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ity, otherwise we base our life on illusion. Because science is still incomplete, and religion is riddled with dogma and superstitions, humankind's attempt at philosophy has been insufficient to deal with the uncertainties and mysteries of life. The metaphysical attempt at bridging the gap between the worlds of matter and spirit, when tried without revelation is confusing and largely a failure. Because mankind lacks the concepts that merges religion and science, it needs revelation to enable metaphysics to effectively construct a working philosophy of the universe. Revelation is the only technique that makes up for the conceptual data which people need in arriving at a satisfying understanding of the dual nature of reality.
Most people have not bridged this gulf between the physical and the spiritual. The reason is because they do not have a clear idea of the true nature of reality. When philosophy leans heavily toward the world of matter, it becomes rationalistic or naturalistic. When philosophy inclines particularly toward the spiritual level, it becomes idealistic or even mystical. When philosophy leans upon metaphysics without the benefit of revelation, it becomes confused. In the past, most of man's knowledge and intellectual evaluations have fallen into one of these three distortions of perception. Philosophy would be illusory if it interprets reality with the linear fashion of logic or with the wholistic way of mysticism. For philosophy to accurately reflect the true state of the universe, it must be able to perceive the elliptic symmetry of reality and all relation concepts as being curved.
People who think linearly are those who are predominantly left-brained: scientists, technicians and mathematicians; they see everything happening as a result of a mechanical and material process; two plus two equals four and so on. This idea of reality says that life is more or less determined by our logical thoughts and mechanistic actions.
Those who are predominantly right-brained such as mystics, visionaries and religionists see reality differently. They see reality as a whole, encompassing the beginning, the end and all of creation. This idea of reality is based on faith, taking it as given that the totality of the universe in space and time is not understandable or comprehensible to humans and will remain a mystery, which means that our own fate cannot be self-determined and must be dependent on the grace of a universal Creator.
Most people's philosophy is based on their perception of reality as being one or the other, and they are both distorted. The mystic who sees reality as being purely spiritual has a philosophy that is often removed from the mechanisms of the physical world while the scientist who sees reality as being merely a "thing" has a philosophy that is mechanical and material and ignores the spiritual aspects of life. Because we are dualistic, material and spiritual, most people have conflicts between their animal nature and their divine nature. Animals are bellicose and self-centered as well as possessing other animalistic habits while the divine nature is loving, self-forgetful and unifying. People spend their whole lives learning how to deal with the conflicts inherent in such a combination of natures and try to create their own personal philosophy that can effectively resolve the two opposing forces. Such a philosophy can only be effective if guided by revelation.
Revelation comes in many forms. It could arrive as a book. Many books have revelatory information in it, however, the information may be useful only to those who can see that particular perspective and are ready for it. The same information may not be suitable for everyone. You can verify its accuracy by applying it to your daily life to see if it reconciles the dualistic nature within yourself. If the information in the book enables you to create an elliptic philosophy that tackles and resolves the issues in your life, you have found a source of revelatory information that works for you.
Another source of revelatory information is personal (auto-revelation), and comes through worshipful meditation, prayer and service. Through these processes, the spirit fills you with insights that gives you an understanding of the dynamics of the elliptic universe and how to combine seamlessly the linear and mystical aspects of your life.
An elliptic philosophy would not be so much a balance but a merging (or morphing) of the linear and non-linear with help from revelatory information. To say that we must balance the physical and spiritual in our lives tends to polarize the two and is different from morphing the physical and spiritual. In other words, we can spend time doing something physical and balance it by doing something spiritual, but this is not the same as seamlessly merging the physical and spiritual in everything we do. To use a food metaphor, one can have carrots, potatoes and meat and eat them separately and still get a balance of the nutrients that they contain. However, if we merge them together to make a stew, we get something new that is better than the sum of its parts. Elliptic philosophy is the stew. To eat the ingredients separately would be just as nutritionally sound as eating them cooked together, but a delicious stew would be hearty - it would feed the soul as well as the body.
So what are good examples of a philosophy based on the elliptical symmetry of reality?
Jesus' parables are wonderful expressions of elliptic philosophy. Jesus knew perfectly well the elliptical symmetry of reality when he began teaching in parables. The linear approach didn't work and he was not a mystic so he merged the rationalistic and the spiritualistic into a story, which is an art, really. And true art is a display of elliptic philosophy, a merging of the duality in man, the material; and man, the spiritual.
Another example of elliptic philosophy would be the following lines of wisdom from The Urantia Book. Notice that most of them have some sort of paradoxical element in them which merge the material and spiritual. For instance:
o The greatest affliction of the cosmos is never to have been afflicted. Mortals only learn wisdom by experiencing tribulation.
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