The Reality of the Universe Mother Spirit

 

By Patricia Rife, Ph.D.

prife@earthlink.net

 

Villanova University "Body, Mind and Spirit"

Urantia Fellowship International Conference,

Delivered on July 31, 2005

Let us begin by realizing that metaphors describe 'reality' and yet scientific terms and spiritual terms may have two different meanings. In science, description is often 'the hardest part' and we struggle with metaphors. My talk today will attempt to form bridges between spiritual 'realities' and physical realities only now described in our century through quantum physics. The slides will illustrate my meanings visually, and remember, they too are metaphors for realities 'unseen'.

Catagorical "imperatives" were postulated by Immanuel Kant in the 18^th century to divide logical constructs into understandable "categories" of thought, in order to categorize logical truths. Yet we may be limited in our mental constructs if we divide the "imperative", or required, postulates about Nature from a basis of a spiritual reference or framework --which can only be grasped at or described metaphorically by our limited, finite human minds and language. One of my heros, Niels Bohr, struggled with this dilemma late in his life when grappling with describing the quantum state of energy at the nuclear level. I will open my talk today with Bohr's challenge to us: that it is often language that we struggle with in science, to describe the far-more subtle "realities" that only now are being proven, and discussed worldwide. I enjoyed several research trips in Copenhagen at the Bohr Institute for Physics, and will describe his work in more detail today. Metaphors abound when we shift to spiritual realities as well.

Spiritual insights and revelations inspire us to reach for a new framework of 'religiosity' as well as descriptions of reality - and consequent, expand our knowledge (as in 'scientia' - to know) about natural forces on Earth -- which may be of little interest to many traditionalists on Urantia, this "world cloaked in darkness". For historic reasons, science began to dominate Western thought by the 1600s, but the Urantia Book teaches us that science is not in the same 'domain' or category as Spirit!

However, we those "categorical differences" should not stop us, as it did not stop Kant, Einstein or Bohr, from reaching to understand universe phenomena scientifically! There were many throughout the history of science whose revolutionary work paved the way for new descriptions of an expanded reality. Max Planck's tiny 'quantum' of action was postulated in 1900, and utilized by the 26 year old Albert Einstein in describing his revolutionary energy theories as well as space-time mathematically.

My own mentor at MIT, Thomas Kuhn, talked a great deal about the 'gestalt switch' which occurs when an old scientific 'paradigm' or worldview is replaced by a new, more accurate one. New terms are then utilized; textbooks re-written; and our conceptual 'frameworks' expanded. And hence, I stand before you, in humility and love, to discuss an unheralded part of our reality, vivid all around us, manifest throughout God's infinite realms: the Universe Mother Spirit. And I would like to postulate that if we would honor her more, recognize her as real, we would honor motherhood, women and their rights, and truly honor the Mother Earth and all 'sacred feminine' aspects of her much more than our techno-focused cultures do today.

How did we get into this predicament in Western cultures, of losing our respect and even accurate metaphors for the Divine feminine? In many cultures I have lived harmoniously with - the Hawaiian, African, and others - 'the Great Mother Spirit' is acknowledged and revered. I don't have time to go into the history of the Catholic priesthood, but for many Christians, God was "externalized" to exclude women from the priesthood by the early centuries of the Christian Church. Such ostracizing by the Church, including banning women from a majority of the professions after the Middle Ages in Europe (where once women were held in great honor as healers with plants, midwives, even surgeons), led women to be 'seen' as 'outsiders' from ranks of privilege, politics, universities and the priesthood. While the Virgin Mary was considered holy, most women weren't.

The very basis of the Urantia Book demonstrates logical consistency and in the very early papers, begins to explain the role and functions of the Universe Mother Spirit. Yet o my dear colleagues and friends, where are the in-depth discussions of her reality around the world today, in our churches, study groups and universities? The Urantia Book obviously is a reflection of a finely-constructed Universe: it has consistency and meaning. It was this "consistency" of values, categories, structure, explanation and flawless logic which first convinced me, a die-hard academic 15 years ago when my fianc' in Hawaii gave me my first book , that the Urantia Book was far more than just a compilation of "papers" narrated by diverse spirit-based authors. I accepted celestial beings as representing "diverse" voices when reading: through the ability most writers have to discern tone, word choice, personality expression and coherent meaning-patterns, I again and again heard the utmost respect throughout the Book for a "higher" Presence, the counter-part of Christ-Michael, whose reality has been unheralded on our planet since ancient times. Her realm is as vast as Nebadon! Now we have the privilege at this conference of discussing the deep realities presented in the Urantia Book, and it is why my presentation today is entitled "The Reality of the Universe Mother Spirit".

In Dr. Sadler's day, the papers emerged slowly and the deep messages were 'digested' by a growing circle. During the same time period, the 1930s-1940s, great breakthroughs were occurring in the sciences and arts by women around the world. As a professor, I well-know that material presented holistically is often understood as a mandala, a gestalt, so it is no surprise that I was drawn to the art of Georgia O'Keefe and later, to the scientific breakthroughs of physicist Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission and Madame Curie, who discovered radium. These women came to their dramatic insights through a 'gestalt switch', a dramatic shift in perceptual understanding: in Meitner's case, it was seeing the chemical composition of the elements they were probing in a new metaphoric way. Can we also envision metaphors in modern quantum physics this way: as struggling to define the nature of God, manifest in our local Universe and in expanding realms such as ours?

It takes time to study the Urantia Book - many years. Don't be discouraged - it rests by my bedside as a constant companion, and I often dive deep into its revealed wisdom just paragraphs at a time during my busy day. So please, breathe in, and let us explore an unexplored realm: the creatrix-powers, emergence, and manifold abilities and grace of the Universal Mother-Spirits (plural), and where they "hail from". It is farther than Philadelphia! Let us first find who are these Creative Daughters and what are their spiritual functions.

POWER POINT

"When a Creator Son of God accepts the creatorship charge of responsibility for a projected local universe, the personalities of the Infinite Spirit pledge themselves as the tireless ministers of this Michael Son. Especially in the persons of the Creative Daughters, the local universe Mother Spirits, do we find the Infinite Spirit devoted to the task of fostering the ascension of the materials creatures to higher and higher levels of spiritual attainment."

Does this mean that, as the 'down-stepping" of the Infinite Spirit take on a feminine, or yin-quality (as Chinese and Asian medical healers use the feminine metaphor)? In the words of a Divine Counselor of Uversa in Paper 8, these Mother Spirits (also called Creative Daughters of the Infinite Spirit) are "dedicated to the unending ministry of revealing the combined love of the Father and the Son to the individual minds of all the children of each universe"

This is a mighty task, indeed. This is far greater than just a "task" given to the angelic. Further on, the definition of the Universe Mother Spirit, stemming from the Infinite Spirit, becomes clear:
"the Holy Spirit is the spiritual circuit of this Creative Daughter of the Paradise Infinite Spirit".

So let us be very clear - not only the feminine metaphor, but the very Holy Spirit itself stems from the Universe Mother/Daughter, the feminine creation of the Infinite Spirit!

We are given the challenge as humans - and the gift of opportunity via choice - through contact with the Adjucant Mind Spirits - to connect deeply with the highest Spirit-currents of worship (the 7^th adjucant mind-spirit). This spurs on our thirst, our reaching, for new forms of social worship. Deep within many cultures, certainly in what some call 'pre-historic' or "ancient" but fairly recent, actually -- we find female deity-figures. Anthropologists have either mis-interpreted these as "fetishes" or relegated them to "birthing ritual figurines" -- as if the Great Feminine powers were only surrounding procreation! Little did many narrow academic minds - or biased, woman-fearing priests - realize but many of these cultures held great reverence for - and here I speak of the term "to revere", as to glorify, honor and nearly worship - the reality of the Divine Feminine in a higher cosmological framework. Broad like her hips spreading wide with child, this Divine quality was recognized and revered. Only in the past few decades have scientists fought long and hard, from anthropology to sociology, to reclaim these portions of our collective world history. Do you see how ill our Western societies have become when they 'wrote out' the reality of the Creative Mother, the reality-daughter of the Infinite Spirit?

Now, let me explore some emerging concepts in modern Quantum Physics, circa 2005, to bring you up to our current state of affairs in science. As a historian of quantum physics, I like to look at trends and metaphors in this field, and you may read my own recent publication on Einstein as well as an overview about Bohr's complementarity theory which I brought with me today. I was just in Vienna at the Boltzmann Institute for Theoretical Physics, and was impressed with the current research in 'entanglement theory' - a quantum concept in which strings of quantized super-fine matter are 'entangled' in the space-time continuum, leading to all sorts of interesting speculations about energetic states and even transfers of energy at a distance. What is important to note in modern quantum theory is that, just like the debates of Bohr and Einstein way back in the 1930s, we see a philosophic quandary appearing in describing the moving energetic states. So far, modern science has still not embraced the realities of personality "presence" within matter!

Lovelock comes the closest in the field of biology when he postulated the 'Gaia' theory of the Earth, as a inter-pentratable 'conscious field' surrounding our planet. Hence, as stem cell research and other DNA and genetic biotechnology work is funded around the world, how many will see the Creative Mother at work in these life-force processes? The Gaia principle asserts that there is a consciousness surrounding our so-called "Mother Earth".

        Let us also acknowledge a vital aspect of the Universal progression which I heard a presenter discuss at last summer's International Urantia Association conference -- my dear friend from Senegal, Moussa. We will meet up with the Universe Mother Spirit long after we die and progress through the Mansion Worlds! In Paper 30, it states, about morontia "progressors": Before departing from their native local universes for the superuniverse receiving worlds, the mortals of time are recipients of spirit confirmation from the Creator Son and the local universe Mother Spirit.

Do you remember the noble student of Jesus' from India, Ganid, and how he struggled to broaden his concept of religion and faith-belief? I loved his prayer "First of all, I am going to practice worshipping God by learning how to do the will of God on Earth; that is, I am going to do my best to treat each of my fellow mortals just as I think God would like to have him treated. And when we live this sort of a life in the flesh, we may ask many things of God, and he will give us the desire in our hearts that we may be the better prepared to serve our fellows." I often wonder, if women were more respected on our planet, if child-rearing was shared and considered a noble activity, that all children around the world were taught to revere our sacred environment, we might come to a more harmonious life-style which returns the respect and honor back to the Daughter of the Infinite Spirit. Learning life-sustaining metaphors is a start towards this healthy respect.

There are, around the world, groups springing up which dance Goddess dances and perform social rituals in honor of the Sacred Feminine. But mainstream Christian, Muslim, Jewish and other religious organizations are often loathe to embrace these groups. I see, in these social attempts by men and women of all ages and races, a memory-fragment of reality that won't go away. In fact, there are still heated debates, in universities as well as private cloisters, about the leadership roles of women in faith-based communities as well as women's roles in prior cultures and civilizations in which women were held as equal counterparts to men. Yet the creator of both the Son and the Universe Mother Spirit, as we all know - IS the First Cause -- GOD.

Cosmic consciousness implies the recognition of a First Cause, the one and only uncaused reality..

And so the Universe Mother-Spirit calls to us. Let us listen for her voice!

In ancient cultures, she was revered, not as part of Nature, but the very source of natural forces themselves. Ancient cultures had many metaphors for these Creative Daughters and her feminine attributes. But what I have learned from the Urantia Book is far more profound: that the Holy Spirit, which moves us so deeply, also hails from a Mother, a loving being, who came directly from God: to minister to us in a compassionate, loving manner that reveals the truth - and hence, reclaims the power - of the eternal Feminine in us all.