mota

48:7.1The lower planes of mor­ontia mota join di­rectly with the higher lev­els of hu­man phi­los­o­phy. On the first man­sion world it is the prac­tice to teach the less ad­vanced stu­dents by the par­al­lel tech­nique; that is, in one col­umn are pre­sented the more sim­ple con­cepts of mota mean­ings, and in the op­po­site col­umn ci­ta­tion is made of anal­o­gous state­ments of mor­tal phi­los­o­phy.

48:7.2Not long since, while ex­e­cut­ing an as­sign­ment on the first man­sion world of Sa­ta­nia, I had oc­ca­sion to ob­serve this method of teach­ing; and though I may not un­der­take to pre­sent the mota con­tent of the les­son, I am per­mit­ted to re­cord the twenty-eight state­ments of hu­man phi­los­o­phy which this mor­ontia in­struc­tor was uti­liz­ing as il­lus­tra­tive ma­te­rial de­signed to as­sist these new man­sion world so­journ­ers in their early ef­forts to grasp the sig­nif­i­cance and mean­ing of mota. These il­lus­tra­tions of hu­man phi­los­o­phy were:

48:7.31. A dis­play of spe­cial­ized skill does not sig­nify pos­ses­sion of spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity. Clev­er­ness is not a sub­sti­tute for true char­ac­ter.

48:7.42. Few per­sons live up to the faith which they re­ally have. Un­rea­soned fear is a mas­ter in­tel­lec­tual fraud prac­ticed upon the evolv­ing mor­tal soul.

48:7.53. In­her­ent ca­pac­i­ties can­not be ex­ceeded; a pint can never hold a quart. The spirit con­cept can­not be me­chan­i­cally forced into the ma­te­rial mem­ory mold.

48:7.64. Few mor­tals ever dare to draw any­thing like the sum of per­son­al­ity cred­its es­tab­lished by the com­bined min­istries of na­ture and grace. The ma­jor­ity of im­pov­er­ished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to be­lieve it.

48:7.75. Dif­fi­cul­ties may chal­lenge medi­ocrity and de­feat the fear­ful, but they only stim­u­late the true chil­dren of the Most Highs.

48:7.86. To en­joy priv­i­lege with­out abuse, to have lib­erty with­out li­cense, to pos­sess power and stead­fastly refuse to use it for self-ag­gran­dize­ment—these are the marks of high civ­i­liza­tion.

48:7.97. Blind and un­fore­seen ac­ci­dents do not oc­cur in the cos­mos. Nei­ther do the ce­les­tial be­ings as­sist the lower be­ing who re­fuses to act upon his light of truth.

48:7.108. Ef­fort does not al­ways pro­duce joy, but there is no hap­pi­ness with­out in­tel­li­gent ef­fort.

48:7.119. Ac­tion achieves strength; mod­er­a­tion even­tu­ates in charm.

48:7.1210. Righ­teous­ness strikes the har­mony chords of truth, and the mel­ody vi­brates through­out the cos­mos, even to the rec­og­ni­tion of the In­fi­nite.

48:7.1311. The weak in­dulge in res­o­lu­tions, but the strong act. Life is but a day’s work—do it well. The act is ours; the con­se­quences God’s.

48:7.1412. The great­est af­flic­tion of the cos­mos is never to have been af­flicted. Mor­tals only learn wis­dom by ex­pe­ri­enc­ing tribu­la­tion.

48:7.1513. Stars are best dis­cerned from the lonely iso­la­tion of ex­pe­ri­en­tial depths, not from the il­lu­mi­nated and ec­static moun­tain tops.

48:7.1614. Whet the ap­petites of your as­so­ciates for truth; give ad­vice only when it is asked for.

48:7.1715. Af­fec­ta­tion is the ridicu­lous ef­fort of the ig­no­rant to ap­pear wise, the at­tempt of the bar­ren soul to ap­pear rich.

48:7.1816. You can­not per­ceive spir­i­tual truth un­til you feel­ingly ex­pe­ri­ence it, and many truths are not re­ally felt ex­cept in ad­ver­sity.

48:7.1917. Am­bi­tion is dan­ger­ous un­til it is fully so­cial­ized. You have not truly ac­quired any virtue un­til your acts make you wor­thy of it.

48:7.2018. Im­pa­tience is a spirit poi­son; anger is like a stone hurled into a hor­net’s nest.

48:7.2119. Anx­i­ety must be aban­doned. The dis­ap­point­ments hard­est to bear are those which never come.

48:7.2220. Only a poet can dis­cern po­etry in the com­mon­place prose of rou­tine ex­is­tence.

48:7.2321. The high mis­sion of any art is, by its il­lu­sions, to fore­shadow a higher uni­verse re­al­ity, to crys­tal­lize the emo­tions of time into the thought of eter­nity.

48:7.2422. The evolv­ing soul is not made di­vine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

48:7.2523. Death added noth­ing to the in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sion or to the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, but it did add to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial sta­tus the con­scious­ness of sur­vival.

48:7.2624. The des­tiny of eter­nity is de­ter­mined mo­ment by mo­ment by the achieve­ments of the day by day liv­ing. The acts of to­day are the des­tiny of to­mor­row.

48:7.2725. Great­ness lies not so much in pos­sess­ing strength as in mak­ing a wise and di­vine use of such strength.

48:7.2826. Knowl­edge is pos­sessed only by shar­ing; it is safe­guarded by wis­dom and so­cial­ized by love.

48:7.2927. Prog­ress de­mands de­vel­op­ment of in­di­vid­u­al­ity; medi­ocrity seeks per­pet­u­a­tion in stan­dard­iza­tion.

48:7.3028. The ar­gu­men­ta­tive de­fense of any propo­si­tion is in­versely pro­por­tional to the truth con­tained.

48:7.31Such is the work of the be­gin­ners on the first man­sion world while the more ad­vanced pupils on the later worlds are mas­ter­ing the higher lev­els of cos­mic in­sight and mor­ontia mota.

103:6.13Rev­e­la­tion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s only hope of bridg­ing the mor­ontia gulf. Faith and rea­son, un­aided by mota, can­not con­ceive and con­struct a log­i­cal uni­verse. With­out the in­sight of mota, mor­tal man can­not dis­cern good­ness, love, and truth in the phe­nom­ena of the ma­te­rial world.

• morontia wisdom

45:7.6Suf­frage is uni­ver­sal on Je­ru­sem among these three groups of cit­i­zen­ship, but the vote is dif­fer­en­tially cast in ac­cor­dance with the rec­og­nized and duly reg­is­tered per­sonal pos­ses­sion of mota—mor­ontia wis­dom. The vote cast at a Je­ru­sem elec­tion by any one per­son­al­ity has a value rang­ing from one up to one thou­sand. Je­ru­sem cit­i­zens are thus clas­si­fied in ac­cor­dance with their mota achieve­ment.

• morontia wisdom

47:5.3Man­so­nia the third is a world of great per­sonal and so­cial achieve­ment for all who have not made the equiv­a­lent of these cir­cles of cul­ture prior to re­lease from the flesh on the mor­tal na­tiv­ity worlds. On this sphere more pos­i­tive ed­u­ca­tional work is be­gun. The train­ing of the first two man­sion worlds is mostly of a de­fi­ciency na­ture—neg­a­tive—in that it has to do with sup­ple­ment­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of the life in the flesh. On this third man­sion world the sur­vivors re­ally be­gin their pro­gres­sive mor­ontia cul­ture. The chief pur­pose of this train­ing is to en­hance the un­der­stand­ing of the cor­re­la­tion of mor­ontia mota and mor­tal logic, the co-or­di­na­tion of mor­ontia mota and hu­man phi­los­o­phy. Sur­viv­ing mor­tals now gain prac­ti­cal in­sight into true meta­physics. This is the real in­tro­duc­tion to the in­tel­li­gent com­pre­hen­sion of cos­mic mean­ings and uni­verse in­ter­re­la­tion­ships. The cul­ture of the third man­sion world par­takes of the na­ture of the postbestowal Son age of a nor­mal in­hab­ited planet.

• experiential connection between material and spiritual

102:3.2Re­li­gious spec­u­la­tion is in­ev­i­ta­ble but al­ways detri­men­tal; spec­u­la­tion in­vari­ably fal­si­fies its ob­ject. Spec­u­la­tion tends to trans­late re­li­gion into some­thing ma­te­rial or hu­man­is­tic, and thus, while di­rectly in­ter­fer­ing with the clar­ity of log­i­cal thought, it in­di­rectly causes re­li­gion to ap­pear as a func­tion of the tem­po­ral world, the very world with which it should ev­er­last­ingly stand in con­trast. There­fore will re­li­gion al­ways be char­ac­ter­ized by para­doxes, the para­doxes re­sult­ing from the ab­sence of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial con­nec­tion be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual lev­els of the uni­verse—mor­ontia mota, the super­phil­o­sophic sen­si­tiv­ity for truth dis­cern­ment and unity per­cep­tion.

• substance is knowledge-reason, essence is faith-insight
• supermaterial reality sensitivity

103:6.7Your dif­fi­culty in ar­riv­ing at a more har­mo­nious co-or­di­na­tion be­tween sci­ence and re­li­gion is due to your ut­ter ig­no­rance of the in­ter­ven­ing do­main of the mor­ontia world of things and be­ings. The lo­cal uni­verse con­sists of three de­grees, or stages, of re­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion: mat­ter, mor­ontia, and spirit. The mor­ontia an­gle of ap­proach erases all di­ver­gence be­tween the find­ings of the phys­i­cal sci­ences and the func­tion­ing of the spirit of re­li­gion. Rea­son is the un­der­stand­ing tech­nique of the sci­ences; faith is the in­sight tech­nique of re­li­gion; mota is the tech­nique of the mor­ontia level. Mota is a super­ma­te­rial re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity which is be­gin­ning to com­pen­sate in­com­plete growth, hav­ing for its sub­stance knowl­edge-rea­son and for its essence faith-in­sight. Mota is a super­phil­o­soph­i­cal rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of di­ver­gent re­al­ity per­cep­tion which is nonat­tain­able by ma­te­rial per­son­al­i­ties; it is pred­i­cated, in part, on the ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing sur­vived the ma­te­rial life of the flesh. But many mor­tals have rec­og­nized the de­sir­abil­ity of hav­ing some method of rec­on­cil­ing the in­ter­play be­tween the widely sep­a­rated do­mains of sci­ence and re­li­gion; and meta­physics is the re­sult of man’s un­avail­ing at­tempt to span this well-rec­og­nized chasm. But hu­man meta­physics has proved more con­fus­ing than il­lu­mi­nat­ing. Meta­physics stands for man’s well-meant but fu­tile ef­fort to com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the mota of mor­ontia.

• attempts integration of meanings and values

48:6.274. Mor­ontia Coun­selors. These min­is­ters re­ceive their name be­cause they are as­signed to teach, di­rect, and coun­sel the sur­viv­ing mor­tals from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin, souls in tran­sit to the higher schools of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They are the teach­ers of those who seek in­sight into the ex­pe­ri­en­tial unity of di­ver­gent life lev­els, those who are at­tempt­ing the in­te­gra­tion of mean­ings and the uni­fi­ca­tion of val­ues. This is the func­tion of phi­los­o­phy in mor­tal life, of mota on the mor­ontia spheres.

• partially proves postulates of science and religion

103:7.10In the mor­tal state, noth­ing can be ab­so­lutely proved; both sci­ence and re­li­gion are pred­i­cated on as­sump­tions. On the mor­ontia level, the pos­tu­lates of both sci­ence and re­li­gion are ca­pa­ble of par­tial proof by mota logic. On the spir­i­tual level of max­i­mum sta­tus, the need for fi­nite proof grad­u­ally van­ishes be­fore the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of and with re­al­ity; but even then there is much be­yond the fi­nite that re­mains un­proved.

• long experience with m. unifies universe perception

103:7.12Sci­ence be­comes the thought do­main of math­e­mat­ics, of the en­ergy and ma­te­rial of time in space. Re­li­gion as­sumes to deal not only with fi­nite and tem­po­ral spirit but also with the spirit of eter­nity and su­prem­acy. Only through a long ex­pe­ri­ence in mota can these two ex­tremes of uni­verse per­cep­tion be made to yield anal­o­gous in­ter­pre­ta­tions of ori­gins, func­tions, re­la­tions, re­al­i­ties, and des­tinies. The max­i­mum har­mo­niza­tion of the en­ergy-spirit di­ver­gence is in the en­cir­cuit­ment of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its; the first uni­fi­ca­tion thereof, in the De­ity of the Su­preme; the fi­nal­ity unity thereof, in the in­fin­ity of the First Source and Cen­ter, the I AM.

• articulates morontia experiences with personality

112:1.11On the mor­ontia level all of these fi­nite di­men­sions of the ma­te­rial level are greatly en­hanced, and cer­tain new di­men­sional val­ues are re­al­iz­able. All these en­larged di­men­sional ex­pe­ri­ences of the mor­ontia level are mar­velously ar­tic­u­lated with the su­preme or per­son­al­ity di­men­sion through the in­flu­ence of mota and also be­cause of the con­tri­bu­tion of mor­ontia math­e­mat­ics.

• guides newly survived mortals

112:6.5Crea­ture vo­li­tion can­not ex­ist with­out mind, but it does per­sist in spite of the loss of the ma­te­rial in­tel­lect. Dur­ing the times im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing sur­vival, the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity is in great mea­sure guided by the char­ac­ter pat­terns in­her­ited from the hu­man life and by the newly ap­pear­ing ac­tion of mor­ontia mota. And these guides to man­so­nia con­duct func­tion ac­cept­ably in the early stages of the mor­ontia life and prior to the emer­gence of mor­ontia will as a full-fledged vo­li­tional ex­pres­sion of the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity.

101:5.13Evo­lu­tion­ary 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.

45:7.7From time to time Je­ru­sem cit­i­zens pre­sent them­selves to the Mel­chiz­e­dek ex­am­in­ers, who cer­tify to their at­tain­ment of mor­ontia wis­dom. Then they go be­fore the ex­am­in­ing corps of the Bril­liant Evening Stars or their des­ig­nates, who as­cer­tain the de­gree of spirit in­sight. Next they ap­pear in the pres­ence of the four and twenty coun­selors and their as­so­ciates, who pass upon their sta­tus of ex­pe­ri­en­tial at­tain­ment of so­cial­iza­tion. These three fac­tors are then car­ried to the cit­i­zen­ship reg­is­trars of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, who quickly com­pute the mota sta­tus and as­sign suf­frage qual­i­fi­ca­tions in ac­cor­dance there­with.

45:7.8Un­der the super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks the as­cend­ing mor­tals, es­pe­cially those who are tardy in their per­son­al­ity uni­fi­ca­tion on the new mor­ontia lev­els, are taken in hand by the Ma­te­rial Sons and are given in­ten­sive train­ing de­signed to rec­tify such de­fi­cien­cies. No as­cend­ing mor­tal leaves the sys­tem head­quar­ters for the more ex­ten­sive and var­ied so­cial­iza­tion ca­reer of the con­stel­la­tion un­til these Ma­te­rial Sons cer­tify to the achieve­ment of mota per­son­al­ity—an in­di­vid­u­al­ity com­bin­ing the com­pleted mor­tal ex­is­tence in ex­pe­ri­en­tial as­so­ci­a­tion with the bud­ding mor­ontia ca­reer, both be­ing duly blended by the spir­i­tual over­con­trol of the Thought Ad­juster.

4:2.7The ap­par­ent de­fects of the nat­u­ral world are not in­dica­tive of any such cor­re­spond­ing de­fects in the char­ac­ter of God. Rather are such ob­served im­per­fec­tions merely the in­ev­i­ta­ble stop-mo­ments in the ex­hi­bi­tion of the ever-mov­ing reel of in­fin­ity pic­tur­iza­tion. It is these very de­fect-in­ter­rup­tions of per­fec­tion-con­ti­nu­ity which make it pos­si­ble for the fi­nite mind of ma­te­rial man to catch a fleet­ing glimpse of di­vine re­al­ity in time and space. The ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions of di­vin­ity ap­pear de­fec­tive to the evo­lu­tion­ary mind of man only be­cause mor­tal man per­sists in view­ing the phe­nom­ena of na­ture through nat­u­ral eyes, hu­man vi­sion un­aided by mor­ontia mota or by rev­e­la­tion, its com­pen­satory sub­sti­tute on the worlds of time.

101:2.2Rea­son 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.

101:2.8Rea­son 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.

102:3.5Sci­ence, knowl­edge, leads to fact con­scious­ness; re­li­gion, ex­pe­ri­ence, leads to value con­scious­ness; phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, leads to co-or­di­nate con­scious­ness; rev­e­la­tion (the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia mota) leads to the con­scious­ness of true re­al­ity; while the co-or­di­na­tion of the con­scious­ness of fact, value, and true re­al­ity con­sti­tutes aware­ness of per­son­al­ity re­al­ity, max­i­mum of be­ing, to­gether with the be­lief in the pos­si­bil­ity of the sur­vival of that very per­son­al­ity.

103:6.8Meta­physics has proved a fail­ure; mota, man can­not per­ceive. Rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique which can com­pen­sate for the ab­sence of the truth sen­si­tiv­ity of mota in a ma­te­rial world. Rev­e­la­tion au­thor­i­ta­tively clar­i­fies the mud­dle of rea­son-de­vel­oped meta­physics on an evo­lu­tion­ary sphere.

103:6.12Out of his in­com­plete grasp of sci­ence, his faint hold upon re­li­gion, and his abortive at­tempts at meta­physics, man has at­tempted to con­struct his for­mu­la­tions of phi­los­o­phy. And mod­ern man would in­deed build a wor­thy and en­gag­ing phi­los­o­phy of him­self and his uni­verse were it not for the break­down of his all-im­por­tant and in­dis­pens­able meta­phys­i­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the worlds of mat­ter and spirit, the fail­ure of meta­physics to bridge the mor­ontia gulf be­tween the phys­i­cal and the spir­i­tual. Mor­tal man lacks the con­cept of mor­ontia mind and ma­te­rial; and rev­e­la­tion is the only tech­nique for aton­ing for this de­fi­ciency in the con­cep­tual data which man so ur­gently needs in or­der to con­struct a log­i­cal phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse and to ar­rive at a sat­is­fy­ing un­der­stand­ing of his sure and set­tled place in that uni­verse.

48:6.28Mota 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. And they are en­abled to bring these ma­te­rial and mor­ontial view­points into true fo­cus largely through the un­tir­ing min­istry of their se­raphic coun­selors, who so pa­tiently teach the man­sion world stu­dents and the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. Many of the teach­ing coun­selors of the su­preme or­der of ser­a­phim be­gan their ca­reers as ad­vis­ers of the newly lib­er­ated souls of the mor­tals of time.