© 2003 Ken Glasziou
© 2003 The Brotherhood of Man Library
This discourse (UB 133:5.4) was between Jesus and a Greek philosopher, ostensibly in about 20 A.D. Coupled with the knowledge of our personal indwelling by the spirit of the Father, it outlines all that is needed for comprehending the purpose of our human existence.
“Scientists may some day measure the energy, or force manifestations, of gravitation, light, and electricity, but these same scientists can never (scientifically) tell you what these universe phenomena are.” (UB 133:5.4)
Today this remains as true as ever. Some may think we know, or can know, it all. The reality is that when we put our knowledge under the microscope, the extent of that knowledge, though praiseworthy and in many ways quite incredible in its ingenuity, basically it is superficial.
An example is electricity. Granted we know that electric current is a flow of electrons in the direction of a potential difference in voltage. We also know there is both an electric field and, at right angles to it, a magnetic field associated with moving electrons. And we know a lot about manipulating electricity in weird and wonderful ways.
But there are more basic questions to be answered. What really is an electric charge? Of what does it consist? What really happens when an electron and its anti-particle, a positron, collide and annihilate? The observed result is a transformation in which two photons are produced. But formerly the electron and positron both had charge and mass. Now there is neither. A simple answer—the charges neutralized one another and the mass became electromagnetic energy. But how??? And what is energy?
Every item of our knowledge can be extended more deeply until we come to a point where real knowledge ceases—leaving us to ponder the unknown or unknowable.
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called. Timothy 6:20.
The doing of the Will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God. UB 111:5.1
“Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations.” (UB 133:5.4)
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote: “Philosophy is not a cognitive discipline. There are no philosophical propositions, no philosophical knowledge. The goal of philosophy is not knowledge but understanding.”
“There always exists the danger that the purely physical scientist may become afflicted with mathematical pride and statistical egotism, not to mention spiritual blindness.” (UB 133:5.4)
This problem appears to be rare amongst truly great scientists. Dogmatism and arrogance, as with religionists, belong to a lesser breed.
“Quantity may be identified as a fact, thus becoming a scientific uniformity. Quality, being a matter of mind interpretation, represents an estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the individual.” (UB 133:5.7)
Value and quality are always relative. Like beauty, they are in the eye of the beholder.
“There is unity in the cosmic universe if you could only discern its workings in actuality. The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God.” (UB 133:5.8)
The real universe is God’s universe and it is friendly to real personalities who surrender their free will back to God in order to seek the perfection that is God. The alternative choice is the sovereignty of self-will—the final effect of which is alienation from reality itself.
“The real problem is: How can the finite mind of man achieve a logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought? This universe-knowing state of mind can be had only by conceiving that the quantitative fact and the qualitative value have a common causation in the Paradise Father.” (UB 133:5.8)
He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer.
William Blake
No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.
Thomas Browne
Jesus informed us that only God is good, that all goodness has its origin in God. We also have, “Man might fear a great God but he trusts and loves only a good God. This goodness of God is a part of the personality of God, and its full revelation appears only in the personal religious experience of the believing sons of God.” If we strive for goodness we strive for God. Jesus also said: “I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly to me—this all powerful truth I insist on believing with a whole-hearted trust in spite of all appearances to the contrary.”
Our total faith and trust in the goodness of God and the friendliness of all his universe unifies our minds and our personalities with the God-Spirit-Within—and in spite of any and all conflicting appearances, there is unity.
“Such a conception of reality yields a broader insight into the purposeful unity of universe phenomena; it even reveals a spiritual goal of progressive personality achievement.” (UB 133:5.8)
There is purpose to mortal life—the spiritual goal of the attainment of goodness.
“And this is a concept of unity which can sense the unchanging background of a living universe of continually changing impersonal relations and evolving personal relationships.” (UB 133:5.8)
The only unchanging thing anywhere is the Eternal God. God is the stable background whose presence our unified minds are able to sense.
“Matter and spirit and the state intervening between them are three interrelated and inter-associated levels of the true unity of the real universe. Regardless of how divergent the universe phenomena of fact and value may appear to be, they are, after all, unified in the Supreme.” (UB 133:5.9)
The state intervening between matter and spirit is “morontia.” But all is one in the experiential God of the finite universes, the Supreme Being.
“Reality of material existence attaches to unrecognized energy as well as to visible matter. When the energies of the universe are so slowed down that they acquire the requisite degree of motion, then under favorable conditions, these same energies become mass.” (UB 133:5.10)
Prior to the a-bomb, this concept was virtually unthinkable for the human psyche. Our physicists now seek to confirm that somewhere above an energy level of 20 billion billion electron volts, there is a zone of zero mass. As energy levels decrease, an as yet hypothetical particle, the Higgs boson, provides the mechanism that breaks the symmetry of the zero mass hypothesis, thus enabling the existence of the low mass particles that make up our finite world of matter.
“And forget not, the mind which can alone perceive the presence of apparent realities is itself also real.”
Mind is real and distinct from matter even at the level of the physical-energy-associated mechanical mind of the lower organisms. Mind caters for levels appropriate for the spiritual, morontial, and finite material states.
It is better to give up trying to get others to love you and to concentrate on being somebody whom others can love.
Of all the dangers which beset man’s mortal nature and jeopardize his spiritual integrity, pride is the greatest. (UB 111:6.9)
“And the fundamental cause of this universe of energy-mass, mind, and spirit, is eternal—it exists and consists in the nature and reactions of the Universal Father and his absolute co-ordinates.”
Missing from this discourse to the Greek philosopher but required for completion of our understanding of both reality and our place and purpose in that reality, is the partnership that we mortals must establish with the indwelling Father-Spirit—God’s gift of a unique part of himself to each ascending mortal.
In this partnership the will of the human personality reigns paramount in the sense that it alone must make the freewill commitment to doing the will of God.
The will of God is the way of God and the way of God is goodness. Therefore our commitment to doing God’s will is a commitment to the ultimate attainment of divine goodness. Hence the reality of our universe career is the experiential perfecting of goodness that will qualify us to attain the very presence of the Father—and beyond.
In summary: