© 2018 David Elders
© 2018 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
David Elders
Translated from English by G.M-D
“Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme pleasure of the human soul. It is the joint creation of the material mind and the spirit”
This essay aims to explore, in the current context, the pedagogy and methodology of the UBIS school in response to the question of whether, in relation to the new truths brought by the revelation of the time, we can use effectively the evolutionary and traditional techniques of education and interpretation used by the evolutionary religions of authority?
I would observe that it is the combined nature of revelation and the revelatory process that determines how the soul of the truth seeker encounters, accesses, perceives, and integrates revealed truth. Without progressive morontia consciousness, I do not think that mind alone can do this. Two thousand years ago Jesus sought to have his revelation recognized and accepted by the established evolutionary religious authorities—the scribes and Pharisees. But as revealed truth, designed to elevate and supplant existing evolutionary beliefs, it was rejected at that time by these leaders before it was spiritually integrated into human consciousness by the living power of the spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Truth, and the universal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters. The crucifixion of Jesus represents the immediate evolutionary response of religious authority to destroy newly revealed truths that were seen as a challenge to existing beliefs and theologies. Is this a warning to us?
Holding The Urantia Book firmly in your hands, have you ever wondered what the evolutionary response to this new revelation might look like? This exercise can be helpful in enabling us to distinguish between the newly revealed truth and the centuries-old beliefs that form the basis of authoritative evolutionary religions. As you continue your analysis, you will likely be disappointed to find that the new revelation is still contaminated by the old evolutionary beliefs (UB 93:7.4). But it is better to know the risks than to delude ourselves into thinking that what we take to be the highest meaning of revealed truth may be only a projection of what we already know and believe.
Toward the last days of His bestowal on our planet, 2,000 years ago, our Creator Son warned the Apostles to “beware of the support of the multitudes” who came to see the Master and hear His words. On a day of rest in the camp, midweek, He said to them:
“This was the occasion of Jesus’ warning his followers to beware of the support of the multitude. He recounted their experiences in Galilee when time and again great throngs of people enthusiastically followed them around and then just as ardently turned against them and returned to their former ways of believing and living. And then he said: “And so you must not allow yourselves to be deceived by the great crowds who heard us in the temple, and who seemed to believe our teachings. These multitudes listen to the truth and believe it superficially with their minds, but few of them permit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with living roots. Those who know the gospel only in the mind, and who have not experienced it in the heart, cannot be depended upon for support when real trouble comes. When the rulers of the Jews reach an agreement to destroy the Son of Man, and when they strike with one accord, you will see the multitude either flee in dismay or else stand by in silent amazement while these maddened and blinded rulers lead the teachers of the gospel truth to their death. And then, when adversity and persecution descend upon you, still others who you think love the truth will be scattered, and some will renounce the gospel and desert you. Some who have been very close to us have already made up their minds to desert. You have rested today in preparation for those times which are now upon us. Watch, therefore, and pray that on the morrow you may be strengthened for the days that are just ahead.”” (UB 177:5.2)
As we seek to experience, perceive, understand in our courses and use in our lives the truths newly revealed by the revelators of The Urantia Book, we would do well to choose the most appropriate methodology, informed by the revelation itself, to facilitate our personal encounter with the living truth. Hiding behind our choices raises questions. Mota #16 warns us that the truth must be experienced BEFORE it can be perceived… If, in addition, the experience and perception of the living truth is uniquely valued and colored by the personality of each child of God, then can it really be “taught” by the old educational techniques of the evolutionary religions of authority? Here is a thought-provoking thought offered by a Melchizedek:
“Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man’s reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world—the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth.” (UB 92:4.3)
There is much to discover in this little quote, but it is worth every seeker of truth to meditate on its meaning. For now, let us note the following few points:
First, the origin of evolutionary religion in relation to revealed religion (as in the actual giving of the first five epochal revelations): Evolutionary religion is a reaction to the belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world. Revealed religion is offered by the real spirit world in response to our human hunger for dependence on the Universal Deities. While evolutionary religion depicts humanity’s groping for truth; revealed religion is that very truth.
Furthermore, revealed religion is a superintellectual gift of the real spiritual world, from above downward; evolutionary religion is a response of the mortal mind from below upward. Certainly, Jesus’ warning to the apostles that a person who merely believes superficially with the mind alone without experiencing the truth in his heart (the soul consciousness) cannot be trusted, is a warning to which, even 2000 years later, we should pay heed.
Of course, we might expect that the Spirit of Truth and the Thought Adjuster would simply transform intellectual understanding into soul-felt experience of truth. But if direct encounter with revealed truth embodied in the living presence of the Creator Son can be recognized only in the mind, what of truth when it is revealed in the form of a book?
Finally, one may question our habitual tendency to approach new truth using old, comfortable, evolutionary methods; to project our existing human beliefs by dressing them up in words from The Urantia Book and presenting them as new understandings, when they are already rooted in the interpretation of others. This reliance on the theological authority of evolutionary religions, supported by what we already know, testifies to its influence, preventing us from using the direct, personal experience of perceiving revealed truth that is the very hallmark of planned revelations to fuel our growth. Just as lipstick does not mask the underlying features of a woman’s face, so using evolutionary techniques of authoritative religious education to approach newly revealed truth will not hide the fact that one cannot use old wineskins to share new wine without altering it. But such a change is not an easy thing. As we are told:
“A philosophy of religion evolves out of a basic growth of ideas plus experimental living as both are modified by the tendency to imitate associates. The soundness of philosophic conclusions depends on keen, honest, and discriminating thinking in connection with sensitivity to meanings and accuracy of evaluation. Moral cowards never achieve high planes of philosophic thinking; it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual living.” (UB 101:7.2)
*An encounter with revealed truth*
The content of The Urantia Book differs from all other teachings in that it is at once intellectual in the discovery of facts relating to our planet Urantia, morontial in the presentation of new concepts about Deity and universal organization, and spiritual in a renewed presentation of truth throughout the book and of the life and teachings of Jesus. The authors have assembled in a book of 2196 pages an impressive series of 197 papers logically organized from the transcendent to the immanent, presented as courses of which they are the teachers and perfectly adapted to our language and understanding.
Unlike the purely evolutionary nature of religious teaching resulting from human groping to approach and know God, revelation is the fruit of the collaboration of beings from the highest spheres of the universes, from Paradise to the local universe with the objective of expanding cosmic consciousness and enhancing the spiritual perception of humanity in order to allow each human being to enjoy spiritual freedom and live in full consciousness a better life of consecration to doing the will of the Universal Father, producing the fruits of the spirit and experiencing the growth of the divinity of the soul in a unique and personal way.
If, in the end, the education system has not achieved this result, it has failed.
Pedagogy: The UBIS school (Urantia Book Internet School) was born, took shape and developed following a meeting in 1998 between Dorothy Elder, a long-time reader and professional teacher and Georges Michelson-Dupont, Trustee of the Urantia Foundation, with the objective of facilitating the encounter between revealed truth and truth seekers from around the world. It is therefore an educational service of the Urantia Foundation.
The school’s pedagogy is based directly on the very revelation of the book, that is, from top to bottom without intermediary: to facilitate the student’s encounter with new and living truth by stimulating his discovery by himself and for himself, and to experience it personally. The principle was simple. But to be effective, it was necessary to resist the siren call of interpretive teaching so that the student’s unique personality could encounter, discover and express new truth in a personal and unique way and share it with his classmates in order to gain an increased and expanded understanding of revealed truth, thus reflecting new supreme meanings.
The Methodology: Inspired directly by Jesus’ method of questioning his listeners to orient them to the new truth, UBIS has developed and refined over time a methodology designed to support and facilitate this pedagogy. Because of the transformative effect of the top-down presentation of the new truth and the process of revelation itself, UBIS focuses solely on The Urantia Book and does not use secondary (interpretive) works by author-researchers expressing their views on truth or reality.
Format: The email address for the UBIS school website is ubis.urantia.org
UBIS courses are given in four languages, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese with a Moodle platform adapted to each language.
The UBIS school year runs over three terms of 10 weeks each, January, April and September. The courses offered are based on the study of booklets, for example the booklets on “Thought Adjusters” or on a general theme from the book, for example “power-personality synthesis”. Each course is an original creation, prepared by an experienced teacher-facilitator. It includes a reading list and a series of questions related to the subject of the course. 1 month before the registration period, in early December, March and August, the list of courses and a brief description are posted on the pages related to the language of the course on the Urantia Foundation website: urantia.org. As previously indicated, the typical UBIS course, designed by each teacher-facilitator, consists of 10 weeks in total.
The first week allows participants to introduce themselves, interact with each other and learn about the course.
This is followed by 4 two-week periods, the first week includes a list of readings appropriate to the course topic and a series of 6 questions focused on the underlying ideas. These questions are intended to facilitate the emergence of new meanings that reading and searching for answers will produce in the minds of the participants. They read in depth the sections chosen by the teacher-facilitator in order to be able to answer at least three of the six questions posed. The answers are pooled and used as material for the following week’s sharing. It is not surprising to note that most students approach the new truth through the prism of what they already know and believe. But the facilitators-trainers encourage them to abandon existing beliefs to discover a new truth through sharing and expanded understanding.
The last week of the course consists of writing a short essay, based on topics provided by the teacher-facilitator. They are asked to answer an evaluation questionnaire on their experience and thus contribute to the continuous improvement of the UBIS school. Finally, depending on their level of participation, a course completion certificate is issued to them. Access to the courses remains open for a week or two so that students have the opportunity to post comments, observations and interact with the students with whom they have shared for 10 weeks the experience of exploring new personal meanings of truth.
Students who wish to become teacher-facilitators must complete at least 3 UBIS courses and be recommended by 2 experienced teachers. They are then invited to complete a 10-week online training program (TFTP) that prepares them to design, implement and facilitate their own courses.
This training program not only covers all the elements that future teacher-facilitators will need to be successful, but the training also serves to give them the tools that can help them become more effective study group leaders in their communities.
The UBIS approach has proven effective in transforming reading groups into in-depth study groups. In addition to this training, each teacher-facilitator has the opportunity to improve the content and presentation of their course by calling upon a small team of highly experienced teacher-facilitators. Called the Course Review Committee (CRC), this small team helps the teacher-facilitator refine the introduction, description, question design, discussion implementation plan, and contributes to respecting the UBIS school’s self-discovery process.
The CRC offers suggestions, but it is the teacher-facilitator who makes the final decisions regarding his course.
In addition, each novice teacher-facilitator is entitled to support from the faculty committee (the teacher education department) in the form of a mentoring program. In this way, teacher-facilitators are trained and supported by multiple levels of services and support. They receive certification in their responsibility to create and facilitate UBIS courses, to live and provide an authentic experience with the UBIS pedagogy itself inspired by the revelation of the Urantia Book.
SOME UBIS COURSES
“The truth personally discovered”
“Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth. There may be conflict between knowledge and human beliefs, beliefs colored with prejudice, distorted by fear, and dominated by the dread of facing new facts of material discovery or spiritual progress.” (UB 132:3.4)
Revelation is a gift from the real spirit world that radically transforms our perception of the reality of God. It is not merely an improvement on existing evolutionary thinking. The attempt to standardize The Urantia Book into the mold of evolutionary reality, and to believe that this is sufficient to establish the reality of its revelatory nature, is a kind of wishful thinking. Indeed, such evolutionary determinism is an intellectual temptation that poses risks to our revelation. Let us not fall into this trap.
In such a context, the UBIS school was designed to use a pedagogy and methodology derived from the fourth and fifth epochal revelations based on the belief that evolutionary techniques of education and religious authority are not suited to the experience and perceptions of revealed truth. It is interesting to consider that in an effort to normalize the fourth revelation as an evolutionary input, the followers of Jesus transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion ABOUT Jesus. How much easier is it to do this with a book? In contrast, the underlying commitment of the UBIS school is to facilitate the discovery of revealed truth by each student in a unique, direct and personal way rather than presented as evolutionary religious education interpreted by a teacher.
During its 20 years of existence, more than 30 trained UBIS TFs have presented more than zoo courses in English and 70 other courses more recently in French, Spanish and Portuguese. UBIS uses Moodle, an online digital platform used by millions of university students around the world, to present its courses in three terms.