© 1986 Madeline Noordzy
© 1986 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
Once an adventurous little Hottentot from southern Africa ran away from home. After a long journey during which he became a stowaway on a cruiser, he arrived in Sydney. For days he strolled around this big city until one day he stood in front of a large hole in the ground. Noisy machinery that seemed like huge monsters to him, made the hole even bigger. As he stood there, wondering what it all was about, somebody slapped him on the back and said: “That’s gonna be the Sydney Opera House mate!” The little Hottentot who wasn’t familiar with the melodious sounds of good old Aussie lingo, thought he heard: “That’s the Sydney Opera House” Soon he became homesick and returned to his native Africa. Along with many other stories he told his tribesmen: “I’ve seen the Sydney Opera House”, and he described it just the way he saw it. A large hole in the ground with noisy big monsters crawling around in it. And all the other Hottentots were amazed and believed him.
Many months later a little Eskimo from Alaska got itchy feet and set out on a journey around the globe. He too arrived on the shores of New South Wales and like the Hottentot before him came face to face with another stage of the building of the Opera House. What he saw was huge cranes swinging their long arms slowly to and fro. The sound of jackhammers and pneumatic drills filled the air. He couldn’t help longing for the silence of the Alaskan snowfields and he returned home, content with his lot. When he told his family what the Sydney Opera House looked and sounded like, they accepted his story as the truth.
A year or so later, a little Indian from Chile arrived in Sydney Harbour. By this time the shells of the outer building had been completed, but inside the building the electricians, plumbers, carpenters, interior decorators and other tradesmen were still trying to bring this architectural wonder to completion. The little Indian looked and listened to all the bustle going on around him and when he got back home, he described the Sydney Opera House to the people of his village just the way he saw and heard it.
Just prior to the grand opening, a little Laplander received an invitation from Santa Claus to hitch a ride on his sleigh for a sneak preview of this wonder of the world. His little hand safely held by Santa’s big warm hand, they both went on an inspection tour. Up and down the stairs, through corridors and foyers, their feet sinking into the new carpet. The little Laplander marvelled at the splendour of it all. They sat in the soft comfortable seats and looked at the grand stage. But this time all was quiet. No sounds came from the orchestre pit and the stage was empty.
“This isn’t all yet,” said Santa. “I wish you could see it, when it is filled with people, waiting for the curtain to rise. A feeling of suspense and excitement is in the air. The orchestra starts to play. The curtain rises and the chorus bursts into song. 0h, the splendour of it all:”
The little Laplander looked at Santa and saw how his kind eyes lit up. He looked at the empty stage and tried to imagine what it all would be like. But because he lacked any experience in this field and his imagination wasn’t all that great either, the story that he eventually told to his friends and relatives was what he saw and understood the Sydney Opera House to be.
With this very unlikely story I am trying to illustrate the relativity of truth. All through history great men have glimpsed a part of the truth Groups have formed around them and accepted it as ‘The Truth’. How many of us have not at one stage or another believed that somewhere there must be such a thing as ‘The Truth’?
“Truth is relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men — even in each human life”.(UB 79:8.8) “Truth cannot be defined with words, only by living”.(UB 132:3.2) “The understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness, morality, ethics, duty, love, divinity, origin, existence, purpose, destiny, time and space, even Deity, are only relatively true”.(UB 115:1.2)
We cannot make other people’s truth our own until we experience it for ourselves. Otherwise it is only a theory. “But truth can never become man’s possession without the exercise of faith.”(UB 132:3.5)
On Boxing Day last year, The Melbourne Age published the results of a poll they held on people’s belief in life after death. One of the most amazing outcomes of it was that 11% of regular churchgoers did not believe in life after death.
Only a minority of people who believe in God, believe in a personal God. I wonder if the world would have grasped more of Jesus’ original teachings, if these people would still be left in limbo. “Theology may fix, formulate, define, and dogmatize faith, but in the human life of Jesus faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for tradition nor a mere intellectual belief which he held as a sacred creed, but rather a sublime experience and a profound conviction which securely held him”. (UB 196:0.5)
Does that mean that God has left us to sort it out for ourselves? Not at all. Apart from five Epochal Revelations, which can be misinterpreted by partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects, the Universal Father already sent a fragment of Himself long before the days of Adam and Eve, or even before the arrival of the Planetary Prince Caligastia. Andon and Fonta, the splendid founders of the human race, received a Thought Adjuster, when at the age of eleven the spirit of wisdom had started to function and they made their first moral decision. Ever since the day of Pentecost each child with a normal human mind has such a divine Monitor given to it, when it takes it s first moral decision.
“The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man’s greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane efforts to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness — contact with the divine presence.” (UB 196:3.34)
But how can we recognize truth? If everyone can pick and choose for himself, how can we judge for ourselves what is true?
“Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth”. (UB 2:7.6)
Thus, we not only have our life-line with the Universal Father, but we also have the Spirit of the Creator Son, the Spirit of Truth. “The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative truth. Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy an experiential existence in the human mind”. (UB 180:5.1-2)
Does that mean we hear the voice of the Thought Adjuster at 6 a.m., and at 9.30 a.m. we have the Spirit of Truth on the line, and maybe on Sunday morning we hear:“This is the Holy Spirit speaking?”
“Although Divinity may be plural in manifestation, in human experience Deity is singular, always one. Neither is spiritual ministry plural in human experience. Regardless of plurality of origin, all spirit influences are one in function”. (UB 34:6.2)
“There truly exists within you a conspiracy of spiritual forces, a confederation of divine powers, whose exclusive purpose is to effect your final deliverance from material bondage and finite handicaps”.(UB 34:6.9)
If you still think that you are right and the other guy is wrong, consider the following statement in the Urantia Book, which always has a very sobering effect on me.
“Partial, incomplete, and evolving intellects would be helpless in the master universe, would be unable to form the first rational thought pattern, were it not for the innate ability of all mind, high or low, to form a universe frame in which to think. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind-created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree”. (UB 115:1.1)
You first have to become humble and open-minded to be able to accept that.
“Happy are the poor in spirit, the humble, for theirs are the treasures of the kingdom of heaven”. (UB 140:3.3)
Madeline Noordzy, Melbourne
Illustrated by Wolfgang Borutta