© 2019 Georges Michelson-Dupont
© 2019 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Georges Michelson-Dupont
Reclosed, France
On the occasion of the European Urantia Conference which took place in Tallinn, Estonia last July, I was invited to give a presentation on the theme of growth in the kingdom of heaven. Here, slightly modified to adapt to the LINK formula, is the text of this presentation.
The theme of this presentation is “Growth in the Kingdom of Heaven,” based on papers from The Urantia Book. We will not have time to cover all aspects of spiritual growth. However, I will touch on certain aspects of the subject that I find appropriate. Furthermore, rather than giving my own interpretation, I will excerpt from the book the appropriate paragraphs that relate to the subject, as I consider the authors to be the best possible teachers. Each excerpt will be followed by questions for consideration.
For the first time in the history of Urantia, the spiritual hierarchy is communicating with us in writing to expand our cosmic consciousness and enhance our spiritual perception.
We read in the publication mandate:
The future is not open to your mortal understanding, but you will do well to study diligently the order, plan, and methods of progression as they were enacted in Michael’s earthly life when The Word was made flesh. You become actors in an episode which follows when The Word was made Book. https://urantia-association.org/about-uai/governance-policies/the-publicationmandate/
This statement about the word needs to be explained because it has confused some readers. It is about the Word and not a comparison that the author would make between Jesus and a physical book. In this context, The Word is the revelation. The Word (the revelation) was spoken orally and in the flesh by our Master Jesus 2000 years ago. The revelation (the Word) is delivered today in the form of papers written by spirit beings and collected in a book: The Urantia Book.
“5. The Urantia Papers. The papers, of which this is one, constitute the most recent presentation of truth to the mortals of Urantia. These papers differ from all previous revelations, for they are not the work of a single universe personality but a composite presentation by many beings. But no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia.” (UB 92:4.9)
Being in book form makes a big difference in the dissemination of the revelation. It is accessible to the greatest number, in its original and unaltered form. It is translated into many languages and thus reaches the inhabitants of Urantia. The exposure of people to the teachings contained therein has become much more “personal”, directly accessible to each seeker of truth, whereas Jesus delivered his message orally to a relatively small number of listeners. Later, the apostles and disciples went around the world “evangelizing” the peoples with their personal interpretation but the message was transformed and westernized.
Can we really achieve what we hold in our hands?
Every time we open The Urantia Book, we have an appointment with God.
For the first time we have personal Master Instructors and, excuse me for saying so:
A divine advisor from the central universe. He knows what he is talking about because he has been in the presence of our Universal Father many times.
A powerful messenger, an ascending being like us who has experienced the plan of divine perfection, and who comes to testify and teach us.
A Melchizedek from our local universe, an expert in education who knows perfectly how our mind works.
The study of The Urantia Book is a privilege. For truth seekers who are passionate about studying the papers, we do not need to wait until we are on the mansion worlds. We read on Mansonia No. 5
“A real birth of cosmic consciousness takes place on mansonia number five. You are becoming universe minded. This is indeed a time of expanding horizons. It is beginning to dawn upon the enlarging minds of the ascending mortals that some stupendous and magnificent, some supernal and divine, destiny awaits all who complete the progressive Paradise ascension, which has been so laboriously but so joyfully and auspiciously begun. At about this point the average mortal ascender begins to manifest bona fide experiential enthusiasm for the Havona ascent. Study is becoming voluntary, unselfish service natural, and worship spontaneous. A real morontia character is budding; a real morontia creature is evolving.” (UB 47:7.5)
Through an expanded understanding of the divine ascension plan and the organization of the universe, we gain a meaningful and coherent perspective on our eternal career and a greater appreciation of universal brotherhood, thus giving inspiring meaning and new direction to our lives.
By better understanding our relationship with our Universal Father and His unconditional love for all of His creation, we can better appreciate what He does for us and love Him more in return.
Revealed truths free us from the chains of ignorance and spiritual confusion, making us cosmic citizens, ambassadors of a new kingdom on earth, the kingdom of heaven, which is the kingdom of the Supreme Being.
At the same time, more spiritual freedom and God-consciousness means more responsibility to the Supreme:
“Man’s temporal relationship to the Supreme is the foundation of cosmic morality, the universal sensibility of duty, and its acceptance. It is a morality which transcends the temporal sense of relative right and wrong; it is based directly on the creature’s conscious appreciation of an experiential obligation to experiential Deity.” (UB 117:4.8)
“The great challenge presented to mortal man is this: Will you decide to personalize, in your own evolving individuality, the experientially valuable meanings of the cosmos? Or, by rejecting survival, will you allow these secrets of the Supremacy to lie dormant until some other creature, at some other time, tries in his own way to make a creaturely contribution to the evolution of the finite God? In that case, it will be his contribution to the Supreme, not yours.” (UB 117:4.10)
And so the decision awaits each of you as it once awaited each of us: Will you fail the God of time, who is so dependent upon the decisions of the finite mind? will you fail the Supreme personality of the universes by the slothfulness of animalistic retrogression? will you fail the great brother of all creatures, who is so dependent on each creature? can you allow yourself to pass into the realm of the unrealized when before you lies the enchanting vista of the universe career—the divine discovery of the Paradise Father and the divine participation in the search for, and the evolution of, the God of Supremacy? (UB 117:4.13)
We must therefore live and behave in accordance with the laws in force within the cosmic brotherhood, namely to love, to want to do good to others; to show mercy in our relationships and to serve our neighbors in a selfless manner.
Before going further, some terms used in the study need to be clarified.
This term is used by many people and in various spheres of discussion, political, philosophical, religious, cultural… It would be good to clarify the meaning.
“In the contemplation of values you must distinguish between that which is value and that which has value. You must recognize the relation between pleasurable activities and their meaningful integration and enhanced realization on ever progressively higher and higher levels of human experience.” (UB 100:3.3)
Question to the public:
What is a value?
For the authors of the book, value has a precise meaning. We read in the Introduction:
“Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.” (UB 0:1.17)
This implies to us creatures that the nature of God is truth, beauty and goodness.
Therefore, divine values are existential and universal.
Question to the audience:
What has value?
We read in the introduction:
“Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty.” (UB 0:1.17)
Remember that:
Love is doing good to others
Mercy is the attitude of love towards others and a quality of growth.
Ministry is the result of both.
When people exercise these qualities in their lives, these experiential achievements have value. These human values are experiential and personal.
Question to the public:
What are these experimental achievements called?
These are The fruits of the spirit
And we know that the fruits of the spirit are the substance of the Supreme. 117:6,17 1290.2)
Question to the audience:
“Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness stabilizing. And when these values of that which is real are co-ordinated in personality experience, the result is a high order of love conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty. The real purpose of all universe education is to effect the better co-ordination of the isolated child of the worlds with the larger realities of his expanding experience. Reality is finite on the human level, infinite and eternal on the higher and divine levels.” (UB 2:7.12)
“But the great problem of religious living consists in the task of unifying the soul powers of the personality by the dominance of love. Health, mental efficiency, and happiness arise from the unification of physical systems, mind systems, and spirit systems. Of health and sanity man understands much, but of happiness he has truly realized very little. The highest happiness is indissolubly linked with spiritual progress. Spiritual growth yields lasting joy, peace which passes all understanding.” (UB 100:4.3)
“Meaning is something which experience adds to value; it is the appreciative consciousness of values. An isolated and purely selfish pleasure may connote a virtual devaluation of meanings, a meaningless enjoyment bordering on relative evil. Values are experiential when realities are meaningful and mentally associated, when such relationships are recognized and appreciated by mind.” (UB 100:3.4)
Meaning depends on our personal appreciation of the experience we have with values. How much do we appreciate truth, beauty and goodness in our daily lives?
Of course, this is a personal examination that each of us can and should make.
In my experience:
-Whenever I am faithful to the truth, I feel at peace.
-Every time I do good for others, I feel good.
-Whenever I appreciate beauty, I am joyful.
I try to exercise and live these values more and more because my Universal Father fills me more and more with loving feelings for my brothers and sisters.
“Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one’s nearness to God and the measure of one’s usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love.” (UB 100:2.4)
Therefore, meanings are personal and the fruit of experience with values.
“The association of actuals and potentials equals growth, the experiential realization of values. But growth is not mere progress. Progress is always meaningful, but it is relatively valueless without growth. The supreme value of human life consists in growth of values, progress in meanings, and realization of the cosmic interrelatedness of both of these experiences. And such an experience is the equivalent of God-consciousness. Such a mortal, while not supernatural, is truly becoming superhuman; an immortal soul is evolving.” (UB 100:3.6)
One day, in a study group, one of the participants asked the question of why some people were attracted to spirituality and sought to give an altruistic meaning to their lives while others were only interested in the search for material and selfish pleasures? Vast debate!
Melchizedek gives us some food for thought:
“Spiritual growth is first an awakening to needs, next a discernment of meanings, and then a discovery of values. The evidence of true spiritual development consists in the exhibition of a human personality motivated by love, activated by unselfish ministry, and dominated by the wholehearted worship of the perfection ideals of divinity. And this entire experience constitutes the reality of religion as contrasted with mere theological beliefs.” (UB 100:2.2)
By reading this statement carefully, we notice that the process is gradual:
First there is An awakening to needs. An awakening means an awareness, an opening of the mind to the need to behave loyally, in accordance with the values of truth, beauty and goodness. Let us remember that the human mind is sensitive to the three levels of reality:
Causality, the realm of reality of the physical senses, is the mathematical form of cosmic discrimination. (The facts)
Duty, the domain of moral reality in philosophy, is the judicial form of cosmic discrimination. (The meanings)
Worship, the spiritual realm of religious experience. It is the worshipful form of cosmic discrimination. (Values)
All men possess these mental qualities because they are innate.
“In the local universe mind bestowals, these three insights of the cosmic mind constitute the a priori assumptions which make it possible for man to function as a rational and self-conscious personality in the realms of science, philosophy, and religion. Stated otherwise, the recognition of the reality of these three manifestations of the Infinite is by a cosmic technique of self-revelation. Matter-energy is recognized by the mathematical logic of the senses; mind-reason intuitively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (worship) is the religion of the reality of spiritual experience. These three basic factors in reflective thinking may be unified and co-ordinated in personality development, or they may become disproportionate and virtually unrelated in their respective functions. But when they become unified, they produce a strong character consisting in the correlation of a factual science, a moral philosophy, and a genuine religious experience. And it is these three cosmic intuitions that give objective validity, reality, to man’s experience in and with things, meanings, and values.” (UB 16:6.10)
“It is the purpose of education to develop and sharpen these innate endowments of the human mind; of civilization to express them; of life experience to realize them; of religion to ennoble them; and of personality to unify them.” (UB 16:6.11)
Fortunately, when man seeks God, God comes to his aid under multiple influences which come to exercise their ministry. This is what we are going to see.
Then a discernment of meanings. We have seen that meaning is what experience adds to value, it is the appreciative awareness of values. When the human mind exercises its innate qualities in its daily life, it opens to the Spirit of Truth and new and higher meanings of truth emerge.
“The first mission of this spirit is, of course, to foster and personalize truth, for it is the comprehension of truth that constitutes the highest form of human liberty. Next, it is the purpose of this spirit to destroy the believer’s feeling of orphanhood. Jesus having been among men, all believers would experience a sense of loneliness had not the Spirit of Truth come to dwell in men’s hearts.” (UB 194:2.2)
“Thus it appears that the Spirit of Truth comes really to lead all believers into all truth, into the expanding knowledge of the experience of the living and growing spiritual consciousness of the reality of eternal and ascending sonship with God.” (UB 194:2.7)
“Since the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth, man is subject to the teaching and guidance of a threefold spirit endowment: the spirit of the Father, the Thought Adjuster; the spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Truth; the spirit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.” (UB 194:2.11)
The Divine Counselor reveals that “Divinity is intelligible to creatures as Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.” UB 0:1.16 In seeking to discover these values, man is in fact only seeking God and attuning himself to the divine will. In truth and in fact, man does not have to go far to find God; He is already within him in the form of the Thought Adjuster whose ministry is to:
“3. The personality craving to be like God—the wholehearted desire to do the Father’s will.”
- The personality craving to be like God—the wholehearted desire to do the Father’s will.
- The personality craving to be like God—the wholehearted desire to do the Father’s will.
- The personality craving to be like God—the wholehearted desire to do the Father’s will. (UB 1:2.6)
“It is the Adjuster who creates within man that unquenchable yearning and incessant longing to be like God, to attain Paradise, and there before the actual person of Deity to worship the infinite source of the divine gift. The Adjuster is the living presence which actually links the mortal son with his Paradise Father and draws him nearer and nearer to the Father. The Adjuster is our compensatory equalization of the enormous universe tension which is created by the distance of man’s removal from God and by the degree of his partiality in contrast with the universality of the eternal Father.” (UB 107:0.5)
Certainly, growth does not come easily, but spiritual happiness comes at a price.
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 196:3.16)
“Religious living is devoted living, and devoted living is creative living, original and spontaneous. New religious insights arise out of conflicts which initiate the choosing of new and better reaction habits in the place of older and inferior reaction patterns. New meanings only emerge amid conflict; and conflict persists only in the face of refusal to espouse the higher values connoted in superior meanings.”
Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving. (UB 100:4.1-2)
Worship: To help and support us in our determination to live spiritually on a daily basis, to face the hazards and conflicts that inevitably arise, we must maintain a living spiritual connection with true spiritual forces. It is through worship of the Divine, contemplative meditation and selfless prayer that we receive the energy that allows us to face difficulties of all kinds and respond to them by positively living the Gospel of Jesus.
To worship is to connect ourselves to the great circuit of Love established by the Universal Father and to receive it abundantly in return with the impulse to share it, to bestow it on our fellow men. Worship is essential to keep faith alive and active. Spiritual energy, like all forms of energy, is consumed, it must be renewed. Without this daily connection, it is not renewed and the soul quickly becomes exhausted.
Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes. (UB 5:3.3)
The worship experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the human soul—the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the material mind’s assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith son of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal—the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality. (UB 5:3.8)
The prayer:
“Modern man is perplexed by the thought of talking things over with God in a purely personal way. Many have abandoned regular praying; they only pray when under unusual pressure—in emergencies. Man should be unafraid to talk to God, but only a spiritual child would undertake to persuade, or presume to change, God.” (UB 91:8.8)
“God answers man’s prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness. Prayer is a subjective gesture, but it contacts with mighty objective realities on the spiritual levels of human experience; it is a meaningful reach by the human for superhuman values. It is the most potent spiritual-growth stimulus.” (UB 91:8.11)
“Words are irrelevant to prayer; they are merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow. The word value of a prayer is purely autosuggestive in private devotions and sociosuggestive in group devotions. God answers the soul’s attitude, not the words.” (UB 91:8.12)
“Prayer is not a technique of escape from conflict but rather a stimulus to growth in the very face of conflict. Pray only for values, not things; for growth, not for gratification.” (UB 91:8.13)
To conclude, we see that God has provided everything that is necessary for human beings to grow spiritually. All that remains for man is to awaken and want.
“God’s gifts—his bestowal of reality—are not divorcements from himself; he does not alienate creation from himself, but he has set up tensions in the creations circling Paradise. God first loves man and confers upon him the potential of immortality—eternal reality. And as man loves God, so does man become eternal in actuality. And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality—actuality—of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality—cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father’s will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.” (UB 117:4.14)