© 2009 Ernesto Veloso
© 2009 Urantia Association of Spain
| The mind according to revelation (last part) | Luz y Vida — No. 18 — September 2009 — Index | How many mortals survive |
Several weeks ago, during a group meeting, a guest asked us to explain what God was. This question reminded me of the time a friend invited me to a conference where he would speak about the unmanifested. I was totally amazed for the simple reason that no one can talk about what they don’t know. Wanting to say something about the non-manifest is like wanting to explain God. God is not explained, God is lived and known only through personal experience. God must be discovered every day in the small acts of life, because every minute we live is a new discovery by faith of the existence of God in our lives. The unmanifested can be the greatest and at the same time the simplest, like tomorrow or the minute that is yet to come.
But the unmanifested can be and is something more than that. The unmanifested is what the Deity reserves for himself in his absolute sovereignty. I personally qualify it as the attributes of unrevealed power and control in or beyond time and space. Our world is relativistic and therefore a finite world; from this it follows that our knowledge must be relative and finite, so also the manifestations we receive from the Deity. When Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father, the answer could not be other than the one given by the Master, “I’ve been with you for so long and you still don’t know me.” Unfortunately, this passage has been misinterpreted, taking it as a declaration by Jesus that he was the Father, when in reality what he was saying to Philip was that the most that man could know of God was what he was demonstrating in terms of personality, and this statement continues and will continue to be valid as long as we do not transcend towards existential levels of greater spirituality.
The unmanifested at a certain level can be what we are discovering or that is revealed to us as we identify with our Adjuster, and this depends from one individual to another even when they are in the same circle. But there is also a differentiation between the different orders of beings; what is not manifested for an evolutionary being like us is not for an angel, and what is not manifested for it is not for a solitary messenger, for example, and so on.
The finite will never be able to know the infinite, much less contain it. From this fact, the inevitable fragmentation of God in his manifestation emerges as his presence moves away from Paradise. If it is true as The Urantia Book says that only the son and the spirit know GOD the Father in all his dimension, it means therefore that for the infinite orders of created and uncreated beings, and of course for the evolutionary creatures of time , there are always and will be facets of God reserved to his inherent expressiveness and sovereignty that may never be known until the moment that, making use of that free will, he decides to manifest some of such unrevealed facets to a being, an order or a universe. .
But the unmanifested is not something that belongs only to the future, the unmanifested may be happening now. Do we understand or know how thousands of physical and mental phenomena occur? We enjoy electricity, water is a blessing, and gravity, although it can kill us at times, is essential for permanence in our world. And I ask: Who has seen a drop of water form? What really is electricity? How does God control gravity? These three things are part of our daily life, we have seen them since we were children and perhaps because they are so common we do not realize that part of those unknown attributes of God that have to do with the control of physical matter in material worlds like ours.
It is good to look up and extend our gaze beyond the immensity of the future and the stars, trying to give us answers and to know what and how God is, but we forget that Our Father is so big that he does not fit in the universe and that at the same time Perhaps his presence is in the most insignificant flower that only lasts a few hours in the spring. The mystery of God surrounds us, and a Divine advisor in the UB, UB 3:4.5 tells us: «_Although I come from the abode very close to the Deity, I cannot presume to speak with perfection of understanding regarding the infinity of many attributes Divine. Only the infinity of mind can fully comprehend the infinity of existence and the eternity of action.
This is said by a Divine advisor whose wisdom, knowledge and spirituality far exceeds ours. Except for the central universe of Havona, the remaining seven superuniverses are on the way to perfection. It is logical to think that, as the stage of Light and Life progresses, new attributes of the Deity will be revealed. Now, talking about what those attributes will be and in what facets of life they will be manifested is something that nobody can do, even if it is a Divine Advisor. On the other hand, if the material creation continues to expand, it means that new powers of control by the Deity will become manifest in relation to these new creations, it is obvious. But talking about these manifestations would be like describing the cars of the year 3000.
Just as I did not go to hear my friend’s lecture on the unmanifested, neither did I give an answer to the visitor who asked for an explanation from God. I can tell what God has meant in my life, my transformation as an individual and as a social being, say that from my encounter with God my perspectives reach a cosmic level, and finally I can say that these experiences are available to whoever wants to. experience them and that the only condition to reach such a level of existence is to believe in God and consecrate your will to the will of the Father, but not to explain God.
Modern life, with its high level of technology and science, while it has raised man’s material standard of living and freed him from many of the superstitions and fears of the primitive age, has also brought him to a position too skeptical about spiritual realities. For this reason we are constantly demanding proof and I think that at some point we all look for someone to give us clear explanations or tangible evidence to believe in God. Now we know that only individual experience is the only method to discover these manifestations, which our heavenly Father in his infinite love and mercy gives us so that we can look for him. We live in a time when knowledge and information are no longer a luxury for a small privileged minority. It is therefore logical that we are now asking ourselves deeper questions and that the answers we need are also deeper. But before God, the mystery of mysteries, before his immensity and majesty, we must recognize that our science and our arguments are null. The only resource that has been given to us is FAITH and as a requirement we have to love him first and get to know him later. Then, step by step, He will reveal himself to us as we ascend, and this would only be enough as an incentive to love him, knowing that every day I can discover something new of his love and greatness and that his manifestation in each of his children is directly proportional to the degree of surrender and consecration to that God whose greatest manifestation in our lives is ourselves.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| The mind according to revelation (last part) | Luz y Vida — No. 18 — September 2009 — Index | How many mortals survive |