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stated on pages 17 and 1343. As readers accept this fact, perhaps they will be more inclined to regard the Fifth Epochal Revelation, not as divine dictation, but as the word of God in the words of freewill celestial beings, some only a little higher than ourselves on the scale of intellectual ability and others many orders of magnitude above our level of knowledge, comprehension, and intellectual ability. These authors have combined together in providing us with what they believe is a reasonably comprehensible overview of the hierarchical structure for universe personalities, a new cosmology that is light years ahead of anything we have had previously, and authoritative insights into the natures of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, the role of the Trinity, together with an expanded version of Jesus' living revelation of God-likeness--and much, much more. In doing so, they have chosen whatever means they, as individuals, considered were suitable to achieve the goals that were set for them.
It is also possible that a restraint was set on this revelation--that it had to be presented in a way that would not unduly upset the normal progress of the planet. It should be obvious from reading the revelation that the goal of mortal life on inhabited planets is not a competition to attain the life and light status in record time nor that our subsequent journey to Paradise is a race to see who can get there first. It is the experiences accumulated and the overcoming of adversity on the journey that appear to be of enormous value for the fulfillment of whatever is eventually in store for us.
The inclusion of "funny stuff" was surely the deliberate act of the revelators and may have slowed up the acceptance of the revelation. If so we have to bow to their superior wisdom, accept what is, and get on with the job in hand. A part of that job may be to explain the nature of the book to the world at large. Many have attempted to foist it on others as an errorless (except for typos) divine revelation, in concept not very different from the divine dictatorship for the Bible now acknowledged by scholars (and many others) as not only out of date but quite wrong. The best description now given is that the Bible contains the word of God in the words of men (Good News Bible, Catholic Study Edition, Thomas Nelson, N.Y. 1979) and it is true that many who hold to this view have discovered for themselves the same Universal Father and the same Jesus as we encounter in The Urantia Book.
A new era for The Urantia Book appears to be dawning, one in which scholarly research, followed by explanation, exposition, midrash, exegesis, etc., that will bring greater understanding of this great book. But first we must get past the divine dictation deadlock.
To achieve better understanding, for some parts of the book it may only be necessary to update terminology in discussing its content. The book uses the phrase "mind circuits" to describe various aspects of mind, its roles, and its interactions. Perhaps the phrase "mind field" would now be more meaningful for all those who have become familiar with the "field" concept from high school and tertiary science education.
The idea of a "field" has been around among physicists for a long time, but in recent times it has blossomed to include the many quantum fields. Discussing these, Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton states:
"We have put into the theory of the quantum field two big ideas, the idea of quantum mechanics and the idea of relativity. These two ideas force us to construct a mathematical model which, when we deduce its consequences, we find a miracle has emerged. Automatically there emerges a third big idea, that the world is built from elementary particles. This idea is a consequence of the fact that, in a quantum field, energy can exist only in discrete units which we call quanta. When we work out the theory of these quanta, we find that they have the properties of the elementary particles that we observe in the world around us."
So from the electric field we get the electron emerging as its accompanying particle, from the electromagnetic field we get photons as vector boson particles that bring us the photo-electric effect (which we use to trap solar energy), light, our TV signals, etc. From the neutrino field there arises the neutrinos, the gluon field, the gluons, etc., etc.; and there are yet other fields for which the particle has yet to be demonstrated--from the gravitational field we expect to find the gravitons, from the Higgs field we hope to locate the Higgs particle, and who knows what for the future?
Although we sometimes try to make models using familiar things to allow us to visualize aspects of these fields (i.e. we use the flow of water from high to low pressure to visualize electric current flowing in the direction of a voltage difference) nevertheless it is a fact that a quantum field cannot be broken down into other constituents, it just is what it is.
Now if we stretch concepts a little, is it possible to think that a midwayer just naturally arises from something we'll call a midwayer field? And do absoniters arise from an absoniter field? And could it be that when two finaliters bring into a being a trinitized son, they are somehow using a trinitized son field in order to do so. Does that sound crazy? I can assure you that it is no more crazy than some of the concepts of quantum theory--or relativity theory for that matter. We just need to become familiar with the concepts for the strangeness to go away.
Although the use of "field" in these ways is descriptive and not empirical nevertheless it may be a good way for we Urantians to think about the mind in all its immense variations.
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