© 1986 Charles Laurence Olivea
© 1986 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
This little essay is written in the hope that I may take advantage of the notion expressed in The URANTIA Book which suggests somewhat gently that universe romancing in the search for truth is often characterized more by insight than fact.
Probably, you have heard of the idea (however phrased) that, although “love” is real, it is impossible to “hold” it as it is possible to hold a baseball or fountain pen in your hand. Since our life vehicle is a material body, we can relate easily to physical reality. The superuniverse of Orvonton in which we live contains both physical and spiritual realities, but these dimensions do not contact each other anywhere in this time-space segment of the grand universe. Even though our body and brain consists of energy-matter, we humans possess mind capacities that enable us to bridge the reality difference between physical and spiritual realities. This is the creature function of human mind.
If we turn to the marvelous statement, “God is love,” we can conjecture reasonably that love — that value which in physical reality we cannot hold — is, in spirit reality, a phenomenon which is literally living, one that is touchable and seeable. In other words, on the spirit level of reality spirit personalities can touch, hold, and embrace love with their very nature as spirits. Although such wording is as a mortal would describe the spirit composition of love by using the language of a material realm, the intent herein is not meant to be a figure of speech. Spirit beings are able to respond to love (or truth, beauty, and goodness) in a manner that seems analogous to the way we respond to things in physical reality.
We sex creatures procreate in a biological manner; the Universal Father and the Eternal Son create with living ideas. For example, when they share an identical thought or concept on the spirit-character of a beautiful Creator Son, he is! To our creature minds, such an accomplishment is all but imaginary. Love to us is real, but since it is not material it has many of the characteristics (seemingly so) of fantasy.
Love has its origins on a level of absolute undifferentiated reality. But in order to make love real and comprehensible to mortal time-space creatures, Deity apparently had to effect a gradual transmutation of love from the highest level of reality to the lowest planetary level of material existence. This was accomplished, I think, by a qualitative, transmutative diminution of love from God’s undifferentiated nature, then to spirit at the higher levels, on down to a morontial level of love, and finally to the low plane of mindal-material creatures who coercive of love as an idea or ideal, and who also feel it as a human emotion. The same generalization would apply equally to truth, beauty, and goodness. While mortal creatures employ mind and human emotion to grasp the reality of love, spirit beings by their very natures are able to function with their spiritedness in a spirit milieu. Since all spirit is intrinsically minded, it would seem that spirit beings do not need mind per se to contact spiritual reality (however, they may use mind to contact matter).
Inherent luminosity and power to attract seem to be two very important features of all spirit. Love is the greatest spiritual reality in the universe, even the universe of universes. Undoubtedly, love on a spirit plane has a distinctive, identifiable luminosity (and perhaps, color and tone). It is literally seeable with spirit-vision. Its drawing power is no doubt due to a visible moral aura intrinsic to spirit-love. If this is correct, than it would follow that love is literally touchable by a spirit gravity-embrace between fellow spirit beings or in their relationship with God, the beloved Universal Father to us all. On this level, love can be measured probably by the degree of its brilliance and the intensity of its compelling attractiveness. Paradoxically, love is best held by sharing (service) or worshipping (pleasure), under the guiding hand of the Father and eventuating in the fellowship of spirit beings. Indeed, in one form or another this observation is true for all of God’s children.
What has been observed about the nature of love in spirit reality can be generalized to other aspects of spirit existence. Truth, beauty, and goodness are no doubt literally knowable as actual entities by spirit persons. Music must exist as living harmony, not merely as sound to be heard. Spirit art is alive, not inert as material art must be. Poetry and philosophy wax with the light of their living voices and ideas, rather than be expressed only as word-symbols as is true necessarily of human constructions. Consider the following descriptions of some spirit beings: Universal Censors are the divine judgment of the Paradise Trinity; Perfectors of Wisdom are literally living wisdom; Divine Counselors constitute the actual counsel of the Trinity: and the Custodians of Knowledge are living ideas, actual living knowledge! Spirit beings must utilize dozens, perhaps hundreds, of spirit-senses unimaginable to us which enable them to interact with the multifarious, spirit-creations of Deity.
In conclusion, let me say that I now conceive of love, truth, beauty, and goodness on the spirit level of reality as literally living phenomena, which are analogous in function to physical objects on the energy-matter level. Furthermore, spirit personalities are constitutively capable of interacting with realities — such as spirit-values, spirit-ideas, and spirit-emotions — that are actual, living entities, But, most important, let us always remember what was said by the apostle, John Zebedee, about the greatest of spirit realities.
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God, Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. We are sure that we live in union with God and that he lives in union with us, because he has given us his Spirit. And we ourselves know and believe the love which God has for us. God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in union with God and God lives in union with him. There is no fear in love, perfect love drives out all fear. The command that Christ has given us is this: whoever loves God must love his brother also.
(1 John 4:7, 8, 13, 16, 18, 21)
Charles Laurence Olivea
Watertown, Connecticut