© 2020 Moustapha NDiaye
© 2020 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
By Moustapha K. NDIAYE
February 24, 2020
(Dakar, Senegal)
This reflection of Moustapha came in the following way: One day, my daughter, then six years old (she is twelve this year) asked me “It seems that with mom, it is you who made me. I would like to know how and why?” Having perceived my surprise, she continued by saying: “It is not urgent, answer later or when you want”. A few days later, I reminded her of her question, and she no longer seemed to remember it. I then immediately understood that it was my Adjuster who was trying to tell me “It is time for you to take an interest in how you were created, and why you were created, in other words to ask me ”Who am I?“ This was for me a positive indication of several things at once. First, that God the Father, via our Thought Adjuster, uses all avenues and all voices to express Himself, through the functioning of God the Supreme. Then, that this manifestation of the Supreme, through family, social, professional relationships, etc., is the very technique of growth, via service, which thus finds all the means of expression required in the lives of men. And finally, that it is to this service, thus illuminated from within by the Adjuster and the soul, and which requires worship and prayer for personal appropriation, that the Master invites us. When it is understood, accepted and implemented, it translates the fact that ”it is our will that His Will be done."]
¶ I. Introduction “Who am I?”
“And, as in each of the previous stages of your ascension towards God, your human self will here inaugurate new relationships with your divine self” (UB 13:121.par)
“Who am I”
This is a question that may seem absurd, and that perhaps many people live and die without exploring in depth. It is also a question that many very wise thinkers have spent a large part of their lives trying to resolve. Most of the time, the majority of men and women are satisfied with incomplete answers, more or less satisfactory, and with very variable geometry, to avoid appearing strange in the eyes of others.
However, it very often resurfaces when we feel life abandoning us.
¶ II. “Who am I?” the human approach
¶ II. 1 Identification with body and mind
Very often, in everyday life, we use the subject “I” to designate or qualify all our “states of being”. We say: “I am sick”, “I am tired”, “I understood”. It is easy to realize that it is the body that is sick, it is also the body that is tired, it is also easy to realize that it is the mind that has understood, and that we could just as well and perhaps should have said “my body is tired”, “my body is sick”, “my thought has understood”. What then is this “I”, distinct from the body and the mind, but which does not hesitate to identify with them, to the point that it may seem absurd to some to say what is in reality more accurate: “my body is sick” or “my thought has understood”. Let us also simply remember that very often, children, in whom the personality of self-affirmation emerges, speak of themselves, of their body, in the third person. We could also very well ask ourselves: “What does this reveal about the nature of the realities which constitute the Human Being at this age already?”
Moreover, during sleep, while the body is asleep, the waking mind is inactive and the ego is in standby mode, this consciousness of “I am” is perfectly active, and sometimes even extra-lucid, testifying to levels of consciousness, and even super consciousness, clearly illustrating the potentially very superior status of the consciousness of “I am” over all states of identification. In other words, our consciousness of “I am” can become a shared level of consciousness, between two different aspects of “I Am”. That said, the process of identification with the body, with the mind, also seems to be something innate and irrepressible in human nature, as desired by God. It even seems to be something desirable at the start, so desirable that it happens during childhood, at an age at which we do not have the means to oppose ourselves, and where everything seems to be desires with which we identify. The child identifies absolutely with everything he undertakes, with a permanent role play. And when we later awaken to certain questions, we no longer have the memory or recollection of things past, we only have the lived experience and new and other forms of desire. This is surely the desired goal, and this is what we call scaffolding. While waiting perhaps to understand why? And towards what? Ultimately, the attachment of the “I am” to what it is not at the start must not lead to guilt, but must be taken as a fact of nature, a means to an end.
Let us remember that:
“In all concepts of selfhood it should be recognized that the fact of life comes first, its evaluation or interpretation later. The human child first lives and subsequently thinks about his living. In the cosmic economy insight precedes foresight.” (UB 112:2.6)
This identification with the body, and with the mind, is intentional and desired at the start, it constitutes the fact of life which comes first. Identification with what we are not, is necessary at the start. It will allow us to identify ourselves later, with who we really are, and objectively. This will happen when the time comes to “reflect and proceed with the evaluation and interpretation of the gift of life”, which alone will allow us to integrate ourselves into the cosmic economy. This will mark our birth of spirit after our birth to material life. Just as the baby in its mother’s womb “knows” nothing of the afterlife although it is alive. The baby who is born into the world a few seconds after childbirth is strictly the same as the one who was in its mother’s womb, at the same time as it is no longer the same, because it enters a new cycle of evaluation and interpretation of life, from the fetal state to that of the baby.
Ultimately, identification allows us to discover reality first, then realize that we are not this reality, to end up realizing, and discovering who we are. And this is exactly the process of all growth, with the benefit of experience that will allow us to know how to improve this lived reality, for those who will live it later. It is an eternal improvement of “Self” by others and for others.
This transition is not an anomaly, necessarily requiring extreme efforts and unusual postures, as well as very trying forms of asceticism, as some might suppose, in light of certain very fashionable theories.
Where are the boundaries between the Being who says: “I Am”, and his means of perceiving reality with which “I Am” wrongly identifies them, and what are the articulations?
To answer it requires sufficient knowledge of origins and destiny, which the “I Am” holds. This acquisition (whether factual or intuitive), is necessary to enable our “I am” to correctly write the history of the present moment, in particular the history of “who am I”, which therefore means “who was I and who will I be?”. This will establish the continuity between origin, history and destiny. This is so true, that “If the mind cannot arrive at true conclusions and penetrate to true origins, it will infallibly be led to postulate conclusions and invent origins, in order to have a means of thinking logically within the framework of these mentally created hypotheses.” "Such universal frameworks for the thought of creatures are indispensable to rational intellectual operations, but, without exception, they are erroneous to a greater or lesser degree. » The goal of life will then be to adapt the imagination of the Ego to the reality of the “I Am”, seen from the human side, and to adapt “the predestined plan of the Thought Adjuster” to the reality of the experience of the subject that He inhabits.
The normal functioning of the mind therefore necessarily requires a revelation, allowing the connection of origins and destiny in the present moment, whether it is self-revelation or epochal revelation, validated by the mind and certified by the experience of the creature.
¶ II. 2 “I Am” in man and Consciousness”: The Personality
On the other hand, the simple fact of recognizing the reality of this “I” reveals at the same time the reality of Consciousness, as being inherent in this “I”, and as a means of perceiving everything with which it identifies, as a body or mind, or which it perceives as someone else. The state of sleep and dream proves that this consciousness is neither in the sleeping body, nor in the mind in waking mode.
To return to the subject, we can always ask ourselves: Who is this “I” who perceives the body and the mind? And who, because he “Is” by saying “I am”, is also Consciousness, and confers on us consciousness. Not only the consciousness of our body, our mind, and our human self, but also the consciousness of the other, when he says “I know you” and by extension the consciousness of the world through the organs of perception of the body. Who is this “I” for whom, ultimately, everything is a tool or object of perception? And to what end?
Let us recall at this level that the teachings of The Urantia Book inform us that: “In human experience, everything that is not spiritual, except personality, is a means to an end. Any true relationship between a mortal and other human or divine persons - is an end in itself. And such association with the personality of Deity is the eternal goal of universe ascension.” (UB 112:2.8). The “I Am” is the Divine Personality in each of us, and thanks to it, we are conscious, and we are also conscious of being conscious, but we only possess for the moment, the levels of consciousness linked to our limited means of perception of reality.
The true purpose of the “I Am” in each of us and of the consciousness of reality inherent in it is therefore established: it is about relationships with human and divine personalities and with the Personality of the Deity itself. (Let us remember that at this level it is about association with the Personality of the Deity itself, and not an association with the Personality of the Father). But the “I Am” in us can only do this by experiencing successive levels of consciousness and by identifying ourselves as a human personality or “ego” in the face of other personalities and finally, in the face of the Source of Personalities, the true “I Am”, the Universal Father of whom our “I Am” is an attribute and a gift.
Let us not forget that everything else is, will have been or will ultimately be a means to an end. At each stage, the corresponding means will be abandoned, for other more elaborate ones, once the goal is reached, whether it is the type of body or the type of mind, or the things associated with them, otherwise the other stages could not be reached, and the same requirements will be reproduced with more difficult and demanding conditions. The best illustration is provided by observing the growth of a child. The child does not hesitate to attach and detach himself from the possibilities of the evolving body and mind, at the different stages, from infant to early childhood, from childhood to adolescence. The key to the growth of the personality, for the adult, is therefore to rediscover, in the face of survival, the enthusiasm, confidence and gratitude of children in the face of life, from which they expect each day, a new wonder. Having all been children, and experienced this, the possibility exists for each of us.
On the other hand, it is true that in modern times, there is an excessive tendency to identify with things and the intellect, via our attachment to the body and the mind. This tendency, in addition to the feeling of separation that it creates and which we will discuss later, increasingly gives rise to disidentification therapies as a form of panacea against the increasingly glaring lack of empathy for others that results from it, thanks to certain theories, often of Asian inspiration, on detachment, and its beneficial effects on mental peace.
However, we must always remember once again that this identification with the body and the mind is indeed a necessary process, and desired by the Father, which takes place in early childhood, when we have no means of opposing it. The objective is to create the mortal identity (in the planetary framework) and the human individuality (the coordination of identity factors), which the “I Am” will need for its expression, with the perfectly defined attributes. Because let us remember that:
“Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases:”
Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases:
Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases:
Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases:
Personality is bestowed by the Universal Father upon his creatures as a potentially eternal endowment. Such a divine gift is designed to function on numerous levels and in successive universe situations ranging from the lowly finite to the highest absonite, even to the borders of the absolute. Personality thus performs on three cosmic planes or in three universe phases: (UB 112:1.1)
Recalling that: “And, as at each of the previous stages of your ascension towards God, your human self will here inaugurate new relationships with your divine self” (UB 13:1.22), let us ask ourselves again the following question: that of knowing what new relationships the divine self, the “I Am” of divine essence, will have to establish with the human personality, this emerging superordinate personality, built around individuality and mortal identity, but which does not always claim this super ordination, because it tends to identify with the body and the mind.
At this stage, let us remember once again that: “In any concept of individuality, it should be recognized that the fact of life comes first, and its evaluation or interpretation second. A child begins by living, and later reflects on his life. In the cosmic economy, insight precedes foresight.” (UB 112:2.6).
After the human self has generally identified us with the body, the mind, and the other perceptions associated with them, through the fact of life, we come to the hour of evaluation and interpretation, the hour of seeking spiritual insight, the hour which must enable the Adjuster and the “I Am” to pass from the darkness into the light of consciousness.
This in accordance with the will of the Universal Father through the plan of progressive achievement
- The Plan of Progressive Attainment. This is the Universal Father’s plan for ascension through evolution. This program was accepted without reservation by the Eternal Son when he concurred with the Father’s proposal, “Let us make mortal creatures in our own image.” This device for enhancing the creatures of time involves the Father’s assigning of Thought Adjusters and endowing material creatures with the prerogatives of personality. (UB 7:4.4)
All that has been said so far concerns the personal relationship of each of us in our relations with the attributes of the “I Am” seeking expression through our “self.” Let us now imagine that this same process is taking place, at every moment, across the seven billion individuals living on the planet and on all the mortal inhabitants of the seven trillion planets (eventually) of the Grand Universe.
The natural question is how to order all this?
¶ III. “I AM”
The Universal Father
The characterization and definition of the “I Am” starting from the Universal Father and the present revelations is different. This characterization of the “I Am” is more difficult for us to access, as creatures, but it undoubtedly corresponds to a better characterization of reality, as it exists in God, at the existential level, while we are entirely experiential beings.
We can cite some of these characterizations:
“The I AM is the Infinite; the I AM is also infinity. From the sequential, time viewpoint, all reality has its origin in the infinite I AM, whose solitary existence in past infinite eternity must be a finite creature’s premier philosophic postulate. The concept of the I AM connotes unqualified infinity, the undifferentiated reality of all that could ever be in all of an infinite eternity.” (UB 105:1.3)
“As an existential concept the I AM is neither deified nor undeified, neither actual nor potential, neither personal nor impersonal, neither static nor dynamic. No qualification can be applied to the Infinite except to state that the I AM is. The philosophic postulate of the I AM is one universe concept which is somewhat more difficult of comprehension than that of the Unqualified Absolute.” (UB 105:1.4)
This characterization and this approach, which transcend the aptitudes and points of view of the creatures that we are, nevertheless find ways to express themselves. These means of expression take into account the totality of the growth potentialities of all creatures sensitive to the “I Am” (endowed with sensitivity to the circuit of Personality of the Father), as well as the totality of the divine expressions transmissible to these creatures. This means which is the living crucible of the experiential actualization of the potentials contained in the existential is the very reality of the Supreme.
It induces a new deal, different from the concept of the existential I Am and the human concept of the I Am approach. It is about “I Am that I Am” or, as far as we are concerned, the experience of man and humanity in God and in the Supreme, the Supreme who is the living expression of God in the Cosmos and the link between the Universal Father, and the creatures and realities of the Grand Universe.
¶ IV. “I AM THAT I AM” The Supreme
“The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but could go no further than to say: “I AM”. When he was pressed to reveal himself further, he revealed only: “I AM that I AM”. But, when Jesus had completed his earthly life, the name of the Father had been revealed in such a way that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could rightly say: I am the bread of life.
The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles, alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly say:
The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles, alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly say:
The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles, alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly say:
The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles, alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly say:
The Master, during the course of this final prayer with his apostles, alluded to the fact that he had manifested the Father’s name to the world. And that is truly what he did by the revelation of God through his perfected life in the flesh. The Father in heaven had sought to reveal himself to Moses, but he could proceed no further than to cause it to be said, “I AM.” And when pressed for further revelation of himself, it was only disclosed, “I AM that I AM.” But when Jesus had finished his earth life, this name of the Father had been so revealed that the Master, who was the Father incarnate, could truly say: (UB 182:1.9)
“I Am” refers to the Universal Father and needs no further qualification, but is understandable as such only in Paradise; and not in the evolving cosmos where the Universal Father is not personally present.
“I Am that I Am” translates the additional step of the Universal Father manifesting Himself as God the Supreme, the God of Creatures, because He is Himself Creator (integrating all the attributes of the Trinity) and Creature at the same time. Through the manifestation “I Am that I Am” the personality of the Universal Father takes on the mantle of time because He identifies Himself with the Cosmos of which He holds the animating power (thanks to the efforts of the Almighty Supreme) and personalizes Himself as a Supreme being. “I am that I am” translates the passage from the Being in Paradise and in the Central Universe, to existence in the Grand Universe. It is therefore indeed a complete answer addressed to the mind of Moses, and an advance in clarification, because “the greatest understanding of the Father for the present age of the universe lies in the knowledge of the Supreme”.
In the same way, and in the image of the Supreme, the “I Am” in us is living its “I Am that I am” by identifying and personalizing itself with the realities of the world, in order to gain the power to identify and personalize itself with its true nature and to coordinate itself with the Supreme. (These identifications with passing realities are the “illusions” of Asian philosophies.) All this, in accordance with the reminder of the mission of progressive achievement, which is the Supreme Command addressed to all evolutionary creatures “Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect.” The Universal Father applies it to Himself as Supreme, before demanding it of His Creatures as partners of the Supreme.
Finally, this reminder is inserted in connection with the terminal effusion of the Master Son which makes the Supreme more accessible to all, by concluding among his attributes.
“I am the living link between time and eternity” which illuminates immensely the reality and nature of the “I Am” in every man who awakens to the desire to do the will of God, in every personality or human self who seeks to discover and realize the predestined plan of his Adjuster, entrusted to the Divine Personality which indwells him. There is no longer a boundary between Being (Prerogative of the Father in paradise) and Existence (Attribute of the Father donning the mantle of the Supreme) and we can participate in both by making “it our will that the will of the Father be done.”
God the Father reveals Himself through actions for the mission of progressive accomplishment, for which He created us in His image and likeness. Our life, beyond our incarnation in the flesh, will have to oscillate between meditation and personal communion with the Father, to acquire Wisdom and then use this Wisdom for impersonal Action and Service within the framework of the Supreme.
Thus, “And, as in each of the previous stages of your ascension towards God, your human self will here inaugurate new relationships with your divine self” (UB 13:1.21)
You who devote yourselves to the service of The Urantia Book and the brotherhood can scarcely realize the importance of your actions. No doubt you will live and die without fully understanding that you are participating in the birth of a new age of religion on this world.
Johanna Beukers