christianity the Lord’s Supper retains

 this mode of communion. The atmosphere of the communion

 provides a refreshing and comforting period of truce in the

 conflict of the self-seeking ego with the altruistic urge of the

 indwelling spirit Monitor. And this is the prelude to true

 worship — the practice of the presence of God which

 eventuates in the emergence of the brotherhood of man.

 

 When primitive man felt that his communion with God had

 been interrupted, he resorted to sacrifice of some kind in an

 effort to make atonement, to restore friendly relationship. The

 hunger and thirst for righteousness leads to the discovery of

 truth, and truth augments ideals, and this creates new

 problems for the individual religionists, for our ideals tend to

 grow by geometrical progression, while our ability to live up to

 them is enhanced only by arithmetical progression.

 

 The sense of guilt (not the consciousness of sin) comes either

 from interrupted spiritual communion or from the lowering of

 one’s moral ideals. Deliverance from such a predicament can

 only come through the realization that one’s highest moral 

ideals are not necessarily synonymous with the will of God.

 Man cannot hope to live up to his highest ideals, but he can be

 true to his purpose of finding God and becoming more and

 more like him.

 

 Jesus swept away all of the ceremonials of sacrifice and

 atonement. He destroyed the basis of all this fictitious guilt and

 sense of isolation in the universe by declaring that man is a

 child of God; the creature-Creator relationship was placed on

 a child-parent basis. God becomes a loving Father to his

 mortal sons and daughters. All ceremonials not a legitimate

 part of such an intimate family relationship are forever

 abrogated.

 

 God the Father deals with man his child on the basis, not of

 actual virtue or worthiness, but in recognition of the child’s

 motivation — the creature purpose and intent. The

 relationship is one of parent-child association and is actuated

 by divine love.
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CURIOSITY IS A DIVINE GIFT

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part I, 14, 5

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Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony — these traits inherent in evolving human nature — were not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short sojourn on earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.

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 Curiosity — the spirit of investigation, the urge of discovery, the drive of exploration —

 is a part of the inborn and divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given you merely to be frustrated and repressed. True, these ambitious urges must frequently be restrained during your short life on earth, disappointment must be often experienced, but they are to be fully realized and gloriously gratified during the long ages to come.

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MUSIC - THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF MEN, ANGELS, AND SPIRITS

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From THE URANTIA BOOK

Part II, 44, 1

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Appreciation of music on Urantia is both physical and spiritual; and your human musicians have done much to elevate musical taste from the barbarous monotony of your early ancestors to the higher levels of sound appreciation. The majority of Urantia mortals react to music so largely with the material muscles and so slightly with the mind and spirit; but there has been a steady improvement in musical appreciation for more than thirty-five thousand years. 

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 Tuneful syncopation represents a transition from the musical monotony

 of primitive man to the expressionful harmony and meaningful melodies of your later-day musicians. These earlier types of rhythm stimulate the reaction of the music-loving sense without entailing the exertion of the higher intellectual powers of harmony appreciation and thus more generally appeal to immature or spiritually indolent individuals.

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 The best music of Urantia is just a fleeting echo of the magnificent strains

 heard by the celestial associates of your musicians, who left but snatches of these harmonies of morontia forces on record as the musical melodies of sound harmonics. Spirit-morontia music not infrequently employs all seven modes of expression and reproduction, so that the human mind is tremendously handicapped in any attempt to reduce these melodies of the higher spheres to mere notes of musical sound. Such an effort would be something like endeavoring to reproduce the strains of a great orchestra by means of a single musical instrument.

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 While you have assembled some beautiful melodies on Urantia,

you have not progressed musically nearly so far as many of your neighboring planets in Satania. If Adam and Eve had only survived, then would you have had music in reality; but the gift of harmony, so large in their natures, has been so diluted by strains of unmusical tendencies that only once in a thousand mortal lives is there any great appreciation of harmonics. But be not discouraged; some day a real musician may appear on Urantia, and whole peoples will be enthralled by the magnificent strains of his melodies. One such human being could forever change the course of a whole nation, even the entire civilized world. It is literally true,
 “melody has power a whole world to transform.”
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 Forever, music will remain the universal language of men, angels, and spirits. Harmony is the speech of Havona.

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This is from Paper 44 of THE URANTIA BOOK,
"The Celestial Artisans."  From the simple standpoint
of just "human curiousity," this is certainly one of
the more intriguing revelations in the book about
life "on the other side."
See the entire paper here:
http://www.urantia.org/en/urantia-book-standardized/paper-44-celestial-artisans
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GOD AND SPIRIT IN THE WILDERNESS

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In the wilderness there is never this sense

of having to move, never the feeling of boredom

if nothing dramatic happens.

Time moves slowly, as it should,

for it is a part of beauty that cannot be

hurried if it is to be understood.

Without this easy flowing, life can become

empty and hectic....

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We cannot all live in the wilderness,

or even close to it, but we can, no matter

where we spend our lives, remember the

background which shaped this sense

of the eternal rhythm, remember that days,

no matter how frenzied their pace,

can be calm and unhurried, we can refuse

to be caught in the so-called rat race and

the tension, which kills God-like leisure.

Though conscious of the roar around us,

we can find peace if we remember

we all come from a common mold

 and primeval background.

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Life in the wilderness can be

a continual contemplation and communion

with God and Spirit of those values

echoing within us all,

values born of timelessness, mystery,

the great silences, and an

ancient way of life.

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Sigurd Olson (1899-1982)

American author, teacher, environmentalist

Former President of the National Parks Assoc.

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SPIRIT LIFE

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I was raised to believe in a spirit world,

that life exists before earth and will continue

to exist afterward, that each human being,

bird and bulrush, along with all other

life forms had a spirit life before it came

to dwell physically on the earth.

Each occupied an assigned sphere of influence,

each had a place and a purpose.

It made sense to a child.

And if the natural world was assigned

spiritual values, then those days spent in

the wilderness were sacred.

We learned at an early age that

God can be found wherever you are,

especially outside.

Family worship was not just relegated

to Sunday in a chapel.

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Terry Tempest Williams

American Author and Naturalist

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