For example there may be a mind field accessible to the Physical Controllers that enables them to confer mechanical or non-teachable mind upon primitive organisms. Though the revelators use the words "mind circuits," perhaps they would have used "field" if  the field concept had been in more common usage in the mid-30's.

     The field concept gives us something we can visualize--for example, if we place an iron tack on a table then bring a magnet with range, although there is no visible contact between the two, we can make the tack move around. And if the magnet is strong enough we can actually feel its "pull" if we hold the tack in our fingers.

     With such an example of the reality of a field in mind, it is not too difficult to visualize the Adjutant Mind Spirits being the source of a mind field that activates the electronic circuitry present in our brains and nervous system in order to allow us to react to stimuli in the way that we do. Then, beyond our world, there may be a morontia mind field, and who-knows-what beyond that. Have you ever felt the presence of a mind with which you are at one? Or the presence of a hostile or evil mind? If so, you may have experienced the interaction of mind fields. The extension of the "field" idea would provide us with both a vocabulary and concepts that are already familiar to us. The point about such ideas is that we use them if they help, and discard them if they do not.

     Such models are not necessarily the truth, just a means of reaching towards truth. Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein all used thought-models to help their thinking. For a scientist, the end test is (or at least used to be) experiment, but we Urantians may have to delay experimentation on concepts such as mind fields until we reach Mansonia or perhaps beyond--meanwhile taking comfort in the knowledge that the master philosophers of Paradise love to speculate.
     
     Briefly reiterating what we have been through, we've seen that some readers such as myself firmly believe that
The Urantia Book does contain material of a scientific nature that could only have been guessed at by a hypothetical human author both at the time of receipt of the Papers and also at the time of publication. But there is also the "funny stuff" that, if read as being factual, appears to be at least strange, and sometimes unbelievable. For the example of the secondary midwayers, a more intense reading shows that the detail of their origin can easily be misread, and that the whole truth is not provided. Perhaps then, in giving us the "funny stuff," the revelators may be using techniques to convey information akin to those used by Jesus such as his parables, or his method of using gross exaggeration to get an idea across (i.e. a father giving his son a serpent or a camel getting through the eye of a needle). A technique the revelators have used extensively, and that many readers have been loath to believe even though clearly stated in the description of their mandate, is the inclusion of scientific material "soon to be outdated." On occasion, this has been done in order to provide a cosmological overview, in principle, close to the truth but in detail, now factually incorrect.

     I believe that many Urantia Book readers, myself included, have made an error more or less identical to that made by Christian fundamentalists in that our initial expectation was that the Fifth Epochal Revelation was not the word of God in the words of men, nor even the word of God in the words of celestial beings, some high, some low, but the word of God in the words of God himself. Hence we skipped over all the denials in the book itself in the hope that here at last we were in possession of absolute truth--and no longer would we have to live in uncertainty about anything. A careful study of
The Urantia Book will reveal that such is not the way of the Universal Father.

   We now have to re-read
The Urantia Book in a more scholarly manner, recognizing its revelatory status but also recognizing that the revelators may have retained the techniques of the ages in bringing this revelation to mankind--the use of some myth, story telling, parable, anecdote, and allegory to convey that truth. At the very least, it is imperative that we explore the possibility that the first reactions many of us  experienced on receiving this revelation--that it is God-given, therefore literal, absolute truth--may not be the whole story. When providing details of the rules for revelation, the revelators did not relieve us from the task of thinking for ourselves. In The Urantia Book, we have a detailed cosmological overview of final reality from which we have to struggle, as always, to discover our own personal truth. A God who loves us could do no other.

   In conclusion let's see what the book says:

     "
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 coordinated 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." (1105)

Home Page    Previous Page    Next Page