© 2002 Alison Gardner
© 2002 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| Not what we give...but what we share... | Volume 4, Number 1, 2002 (Summer) — Index | Religious Practice and the Urantia Revelation |
A couple of years ago, a diverse group of long-time Urantia Book readers took on the daunting task of establishing a new and expanded meaning for the word, cult. The panel is now preparing to publish their work through The Urantia Book Fellowship’s Wrightwood Series, a program that sponsors the scholarly pursuit of mainstream topical studies. These publications are intended for a broad audience including people new to The Urantia Book or learning of its existence for the very first time.
The word, cult, has a range of meanings, theological and religious, sociological, and anthropological. It is a word that has been denigrated in the modern age, mostly unfairly, making it ripe for a healthy examination. Every forward-thinking person, especially those fortunate enough to have uncovered The Urantia Book, should care how its meaning has evolved. As this Wrightwood panel has gradually unraveled the perplexities of this topic, they have steadily grown in their commitment to find answers and, more important, ask new questions to generate a global dialog on this intriguing subject.
What follows are selected excerpts from the draft Introduction and my chapter, “Free Will and Consciousness of Being.” Part I examines cult from a global perspective, Part lI addresses the individual’s viewpoint. Look for this material in its soon-to-be published expanded form, which includes more than 6 chapters and many extras from the rest of the panelists covering diverse aspects of cult.
The importance of cult, or culture, to the prosperity and well being of enlarging civilization should never be underestimated.
Humankind can identify meanings and values and communicate ideas, even ideals. “It is this ability to communicate and share meanings that constitute human culture and eruibles man, through social associations, to build civilizations. Knowledge and wisdom become cumulative because of man’s ability to communicate these possessions to succeeding generations. And thereby arise the cultural activities of the human race: art, science, religion, and philosophy.” [UB 160:2.3]
The etymological roots of the word, cult, reach back to the Latin and French, eultus, which means, simply, and exquisitely, to worship. Words such as culture and cultivate capture this meaning, expressing how humanity generally, and cults and religions specifically, revere and perpetuate that which holds worth for civilization as a whole. Worship-cult is so ubiquitous in the social stream of daily life, we hardly notice it.
The cult type of social organization persisted because it provided a symbolism for the preservation and stimulation of moral sentiments and religious loyalties. The cult grew out of the traditions of ‘old families’ and was perpetuated as an established institution; all families have a cult of some sort. Every inspiring ideal grasps for some perpetuating symbolism—seeks some technique for cultural manifestation which will insure survival and augment realization—and the cult achieves this end by fostering and gratifying emotion. [UB 87:7.1]
Up until about 500 years ago, the common man found religious practice enshrouded in mystery, held closely and authoritatively by the cleric class. only priests could set eyes on the few bibles in existence, for example. Geography and the power of the state determined religious destiny.
At the time of the Renaissance, however, religious texts were more in demand in large part due to man’s blossoming interest in philosophy and a renewed need to seek out the roots of his own spiritual urges. New printing aided this quest, of course. Man for the first time began to think about spirituality in a personal sense rather than as his connection to his cohorts.
Personally held ideas about religion challenged the state’s authority. From the perspective of those in (self-appointed) authority, religion and its underpinning cult practices began to diverge. This may mark the institutionalized disparagement and downfall of the word, cult, for it became inexorably associated with “other” beliefs, held as heretical, antithetical to authoritative orthodoxy.
Consider the transformative proclamation of Luther’s Protestantism as a metaphor for the constantly changing understanding of the word, cult. While the idea of worshipping a personal Cod had been around for hundreds of years, Luther, in practically one generation, replaced the singularly arrogant concept that each man would receive faith via the church and priests, with the dynamic idea that individuals can and do find and have faith on their own by virtue of their personal relationship with God. At the time, Luther was seen by the centralized church as a flawed cult leader while today he is remembered as a great visionary who led the way for the diverse expression of Christianity throughout the world.
Humorist Leo Pfefffer expresses today’s popular beliefs about “cult.” “If you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps the religion; and if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect; but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult.” We observe in this witticism the mind of the superficial thinker who easily ignores the underlying theology of any idea outside his own chosen core beliefs, even fears and hates ideas different or challenging to his own.
When you presume to sit in critical judgment 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. [UB 101:9.2]
Theology is always the study of your religion; the study of another’s religion is psychology. [UB 103:6.1]
Modern fears of “cult” arc simplistic (hence easily lampooned by Pfeffer) because they spring from fear of a group’s practices—always assumed to be deceptive, with psychological pressure techniques, assumed to be dangerous—rather than the actual belief system of its adherents. Even international leaders of interfaith movements concede their efforts invariably revert to superficial ecumenical dialog in place of true pluralism. Rarely will one group proclaim another’s path equally effective, or be willing to change their core beliefs to accommodate one another’s chosen path. And here lies the great irony of modern fears of cults: every religion, sect, and cult known to man has and does engage, to a greater or lesser extent, in deceptive practices and psychological pressure techniques. For what could be more misleading or emotionally manipulative than the inexorable doctrine and creeds every mainstream religion uses to control its constituents’ behavior, finances, and personal decision-making?
With our generation’s rise of extreme groups hiding their motives and actions behind a veil of religion, from Hitler to bin Laden, simply the utterance of the word, cult, evokes fear and loathing. As a global community we must address head-on the germinating source of these fears, despite their superficial nature.
There has been one driving force in particular that has denigrated and obfuscated any positive appreciation for what cult is, and its great importance to the growth of civilization. Fundamentalism in its various manifestations, whether outside or within organized religion, triggers the fear response to the word, cult. Fundamentalism can be viewed as the simplistic, primitive precept that all must think and believe alike, and in some cases, die if we do not.
Hitler was a master manipulator in pressing his political megalomania, hiding behind carefully selected Teutonic and racial myths, expressing them in a religious context, and landing on murder as the seemingly justifiable final solution to fully express this contrived cult. Bin Laden, too, dismantled the basic tenets of Islam, established a fundamentalist cult bearing just enough similarity to Islam, linked it to hatred (jealousy) of western prosperity, and planted it in the minds of a fear-driven, retrograde desert society, to justify his own greedy grasp for power.
Fundamentalism among Christians fares no better, subscribing to only various literalistic beliefs and dismissing or condescending to any group that doesn’t express Christianity in precisely its sectarian way. Likewise, other religions and modern cults set their members apart and above the “unwashed” among whom they live by ascribing to some special truth known and possessed only by them. It is understandable that fundamentalist cults seek insular, cloistered existences, making it easier for their leaders to control the fortunes and fruits of their followers’ labors, censoring even their followers’ creative thoughts that may stray outside the boundaries of their cult.
Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands respect because its followers believe it is The Truth; ‘the faith once delivered to the saints’ must, in theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself. [UB 92:3.4]
Every evolutionary religion, by design or chance, has created a way for those who fear change, diversity, pluralism, even creativity itself, to justify their base materialism, placing themselves in direct opposition to true personal spirituality. By adopting any unchanging set of core beliefs, each religion or individual person sets it/ himself against the next one, because the logical extrapolation of any set of unchanging core beliefs perforce suggest; that any other set is inadequate or antithetical to the “real” path. But fundamentalism is much worse than even that, for it subtly and/or overtly promotes among its very adherents a growing fear and intolerance of others (and other ideas) outside one’s immediate community of believers. It is this innate exclusionary aspect of fundamentalism that destroys any potential for good its supporters perceive. If it is static, it is forever stuck in partiality, unoriginality, and incompleteness. The idea that everyone must think alike devalues humanity by looking at others (most of the rest of the world) as unsalvageable unless they go along with you—a most unspiritual attitude.
The ceremonies, rituals, and slogans characteristic of a positive and determinedly non-static cult positively express religious, philosophical, and social impulses, securing them from one generation to the next. Conversely, fundamentalism has a deconstructive effect by institutionalizing a delimiting set of beliefs and protecting materialistic, disassociarive, anti-social impulses.
If your religion is a spiritual experience, your object of worship must be the universal spirit reality and ideal of all your spirinialized concepts. All religions based on fear, emotion, tradition, and philosophy can be termed intellectual religions, while those based on true spirit experience can be termed true religions. The object of religious devotion may be material or spiritual, true or false, real or unreal, human or divine. Religions can therefore be either good or evil. [UB 160:5.3] (paraphrased)
Belief is the foundation of every religious ideal, but to the extent that these beliefs remain static or remain at a level that is not universal (for all), they actually can hold man back from God, even from his fellow man. For example, the idea that man requires an intermediary to make contact with God, a minister, priest, rabbi, guru, has been elevated far above the idea that God dwells within the hearts and minds of all humankind, there 24/7 just to “talk things over.” By requiring a believer to act out his religious impulse in the presence of any other human, on a certain day, at a certain time, in a certain place, in a particular sequence, we demean the idea of religion itself.
While the religion of authority may impart a present feeling of settled security, you pay for such a transient satisfaction the price of the loss of your spiritual freedom and religious liberty… The religion of the spirit leaves you forever free to follow the truth wherever the leadings of the spirit may take you…To honor the God-knowing leaders of the past may indeed be worth while, but why, in so doing, should you sacrifice the supreme experience of human existence: finding God for yourselves and knowing him in your own souls? UB 155:6.5,7
Static religions and cults damn man for his natural spirit impulses. You’re out if you haven’t accepted Jesus as your personal savior. You’re out if you do not observe the Sabbath. You’re out if you do not fast during Ramadan. You’re out if you do not believe in the virgin birth. You’re out if you sanction and hang onto individuality. You’re out if you have not been chosen. You’re out, you’re out, you’re out. All of these exclusions are directed outward from within the static cult of selected core beliefs, and ironically, incriminate the cult or religion being promulgated.
The Urantia Book elucidates this quandary, this tension between set beliefs and inclusive belief systems, in the following paragraphs.
From the dawn of civilization every appealing move-meta in social culture or religious advancement has developed a ritual, a symbolic ceremonial. The more this ritual has been an unconscious growth, the stronger it has gripped its devotees. The cult preserved sentiment and satisfied emotion, but it has always been the greatest obstacle to social reconstruction and spiritual progress." [UB 87:7.2]
Notwithstanding that the cult has always retarded social progress, it is regrettable that so many modern believers in moral standards and spiritual ideals have no adequate symbolism—no cult of mutual support—nothing to belong to. But a religious cult cannot be manufactured; it must grow. And those of no two groups will be identical unless their rituals are arbitrarily standardized by authority. [UB 87:7.3]
In the past, truth has grown rapidly and expanded freely when the cult has been elastic, the symbolism expansile. Abundant truth and an adjustable cult have favored rapidity of social progression. A meaningless cult vitiates religion when it attempts to supplant philosophy and to enslave reason; a genuine cult grows. [UB 87:7.5]
The one and only cure for fundamentalism, and the only antidote to the negative expressions of cult, is universality, a prerequisite “cult of mutual support.” Only universal concepts envelop all of humanity, excluding no one. The basic idea that all men and women are children of one heavenly father is in itself a most revolutionary concept in that it assertively challenges all hatred, intolerance, or urge to control others, while giving comfort to the most downtrodden among us.
Modern man must find some adequate symbolism for his new and expanding ideas, ideals, and loyalties. This enhanced symbol must arise out of religious living, spiritual experience. And this higher symbolism of a higher civilization must be predicated on the concept of the Fatherhood of God and be pregnant with the mighty ideal of the brotherhood of man. [UB 87:7.6]
Having been fortunate enough to be the beneficiaries of the expanded truths found in The Urantia Book and elsewhere, we have a duty to those around us, and those to come soon after us, to rescue the word, cult, and reestablish its meaning, free from its baggage. In so doing, we will restore an understanding of the basic elements of religion and spiritual life in ways that bring God closer to man and man closer to God.
There is great hope for any church [any religion, sect, or cult] that worships the living God, validates the brotherhood of man, and dares to remove all creedal pressure from its members. [UB 103:5.12] (with paraphrase)
Having looked at the current meanings and values imposed on the word, cult, what is the individual, searching for his own answers, to do? Consider that belief and faith are always a matter of free will choice. Tracking the emergence of individual consciousness and its natural, intimate relationship to emerging cults, and religion in general, is a key to understanding for yourself all three: belief, faith, and free will. All three, by man’s nature, undergo a lifetime of progressive growth, perfecting evolutionarily, under a unifying, unique personality.
Religious faith (is) human belief in spiritual realities and divine values. [UB 195:7.1]
The Universal Father never imposes any form of arbitrary recognition, formal worship, or slavish service upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes. The evolutionary inhabitants of the worlds of time and space must of themselves—in their own hearts—recognize, love, and voluntarily worship him . . . The affectionate dedication of the human will to the doing of the Father’s will is man’s choicest gift to God; in fact, such a consecration of creature will constitutes man’s only possible gift of true value to the Paradise Father. In God, man lives, moves, and has his being; there is nothing which man can give to God except this choosing to abide by the Father’s will . . . [UB 1:1.2]
States of consciousness can be mapped, despite the poverty of current language and symbology, but mapped nonetheless as three distinct attributes of personality: the unconscious, the conscious, and the superconscious.
Superconsciousness is a consciousness of consciousness, for only man can think about what he is thinking. It is the inborn philosopher in all of us. Superconsciousness is the individual’s unique conscious, ness of divinity comprising the philosopher’s leap of faith, recognizing that there is much unseen and unknown. Cult, whether acknowledged or not, represents the cumulative efforts of man to grasp these cosmic secrets.
Plato called this unseen and unknown knowledge “hidden knowledge.” The word, apocrypha, also means hidden. More recently, the words, occult and mysticism, have been used as synonyms for attempts to participate in cosmic mysteries. In the pursuit of this hidden knowledge, man has left- much evidence of his intimacy with cult and religion, for he has sought nothing less than the actual convergence of the human and divine, and all of it laying patterns of perfection within man’s superconsciousness.
Superconsciousness is the very arena of creature, Creator contact where free will, belief, and faith gradually expand. Always will this superconscious reach higher each day toward an ideal, perfecting toward perfection. And, the superconscious does all this even when the conscious mind appears unaware of this inherent, mutual, and driving intent to join man and God; but it becomes superpersonal when it is acknowledged consciously more and more by the mind and heart of its indwelling.
It is somewhat humbling to think of the few tools we have on our own, as we wander through life wondering what the big fuss is about cults and religions. We are born into a world with free will and all the time in the world to exercise it. Once set upon a path of our own making, the enlightened among us commit their free will, their egos, to doing God’s will, universal peace on earth and goodwill towards men, truth, beauty, goodness, and LOVE combined.
No personal suffering or cataclysmic life event is required to come to fully embrace the will of God. It’s what The Urantia Book calls personal “light and life,” available on an individual level in the here and now to the receptive personalities unifying among us, and global “Light and Life,” to be enjoyed on a planetary level as its citizens worldwide unite along universal spiritual goals. Humankind is so often dominated by the ideal of a far-off perfection, not realizing that, like Jesus the Man, we can experience unbroken spiritual communion, everyday, every moment “light and life.” One day, children will be born into a world where they are encouraged to live their lives in communion with the divine. For now, we can actually choose this, and without removing us for day-to-day living on earth, become an active, aware, and integral part of the eventuation of Light and Life as a planetary destiny.
After eons of spiritual growth within a grand universe of progressive attainment in time and space, evolutionary mortals arrive at the center of the Grand Universe having achieved their first endowment of God’s perfection…the “perfection of purpose.”
‘Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.’ That is the astounding invitation-command broadcast to the finite children of the worlds of space. The promulgation of that injunction has set all creation astir in the co-operative effort of the celestial beings to assist in bringing about the fulfillment and realization of that tremendous command of the First Great Source and Center. [UB 26:4.12]
This first goal of mortal attainment—the personal perfection of one’s spiritual purpose—begins the day it is recognized consciously, the dawn of one’s “superpersonality.” While this is wholly a matter of free will, the God-conscious man enters into a true partnership with God the Father and His manifold eternal-infinite spiritual reality—by far the greatest adventure to be had. This deity adventure comprises the totality of man’s evolutionary quest for self-understanding, as expressed in culture and in religion.
While the unconscious and conscious minds serve many of the higher mammals, superconsciousness, a higher level of mind, a higher level of thinking, is unique to humans. Only man can worship and gain wisdom. On the conscious level, man—not God—has proclaimed both popes and street variety cult leaders, yet labors in his superconscious to discover still greater self-knowledge, self-actualization, and self-spiritization.
Only man loves his children’s children, distinguishing evidence of his in-born superconsciousness, the gateway to divinity. This wholly human aptitude, to consider one’s progeny, or anyone other than himself for that matter, uncovers an unending series of philosophic challenges necessary to resolve if there is ever to be continued growth on any level of consciousness. As he meets these philosophical challenges, one by one, day by day, the expansile mysteries of divinity are expressed before his eyes, in his daily life, especially in his relationships with others.
Gradually all of man’s relationships synchronize with his growing, internal, and entirely personal experience of divinity. Man’s interior and wholly personal relationship with divine realities is confirmed to all other personalities by the degree of sincere and boundless love he showers on his fellow man. Always is the Fatherhood of God in sync with the brotherhood of all mankind.
With every act, man is empowered to act as God to any of His children, to actualize divine love in time and space, and, thereby, to make ready for a further enlargement of his superconscious—true, and alive, God-consciousness.
This God-like love we give to our fellows is not just run of the mill brotherly love and affection. It is not mere ethical service, but a dynamic form of fatherly love, looking upon one’s fellows as God the Parent does, expressing the Divine Affection for all His children. This may sound difficult to do but the reality is that it is the easiest path, the one with least resistance, and the greatest constructive results. God’s Love carries a power no mortal can conceptualize, yet any man or woman can wield this power creatively on behalf of his fellows, all according to an individualized, self-obtained God-con-sciousness. This is the very foundation of the expandable, adjustable “cult of mutual support.”
(If you don’t believe this, that loving service to your fellow man leads to constructive results and a greater God-consciousness, why not challenge yourself to pretend this is true for one week. Satisfaction is guaranteed in 7 days or less!)
Superconsciousness—consciousness of the divine—is a higher level of thought than the merely conscious mind. Superconsciousness enables man to meet deity in its many forms, in its many descriptions confronting daily life. It is a level of mind, which can connect superpersonally with other personalities, human and divine, and can do so in any arena of human choice, in the family, commerce, academe, the media, nations, and the world community-at-large.
Superconsciousness enables man to personalize the spirit that lies within, and we do it through free will choice. While spiritizing our personality, the spirit is eventuating its unique personalization, resulting in a divine soul residing within the human mind, and many say in the heart, of man. Man’s intellectual and philosophical grasp of divinity within his superconscious translates and connects the growing personal spirit, the soul, no matter how fledgling, to God.
Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience. [UB 195:10.1]
Evolutionary growth born of personal spiritual experience is as important to God as it is to man’s well being. God’s nature is sevenfold, one-seventh in reserve for us, all races of humans, to give to the personality of God something precious, an actual part of His growing nature born of our finite spiritual experience. This exclusively experiential spirit growth contributes, one ideal at a time, to the eventuation of one seventh of God’s nature, the one-seventh not already infinite-eternal perfect. It is best described as God the Supreme, comprising as it eventually does, the totality of supreme values. This is the motivation for the expandable, adjustable “cult of mutual support.”
All of man’s finite perfecting throughout the evolving universes of time and space adds up to this actualized, new, original deity personality, The Supreme—truly the Motherhood of God. This one-seventh of God, still under construction in a cosmic sense, comprises the complete marriage of humanity and divinity, in both an individual and a planetary context. These and many other connections to the divine are the channel markers as man makes his way upward and inward in loving service to his brethren as an expression of his internal, and most personal, relationship with the original divine personality known to those who love Him as God the Father.
Much now depends on our answers to the question of why it is very important at this particular point in our mutual history to better understand each other and at the same time God. More fruitful understanding of each other, creating peace, is one ideal with which every person should be able to agree, no matter where they fall on the humanistic-philosophic-religious/spiritual spectrum. Improving relationships with each other and creating new and peaceful relationships with those we’ve yet to know is a noble goal from any viewpoint. There are no boundaries or borders that can retard our finding better ways each day to communicate with each other and, thereby, God Himself. The future health of the entire planet needs these answers now. The expansive and ever-changing nature of these types of universal goals lay the cornerstone in the new cult of mutual support—goals and beliefs that grow and expand with greater self-knowledge. Demystifying and redefining cult and religion, we can begin to move forward, salvaging the best of that which is old and good and marrying it to the new, original possibilities we now have at our fingertips throughout the world.
Each person must make life’s journey on his own terms. Intellectual understandings day by day upgrade to spiritual certainties as man begins to look upon his fellows with love, each new relationship another opportunity to express his internal relationship with God in partnership with divinity, man’s hopes and desires can all be reconciled in terms of truth, beauty, goodness, and, love. And, each person gets to give God personal evolutionary experience, something He can only receive from us.
Only by discovering for oneself the true meaning of religion and cult will man be successful in cleansing his mind of any subsidiary distractions set upon him by the course of events or the well-meaning doctrines of other humans. By faith, he rises from mere self-understanding to self-actualization and self-spiritualization.
The drive toward melding one’s personality with God arrives early and naturally in man’s experience. An examination of the roots of philosophy and religion uncover the cults that were foundational to their mod, ern expression. it is interesting to keep in mind that this path from impulse and illusions to a philosophy-based religion is startlingly similar when considering both primitive man’s first assumptions about the world in which he found himself and modern man’s primitive beliefs. (The inserted bracketed words in the following quotes speak to this fascinating correlation, and, as a type of literary exercise, allows each of us to recognize our own antecedent or still latent fears which, hopefully, will soon be replaced by a personal cultivation of religious ideals, free of all primitive fear.)
Primitive religion. The seminatwal and instinctive urge to fear mysterious energies and worship superior forces, chiefly a religion of the physical nature, the religion of fear. [UB 155:5.3]
Primitive religion had [has] a biologic origin, a natural evolutionary development, aside from moral associations and apart from all spiritual influences. The higher animals have fears but no illusions, hence no religion. Man creates his primitive religions out of his fears and by means of his illusions. [UB 85:0.1]
Fear, joined with ignorance of natural phenomena, is about to give [gives] birth to primitive religion. [UB 62:5.4]
Early religion was [is] wholly intellectual in nature and was [is] entirely predicated on associational circumstances. The objects of worship were [are] altogether suggestive; they consisted [consist] of the things of nature which were [are] close at hand, or which loomed [loom] large in the commonplace experience of the simple-minded primitive…[man]. [UB 85:0.2]
Man’s earliest prereligious fear of the forces of nature gradually became [becomes] religious as nature became [becomes] personalized, spiritized, and eventually deified in human consciousness. Religion of a primitive type was [is] therefore a natural biologic consequence of the psychologic inertia of evolving animal minds after such minds had once entertained tentertaini concepts of the supernatural. [UB 86:0.2]
Aside from the natural worship urge, early evolutionary, religion had [has] its roots of origin in the human experiences of chance—so-called luck, commonplace happenings. . . and this gives certain origin to those experiences which man interprets as good luck and bad luck. Mischance was [is] a great factor in the lives of men and women who lived [live] constantly on the ragged edge of a precarious and harassed existence. [UB 86:1.1]
Into this major premise of illusion and ignorance, mortal fear has packed all of the subsequent superstition and religion of primitive peoples. This was man’s only religion up to the times of revelation, and today many of the world’s races have only this crude religion of evolution. [UB 86:6.3]
Religion represents man’s adjustment to his illusions of the mystery of chance. [UB 87:5.2]
Prayer, as an agency of religion, evolved [evolves] from previous nonreligious monologue and dialogue expressions. With the attainment of selfconsciousness by primitive man there occurred [occurs] the inevitable corollary of other-consciousness, the dual potential of social response and God recognition. [UB 91:0.1]
The simple prayer of faith evidences a mighty evolution in human experience whereby the ancient conversations with the fictitious symbol of the alter ego of primitive religion have become [becomes] 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. [UB 91:3.4]
Primitive religion was [is] largely a material-value consciousness, but civilization elevates religious values, for true religion is the devotion of the self to the service of meaningful and supreme values. As religion evolves, ethics becomes the philosophy of morals, and morality becomes the discipline of self by the standards of highest meanings and supreme values—divine and spiritual ideals. And thus religion becomes a spontaneous and exquisite devotion, the living experience of the loyalty of love. [UB 92:7.5]
Religion, as a human experience, ranges from the primitive fear slavery of the evolving savage up to the sublime and magnificent faith liberty of those civilized mortals who are superbly conscious of sonship with the eternal God. [UB 101:0.1]
Philosophy transforms that primitive religion which was largely a fairy tale of conscience into a living experience in the ascending values of cosmic reality. [UB 101:7.6]
The cave man went thoughtlessly through his life, a series of fleeting pleasures and egregious bad luck. When bad things happened, and there were some very bad things happening in this period, he asked himself why. Religion and the cult of religion are here born with man’s hope to overcome future had luck. Modern man, too, can be found in this primitive spiritual state. All evolutionary dogma is built on the fear of bad luck. Even the self-serving humanist will concede that he does good to offset bad fortune.
The cave man clan’s shamans were set to work to help individuals and groups avoid bad luck, by supplication and some promised sacrifice to whatever the forces of bad luck could be. Much later, early man awakened to the possibilities of good fortune, as well as the now very familiar bad fortune he was enduring, and his redemptive sacrifices expanded, became more codified, and formed group religious practice. These new entreaties, to the imagined gods of both good luck and bad luck, can be considered one of man’s great steps forward in the development of religion-cult, modern philosophy, and, better civilizations.
Today, the religions and cults of our cohorts echo this simplistic, bad-luck-good-luck interpretation of human and divine realities. Man’s search for the divine is today and throughout history written in his cults and religions.
These early events set the stage for mankind’s march through millennia in search of salvation, a loving union with all truth, beauty, and goodness. These images of primitive religion, a war between good luck and had luck, just as assuredly map our own interior life antecedent to a sincere search for spiritual values and divine realities. After all these hundreds and thousands of years, people arc left in a self-made form of spiritual slavery, just barely removed from this good-luck-and-bad-luck state of mind about divinity—that God surely is nothing more than an inconsistent meter of both good and bad luck, an often wrathful God sitting in judgment of our every action, while quite the opposite is true.
God’s salvation is central to man’s search for divine truth. To the God-knowing individual it is simply the acceptance of sonship with Him. Yet for many this salvation continues to be held hostage by human intermediaries, evolutionary religions (the religions of us/good and them/unwashed), and every manner of false cult. All offer material superiority and eternal salvation—for a price, for acceptance of their man-made dogma, for a set of rituals assuring survival.
It is the individual himself, who must break free from these profane interruptions, distractions by humans to humans. In this way, today or tomorrow, he may fully embrace divine and sacred realities, to live in partnership with God, one personality with The Personality.
The cult advances slowly in generation epochs and agelong cycles. But it does move forward. Evolutionary belief…laid the foundation for a philosophy of revealed religion which will eventually destroy the superstition of its origin. [UB 92:3.5]
Alison Gardner discovered The Urantia Book in 1970 after hearing excerpts read on the radio. She was a founder of the Connecticut Society, has served on the General. Council and as a member of the Education Committee, and is Chair of the Fellowship’s Ad Hoc Public Relations Committee. Alison has served as moderator and contributor for the Wrightwood Series. She and her husband, Dan Massey, have two teenage children.
| Not what we give...but what we share... | Volume 4, Number 1, 2002 (Summer) — Index | Religious Practice and the Urantia Revelation |