© 1990 Nancy Johnson
© 1990 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
…Forms are valueless when lessons are learned. No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched. But sometimes error is so great that its rectification by revelation would be fatal to those slowly emerging truths which are essential to its experiential overthrow.… (UB 48:6.32)
No doubt we have all paid attention service to this provocative statement by an archangel from Nebadon, and surely this archangel intended to pique our curiosity and stimulate us to examine our conceptual environment — our belief system — to recognize an error that’s so out of sync with true reality that they couldn’t tell us what it was. What truth could have had such a traumatic impact on us at that time? Did they give us any clues?
Consider for a moment the nature of the following conceptual errors, presented in arbitrary order, which the revelators of truth did not hesitate to correct:
This list could be expanded considerably, but the point to be made here is that the revelators did not hesitate to refute these cherished beliefs of ours — beliefs so strong that wars have been proudly fought and lives willingly sacrificed in a noble and courageous attempt to defend them.
The kind of error we’re looking for couldn’t possibly be found in the realm of religious dogma. Each school of religious belief has its own dogma, while too many mortals have no religious belief at all. The error must have to do with a misperception that virtually everyone shares — unquestionably an error set in motion at the time of the Lucifer rebellion and the Calligastic betrayal of our world — and one which hits us at the supposed core of our very being. But what could it be? And if we’re oblivious to the error, how will we recognize the truth? Surely they gave us some clues.
What was uppermost in the mindset of the world in the mid ’ 30 s that prevented the revelators from correcting this great error in our belief system? Material survival? These people had just stepped out of the first world war. They were face to face with the setback of a devastating depression and were on the brink of engaging in another world war where attack seemed justified. Science and technology were just beginning to blossom, psychology was regarded as a pseudoscience, and few people believed there might be life on other worlds.
Today’s problems are not any better or worse, but our lifestyle is drastically different. Overall we’re much better educated and have more time to think and ponder the solution of our problems from a higher perspective. Has that mindset changed sufficiently in recent times to allow correction of the error? These words from a Melchizedek would lead us to believe that it is at least possible when he said:
Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented. (UB 101:4.1)
Forty years later another revelation appeared on the scene: A Course in Miracles. The author presumably is Christ himself (or possibly the Spirit of Truth speaking for him). According to the author, our perception of reality is totally of base. Our ego minds think the material world is the real world and that our bodies prove we’re all separate beings, blinding us to our oneness. In this world of nonreality, our ego minds try to reign supreme, even demanding that we see ourselves as separate so we can exploit our specialness and justify attacking one another. The ego’s only purpose is to survive; it doesn’t even concern itself with right thinking. The purpose of the course is to teach us how to forget everything we think we know and let the Holy Spirit correct our perception for us. It is time, he says, to correct the ancient misperception, heal the separation, and begin living as God created us to live — as one.
The text was difficult to study — oftentimes frustrating in its repetitious hammering away at a single theme. I was sometimes disturbed as it hit upon areas into which I had personally invested some reality, saying it had no reality. Only toward the end did I begin to see the point of it all, but perhaps that wouldn’t have been possible without reading the other parts first.
By the time I finished studying the text of A Course in Miracles, I could begin to understand the validity of its claim that we have a split mind (material [ego] mind/cosmic [spirit] mind), with the ego mind investing enormous energy in self-defeating judgments about ourselves and others that have absolutely no reality in eternity. The invitation was for all who would participate as miracle workers to suspend all judgments about anything we can perceive through our material senses, holding ourselves and all others as blameless of any wrongdoing, while the Holy Spirit lets us see who we really are and heals the separation.
In all subsequent readings of The Urantia Book I noticed a remarkable number of statements which would support the claims in A Course in Miracles, and I began to wonder if these were clues — an attempt on the part of the revelators to condition us to recognize the “great error” when the time was right.
An archangel of Nebadon revealed his technique of conveying ideas by implication, and I observed that this technique was effectively used by many of the other authors also. Referring to the Harmony Workers, he said:
…If I had the least possible basis for comparison, I would attempt to portray this unique field of spirit achievement, but I despair-there is no hope of conveying to mortal minds this sphere of celestial artistry. Nevertheless, that which cannot be described may still be implied: (UB 44:7.1)
He then painted a word picture that each reader might interpret according to his/her comprehension capacity.
The revelators told us they were handicapped by the necessity of describing spiritual realities in distorted form so they might be at least partially comprehended by the material intellect. The excerpts from The Urantia Book used in this presentation pertain mostly to the nature of material personality, material mind, and the soul as they would be described from the Paradise viewpoint and which are more in alignment with statements made in A Course in Miracles. (Underlinings are inserted for emphasis.) Some of these statements from the book are subtle and imbedded in heavy subject matter so they may be easily overlooked by the material intellect but are nevertheless registered on the brain; others are direct and even blunt. All together they clearly imply that our material existence is nothing more than a means to an end. This may be what the archangel meant when he said, “No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched.”
A Course in Miracles tells us to wake up from our dream and remember who we are-that we’re not who we think we are. As far as they had permission to, I believe the revelators of The Urantia Book tried to tell us the same thing. In Paper 1 a Divine Counselor says:
Human personality is the time-space image-shadow cast by the divine Creator personality. And no actuality can ever be adequately comprehended by an examination of its shadow. Shadows should be interpreted in terms of the true substance. (UB 1:6.1)
In Paper 5 he describes a little more:
Personality is potential in all creatures who possess a mind endowment ranging from the minimum of self-consciousness to the maximum of God-consciousness. But mind endowment alone is not personality, neither is spirit nor physical energy. Personality is that quality and value in cosmic reality which is exclusively bestowed by God the Father upon these living systems of the associated and co-ordinated energies of matter, mind, and spirit. Neither is personality a progressive achievement. Personality may be material or spiritual, but there either is personality or there is no personality. The other-than-personal never attains the level of the personal except by the direct act of the Paradise Father. (UB 5:6.3)
So personality is bestowed by God the Father, and it may be material or spiritual. The material self is endowed with material personality which is temporarily ours for use during this life in the flesh, for he goes on to say:
Capacity for divine personality is inherent in the prepersonal Adjuster; capacity for human personality is ins potential in the cosmic-mind endowment of the human being. But the experiential personality of mortal man is not observable as an active and functional reality until after the material life vehicle of the mortal creature has been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father, being thus launched upon the seas of experience as a self-conscious and a (relatively) self-determinative and self-creative personality. The material self is truly and unqualifiedly personal.
The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity; the prepersonal spirit Adjuster also has identity, eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit prepersonality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence the surviving identity of the immortal soul. (UB 5:6.6-7)
The time-space image-shadow called human personality is made possible by the pattern arrangement of our material forms. But it is not observable as an active and functional reality until after the Thought Adjuster and soul are present. Also, we are told many times that the bestowal of personality is the exclusive domain of God the Father, but does he delegate the bestowal of “shadow” personality to the Conjoint Actor? Consider the implication of the following statement which appears without apparent explanation in Paper 112.
While it would be presumptuous to attempt the definition of personality, it may prove helpful to recount some of the things which are known about personality:
1. Personality is that quality in reality which is bestowed by the Universal Father himself or by the Conjoint Actor, acting for the Father. (UB 112:0.2-3)
Ordinarily we regard the Conjoint Actor as the bestower of mind. How does the Conjoint Actor act for the Father in the bestowal of personality? We are told in Part I (UB 12:8.8) that he reacts to both material and spiritual realities, and ministry to beings such as ourselves (who represent a union of both the material and spiritual phases of creation) is his exclusive domain. Does he bestow material (temporal) personality on material minded creatures? The material aspect of creature mind can only respond to the material gravity circuit, as explained by a Divine Counselor in Paper 9 (UB ○:6.5), but if we focus our attention on one short paragraph in Paper 8 , we will see that he had already called attention to a primary flaw in our view of reality and suggested how we might try to understand the nature and work of the God of Action:
…But material creatures who tend towards the error of viewing matter as basic reality and mind, together with spirit, as postulates rooted in matter, would better comprehend the Third Source and Center if he were called the Infinite Reality, the Universal Organizer, or the Personality Co-ordinator. (UB 8:2.3)
He describes “the error,” but is it the root of THE error? Matter is not basic reality, and mind and spirit are not rooted in matter. Perhaps we would do better to think of them as temporarily housed or encircuited in matter — a sort of complementary “shadow” composed by the Conjoint Actor in his role as Universal Organizer. As Personality Co-ordinator, the Conjoint Actor awaits the advance preparation of the Creator Son and Creative Spirit who duplicate certain Havona patterns of personality and mind in their material creation. (It’s somewhat important to the entire discussion for you to be aware that in the Foreword (UB 0:6.9) we are told: “Pattern is pattern and remains pattern; only copies are multiplied” … “In contrast to the aspect of the total, pattern discloses the individual aspect of energy and of personality.”) We are given some interesting information about the advance preparation of the Creator Son and Creative Spirit in Papers 14 and 3.
A Creator Son uses the creatures of Havona as personality-pattern possibilities for his own mortal children and spirit beings… (UB 14:6.28)
On the worlds of Havona the Spirit and the Daughters of the Spirit find the mind patterns for all their groups of spiritual and material intelligences… (UB 14:6.33)
…Mind of the human order is a bestowal of the Daughters of the Conjoint Actor, the Divine Ministers of the evolving universes. (UB 3:1.8)
Havona is the home of the pattern personality of every mortal type and the home of all superhuman personalities of mortal association who are not native to the creations of time. (UB 14:6.37)
Now we can take a fresh look at two statements in Paper 112 which round out the picture of the material stage for the enactment of the human part of the drama unfolding in the seven superuniverses:
Human beings possess identity only in the material sense. Such qualities of the self are expressed by the material mind as it functions in the energy system of the intellect. When it is said that man has identity, it is recognized that he is in possession of a mind circuit which has been placed in subordination to the acts and choosing of the will of the human personality. But this is a material and purely temporary manifestation, just as the human embryo is a transient parasitic stage of human life. Human beings, from a cosmic perspective, are born, live, and die in a relative instant of time; they are not enduring. But mortal personality, through its own choosing, possesses the power of transferring its seat of identity from the passing material-intellect system to the higher morontia-soul system which, in association with the Thought Adjuster, is created as a new vehicle for personality manifestation. (UB 112:5.4)
At death the functional identity associated with the human personality is disrupted through the cessation of vital motion. Human personality, while transcending its constituent parts, is dependent on them for functional identity. The stoppage of life destroys the physical brain patterns for mind endowment, and the disruption of mind terminates mortal consciousness. The consciousness of that creature cannot subsequently reappear until a cosmic situation has been arranged which will permit the same human personality again to function in relationship with living energy. (UB 112:5.14)
The body, then, is merely a temporary functional vehicle with a unique neural pattern. Once activated with the spark of life, it becomes a mechanism for the functioning of the mind and personality circuits. The morontia-soul system is also a vehicle for personality manifestation, and we are supposed to transfer our seat of identity to this soul. The soul is what is observable to spirit beings as an active and functional reality. A Mighty Messenger, a one-time mortal like ourselves, made this so clear when he said:
On a material world you think of a body as having a spirit, but we regard the spirit as having a body. The material eyes are truly the windows of the spirit-born soul. The spirit is the architect, the mind is the builder, the body is the material building. (UB 42:12.12)
But what is the soul? Do we really know? From the material viewpoint, it’s “something” we created in partnership with the Thought Adjuster. The book tells us this repeatedly. We were only about five years old at the time and probably don’t remember too much about it. Nevertheless, from the Paradise viewpoint there must be something additional involved in the “birth” of the soul. First a Mighty Messenger tells us, “The great Supreme is the cosmic oversoul of the grand universe. In him the qualities and quantities of the cosmos do find their deity reflection…” (UB 117:5.1) A few pages later he tells us this:
The act of the creature’s choosing to do the will of the Creator is a cosmic value and has a universe meaning which is immediately reacted to by some unrevealed but ubiquitous force of co-ordination, probably the functioning of the ever-enlarging action of the Supreme Being.
The morontia soul of an evolving mortal is really the son of the Adjuster action of the Universal Father and the child of the cosmic reaction of the Supreme Being, the Universal Mother. The mother influence dominates the human personality throughout the local universe childhood of the growing soul… (UB 117:6.4-5)
Consider the implication of this remark — and add to it the Divine Counselor’s words that we are not observable as an active and functional reality until after the appearance of the Thought Adjuster and the soul. Could it be that the soul is a fragment of the Supreme just as the Adjuster is a fragment of the Father? I have to ask — because A Course in Miracles urges us to remember who we are, saying we forgot, but not to fear, because the Holy Spirit remembers for us until we awaken from our dream.
Mighty Messengers must be granted more freedom than others in the revelation of truth to mortals. Four times other revelators use a familiar quote from Scripture with reference to the Universal Father — the one that says:
“In Him we live and move and have our being.” (UB 2:1.11) (See also UB 1:5.16, UB 12:7.12, and UB 105:2.11.)
There is no cause to question it, since we know the Primal Father is the source of all that is. But the Mighty Messenger uses the same quote in reference to the Supreme, creating a big shift in perception. He tells us:
The Supreme Being did not create man, but man was literally created out of, his very life was derived from, the potentiality of the Supreme. Nor does he evolve man; yet is the Supreme himself the very essence of evolution. From the finite standpoint, we actually live, move, and have our being within the immanence of the Supreme. (UB 117:3.12)
Are we too focused on our individuality to fully welcome the role of the Supreme in the evolution of the worlds of time and space? A Course in Miracles frequently makes reference to God’s Son (capitalized) in a collective sense which clearly distinguishes it from “God’s son” (not capitalized), which is the style used to refer to individual mortals. Since it tells us we’re all really one, a Urantia Book student might easily infer that “God’s Son” (capitalized) probably refers to the evolving Supreme Being.
So A Course in Miracles tells us to “remember who we are” and a Mighty Messenger tells us that we are the children of the Supreme. A thorough study of The Urantia Book alone provides sufficient ground for us to infer that, collectively speaking, in reality we are the Supreme — but not our bodies or our temporary identities, because we’ve already learned that these do not survive mortal death. We have learned that the Father is self-realizing in the worlds of time and space by sending a fragment of himself to dwell within us after contact has been made by the sixth and seventh adjutant mind spirits. The soul repercussion of this act is a child of the evolving Supreme in whom we actually live, move, and have our being. And we are told about the overcontrol of Supremacy.
Still quoting from a Mighty Messenger, the next two references from the paper on “Energy — Mind and Matter” are thought provoking and have left many a reader puzzled as to their possible meaning. These may or may not have something to do with the overcontrol of the Supreme, but they’re definitely clues of some sort:
Mind is always creative. The mind endowment of an individual animal, mortal, morontian, spirit ascender, or finality attainer is always competent to produce a suitable and serviceable body for the living creature identity. But the presence phenomenon of a personality or the pattern of an identity, as such, is not a manifestation of energy, either physical, mindal, or spiritual. The personality form is the pattern aspect of a living being; it connotes the arrangement of energies, and this, plus life and motion, is the mechanism of creature existence. (UB 42:12.9)
…And from there on out through the realms of time and space, wherever a divine spirit reality is present, whenever a real spirit-mind is functioning, there always tends to be produced a material or physical counterpart of that spirit reality.
The spirit is the creative reality; the physical counterpart is the time-space reflection of the spirit reality, the physical repercussion of the creative action of spirit-mind. (UB 42:12.13-14)
At least we have a little more information regarding the source of the mechanism of creature existence. The next three references explain the limitations of this mechanism and something about the overcontrol of Supremacy:
Mechanisms produced by higher minds function to liberate their creative sources but to some degree unvaryingly limit the action of all subordinate intelligences. To the creatures of the universes this limitation becomes apparent as the mechanism of the universes. Man does not have unfettered free will; there are limits to his range of choice, but within the radius of this choice his will is relatively sovereign.
The life mechanism of the mortal personality, the human body, is the product of supermortal creative design; therefore it can never be perfectly controlled by man himself. Only when ascending man, in liaison with the fused Adjuster, self-creates the mechanism for personality expression, will he achieve perfected control thereof.
The grand universe is mechanism as well as organism, mechanical and living-a living mechanism activated by a Supreme Mind, co-ordinating with a Supreme Spirit, and finding expression on maximum levels of power and personality unification as the Supreme Being. But to deny the mechanism of the finite creation is to deny fact and to disregard reality. (UB 118:9.2-4)
…The Primal Father is even now — as always — self-realizing of an ever-expanding arena of time-space, and of time-space-transcended, meanings, an arena of changing relationships wherein energy-matter is being progressively subjected to the overcontrol of living and divine spirit through the experiential striving of living and personal mind. (UB 42:10.1)
We do not find the overcontrol of Supremacy to be wholly predictable. Furthermore, this unpredictability appears to be characterized by a certain developmental incompleteness, undoubtedly an earmark of the incompleteness of the Supreme and of the incompleteness of finite reaction to the Paradise Trinity.
The mortal mind can immediately think of a thousand and one things — catastrophic physical events, appalling accidents, horrific disasters, painful illnesses, and world-wide scourges — and ask whether such visitations are correlated in the unknown maneuvering of this probable functioning of the Supreme Being. Frankly, we do not know; we are not really sure. But we do observe that, as time passes, all these difficult and more or less mysterious situations always work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. It may be that the circumstances of existence and the inexplicable vicissitudes of living are all interwoven into a meaningful pattern of high value by the function of the Supreme and the overcontrol of the Trinity. (UB 10:7.4)
Could it be that the Supreme is orchestrating this growing sense of urgency among many readers that it is time for us to begin manifesting the unifying nature of Supremacy in our worldwide fellowship? But we cannot effectively do this unless we manage to transfer our seat of identity to the higher morontia-soul system. Our material selves are not capable of discerning spiritual reality, as pointed out in the next three references:
It is exceedingly difficult for the meagerly spiritualized, material mind of mortal man to experience marked consciousness of the spirit activities of such divine entities as the Paradise Adjusters. As the soul of joint mind and Adjuster creation becomes increasingly existent, there also evolves a new phase of soul consciousness which is capable of experiencing the presence, and of recognizing the spirit leadings and other supermaterial activities, of the Mystery Monitors. (UB 5:2.5)
Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind…The difficulties and paradoxes of religion are inherent in the fact that the realities of religion are utterly beyond the mortal capacity for intellectual comprehension. (UB 5:5.6)
Knowledge is the sphere of the material or fact discerning mind. Truth is the domain of the spiritually endowed intellect that is conscious of knowing God. Knowledge is demonstrable; truth is experienced. Knowledge is a possession of the mind; truth an experience of the soul, the progressing self. Knowledge is a function of the nonspiritual level; truth is a phase of the mind-spirit level of the universes… (UB 130:4.10)
As you may now understand, it never has been our material selves who were comprehending the spiritual truths associated with the factual information we’ve been storing in our brains, but it was truly important to get it recorded there. Only in recent times has science discovered that every experience we have ever had, along with any emotional response connected with the experience, is indelibly recorded on the brain. This would include all spiritual experiences as well, even though, as we just read, these are actually experiences of the soul. These accumulated records are scanned and the information used as a basis for making decisions in the present. The joy emotion associated with gradually accumulated spiritual recordings becomes an increasingly attractive choice stimulus to the material creature who naturally seeks pleasure over pain. The indwelling Adjuster can then help us remember the joy at each moment of choice. The midwayers explained it this way:
The human mind does not create real values: human experience does not yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose. (UB 196:3.10)
Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings… (UB 196:3.16)
A Melchizedek solicits our cooperation with a practical logic our mortal minds can understand:
But mortal mind without immortal spirit cannot survive. The mind of man is mortal; only the bestowed spirit is immortal. Survival is dependent on spiritualization by the ministry of the Adjuster-on the birth and evolution of the immortal soul; at least, there must not have developed an antagonism towards the Adjuster’s mission of effecting the spiritual transformation of the material mind. (UB 49:4.9)
The choosing power of the material personality should not be understated, but as we grow more consciously aware that it is actually our soul-selves, not our material selves, who are capable of recognizing the leadings of our Thought Adjusters, it makes more sense to consciously shift the focus of our identity to our soul-elves. You might ask, “How can we do this?” The Urantia Book tells us we can; A Course in Miracles tells us how! It may be the only way we can truly demonstrate our sincerity when we say: “It is my will that your will be done.” Without this focus, growth is likely to be spontaneous and wholly haphazard rather than controlled, directed, and constructive. The Urantia Book provides us with the skeleton concept, which is basically this:
…Such a spirit dominance of the material mind is conditioned upon two experiences: This mind must have evolved up through the ministry of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, and the material (personal) self must choose to co-operate with the indwelling Adjuster in creating and fostering the morontia self, the evolutionary and potentially immortal soul. (UB 111:1.2)
Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man’s inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside… it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing… (UB 5:6.8)
…By and with the consent of your will, the Adjuster has the power to subject the creature trends of the material mind to the transforming actions of the motivations and purposes of the emerging morontial soul. (UB 108:5.4)
A Course in Miracles picks up where The Urantia Book left off.
We know our world is classed as semibarbaric on the evolutionary scale. A Course in Miracles asks us to become instruments of peace and tells us how to let the Holy Spirit use our physical presence as a communication tool to turn all forms of fear into love. A Solitary Messenger encouraged us to do this, too, when he said:
Since this inner life of man is truly creative, there rests upon each person the responsibility of choosing as to whether this creativity shall be spontaneous and wholly haphazard or controlled, directed, and constructive. How can a creative imagination produce worthy children when the stage whereon it functions is already preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries? (UB 111:4.9)
The first volume of A Course in Miracles, the Text, has an unusual introduction which says, in part: “This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance…”
It could rightly be called a course in how to respond to the leadings of our Thought Adjusters who long to bring about our spiritual transformation. As we learned from The Urantia Book earlier in this discussion, material creatures tend toward the error of viewing matter as basic reality and mind, together with spirit, as postulates rooted in matter. As long as this fundamental error in perception persists in our minds we will not be able to transcend our animal response to the material gravity circuit. Any attempt to live in unified Supremacy will be doomed to failure, because that is a spirit-dominated realm.
Jesus understood 2000 years ago that it would not be easy for believers to suddenly transfer their seat of identity from the material self to the soul. Otherwise he would not have said:
Forewarn all believers regarding the fringe of conflict which must be traversed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within either realm, there is little conflict or confusion, but all are doomed to experience more or less uncertainty during the times of transition between the two levels of living. (UB 159:3.7)
He’s been a patient Master, but today he says we’re running out of time, so he sent us a course to tell us how it can be done. To mainline Christianity “running out of time” suggests that the catastrophic events foretold in the Scriptures are just around the corner. Students of The Urantia Book might infer that we’re about to embark on a new age — the first stage of light and life — and most of us fondly wish to make a significant contribution toward that end. But we know there are conditions which must first be met before this can happen, and one of those conditions — the end of rebellion-requires our direct participation, as we were told in Paper 35.
In the event of rebellion on a system headquarters, a new 5overeign is usually installed within a comparatively short time, but not so on the individual planets. They are the component units of the material creation, and creature free will is a factor in the final adjudication of all such problems. Successor Planetary Princes are designated for isolated worlds, planets whose princes of authority may have gone astray, but they do not assume active rulership of such worlds until the results of insurrection are partially overcome and removed by the remedial measures adopted by the Melchizedeks and other ministering personalities… (UB 35:9.9)
A Course in Miracles says it is time to correct an ancient misperception. It tells us what it is and teaches us how to become the kind of miracle workers it will take to correct it.
The Urantia Book tells us our enduring reality is that we are fragments of the Father and possibly living cells of the Supreme Being. True, we have a material form, with a material mind and a material personality, but “Forms are valueless when lessons are learned. No chick may be had without the shell, and no shell is of any worth after the chick is hatched.” Once a certain phase of soul consciousness — awareness of our true reality — is reached, we no longer have to “live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor.” (UB 3:5.13) We’re able then to forsake the self-life and dynamically choose the divine life instead.
Perhaps we might infer that “forsake the self-life” means we must deny the body its natural instincts. Not so. Apparently the material creation, including the body, has always been quite perfect to fulfill the purpose for which it was created. The misperception, we are told, is that the material or ego mind has been conditioned to believe that it — and all other ego minds — are separate entities apart from God. Remember that Lucifer challenged the reality of God, saying it was just a hoax designed to keep us in line and prevent us from enjoying the freedom we are entitled to. Then Caligastia sided with him, and in a very short time our world reverted to primitive ways. Cooperation lost out to competition, and today we’re still caught up in trying to control or outdo one another, miserably preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries. This is the self-life we must forsake- the ego mind that thinks it’s separate. We cannot attack another without attacking ourselves. Bodies are material and nonspiritualonly a means to an end-whereas true relationships acknowledge our spiritual oneness and are therefore ends in themselves.
A Course in Miracles tells us that we can first let the Holy Spirit teach us that we’re the “chick,” not the “shell,” and from there we can use our shells as much needed communication devices to help awaken all our brothers from the illusion of separateness kept alive by an ancient misperception. For all who are willing to participate in healing the separation, he promises the same thing a Melchizedek so poetically described in Paper 101 on “The Real Nature of Religion”:
Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality’s triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space. (UB 101:10.9)
The ideas and conclusions presented in this work are thoso of the author and not necossarily those of URANTIA Foundation, copyright owner of The Urantia Book, all rights reserved, or Foundation for Inmer Peace, copyright owner of A Course in Mirades, all rights reserved.