One evening in a poetry workshop, I said the spiritual insight in my poem was the result of “a divine invasion.” I didn’t share that it was a phrase I’d read in the Urantia Book (UB). One of my fellow poets, an avowed atheist, asked me what a divine invasion was.  I found myself a little tongue-tied, and didn’t want to quote the Urantia Book in my poets group. I’d never done so before, especially because none of the others were familiar with it.  I think Joe wanted me to demonstrate that this “invasion” was observable in some way. Like many nonbelievers, he was looking to logic and reason to validate my idea of the reality of God. But as the philosopher, Kant, reminded us, “Religion cannot be proved by theoretical reason.”

   Here are a couple of instances where the UB uses the term invasion. “Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul.” (2095.4; 196:3.20)

   “In the days of the mortal flesh the divine spirit indwells you, almost as a thing apart, in reality an invasion of man by the bestowed spirit of the Universal Father.” (48:1.6)

   This seems to imply that the Thought Adjuster has to force its way in at times, although many UB passages confirm the spirit indweller never enters our minds against our will (p. 753; 66:8.6). Perhaps the phrase “divine invasion” describes what happens at an early stage in our relationship with God where there is still a lot of personal noise in the mind to overcome, a stage where we have not yet acquired much ability to listen to the still small voice within.

    I am personally biased to describe spiritual insights as a feeling of “being elevated,” or “transported” but I realize that could be misleading. Enlightenment can come with an emotional content, but it also arrives without such feelings. “There is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or expression of religious emotions.” (101:1.2)

   “The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking.” (pg. 1104; 101:1.3)

   We UB readers describe discovering God through faith, an idea we share with Christianity. And sometimes it is an emotional experience. Our unreasoned, unreasonable faith tells us the emotions are real.

   I might have quoted Thomas Merton, the Catholic contemplative, to answer Joe the poet’s challenge. Merton wrote, “The soul … is penetrated from time to time with vivid intuitions of God’s action,” (Bread in the Wilderness.)

   A well-known Christian pastor of the Lakota Indian people once wrote, “You have experienced, like me, being at the divine intersections of time and space where amazing new realities appear.” (Lakota Christian minister, Richard Twiss)

   Once we’ve had an experience of the “divine invasion,” or a soul penetration, we then reach out to the Spirit (our spirit teacher, the Thought Adjuster, the divine spark) seeking further experiences of enlightenment.

   “You would not seek me, had you not found me.” (Blaise Pascal) We begin to experience the reciprocal nature of personal revelations:

… “Mortal existence must be visualized as consisting in the intriguing and fascinating experience of the realization of the reality of the meeting of the human upreach and the divine and saving downreach.” (102:6.10, p. 1125)

   “… when there exists perfection of the human motivation of loyalties to the divine idea, then there very often occurs a sudden down-grasp of the indwelling spirit …” (pg. 1098; 100:5.4)

   When we discover how certain the Spirit is to respond to a knock on its door, this becomes a proof of God’s existence for us—the personal faith experience.  I wouldn’t be able to successfully express, demonstrate or justify these discoveries to my atheist friend Joe. He would have to experience the “sudden downgrasp,” for himself.  

   The UB also cautions us about errors in our understanding that can happen: (100:5.7) “Altogether too much of the uprush of the memories of the unconscious levels of the human mind has been mistaken for divine revelations and spirit leadings.”

   Is there a way to verify that our divine invasions are genuine insights, not simply unconscious memories? In a later discussion, we’ll talk about developing and using a truth filter.

   Next time: more on the Thought Adjuster.