© 2011 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
¶ Union with God — our goal
If we sell our birthright, if we neglect or treat with contempt the beneficent laws of God, we turn our backs on the Father’s home and wander off into a distant land. What use then is the warmth and cheerfulness that abound in our native home? When we are tired of the troubles of life, when we are weary, when we feel homesick, we can return with faltering steps to the Father’s house. But we can make this return either by the path of bitter experiences or by the joyful abandonment of material goods.
Let us make our subjective an objective, a wise voluntary collaborator of the principle. Let us head straight towards our objective. Let us make it the divine inner life. No one has ever accomplished anything great without having totally concentrated his will and maintained his objective (God) before the pure mirror of his thought force. The thought force is man acting as God, man demanding of himself such concentration on his objective (God) that it manifests itself instantly. As soon as God has become objective, let us present the mold of our desire, and this mold is immediately filled. If this affirmation does not prove to be rigorously exact, it is because we could not have had it.
When our desire is presented as indicated, it is divine. If your divinity is constantly manifested, our desire is conceived according to divine harmony. We have all power to set its date of execution and to pronounce the word of authority. We remain the Master. To the outside world, our command is: “Complete silence.” We can then say with precision and full knowledge: “There is no greater power than my inner Christ! I send forth my word endowed with the quality of Christ, and it instantly accomplishes all things. I give praise and blessing, and I send forth my word in abundance, harmony, and perfection.”
In the beginning, we spoke the word (God) which represents our true desire. Let us never go back, let us not repeat our request. This attitude would engender doubt. Let us go forward, let us remember what we have done. If we have formulated our Word Christ, we are master of the situation. The desired thing is accomplished, complete, divinely in order.
If two beings unite their spiritual strength, they can triumph over the world, even if they can do nothing individually. These two beings are God and us, united in the same goal. If others unite with us with the same sincerity of motives, our power grows faster than quadrupling the number of associates. “If two of you join together with God to formulate a request, my Father will hear it.” United with God, man triumphs over that which is not divine.
Let us enter the secret place of our soul, close the door to the outside world, close our eyes of flesh, look at our divine Self with our inner eye. We have peacefully put ourselves in a spiritual receptive state. “I commune with the Energy of Universal Life. It passes through me, I know it, I feel it. I thank God my Father for having the ability to accomplish all things.”
When we pray to God and our innermost soul is in contact with the Energy of Universal Life, we use this energy to an unlimited extent. We give the name of God to the infinitely wise Spirit which exists within and without every human being. The outward expression of God can only be formulated through us. It is therefore not necessary to seek help and knowledge from without. Let us seek them within, knowing that intelligent truth and the source of all knowledge are latent within us. Having understood this principle, we can call upon it for any work, being certain that the Universal Spirit, the God within, is the greatest of educators.
All our power is first drawn to us, then worked out in our bodies, and finally manifested for the accomplishment of that which we command it to perform. This is God expressing his power through us. God is not personal, but within and all-inclusive. By letting him express himself from within, one is connected with him, for he interpenetrates all worlds. By worshipping the God within, by seeing him emanate from within, one worships the Deity in the whole human family. On the contrary, the worship of an external God produces idolatry. Whoever worships God within, and sees him manifest from within to the outside of the world, comes into conscious contact with the universal emanations of divine life and light. There can be no deity outside our body without it also existing within, for all is an emanation of vibrating energy. The vibrations of God include every cell of our body and the whole mass of the Universe. God is therefore everywhere before everything, in everything, around everything, enveloping and embracing everything. The immanent energy of life and light passes through all the atoms of space without excepting any.
Man as a poor dust worm has no consciousness of God. He only expresses the consciousness of the worm. When one shoots at a target and wants to hit, one must concentrate all one’s thoughts on the middle of the target and see nothing else but the center. If one has hit, one has come one step closer to God, because God is the divine ideal, the focus toward which all thoughts and actions converge.
This is how one develops within oneself the spiritual man, the Christ of God, the Word made flesh. As certainly as God surrounds the flesh, this flesh is God.
¶ Our heritage
To make heaven manifest, let us know that everything there is spiritual. Heaven is a perfect state of consciousness, a perfect world on earth, here and now. We just have to accept it. It is there, around us, waiting for us to open our inner eye through which my body will become light. This light is that of the Father, and the Father is there, in the depths of our being. Nothing is material, everything is spiritual. To realize this marvelous world given by God which is there, here and now, we must know it in thought.
Since man was created in the image and likeness of God, he has been given the power to create just as God does. God expects man to use his power as freely as he does, and in exactly the same way.
One must first perceive the need, then conceive the good, the ideal intended to fill the mold held in consciousness, then fill it with the Universal substance of Thought. Finally, one must utter the word, say that the mold is full, and so it is, and it is good.
At first, it requires immense faith. It must be built up little by little and practiced faithfully like music or mathematics until you reach the stage of knowledge. Then you are free, grandly, magnificently free. There is no better example of this kind of life than that of Jesus. Let us recognize the power included in his name, Jesus, the Christ made manifest, God manifesting himself in the flesh of man. Jesus had reached the point where he trusted entirely in his deep understanding of God, and that is how he accomplished his mighty works. He relied neither on the power of his own will nor on the strong concentration of his thoughts, but rather on the will of God: “Thy will be done, O my God, and not mine.” Jesus always wanted to do the will of God, to do what God wanted him to do.
We must all ascend to the highest heights of consciousness, to receive illumination. These heights are at the top of the head, and if the faculties are not developed there, they must be developed by spiritual thoughts. Then love must be allowed to flow from the heart, the center of love, to balance the thought. This done, the Christ reveals Himself. The son of man perceives that he is the son of God, the Only Begotten Son in whom the Father finds His pleasure. Finally, this must be lived for all, with continual love. Each soul born on earth is the expression of an ideal image of God as He sees Himself. Each has been given the same power as God to rule over all. God desires to see man develop his divine qualities and accomplish works through the inheritance of the Father, the great Universal Thought which is in all and above all. Let us understand that each one is an expression (out of the invisible, of the Spirit) in a visible mold, in a form through which God loves to express Himself. When we know this and accept it, we can truly say with Jesus: “Look, here is a Christ.” This is how he achieved mastery over the carnal world. He recognized, proclaimed, and accepted his divinity, then lived the holy life as we should live it.
¶ The choice
Evil results only from man’s perfect capacity to create what he sees in his mind and which separates him from God. For man brings about the things he thinks about. If he had not seen evil, evil would have had no power, would not have been expressed. Only good would be expressed, and we would be as perfect as God sees us today. Heaven would always have been on earth as God sees it and as we must all see it in order to manifest it. Let us look at the divine quality of each man without comparing him to others. Let us seek Christ in every face and you will make this divine quality appear there. We see only Christ in all and at all times. Power is the demonstration of the active Principle of God. The perfect activity of God never manifests itself too much or too little. God never fails and is never inactive. The Principle of God always works constructively. “I command myself to present myself in perfect harmony with the active Principle of God and with him alone.”
We can go one step further and say with just as much precision: “I spread this divine flame through my physical body.” We are then transmuted into this pure substance which only the Principle of God sees. Then it becomes necessary for us to accept the Principle and develop our consciousness until it becomes that of God. At the same time, we merge into God, we effectively become God, we are one with the Most High. Man belongs to this elevated realm where he is one with the essence of all things and where no division can exist. He is truly God.
Man himself can become God or demon. If he lives in the vibratory sphere of God, this is his entire domain. It is the only place where he can express God and become one with him. In this position, man certainly surpasses the conception that mortals have of him. From then on, we see that we come from the kingdom of God, that man is God, but that he can come out in imagination from the kingdom of God and create for his own use a demonic kingdom that will seem real to him. Humanity has no other alternative than its maintenance or its fall. There is only one choice, one intention, one truth, and one science that makes us free. We become God or slaves at our choice.
Let us stop for a moment and think about the universality of God, the First Cause without beginning or end, with its universal field of action. Let us allow ourselves to be surrounded by Him. Let us become faithful to this conception and to it alone. Let us worship only one God, an all-powerful presence. We will then discover that the human vibrations of our body are transmuted into divine or original vibrations.
Let us live, think, evolve, and be one with this vibration. Then we are truly in worship. Man becomes what he adores, what he takes as his ideal, and so it is for all humanity. There is only one God, one Christ, one Communion, one Man, one general family where all are brothers and sisters and are one.
God cannot be expressed in the form of a person or a personal image. God is a universality that includes everything and interpenetrates all things. As soon as we personalize, we idolize. We lose and possess only the empty idol. This ideal is not a dead savior or a dead God. We must make God alive and vital to ourselves by thinking and knowing that we are God. This is of capital importance. It is the divine science of our being. It allows the Christ in us, Our Savior, to come alive and become one with us.
“You are Christ Himself and He becomes the motive for the acts of your whole life. You save yourselves, you redeem your true self, you become one with God. By reverencing, loving and adoring this ideal, you incorporate it, and God becomes active in your inner being.” Man enjoys free will and brings about the object of his thoughts. Christ dwells in us as in everyone. Our body is pure, perfect, young, always beautiful and divine. God created us exactly in His image and likeness, and gave us authority over all things. By ourselves, we are always Christ, the perfect Son of God, the only son in whom the Father and the Mother take pleasure. We are pure, perfect, holy, divine, united with God who is the totality of Good. And everything gave birth to the right to proclaim this filiation, this divinity.
Baird T. Spalding
