cosmology

• approach from divine destiny, not human origins

19:1.5For ex­am­ple: The hu­man mind would or­di­nar­ily crave to ap­proach the cos­mic phi­los­o­phy por­trayed in these rev­e­la­tions by pro­ceed­ing from the sim­ple and the fi­nite to the com­plex and the in­fi­nite, from hu­man ori­gins to di­vine des­tinies. But that path does not lead to spir­i­tual wis­dom. Such a pro­ce­dure is the eas­i­est path to a cer­tain form of ge­netic knowl­edge, but at best it can only re­veal man’s ori­gin; it re­veals lit­tle or noth­ing about his di­vine des­tiny.

19:1.6Even in the study of man’s bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion on Uran­tia, there are grave ob­jec­tions to the ex­clu­sive his­toric ap­proach to his pres­ent-day sta­tus and his cur­rent prob­lems. The true per­spec­tive of any re­al­ity prob­lem—hu­man or di­vine, ter­res­trial or cos­mic—can be had only by the full and un­prej­u­diced study and cor­re­la­tion of three phases of uni­verse re­al­ity: ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. The proper un­der­stand­ing of these three ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­i­ties af­fords the ba­sis for a wise es­ti­mate of the cur­rent sta­tus.

19:1.7When the hu­man mind un­der­takes to fol­low the philo­sophic tech­nique of start­ing from the lower to ap­proach the higher, whether in bi­ol­ogy or the­ol­ogy, it is al­ways in dan­ger of com­mit­ting four er­rors of rea­son­ing:

19:1.81. It may ut­terly fail to per­ceive the fi­nal and com­pleted evo­lu­tion­ary goal of ei­ther per­sonal at­tain­ment or cos­mic des­tiny.

19:1.92. It may com­mit the su­preme phil­o­soph­i­cal blun­der by over­sim­pli­fy­ing cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary (ex­pe­ri­en­tial) re­al­ity, thus lead­ing to the dis­tor­tion of facts, to the per­ver­sion of truth, and to the mis­con­cep­tion of des­tinies.

19:1.103. The study of cau­sa­tion is the pe­rusal of his­tory. But the knowl­edge of how a be­ing be­comes does not nec­es­sar­ily pro­vide an in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of the pres­ent sta­tus and true char­ac­ter of such a be­ing.

19:1.114. His­tory alone fails ad­e­quately to re­veal fu­ture de­vel­op­ment—des­tiny. Fi­nite ori­gins are help­ful, but only di­vine causes re­veal fi­nal ef­fects. Eter­nal ends are not shown in time be­gin­nings. The pres­ent can be truly in­ter­preted only in the light of the cor­re­lated past and fu­ture.

19:1.12There­fore, be­cause of these and for still other rea­sons, do we em­ploy the tech­nique of ap­proach­ing man and his plan­e­tary prob­lems by em­barka­tion on the time-space jour­ney from the in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and di­vine Par­a­dise Source and Cen­ter of all per­son­al­ity re­al­ity and all cos­mic ex­is­tence.

• leads to pursuit of God-consciousness

56:10.83. Ethic sen­si­tiv­ity. Through the re­al­iza­tion of truth the ap­pre­ci­a­tion of beauty leads to the sense of the eter­nal fit­ness of those things which im­pinge upon the rec­og­ni­tion of di­vine good­ness in De­ity re­la­tions with all be­ings; and thus even cos­mol­ogy leads to the pur­suit of di­vine re­al­ity val­ues—to God-con­scious­ness.

• of Urantia Papers not inspired; destined to be quickly outgrown; limited by revelators’ authorization

101:4.1Be­cause 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.

101:4.2Man­kind 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.

101:4.3Truth 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.

101:4.4In 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.

101:4.5Truth 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:

101:4.61. The re­duc­tion of con­fu­sion by the au­thor­i­ta­tive elim­i­na­tion of er­ror.

101:4.72. The co-or­di­na­tion of known or about-to-be-known facts and ob­ser­va­tions.

101:4.83. The restora­tion of im­por­tant bits of lost knowl­edge con­cern­ing ep­ochal trans­ac­tions in the dis­tant past.

101:4.94. The sup­ply­ing of in­for­ma­tion which will fill in vi­tal miss­ing gaps in oth­er­wise earned knowl­edge.

101:4.105. Pre­sent­ing cos­mic data in such a man­ner as to il­lu­mi­nate the spir­i­tual teach­ings con­tained in the ac­com­pa­ny­ing rev­e­la­tion.

• danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in

111:4.4The in­ner and the outer worlds have a dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. Any civ­i­liza­tion is in jeop­ardy when three quar­ters of its youth en­ter ma­te­ri­al­is­tic pro­fes­sions and de­vote them­selves to the pur­suit of the sen­sory ac­tiv­i­ties of the outer world. Civ­i­liza­tion is in dan­ger when youth ne­glect to in­ter­est them­selves in ethics, so­ci­ol­ogy, eu­gen­ics, phi­los­o­phy, the fine arts, re­li­gion, and cos­mol­ogy.