© 2005 Georges Michelson-Dupont
© 2005 Mercedes Delgado, from translation
© 2005 Urantia Association of Spain
(This article is the first installment of a two-part series)
I. Presentations by Mrs Diagne Ndèye Fatou Bamba and Miss Monique Ndiaye followed by debate.
II. Participation in a communal meal.
The intercontinental and interracial exchange of spirituality (Europe, America, Africa) is established with the visit of our spiritual brothers to the GREPS (Search and study group for spiritual progress).
"You are my night
you are my days
you are my miracle
In so many ways you give hope”
I.
Testimony of Mrs. Diagne: My life before and after cosmogony.
Testimony of St. Ndiaye: From animal indolence to the consecration of choice.
Fadel Ndiaye: I thank my father for the family education he has bestowed on me. I thank you above all for the spiritual education that has enlightened my relationship with God and has allowed me to understand the meaning of my life and God’s will for each of his children.
Here I renew my personal commitment to serve the divine cause that my father has professed.
Assane Diagne: Only spirituality allows men to speak the same language. All social, religious and cultural barriers fall thanks to the spiritual education that leads to the brotherhood of all men. All life comes from God and is moved by God. Certainly the differences exist because of the personalities, but all the men agree in the similarity of the spiritual experience. There is only one God and unity on earth is found in the likeness of that God. We pray to God to open the new era of spiritualization of the earth.
Fatou Ndiaye Sow: I thank our guests and M. Ndiaye, whose constant efforts have allowed us today to enjoy the benefit of the 5th Revelation widely and deeply. I am a witness to Moussa’s efforts in the long search for God and his readiness to share with all those who were seeking the truth of their lives, whatever their ages, their races, or their socio-professional activities. It has particularly helped young people at a time when the Senegalese government and state were abandoning them.
I also point out that the students have advanced a lot in their understanding of God and especially in his expression, which has become clear and spontaneous.
I pray to God that this educational effort will continue.
Richard Keeler: God’s love cannot be outside of life. It must necessarily be lived for it to become real.
I thought that goodness could only come from God, but today I realize that the man who knows God can be good and live goodness.
Alioune Badiane: I appreciate the pedagogy of teaching both from the point of view of its originality and its efficiency and effectiveness. I also appreciate the great goodness of the love of M. Ndiaye, who has not tried in any way to privilege his children, but quite the contrary, he has opened himself to all the children of Senegal, of Africa and even of the planet. Your children, who have fully accepted this education, make a true and positive impression on all those around them.
Africa needs to develop in the image of other continents. This much-desired development cannot reach its fullness if it is not impregnated with divinity. M. Ndiaye, who has understood it so well, tried to share his knowledge with the leaders of the nation. But the simplicity of God in love, its truth and its beauty, often escapes men imbued with their own intellectual knowledge. The solution to the problems of today’s humanity is not found in schools and universities, but in us, in love.
M. Ndiaye is today the ambassador of the 5th Revelation in Africa and all those he has instructed have taken up the torch.
Ndève Khadv Diagne: The daily training and knowledge integrated into our lives thanks to this educational framework have led us to perceive the effectiveness of God in our lives. M. Ndiaye has given his life, which for us today means the knowledge of God and the transformations in ours.
Moussa Ndiaye: It is difficult to sustain the human effort in the search for God. The great educator of Nebadon had to endure the fickleness of his apostles while on earth.
The efforts made by our guests in the preservation and editing of the Urantia Book and our efforts to search deeply for divine wisdom have jointly enabled us to reach these present results, efforts unified in God. We pray to God to keep each one of us in this momentum.
II. Participation of the meal in communion.
I was born in a Muslim family. He complied to a certain extent with the precepts of Islam, that is, the 5 daily prayers, giving alms to the poor and helpless, and he also practiced fasting. My religion had taught me that prayer changed the character of the individual and made him better, but I realized that all this did not lead to any transformation, to any change regarding my being. I was still the same. After each prayer, I asked God to solve my problems, my difficulties, but I was always dissatisfied. He even prayed without thinking of God. I finally stopped praying. My life no longer had meaning, it was only subsistence, a terrible loneliness.
On the other hand, I had many questions about the meaning of my existence on earth, the purpose of my being, and I even wondered if I existed for God. And they were questions I didn’t dare ask anyone for fear of being labeled a non-believer or a blasphemer. In the depths of me I had a burning desire to understand, to know and even to be the faithful, loyal friend of God. The phenomenon of death had created anguish in me, a terrible fear, since for the Muslim religion, God has already chosen those who go to Paradise and those who will go to hell. I lived more and more uncertainty and insecurity regarding my destiny. I also understood that man is a worm, due to his material, finite, limited, mortal nature, and that he will never be able to know God or access him from here below. Since it was impossible to know God, my life was full of insignificant things, I could spend a whole day sleeping or listening to music. My life was getting more and more monotonous. Until I found this “Search and study group for spiritual progress” through my husband, who is also a member of this same group. Since I made the firm and sincere decision to know God and dedicate my whole life to him, I have felt a new strength emerge in me. More and more new moral, superhuman needs were installed. I confess to you that the day the helpers showed me the power of personality, the personal presence of God in my mind and the reality and meaning of the soul, I felt a great satisfaction, a liberation of my intellectual, moral and religious. The education, the study of the Urantia Book texts, the daily preparation, have made me a new being, a new person surrounded by divine forces.
This new awareness of God and the personal effort to want to be like Him has brought many changes to my life, transformations at the level of my human self. I have learned to develop self-control, to temper certain impulses typical of my animality, to suppress certain mental poisons such as anger, nervousness, suspicion, envy, which could block and impede the spiritualization work of the Adjuster.
Thanks to spiritual education I have learned to discipline my mind, my will, to eliminate certain negative ideas and to dominate and control the impulses of my body, of my material and human ego. Daily spiritual formation has given me the opportunity to develop my inner life, that is, the life of the soul in relation to the Thought Adjuster. The more I advance in this spirituality, the more I live the intelligent cooperation with the Adjuster, since the great impulses of my thought and of my life are already Adoration, Prayer and Service.
In practical life, spirituality has allowed me to have a new perception, a heightened understanding of family and society.
As an educated woman and mother, I strive with God to educate my children and guide them according to God’s will. The education of your thought and character is always accompanied by prayers to your Thought Adjusters. I hope that one day they will make God’s choice, become God’s children by faith. I try to do my best to fulfill my parental duty, assume my responsibilities regarding the education of the children and the building of my conjugal home.
On the other hand, I have a new meaning of social life. I look for the similarity with God, society is the scenario where I apply my spiritual knowledge. I try to live my social relationships in terms of morality, ethics and divine love. I am increasingly motivated by the desire to make others better, to love them and serve them as God loves and serves them. I always pray to my Adjuster to give me the opportunity to manifest the Goodness, the Love, the Truth of God, through my relationships with others. Spirituality has taught me how to show the Truth to other consciences, to serve them without interest and this gives me immense satisfaction.
In my religion, strictly speaking, I have become a better Muslim because I have freed myself from dogmas, from conformism and, personality, personal initiative, has come to the fore. I have more courage and strength to continue this spiritual experience because my Thought Adjuster raises my prayers, inspires me and guides my steps and actions towards a movement of perfection.
Spirituality has developed in me a dynamic faith in a Supreme Deity, the hope and certainty of eternal survival and the certainty of the divine. My thinking is moved by higher ideals, by a new appreciation and recognition of divine values.
To this end, I thank God (my Thought Adjuster) for having made me find this revelation and the educational framework that have allowed me to have a clear and intelligent awareness of the spiritual reality of God. Thanks to education and spiritual formation, that is, to the authentic spiritual experience with the Thought Adjuster, I have found peace of heart, stability, balance of my being.
I also thank our spiritual educator, in this case Mr. Moussa Ndiaye, for his selfless love, for his continuous effort and for his pedagogy, which have taught me to know God and to relate to the Inner Adjuster. I ask God to grant him a long life, iron health so that he can achieve his purpose, his cosmic ministry, and that there are in Senegal and throughout the world men and women who are similar to him so that they can spiritually enlighten and educate all personalities of good will and good faith.
I pray to God that the number of our group will increase in quantity and quality and that there will be in Senegal, in Africa and in the entire world men and women thirsty for truth and perfection in order to give their Adjusters the opportunity to spiritualize and perfect them.
I pray to God to bless our guests, that the Spirit of Truth guide them and the Holy Spirit inspire them; They are under the protection of the Supreme Almighty. May their stay in Senegal be an opportunity for them to fully experience spiritual brotherhood.
Grace and praise to God our Loving Father who reigns and dwells in all of us. Thanks to your Inner Spirit that renews us and renews the face of the earth. Praises to Almighty God who frees us from our materiality to elevate us towards his greatness. Honor and thanks to our spiritual educator who frees us from the slavery of darkness and ignorance to lead us to the light that gives life.
The spiritual education that we receive here has freed me from torpor, from idleness, from a lack of idealism and has led me to enter a dynamic and effective life that has radically changed my conception of life. Between the boredom of an insignificant life and the lack of precise objectives on the one hand, and the consecration of my choice to do the divine will on the other, the road has been long, very long. My educator and my Adjuster can congratulate themselves today for having achieved, with respect to me, the transformation of a purely materialistic mediocre being into a personality endowed with spiritual idealistic power.
Fundamentally thanks to this present study, the idea of evolution and the ideal of perfection were discovered. When these were clearly accepted, I understood that I had to take charge of my life and complete the previous family, social and religious education. Tactfully, my educator made me see that I had a tendency to be lazy in the face of the passing of life. University studies, not always crowned with success or joy, had ended up destroying my taste for effort. The family fawned on me and appreciated my passive side, as I was not a rebellious child. The belief in spirits had helped to further nullify personal effort. The simple belief in a “Risen Jesus” was until then the only tangible proof of a God with us. My religious formation had led me to confirmation, the highest sacrament at that age, and they made me believe that I communed with God every Sunday through the Eucharist.
As for society, the highest model of a woman it offered me was that of a future wife, married to a rich man who would give me the world on a golden platter. This was unfortunately the dark framework of my existence.
When I wanted to find the truth and engage in the search, disappointments followed. The Bible courses taught by a monk from “Keur Moussa” to which I had signed up were nothing more than repetitions of biblical passages and the Second Vatican Council, things we had been hearing since the first catechism course. Despite all his goodwill, the monk created more doubt than certainty in my search for immutable truth.
I had approached some fetishistic marabouts, who apparently have the power to enlighten us about the future, but the ditty was always the same: good luck, a car, a house, an “evil spirit that delays marriage.” In short, they said everything except the essentials. Although one of them let me know that I would find a man who would positively change my life. But where, when and how? the question remained in the air.
The height of my disappointment came when a priest, in response to my demand that I want to know more about divine things, proposed to kiss him.
A sherif who frequented the house made the same proposition to me, alleging that light was transmitted in this way.
No man can satisfy the love that I harbored in the bottom of my heart and that I was not able to qualify.
In the midst of a bustling world, in a relatively flexible environment, I felt inconsolably alone and spent long hours by the sea asking questions of a God I did not yet know.
Fortunately, at a time when I was abandoning myself to the world, I found Mr. Ndiaye Moussa, and God was revealed and taught to me, and I discovered him in my life through his interior presence. The man who made me discover it convinced me almost with his own life. The teaching was such, by its content and its pedagogy, that it fully satisfied my intellect. I would wake up to the fact that my life and everything in it (body, helpers, personality, Adjuster, and Soul) came from God and had a purpose in regard to Him. I discovered that all men, all races, the entire planet, the Universe of Universes, opened up to me thanks to the aptitudes and potentials that God had installed in me, and that had been awakened by education and clarified experience. The universal daughter was beginning to emerge. I discovered that my physical, intellectual and moral limitations in relation to my desires for perfection and eternity had disappeared, in cooperation with the Adjuster, by the creation of my Soul. I discovered that God has given us everything and has foreseen everything for an evolutionary purpose, and that in order to participate in it, it was necessary to make my free will work. I found that with the Adjuster, I could completely trust God and be assured of His loyalty and faithfulness. I discovered that my spiritual educator, who works under the aegis of my Adjuster, was just as good, true, and trustworthy. His very example of life is the embodiment of an ideal of spiritual fraternity, the gift of oneself so that the other becomes better, or what is the same, that he knows his Adjuster and tries to be like him.
The spiritual awakening was the fruit of a long educational work but today it is true and fully approved. Life, in all the angles in which we can conceive it, from simple sexual attraction, through emotional passion, to the highest divine ideal, comes to us from God, moves through Him and in relation to Him. It is above all a continuous revelation of our talents and abilities to improve ourselves and our life plan. This is possible through the recognition of the value of our being as well as that of our fellow men, the recognition of paternity and the common destiny of all men, the certainty of the result of the divine plan, the certainty of the power of love and triumph. personal by total cooperation with our Adjuster and unfailing loyalty to the love of our spiritual educator.
Thus installed in complete security and total confidence in this ideal, I understood that only God deserves to be searched for, found and loved, at the risk of selling all my riches to buy the rare pearl.
The adventure that was proposed to me was grandiose, immense, almost utopian, but deep down in my soul, something told me that my life was made for that and, without a doubt, one day I would savor the spiritual joy of having chosen God. .
My life was no longer just a struggle for existence (good job, good house, social prestige). Rather, it became a daily invitation to live with God for the realization of my spiritual destiny and for the realization of the Supreme.
I learned to clearly discern between what has value and what is value, and then to choose to be that value. I can say that the best thing that all previous philosophy had taught me was to believe in value. This spiritual education makes me discover, through acceptance of the ideal, that it is necessary to do something, in addition to being something. Resembling God is precisely getting to say I am in any circumstance. I have felt called, directly, personally and inescapably by God himself before the moral obligation and the spiritual satisfaction of living the divine values of Goodness, Truth and Beauty so attractive. These tensions develop thanks to the cultivation of my thinking, the self-sacrifice and constant courage of our spiritual educator, the trust in my Adjuster and God’s design, the model of fraternity in the similarity of thought and experience. I am drawn to an ever higher quality of life, an increase in qualitative value, which I know is inspired by the Inner Adjuster.
The daily experience of living according to the will and the plan of my Adjuster, at least with respect to desire and will, made me see to what extent my life was simplified and enriched by entering into new essential axes, namely, life family, socio-professional life and religious life.
I learned to have a new vision of my parents by recognizing the greatness of their love, but also accepting their relativity to Heavenly Father’s love. The sublimity of my educator’s love, which incessantly pushes me to communion with my Adjuster, progressively frees me from the visceral love of parents.
Representing the value in the family that I project to create, is to be the mother who loves what is small in man, starting from the lowest level of consciousness and going through self-awareness and awareness of any other reality different from mine, until arriving, at best, to God-consciousness. For this purpose, I free myself from masculine slavery, from the extreme dependence on a man to whom I would be subjected, most of the time unconsciously, due to social culture, fear of prolonged celibacy or an unfortunate divorce. I have begun to see the man in my life more as a partner chosen freely on the basis of a moral consensus to live the cooperation in the education of children, mine or adopted. I no longer fear the inevitable marital conflicts, rather I think about their solution in sincere cooperation with my partner. My responsibility and readiness for parental action feel much more compromised. If to this is added the clear awareness of doing the will of God, the task becomes light and filled with joy. I also conceive more clearly the liberation of children from their parents, after they have reached God’s moral choice after childhood and adolescence.
This is reinforced by the fact that I have discovered the true model of a woman through the Divine Minister. I have also discovered the partnership model between Michael and the Divine Minister in creativity, the difference in equality and freedom.
I pray to God that the family-home, the center of all educational efforts, be preserved in its most essential, in its quintessence, for the procreation and edification of God’s children. That the parents discover and experience the cooperation with their Adjuster and the Adjuster of their children in family education.
I learned about these studies before my professional activity: then I understood the primacy of God in my life, and the secondary nature of work, useful instead to solve the world’s material problems. This is the reason why I asked my Adjuster to find a job in perfect harmony with my current spiritual state, a job that would leave me enough free time to deepen my knowledge of God, and he granted it to me in effect.
I have also clarified notions about the philosophy and value of work. These are some examples:
A new socio-professional character was born in me. The moral awareness of the acceptance of duty and the ethical awareness of service have become the means by which I invite my Adjuster to help me and make his will prevail in my professional environment. With my renewed prayers and fellowship with my fellow Adjusters, I see how work can be done to improve human character and our ways of living and thinking. These prayers are extended to the whole of the nation, so that governments understand this value of work, and concomitantly, citizens also accept the need to work.
The promises of the Gospel have been fulfilled in terms of the certainty of my affiliation with God. The clarification of my relationship with God, the discovery of my Adjuster, and the knowledge of my Creator and his design have forever changed my religious life. My holiness is no longer a matter of baptism or communion in the Eucharist. On the contrary, I only owe myself to the voluntary study, to the deliberate and consecrated choice to allow the Adjuster to carry out his plan of spiritualization of my thought. My whole life is given to God, following the example of our spiritual educator, so that the divine will be done. My promise to the Supreme is reaffirmed, as is my spiritual promise to love my fellow men and make them discover their inner God. Even family life and society are the scenario where I apply my knowledge to carry out the new model of civilization that God inspires. Social problems generally constitute the circumstances called upon to evolve and submit to the rule of wisdom and the force of progress.
I discover in my spiritual life the value that grows, that expands. Having been born of the Spirit, the spiritual reality takes on a tangible existence due to the fact that growth is unlimited. The more I know of God, the more I feel drawn to Him, and I don’t see the end. The consciousness of my cosmic citizenship is now established for an eternity of life and divinity of status.
The more I go back, the more I value my acquisitions and the more I realize the long way I have to go. I understand and accept now that billions of years and innumerable worlds are planned to lead us through the transformative experience before the presence of God in Paradise. And I understand that God himself has come to live in my thought to carry out my transformation of spiritual ascent. I also understand that the beings of Paradise have left it to attend the extraordinary phenomenon of God becoming man and man becoming God in his fusion with the Adjuster that inhabits him. The Adjuster in my thought, the cooperation with our educator and the spiritual brotherhood of the universal brotherhood have made me a new being, a daughter of God born again of the Spirit and who consecrates his whole life to the divine service of revealing God to seekers of Truth, regardless of their race or religion. I pray to God for a religious and spiritual awakening on earth and for the multiplication of the harvesters.
Annexes: texts of the exhibitions and list of those present.
Moussa Ndiaye: Your different presentations have helped our godbrothers Georges, Richard and Marlène to understand the essence of our spiritual experience, since the duration of their stay is insufficient to make them live as much as we would like share with them.
The creation of this group is by no means an arbitrary act on my part. I had an understanding of the way Senegalese thought worked, under the influence of cultural and historical factors. Our nation is made up of several cultures, two of which are dominant, the Senegalese and the Western, which I perceived differently in the functioning of Senegalese thought. This thought has known a clear evolution due to the fact that the Senegalese have opened up and interested in Western esotericism, gnosis and secret societies. I had therefore conceived an original approach in the conquest of the knowledge of God. Personally I had studied all these methods and had ended up realizing that none of them led to the knowledge of God. Worse still, 30 years could easily go by without realizing that a good part of life would be lost, which was a terrible block in thought.
All this pushed me further to seek for the Senegalese a clearer and more effective method to know God. This search period corresponded, on the political and social level, with a deep crisis of the youth that manifested itself in clashes between the students and the government in the streets of Dakar. This portended a great change and I perceived that people would soon awaken to the need to be educated about themselves, about God and about society. I directed my prayer to God to find those changes and introduce this knowledge.
The first clear and real answer that God gave me was translated into the question-answer sessions of the young people about their difficulties and their destiny. The meetings were generally held on Saturdays and about 50 or 60 young people attended. Some stopped by during the week for private interviews.
At first, I was satisfied with answering their concerns because I knew that human thought as God created it and by asking questions, I would end up asking the only true question: who created me and why? Who is God? ? All the questions of that time were inscribed in a great register. If you want, we will send them to you with their dates to show you the evolution of Senegalese thought. The enthusiasm of the young people was such that they wanted to go out and share their discovery with the whole world. I let them know that the time had not yet come and when it did many of them would no longer be there. When all the questions ended up leading to God, I asked them: Do you want to know God? They all answered affirmatively. Seven (7) were selected to begin systematic teaching.
They were all sincere, but not deep and strong enough to stay in this search for God. Only two remained: Moustapha and Doudou. The teaching was based on them and has grown ever since. Real students began to come and continue to come, coming from all ethnicities in Senegal and from other African countries. Many trained and returned to their countries of origin, but they will surely return. They were disciples and what I was looking for were apostles who would spread the 5th revelation.
At the same time I reflected on the family and society, the changing family with respect to the customs of society. I wanted to capture this change in depth and for this purpose GREPS was created: which for seven (7) years brought together different specialists once a month to reflect on family problems. The conclusions of these works were sent to the Head of State, Mr. Abdou Diouf, to draw his attention to what was happening in his country. He was very impressed by this report. The dossier was then entrusted to his technical adviser, Mrs. Elimane Kane, the current Minister of Culture.
Religious thought also underwent a transformation that we tried to study. For 7 years monthly religious conferences were organized. We were striving to understand how the Senegalese perceived the change, thanks to the interventions of eminent Qur’an scholars, whose work was so appreciated that Senegalese continue to request it today.
From this evolution arose a concept in Muslim thought: “man is a representative of God.” This was a very high concept in relation to global belief. It allowed those who studied spirituality to see that God has matured society and that the Senegalese needed light. What the members of GREPS received as light through the teachings was desirable and necessary to Senegalese thought. This is how they prepared for a great ministry. The same work was carried out in the Catholic world. We are aware today that God has opened society to us. It is up to us to find intervention strategies in the triple development of the individual, the family, society and religion. God desires that all men and nations evolve in the knowledge of God, and in the acquisition of an ideal society.
If we do not lower our arms, we will do together with God an important work that future generations will continue. This is one of the group’s missions.
The other part of the mission concerns our relationship with the other races. This meeting with our spiritual brothers is situated in this perspective.
Richard Keeler: The goal of humanity is in eternity in Paradise, where we will arrive after 200 billion years.
These present revelations are intended for the generation to come for the next thousand years. The interval between the revelations narrows more and more. Adam came 500,000 years after the Planetary Prince. Between Adam and Melchizedek there were 35,000 years, between Melchizedek and Jesus: 1973 years. Between the incarnation of Michael and these present revelations there are exactly 2000 years. Between these revelations and us: 50 years. So we are the pioneers of this 5th Revelation.
We should not be surprised at our own fruits of the Spirit or that of our fellow men, because the shadow always follows the substance, which is the relationship with God.
An atheist cardiologist heard of prayer. He did the following study on his patients: he divided them into 3 groups.
And guess the results! There was no doubt that the results would be better if the patients in the 2nd group knew that they were being prayed for. He then wished that his patients would also use this prayer technique when taking their medicines. The improvement in health was only the shadow of the substance. Since that day, this doctor asks his patients 2 things upon receiving them: Do you believe in God? Do you believe in life after death?
Now I understand that love, goodness and truth come and can only come from God. The person who knows God can choose to be like Him, that is, good and loving. So if we show the fruits of the spirit we should thank God. Doudou and Moustapha, like each one of you, are worthy of being revealers of God.
Now I am going to talk to you about my own existence. When I began reading the Urantia Book in 1959, I did not have the ability, much less the experience, to reveal God. The book says instead that we can experience it and know that God is more real than any other experience. I had this experience, which I qualify as the most valid and dearest in my life, and I know that each one of you is real, but I know that your reality and our reality are almost nothing compared to the reality of God. The first trustees were tormented by the fact that they had sold only 3 books a year. Last year 300,000 books were sold. With an 8% growth, more than a million books could be in the hands of readers in the year 2008. I know that the 5th revelation is alive thanks to God, to you and to all of us. Continue your work. We are all members of the family of God that will serve now until eternity.
Georges Dupont: I am pleasantly surprised by the youth of the group, and this fills me with hope. I want you to succeed in this attack. It is the first of all my visits throughout the world that I see so many young people interested in the 5th Revelation.
Karim Diallo: The first thing that impressed me in this group was the quality of the reception. I had many experiences before, but never previously discovered what I found in this group. They made me see that I was free and that it was possible to know the God called Infinite. The study of the Adjuster and the awareness of its inner presence showed me this possibility.
I feel great pride and great joy to have found God. I verified it in my 1st teaching, which was soon effective and correct. I realized that God was with me the whole time the teaching lasted. I knew the sublime experience of discovering the presence of God in the fruits of the Spirit.
Moussa Ndiaye: To love men you have to know them. In reception, we try to get to know people according to God’s plan of creation and to understand their perception of life, resulting from their family, social and religious upbringing. It is why the new ones feel comfortable and happy. We must learn to perceive the needs of those whom God sends us.
Minutes drafted by Ms. Monique Ndiaye.
I would like to briefly present to our guests and brothers in God, Georges, Marlène and Richard, the life of our study group and spiritual fraternity. I will try to broadly outline the history of the group, I will analyze the functioning and the pedagogical supports of our community of fraternity, and finally, as a testimony, I will speak of my spiritual experience and the benefit of its fruits.
In 1973 I met Mr. Moussa Ndiaye and his wife at their home in Fann Hock, a neighborhood near the University of Dakar. I was led there by a friend who told me: “I am going to introduce you to someone who answers all the questions that are asked.” I was really excited. And the first Saturday that I met the group led by Mr. Moussa Ndiaye, I was delighted and amazed. The light given off by this simple and good man, and which clarified my thinking, had literally enlightened me. That night I practically did not sleep, and the wait was long for the following Saturday to arrive and to be able to verify if what had happened to me was temporary or not. Since then, I have not stopped frequenting this exceptional group. After long years of assiduity, I kept wondering how a man can be so perceptive and so patient to put himself at the service of others in such a disinterested and free way. I have learned to know this man, to love him, because he has taught me to know God. This God -Thought Adjuster- who justifies that a human being is so faithful to his ideal, that of loving men.
So we would meet every Saturday. We asked questions in all spheres of existence: family, human relations, politics, philosophy, religions, prophets, God, etc… No matter how difficult and complex the questions were, Mr. Ndiaye answered with precision, naturalness, kindness and pedagogy. Our satisfaction and our joy were total when we left the sessions on Saturday, from 1973 to 1980.
We were so happy and sure that we were in possession of the truth that some thought we had to go out and share it with the whole world. M. Ndiaye disappointed us and even disgusted us when he responded to this proposal: “you who say it, will not continue there to make it known to others”. Time proved him right, since Ms. Ndiaye, Moustapha and myself are the only survivors of the beginning of this group’s life.
The adventure continued, some left, others came, and we kept asking questions, and M. Ndiaye kept answering. The consistency in M. Ndiaye’s answers was so great, and the reference to God so constant, that the questions about God were more and more numerous, and one day the group asked if it was not possible to access this Source of Truth. Immediately, M. Ndiaye began, in 1981, to show us the teachings on Spiritual Reality, organizing them in the form of seminars: that was the Revelation. Each one of us remembers the deep impression that the 1st seminar made on his being. Currently, the most advanced have studied about fifty seminars.
On the other hand, between 1982 and 1984, we organized social gatherings called “Banquets” in most of the family homes of the members of the group, to get to know each other more objectively and reassure the families about our activities, and since then they feel a great appreciation for M. Ndiaye. On the occasion of these meetings, in the form of questions and answers, the social concerns of our guests became numerous and varied. But at the 15th Banquet, in August 1984, all the questions were about marriage, family life, children’s education, religion’s or God’s point of view about the family. At the end of the conversations, a woman got up and asked if we could not create a marriage school. The entire room applauded him.
From the following month, September 1984, we organized the first seminar on marriage. Up to a total of thirty, during which a speaker dealt with a topic of family life, and brought it up for debate. We publish twenty of these works in the form of magazines, the conclusions of which M. Ndiaye sent to the Head of State more than 7 years ago.
Around 1988, we started some religious meetings in which scholars of Islam made presentations followed by debate. This allowed us to take the religious pulse at a fairly high level, and to rejoice in the appreciation of our spiritual formation. And this is briefly summarized a large part of the history of the group, in relation to the problems of society.
I would now like to analyze the functioning and pedagogy of our spiritual group. This group has as its first vocation the study, teaching and knowledge of God, based on the Urantia Revelation, by the method of spiritual education. Our activities can be analyzed according to some axes:
As a conclusion to this presentation, we can affirm that the soul of our spiritual activity is spiritual education. We have had the luck and joy of accessing the teachings of the Urantia Book through the spiritual education of M. Ndiaye -which is based on an effective and time-tested pedagogy, based on 3 points:
In closing I would like to say a few words about my spiritual experience. I must confess that I did not spend a long time looking for God before finding him, since I met M. Ndiaye very young. The difficulties I had were left behind since I found the group. In fact, my Adjuster, M. Ndiaye and the fraternity group, according to my will, have made me what I am spiritually. I will limit myself to summarizing in several points the spiritual fruits resulting from my personal spiritual experience:
For now, my essential goal is progressive unification with God - through knowledge and service. I perceive that I need to unify the human ego, the morontia soul, and the spirit Adjuster, in order to live in supremacy.
In other words, I must coordinate my spiritual life, my social life and my family life for my spiritual fulfillment.
This is what I wanted to say to our brothers and I hope they have better understood how this group works. I thank you for your attention.
My presentation this afternoon concerns the pedagogical approach by which the teachings of the Urantia Book have been imparted to the students of GREPS spirituality, taking into account the specificities of our human nature and our socio-cultural environment.
The Urantia Book presents the revelations starting from the Central Universe to Michael’s incarnated life, going through the Super Universes and through our Local Universe. Therefore, its presentation is conducted from God to man and is completely in accordance with the way in which reality -which is born from God- is distributed and differentiated. However, man follows the path in reverse in his adventure of spiritual progression in the direction of the Universal Father, and progressively discovers spiritual reality through a development of his basic endowments and a transformation of his nature. And this is how Mr. Moussa Ndiaye soon understood the need to establish a special pedagogy and approach to progressively and safely guide the thought of the Senegalese, in a predominantly Muslim environment, towards the discovery in themselves of spiritual realities. From there it was a true spiritual education.
This has been how the teachings have been broken down into seminars. In the chronology of teaching, the first seminars are as follows:
This is followed by a series of seminars on religious experience, prior to others dealing with the organization of the Universe, the history of the planet in relation to its vicissitudes, etc…
With this approach, the global objective is noticed, which is to allow the student to better discover his potentially spiritual nature from the basic elements of his starting nature. Careful teaching by helpers reveals to him the real nature of his mind, and this understanding, coupled with teaching on the method of faith, facilitates mutual relations with the Adjuster who indwells this mind. Later, the seminar on the Ego restates the perspectives of real growth in a need to open the Ego to the spiritual influences that will be described later in more detail.
The seminar on life tells the story of the first human beings. The accompanying commentaries, as well as preliminary information regarding the Lucifer rebellion, the lack of Adam and Eve, as well as answering many questions students are asking at the time, offer a better appreciation of the human condition.
This self-knowledge (Helpers, Ego), combined with the teachings of the life seminar, form a broad basis for the Thought Adjuster seminars and facilitate the Adjuster’s work prior to the soul seminar (which comes as justification). of the combined efforts of man and God). The following seminar concerns prayer since all the basic elements have already been seen to understand the phenomenon of prayer and to make effective prayers. The content of the teachings on prayer now comes to clarify and give consistency to the ritual prayers of evolutionary religions.
At this time, all the fundamental concepts have already been raised to allow the student to understand through his own inner life the teachings on religious experience, distributed in various seminars. This personal effort, sanctified by spiritual influences, then allows us to approach the teachings based on divine administration, mainly at the level of the Local Universe, and thus reveal the identity of our Son Michael. Generally, it is in this phase when the students, matured along the way by many exhibitions, testimonials, evaluations, etc… are prepared to become educators. The seminars continue in this way with the same pedagogical interest.
There are many students who do not stay until the advanced seminars. For this reason, a particular pedagogical effort is undertaken in the first seminar. It contains the following chapters:
The teachings on helpers show both their fullness in the scientific and material domain and their limitations in the spiritual domain, in order to introduce faith well, not as an attitude of passive submission, but as a dynamic and intelligent method that it takes into account the dimensions of personality that transcend material limitations. All the essential concepts of personal religious experience are defined in this first seminar, taking advantage of the student’s inevitable questions about the topics covered.
The goal is that even if the student does not go beyond this seminar, he will arm himself with enough basic concepts and knowledge that his Adjuster can use in his life to spiritualize his thinking as much as possible. The total effectiveness of this pedagogical approach to assimilating and living the teachings of the Urantia Book favored me personally, as well as my other spirit brothers, but I have only discerned its wisdom when I have set out to teach what I began 12 years ago.
When we properly receive the teachings of the Urantia Book, there is a great light that illuminates our consciousness. However, it was by imparting these teachings, after the sincere desire to share them found the pedagogical preparation for this purpose, that I realized what “the presence of the spirit” was. I was able to appreciate many times the inspiration of the Holy Spirit during the unexpected questions of the students. Among about thirty students, I was able to gauge the differential way of the Thought Adjuster Spirit of spiritually harmonizing Teachers and Taught. These testimonies corroborated by my other brothers in spirit have allowed me to better understand many of Michael’s words during his incarnation and to better understand the kind of love that he tried to make men discover.
I was also able to recognize the importance of the altruistic prayers carried out as a group by GREPS twice a week, from 1981 to 1988. After a humane analysis of the problems, these prayers for Senegalese society, Africa and the world, allowed us to seeing many new concepts and facts appear according to our prayers, following unpredictable paths that built us on the resources and originality of God the Supreme.
In 1981, when I was still a student in France, during an optical examination, my family doctor discovered ocular hypertension that required surgery. The news shocked me, and at night I prayed with great fervor. I had a dream in which I saw an elderly blind Caucasian man with a cane in the center of a circle where I was with others. He turned his cane towards me and touched my head, then I woke up. I talked about it in correspondence with my father, who told me to pay attention to the events of the following days in case the dream was precognitive. After having done all the preoperative tests, I spent a few weeks without news from my doctor, or from the hospitals where I performed the tests, and I ended up believing that the operation was undoubtedly no longer necessary. One day in the metro, the day before my final departure from Lyon after finishing my studies at INSA, I found the blind old man from the dream. He asked for help to get out to the Charpennes station and I sensed that no one from the carriage was leaving, and that it was I who had to help him out. This is how things happened, and once at the exit of the subway entrance, I ran into my family doctor, a lady who told me: «God does things well, for several days I have been trying to find him, in vain, to inform you of the date of the operation. Indeed, I had moved from the INSA campus a long time ago because the school was closed. And that’s how I successfully came out of this operation. A few months later, back in Dakar, I received my first Urantia Book teachings, and heard about the Thought Adjuster. I understood that beyond the anecdotal character of this experience and even before I experienced the reality of his presence through the teachings, my Adjuster preceded me on the path of our encounter. Later, in 1990, due to the financial difficulties of the company in which I worked at the time in Dakar, I was forced -as well as other colleagues- to give the names of three of the twelve agents that made up my unit, in order to fire them. This difficult choice led me to constantly pray for them, according to the method perfected with my spirit brothers and based on applications from the Urantia Book.
A few months after that, there was a workers’ strike in another platform of the company and they contacted me to give the names of three agents that they wanted to hire urgently, replacing the strikers. Logically I gave those of the agents who had been fired. But before that and for many weeks I had direct premonitions, “accidental” information and premonitory dreams, regarding the evolution of the conservatory measures that the management planned to take for the benefit of the dismissed agents, and even the reverses of all these provisions. These and other experiences ended up making me see the efficacy of prayer combined with a life of social service, truly lived according to the spirit.
GREPS also had to initiate worship sessions, during which group meditations on basic concepts were held, followed by conversations. We were able to appreciate that this increases the interiorization of these concepts and provokes an amplitude of conscience, a preparatory condition for all intelligent action in God.
Within the framework of its activities, GREPS has also presented, through its members, numerous exhibitions on the works of authors or on the experiences of members who have known sects or other spiritual movements. In this way, GREPS has been able to make exhibitions on the life and teachings of RAM, the Mahikali movement, on Eckankar, many other Sufis of Islam, Christian Gnostics, Greek mythology, etc.
As a conclusion, the GREPS method comprises several approaches, whose purposes can be summarized as follows: