© 2003 Ken Glasziou
© 2003 The Brotherhood of Man Library
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
Pascal, Pensées IV
“. . . much of your past life and its memories, having neither spiritual meaning nor morontia value, will perish with the material brain; much of material experience will pass away as onetime scaffolding which, having bridged you over to the morontia level, no longer serves a purpose in the universe” (UB 112:5.22)
Only that which has spiritual meaning and value survives with our soul. So what has spiritual value? Many hours of searching The Urantia Book may fail to find even a clue. The difficulty is that words like meaning and value have no hard and fast definition and for almost all conceivable occurrences must be considered in relative terms.
The problem was highlighted by a bishop who, in struggling to define morality, realized that all moral acts are situational—they happen in a some particular situation that will never recur with all details of the situation exactly the same. Hence no precise definition is even possible.
Like morality, a spiritual value is both situational and relative. So having nailed that down, can we get further? In one occurrence in the Papers, we find, “Spiritual development is determined by the capacity therefore and is directly proportional to elimination of the selfish qualities of love.” (UB 100:2.4) That at least has a concrete meaning in that we can guarantee we will make spiritual growth if we reduce our selfishness.
There are three remarkable conversations recorded in the Papers that occurred during the visit of Jesus to Rome with his student, Ganid. All three were with Greeks intellectuals who had been imbued with the driving principle that marked the uniqueness of Greek philosophy—the belief that pure thought is capable of solving all of our difficulties.
A key statement for our search on the meaning of spiritual values was made to one of them named Mardus, “Goodness, like truth is always relative and unfailingly evil-contrasted.” Since God is the source and measure of all goodness (for “only God is good”), we can set God at one end of the relativity scale for determining all value. In his comment to Mardus, Jesus fixes the other end—evil. How evil? From comments made elsewhere, extreme selfishness may underpin the superlative for evil.
In the first of these discourses, Jesus to said to Angamon, “The standard of true values must be looked for in the spiritual world and on divine levels of eternal reality. To an ascending mortal all lower and material standards must be recognized as transient, partial, and inferior.” (UB 132:1.2)
This confirms that the top end of the scale is divinity itself, and since all divinity is one, no subdivision is necessary. But it also tells us that there are no values that belong directly to the material world itself. Diamonds and dollars, mansions and motor cars have absolutely no value when we pack our belongings and depart for the morontia worlds. And if fame has a value then it is only in proportion to its content of goodness.
“In every age scientists and religionists must recognize that they are on trial before the bar of human need. They must eschew all warfare between themselves while they strive valiantly to justify their continued survival by enhanced devotion to the service of human progress.” (UB 132:1.4)
To Mardus, he also said, “But the soul that survives time and emerges into eternity must make a living and personal choice between good and evil as they are determined by the true values of the spiritual standards established by the divine spirit which the Father in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This indwelling spirit is the standard of personality survival.” (UB 132:2.2)
A feeling of importance is a dire warning that something is going dreadfully wrong.
Man is perishing that may be, but if it is nothingness that awaits us, then let us so live that it will be an unjust fate.
Miguel de Unamuno
All that goes with us to the mansion worlds is, in some way, related to our spiritual goodness. Nothing else will qualify. Our indwelling Father-Spirit is both the determiner of value and the custodian of our soul.
Goodness, like truth, is always relative and unfailingly evil-contrasted. It is the perception of these qualities of goodness and truth that enables the evolving souls of men to make those personal decisions of choice which are essential to eternal survival. . . . (UB 132:2.3)
“Goodness is always growing toward new levels of the increasing liberty of moral self-realization and spiritual personality attainment—the discovery of, and identification with, the indwelling Adjuster. An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one’s fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father’s will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him.” (UB 132:2.5)
Experiences come regardless. Each carries the opportunity for decisions. If there are no decisions, no values can come into being. Our indwelling Father-Spirit is the arbiter and he cannot be fooled, not even by the world’s best of con artists. The degree of unselfishness in our decisions is a major factor for determining value.
As you ascend the universe scale of creature development, you will find increasing goodness and diminishing evil in perfect accordance with your capacity for goodness-experience and truth-discernment. (UB 132:2.6)
Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of truth and beauty. Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted with the negative counterpart—the shadows of potential evil. . . . (UB 132:2.7)
“The possibility of evil is necessary to moral choosing, but not the actuality thereof.” (UB 132:2.10)
To Nabon, the third member of this triad, Jesus said, “Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living. Truth is always more than knowledge. Knowledge pertains to things observed, but truth transcends such purely material levels in that it consorts with wisdom and embraces such imponderables as human experience, even spiritual and living realities. Knowledge originates in science; wisdom, in true philosophy; truth, in the religious experience of spiritual living. Knowledge deals with facts; wisdom, with relationships; truth, with reality values. . . .” (UB 132:3.2)
“Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him. There is never conflict between true knowledge and truth.” (UB 132:3.4)
[The beauty of these words automatically generates the thought, “Did any man ever write or speak thus.” To which a reply might be, “Perhaps occasionally but never consistently.” The revelatory truth in the Papers is self-validating.]
Though the work may be important the self is not. UB 48:6.37
There follows a quite remarkable comment defining faith as our “sublime hope.” What we hope to become sets the scale for our values: “Truth can never become man’s possession without the exercise of faith. This is true because man’s thoughts, wisdom, ethics, and ideals will never rise higher than his faith, his sublime hope. And all such true faith is predicated on profound reflection, sincere self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness. Faith is the inspiration of the spiritized creative imagination.” (UB 132:3.5)
“Faith acts to release the superhuman activities of the divine spark, the immortal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the potential of eternal survival” (UB 132:3.6)
Our faith and our hopes are important both for adding purpose to our existence and for their spiritualization.
A little further on in this discourse we find a definition for spiritual evolution. “Spiritual evolution is an experience of the increasing and voluntary choice of goodness attended by an equal and progressive diminution of the possibility of evil. With the attainment of finality of choice for goodness and of completed capacity for truth appreciation, there comes into existence a perfection of beauty and holiness whose righteousness eternally inhibits the possibility of the emergence of even the concept of potential evil. Such a God-knowing soul casts no shadow of doubting evil when functioning on such a high spirit level of divine goodness. . . .” (UB 132:3.8)
There is positive feedback from our choices and our decision making, fortifying and upgrading their spiritual value depending upon the content of goodness and unselfishness but doing the opposite if through selfishness we slip waywardly backwards toward the pole tainted by evil. Positive feedback actually feeds upon itself. It has the characteristic of the more you do it, the more there is of it and the faster you get there. But it cuts both ways.
And at the conclusion of the discourses there is a concise statement of the revelation promise given in these Papers, “The presence of the Paradise spirit in the mind of man constitutes the revelation promise and the faith pledge of an eternal existence of divine progression for every soul seeking to achieve identity with this immortal and indwelling spirit fragment of the Universal Father.” (UB 132:3.9)
The fulfillment of the revelatory promise is dependent on both our conscious and our unconscious seeking for identity with the one who is simply “good.”