© 2022 Gard Jameson
© 2022 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| Sources of Revelatory Insight: A Meditation on the “Human Sources” | Special 2022 Issue — Index | True Values |
by Gard Jameson
There are three segments that follow: The Urantia Book (TUB), the Human Source (HS), and the Commentary © The use of bolding is intended to highlight the similarities in language between The Urantia Book quote and the quote from the text, Creative Personality [CP], by Ralph Tyler Flewelling.
(TUB) “The night before they left Alexandria Ganid and Jesus had a long visit with one of the government professors at the university who lectured on the teachings of Plato. Jesus interpreted for the learned Greek teacher but injected no teaching of his own in refutation of Greek philosophy. Gonod was away on business that evening; so, after the professor had departed, the teacher and his pupil had a long and heart-to-heart talk about Plato’s doctrines. While Jesus gave qualified approval of some of the Greek teachings which had to do with the theory that the material things of the world are shadowy reflections of invisible but more substantial spiritual realities, he sought to lay a more trustworthy foundation for the lad’s thinking; so he began a long dissertation concerning the nature of reality in the universe. In substance and in modern phraseology Jesus said to Ganid:” [[The Urantia Book UB 130:4.1]]
“The source of universe reality is the Infinite. The material things of finite creation are the time-space repercussions of the Paradise Pattern and the Universal Mind of the eternal God. Causation in the physical world, self-consciousness in the intellectual world, and progressing selfhood in the spirit world—these realities, projected on a universal scale, combined in eternal relatedness, and experienced with perfection of quality and divinity of value—constitute the reality of the Supreme. But in an ever-changing universe the Original Personality of causation, intelligence, and spirit experience is changeless, absolute. All things, even in an eternal universe of limitless values and divine qualities, may, and oftentimes do, change except the Absolutes and that which has attained the physical status, intellectual embrace, or spiritual identity which is absolute.” [UB 130:4.2]
“The highest level to which a finite creature can progress is the recognition of the Universal Father and the knowing of the Supreme. And even then such beings of finality destiny go on experiencing change in the motions of the physical world and in its material phenomena. Likewise do they remain aware of selfhood progression in their continuing ascension of the spiritual universe and of growing consciousness in their deepening appreciation of, and response to, the intellectual cosmos. Only in the perfection, harmony, and unanimity of will can the creature become as one with the Creator; and such a state of divinity is attained and maintained only by the creature’s continuing to live in time and eternity by consistently conforming his finite personal will to the divine will of the Creator. Always must the desire to do the Father’s will be supreme in the soul and dominant over the mind of an ascending son of God.” [UB 130:4.3]
***
(HS) “Yet there is no idea more universal than that of causation, unless it be the conviction of the reality of self- consciousness.” [Creative Personality(CP) 56]
***
© The first few paragraphs of the “Discourse on Reality” provide the setting, with the teachings of Plato being the pretext, for Jesus’ discourse on reality to the Indian lad, Ganid. Plato’s dialogues on reality have been the template for countless generations of individuals as their own reflection on reality. Of interest and consistent with Jesus’ manner of teaching, he provided no “refutation of the Greek philosophy,” nothing negative. He only built upon the positive aspects of Plato’s thought that “material things of the world are shadowy reflections of invisible but more substantial spiritual realities.”
The first two paragraphs of the “Discourse on Reality” have some direct corollary in Ralph Tyler Flewelling’'s popular text, Creative Personality, the human source for all of the discourses found in the Mediterranean tour. Flewelling provides a great deal of reflection upon the covered topics: causation, self- consciousness, progressing selfhood, and the soul [CP 209], though not always in the manner articulated by The Urantia Book. Paraphrasing Jesus’ talks, the midwayers— sponsors of this section—provide an appreciation of and reflection upon four out of seven Absolutes of reality—four fundamental, absolute axioms of any inquiry into the nature of reality:
- Original Personality (the Universal Father),
- Spirit (the Eternal Son),
- Universal Mind (the Infinite Spirit),
- Paradise Pattern (the Eternal Isle of Paradise)—realities which give rise to all things and beings, personal, spiritual, intellectual, and material. [UB 0:5.5]
Jesus then provides a succinct appreciation of the conditions of experience, inherent in human consciousness. As finite creatures, we possess these inherent factors of awareness which enable us to be self-conscious of, and to reflect upon, spiritual values and material causation, drawing meaning through the mind.
At the outset of this remarkable discourse, Jesus alludes to The Plan of Progressive Attainment [UB 7:4.4], to “become as one with the Creator . . .” With articulate and exquisite brevity, Jesus has in one paragraph covered the essential understanding of the entire cosmic arena of our very existence, the objective truth of personality, spirit, mind, and matter, alongside the subjective lens of human experience, all the while stating the divine purpose of our of very existence, the evolutionary transformation of the soul, “Be you perfect even as I am perfect.” [UB 1:0.3]
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(TUB) “A one-eyed person can never hope to visualize depth of perspective. Neither can single-eyed material scientists nor single-eyed spiritual mystics and allegorists correctly visualize and adequately comprehend the true depths of universe reality. All true values of creature experience are concealed in depth of recognition.” [UB 130:4.4]
***
(HS) “There is no real excuse, no excuse save that of prejudice, why we should not now endeavor to look at our world squarely and admit the realities that are most precious to us, without constantly attempting to squint half our world out of the angle of vision. [CP 59–60]
***
© This is the confusion that is arraying science and religion in hostile camps and bringing no end of confusion both to reason and to religion. A one-eyed man can never see quite correctly and it is our possession of two eyes, we are told, that gives depth or perspective to our vision. What we need is depth, and we shall never get depth until we include in our vision the whole scheme of relations, physical, mental, and spiritual.
The next paragraph in the “Discourse on Reality” contains a sentence which also correlates with what is found in Creative Personality by Flewelling. It uses the metaphor of sight to illustrate a thought, helping to convey that idea. The revelators used human sources to aid in the comprehension of revelatory ideas, insights that have been recognized and realized by these human 
authors. The image of a “one-eyed person” is particularly graphic and helps to articulate a fundamental mistake made by many humans: to assume that reality is either material or spiritual, and not both. The atheistic materialist and the spiritual idealist are able to see at best half of reality, and lack depth of recognition, or perspective. If philosophy could be summed up in a few words it might be: the enhancement of our relationship with a perspective on reality.
After laying the groundwork in the second paragraph about the nature of reality, the revelators now provide a sensibility about the importance of our philosophical assumptions, and how our prejudices can leave us short- sighted or myopic in our own search for and discovery of reality. In India, the word for an authentic philosopher is the Sanskrit word, Rishi, a “Seer,” one who sees!
Very powerfully, the revelators reveal that true values are not accessible without experiential depth of recognition. Such depth is only possible to the person who has truly confirmed and affirmed in personal experience the primary dimensions of reality: spirit, mind, and matter, coordinated by personality. A reading of Flewelling enhances the appreciation of the revelator’s words, “there is no real excuse…why we should not now endeavor to look at our world squarely (honestly) and admit the realities that are most precious to us, without constantly attempting to squint half our world out of the angle of vision.” [CP 59]
When one experiences popular materialist thought one is confronted by very smart, somewhat cynical, and clever individuals who are attempting to “squint half our world out of the angle of vision,” without philosophical foundation, without a willingness to look at what is right in front of us! All too often philosophers use their analytical tools and wit to rationalize an unreasonable ideology. Materialism is one such ideology which lacks explanatory power and which displays deep seated prejudice, oftentimes the result of personal, collective, or ancestral trauma.
The Urantia Book discloses that “REALITY, as comprehended by finite beings, is partial, relative, and shadowy. The maximum of Deity reality fully comprehensible by evolutionary finite creatures is embraced within the Supreme Being (the finite expression of Deity). Nevertheless there are antecedent and eternal realities, superfinite realities, which are ancestral . . .” [UB 0:3.20] The materialist in arguing against Deity or spiritual reality has no logical ground in that he or she is unwilling to inquire of “realities, which are ancestral,” realities understood by both Western and Eastern traditions for millennia.
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(TUB) “Mindless causation cannot evolve the refined and complex from the crude and the simple, neither can spiritless experience evolve the divine characters of eternal survival from the material minds of the mortals of time. The one attribute of the universe which so exclusively characterizes the infinite Deity is this unending creative bestowal of personality which can survive in progressive Deity attainment.” [UB 130:4.5]
(HS) “It is not safe, on the basis of what is still a hypothesis, to draw too dogmatic a conclusion (about evolution). One might quite as well string out the collection of watches in a museum in the order of their descending crudity and when they are nicely arranged to declare that the largest and crudest of the lot ‘caused’ all the others . . . The thoughtful man will be conscious of a feeling of inadequacy in the assumption that this growing order of complexity and adaptation raised itself up out of chaos into order, adaptability, and intelligence, without the aid of intelligence… Intelligence in the cause is demanded by intelligence in the effect. Non-intelligence can never be logically held to be the cause of intelligence.” [CP 61]
***
© The above passage from The Urantia Book is brilliant in its invective against trying to irresponsibly explain away how very simple, single-celled organisms, without a nucleus, became very complex multicellular creatures, and how inorganic matter is capable of becoming self-conscious, how the “refined and complex” comes “from the crude and simple.”
This is a simple matter of logic and insight. Flewelling’s metaphor of using a series of watches, starting with “the largest and crudest” helps to explain “the inadequacy in the assumption that this growing order of complexity and adaptation raised itself up out of chaos into order, adaptability, and intelligence, without the aid of intelligence.”*
The Urantia Book goes on to say the same about the improbability of the spiritual progression of matter evolving into “divine characters of eternal survival.” The Urantia Book again adds depth and perspective by adding to the scenario of evolutionary biological progression the scenario of spiritual progression, suggesting the absurd improbability of either scenario under a materialist assumption. It then adds another layer of understanding by introducing the axiom or assumption of “personality,” as redefined in the Discourse on Reality. This assumption, as we shall see, is the capstone of the revelation, that each of us is a person sourced in the Infinite and Eternal Personality of God, with a unique destiny, should we choose to discern God’s will for our life.
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(TUB) “Personality is that cosmic endowment, that phase of universal reality, which can coexist with unlimited change and at the same time retain its identity in the very presence of all such changes, and forever afterward.” [UB 130:4.6]
***
(HS) “Personality, and personality alone in all the realms of experience is able to undergo change and yet to survive change.” [CP 39]
“Philosopher Lotze has described personality in terms similar to these: ‘Reality is that which can suffer change and yet remain the same through change. It may be that life is never achieved in its highest and truest sense until it has shown the conquering ability to take up into itself all change, and to survive forever.’ ” [CP 71]
***
© In “Paper 1. The Universal Father” of The Urantia Book, we are told: “Personality, in the supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe of universes.” [UB 1:5.13] The concept of personality in the book is significantly different from that concept found in contemporary psychology, and represents the primal revelation.
First, personality is the unique gift of God. Second, personality is different from character, which grows; personality is changeless. Third, personality is the source of our capacity for self- consciousness, reflection, and self-direction— will. These are just a few of the ways in which the concept of personality differs from contemporary understanding. The Urantia Book’s appreciation of personality provides an ordering principle of maximum value in that it is sourced in ancestral realities.
Matter, mind, and spirit represent realities that reflect qualities of energy, subject to cosmic forces of gravity. Personality seems to be, for it is ultimately mysterious in nature, the means by which all such energy is coordinated, ordered, and orchestrated. It is utterly unique in that each person is “without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity.” [UB 12:7.9]
It is appropriate to note here that Ralph Tyler Flewelling was one of the leading philosophical visionaries on the subject of personality, coming from the tutelage of the great philosopher, Borden Parker Bowne. Boston University and the University of Southern California were two major bastions of the philosophy of personality that is adopted in much of the language of The Urantia Book
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(TUB) “Life is an adaptation of the original cosmic causation to the demands and possibilities of universe situations, and it comes into being by the action of the Universal Mind and the activation of the spirit spark of the God who is spirit. The meaning of life is its adaptability; the value of life is its progressability—even to the heights of God-consciousness.” [UB 130:4.7]
***
(HS) “Presumably a fairly acceptable definition of life might be that it is a process, a constant readaptation of function to environment, the response of the functioning organism, as such, to things other than itself.” [CP 65]
“To begin at the foundation, what is the meaning of life in its simplest form? At this vantage point there is little perhaps that distinguishes the organic from the inorganic. That little seems to lie in a power of adaptation.” [CP 246]
***
© The above quote from The Urantia Book is extraordinary. The significant contribution of Flewelling that is incorporated in the text is the notion of adaptation. The upstep in revelatory insight comes in the realization that the primary adaptation of human life is not so much biological as it is spiritual, “by the action of the Universal Mind and the activation of the spirit spark of the God who is spirit…even to the heights of God-consciousness.”
The sentence: “The meaning of life is its adaptability; the value of life is its progressability,” could be the byline of The Urantia Book. The book goes to extraordinary efforts to illustrate how moral evolutionary insight and spiritual attainment go hand in hand in the growth of the individual. Each day, each life is an exercise in our capacity to adapt to constantly changing conditions, toward the end of progressing toward the realization in personal experience of the supreme values of reality: love, truth, beauty, and goodness. Evolutionary progression is a primary theme of the Urantia revelation. As Darwin suggested: “it is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
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(TUB) “Misadaptation of self-conscious life to the universe results in cosmic disharmony. Final divergence of personality will from the trend of the universes terminates in intellectual isolation, personality segregation. Loss of the indwelling spirit pilot supervenes in spiritual cessation of existence. Intelligent and progressing life becomes then, in and of itself, an incontrovertible proof of the existence of a purposeful universe expressing the will of a divine Creator. And this life, in the aggregate, struggles toward higher values, having for its final goal the Universal Father.” [UB 130:4.8]
***
(HS) “Now the life of the spirit, or immortal life, is a growing and continuous adaptation to a moral and spiritual environment. When it ceases to adapt itself, or when that adaptation is no longer possible, there is cessation or death.” [CP 249]
“In so far as evil personality puts itself out of functioning touch with the universe of spiritual values and self- realization, out of harmony with life, the universe, and God, it is difficult to imagine where in the Cosmos it would find a place for continuance, or why continuance should be desirable.” [CP 251]
“Here the living organism is able to struggle toward values.” [CP 69]
***
© The Urantia Book speaks to the consequences of the “misadaptation of self- conscious life,” while Flewelling puts the same thought in the positive: “Now the life of the spirit, or immortal life, is a growing and continuous adaptation to a moral and spiritual environment.” Both suggest that we have a spiritual destiny that supersedes our biological origins. We are dual-origin creatures, having biological as well as spiritual roots, and a spiritual destiny.
As persons we have both a moral or horizontal dimension, our interassociation with other personalities, and a spiritual or vertical dimension, our integration with the reality of spirit that indwells and embraces every individual. Out of the coordination of those two dimensions, moral insight and spiritual attainment, there is a growing longitudinal dimension of unification of the soul as it “struggles toward higher values,” God consciousness.
“Man’s terrestrial orientation, his cosmic insight, and his spiritual directionization are all enhanced by a better comprehension of universe realities and their techniques of interassociation, integration, and unification.” [UB 106:0.1]
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(TUB) “Only in degree does man possess mind above the animal level aside from the higher and quasi- spiritual ministrations of intellect. Therefore animals (not having worship and wisdom) cannot experience superconsciousness, consciousness of consciousness. The animal mind is only conscious of the objective universe.” [UB 130:4.9]
***
(HS) “The animal mind is . . . not conscious of consciousness . . . The animal has states of consciousness but no power of reflecting upon them. To man is given the supreme gift, the power of reflection upon his own mental moods. He not only relates himself to experiences, he also relates experience to experience, impulse to impulse, and all to his own past or possible action.” [CP 70]
“Out of this ability to reflect upon his own . . . mental life, grows his sense of moral responsibility . . . that longing for spiritual self-expression . . .” [CP 82]
***
© The Urantia Book speaks of one of the primary attributes of personality being self- consciousness, or consciousness of consciousness. Such consciousness entails by definition the awareness of the spiritual and moral dimension of our existence. This is a key insight into the nature of personality. The distinction between animals and humans is significant. Both The Urantia Book and Flewelling suggest that within the cosmic frame of reference being a member of the human species, homo sapiens sapiens, carries a special import.
Just why is self-consciousness so very important? In part the answer lies in the very purpose of our lives, to progress, to grow, to transcend the limitations of our partial perspective. Without self-consciousness, we could not reflect upon both the sorrows and the joys of our existence; we could not consider the significance of our personal relationships, family, friends, and others; we could not ponder the immensity and beauty of the universe in which we dwell; we could not wonder about our own identities, as both material and spiritual beings; we could not dare to enter into the gates of thanksgiving and the courts of praise, experiencing the sublime mystery associated with our very existence, worshiping the First Source and Center, the Creator, Controller, and Destiny of all personality. Within the deep cave of self- consciousness lies the way forward for all personalities.
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(TUB) “Knowledge is the sphere of the material or fact-discerning mind. Truth is the domain of the spiritually endowed intellect that is conscious of knowing God. Knowledge is demonstrable; truth is experienced. Knowledge is a possession of the mind; truth an experience of the soul, the progressing self. Knowledge is a function of the nonspiritual level; truth is a phase of the mind-spirit level of the universes. *The eye of the material mind perceives a world of factual knowledge; the eye of the spiritualized intellect discerns a world of true values. These two views, synchronized and harmonized, reveal the world of reality, wherein wisdom interprets the phenomena of the universe in terms of progressive personal experience.” [UB 130:4.10]
***
(HS) “Knowledge is confined to scientific demonstration and so covers but a portion of practical needs— Truth is a more comprehensive term and should not be limited to knowledge.” [CP 118]
“We ought by some sort of common consent, perhaps, to use the term knowledge as designating the demonstration of science, while truth might be taken as the larger and more comprehensive term, not limited to scientific demonstration alone but applicable as well to human values.” [CP 119]
“The existence of God, though rationally justified, is not scientifically demonstrable. God is known only through an act of experience, an act of faith, an act of religion.” [CP 84]
“Knowledge becomes then a practical possession whose worth is measured largely by its practicality or by the insight it gives into the nature of the general order.” [CP 122]
“Truth has two eyes for the discernment of the world, the eye of science and the eye of philosophy. In the search for meaning, whoever shall endeavor to get along with one of them will be like a barnyard fowl with a single eye who in his endeavor to see simply swings about in a circle. What do we know? At best only the sequence in phenomena. When we go farther it must be from the world of knowledge to the larger world of values; from the world of science to the world of truth.” [CP 123]
***
© This passage lays the groundwork for a
genuine philosophy that acknowledges both the reality of facts and the reality of values, the domain of matter and the domain of spirit, by the intervening awareness of meaning, the domain of philosophy, the domain of science and the domain of religion. In our profound confusion we too often lose the import of the morality of facts and the fact of morality, how meaning connects facts and values. As The Urantia Book suggests: “These two views, synchronized and harmonized, reveal the world of reality, wherein wisdom [meaning] interprets the phenomena of the universe [facts] in terms of progressive personal experience [values].”
The methodology of reason yields the growing field of objective knowledge or science, while the methodology of faith yields the progressive personal subjective experience of values, the heart and soul of religion. While science discovers facts in the outer objective world of experiment, religion finds its adventure of value within our deepest recesses of our subjective experience. Methodology is very important. If we apply only scientific or empirical methods to spirituality, we shall always come up short of real answers. The same is true if we only allow the methodology of faith to guide the footsteps of our scientific inquiry, the folly of the Middle Ages.
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(TUB) “Error (evil) is the penalty of imperfection. The qualities of imperfection or facts of misadaptation are disclosed on the material level by critical observation and by scientific analysis; on the moral level, by human experience. The presence of evil constitutes proof of the inaccuracies of mind and the immaturity of the evolving self. Evil is, therefore, also a measure of imperfection in universe interpretation. The possibility of making mistakes is inherent in the acquisition of wisdom, the scheme of progressing from the partial and temporal to the complete and eternal, from the relative and imperfect to the final and perfected. Error is the shadow of relative incompleteness which must of necessity fall across man’s ascending universe path to Paradise perfection. Error (evil) is not an actual universe quality; it is simply the observation of a relativity in the relatedness of the imperfection of the incomplete finite to the ascending levels of the Supreme and Ultimate.” [UB 130:4.11]
***
(HS) “Error is the hampering weakness made by a struggle of imperfect and growing learners.” [CP 134]
“The disclosure of error practical rather than theoretical – In science by experiment, in ethics (religion) by experience” [CP 130]
“(Possibility of error) is the **keenest inducement to mental accuracy.” [CP 134]
“Freedom then makes possible the misinterpretation of facts, even though those facts spring from the unmistaking Absolute.” [CP 133]
“Possibility of error leads to possibility of growing knowledge, and growing knowledge is the great incentive of rational progress.” [CP 133–134]
“Error should not, however, be held as a necessary and independent part of the general reality. It is the shadow of incompleteness which falls across knowledge.” [CP 134]
“Error cannot be held as having positive objectivity and a destined place in things. It springs from the limitations of finite knowledge. It is not a quality of things nor of the world- ground, but of our incompleteness.” [CP 134–135]
***
© This section leads us into how mind, by virtue of its finite perspective, gives rise to interpretation—interpretation that is invariably subject to error. It is almost as if God wanted us to see partially so that we might enter into relation with others to understand and clarify our limited perspectives. God intended us to be in relationship and to evolve in our understanding. Without relationship, we wander in confusion, subject to the immense limitations and gravity of our personal subjectivity. This capacity for “error” leads naturally to a moral conversation. When a person is unwilling to acknowledge “facts” or “knowledge” there is a moral implication in that denial. When the person is unwilling to acknowledge the “values” or “moral ground” associated with our relationships, there is clearly a moral issue, leading to the possibility of evil, or even greater error. Evil presents the great road bump of civilization and of clear understanding.
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(TUB) “Although Jesus told all this to the lad in language best suited to his comprehension, at the end of the discussion Ganid was heavy of eye and was soon lost in slumber. They rose early the next morning to go aboard the boat bound for Lasea on the island of Crete. But before they embarked, the lad had still further questions to ask about evil, to which Jesus replied:” [UB 130:4.12]
“Evil is a relativity concept. It arises out of the observation of the imperfections which appear in the shadow cast by a finite universe of things and beings as such a cosmos obscures the living light of the universal expression of the eternal realities of the Infinite One.” [UB 130:4.13]
“Potential evil is inherent in the necessary incompleteness of the revelation of God as a time-space- limited expression of infinity and eternity. The fact of the partial in the presence of the complete constitutes relativity of reality, creates necessity for intellectual choosing, and establishes value levels of spirit recognition and response. The incomplete and finite concept of the Infinite which is held by the temporal and limited creature mind is, in and of itself, potential evil. But the augmenting error of unjustified deficiency in reasonable spiritual rectification of these originally inherent intellectual disharmonies and spiritual insufficiencies, is equivalent to the realization of actual evil.” [UB 130:4.14]
“All static, dead, concepts are potentially evil. The finite shadow of relative and living truth is continually moving. Static concepts invariably retard science, politics, society, and religion. Static concepts may represent a certain knowledge, but they are deficient in wisdom and devoid of truth. But do not permit the concept of relativity so to mislead you that you fail to recognize the co-ordination of the universe under the guidance of the cosmic mind, and its stabilized control by the energy and spirit of the Supreme.” [UB 130:4.15]
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(HS) “This deadweight of static concepts is the delaying load which keeps us from attaining wider vistas of truth in every field. It lights the flames of the martyrs in the hard fought advances of political, social, and religious understanding.” [CP 166–167]
“This concept of relativity, entrancing as it is, has not power to stand as a single and unsupported assumption. With the universe as a complicated system of constantly changing relations, there must be complete coordination. Complete coordination in such a system is inexplicable and even unthinkable except upon the supposition of a directive Cosmic Intelligence.” [CP 167]
***
© And so, we come to the close of Jesus’ “Discourse on Reality,” paraphrased, suggesting that all things, all meanings, and all values, point back to a Cosmic Intelligence which gives rise to the sublime manner in which facts, meanings, and values are coordinate and interdependent. Flewelling rightly understands the universe as a complex system of relations and relationships, within which there is partiality of perspective [cf. “now we see through a glass darkly” (1 Cor. 13:12) ], requiring integrity in those relationships which are supported by universe values, and not merely subjective opinion. Our age of skepticism, relativism, and cynicism is a time of tragic consequences due to the unwillingness or ignorance of many regarding the intimate care of the Infinite and Eternal Creator for the Creation and the yearning of the Creator for personal communion with his creatures.
In that communion lies a novel, growing awareness of the relation of fact to value, of reason to faith, of causation to worship. Each of us has been bestowed with the cognitive equipment required to discern the nature of reality and to put ourselves in proper relation. The assumption that we live in a meaningless universe is the result of one-sided, myopic reflection. The realization that we live in a friendly universe allows for the humble recognition of the limitations of our own point of view, that we need one another’s perspective, and for a growing gratitude for the growth of meaning and value in our personal experience.
The great mystery of existence is how God, in whom we move, live, and have our being, stretches across eternity and infinity toward each and every person with the promise and experience of unconditional love. So much more than a mere thought, an object, or a being, God is experienced through our wholehearted yearning as the depth of our subjective personal spiritual experience and the height of our objective awareness of reality!
“Any philosophy is to be tested by its definition of reality.”
- Ralph Tyler Flewelling
A one-eyed person can never hope to visualize depth of perspective. Neither can single-eyed material scientists nor single-eyed spiritual mystics and allegorists correctly visualize and adequately comprehend the true depths of universe reality. The Urantia Book, UB 130:4.4
¶ External Links
| Sources of Revelatory Insight: A Meditation on the “Human Sources” | Special 2022 Issue — Index | True Values |