© 2013 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Because a man lived as if God were the invisible part of himself, we have the feast of Christmas. Because a being believed so totally in the Cosmic Power within him, we celebrate the Divine Incarnation.
The great error of Christianity has not been a lack of sincerity in its desire to follow its Great Master, but rather in a mistaken conception of his message. It would be to the advantage of those who believe in the teaching of Jesus to seek to penetrate more deeply into its meaning.
Here is a being who, without any arrogance and free from all egoism, believed in the Divine Incarnation in himself and in all men. He believed that Divine self-knowledge acted as intuition at the heart of his own consciousness of being. If Jesus had taken this as a simple theory, his life would never have fired the imagination of men. It is because he demonstrated what he believed that we celebrate His birth, that we take His life as a model for all Humanity.
Jesus conceived of the Universe as Infinite Being and immutable Law. God, as Infinite Spirit, was for Him a Divine Presence, warm, colorful, sensitive, the Presence with which He was in constant communion. He revealed that every man is an incarnation of God; that every man is a channel for the Divine and that every being can become an expression of the beauty, wisdom and power of the Spirit.
It is said that Jesus grew in wisdom before God and man. As He became aware of the Spirit in Him, God—as far as that was possible—became truly man. The divine nature was thus revealed to Him in the form of love, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness. Close relationship with the Spirit inspired His life and gave Him an awareness of Divine Power. Consequently, He spoke as no man has ever spoken, either before Him or since, proclaiming: “the words that I speak to you, they are the Spirit of life.”
His greatest works were accomplished immediately after periods of serene communion. We can imagine Him communing in solitude with the Infinite “who peoples the places of His Presence.” We can imagine Him feeling the Divine Presence, alive and conscious. We can imagine Him uniting His human nature so deeply with the Divine that, little by little, the human with his sense of separation and isolation, surrendered to the Divine, to a sense of universality and inclusion.
Suppose that infinite peace, Divine peace, truly surrounds us. But our ears are so full of confusion, our eyes so darkened with tears, and our thoughts so full of discord, that we neither see nor hear nor feel this peace. Can we imagine removing ourselves from confusion long enough to listen to this peace? What we do only in imagination, Jesus did in reality.
The Divine presence was not a theory, not a thing to be hoped for, but a very real, realized thing.
Following these periods of communion with the Spirit, He returned to the paths of human activity, manifesting a power that has confounded the imagination of the world and led us to believe that He possessed a secret that others could not know. Yet we hear Him proclaim that what He did, others could do also, if they would believe. Naturally, we ask ourselves this question: “Believe in what?” Believe in the divine Presence and Power. The Presence as love and gift, the Power as Law and fulfillment.
In front of the temple of Solomon were two columns: “the one on the right called Jachin, the one on the left called Boaz”. One represented thought, feeling, volition, and the other represented law and order. Together, they represented the Infinite Person and the Infinite Principle. Before one could enter the temple, one had to pass between these columns. That is to say, one had to come to understand that the Universe is a combination of the personal and the impersonal.
Passing between these two columns, one had to see the Universe as the Divine Person, as something warm, colorful, full of love and beauty, and at the same time as law and order. The Universe is both spontaneous and mechanical. Spontaneous in its thought, mechanical in its functioning. This is what Jesus was referring to when he said: “Strait is the gate, narrow is the way.” It is impossible to enter the temple without first realizing the Presence and observing the Law.
The temple is the symbol of man. “Do you not know that you are the temple of the living God”? In this temple, in the Holy of Holies rests the Ark of the Covenant which contains the Book of Life and the Law, on which is written the name of the Divine Being: I AM. Jesus passed between the columns of Life and the Law. He found them inclined by love and united by reason; He entered the Holy of Holies and opened the Book of Life. He read the name of the Divine Being and understood its meaning. Consequently, He boldly proclaimed: I AM HE! That is to say, I am the One who was awaited… I am the incarnation of God… I am the Divine Presence in man.
When Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me,” He was speaking of the union of the soul with God. When He said, “I am the good shepherd and my flock knows my voice,” He was speaking of something that all spiritual geniuses have known, that he who enters the temple of perception recognizes the Divine Presence, hears the Voice. This Voice speaks through intuition, which is a spiritual consciousness that all men possess.
Jesus showed the way of Truth and Life: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. — “The blood of the Lamb” signifies the Life of the Spirit. The sacrifice offered on the altar of faith symbolizes the transmutation by fire of the spirit, from the human into the Divine.
When we study the deeper meaning of this teaching, we discover that true sacrifice is not a surrender of the personality, but a fusion of the personality with the Infinite. True surrender is a willingness to renounce that which contradicts the Life of the Spirit, to abandon hatred and antagonism, resistance and resentment, fear and doubt, uncertainty and confusion. This must happen if we would have the Spirit incarnate itself deeply within us. Every man is forced to make this sacrifice before he can enter the temple of his being. He is not permitted to pass between the columns which represent the Person and the Principle until he first unites them by his love and faith. We could not expect to introduce discord into harmony, nor hatred into the Kingdom of God.
Can we blame the Divine if He refuses to sing with us our hymn of hate? Humanity now understands the meaning of one of the columns that stand at the entrance to the temple: that which represents the law; the secrets of nature, the dynamic power released by the atomic bomb, the progress of technical knowledge, energy untempered by reason. We must now learn the meaning of the other column; that which represents Love. Unrestrained power brings chaos. Power under the control of spiritual motivation is the cosmos. One is hell, the other Heaven.
We have become technicalized, we are modernized, industrialized, commercialized and over the last few decades we have been “psychologized”. But who can say that we are civilized? We will never be civilized until we are spiritualized.
So, we mark a time. God grant that at this Christmas time we may have the courage to face the issue; that we may have the moral vigor and spiritual conviction to face it frankly and sincerely; that after our long night, a new dawn may break. May a voice cry out in our wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight the paths.” May the voice of the Great Shepherd resound once again in the world! Only in Universal Love is Universal Security found. May our Christmas trees this year be illuminated with this love. May it sparkle on the branches of our Tree of Life. May we come to understand that there is one GOD, one SHEPHERD, one LAMB.
The TRUTH has always been and always will be.
LOVE transcends all the suffering that inhabits and breaks all beings who, by dint of wanting to appear, have forgotten the sublime natural therapy that is LOVE. The more we love, the less we will suffer.
WISDOM is experienced in the way we accomplish our Karma, the logical consequence of our actions and thoughts. Everything we do has repercussions throughout the Universe and perhaps resonates beyond since everything is connected. The first step towards self-KNOWLEDGE involves the psychological recognition of what we are and the courage to approach the paradoxical analysis of situations.
The Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot console.
Ernest Holmes