© 2013 Ivan Stol, Guy de Viron, Max Masotti, Meredith J. Sprunger, Karuna Leys, Chaz Wesley, Simon Orsini, Jean-Claude Romeuf, Dominique Ronfet
© 2013 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
¶ The President’s Ticket: Living Room
Hello dear friends,
In these troubled times, we do not forget those who seek relative inner peace. Therefore, we have launched a series of exhibition trials in wellness fairs in order to experiment with a way of making the existence of this book known to as many people as possible.
I hope that such initiatives will flourish in different regions with of course the help of the association. It is a very instructive group work that includes a questioning of our intentions and the type of service and message that we are supposed to transmit in a positive way (to the greatest number in a limited time).
Ivan Stol
¶ Edito: Love, Gratitude and Light
Here is the return to school after sumptuous summer hours, filled with light and heat. Time of harvests and flavors that pushes us to stock up on all the gifts of Mother Nature. It is therefore a time of grace and gratitude before the next cold weather. Is this why Dominique feels chilly when reading The Urantia Book, he who hoped to find there a powerful viaticum, a modus vivendi, a Havonian sesame…? His question has the merit of challenging us.
Fortunately, reality plunges us back into our daily materiality, a reality that is not so rosy with its sound of boots at our doors in the face of this insane drowsiness of our political leaders who have lost the visionary sense of the common good. How to react? What attitude should we adopt?
Guy from Viron
Editor’s note (editor’s note):
The Links are quarterly and appear on the 15th of March, June, September and December! They are first sent to subscribers in digital form (PDF format) on these same dates and then, as far as possible, in their “paper” form. As AFLUB prints are grouped with other periodicals, it is possible that the deadline for the paper format is longer. As for the texts intended to be published within the Link concerned, they must imperatively arrive 30 days before the aforementioned publication date and approved by our president, Ivan Stol, director of publication. Thank you for your understanding.
¶ Thesis: On Love III
6. … For a century we have undergone, without really realizing it, a remarkable transformation in the intellectual order. To discover, to know, had always been a deep tendency of our nature. Do we not already recognize it in the Caveman? But it is only yesterday that this essential need to know has been made explicit and transformed into an autonomous vital function, taking precedence in our existence over the preoccupation with eating and drinking. Well, if I am not mistaken, this phenomenon of individualization of our highest psychological functions, not only is far from having reached its limits on the terrain of pure thought, but it also tends to spread to a neighboring domain, which has remained practically formless and unexplored: the “terra ignota” of affective powers and love.
Teilhard de Chardin
¶ Maxien Quiz No. 15: The questions
Superuniverse
- The presence of the divine Adjuster in the human mind is revealed by three experiential phenomena: Which?
- The infinite and total reality is existential in seven phases and under the aspect of seven coordinated Absolutes: what are these Absolutes?
- The Melchizedeks of Nebadon called the physical substance of Paradise by a definite name. What name did the Melchizedeks give to this substance?
- In the UB, we are given 13 different names for the Infinite Spirit. Can you name four of them?
Max Masotti
¶ Psychospi: The Seven Fundamental Realities VII
3. Human determinants: Mastery of will and mind
Human will is the key determinant of mortal destiny. Although finite volition is limited, our will has sufficient freedom to identify with values and form the direction of our mind and growth. Because of God’s self-limitation, His Indwelling Spirit is always subject to our will. We have the opportunity to identify with reality and survive our mortal experience or to dissociate ourselves from truth, beauty, and goodness and terminate our existence. When we dedicate ourselves to following God’s will, we are launched on the road to salvation.
Such a choice is not a surrender of the will, but a recognition of reality. It is an edification, an expansion, and a glorification of the will by our highest perception of truth. It is a consecration of the will to identify with the Indwelling Spirit of God. Spiritual growth involves a progressive identification with God. The goal of mortal destiny is the complete and final harmonization of our will with the will of God. At this moment of perfect harmony there is a fusion, a commitment, and a permanent union of the bonds between the human and the divine.
Meredith J. Sprunger
¶ Humor: The Palestinian Donkey
“The Palestinian donkey is very vigorous, suffers little from heat, feeds on thistles; the shape of its hooves makes its gait very sure; finally its maintenance is inexpensive. Its only faults are stubbornness and laziness.”
I advance like the donkey of Jerusalem which the Messiah, one Palm Sunday, made a royal and peaceful mount.
I don’t know much but I know that I carry Christ on my back and I am more proud of that than of being Basque.
I carry him, but he leads me.
I know He is leading me to His Kingdom where I will bask endlessly in green pastures.
I’m taking small steps.
Along steep paths, far from those highways where speed prevents you from recognizing mount and rider.
When I stumble over a stone, my Master must be quite jolted, but he never reproaches me for anything.
It’s wonderful how kind and patient he is with me: he gives me time to greet Balaam’s lovely donkey, to dream in front of a field of lavender, to even forget that I’m carrying him.
I move forward, in silence. It’s crazy how we understand each other without speaking; besides, I don’t hear too much when he whispers words in my ear.
The only word of his that I understood seemed to be for me alone and I can testify to its truth:
“My yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt 11:30).
It’s like, animal faith, when I was happily carrying his mother to Bethlehem one Christmas Eve:
“She weighed little, being occupied only with the future within her”, said Jules Supervielle, the poet and friend of donkeys.
I go forward in joy. When I want to sing his praises, I make a hell of a racket, I sing out of tune.
He, then, laughs heartily, a laugh that transforms the ruts into a dance floor and my hooves into sandals of wind.
These days, I swear, we come a long way!
I move forward, I move forward like a donkey carrying Christ on its back.
Bishop Etchegaray
¶ Poetry: Ultimate Escort
To my father
Cross the desert, dear soul, Find the threshold and the passage, The oasis that is not a mirage And the well irrigated with living water.
Come forward surrounded
Of your treasures of human love
Given and received in sharing
Throughout your existence.
They will be your precious escort,
Your heralds dressed in fire,
Your couriers to the Truce.
Cross the desert, dear soul,
Find the threshold and the passage,
The oasis that is not a mirage
And the well irrigated with living water.
Come forward surrounded
Of your treasures of human love
Given and received in sharing
Throughout your existence.
They will be your precious escort,
Your heralds dressed in fire,
Your couriers to the Truce.
from “The Solitude Star”, 1991
Luce Peclard
¶ The two lions
An old wise man from North Cameroon in Africa, initiated his grandson into wisdom:
- inside me there are two lions.
One is full of vanity, arrogance, anger, greed, lies,
of envy, superiority, false pride.
The other, on the contrary, is good, peaceful, happy, humble, generous, true,
filled with compassion.
The struggle between these two lions within me is terrible.
You see inside you it’s the same.
The child thought for a while, then, worried, asked the killer question:
- Which of the two lions will ultimately win the fight?
The grandfather answers:
- The one you feed the best!!!
¶ Prayer: We seek
Mr. Creator.
We are looking for:
- an electrician to restore power between those who no longer speak to each other,
- a nurse to heal the bruises of the soul,
- an optician to change your looks,
- a deminer to defuse disputes,
- a gravedigger to bury the hatchet,
- a mason to build peace,
- an agronomist to promote the culture of non-violence,
- a signalman to find the right direction,
- a musician to soothe manners,
- a cook to share food with all humanity,
- a tailor to rebuild social ties,
- a teacher to teach people to count on each other,
- a computer scientist to save the creation,
- a journalist to spread the good news.
Author Unknown
¶ Reflection: Lady Good Augur’s Suggestions
Please replace this word time with the word Love.
And rather than:
- I dedicate all my time to you, propose: I offer you all my Love.
- I took a lot of time, I put a lot of love.
- It pays off with time, it pays off with Love.
- From time to time, from Love to Love.
- At the same time, of the same Love.
On the other hand, if you say to yourself: Right now, I don’t have time for myself, know that you have no Love for yourself.
Likewise if: I have no time to give you, I have no Love for you. What a pity! What would it mean to gain time, if one does not gain sympathy, friendship, cordiality, consideration, leniency? What is the use of having time before me if it does not teach me to be more attentive, more kind, more loving, more favorable, more intelligent…
Supposing I invest a lot of time but put no Love, what would work without Love look like? Supposing again that I never love what I do, when will I be able to do what I love? Yesterday, I loved? Tomorrow? Never. Everything in its time. Everything in its Love.
Love time does not lead the same life as mechanical time. In mechanical time I make you waste time and you make me waste mine. We are all losers. One might have thought that war was a position against position struggle, in fact it is “your time” against “mine”. I want to set “your” clocks to “my” time: woe to you if you do not make me happy.
If there is “no more time” then there is “no more Love”. If there is “still time” then there is “still and always a possible Love”.
Excerpt from Where to find time? The first hour Guide to the use of one’s destiny (Edit. l’Être/Image)
Bernard Leblanc-Halmos
¶ Hymn: Joy
“A burst of fire in the heart, a burst of laughter through all flesh, a blaze of living water in the mind; a rush of a gust of wind that rouses, lifts, carries away everything, without thought, like an armful of sand and foam; an immense expansion of the world and of desire. Joy is more and other than a feeling, it is at once a sensation, an emotion, a shock, an illumination. It is a flavor. It gives the taste of life in all its freshness, and its strange mixture of power and sweetness.
Joy is always new, unheard of, a little crazy, like a child who comes running and starts dancing, juggling with pebbles, clouds and bubbles of sun; this is how it is when a loved one, long awaited, appears on the platform or in the room where we were waiting for his arrival. At the moment of his appearance, the space all around begins to rotate, to expand, time is pulverized, time becomes extremely dense, and our heart no longer rings except with the sound of the footsteps of the other who is advancing, there is no other light than that spread by his face.
Joy embraces the whole body, seizes it, moves it, as do a fit of laughter, a sob, a fever: it dazzles as it seizes and strikes beauty which suddenly reveals itself in a masterpiece, as well as in an admirable almost nothing.
Joy and beauty are sisters in energy, beauty and high violence. Joy is a burst of beauty under the embrace of the verb to live conjugated in the lively and virgin present; beauty is a flash of joy that can be exquisite, serene as much as abrupt, harsh and violent.
(extract from Thoughts)
Blaise Pascal
¶ Study: The Reality of Personality II
The ability to abstract (reason) also allows us to imagine things in the future, in a time that does not yet exist! That is why we humans can be concerned about the fate of the generations that will live after us, and we can undertake things whose result will be realized in a distant time. Animals cannot do that. Only a being who is given reason can reflect on something that will happen long before it happens. He can imagine different scenarios and reflect on the different means to achieve his goal. He can also reflect on the value of this goal. Does the goal really have a value? Is it worth it? He can therefore reflect on the usefulness. Will it serve any purpose? When a man does not reflect on the purpose and usefulness of his efforts, he lives at the level of animals.
Karuna Leys
¶ Testimony: Awakened to the fullness of life
By filling each page of this collection, I might be able to describe the emotions I felt when I was told, “You have cancer.” It would take a hundred other collections to contain my feelings when I was told, “You also have multiple sclerosis.” It is impossible to describe the effects on the body of spinal taps, steroid treatments, and 49 pills a day, or the effects on the mood of severe anemia and clinical depression. I could tell you all the things that went wrong, but what a boring story that would be!
Let me share this story instead. On a cold day in the year 2000, while I was bored to death watching the fan on the ceiling spin, I reluctantly turned my head to look out the window at the raindrops soaking the ground. Faced with one’s own mortality, clinically depressed, the last thing one wants is a rainy day.
Chaz Wesley
¶ Reflection: Causes, Effects II
In the spiritual and material universe the physical elements that constitute the electron are made of another matter. If one could modify the rotation of the primary units of matter and at the same time transform these associations of energy into adapted frequencies, one could create a new substance, one would then enter a new dimension.
At this point, I specify that the diffuse background heard and recorded by two scientists at random during their research on microwaves, which earned them the Nobel Prize (according to the theory of the big bang) is in reality nothing other than the residual resonance of the space cyclone generated by nuclear eruptions in the different phases contained inside the nebulae, which gave birth in several stages to the suns and planets of our galaxy. Not to be confused with micrometric radiation, this radiation is a particular phenomenon undoubtedly due to the accumulation of the very irradiant and very dense missing matter in the universe. In space, many influences intervene to give the illusion that the speed increases by at least 180 km per second, for each million light years added to the distance. The illusion is that distant star systems are fleeing our sector at a speed of more than 50,000 km per second. But this apparent speed of recession is not real, it is the result of many erroneous factors including observation angles.
Simon Orsini
¶ Feather: The fairy
The boat showed me many landscapes
I have met fairies on every continent
Madness helped me overcome mirages
But I sometimes succumbed to it for long periods of time.
When I no longer heard blowing in the clouds
The wind from the sky rushing into my heart
I lost my compass and found the storm
Who made the hours of happiness capsize
My angel I am waiting for you like a promised fairy
Jean-Claude Romeuf
¶ Poetry: The Daily Ascent
I live in a landscape bristling with peaks
To climb every day in gestures and words.
There are many trails, the slopes a little crazy,
The attractive overhangs above the sunny slopes!
The vertigo all around rocks me in its nets,
I almost fell.
I cling to the walls, consult my compass,
Because the verdict of the facts never changes.
Reality is stronger, the event grabs me.
I have to climb up there, it’s time for some rock climbing.
On my left a ravine, on my right a torrent.
Balance keeps me on the edge of the ridge.
My steps cannot be those of a wanderer…
And here I am already riding on the ridge!
Luce Peclard
¶ Prayer… Even if
Even if you feel tired,
Even if triumph abandons you,
Even if a mistake hurts you,
Even if a betrayal hurts you,
Even if an illusion fades,
Even if the pain burns your eyes,
Even if your efforts are ignored,
Even if ingratitude is the reward,
Even if incomprehension cuts your laughter,
Even if everything seems like nothing,
Start again!
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires, Argentina
¶ Maxien Quiz No. 15: The answers
Superuniverse
- The three experiential phenomena which reveal the presence of the Adjuster in the human mind are:
- The intellectual capacity to know God-God consciousness.
- The spiritual impulse to find God-the search for God.
- The personality’s intense desire to be like God-the sincere desire to do God’s will. UB 1:2.4-6
- These 7 absolutes are: 1. The First Source-Center; 2. The Second Source-Center; 3. The Third Source-Center; 4. The Isle of Paradise; 5. The Deity Absolute; 6. The Universal Absolute; 7. The Unqualified Absolute. UB 0:3.12-18
- The Melchizedeks of Nebadon have long called the physical substance of Paradise absolutum. UB 11:2.9
- The Third Source and Center is known by many titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Co-ordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action, and on Urantia it is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind. UB 8:2.2
Max Masotti
¶ Brother Dom’s Little Corner: The Truth
- Okay, let’s admit it!
- Let’s admit what? You woke me up.
- Let’s admit that the UB is what it claims to be: the 5th revelation of the Truth.
- Yes? So what?
- So! So!? But finally how many times must I read it to benefit from the effects of this unique source of knowledge.
- …?
- Should I read it in the morning or in the evening? Both? How many pages?
Dominique Ronfet
¶ Imprint
Le Lien Urantien is the journal of the French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book, a member of the UAI, the International Urantia Association.
| Head office | rue du Temple 1, F-13012 Marseille, +33 (0)4 91 27 13 20 |
| afflu@urantia.fr | |
| Site | www.urantia.fr / http://forum.urantia.fr |
| Publication Director | Ivan Stol, ivan.stol@free.fr |
| Editor in Chief | Guy de Viron, guydeviron@bluewin.ch |
| Reading Committee | Jean Royer, Max Masotti |
| Subscription | €20 per year (quarterly publication 4 issues) |
| Legal deposit | December 1997 — ISSN 1285-1116 |
| Print run | 125 copies © 1955 URANTIA Foundation |
All rights reserved. Materials from The Urantia Book are used with permission. Any artistic depictions, interpretations, opinions or conclusions implied or stated are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of URANTIA Foundation or its affiliates.