© 1990 Christopher Billington
© 1990 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
I have been re-reading the rather few remarks about ‘mota’.
“Mota is more than a superior philosophy; it is to philosophy as two eyes are to one; it has a stereoscopic effect on meanings and values. Material man sees the universe, as it were, with but one eye — flat. Mansion world students achieve cosmic perspective — depth — by superimposing the perceptions of the morontia life upon the perceptions of the physical life.” (UB 48:6.28)
I was later able to relate this to my interest in language and humour, and my unease about the poverty of the descriptions of humour in The URANTIA Book. I have always known that one of the prime sources of humour lies in the structure, the formalism, of language. Because of the symbolism a statement can have a variety of meanings. The context may show which is intended, and the hearer normally is unaware of any other meaning because of being tuned in to that context. However, the more lateral thinker (or language freak, like me) can often see more than the intended meaning. The surprise of the sudden realisation of another twist is one of the manifestations of humour, and for me a significant one. If the speaker has also seen it, then this may be a deliberate joke; if the speaker hasn’t seen it then the hearer is well advised to let it pass, but maybe still enjoy the humour of it internally.
Now: if we take a rather wide interpretation of the meaning of philosophy, we see that the existence of mota means that to the morontian these alternative meanings are present and available simultaneously. There is no sudden appreciation of an alternative, and sudden realisation is the basis for this type of humour. So the morontian does not see this kind of juxtaposition as a source of humour, though there may well be some analogous feeling which has not been described to us, and for obvious reasons. It is possible to extend this train of thought and suggest that the mortal who has learned to appreciate this kind of humour is also on the way to understanding something of what mota means while still in his material state.
There are some snags to this train of thought also. Learning that languages were still a necessary part of communication even beyond the local universe was a shock to me: I had always imagined that some kind of telepathy operated, that mind looked at mind and was aware of thought content. I was reconciled to this by noting that language provides some privacy, some personal uniqueness, which would be impossible with a universally operating telepathy. Language allows me to tell you things or refrain from doing so. In some sense it is like our skin which allows us to retain our moisture, and without which we quickly die of dehydration. Granted the continuance of language, then, we still have to operate with symbols, and the symbols essentially have several meanings. Thus the possibility of ‘language humour’ would seem to continue to exist in the morontia and the spirit states, and we seem to have turned the whole argument on its head. The fault may be that I have interpreted ‘philosophy’ too widely, and that the concept of mota is more restricted than I have supposed. It all needs working on.
Christopher Billington
WTree via Buchan, Vic.