© 2021 André Desjardins
© 2021 Francophone Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Science Or Revelation | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 95 — September 2021 | What The Urantia Book Means To Me |
Andrew Desjardins
St. Alexis of the Monts
Quebec — Canada
I heard a comment from a reader of The Urantia Book about his eagerness to go to the mansion world. I wondered about this remark: must we wait until we pass away in the body in some hypothetical future in order to reach the mansion worlds or other spirit worlds? I am well aware that it is impossible to “go” materially to the mansion worlds or other spirit spheres, but it is perfectly possible to go in spirit and transcendentally to any place on these worlds at our desire through The Urantia Book. The question is: What do we do while we wait for our passing away? It is difficult for me to imagine our Heavenly Father limiting us in our mental actions on the grounds that we must wait until we pass away to reach the morontia worlds or other spirit worlds. The Father of Love does not close the door and impose no restrictions on the evolution of His children; He does not impose His will against their own absolute sovereign will and desires except the limits His children impose on themselves. An Archangel of Nebadon tells us:
“The morontia life, extending as it does over the various stages of the local universe career, is the only possible approach whereby material mortals could attain the threshold of the spirit world. What magic could death, the natural dissolution of the material body, hold that such a simple step should instantly transform the mortal and material mind into an immortal and perfected spirit? Such beliefs are but ignorant superstitions and pleasing fables.” ([UB 48:0.2)
He also adds this remark:
“You should understand that the morontia life of an ascending mortal is really initiated on the inhabited worlds at the conception of the soul, at that moment when the creature mind of moral status is indwelt by the spirit Adjuster. And from that moment on, the mortal soul has potential capacity for supermortal function, even for recognition on the higher levels of the morontia spheres of the local universe.” ([UB 48:6.2)
These references clearly indicate that the experience of morontia life begins right here on our planet at the creation of our soul with the help of our Inner Adjuster without the need to leave our physical body or pass away to access these spirit worlds. For mortals such as ourselves, our morontia life actually begins on the inhabited worlds right here on our planet Earth as mentioned in the last reference. Our soul by its morontia nature has the privilege of “going” and traveling the morontia worlds or “going” to other spirit worlds right from its creation by the will of our personality with the assistance of our Inner Adjuster.
Death is not a magic wand that grants us the privilege of arriving at an idyllic all-inclusive paradise destination and enjoying eternal well-being without effort or discipline on our part. The beginning of morontia life on our planet is the foundation of spiritual-experiential training and education for mortals such as ourselves. This primary morontia school of the soul is the beginning of spiritual progression to the higher realms of infinity and eternity for survivors. The Urantia Book introduces us to morontia life as it can be experienced on our planet today, transcending time and space. Our morontia evolution depends entirely on our willingness to live in spirit the experience of divinity through progressive morontia transformations of our soul without being obliged to leave our material and physical world in union with our Thought Adjuster and in collaboration with the personalities in the service of the Infinite Spirit. The Urantia Book gives us much information about the Divine and our relationship with God, but if we do not implement these spiritual principles in our material lives, these teachings remain sterile; then The Urantia Book becomes simply a book to read.
The mansion worlds add nothing quantitatively to our acquired stock of experience of perfecting spiritual values and mental meanings during our earthly life; they are transshipped to these worlds with the certainty that these values acquired during our earthly life are recorded in the morontia form of our immortal soul and committed to the custody of our seraphic Guardian. As mentioned by a Bright Evening Star:
“On mansion world number one (or another in case of advanced status) you will resume your intellectual training and spiritual development at the exact level whereon they were interrupted by death. Between the time of planetary death or translation and resurrection on the mansion world, mortal man gains absolutely nothing aside from experiencing the fact of survival. You begin over there right where you leave off down here.” ([UB 47:3.7)
The morontia spheres are constructed and organized according to the universal career plans of spiritual evolution according to the plans of achievement established by the Universal Father for all mortal ascenders. These morontia spheres are the first steps of progressive training towards the universal career plan of spiritual evolution for all mortal ascenders such as ourselves here on our planet. A Divine Counselor from Uversa tells us:
“The Universal Father never does anything that causes subsequent sorrow or regret, but the will creatures of the planning and making of his Creator personalities in the outlying universes, by their unfortunate choosing, sometimes occasion emotions of divine sorrow in the personalities of their Creator parents. But though the Father neither makes mistakes, harbors regrets, nor experiences sorrows, he is a being with a father’s affection, and his heart is undoubtedly grieved when his children fail to attain the spiritual levels they are capable of reaching with the assistance which has been so freely provided by the spiritual-attainment plans and the mortal-ascension policies of the universes.” ([UB 4:3.5)
The Urantia Book contains 196 papers; these papers are 196 heavenly destinations of travel “in spirit” presented by experienced guides and educators representing the highest source of divine information available. All these papers allow us to travel and visit “mentally” the Central Universe, go to the superuniverses, transport ourselves to the Local Universe, or to the History of Urantia and relive the Bestowal of the Life and Teachings of Jesus according to our intentions without being obliged to leave our material world; all this is done “in spirit” by transcendence. The morontia spheres are real, but it would be impossible to locate these worlds materially with our eyes of flesh or to locate other worlds of the spirit even with the most powerful telescopes produced by material techniques but it is perfectly possible to see them with the eyes of the spirit. An archangel of Nebadon tells us:
“Under such conditions of lighting, the light rays do not seem to come from one place; they just sift out of the sky, emanating equally from all space directions. This light is very similar to natural sunlight except that it contains very much less heat. Thus it will be recognized that such headquarters worlds are not luminous in space; if Jerusem were very near Urantia, it would not be visible.” ([UB 46:1.5)
This last reference indicates that the worlds of Jerusem are not material “balls” as humans can conceive them, they are rather spheres of activity associated with the worlds of the spirit. The graphic conception that one has of these worlds represents these spheres but it would be very difficult to seek to locate them in space since they are of invisible morontia form just as our soul by its morontia nature is invisible with material eyes. These spheres are real but they are above all spheres inhabited by seraphic armies assigned to the needs of the ascenders. Just as the morontia spheres are invisible with the eyes of flesh, it is the same with the seraphim but their presences are felt on our planet Urantia and they are always in action for the mental needs of the morontia progressors. These seraphim perform several different functions of service according to their attributes and through their presence, they assist morontia progressors in their spiritual evolution and participate in their morontia transformation by providing the tools necessary for their mental education and the spiritual evolution of their soul right here on our planet.
These multitudes of seraphim are present near us without us being really aware of their presence; they are the intermediaries between the material world and the spiritual world.
They can act in our material mind, guide us and lead us towards the higher spiritual spheres of our Local Universe as presented by a Melchizedek acting on request of the Chief of the Seraphic Hosts of Nebadon:
“The seraphim are so created as to function on both spiritual and literal levels. There are few phases of morontia or spirit activity which are not open to their ministrations. While in personal status angels are not so far removed from human beings, in certain functional performances seraphim far transcend them. They possess many powers far beyond human comprehension. For example: You have been told that the “very hairs of your head are numbered,” and it is true they are, but a seraphim does not spend her time counting them and keeping the number corrected up to date. Angels possess inherent and automatic (that is, automatic as far as you could perceive) powers of knowing such things; you would truly regard a seraphim as a mathematical prodigy. Therefore, numerous duties which would be tremendous tasks for mortals are performed with exceeding ease by seraphim.” ([UB 38:2.3)
The seraphim are not visible with fleshly eyes, but they are present in our material world as mentioned in the last reference and they have the power to transport, follow and guide us “mentally” to the 570 morontia attainments of personal education in these worlds. These attainments are made by progressive transformation of our material mind. The morontia spheres are best viewed as spheres of mental activity essential to the evolution of the morontia soul of ascending mortals and not as spheres having a material form.
One of the purposes of the morontia worlds is to eradicate from mortals the automatism and deficiencies of the mechanical material mind by transformation into an evolving morontia mind with the assistance of the seraphic hosts at our disposal. An archangel of Nebadon states:
“One of the purposes of the morontia career is to effect the permanent eradication from the mortal survivors of such animal vestigial traits as procrastination, equivocation, insincerity, problem avoidance, unfairness, and ease seeking. The mansonia life early teaches the young morontia pupils that postponement is in no sense avoidance. After the life in the flesh, time is no longer available as a technique of dodging situations or of circumventing disagreeable obligations.” ([UB 48:5.8)
This last reference indicates that it is perfectly possible to eradicate these vestiges of our animal character during our life on Earth by considering that our morontia life begins at the conception of our soul. (See ref. UB 48:6.2) By following this prescription suggested by the archangel of Nebadon we can in wisdom and in worship aim at the experience of perfection by making mental corrections during our life on our planet without waiting for death in response to the supreme challenge of the Universal Father “to strive for the perfection of divinity”. [UB 1:0.4]
For will-given personalities such as ourselves on our planet, we have the privilege of choosing to do the Father’s will by experiencing the perfection of divinity during our earthly life; all these values of perfection experiences acquired during our life on Earth are automatically credited to us on the mansion worlds or on other spirit worlds.
In pursuing our goal of spiritual progression we will always have experiences of perfection to live, mental adjustments to accomplish and corrections to make to our personality in our desire to become like God in this perpetual search to live the experience of perfection in mental meanings and spiritual values with our Divine Adjuster. A Divine Counselor mentions:
“The enlightened worlds all recognize and worship the Universal Father, the eternal maker and infinite upholder of all creation. The will creatures of universe upon universe have embarked upon the long, long Paradise journey, the fascinating struggle of the eternal adventure of attaining God the Father. The transcendent goal of the children of time is to find the eternal God, to comprehend the divine nature, to recognize the Universal Father. God-knowing creatures have only one supreme ambition, just one consuming desire, and that is to become, as they are in their spheres, like him as he is in his Paradise perfection of personality and in his universal sphere of righteous supremacy. From the Universal Father who inhabits eternity there has gone forth the supreme mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.” In love and mercy the messengers of Paradise have carried this divine exhortation down through the ages and out through the universes, even to such lowly animal-origin creatures as the human races of Urantia.” ([UB 1:0.3)
Whether we are here during our earthly life or elsewhere on other spirit worlds in a future life we will always have to continue this struggle to experience perfection as presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon:
“The pursuit of the ideal—the striving to be Godlike—is a continuous effort before death and after. The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life. Real religion does not foster moral indolence and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon one as a result of passing through the portals of natural death. True religion does not belittle man’s efforts to progress during the mortal lease on life. Every mortal gain is a direct contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of the immortal survival experience.” ([UB 103:5.7)
The morontia worlds are the first course of the progressive material mental transformation experience of all mortal or survival-quality survivors. One of the purposes of these schools of mental training and spiritual development is to eliminate the deficiencies of our mortal origin of material nature by a metamorphosis into a morontia mind of survival value with the support of seraphic tutors. Our education in the morontia life begins on our planet by seeking to remove the mechanical automatism of our material thinking by discipline and effort of will directed toward our desire to resemble the God of Perfection in a cooperative attitude with our Thought Adjuster.
In these morontia spheres, we learn to nourish ourselves with spiritual values and mental meanings essential to the growth of our soul in order to continue our evolution by experience towards higher levels of spiritual progression in the eternal adventure towards Paradise. These mental transformations allow us to improve our conscious contact with our God of Love in our pursuit to do His Will by seeking perfection in our way of acting and behaving in our social interactions. These mental actions of seeking perfection by experience are the response of our personality to the challenge of achieving the perfection of divinity following God’s supreme injunction to be perfect like himself. Ref…: [UB 1:0.4]
The progressive experience of perfection begins right here on our planet without having to wait for death to reach a certain level of perfection. There is no limit to enhancing our spiritual perception during our earthly life, the Father of Love has provided us with all the necessary assistance for our evolution and our spiritual progression according to his plans of achievement (see ref. 4:3.5-58.3) implemented by his desire to enter into relationship with his children of time. It is our privilege to use these established plans of achievement in the pursuit of this road towards the infinite paths of achievement of perfection by experience. It is up to us and our sincere motivation to take this road of perfection; no one can do it for us and no one can instantly transform us by magic into a perfected state.
Our soul is the eternal passport to all destinations to Paradise but our soul progression is through experience of progressive personal attainment by developing our mental capacities and our values of perfection through experience. Our education and progressive spiritual attainment is done with the complicity of our Indwelling Adjuster and continues beyond the boundaries of our local universe by transcending time and space through our abilities to live “in spirit” on our present planet as dictated by a Brilliant Evening Star of Nebadon:
“This training of mind and education of spirit is carried on from the worlds of human origin up through the system mansion worlds and the other spheres of progress associated with Jerusem, on the seventy socializing realms attached to Edentia, and on the four hundred and ninety spheres of spirit progress encircling Salvington. On the universe headquarters itself are numerous Melchizedek schools, the colleges of the Universe Sons, the seraphic universities, and the schools of the Teacher Sons and the Union of Days. Every possible provision is made to qualify the various personalities of the universe for advancing service and improving function. The entire universe is one vast school.” ([UB 37:6.2)
As indicated in this last reference, our mental training and spiritual education begins on our home planet and this spiritual progression continues on the spirit worlds always in the presence of our Thought Adjuster; our sincere cooperation is the key in our search for the Source of Perfection. Our personality possesses the inherent attributes of the power to transcend time and space from our home planet without being required to physically leave it. Transcendence allows us to access higher levels of spiritual progression far beyond our local universe and our goal in transcending is to find the Eternal God: the First Source and Center of all things.
It is perfectly possible to live in our present world in harmony with our Inner Adjuster in order to continue the experiential growth of our soul without limiting ourselves to any level of spiritual evolution. Our mental limits are always those to which we limit ourselves. Our education and spiritual evolution begins on our planet at the conception of our soul with the assistance of our Inner Adjuster; (See Ref. UB 48:6.2) through this intimate association no limits are imposed on our personality except those which we impose on ourselves. Through our free will, neither God nor even our Thought Adjuster can go against the absolute personal will and choices of the human personality.
The experiences of divine perfection, spiritual worth and our mental evolution acquired during our material life here on our planet are automatically credited to us on the mansion worlds. Our mind is the basis of our spiritual development and it is perfectly possible to “go mentally” to the morontia worlds by considering our soul is of morontia conception and by our mental capacities to transcend time and space. Our morontia education, our training and our progressive spiritual evolution begin here on our home planet from the conception of our soul. Our destiny always depends on our intentions and choices to live divinely by aiming for the progressive experience of perfection. An archangel of Nebadon tells us in the morontia mota:
“24. 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.” ([UB 48:7.26)
Although we are subject to the electrochemical system of our brain during our earth life, it is possible to escape from this material energy form by transcendence and to go to the morontia boundaries or to other spirit worlds with the assistance of our Thought Adjuster without leaving our earth life by the qualification of our morontia soul and our power and capacity to live the spirit life. A Mighty Messenger informs us:
“Mortal man is a machine, a living mechanism; his roots are truly in the physical world of energy. Many human reactions are mechanical in nature; much of life is machinelike. But man, a mechanism, is much more than a machine; he is mind endowed and spirit indwelt; and though he can never throughout his material life escape the chemical and electrical mechanics of his existence, he can increasingly learn how to subordinate this physical-life machine to the directive wisdom of experience by the process of consecrating the human mind to the execution of the spiritual urges of the indwelling Thought Adjuster.” ([UB 118:8.2)
Thus man possesses within himself this power to subordinate his mortal material mind to a morontia mind essential to the survival of his personality according to his choices and his decisions for the evolution of his soul by a habit of living in spirit by seeking the God of Spirits by his sincerity, his persistence and in the firmness of his decisions. Jesus, addressing his disciples during his 18th morontia appearance, said to them:
““Peace be upon you. You rejoice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead because you thereby know that you and your brethren shall also survive mortal death. But such survival is dependent on your having been previously born of the spirit of truth-seeking and God-finding. The bread of life and the water thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the kingdom. These great truths and these universe facts are all related to this gospel in that they are a part of the result of believing the good news and are embraced in the subsequent experience of those who, by faith, become, in deed and in truth, the everlasting sons of the eternal God. My Father sent me into the world to proclaim this salvation of sonship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this salvation of sonship. Salvation is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will immediately begin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in loving service to their fellow creatures. And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace. If professed believers bear not these fruits of the divine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are useless branches on the living vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Father requires of the children of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, therefore, you are not fruitful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your unfruitful branches. Increasingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you progress heavenward in the kingdom of God. You may enter the kingdom as a child, but the Father requires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spiritual adulthood. And when you go abroad to tell all nations the good news of this gospel, I will go before you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”” ([UB 193:2.2)
Transcendence is the way of going beyond human limitations with an automatic material mental mechanism that gives personalities the ability to live in spirit in their perpetual search for truth and to find the God of Spirit. Spirit life is living as if in the presence of God Himself through the indwelling presence of our Thought Adjuster. Spirit life becomes effective as soon as this sincere choice of the personality in good faith consents to seek perfection through personal communion with the Paradise Father through the presence of our indwelling Adjuster. Spirit birth is our mental passport to the morontia adventure and to the spirit worlds.
Our mind allows us to transcend by looking at the past, to live in the present and imagine plans for a future life in a single phase without moving materially; this is what allows us to “travel” in time by transcendence and plan our spiritual future. Planning one’s spiritual life is like participating in a retirement plan by acquiring spiritual values that are credited to us no matter where we are in the universe. An archangel of Nebadon also mentions in the morontia mota:
“4. Few mortals ever dare to draw anything like the sum of personality credits established by the combined ministries of nature and grace. The majority of impoverished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to believe it.” ([UB 48:7.6)
The morontia mota is a mental protocol and an influence that instills in us rules of conduct by inciting us to follow a mode of action and a way of behaving. It is perfectly possible to practice these rules of conduct during our earthly life without having to pass away by implementing these 28 lessons of the morontia mota in our daily life. A Melchizedek of Nebadon mentions:
“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.” ([UB 103:6.7)
By combining the elements of knowledge-reason with the essence of faith-clairvoyance, it is perfectly possible to practice morontia mota during our earthly life; it is one of the means for us humans to reach the morontia worlds by transcendence.
In closing; a Perfecter of Wisdom mentions:
“The goal of existence of all personalities is spirit; material manifestations are relative, and the cosmic mind intervenes between these universal opposites. The bestowal of mind and the ministration of spirit are the work of the associate persons of Deity, the Infinite Spirit and the Eternal Son. Total Deity reality is not mind but spirit-mind—mind-spirit unified by personality. Nevertheless the absolutes of both the spirit and the thing converge in the person of the Universal Father.” ([UB 12:8.13)
Finally, I want to pay tribute to the authors of the 196 fascicles of the Urantia Book as well as to the divine and human personalities who participated in the materialization of the Urantia Book.
| Science Or Revelation | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 95 — September 2021 | What The Urantia Book Means To Me |