© 2020 Georges Michelson-Dupont
© 2020 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
The expansion of material knowledge permits a greater intellectual appreciation of the meanings of ideas and the values of ideals. A human being can find truth in his inner experience, but he needs a clear knowledge of facts to apply his personal discovery of truth to the ruthlessly practical demands of everyday life. (UB 111:6.7)
Science is the source of facts, and mind cannot operate without facts. They are the building blocks in the construction of wisdom which are cemented together by life experience. Man can find the love of God without facts, and man can discover the laws of God without love, but man can never begin to appreciate the infinite symmetry, the supernal harmony, the exquisite repleteness of the all-inclusive nature of the First Source and Center until he has found divine law and divine love and has experientially unified these in his own evolving cosmic philosophy. (UB 111:6.6)
Thanks to or because of the confinement due to Covid 19, we created an online study group in order to overcome the difficulty of seeing each other in person. Of course, videoconferencing will never replace the pleasure of physical presence but it at least has the merit of breaking social isolation. For my part, having used it for some time, I got used to it and I am lucky to have a fast connection which makes it more fluid. 48 hours after the proposal on the AFLUB forum, 7 people registered and we had our first session on Sunday October 4. (The Zoom address to attend is: 391 845 8167, you just need to install the free Zoom software by going to the following address: zoom.us and follow the instructions in French)
This group, open to all, takes place on the first and third Sunday of each month, from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Its operation is very simple, every first Sunday of the month a moderator is designated, the sections to be studied must be read before the session and everyone is free to ask questions in writing and send them to the moderator who shares them before the session. They are then discussed and argued during the session.
We have therefore decided to begin with the Introduction. Why? It is in the Introduction that are “introduced” a) the basic concepts that will be discussed later, b) the terminology used, more significant than the common interpretation and c) the Deities and divine personalities and their origins. This study of the Introduction is all the more necessary since there exists, as the Divine Counselor points out:
“IN THE MINDS of the mortals of Urantia—that being the name of your world—there exists great confusion respecting the meaning of such terms as God, divinity, and deity. Human beings are still more confused and uncertain about the relationships of the divine personalities designated by these numerous appellations. Because of this conceptual poverty associated with so much ideational confusion, I have been directed to formulate this introductory statement in explanation of the meanings which should be attached to certain word symbols as they may be hereinafter used in those papers which the Orvonton corps of truth revealers have been authorized to translate into the English language of Urantia.” (UB 0:0.1)
In fact, the main purpose of studying the Introduction is to clarify as much as possible these notions and concepts discussed as well as the terminology used. We therefore happily undertook the reading of the first three sections and began the study of the questions posed.
After an hour, the question arose as to how this intellectual study on the different personalizations of the Deity, the levels of reality, and what comes next could be useful in our quest to become a better person and solve our daily problems? In fact, this is a completely legitimate question that we all ask ourselves at one point or another during our reading.
I would answer for my part that the answer remains in each of us and depends closely on our determination to want to know God. Our understanding is not fixed, it evolves by taking on more and more meaning as we progress in the study, a bit like the pieces of a puzzle that we build. The Divine Counselor, author of the introduction, invites us to persevere in these terms:
“We are fully cognizant of the difficulties of our assignment; we recognize the impossibility of fully translating the language of the concepts of divinity and eternity into the symbols of the language of the finite concepts of the mortal mind. But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.” (UB 0:12.13)
This is the reason why the answer to such a question can only be personal and individual; it takes place in our interior life, it depends intimately on what each of us seeks to accomplish with our life, our centers of interest, our personal desires, our supreme ideals.
Though the work of Adjusters is spiritual in nature, they must, perforce, do all their work upon an intellectual foundation. Mind is the human soil from which the spirit Monitor must evolve the morontia soul with the co-operation of the indwelt personality. (UB 111:1.1)
It is still necessary that our conscience is not clouded by confusion, handicapped by ignorance and locked in prejudices. Our capacity to think well, to possess the right information, to seek with determination and discernment the Truth, Beauty and Goodness, contributes to spiritualizing our interior life.
We, Urantians, are like this man on his island in the middle of the ocean, remaining in ignorance of what he is doing there, of his origins, of his future, of his position in the universe, and of what is happening beyond the horizon that he looks at without being able to provide an answer. We need help from outside, these are the revelations of the time and for us, it is the there will be many others to come, the goal being to install the era of light and life on Urantia.
The fourth revelation, Jesus of Nazareth, our Creator Son came to reveal the truth that God, his Father and our universal Father, is not a God of anger and vengeance, he is a God of love. We are all his children; he is no respecter of persons. We just need to believe in him to have eternal life.
The fifth revelation adds a further attribute to being His children, it reveals to us that God has partnered with us to co-create our true individuality, through soul fusion with our Thought Adjuster, that He has taken us as partners in His plan of perfecting and fulfilling universal destiny. This plan is perfectly described in The Urantia Book, in minute detail.
For my part, studying this revelation now is a preparation for the next stage of my life on the mansion worlds. A Bright Evening Star reveals to us that:
“The mortal-mind transcripts and the active creature-memory patterns as transformed from the material levels to the spiritual are the individual possession of the detached Thought Adjusters; these spiritized factors of mind, memory, and creature personality are forever a part of such Adjusters. The creature mind-matrix and the passive potentials of identity are present in the morontia soul intrusted to the keeping of the seraphic destiny guardians. And it is the reuniting of the morontia-soul trust of the seraphim and the spirit-mind trust of the Adjuster that reassembles creature personality and constitutes resurrection of a sleeping survivor.” (UB 47:3.3)
“Your Adjuster memory remains fully intact as you ascend the morontia life. Those mental associations that were purely animalistic and wholly material naturally perished with the physical brain, but everything in your mental life which was worth while, and which had survival value, was counterparted by the Adjuster and is retained as a part of personal memory all the way through the ascendant career. You will be conscious of all your worth-while experiences as you advance from one mansion world to another and from one section of the universe to another—even to Paradise.” (UB 47:4.5)
I will have developed here below the qualities of perseverance in mental training and the spiritual openness which results from it, all things which contribute to the construction of character which, in turn, survives in the personality.
God gives us the possibility of participating in this cosmic adventure according to our capacities, both personal and collective, but to participate in a conscious and responsible manner, we must understand somewhat the universal laws and the mechanisms of the Deities which govern and operate this march towards perfection because they also apply at our level, in our daily life.
A Melchizedek from Nebadon explains it to us in these terms:
IT IS not enough that the ascending mortal should know something of the relations of Deity to the genesis and manifestations of cosmic reality; he should also comprehend something of the relationships existing between himself and the numerous levels of existential and experiential realities, of potential and actual realities. 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)
In our inner life there is a process of effective interassociation-integration-unification between the daily experiences of facts/Meanings/values on the one hand and the work of our Thought Adjuster in coordination with the Spirit of Truth of Jesus on the other.
“Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity—the universe and its Maker.” (UB 196:3.20)
Some people are too busy to grow and are in serious danger of spiritual immobility. Provision must be made for the growth of meanings at different ages, in successive cultures, and in the passing stages of progressive civilizations. The chief inhibitors of growth are PREJUDICE AND IGNORANCE.
This spiritual dynamic of the Adjuster in our mind is a phenomenon of evolution-revelation and everyone can testify that with each new reading of a paragraph of the book, new meanings emerge which astonish us ourselves, confirming by experience this phenomenon of evolution-revelation. The product of these interactions is the formation of character,
The moral values of the universe become intellectual possessions by the exercise of the three basic judgments, or choices, of the mortal mind:
- Self-judgment—moral choice.
- Social-judgment—ethical choice.
- God-judgment—religious choice.
Thus it appears that all human progress is effected by a technique of conjoint revelational evolution.
Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings. And this lover hails from the very source of infinite love; this interpreter is a part of Universal Unity; this evaluator is the child of the Center and Source of all absolute values of divine and eternal reality. (UB 196:3.11-16)
For me, studying the book has become my daily appointment with our Universal Father, a moment of communion that nourishes me spiritually for the day, a moment of gratitude for all that he has prepared for us, for all this cosmic brotherhood that works together for the good of the entire universe. Knowing the truth helps affirm my faith in him.
Before knowing The Urantia Book, not being inclined to seek the truth, I had almost become agnostic [1] although I spent my early education at the Catholic college of Juilly [2] with the Oratorian brothers, then did my secondary studies at the anthroposophist school [3] of Rudolf Steiner on rue d’Alésia in Paris. When my father, Jacques Dupont, came into contact with Jacques Weiss in 1958 and received the first edition in 3 volumes of The Urantia Cosmogony in 1961 & 62, he offered me a complete set; I was then 14 years old. Finally, it was through material difficulties that I arrived at the book. I ended up realizing that the material values I was running after were ephemeral, that they only led me to disillusionment and unhappiness.
From the beginning, reading it gave me almost immediate psychological relief; even if I didn’t understand much of it, having started with the Introduction. Then the anxiety and stress disappeared as I progressed through the booklets, I was gently invaded by a love and respect for the Creator at the same time as I felt a discreet “little voice” telling me “it’s the truth”.
Reading the first 5 booklets “opened my eyes” to the Universal Father. Knowing that he is both so far from me, in transcendence, perfectly controlling all of his creation and also in me, in immanence, knowing everything about me and knowing what I really need, completely overwhelmed me. Since then, the revelation has illuminated and inspired the path of my life as a man. In difficult times and there were many as each of us can experience, reading it was a great comfort to me. First it helped me to free myself from stress by connecting me to the Spirit, diving into a positive and salutary reading, cleaning up negative thoughts, then it allowed me to put things into perspective, to gain perspective on the situation, it calmed my psychological anxiety.
Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements. Religious faith—the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence—unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heavenly Father of Jesus’ gospel, the personal God of human salvation. (UB 196:3.1)
The work of the Spirit of Truth combined with that of the Adjuster in each of us is very effective. Each time I reread a section, or even a paragraph, read through a few days before, new ideas appear in my mental framework, new meanings emerge, bringing clarifications, adjusting my thinking, enriching my inner life, in short, illuminating this “arena of choice” that is the consciousness of consciousness and ultimately allowing better decisions, more in accordance with the Inner Spirit.
Yes, it takes consistency and perseverance to study revelation. Terminology is an obstacle for some, the thickness of the book or its difficulty is for others. This is why study groups are so effective because they connect different levels of understanding:
“THE experience of dynamic religious living transforms the mediocre individual into a personality of idealistic power. Religion ministers to the progress of all through fostering the progress of each individual, and the progress of each is augmented through the achievement of all.”
Spiritual growth is mutually stimulated by intimate association with other religionists. Love supplies the soil for religious growth—an objective lure in the place of subjective gratification—yet it yields the supreme subjective satisfaction. And religion ennobles the commonplace drudgery of daily living. (UB 100:0.1-2)
Voices have been raised to affirm that intellectual study as such does not bring much to the interior life and that only the experience of coming closer to God matters for spiritual progress. This is not the opinion of the revelators, if all this data is revealed to us it is in the hope of improving our quality of thinking. The attentive and systematic study of revelation is necessary to the extent that, as we said above, it enriches our knowledge, it eliminates confusion, it broadens our cosmic consciousness and enhances our spiritual perception.
La vérité est toujours une révélation. C’est une autorévélation quand elle émerge comme résultat du travail de l’Ajusteur intérieur, et c’est une révélation d’époque quand elle est présentée par le truchement d’autres intermédiaires, groupes ou personnalités célestes.
La vérité peut nêtre inspirée que relativement, bien que la révélation soit invariablement un phénomène spirituel. Les exposés se référant à la cosmologie ne sont jamais inspirés, mais de telles révélations ont une immense valeur, en ce sens qu’elles clarifient au moins provisoirement les connaissances :
- Elles réduisent la confusion en éliminant d’autorité les erreurs.
- Elles coordonnent les observations et les faits connus ou sur le point d’être connus.
- Elles restaurent d’importantes fractions de connaissances perdues concernant des évènements historiques du passé lointain.
- Elles fournissent des renseignements qui comblent des lacunes fondamentales dans les connaissances acquises par ailleurs.
- Elles présentent des données cosmiques d’une manière qui éclaire les enseignements spirituels contenus dans la révélation qui les accompagne. LU 101:4.3-10
It is for all these reasons, and for others still, that I study the revelation. I do not allow myself to be diverted by so-called additions resulting from channeling which I consider to be an intellectual and spiritual fraud whose goal is to divert seekers of truth from the revelation. Anything that deviates, divides, or distances the readership of The Urantia Book must rejoice Caligastia.
I would conclude by quoting a Solitary Messenger from Orvonton:
Bien que les Ajusteurs aient à effectuer un travail de nature spirituelle, ils sont obligés de l’exécuter tout entier sur des bases intellectuelles. Le mental est le terrain humain à partir duquel le Moniteur d’esprit doit faire apparaitre, par évolution, l’âme morontielle, avec la coopération de la personnalité qu’il habite.
…
Le mental matériel est le cadre dans lequel les personnalités humaines vivent, sont conscientes d’elles-mêmes, prennent des décisions, choisissent ou abandonnent Dieu, se rendent éternelles ou se détruisent ellesmêmes…
…
Le mental mortel est un système intellectuel temporaire prêté aux êtres humains pour être utilisé pendant la durée d’une vie matérielle, et, selon la manière dont ils emploient ce mental, ils acceptent ou rejettent le potentiel d’existence éternelle. LU 111:1.1-5
George Michelson Dupont
Reclosed October 2020
There have been many events of religious revelation but only five of epochal significance. These were as follows: (UB 92:4.4)
¶ Notes
Agnosticism, or questioning thought, is a conception according to which the human mind cannot access the absolute. According to agnostics, it is impossible to settle the debate on the existence of a god or a divinity. There is no definitive proof on the subject and it is not possible to decide. Wikipedia ↩︎
The college of Juilly is an educational establishment, placed under the supervision of the Oratory of France, which operated almost without interruption from 1638 to 2012. Wikipedia ↩︎
Anthroposophy is an esoteric movement created by the Austrian occultist Rudolf Steiner at the beginning of the 20th century. This movement is linked on the one hand to the theosophy of Helena Blavatsky and on the other hand to the movements of modern Rosicrucianism. Wikipedia ↩︎