© 2011 Carmelo Martínez, Santiago Rodríguez, Antonio Moya, L. Coll
© 2011 Urantia Association of Spain
| When does the Thought Adjuster work? | Luz y Vida — No. 27 — December 2011 — Index | Neither secularism nor religion |
Participants:
- Carmelo Martínez
- Santiago Rodríguez
- Antonio Moya
- L. Coll
¶ Carmelo
Regarding these trilogies I have found another interesting paragraph that can help to clarify the concepts; is 196:3.2. Says so:
“There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith—physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value.” (UB 196:3.2)
I admit that I am not very clear about it, but I am going to propose, even so, some examples to open the debate. I’m not sure but maybe it is:
A fact (or thing): a starry sky brimming with stars, one of those that amaze. A meaning: those worlds are made for humans, so that we live and progress in them.
A value: the beauty of the scene as a reflection of the reality of the Deity.
Facts are grasped, meanings are understood, values are accepted (matter, mind, and spirit).
Other:
- A fact: death.
- One meaning: the formation of the soul as a joint work of the mind and the adjuster.
- A value: the survival capacity of the soul.
Another one:
- A fact: the appearance of Jesus on Earth.
- A meaning: his concept of the kingdom, the brotherhood of humans.
- A value: the progress of the human being in that fraternity through disinterested service to his fellow men.
I’d like to discuss these examples, and any others you can give, with you. I have already told you that I am not very clear.
I also propose that we compile those trilogies that appear throughout the UB (truth, beauty and goodness; science, philosophy, religion; matter, mind, spirit; etc.)
I await your comments.
¶ Santi
Here I am sending you the results of my exercise (this is like an exam, and it is not easy…) Carmelo, certainly there are still “nebulous” things to finish outlining, but I have been able to clarify myself with the following:
I did not want to search more in the UB, but I have made an examination of what I at this moment interpret of these concepts:
- Facts, meanings, values
- material, mental, spiritual
- Truth, beauty, goodness In principle I had them located in the same three columns; that is, these three triads have similar considerations. Facts is Material and Truth, as Meanings is Mental and Beautiful, and Values is Spiritual and Goodness.
¶ Facts
For me, a fact is like we get a snapshot of the universe. That is, they are the things that happen; among the things that happen, those with which we are most familiar are those that come from the physical world; we have studied them, and it is what we normally know as reality. As we progress in our knowledge of nature, we can even predict them. They are as they are and follow what we call natural laws.
But I think that in the same package of “facts” we have to include the things or actions that human beings do. That is, showing a smile is a fact; giving a hug is a fact; killing someone is also a fact.
Therefore, I believe that “facts” are those things that have happened or are there, and that we can no longer modify.
We could say that there are two types: Type A) those that come from the laws of nature, and type B) those that have been originated by the will of the personalities.
The “facts” are characterized as existing by themselves, whether we know them or not, whether we are aware of them or not, and of the type A, there are many that are waiting to be discovered.
¶ Values
Like the facts, they exist; they are pending to be discovered, and they are usually desirable objectives, that is, they are goals that we try to achieve.
I understand that the values for each generation, for each individual, may be different, and I suspect that as we grow in wisdom, we find higher “values.”
How do we decide what our values are? In two ways: some of them we inherit conceptually from previous generations, perhaps our Adjuster insinuates them to us, and others we possibly discover and give them that status as we are able to elaborate the third concept: the meanings.
¶ Meanings
The meanings would be the creations of our mind, with which we try to find correlations between the facts that we are learning and the values that we are able to glimpse.
At first we have a hard time finding fact/value pairs that correlate with any meaning. But I am convinced that, as time goes by, our growth will probably help us to find values that correspond to facts, and to find values in different facts, even those that we assume to be “bad”, as they have explained to us with the matter of the Lucifer rebellion.
Following this line of thought, I would see the examples that Carmelo gives like this:
A) Fact: starry sky.
Meaning: the meaning will be what leads us to a value. Carmelo argues as a value the “beauty of the scene…”. From my point of view this beauty would fall in the “meanings” column.
Value: I would see better fit here the exaltation of the greatness of the Father “by not repairing expenses” when looking for a place to live.
B) Fact: Death.
Meaning: the proper meaning of death, as a terrestrial escape technique to continue our evolution elsewhere and on another level.
Value: We would find this in the possibility that this death is the beginning of eternal life.
C) Fact: Appearance of Jesus on Earth.
Meaning: the human being has to progress and we must take Jesus as an example.
Courage: trying to extend and establish his idea of fraternity and the kingdom on Earth.
¶ Antonio
Santi: as always, your contribution is enlightening. Thank you for sharing it with us. The aforementioned trilogy can be built with many elements:
Truth, beauty and goodness.
Things, meanings and values.
Body, mind and spirit.
Science, philosophy and religion.
Knowledge, wisdom and spirituality.
Paradise, Infinite Spirit, Eternal Son.
The material, the mental and the spiritual. Surely a few more could be added.
And this paragraph in between is very illuminating:
There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith—physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value. (UB 196:3.2)
On one side are things (Paradise) and on the opposite side are values (the Eternal Son). The meanings (the Infinite Spirit) try to relate things to values and/or vice versa.
This is the problem that arose when the Father decided NOT to synthesize the Manifested Reality (as he had done with the Potential Reality):
When God thus unifies a part of Manifested Reality (and excludes Paradise), He makes this association include Deity only. It does not synthesize all of Manifested Reality, but limits this unification to the Manifested Reality that is Deity. God leaves out Paradise. Since Paradise is left out of this existential synthesis, it will represent a problem for all associates and subordinates of God who will appear later with experiential status. (Bill Sadler, “Creation Story”)
¶ L. Coll
When we talk about truth, beauty and goodness, these paragraphs from the book catch my attention:
Truth is best known for its spiritual flavor. UB 2:7.6
All truth-material, philosophical or spiritual at the same time beautiful and good. All authentic beauty-material art or spiritual symmetry-is both true and good. All genuine goodness—whether it be personal morality, social equity, or divine ministry—is equally true and beautiful. UB 2:7.11
Truth, beauty, and goodness are divine realities, and as man ascends the scale of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and unified in God, who is love. (UB 2:7.10)
¶ Antonio
In case it helps at all, here is this text from Document 102, section 3:
Science, knowledge, leads to awareness of the facts; religion, experience, leads to awareness of values; philosophy, wisdom, leads to coordinated consciousness; revelation (the morontia mote substitute) leads to awareness of true reality; while the coordination of the consciousness of facts, values and true reality constitutes being aware of the reality of the personality, the maximum of being, together with the belief in the possibility of the survival of this very personality.
Knowledge leads to situate men, to originate social layers and castes. Religion leads to serve men, thus creating ethics and altruism. Wisdom leads to a better and higher association both of ideas and with fellow men. Revelation frees men and sets them on the path towards the eternal adventure.
Science classifies men; religion loves men, even as yourselves; wisdom does justice to different men; but the revelation glorifies man and reveals his ability to associate with God.
Science strives in vain to create the fraternity of culture; religion engenders the brotherhood of the spirit. Philosophy fights for the brotherhood of wisdom; the revelation describes the eternal brotherhood, the Paradisiacal Body of the Finality.
Knowledge produces pride in the fact of personality; wisdom is awareness of the meaning of personality; religion is the experience of knowing the value of personality; the revelation is the security of the survival of the personality.
Science tries to identify, analyze and classify the segmented parts of the unlimited cosmos. Religion captures the idea of the whole, the total cosmos. Philosophy tries to identify the material segments of science with the concept of the whole based on the spiritual insight of the whole. Where philosophy fails in this attempt, revelation succeeds, affirming that the cosmic circle is universal, eternal, absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of the Infinite I AM is therefore endless, limitless, and includes everything without time, without space and without qualification. And we testify that the Infinite I AM is also the Father of Michael of Nebadon and the God of human salvation.
Science alludes to the Deity as a fact; philosophy presents the idea of an Absolute; religion presents the image of God as a loving spiritual personality. The revelation affirms that there is unity between the fact of Deity, the idea of the Absolute and the spiritual personality of God; and furthermore he presents this concept in the form of our Father—the universal fact of existence, the eternal idea of mind, and the infinite spirit of life.
The pursuit of knowledge constitutes science; the search for wisdom is philosophy; love of God is religion; the hunger for truth is a revelation. But the inner Thought Adjuster is the one that connects the feeling of reality with the human spiritual insight of the cosmos.
In science, the idea precedes the expression of its realization; in religion, the experience of realization precedes the expression of the idea. There is a vast difference between the evolutionary will to believe and the product of enlightened reason, religious insight and revelation - the will to believe.
En la evolución, la religión conduce con frecuencia al hombre a crear sus conceptos de Dios; la revelación manifiesta el fenómeno de Dios haciendo evolucionar al hombre mismo, mientras que en la vida terrestre de Cristo Miguel contemplamos el fenómeno de Dios revelándose al hombre. La evolución tiende a hacer a Dios semejante al hombre; la revelación tiende a hacer al hombre semejante a Dios.
Science is only satisfied with first causes, religion with supreme personality, and philosophy with unity. Revelation affirms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eternal real is the good of the universe and not the time illusions of space evil. In the spiritual experience of all personalities, always is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real. UB 102:3.5-15
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/
| When does the Thought Adjuster work? | Luz y Vida — No. 27 — December 2011 — Index | Neither secularism nor religion |