885 lines
50 KiB
Plaintext
885 lines
50 KiB
Plaintext
Urantia Book Paper 101 The Real Nature Of Religion
|
||
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
|
||
|
||
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
|
||
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
|
||
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
|
||
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
|
||
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
|
||
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
|
||
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
|
||
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
|
||
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
|
||
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
|
||
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
|
||
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
|
||
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
|
||
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
|
||
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
|
||
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
|
||
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
|
||
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
|
||
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
|
||
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
|
||
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
|
||
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
|
||
...
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Paper 101 The Real Nature Of Religion
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Introduction
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive
|
||
social evolution. But religion, as such, is not merely a moral movement, albeit
|
||
the outward and social manifestations of religion are mightily influenced by
|
||
the ethical and moral momentum of human society. Always is religion the
|
||
inspiration of man's evolving nature, but it is not the secret of that
|
||
evolution.
|
||
|
||
Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the
|
||
superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material
|
||
mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that "true light which
|
||
lights every man who comes into the world." And this spirit leading is distinct
|
||
from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious
|
||
assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion
|
||
transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is
|
||
faith, trust, and assurance.
|
||
|
||
1. TRUE RELIGION
|
||
|
||
True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out
|
||
and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic
|
||
experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by
|
||
the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but
|
||
viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from
|
||
the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether
|
||
logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a
|
||
moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal
|
||
realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the
|
||
flesh.
|
||
|
||
The Thought Adjuster has no special mechanism through which to gain
|
||
self-expression; there is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or
|
||
expression of religious emotions. These experiences are made available through
|
||
the naturally ordained mechanism of mortal mind. And therein lies one
|
||
explanation of the Adjuster's difficulty in engaging in direct communication
|
||
with the material mind of its constant indwelling.
|
||
|
||
The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions,
|
||
but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1105
|
||
|
||
, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived
|
||
only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears
|
||
the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. "Without holiness no man may see the
|
||
Lord." All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such
|
||
religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the
|
||
combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function
|
||
amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving
|
||
sons of God.
|
||
|
||
Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by
|
||
faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the
|
||
finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and
|
||
spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest
|
||
religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and
|
||
authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely
|
||
mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of
|
||
spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind,
|
||
and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is
|
||
simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the
|
||
reality of such a purely personal experience.
|
||
|
||
While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a
|
||
material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational
|
||
insight which originates in man's mind-experience. Religion is born neither of
|
||
mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or
|
||
less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely
|
||
intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate
|
||
in the domain of man's moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth
|
||
of man's spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality which accrues as
|
||
a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the
|
||
God-hungry mortal mind.
|
||
|
||
Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and
|
||
the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true
|
||
religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain
|
||
consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the
|
||
believing personality.
|
||
|
||
Thus it may be seen that religious longings and spiritual urges are not of such
|
||
a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are
|
||
they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the
|
||
conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty
|
||
and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a
|
||
profound impression upon man's moral nature that he finally reaches that
|
||
position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no
|
||
right not to believe in God. The higher and superphilosophic wisdom of such
|
||
enlightened and disciplined individuals ultimately instructs them that to doubt
|
||
God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and
|
||
deepest thing within the human mind and soul--the divine Adjuster.
|
||
|
||
2. THE FACT OF RELIGION
|
||
|
||
The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of rational
|
||
and average human beings. And this is the only sense in which religion can ever
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1106
|
||
|
||
be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The proof that revelation is
|
||
revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does
|
||
synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of
|
||
religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and
|
||
unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of
|
||
mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those
|
||
questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out
|
||
his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit.
|
||
|
||
Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the
|
||
attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of
|
||
the morontia viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the
|
||
comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the
|
||
mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural,
|
||
religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical.
|
||
|
||
Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First
|
||
Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science
|
||
into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation
|
||
of such a faith, such spiritual insight.
|
||
|
||
There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival:
|
||
|
||
1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust
|
||
initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
|
||
|
||
2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit
|
||
of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of
|
||
the written word.
|
||
|
||
Science ends its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause. Religion
|
||
does not stop in its flight of faith until it is sure of a God of salvation.
|
||
The discriminating study of science logically suggests the reality and
|
||
existence of an Absolute. Religion believes unreservedly in the existence and
|
||
reality of a God who fosters personality survival. What metaphysics fails
|
||
utterly in doing, and what even philosophy fails partially in doing, revelation
|
||
does; that is, affirms that this First Cause of science and religion's God of
|
||
salvation are one and the same Deity.
|
||
|
||
Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of
|
||
philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science
|
||
yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity;
|
||
revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to
|
||
universal reality.
|
||
|
||
The contemplation of nature can only reveal a God of nature, a God of motion.
|
||
Nature exhibits only matter, motion, and animation--life. Matter plus energy,
|
||
under certain conditions, is manifested in living forms, but while natural life
|
||
is thus relatively continuous as a phenomenon, it is wholly transient as to
|
||
individualities. Nature does not afford ground for logical belief in
|
||
human-personality survival. The religious man who finds God in nature has
|
||
already and first found this same personal God in his own soul.
|
||
|
||
Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation, the substitute for morontia insight
|
||
on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the same God in nature that faith
|
||
exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation successfully bridge the gulf between
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1107
|
||
|
||
the material and the spiritual, even between the creature and the Creator,
|
||
between man and God.
|
||
|
||
The contemplation of nature does logically point in the direction of
|
||
intelligent guidance, even living supervision, but it does not in any
|
||
satisfactory manner reveal a personal God. On the other hand, nature discloses
|
||
nothing which would preclude the universe from being looked upon as the
|
||
handiwork of the God of religion. God cannot be found through nature alone, but
|
||
man having otherwise found him, the study of nature becomes wholly consistent
|
||
with a higher and more spiritual interpretation of the universe.
|
||
|
||
Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience
|
||
it is continuous. Divinity functions in mortal personality as the Adjuster gift
|
||
of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the
|
||
Universe Spirit, while these three supermortal endowments are unified in human
|
||
experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme.
|
||
|
||
True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral
|
||
consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic
|
||
doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that "the Spirit itself
|
||
bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." Religion
|
||
consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the
|
||
sublimity of the soul's trust.
|
||
|
||
Your deepest nature--the divine Adjuster--creates within you a hunger and
|
||
thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is
|
||
the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and
|
||
thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become
|
||
conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality
|
||
and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good.
|
||
|
||
The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on
|
||
great learning or clever logic. It is spiritual insight, and that is just the
|
||
reason why some of the world's greatest religious teachers, even the prophets,
|
||
have sometimes possessed so little of the wisdom of the world. Religious faith
|
||
is available alike to the learned and the unlearned.
|
||
|
||
Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much
|
||
less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God
|
||
consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things
|
||
spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no
|
||
argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary, while to all
|
||
other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly
|
||
convincing.
|
||
|
||
Psychology may indeed attempt to study the phenomena of religious reactions to
|
||
the social environment, but never can it hope to penetrate to the real and
|
||
inner motives and workings of religion. Only theology, the province of faith
|
||
and the technique of revelation, can afford any sort of intelligent account of
|
||
the nature and content of religious experience.
|
||
|
||
3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF RELIGION
|
||
|
||
Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in
|
||
spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies;
|
||
it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic
|
||
vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to
|
||
human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral
|
||
consciousness.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1108
|
||
|
||
Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in
|
||
association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father's gift to man.
|
||
Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the
|
||
Creative Spirit's gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit
|
||
realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the
|
||
bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and
|
||
interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality
|
||
in potential destiny.
|
||
|
||
It is this same spirit personality, in primitive and embryonic form, the
|
||
Adjuster possession of which survives the natural death in the flesh. This
|
||
composite entity of spirit origin in association with human experience is
|
||
enabled, by means of the living way provided by the divine Sons, to survive (in
|
||
Adjuster custody) the dissolution of the material self of mind and matter when
|
||
such a transient partnership of the material and the spiritual is divorced by
|
||
the cessation of vital motion.
|
||
|
||
Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the
|
||
potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which
|
||
it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and
|
||
testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness)
|
||
is revealed in that it:
|
||
|
||
1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse
|
||
animalistic tendencies.
|
||
|
||
2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter
|
||
disappointment and crushing defeat.
|
||
|
||
3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and
|
||
physical calamity.
|
||
|
||
4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding
|
||
baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.
|
||
|
||
5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of
|
||
maltreatment and the rankest injustice.
|
||
|
||
6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of
|
||
seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to
|
||
human welfare.
|
||
|
||
7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations
|
||
of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.
|
||
|
||
8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul's survival regardless of
|
||
the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of
|
||
unsound philosophy.
|
||
|
||
9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and
|
||
partial civilizations of modern times.
|
||
|
||
10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human
|
||
selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political
|
||
maladjustments.
|
||
|
||
11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine
|
||
guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.
|
||
|
||
12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to
|
||
declare, "Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him."
|
||
|
||
We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits
|
||
dwelling within him: first, by personal experience--religious faith; second, by
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1109
|
||
|
||
revelation--personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such
|
||
extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are
|
||
illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the
|
||
presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there
|
||
are still others.
|
||
|
||
And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of
|
||
religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and
|
||
spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious
|
||
experience.
|
||
|
||
4. THE LIMITATIONS OF REVELATION
|
||
|
||
Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins,
|
||
it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in
|
||
cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of
|
||
revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of
|
||
unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed
|
||
religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future
|
||
students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine
|
||
religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the
|
||
associated cosmologies therein presented.
|
||
|
||
Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth
|
||
are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at
|
||
liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years.
|
||
Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of
|
||
the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now
|
||
or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and
|
||
religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the
|
||
records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements
|
||
regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence
|
||
of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new
|
||
developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly
|
||
undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that
|
||
revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is
|
||
not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting
|
||
of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human
|
||
wisdom must evolve.
|
||
|
||
Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the
|
||
work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the
|
||
function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.
|
||
|
||
In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the
|
||
manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine
|
||
excellence.
|
||
|
||
Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a
|
||
spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never
|
||
inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least
|
||
transiently clarify knowledge by:
|
||
|
||
1. The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
|
||
|
||
2. The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1110
|
||
|
||
3. The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal
|
||
transactions in the distant past.
|
||
|
||
4. The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in
|
||
otherwise earned knowledge.
|
||
|
||
5. Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual
|
||
teachings contained in the accompanying revelation.
|
||
|
||
5. RELIGION EXPANDED BY REVELATION
|
||
|
||
Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the
|
||
necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths
|
||
of spirit acquirement.
|
||
|
||
Science deals with facts; religion is concerned only with values. Through
|
||
enlightened philosophy the mind endeavors to unite the meanings of both facts
|
||
and values, thereby arriving at a concept of complete reality. Remember that
|
||
science is the domain of knowledge, philosophy the realm of wisdom, and
|
||
religion the sphere of the faith experience. But religion, nonetheless,
|
||
presents two phases of manifestation:
|
||
|
||
1. Evolutionary religion. The experience of primitive worship, the religion
|
||
which is a mind derivative.
|
||
|
||
2. Revealed religion. The universe attitude which is a spirit derivative; the
|
||
assurance of, and belief in, the conservation of eternal realities, the
|
||
survival of personality, and the eventual attainment of the cosmic Deity, whose
|
||
purpose has made all this possible. It is a part of the plan of the universe
|
||
that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the
|
||
spiritual expansion of revelation.
|
||
|
||
Both science and religion start out with the assumption of certain generally
|
||
accepted bases for logical deductions. So, also, must philosophy start its
|
||
career upon the assumption of the reality of three things:
|
||
|
||
1. The material body.
|
||
|
||
2. The supermaterial phase of the human being, the soul or even the indwelling
|
||
spirit.
|
||
|
||
3. The human mind, the mechanism for intercommunication and interassociation
|
||
between spirit and matter, between the material and the spiritual.
|
||
|
||
Scientists assemble facts, philosophers co-ordinate ideas, while prophets exalt
|
||
ideals. Feeling and emotion are invariable concomitants of religion, but they
|
||
are not religion. Religion may be the feeling of experience, but it is hardly
|
||
the experience of feeling. Neither logic (rationalization) nor emotion
|
||
(feeling) is essentially a part of religious experience, although both may
|
||
variously be associated with the exercise of faith in the furtherance of
|
||
spiritual insight into reality, all according to the status and temperamental
|
||
tendency of the individual mind.
|
||
|
||
Evolutionary religion is the outworking of the endowment of the local universe
|
||
mind adjutant charged with the creation and fostering of the worship trait in
|
||
evolving man. Such primitive religions are directly concerned with ethics and
|
||
morals, the sense of human duty. Such religions are predicated on the assurance
|
||
of conscience and result in the stabilization of relatively ethical
|
||
civilizations.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1111
|
||
|
||
Personally revealed religions are sponsored by the bestowal spirits
|
||
representing the three persons of the Paradise Trinity and are especially
|
||
concerned with the expansion of truth. Evolutionary religion drives home to the
|
||
individual the idea of personal duty; revealed religion lays increasing
|
||
emphasis on loving, the golden rule.
|
||
|
||
Evolved religion rests wholly on faith. Revelation has the additional assurance
|
||
of its expanded presentation of the truths of divinity and reality and the
|
||
still more valuable testimony of the actual experience which accumulates in
|
||
consequence of the practical working union of the faith of evolution and the
|
||
truth of revelation. Such a working union of human faith and divine truth
|
||
constitutes the possession of a character well on the road to the actual
|
||
acquirement of a morontial personality.
|
||
|
||
Evolutionary religion provides only the assurance of faith and the confirmation
|
||
of conscience; revelatory religion provides the assurance of faith plus the
|
||
truth of a living experience in the realities of revelation. The third step in
|
||
religion, or the third phase of the experience of religion, has to do with the
|
||
morontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. Increasingly in the morontia
|
||
progression the truths of revealed religion are expanded; more and more you
|
||
will know the truth of supreme values, divine goodnesses, universal
|
||
relationships, eternal realities, and ultimate destinies.
|
||
|
||
Increasingly throughout the morontia progression the assurance of truth
|
||
replaces the assurance of faith. When you are finally mustered into the actual
|
||
spirit world, then will the assurances of pure spirit insight operate in the
|
||
place of faith and truth or, rather, in conjunction with, and superimposed
|
||
upon, these former techniques of personality assurance.
|
||
|
||
6. PROGRESSIVE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
|
||
|
||
The morontia phase of revealed religion has to do with the experience of
|
||
survival, and its great urge is the attainment of spirit perfection. There also
|
||
is present the higher urge of worship, associated with an impelling call to
|
||
increased ethical service. Morontia insight entails an ever-expanding
|
||
consciousness of the Sevenfold, the Supreme, and even the Ultimate.
|
||
|
||
Throughout all religious experience, from its earliest inception on the
|
||
material level up to the time of the attainment of full spirit status, the
|
||
Adjuster is the secret of the personal realization of the reality of the
|
||
existence of the Supreme; and this same Adjuster also holds the secrets of your
|
||
faith in the transcendental attainment of the Ultimate. The experiential
|
||
personality of evolving man, united to the Adjuster essence of the existential
|
||
God, constitutes the potential completion of supreme existence and is
|
||
inherently the basis for the superfinite eventuation of transcendental
|
||
personality.
|
||
|
||
Moral will embraces decisions based on reasoned knowledge, augmented by wisdom,
|
||
and sanctioned by religious faith. Such choices are acts of moral nature and
|
||
evidence the existence of moral personality, the forerunner of morontia
|
||
personality and eventually of true spirit status.
|
||
|
||
The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic
|
||
memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness.
|
||
Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of
|
||
association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1112
|
||
|
||
mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses
|
||
wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by
|
||
the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the
|
||
Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.
|
||
|
||
Christ Michael, when bestowed on Urantia, lived under the reign of evolutionary
|
||
religion up to the time of his baptism. From that moment up to and including
|
||
the event of his crucifixion he carried forward his work by the combined
|
||
guidance of evolutionary and revealed religion. From the morning of his
|
||
resurrection until his ascension he traversed the manifold phases of the
|
||
morontia life of mortal transition from the world of matter to that of spirit.
|
||
After his ascension Michael became master of the experience of Supremacy, the
|
||
realization of the Supreme; and being the one person in Nebadon possessed of
|
||
unlimited capacity to experience the reality of the Supreme, he forthwith
|
||
attained to the status of the sovereignty of supremacy in and to his local
|
||
universe.
|
||
|
||
With man, the eventual fusion and resultant oneness with the indwelling
|
||
Adjuster--the personality synthesis of man and the essence of God--constitute
|
||
him, in potential, a living part of the Supreme and insure for such a onetime
|
||
mortal being the eternal birthright of the endless pursuit of finality of
|
||
universe service for and with the Supreme.
|
||
|
||
Revelation teaches mortal man that, to start such a magnificent and intriguing
|
||
adventure through space by means of the progression of time, he should begin by
|
||
the organization of knowledge into idea-decisions; next, mandate wisdom to
|
||
labor unremittingly at its noble task of transforming self-possessed ideas into
|
||
increasingly practical but nonetheless supernal ideals, even those concepts
|
||
which are so reasonable as ideas and so logical as ideals that the Adjuster
|
||
dares so to combine and spiritize them as to render them available for such
|
||
association in the finite mind as will constitute them the actual human
|
||
complement thus made ready for the action of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the
|
||
time-space manifestations of Paradise truth--universal truth. The co-ordination
|
||
of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession
|
||
of a righteous character, the prerequisite for mortal admission to the
|
||
ever-expanding and increasingly spiritual realities of the morontia worlds.
|
||
|
||
The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully
|
||
embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and
|
||
love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity,
|
||
intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical
|
||
sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal
|
||
survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to
|
||
the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for:
|
||
|
||
1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with
|
||
God, who is spirit.
|
||
|
||
2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth
|
||
shall set him free.
|
||
|
||
3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity
|
||
of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe
|
||
creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the
|
||
ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1113
|
||
|
||
4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit
|
||
levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of
|
||
Havona and the perfection of Paradise.
|
||
|
||
5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness
|
||
through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by
|
||
co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.
|
||
|
||
6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending
|
||
progression in God-recognition and God-service.
|
||
|
||
7. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through
|
||
the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the
|
||
Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite.
|
||
|
||
Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection
|
||
of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all
|
||
this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human
|
||
experience of religion. And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was
|
||
nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the
|
||
faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe absolute in so far as such
|
||
is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space.
|
||
|
||
Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, mortal man can foretaste in
|
||
time the realities of eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience,
|
||
of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow
|
||
him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as
|
||
they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus
|
||
as he was. New potentials were actualized in the universe of Nebadon consequent
|
||
upon the terminal bestowal of Michael, and one of these was the new
|
||
illumination of the path of eternity that leads to the Father of all, and which
|
||
can be traversed even by the mortals of material flesh and blood in the initial
|
||
life on the planets of space. Jesus was and is the new and living way whereby
|
||
man can come into the divine inheritance which the Father has decreed shall be
|
||
his for but the asking. In Jesus there is abundantly demonstrated both the
|
||
beginnings and endings of the faith experience of humanity, even of divine
|
||
humanity.
|
||
|
||
7. A PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
|
||
|
||
An idea is only a theoretical plan for action, while a positive decision is a
|
||
validated plan of action. A stereotype is a plan of action accepted without
|
||
validation. The materials out of which to build a personal philosophy of
|
||
religion are derived from both the inner and the environmental experience of
|
||
the individual. The social status, economic conditions, educational
|
||
opportunities, moral trends, institutional influences, political developments,
|
||
racial tendencies, and the religious teachings of one's time and place all
|
||
become factors in the formulation of a personal philosophy of religion. Even
|
||
the inherent temperament and intellectual bent markedly determine the pattern
|
||
of religious philosophy. Vocation, marriage, and kindred all influence the
|
||
evolution of one's personal standards of life.
|
||
|
||
A philosophy of religion evolves out of a basic growth of ideas plus
|
||
experimental living as both are modified by the tendency to imitate associates.
|
||
The soundness of philosophic conclusions depends on keen, honest, and
|
||
discriminating thinking in connection with sensitivity to meanings and accuracy
|
||
of evalua-
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1114
|
||
|
||
tion. Moral cowards never achieve high planes of philosophic thinking; it
|
||
requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the
|
||
exploration of unknown realms of intellectual living.
|
||
|
||
Presently new systems of values come into existence; new formulations of
|
||
principles and standards are achieved; habits and ideals are reshaped; some
|
||
idea of a personal God is attained, followed by enlarging concepts of
|
||
relationship thereto.
|
||
|
||
The great difference between a religious and a nonreligious philosophy of
|
||
living consists in the nature and level of recognized values and in the object
|
||
of loyalties. There are four phases in the evolution of religious philosophy:
|
||
Such an experience may become merely conformative, resigned to submission to
|
||
tradition and authority. Or it may be satisfied with slight attainments, just
|
||
enough to stabilize the daily living, and therefore becomes early arrested on
|
||
such an adventitious level. Such mortals believe in letting well enough alone.
|
||
A third group progress to the level of logical intellectuality but there
|
||
stagnate in consequence of cultural slavery. It is indeed pitiful to behold
|
||
giant intellects held so securely within the cruel grasp of cultural bondage.
|
||
It is equally pathetic to observe those who trade their cultural bondage for
|
||
the materialistic fetters of a science, falsely so called. The fourth level of
|
||
philosophy attains freedom from all conventional and traditional handicaps and
|
||
dares to think, act, and live honestly, loyally, fearlessly, and truthfully.
|
||
|
||
The acid test for any religious philosophy consists in whether or not it
|
||
distinguishes between the realities of the material and the spiritual worlds
|
||
while at the same moment recognizing their unification in intellectual striving
|
||
and in social serving. A sound religious philosophy does not confound the
|
||
things of God with the things of Caesar. Neither does it recognize the
|
||
aesthetic cult of pure wonder as a substitute for religion.
|
||
|
||
Philosophy transforms that primitive religion which was largely a fairy tale of
|
||
conscience into a living experience in the ascending values of cosmic reality.
|
||
|
||
8. FAITH AND BELIEF
|
||
|
||
Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the
|
||
mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere
|
||
belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to
|
||
faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a
|
||
living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth,
|
||
admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an
|
||
attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these
|
||
personified and infinitely more.
|
||
|
||
Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief
|
||
fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the
|
||
association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy;
|
||
it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and
|
||
supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group
|
||
possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to
|
||
a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist.
|
||
|
||
Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer
|
||
upon its devotees assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters
|
||
betrayal
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1115
|
||
|
||
of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine
|
||
ideals. Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living. Living
|
||
faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance.
|
||
|
||
Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an
|
||
unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation. Faith
|
||
vitalizes religion and constrains the religionist heroically to live the golden
|
||
rule. The zeal of faith is according to knowledge, and its strivings are the
|
||
preludes to sublime peace.
|
||
|
||
9. RELIGION AND MORALITY
|
||
|
||
No professed revelation of religion could be regarded as authentic if it failed
|
||
to recognize the duty demands of ethical obligation which had been created and
|
||
fostered by preceding evolutionary religion. Revelation unfailingly enlarges
|
||
the ethical horizon of evolved religion while it simultaneously and unfailingly
|
||
expands the moral obligations of all prior revelations.
|
||
|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which
|
||
compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in
|
||
those morontial realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral
|
||
concepts, his highest interpretation of life's greatest values and the
|
||
universe's deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of
|
||
yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual
|
||
consciousness.
|
||
|
||
The search for beauty is a part of religion only in so far as it is ethical and
|
||
to the extent that it enriches the concept of the moral. Art is only religious
|
||
when it becomes diffused with purpose which has been derived from high
|
||
spiritual motivation.
|
||
|
||
The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized man is not concerned so
|
||
much with some specific intellectual belief or with any one particular mode of
|
||
living as with discovering the truth of living, the good and right technique of
|
||
reacting to the ever-recurring situations of mortal existence. Moral
|
||
consciousness is just a name applied to the human recognition and awareness of
|
||
those ethical and emerging morontial values which duty demands that man shall
|
||
abide by in the day-by-day control and guidance of conduct.
|
||
|
||
Though recognizing that religion is imperfect, there are at least two practical
|
||
manifestations of its nature and function:
|
||
|
||
1. The spiritual urge and philosophic pressure of religion tend to cause man to
|
||
project his estimation of moral values directly outward into the affairs of his
|
||
fellows--the ethical reaction of religion.
|
||
|
||
2. Religion creates for the human mind a spiritualized consciousness of divine
|
||
reality based on, and by faith derived from, antecedent concepts of moral
|
||
values and co-ordinated with superimposed concepts of spiritual values.
|
||
Religion thereby becomes a censor of mortal affairs, a form of glorified moral
|
||
trust and confidence in reality, the enhanced realities of time and the more
|
||
enduring realities of eternity.
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1116
|
||
|
||
Faith becomes the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual
|
||
concept of enduring reality. Religion becomes the avenue of man's escape from
|
||
the material limitations of the temporal and natural world to the supernal
|
||
realities of the eternal and spiritual world by and through the technique of
|
||
salvation, the progressive morontia transformation.
|
||
|
||
10. RELIGION AS MAN'S LIBERATOR
|
||
|
||
Intelligent man knows that he is a child of nature, a part of the material
|
||
universe; he likewise discerns no survival of individual personality in the
|
||
motions and tensions of the mathematical level of the energy universe. Nor can
|
||
man ever discern spiritual reality through the examination of physical causes
|
||
and effects.
|
||
|
||
A human being is also aware that he is a part of the ideational cosmos, but
|
||
though concept may endure beyond a mortal life span, there is nothing inherent
|
||
in concept which indicates the personal survival of the conceiving personality.
|
||
Nor will the exhaustion of the possibilities of logic and reason ever reveal to
|
||
the logician or to the reasoner the eternal truth of the survival of
|
||
personality.
|
||
|
||
The material level of law provides for causality continuity, the unending
|
||
response of effect to antecedent action; the mind level suggests the
|
||
perpetuation of ideational continuity, the unceasing flow of conceptual
|
||
potentiality from pre-existent conceptions. But neither of these levels of the
|
||
universe discloses to the inquiring mortal an avenue of escape from partiality
|
||
of status and from the intolerable suspense of being a transient reality in the
|
||
universe, a temporal personality doomed to be extinguished upon the exhaustion
|
||
of the limited life energies.
|
||
|
||
It is only through the morontial avenue leading to spiritual insight that man
|
||
can ever break the fetters inherent in his mortal status in the universe.
|
||
Energy and mind do lead back to Paradise and Deity, but neither the energy
|
||
endowment nor the mind endowment of man proceeds directly from such Paradise
|
||
Deity. Only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. And this is true
|
||
because it is only in the spiritual sense that man is at present endowed and
|
||
indwelt by the Paradise Father. Mankind can never discover divinity except
|
||
through the avenue of religious experience and by the exercise of true faith.
|
||
The faith acceptance of the truth of God enables man to escape from the
|
||
circumscribed confines of material limitations and affords him a rational hope
|
||
of achieving safe conduct from the material realm, whereon is death, to the
|
||
spiritual realm, wherein is life eternal.
|
||
|
||
The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to
|
||
afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich
|
||
human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the
|
||
perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man's concepts of
|
||
ideality are endowed with reality.
|
||
|
||
Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason
|
||
alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But
|
||
it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall
|
||
comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that
|
||
can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious
|
||
experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of
|
||
the material
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1117
|
||
|
||
world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual
|
||
world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking
|
||
regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only
|
||
passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal
|
||
creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.
|
||
|
||
Religion effectually cures man's sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual
|
||
loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new
|
||
and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of
|
||
righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with
|
||
the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul
|
||
immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.
|
||
|
||
When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish
|
||
part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the
|
||
Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the
|
||
inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he
|
||
combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he
|
||
staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a
|
||
hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error.
|
||
|
||
Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of
|
||
reality's triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures
|
||
become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh
|
||
limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain
|
||
eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have
|
||
certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces
|
||
and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now
|
||
doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from
|
||
God's viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material
|
||
isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself
|
||
becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving
|
||
panoply of space.
|
||
|
||
[Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]
|
||
|
||
top of page - 1118
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART III: The History of Urantia
|
||
: The Origin Of Urantia Life Establishment On Urantia The Marine-life Era On
|
||
Urantia Urantia During The Early Land-life Era The Mammalian Era On Urantia The
|
||
Dawn Races Of Early Man The First Human Family The Evolutionary Races Of Color
|
||
The Overcontrol Of Evolution The Planetary Prince Of Urantia The Planetary
|
||
Rebellion The Dawn Of Civilization Primitive Human Institutions The Evolution
|
||
Of Human Government Development Of The State Government On A Neighboring Planet
|
||
The Garden Of Eden Adam And Eve The Default Of Adam And Eve The Second Garden
|
||
The Midway Creatures The Violet Race After The Days Of Adam Andite Expansion In
|
||
The Orient Andite Expansion In The Occident Development Of Modern Civilization
|
||
The Evolution Of Marriage The Marriage Institution Marriage And Family Life The
|
||
Origins Of Worship Early Evolution Of Religion The Ghost Cults Fetishes,
|
||
Charms, And Magic Sin, Sacrifice, And Atonement Shamanism--medicine Men And
|
||
Priests The Evolution Of Prayer The Later Evolution Of Religion Machiventa
|
||
Melchizedek The Melchizedek Teachings In The Orient The Melchizedek Teachings
|
||
In The Levant Yahweh--god Of The Hebrews Evolution Of The God Concept Among The
|
||
Hebrews The Melchizedek Teachings In The Occident The Social Problems Of
|
||
Religion Religion In Human Experience The Real Nature Of Religion The
|
||
Foundations Of Religious Faith The Reality Of Religious Experience Growth Of
|
||
The Trinity Concept Deity And Reality Universe Levels Of Reality Origin And
|
||
Nature Of Thought Adjusters Mission And Ministry Of Thought Adjusters Relation
|
||
Of Adjusters To Universe Creatures Relation Of Adjusters To Individual Mortals
|
||
The Adjuster And The Soul Personality Survival Seraphic Guardians Of Destiny
|
||
Seraphic Planetary Government The Supreme Being The Almighty Supreme God The
|
||
Supreme Supreme And Ultimate--time And Space The Bestowals Of Christ Michael
|
||
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>Ŀ
|
||
<EFBFBD> // <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> Religion In <20> The <20> Urantia Book <20> Search <20> SiteMap! <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> Hum... <20> Foundations... <20> PA... <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
//
|
||
|
||
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>Ŀ
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> SPIRITWEB ORG (info@spiritweb.org), <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> http://www.spiritweb.org <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> Webmaster <webmaster@spiritweb.org> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> ONLINE SINCE 1993. MAINTAINED IN SWITZERLAND. <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> DISTRIBUTED TO CALIFORNIA, SPAIN, ITALY, SOUTH AFRICA, <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> AUSTRALIA <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20> <20>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|