© 1999 Larry Mullins
© 1999 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| The Quest for Spiritual Culture: Toward a New Paradigm of Spirituality | Fall 1999 — Index | Living the Family of God |
Note: The term “Meta-Values” was coined originally by Abraham Maslow. Dr. Maslow believed a “Science of Values” should be developed, an idea that has yet to be realized. Urantians can readily grasp the concept of Meta-Values, and can use it to improve their ability to live the teachings of the Urantia Papers.
Human activity, ideally, is an organized Meta-Valuedriven “system” that must operate within a changing and difficult world. Modern discoveries in quantum physics show that closed, old-fashioned systems and organizations which strive for stability and control are doomed to entropy and decay, while only resilient, organic systems survive and thrive amid the rapid changes of modern life. Do not be discouraged if you discover yourself repeatedly slipping “out of the zone.” Consider this analogy: the successful Apollo flight to the moon was on course only ten percent of the time! Keep at it and you will become so adept at “course correction” that it will happen unconsciously, and virtually automatically.
Values and Meta-Values have been written about by many religionists. The Urantia Papers have sought to interface with the highest and most enlightened precepts of science in their revelation of spiritual insight. The Urantia Papers, as no other document in history, establish the unity of truth that is underlying the highest scientific precepts and the richest spiritual insights.
As Urantians, we are called upon to release the prodigious concept of Meta-Values from the twin-tombs of religious dogma and scientific materialism, where it lives comatose with a logic-tight barrier preventing “cross-pollination.” The concept of Meta-Values needs to be re-activated. To energize and activate the concept of Meta-Values, we must understand it as synthesized and connected with all enlightened discoveries and with the disciplines of science, religion, and philosophy. If this is done, Meta-Values can be transcultural and unifying, in the same way technology is transcultural.
Indeed, Urantians know that Meta-Values are part of the unity of truth that underlies all of reality. Therefore, we must assert that Meta-Values are not a mere question of taste and preference, but a universal language of cosmic realities. Therefore, what is True for me is also True for you, and for Aborigines, Chinese, Spanish, or Russians. Likewise, what is Beautiful and Good transcends — or should eventually transcend-cultural barriers. Love, or Truth in Action, is the ultimate universal language of Urantians. With these points in mind about the unity of Truth, we will revisit the scientific grounds upon which an enlarged Urantian theory of Meta-Values may partially rest.
Some of what the Urantia Papers tell us was discovered clinically and presented by Abraham Maslow when he coined the term Meta-Values, and proposed a Science of Values several decades ago. The major difference between Dr. Maslow’s ideas and the Urantian perspective is that Maslow believed Meta-Values to be higher biological drives that have no relationship to spiritual realities. The enlarged Urantian theory proposes that Meta-Values are spiritual realities, that they originate in God, and these spiritual realities impinge upon the human psyche, through the Thought Adjuster interaction with an enlightened mind. People and things have value, Meta-Values are value.
The difference between the two views is significant. We cannot have a relationship with even the most personally attuned of the Meta-Values — Goodness. We can only have a relationship with another person. In the inner life we can have a relationship with the personal aspects of God, the loving Father of the Universe. It is this living relationship that is the basis for The Step Beyond [1]. Without such a relationship, goodness is only a philosophical principle.
We Urantians insist that Goodness is far more than a bromide: Goodness is THE basic personality-related reality of the benevolent universe. As Rodan observed, God is far more than this personality reality — but he cannot be less.
Dr. Maslow certainly was aware of the perplexing question of the true origin and nature of Values. Had he attributed Meta-Values to a personal God, Maslow would have probably been ridiculed by his colleagues, and quickly fallen into academic oblivion. However, he wrote boldly and went farther than most scientific minds:
“Man demonstrates in his own nature a pressure toward fuller and fuller Being, more and more actualization of his humanness …Man is ultimately not molded or shaped into humanness or taught to be human…This is not contradiction to the data that is already amassed which show clearly that living in a family and in a culture are absolutely necessary to actualize these psychological potentials that define humanness.” [2]
Dr. Maslow is asserting here that we absolutely need people-associations to actualize our own human potentials as tangible realities. The Urantia Papers extend that premise to say that we also absolutely need a relationship with a “person” in the inner life-God the Father-to actualize our spiritual potentials. The fruits of success in the inner life naturally overflow and enrich the way we think and act. Testimony after testimony by Twelve Step participants, and folks who have had peak religious experiences, prove that this is at least a plausible, if not a certain conclusion — even when approached by secular scientific methods.
The Urantia Papers propose that the “self-actualizing” process of Dr. Maslow is significantly a spiritual as well as a psychological process. More than that, the Papers propose that the self-actualizing process itself will never be understood by psychology until the reality of spiritual factors are accepted. The self-actualizing process was acknowledged by Maslow as moving us toward higher realities — toward what is True, Beautiful and Good. It is therefore not unreasonable to argue that self-actualizing is in essence a spiritualizing process, so to speak. Again, Dr. Maslow also saw the clear connection:
“If the various extant religions may be taken as expressions of human aspiration, i.e., what people would like to become if only they could, then we can see here too a validation of the affirmation that all people yearn toward self-actualization, or tend toward it. This is so because our description of the actual characteristics of self-actualizing people parallels manyof the points and the ideals urged by the religions, e.g., the transcendence of self, the fusion of the true, the good and the beautiful, contribution to others, wisdom, honesty and naturalness, the transcendence of selfish and personal motivations, the giving up of ”lower“ desires in favor of ”higher“ ones, increased friendliness and kindness, the differentiation between ends (tranquility, serenity, peace,) and means (money, power, status,) the decrease in hostility, cruelty and destructiveness(Although decisiveness, justified anger and indignation, self-affirmation, etc. may very well increase.)” [3]
In this brilliant series of insights Dr. Maslow compares the Values and qualities he discovered in studying the highest and best humans with the spiritual qualities of religionists. It was in a later work, Values, Religion and Peak Experiences, that Maslow declared that the domain of Values should be appropriated, or impinged upon, by science for study. His opinion was that religionists should no longer be able to lay exclusive claim to enlightened Values. A scientist, he believed, should face the facts of the discovery of Meta-Values as intrinsic (but usually latent qualities) in all normal humans. Meta-Values fully emerge as the fruits of maturity in the highest (most efficient, effective, mature and successful) human specimens. Maslow insisted that scientists should objectively study these Values.
Unfortunately, Maslow did not (perhaps could not) propose to appropriate “God” along with Meta-Values for scientific study. However, Viktor Frankl, the Austrian Psychiatrist who survived the Nazi death camps, was not reluctant to factor God into the human psyche. Frankl did not advocate that science return its original role of hand-maiden to theology, but rather had a more daring vision for scientists:
“In contrast to the ‘fluid’ border between the conscious and unconscious, the line between the spiritual and the instinctual cannot be drawn sharply enough …Since human existence is spiritual existence, we now see the distinction between conscious and unconscious becomes unimportant compared to another distinction: The real criterion of authentically human existence derives from discerning whether a given phenomenon is spiritual or instinctual…This is due to the fact that — in contrast to the psychoanalytic concept — being human is not being driven but ‘deciding what one is going to be’ to quote Jaspers…or to quote Heidegger: ‘I would say that being human is being responsible. . . responsible for one’s own existence.’” [4]
Viktor Frankl’s observations deserve careful consideration by Urantians. He believed in an inner core of spiritual reality as the critical reality-factor in human development. The Urantia Papers define this irreducible essence of self as personality, making the distinction between the essence and human personality, which may be said to be the shadow of the essence. Moreover, Frankl lived this truth in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and survived deprivation beyond our imagining. Frankl defined religion as an inner, personal experience of this spiritual reality:
“If religion is to survive it will have to become a profoundly personalized religion which allows any human being to speak a language of his or her own when addressing himself or herself to the ultimate being… God is partner to our most intimate soliloquies.” [5]
No wise Urantian will fail to note the parallel of Frankl’s insights with the revelation of the Urantia Papers:
“Since true religion is a matter of personal spiritual experience, it is inevitable that each individual religionist must have his own and personal interpretation of the realization of that spiritual experience. Let the term ”faith" stand for the individual’s relation to God rather than for the creedal formulation of what some group of mortals have been able to agree upon as a common religious attitude. 'Have you faith? Then have it to yourself. “ “ (UB 99:5.7)
Unfortunately, much of the great work of Viktor Frankl has not been fully recognized due to the influence of the sacred cow of “scientific” mono-materialism. Indeed, much of modern science has broken with the tyranny of religious dogma, only to become virtually bound in the tyranny of mono-materialism. So, when most quantum scientists run up against the unexplainable, timeless, spaceless mysteries of the very small, they find it safer to postulate a preposterous series of “infinite parallel universes,” than to allow for a more elegantly logical First Source and Center.
These scientists would rather affront our common sense than admit to the existence of God, even as an impersonal force. Thus they fail to see that it is logical that emerging reality of the inconceivably small is timeless, spaceless, and not under physical law. For they are looking at the fringes of the Unqualified Absolute — they are seeing the peripheral stages of the mind of God as, amid his Absoluteness, he makes “room” for time and space.Therefore, we Urantians must now challenge the ultimate sacred cow of science (not of all scientists, but contemporary science in general) — that God is territory that is virtually forbidden to scientific inquiry.
Especially important evidence that clinically supports the concept of a contactable God-presence in the human psyche may be drawn from the abundant testimony of Twelve Step participants. There are overwhelming signs that there is “something” — yet to be scientifically accounted for — that is functioning in Twelve Step Programs. Why is it forbidden to postulate, from this evidence, the possibility of a personal God — just as science postulates black holes and “strange attractors” by examining only the provisionary evidence of their existence?
Surely a master practitioner of enlightened modern scientific objectivity could place a negative template over the earlier stated insights by Dr. Maslow and thereby discover evidence of a void — a missing dynamic that could be filled if a scientist were “allowed” to at least consider the possibility of the existence of a personal, inner God as postulated by Viktor Frankl.
Consider what Dr. Maslow has said: First his assertion of an absolute need for personal relationships if we are to actualize as fully functioning humans. Second, Dr. Maslow saw the intrinsic nature of Values as parallel to religious feelings, and as qualities which emerge from within — without exception — in all healthy, SelfActualizing people. If we add to these two postulates the mountain of human testimony about the inner life experience, God becomes a reasonable, perhaps a compelling possibility. We must, then, be puzzled to observe modern science cripple and distort itself as it twists and turns to avoid even considering the factoringin of God as a cosmic reality. The mono-materialistic scientist is a high priest of a dogma that is as restrictive as that of the 19th century theologian.
It is arguable that Abraham Maslow perceived Meta-Values, and understood them on the operative level better than any well known psychologist or religionist before or since. He understood that we must make “gut level” value judgments, or choices, constantly. What we elect as our core values matters enormously. What we are is clearly revealed by our gut-level choices and unconscious, habitual actions.
“Actualizing” as a psychological concept parallels spiritual growth in that it is ultimately about effective and productive choosing. Actualizing is the process of choosing the more “actual” or the more real over any other alternative. Actualizing is the choice of the Good over the less good, the Beautiful over the less beautiful, and the True over the less true. Actualizing is about choosing Love over indifference. Finally, actualizing is choosing Growth over inertia or safety. These psychological concepts espoused by Dr. Maslow are in perfect parallel with the Urantia Papers. The Urantia Papers are, to a large degree, an education toward the ability to make decisions, with the repetitious caveat that a decision is never completed until it is acted out. How do Meta-Values help us decide which path is the path to growth?
When an individual personally discovers the reality of Beauty and Truth in the universe, this experience allows him to conjecture (at least) the existence of an impersonal Higher Force. The discovery of Goodness, or benevolence, in the universe goes further. It allows us to suppose that the source for this universal “force” is personal and caring. On the level of our own experience, we discover the power of Goodness when we see that it is the Meta-Value most closely related to people and relationships. Does this matter? Yes, it matters enormously:
Every evil philosophy that has done harm, that has exploited, humiliated and persecuted people, every belief that drenched our planet with innocent blood, was devoid of Goodness in its core values.
If you are a Urantian business person, a career-seeker, or any type of visionary, Meta-Values can add a single ingredient to your “Mission Statement” or your life vision that could multiply its effectiveness many times. MetaValues provide a core of strength and stability within — a strength that will never fail you — and yet Meta-Values will also stimulate and fuel fearless growth and progress in the face of a changing world.
Perhaps the best way to explain the importance of the key Meta-Value of Goodness, and how it works to configure behavior, is to consider what can happen when people overlook it. Our highest and most enlightened leaders and scholars too often forget its importance. For example, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, a man whom the Economist has called: “God’s man in action,” has defined leadership in this way: “[Leadership] requires three things: having a clear vision, articulating it well, and getting your team enthusiastic about sharing it. And above all, the leader must be consistent. As the Bible says, no one follows an uncertain trumpet.”
The problem with this definition is that it could work (and did work) for an Adolph Hitler or any criminal mind as efficiently as for a high-minded leader. When Goodness, in the sense of unconditional concern for all people, is omitted from a philosophy, the philosophy can drive a leader to do great harm. The development of leadership characteristics, divorced from values-especially MetaValues, and particularly Goodness — can result in a virtual human monster who is hungry for power and control at any cost. Greatness, in reaching its most enlightened human levels of attainment, cannot be divorced from goodness. A nation of people that does not collectively require Goodness and integrity from its leaders is on a slippery slope.
A Value-sensitive definition of Urantian leadership is: a leader who establishes a core set of worthy Values and who pursues a Vision that is harmonious with these Values. Yes, the leader needs to be clear and decisive, and must be able to excite her followers. But any mission or vision that does not take into account goodness, or the greatest good for all concerned, is inadequate to address the approaching millennium.
The Urantia Papers make it clear that authentic spirituality does not stop at the front door of a business. Further, the theme of The Urantia Book, from one perspective at least, hinges upon the reality and application of Meta-Values as the most practical, powerful, and transforming forces on earth. In the balance of this article we will examine ways Urantians can apply Meta-Values to revolutionize their lives.
Add an element of loving service to your life each day. Buckminster Fuller declared that the secret to his enormous success was his effort to orchestrate each encounter with each person for their benefit and spiritual advantage. At first, apply loving service within your own normal field of activity. If you have a difficult phone call to make to a friend or relative, resolve that it will result in their benefit and spiritual advantage. Look for the continuous small opportunities we are given to serve as you pass by.
The “Yoga of Love” is the royal road to freedom. Remember, the yoke of Truth and Love is light, it is never a burden. The Urantian-actualizer is generous and loving not as a reaction to guilt or imagined “duty,” but rather because he or she overflows with an abundance of the fruits of Truth, Beauty, Goodness and Love. The flow of MetaValue energies into the personality is actually enriched when an individual pours the fruits of Meta-Values out upon the world.
As you operate within your usual sphere of activity, watch also for the creative “unicorn” of opportunity which may appear at any moment. Beever-vigilant, ever-prepared to make the faith-action leap. Even as you leap, know that you are making a Faith-Action-and are entering into an endless process. And, even as you succeed, know that soon you will again be called upon to startle those who know you with an even more daring leap of faith. Faith-Action will, however, become second nature. And one day, almost unnoticed, the great peace that is beyond understanding will be yours. You will realize that anxiety, doubt, and tension have disappeared completely. You will then know you are in the zone, in the flow, and you are propelled toward your destiny upon the exquisite cosmic currents of “light” itself.
Recall the motto of the fledgling artist: “Not a day without a line.” As Rodan observed, your only task, each day, is to daily achieve Meta-Value alignment. Once we have alignment with the Father, all else follows. Without such alignment, you go forth to bend the universe to your own will. Anxiety, fear, exhaustion, and a continuous feeling of impending doom is the result.
Beauty may be discovered in the material world by the scientist, or it may exist spiritually as a Pattern that is a potential in the mind of God. Look for the Pattern that is yours, the one that cries out to be brought into material manifestation for the Supreme by your heart and mind and hands and feet. Spiritually, strive to capture your Pattern of what “ought to be.” Beauty is continuously seeking to actualize in your life. Each day try to foster the actualization of more Beauty. The state-of-mind we seek to rise to as we meditate upon Beauty is one of supreme confidence: We have a valuable gift to give.
As we Urantians go through our lives, if we are active, energetic people, we will brush and bump against other personalities. The riddle of other personalities must be solved. Knowing that you are a child of God, it is axiomatic that other people share equal spiritual status with you in this regard. You are not an only child. The Fatherhood of God clearly implies the brotherhood and sisterhood of humankind. This we Urantians cannot escape.
So keep in mind that when a thirty-year old Buckminster Fuller stood at the shores of a desolate, dark lake and considered suicide, he also stood upon the shores of destiny. When Fuller looked into the reality of non-life, he felt a life-changing, down-grasping message resonate in his heart. “You have no right to destroy yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe.”
Thus it is that we have no right to exit life, nor even avoid life because it seems to be a bleak struggle against impossible odds. As Cyrano declared: “A man fights for more than the mere hope of winning.” You belong to the universe no less than Buckminster Fuller, and the universe would have you claim your birthright as a child of God. The universe would teach us, at whatever cost, to love and serve our fellow brothers and sisters. We learn to love them through knowing them. As Marva Collins (the brilliant black teacher in Chicago who made Shakespearean scholars out of “hopeless” drop-outs), looked beyond the gross appearance and attitudes of the rejected children who came to her, we must learn to do likewise. Ms. Collins said she hugged them until “their eyes began to dance.” As the images of all those you know float into your consciousness during meditative moments, bless them with conviction and ungoverned energy.
Truth is a living, conscious drive toward objective reality. Truth is a growing composite of the exhilarating meanings and insights that we discern when we are “in the zone,” in a perfect dynamic balance between Beauty and Goodness. Truth is a pulsing, actualizing, creative and energetic attitude of recognition, confidence and love.
We do not seek to curb either our assertiveness nor our Will to Beauty, nor our compassion or Will to Goodness. No Meta-Value can be excessive. A Meta-Value can, however, cause problems when it is out of sync and harmony with its complement. So we struggle to maintain a position of equilibrium, or an exquisite poise, by enhancing the counter-part Meta-Value. Thus, if we are “too aggressive,” we rejoice at this energy, and balance it with an appropriate degree of compassion. If we are “too nice,” and are taken advantage of, we learn to rejoice in our aptitude of compassion, and foster an appropriate degree of assertiveness, or self-interest to achieve balance in future relationships.
In my job as a management consultant, I have learned that women managers are often wonderfully compassionate, but are actually frightened by their instincts to be assertive. Men, on the other hand, are generally very pleased with their assertiveness but afraid of the “touchy-feeley” stuff. They are afraid of their own Will to Goodness. Yet nothing is more compelling than the manager who is a dynamic balance of compassion and assertiveness. Confidence and Love, in appropriate measure, form the requisite dynamic for leadership in the dawning millennium.
This idea of enhancement of the desirable rather than repression of the less desirable is a unique paradigm shift that Jesus offered us, so please consider it carefully. This is the spiritually-transcendent method of making dramatic change. It is easily understood, but requires careful and thoughtful execution. If you have understood the requirements of the Master and have eliminated the resentments and self-doubt that bar the way, you can most effectively use the enhancement technique. When you apply it, you will experience results that are virtually beyond imagining, because you are engaging the mightiest forces in the universe. Rather than inhibiting, or controlling, or directing Meta-Values, you are learning to enhance them and balance theirenormous energies. No one can predict the result when Meta-Values achieve the enthralling, ephemeral moments of perfect balance in the human psyche.
These are powerful, deeply stirring questions for Urantians. They are disturbing because they challenge us to the inner core of our being. They probe our Values. They remind us that we may be on the wrong “bus,” and that we may one day find ourselves in a place where we never intended to be. When we are young, we may take this bus or that one, we may make many detours, and, laughing with the joy of childhood, pick up the pieces, and start again. When we are young we seem to have a limitless abundance of time.
But for all of us, there comes a day when we sense that it is time to be about the task we were created to fulfill. We no longer have the luxury of wasting energy and squandering time. And we face the fact that, locked within our heart and soul is the nine-tenths of us that the Supreme-and the world around us — most desperately needs. Now is the time to take the shortest road, with a sense of the greatest urgency. Too much is at stake to delay another day, even another moment.
So, if these questions disturb you, I urge you to read them again. Read them every day. Read them until you can answer them with an attitude of confidence, peace, and love. As Urantians, we have a unique opportunity to set into motion a true “science” of Meta-Values. Young Urantians watch our loyalties to Values, and learn by watching. Yet, even if we are loyal and wise, we older Urantians may not live to see a Urantian University of Meta-Values materially arise upon our planet. Even so, we may trust that our loyalties will inspire the hands and hearts of future Urantians, who will follow us and actually create such an edifice, and fill it with spiritual light. And, we must have faith in the grander vision of the Urantia Papers: Upon all of the untracked and lonely vistas of the intellectual and spiritual frontiers that we dare to penetrate and stand upon today — however tenuously — one day will come a wave of new Urantians whose fresh energy and vitality will build wondrous cities of Light and Life.
This material has been adapted from Chapter 17 of a work in progress by Larry Mullins, The Step Beyond. © Copyright 1998, Larry Mullins, Boulder, CO. Larry Mullins is a consultant in advertising and marketing. He is an editorial consultant to the Journal and author of Immature People with Power and Jesus: God and Man.
“If something has become a religion in your experience, it is self-evident that you already have become an active evangel of that religion since you deem the supreme concept of your religion as being worthy of the worship of all mankind, all universe intelligences. If you are not a positive and missionary evangel of your religion, you are self-deceived in that what you call a religion is only a traditional belief or a mere system of intellectual philosophy.” UB 160:5.3
| The Quest for Spiritual Culture: Toward a New Paradigm of Spirituality | Fall 1999 — Index | Living the Family of God |
Larry Mullins, Copyright 1998 ↩︎
Maslow, Abraham. Toward a Psychology of Being. New York: Nostrand Reinhold, 1968: 160-161. ↩︎
ibid., p. 158 ↩︎
Frankl, Viktor. Man’s Searchfor Ultimate Meaning. Insight Books, 1997: 32. (A recent update of The Unconscious God by Viktor Frankl, first presented as a series of lectures in 1947.) ↩︎
ibid., pp.149-151 ↩︎