Episode:Melchizedek Gospel—Response in the Orient (Part 2)
The theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human, something new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian gospel—the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all men—which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service.
Keywords: Urantia, Melchizedek of Salem, Brahman, Oversoul, Supreme
Summary by Kermit
with final edits by James
This reading left us with a sad picture of the collapse of the vast Vedic priesthood as a consequence of their presumptuous self-exaltation above their gods, coupled with their engulfment by surrounding less advanced civilizations with their accompanying debasing cults.
What could have been an emerging monotheism was most seriously crippled by the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. The endless round of successive incarnations as man, beast, or lower life forms robbed struggling mortals of the hope of deliverance and advancement in death, such as had been a part of earlier Vedic beliefs.
This reading triggered a lengthy discussion of possible origins of belief in reincarnation and feasible explanations of peoples’ experiences of so-called past lives. The orange race, significantly represented in the peoples of the Dravidian Deccan were given to a belief in transmigration and reincarnation, based largely on their observance of hereditary and trait resemblance of offspring to ancestors. Also, remnants of residual teachings from the days of Adam and Eve, of the mansion world ascension with a series of re-personalizations requiring the surrender of consciousness contributed to the holding of these beliefs. [86:4.6]
Regarding the experiences of individuals claiming to have lived other lives in past times, the revelation provides considerable information about the nature and attributes of mind energy that can be applied in explaining such phenomena. Consult the archive of the show for the details of this discussion.
We then transitioned to the topic of animals failing to survive death. We read [130:2.8] Jesus’ teaching in response to Ganid’s question regarding whether intelligent animals possess souls or have will. As a result of this teaching Ganid never again entertained belief in the transmigration of the souls of men into the bodies of animals. Jesus went even further with Gonod the next day when he said that “human wills which are fully occupied with passing only upon temporal decisions having to do with the material problems of animal existence are doomed to perish in time.” [130:2.9]
The spirit of our discussion should not be interpreted as a devaluation of animals, but rather a recognition of the human being’s capacity to love. And further, remember that when observing the endearing animal behaviors so precious to animal lovers, you are in fact witnessing a manifestation of the mind of the Divine Minister.
We went on to call attention to the error of dichotomous thinking embodied in the viewpoint that the human animal-origin nature is somehow subhuman. The highest animals are engaged mindally with the first five adjutants. We humans are engaged with all seven adjutants. This encircuitment constitutes us as animal-origin, in a sense pre-human. It is the next evolutionary step, the encircuitment in the Holy Spirit, and her three cosmic intuitions—CAUSATION, DUTY, AND WORSHIP—that constitutes us actually human. The take-home lesson of this apparent digression consists in the challenge for us to not stall out in a pre-human state of mind, but reach up and actually grab on to our higher nature and the recognition it gives us.
In returning to our reading, we follow the sad history of India and the dire consequences that ensued following the rejection of the one God of Melchizedek. Following the debilitating teaching of the transmigration of souls came the invention of the doctrine of escape from self by submergence in the rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman. Each step in this unfolding history represents a descent, retrogression in quality of thought and belief. Mortal desire and human ambition were virtually destroyed. In their violent reaction to the vitiating beliefs from the debasing and debilitating cults and creeds from the Deccan, the Brahman priesthood tried to find true reality. But in their attempts to deanthropomorphize their concept of deity, they descended again and depersonalized the concept of God. Thus, they emerged not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing Absolute. The Brahmans’ attempts at self-preservation led to their rejection of the one God of Melchizedek, leaving them with the concept of Brahman, an impersonal and impotent it. Thus the spiritual life of India remained helpless and prostrate from then to the twentieth century.
As the Upanishads (part of the Hindu scriptures) were being written, Buddhism arose in India. Buddhism embodied a higher morality than Hinduism, but had an even less well-defined portrayal of God, and gave way before the onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the supreme God of the universe. Note that the inhabitants of northern India received the definitive and personal God of Islam in favor of the impersonal IT. Such is the nature of the children of God. A definitive personal God is seen as better than none.
3. Brahmanic Philosophy
Two essential elements of religion were lacking in the Brahmanic philosophy: first the existence of the Universal Father of all universe creatures, and second, the fact of the experience of perfecting in the progressive ascension-quest for this Universal Father. Brahmanism did make one of the noblest reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics.
The Brahman concept of an all-pervading Absolute as an absolute, even infinite being, was valid but being devoid of personality attributes, was not experiencable by the individual. In the Foreword of The Urantia Book, the authors reveal the Unqualified Absolute as a positive universe overcontrol in infinity and are careful to differentiate it from “a mere negativistism of philosophic concept,” [0:11.8] or “an undifferentiated and all-pervading influence comparable … to the pantheistic concepts of metaphysics.” [0:11.9]
Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. But the philosophers of those days were unable to make the next advance in deity conception, conceiving of the Brahman as an associative and creative personality approachable by created and evolving beings. They thereby failed to achieve what would have been the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia. They were unable to move up from their pre-personal beliefs to a personal, experiencable God.
