THE URANTIA BOOK
MORONTIA MOTA
Pages 556-557
The 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 moral philosophy.
Not 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:
1. A display of specialized skill does not signify possession of spiritual capacity.
Cleverness is not a substitute for true character.
2. Few persons live up to the faith which they really have.
3. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.
4. Inherent capacities cannot be exceeded; a pint can never hold a quart.
The spirit concept cannot be mechanically forced into
the material memory mold.
5. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established
by the combined ministries of nature and grace.
6. Difficulties may challenge mediocrity and defeat the fearful, but they only stimulate the
true children of the Most Highs.
7. 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 a high civilization.
8. 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.
9. Effort does not always produce joy, but there is no happiness without intelligent effort.
10.Action achieves strength; moderation eventuates in
charm.
11. Righteousness strikes the harmony chords of truth, and
the melody vibrates throughout the cosmos, even to the
recognition of the Infinite.
12. The weak indulge in resolutions, but the strong act. Life
is but a day’s work. Do it well. The act is ours, the con-
sequences God’s.
13. The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only
learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.
14. Stars are best discerned from the lonely isolation of experiential depths, not from the
illuminated and ecstatic mountain tops.
15. Whet the appetites of your associates for truth; give advice only when it is asked for.
16. Affectation is the ridiculous effort of the ignorant to appear wise, the barren soul to
appear rich.
17. You cannot perceive spiritual truth until you feelingly experience it, and many truths
are not really felt except in adversity.
18. Ambition is dangerous until it is fully socialized. You have not truly acquired any virtue
until your acts make you worthy of it.
19. Impatience is a spirit poison; anger is like a stone hurled into a hornet’s nest.
20. Anxiety must be abandoned. The disappointments hardest to bear are those which
never come.
21. Only a poet can discern poetry in the commonplace prose of routine existence.
22. 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.
23. The evolving soul is not made divine by what it does, but by what it
strives to do.
24. Death added nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual
endowment; but it did add to the experiential status the consciousness
of survival.
25. 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.
26. Greatness lies not so much in possessing strength as in making a
wise and divine use of such strength.
27. Knowledge is possessed only by sharing; it is safeguarded by wisdom
and socialized by love.
28. Progress demands development of individuality; mediocrity seeks
perpetuation in standardization.
29. The argumentative defense of any proposition is inversely
proportional to the truth contained.
:6.2 1135 § 4 When man approaches the study and examination of his universe from the
outside, he brings into being the various physical sciences; when he approaches the research
of himself and the universe from the inside, he gives origin to theology and metaphysics. The
later art of philosophy develops in an effort to harmonize the many discrepancies which are
destined at first to appear between the findings and teachings of these two diametrically
opposite avenues of approaching the universe of things and beings.
103:6.7 1136 § 2 Your 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.
103:6.9 1136 § 4 Science is man's attempted study of his physical environment, the world of
energy-matter; religion is man's experience with the cosmos of spirit values; philosophy has
been developed by man's mind effort to organize and correlate the findings of these widely
separated concepts into something like a reasonable and unified attitude toward the cosmos.
Philosophy, clarified by revelation, functions acceptably in the absence of mota and in the
presence of the breakdown and failure of man's reason substitute for mota -- metaphysics.