© 2006 Dominique Ronfet
© 2006 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Essays to explain the concept of living truth | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 | Worship God? An invitation to travel outside of space-time |
The chapter “Prayer and the alter ego” (Fasc. 91 Chap. 3) opens certain doors to the ways in which human psychology functions.
I would like to share with you what inspired me to read this chapter.
These thoughts are obviously my own.
A man is never totally alone thanks to his particular mental functioning. He has the possibility of “reflecting on himself”, of projecting himself through certain imaginary conversations.
“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.” (UB 91:3.1)
This very human faculty (do you think a cat meows to itself?) to maintain an imaginary dialogue leads me to remember that we are the bearers of a Personality which is more than our individuality.
This concept, widely developed in the Fascicles, still remains impossible to grasp.
Despite everything, it can be understood as an invariant force, a will, absolute in its essence, a quality, a potential unifying faculty whose sole aim would be to reveal itself through the reunion of the disparate elements of our individual.
In the example of man speaking to himself, the Personality then seems to present itself as a mirror. It reflects our human identity and invites us, like Alice in Wonderland, to cross it to go beyond this imperfect reflection, this projection made of our fears, hopes and dreams (beliefs).
Could humans therefore be communicating animals who progress through this technique of exchange in their search for themselves, for their origins?
The importance of this communication factor then extends under the influence of spiritual currents, after the other-human, towards the other-divine.
It is human progression towards natural religion.
The early and primitive form of prayer was much like the semimagical recitations of the present-day Toda tribe, 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. (UB 91:3.2)
The conversations then turn into prayer towards the divinity of the moment.
To avoid just monologues, humans must then interpret the signs of a response where they can.
But these exchanges remain above all projections.
It remains for man to find this divine host by intuition, the final goal of this search for identification.
As it is conceived by successive generations of praying mortals, the alter ego evolves up through ghosts, fetishes, and spirits to polytheistic gods, and eventually to the One God, a divine being embodying the highest ideals and the loftiest aspirations of the praying ego. And thus does prayer function as the most potent agency of religion in the conservation of the highest values and ideals of those who pray. From the moment of the conceiving of an alter ego to the appearance of the concept of a divine and heavenly Father, prayer is always a socializing, moralizing, and spiritualizing practice. (UB 91:3.3)
We then reach a maximum point of balance between a prayer turned towards the outside (active), resulting from our desire to project towards the alter-ego and a grateful prayer (passive) turned towards the interior revelation, intuition of an interior divinity.
Aside from all that is superself in the experience of praying, it should be remembered that ethical prayer is a splendid way to elevate one’s ego and reinforce the self for better living and higher attainment. Prayer induces the human ego to look both ways for help: for material aid to the subconscious reservoir of mortal experience, for inspiration and guidance to the superconscious borders of the contact of the material with the spiritual, with the Mystery Monitor. (UB 91:3.5)
Enlightened prayer must recognize not only an external and personal God but also an internal and impersonal Divinity, the indwelling Adjuster. It is altogether fitting that man, when he prays, should strive to grasp the concept of the Universal Father on Paradise; but the more effective technique for most practical purposes will be to revert to the concept of a near-by alter ego, just as the primitive mind was wont to do, and then to recognize that the idea of this alter ego has evolved from a mere fiction to the truth of God’s indwelling mortal man in the factual presence of the Adjuster so that man can talk face to face, as it were, with a real and genuine and divine alter ego that indwells him and is the very presence and essence of the living God, the Universal Father. (UB 91:3.7)
This search for balance, which some will call wisdom, is undoubtedly the key to avoiding having either a religion that is too human (Christianity), which through an excess of exteriorization tends to create an exaggeratedly human divinity, or a philosophy/religion, Buddhism, which on the contrary favors interiorization but then seems, through too strong an intuition of the Adjuster, not to be able to arrive at the concept of a personal God.
This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion. (UB 94:11.5)
We have therefore seen the need for communication move from the alter-ego to prayer to the alter-divine to arrive at the desire for identification with a unique source, the intuition of the Father of Paradise.
Our natural need to project our research meets our inner aspiration towards greater perfection.
There is no doubt that this path of exchange/revelation will continue long after our time here below.
5. While attaining satisfactory socialization of the personality on intellectual and vocational levels, further perfect the ability to live in intimate contact with similar and slightly dissimilar beings with ever-lessening irritability and ever-diminishing resentment. The reversion directors contribute much to this latter attainment through their group-play activities.
6. Adjust all of these various socialization techniques to the furtherance of the progressive co-ordination of the Paradise-ascension career; augment universe insight by enhancing the ability to grasp the eternal goal-meanings concealed within these seemingly insignificant time-space activities.
7. And then, climax all of these procedures of multisocialization with the concurrent enhancement of spiritual insight as it pertains to the augmentation of all phases of personal endowment through group spiritual association and morontia co-ordination. Intellectually, socially, and spiritually two moral creatures do not merely double their personal potentials of universe achievement by partnership technique; they more nearly quadruple their attainment and accomplishment possibilities. (UB 43:8.9-11)
Have a good trip everyone!
Dominique Ronfet
| Essays to explain the concept of living truth | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 38 — Winter 2006 | Worship God? An invitation to travel outside of space-time |