© 2024 Jean Lapierre
© 2024 Urantia Association of Quebec
Jean Lapierre
Bromont
(Editor’s note: We have added and slightly modified two email communications from Jean to his study group to publish his text).
Hello everyone,
Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. (UB 101:1.4)
Recently, while reading Paper 26, I have experienced the discovery of new meanings concerning the central universe and I would like to share them with you. To qualify for Havona, one must have attained the perfection of intention to become perfect according to the decree of the Universal Father. It is only at this moment that we are qualified to go there and continue this long training journey which will consist of reaching the paradisiacal perfection of the personality. For this, it will be essential:
- to develop the perfection of intelligence
- to develop the technique of understanding
This is well described in the following extracts and invites us to understand that our intellectual faculties are always required.
The pilgrim lands on the receiving planet of Havona, the pilot world of the seventh circuit, with only one endowment of perfection, perfection of purpose. The Universal Father has decreed: “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.” That is the astounding invitation-command broadcast to the finite children of the worlds of space. The promulgation of that injunction has set all creation astir in the co-operative effort of the celestial beings to assist in bringing about the fulfillment and realization of that tremendous command of the First Great Source and Center. (UB 26:4.12)
When, through and by the ministry of all the helper hosts of the universal scheme of survival, you are finally deposited on the receiving world of Havona, you arrive with only one sort of perfection — perfection of purpose. Your purpose has been thoroughly proved; your faith has been tested. You are known to be disappointment proof. Not even the failure to discern the Universal Father can shake the faith or seriously disturb the trust of an ascendant mortal who has passed through the experience that all must traverse in order to attain the perfect spheres of Havona. By the time you reach Havona, your sincerity has become sublime. Perfection of purpose and divinity of desire, with steadfastness of faith, have secured your entrance to the settled abodes of eternity; your deliverance from the uncertainties of time is full and complete; and now must you come face to face with the problems of Havona and the immensities of Paradise, to meet which you have so long been in training in the experiential epochs of time on the world schools of space. (UB 26:4.13)
Faith has won for the ascendant pilgrim a perfection of purpose which admits the children of time to the portals of eternity. Now must the pilgrim helpers begin the work of developing that perfection of understanding and that technique of comprehension which are so indispensable to Paradise perfection of personality. (UB 26:4.14)
Pilgrims will have to follow and master a program that will be quantitative, qualitative and experiential (intellectual, spiritual and supreme) UB 26:5.4. This program will consist of recognizing and clearly understanding: 1- On the 7th circuit, the Master Spirit of the ascending pilgrim’s superuniverse; 2- On the 6th circuit, the Supreme Being; 3- On the 5th circuit, the Infinite Spirit; 4- On the 4th circuit, the Eternal Son; and finally on the 3rd circuit, the Universal Father. On circuits 2 and 1, the program aims to prepare pilgrims to acquire citizenship of Paradise.
This booklet also mentions that there are few pilgrims who fail to recognize and understand an existential Paradise deity according to the program they must master on the Havona circuits 3, 4 or 5. We are told that these pilgrims all come from superuniverses 1, 2, 3,5 and 6. Those coming from superuniverses 4 and 7 respectively under the influence of the Master Spirits representing respectively the Father-Son deity association; and Father, Son and Spirit never experience failure.
Not many pilgrims experience the delay of seeming failure in the Deity adventure. Nearly all attain the Infinite Spirit, though occasionally a pilgrim from superuniverse number one does not succeed on the first attempt. The pilgrims who attain the Spirit seldom fail in finding the Son; of those who do fail on the first adventure, almost all hail from superuniverses three and five. The great majority of those who fail on the first adventure to attain the Father, after finding both the Spirit and the Son, hail from superuniverse number six, though a few from numbers two and three are likewise unsuccessful. And all this seems clearly to indicate that there is some good and sufficient reason for these apparent failures; in reality, simply unescapable delays. (UB 26:8.4)
The defeated candidates for the Deity adventure are placed under the jurisdiction of the chiefs of assignment, a group of primary supernaphim, and are remanded to the work of the realms of space for a period of not less than one millennium. They never return to the superuniverse of their nativity, always to that supercreation most propitious for their retraining in preparation for the second Deity adventure. Following this service, on their own motion, they return to the outer circle of Havona, are immediately escorted to the circle of their interrupted career, and at once resume their preparations for the Deity adventure. Never do the secondary supernaphim fail to pilot their subjects successfully on the second attempt, and the same superaphic ministers and other guides always attend these candidates during this second adventure. (UB 26:8.5)
We are also told this:
Those who are unsuccessful in the first effort at Deity attainment are advanced from the circle of failure directly to the second circle before they are returned to superuniverse service. Thus the counselors and advisers also serve as the counselors and comforters of these disappointed pilgrims. They have just encountered their greatest disappointment, in no way differing from the long list of such experiences whereon they climbed, as on a ladder, from chaos to glory—except in its magnitude. These are they who have drained the experiential cup to its dregs; and I have observed that they temporarily return to the services of the superuniverses as the highest type of loving ministrators to the children of time and temporal disappointments. (UB 26:10.2)
After a long sojourn on circuit number two the subjects of disappointment are examined by the councils of perfection sitting on the pilot world of this circle and are certified as having passed the Havona test; and this, so far as nonspiritual status is concerned, grants them the same standing in the universes of time as if they had actually succeeded in the Deity adventure. The spirit of such candidates was wholly acceptable; their failure was inherent in some phase of the technique of approach or in some part of their experiential background. (UB 26:10.3)
Let us note the following important points:
- They never return to the superuniverse of their nativity, but always to the supercreation most favorable for their re-education preparatory to the second adventure of Deity.
- They temporarily return to superuniverse service as loving ministers of the highest type to the children of time and the temporally disappointed. (They acquire inestimable quality and value in the finite and to the Supreme Being.)
- Their failure was inherent in a certain phase of the approach technique or a certain part of their experiential learning. (in other words: not their fault)
Finally, in closing, I would like to bring this excerpt to your attention:
The fourth Havona circuit is sometimes called the “circuit of the Sons.” From the worlds of this circuit the ascending pilgrims go to Paradise to achieve an understanding contact with the Eternal Son, while on the worlds of this circuit the descending pilgrims achieve a new comprehension of the nature and mission of the Creator Sons of time and space. There are seven worlds in this circuit on which the reserve corps of the Paradise Michaels maintain special service schools of mutual ministry to both the ascending and descending pilgrims; and it is on these worlds of the Michael Sons that the pilgrims of time and the pilgrims of eternity arrive at their first truly mutual understanding of one another. In many respects the experiences of this circuit are the most intriguing of the entire Havona sojourn. (UB 26:8.1)
I had always wondered why 1 million Michael Sons when there is a potential of only 700,000 local universes? I believe the other 300,000 Michael Sons are those.
After careful consideration I have come to the conclusion that there are no anomalies or failures in those who fail at first. They return temporarily to superuniverse service as loving ministers of the highest type to the children of time and to the temporally disappointed. They thus gain an irreplaceable experience which makes them immensely loving, understanding, and empathetic toward their fellows and other personality types. This is an important experiential contribution to the Supreme and therefore to the finite. The revelators also tell us this: All this seems to indicate clearly that there is a good and valid reason for these apparent failures. In reality, they are simply unavoidable and therefore necessary delays. Moreover, this delay lasts only a millennium. Consider Andon and Fonta who are still in the local system welcoming survivors arriving to the House worlds for almost a million years, thus delaying their own ascension.
These pilgrims experience the greatest disappointment, but they are not the only ones: think in particular of two finaliters who attempt to achieve the trinitization of a creature and who fail after an extremely long duration:
If two mortal finaliters, on going before the Architects of the Master Universe, demonstrate that they have independently chosen an identical concept for trinitization, the Architects are empowered, on their own discretion, to promulgate mandates permitting these glorified mortal ascenders to extend their recess and to remove themselves for a time to the trinitizing sector of the Paradise Citizens. At the end of this assigned retreat, if they report that they have singly and jointly elected to make the paradisiacal effort to spiritualize, idealize, and actualize a selected and original concept which has not theretofore been trinitized, then does Master Spirit Number Seven issue orders authorizing such an extraordinary undertaking. (UB 22:7.5)
Unbelievably long periods of time are sometimes consumed in these adventures; an age seems to pass before these faithful and determined onetime mortals—and sometimes Paradise-Havona personalities—finally achieve their goal, really succeed in bringing their chosen concept of universal truth into actual being. And not always do these devoted couples meet with success; many times they fail, and that through no discoverable error on their part. Candidates for trinitization who thus fail are admitted to a special group of finaliters who are designated as beings who have made the supreme effort and sustained the supreme disappointment. (UB 22:7.6)
I find that there is a certain similarity with the Havona pilgrims except that this time, they are perfect personalities in the sense of the finished. Again, we are told that there is no error on their part. There seems to be a plan, because these candidates are admitted into a special class of finaliters: those who have made the supreme effort and suffered the supreme disappointment.
