© 2002 Joseph Servant
© 2002 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 22 — Summer 2002 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 22 — Summer 2002 | Life Carriers |
From all eternity exists the “I AM”, the infinite God who created the universe of universes and administers it unceasingly. (UB 195:7.18); He reveals himself to us as the Universal Father, a Father-friend. The center of the universe of universes is the central universe, a perfect universe composed of Paradise, surrounded by 10 concentric elliptical circuits, comprising more than a billion spheres inhabited by a myriad of perfect created people. This central universe had no beginning, it has always existed, it is existential. Around this existential universe, on successive elliptical circuits, the Grand universe was built experientially, evolutionarily, starting from the primordial energy which condenses into nebulae from which suns are expelled, which eject planets like ours.
As soon as these planets become habitable, a hierarchy of creative personalities will bring life there in the form of an initial programmed cell, then orchestrate its evolution through the plant, animal, then human phases; where each phase is the consequence of the previous one and feeds on it.
Concerning our earth, life began there about a billion years ago with the era of marine life to end, a million years ago, with the most evolved mammal, the primate. The best couple of these primates was chosen to become human - it was the mutation of the animal to man - These two primates then received, from the universal Father, the gift of personality which definitively differentiated them from the animal by giving them an identity, a self-awareness, a free will allowing them to choose, and a mental increase. By the gift of this free will, absolutely respected, man becomes responsible for his destiny, he is faced with the choice of basing himself solely on the reactions of his mind or of seeking the help of his divine guides who are: God the Father who is love, the absolute of values, the absolute of truth, our goal to achieve; Jesus, Son of God who is our Master, our Brother-friend, our educator who reveals us and leads us into the truth, he is the path leading us to the Father; the Holy Spirit who educates us from the blossoming of primitive physical reflex instincts to wisdom, and then promotes our development towards logic, morality and spirituality; our Guardian Angel - Angel friend - who guides us by manipulating our environment. Let us ask these divine helpers to enlighten us, to lead us into the living truth so that we build in ourselves and by ourselves our religion. Religion is strictly personal.
“While the earthly child contains a material fraction of his human father, there exists a spiritual fraction of the heavenly Father in every son of the kingdom by faith” (UB 148:4.10); this fragment of the Father, our Thought Adjuster, individualizes the love of the Father, it inhabits our mind as soon as it has become moral, and with this mind, it will engender our soul, our spiritual self, of which it is the Father; and the Holy Spirit, creator of the mind, is the Mother of our soul, our Mother-friend. Our second birth will occur when, having become conscious of our sonship with the Father, we decide to do his will; it is the passage from the world of the flesh to the world of the spirit, to the world of love; it is following Jesus. After the death of our physical body, our soul will continue its path towards worlds where the habits of life are righteousness and the joy of living in truth. (l 935-0) Man is the descendant of combative animals, he has within him the potential of all the physical and mental qualities acquired and developed during evolution: the solidity of the oak, the agility of the doe, the cunning of the fox, … “the human intellect takes root in the material origin of animal races” (UB 9:5.5); Evolution wants his original qualities of selfishness and pride to push him to be the dominant one. This is material life. But as soon as the fragment of the Father comes to inhabit his mind, it leads him to spiritual life, to love. His material ego gradually fades before his spiritual self, his soul. Only the soul loves.
Life is a drama. Our path consists of dying to the material life based on selfishness and pride, to be born to the spiritual life based on altruism and humility, a life where the only motive for action is love; such is the goal of our earthly life.
Love cannot be imposed. To love is to free oneself from the self, it is to forget oneself for the benefit of what is external to oneself. It is the domain of equity, sharing and selfless devotion. Love is born only from a deep and consummate understanding of the motives and feelings of our neighbor.
Love is constantly instilled in us by our divine helpers, but its application depends solely on the free will choice of our personality.
The main religions refer to Abraham; they are based on the unique concept of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men, but, if they have retained this concept, they have left it more and more in the background, stifled by rivalries, customs and rituals. Each religion has two kinds of adherents: sincere believers in a God of love, acting with love in their social relations, they are bearers of the blossoming of religion because they live love, they are the silent majority; and those who, without deep conviction, responding to the need to belong to a community, place themselves under a banner of which they establish themselves the defenders, in order to be able to give free rein to their quarrelsome temperaments characteristic of their immaturity, they are the destroyers of religion because they live hatred, but they are our brothers; they are the noisy minority. Each religion has its terrorists.
Originally, man is naturally belligerent, he defends his territory, he likes to fight; but his first nature will gradually come into conflict with his second nature manifested by the need to be loved and to love, the need of his nascent soul; and it is by seeking to satisfy this need that we can act positively on him; it is to direct him towards his God of love, it is to follow the evolution. Let us use the powerful force of love. The earth is dying from lack of love, it is the cause of poverty. Terrorism will not be eliminated by fighting the terrorist with weapons, but by loving him, because he is only backward or misguided. It is up to sincere believers of all religions, atheists included, to courageously enlist in this mission of love in order to defend the purity of their religion and their culture by imposing true values. Holy war does not exist, because what is holy is good and fraternal for all humanity.
The delinquent is the victim of a society that does not educate its youth. Society must vigorously invest in an education based on the teaching and practice of true values, generalized on a global scale, and provided to adults as well as young people. Let us use television positively. Let us educate public opinion, it will then clean up. Public opinion is none other than the expression of the Spirit of Truth through each individual.
The Church was an inevitable and useful social result of the life and teachings of Jesus. The tragedy was that this social reaction to the teachings of the kingdom so completely supplanted the spiritual concept of the true kingdom, as Jesus taught and lived it, that a formal, institutional Church became the substitute for the kingdom brotherhood individually led by the spirit of God indwelling the mind of man, our Thought Adjuster. (UB 170:5.10)
André Malraux said “the twenty-first century will be spiritual or it will not be.” The spiritual is love, and love is the true, the beautiful and the good, these are the true values, living values because “truth is coherent, beauty is attractive and goodness is stabilizing. And, when these three values of reality are coordinated in personal experience, the result is a high quality of love, conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty” (UB 2:7.12). Faith is “human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.” (UB 195:7.1)
Joseph Servant
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 22 — Summer 2002 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 22 — Summer 2002 | Life Carriers |