© 2019 Neil Francey
Personal relationships are at the core of all our activities, now and in the far distant future. And the basis of the interplay between individuals, both mortal and divine, is love.
Some degree of moral affinity and spiritual harmony is essential to friendship between two persons; a loving personality can hardly reveal himself to a loveless person. Even to approach the knowing of a divine personality, all of man’s personality endowments must be wholly consecrated to the effort; halfhearted, partial devotion will be unavailing. UB 1:6.5
Love is the secret of beneficial association between personalities. You cannot really know a person as the result of a single contact. You cannot appreciatingly know music through mathematical deduction, even though music is a form of mathematical rhythm. The number assigned to a telephone subscriber does not in any manner identify the personality of that subscriber or signify anything concerning his character. UB 12:9.2
This is included because of the difference a happy person makes in the workplace compared to an unhappy person. The quotes give a clue to how happiness can originate in the heart.
Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth because it can be acted out; it can be lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon error because, not being a reality, it cannot be realized in experience. Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor. UB 2:7.6
Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience. UB 2:7.11
Communication and information are at best relatively true, and subject to misinterpretation. We have to learn to live with it at this stage.
All finite knowledge and creature understanding are relative. Information and intelligence, gleaned from even high sources, is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true. UB 2:7.1
Evolving personalities are only partially wise and relatively true in their communications. They can be certain only as far as their personal experience extends. UB 2:7.2
On being a visionary: Forward looking individuals are essential contributors to a progressive company. They construct a new and appealing organization. We all have to be somewhat visionary too when we are creating our philosophy of living. We can cause change, and bring about better ways to deal with true reality.
The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness. UB 2:7.10
Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt man has powers of prevision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of selfrealization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality. UB 12:5.10
The human personality is not merely a concomitant of time-and-space events; the human personality can also act as the cosmic cause of such events. UB 12:5.11
Opportunities in the commercial world are limited by numerous factors, some of which are listed below. However, none of these limitations apply when we seek spiritual progress. The possibilities are equally available to all, and by definition are limitless.
The consciousness of a victorious human life on earth is born of that creature faith which dares to challenge each recurring episode of existence when confronted with the awful spectacle of human limitations, by the unfailing declaration: Even if I cannot do this, there lives in me one who can and will do it, a part of the Father-Absolute of the universe of universes. And that is “the victory which overcomes the world, even your faith.” UB 4:4.9
The mortals of the realms of time and space may differ greatly in innate abilities and intellectual endowment, they may enjoy environments exceptionally favorable to social advancement and moral progress, or they may suffer from the lack of almost every human aid to culture and supposed advancement in the arts of civilization; but the possibilities for spiritual progress in the ascension career are equal to all; increasing levels of spiritual insight and cosmic meanings are attained quite independently of all such sociomoral differentials of the diversified material environments on the evolutionary worlds. UB 5:1.4
From where can we derive a higher minded commitment to the service of our fellows? Again, we turn to the spiritual component in our God given natures.
God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman. UB 5:4.3
Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher spiritual levels of religious experience. UB 5:5.4
The integration of these three components into our living, both the business and personal aspects, will result in a greater satisfaction in living.
Mortal man secures three great satisfactions from religious experience, even in the days of his temporal sojourn on earth:
- Intellectually he acquires the satisfactions of a more unified human consciousness.
- Philosophically he enjoys the substantiation of his ideals of moral values.
- Spiritually he thrives in the experience of divine companionship, in the spiritual satisfactions of true worship. UB 5:5.7-10
We know of many things that account for cohesion between people, groups, and even countries. Here we are invited to recognize another and incredibly powerful gravity that draws people together, and unites them. Be aware of its existence in the corporate world.
Spirit realities respond to the drawing power of the center of spiritual gravity in accordance with their qualitative value, their actual degree of spirit nature. Spirit substance (quality) is just as responsive to spirit gravity as the organized energy of physical matter (quantity) is responsive to physical gravity. Spiritual values and spirit forces are real. From the viewpoint of personality, spirit is the soul of creation; matter is the shadowy physical body. UB 7:1.3
Spirit-gravity pull and response thereto operate not only on the universe as a whole but also even between individuals and groups of individuals. There is a spiritual cohesiveness among the spiritual and spiritized personalities of any world, race, nation, or believing group of individuals. There is a direct attractiveness of a spirit nature between spiritually minded persons of like tastes and longings. The term kindred spirits is not wholly a figure of speech. UB 7:1.6
The discriminative operation of the spirit-gravity circuit might possibly be compared to the functions of the neural circuits in the material human body: Sensations travel inward over the neural paths; some are detained and responded to by the lower automatic spinal centers; others pass on to the less automatic but habit-trained centers of the lower brain, while the most important and vital incoming messages flash by these subordinate centers and are immediately registered in the highest levels of human consciousness. UB 7:3.4
There are few more important relationships than the master-servant, coachplayer, parent-child, manager-staff, and teacher-student. It is the foundation of universes. They are all indicative of ‘family’.
It is enough of a reach of the material mind of the children of time to conceive of the Father in eternity. We know that any child can best relate himself to reality by first mastering the relationships of the child-parent situation and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. Subsequently the growing mind of the child will be able to adjust to the concept of family relations, to relationships of the community, the race, and the world, and then to those of the universe, the superuniverse, even the universe of universes. UB 8:1.11
He is the perfect boss of a very big business indeed. From the one man business, up to the multinational, and beyond to the universal.
It is repugnant to the divine nature to suffer any sort of deterioration or ever to permit the execution of any purely personal act in an inferior way. It should be made clear, however, that, if, in the divinity of any situation, in the extremity of any circumstance, in any case where the course of supreme wisdom might indicate the demand for different conduct — if the demands of perfection might for any reason dictate another method of reaction, a better one, then and there would the all-wise God function in that better and more suitable way. That would be the expression of a higher law, not the reversal of a lower law. UB 12:7.3
The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves each individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves every individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood. UB 12:7.8
The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity. UB 12:7.9
A business entity is the sum of its parts, the forces of good carrying the firm forward while other forces hold it back. It is evident for example in areas such as government, sport, banking, communications, health, and arts.
Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons. The part profits or suffers in measure with the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men. As moves the part, so moves the whole. As the progress of the whole, so the progress of the part. The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood. UB 12:7.11
Appreciate how the mind works. While these few quotes are brief, they take us way beyond present day concepts of those agencies who would presume to lecture us on how the mind works: How we should feel, how much we deserve things, how to be a victim, and all of that.
Mind is the technique whereby spirit realities become experiential to creature personalities. And in the last analysis the unifying possibilities of even human mind, the ability to coordinate things, ideas, and values, is supermaterial. UB 12:8.8
The goal of existence of all personalities is spirit; material manifestations are relative, and the cosmic mind intervenes between these universal opposites. UB 12:8.13
On Paradise the three energies, physical, mindal, and spiritual, are co-ordinate. In the evolutionary cosmos energy-matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit, through the mediation of mind, is striving for the mastery. UB 12:8.14
Mortal man has a spirit nucleus. The mind is a personal-energy system existing around a divine spirit nucleus and functioning in a material environment. Such a living relationship of personal mind and spirit constitutes the universe potential of eternal personality. Real trouble, lasting disappointment, serious defeat, or inescapable death can come only after self-concepts presume fully to displace the governing power of the central spirit nucleus, thereby disrupting the cosmic scheme of personality identity. UB 12:9.6
Just imagine this: For each of us, this life is the start of an enthralling future if we so choose. Our working lives here are but a glimpse of what can be achieved. Let’s see it as a simple training ground. Best we make a start on applying superior approaches. And realize experiences can be spiritual.
To me, these executive worlds are the most interesting and intriguing spots outside of Paradise. In no other place in the wide universe can one observe such varied activities, involving so many different orders of living beings, having to do with operations on so many diverse levels, occupations at once material, intellectual, and spiritual. When I am accorded a period of release from assignment, if I chance to be on Paradise or in Havona, I usually proceed to one of these busy worlds of the Seven Master Spirits, there to inspire my mind with such spectacles of enterprise, devotion, loyalty, wisdom, and effectiveness. Nowhere else can I observe such an amazing interassociation of personality performances on all seven levels of universe reality. And I am always stimulated by the activities of those who well know how to do their work, and who so thoroughly enjoy doing it. UB 13:4.7
Concerning the government of the central universe, there is none. Havona is so exquisitely perfect that no intellectual system of government is required. There are no regularly constituted courts, neither are there legislative assemblies; Havona requires only administrative direction. Here may be observed the height of the ideals of true self-government. UB 14:3.1
The regulations of the central universe are fittingly and inherently natural; the rules of conduct are not arbitrary. In every requirement of Havona there is disclosed the reason of righteousness and the rule of justice. And these two factors, combined, equal what on Urantia would be denominated fairness. When you arrive in Havona, you will naturally enjoy doing things the way they should be done. UB 14:5.3
One of the main differentials between companies is their creativity — originality, inspiration, ingenuity, vision, flash of genius. In summary — the spark of spirit. Not forgetting hard work of course.
Monotony is indicative of immaturity of the creative imagination and inactivity of intellectual co-ordination with the spiritual endowment. UB 14:5.8
Curiosity — the spirit of investigation, the urge of discovery, the drive of exploration — is a part of the inborn and divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given you merely to be frustrated and repressed. True, these ambitious urges must frequently be restrained during your short life on earth, disappointment must be often experienced, but they are to be fully realized and gloriously gratified during the long ages to come. UB 14:5.11
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 42:12.14
Mind universally dominates matter, even as it is in turn responsive to the ultimate overcontrol of spirit. UB 42:12.15
Teamwork and co-operation offer another unique and advantageous circumstance for an organization. Realize the beneficial nature of this character trait and seek it in recruiting.
The fact of the cosmic mind explains the kinship of various types of human and superhuman minds. Not only are kindred spirits attracted to each other, but kindred minds are also very fraternal and inclined towards co-operation the one with the other. Human minds are sometimes observed to be running in channels of astonishing similarity and inexplicable agreement. UB 16:6.3
One of the most important lessons to be learned during your mortal career is teamwork. The spheres of perfection are manned by those who have mastered this art of working with other beings. Few are the duties in the universe for the lone servant. The higher you ascend, the more lonely you become when temporarily without the association of your fellows. UB 28:5.14
Primitive human beings early learned that groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their individual units. One hundred men united and working in unison can move a great stone; a score of well-trained guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result of the organization of intelligent co-operators. But cooperation is not a natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first through fear and then later because he discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity. UB 68:1.4
The means and focus to achieve end goals can be relatively straightforward. Even the suitability of the goal. However, (practical) business sense, (moral) virtue, and (spirit) insight create the true circumstances for ultimate success.
As a result of experience an animal becomes able to examine the different ways of attaining a goal and to select an approach based on accumulated experience. But a personality can also examine the goal itself and pass judgment on its worthwhileness, its value. Intelligence alone can discriminate as to the best means of attaining indiscriminate ends, but a moral being possesses an insight which enables him to discriminate between ends as well as between means. And a moral being in choosing virtue is nonetheless intelligent. He knows what he is doing, why he is doing it, where he is going, and how he will get there. UB 16:7.4
When man fails to discriminate the ends of his mortal striving, he finds himself functioning on the animal level of existence. He has failed to avail himself of the superior advantages of that material acumen, moral discrimination, and spiritual insight which are an integral part of his cosmic-mind endowment as a personal being. UB 16:7.5
Every day we are called upon to make moral decisions affecting all aspects of our lives. It is when we apply the highest values in our deliberations that we avoid the corrosion of conflict. We have a wise internal barometer of right and wrong. Is it functioning? Or corroded? A Spirit of Truth pervades all.
Man’s physical environment entails the battle for existence; the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely strive to be like him. UB 5:5.1
In the day-by-day life of mortal man, virtue is realized by the consistent choosing of good rather than evil, and such choosing ability is evidence of the possession of a moral nature. UB 16:7.6
The art of relative estimation or comparative measurement enters into the practice of the virtues of the moral realm. UB 16:7.7
Moral acts are those human performances which are characterized by the highest intelligence, directed by selective discrimination in the choice of superior ends as well as in the selection of moral means to attain these ends. Such conduct is virtuous. UB 16:7.10
And here is the one benchmark and purpose for making those decisions, decisions, and more decisions. And this single measure divides people in the eyes of God.
The keys of the kingdom of heaven are: sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity. All men have these keys. Men use them — advance in spirit status — by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions. The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always - in any sphere, in all of them this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the humblest citizen of Jerusem or even the least of mortals on Urantia. UB 39:4.14
Business entities are like civilizations.
Civilizations are contributions of the constitutive unstable because they are not factors of man — science, morality, cosmic; they are not innate in the individuals of the races. They must be nurtured by the combined and religion. Civilizations come and go, but science, morality, and religion always survive the crash. UB 16:9.5
The Golden Rule means we are all involved in the ‘service’ industry. Unfortunately in the world today, this is not always a two way street. We cannot necessarily expect our efforts to be returned in kind.
Unselfishness, aside from parental instinct, is not altogether natural; other persons are not naturally loved or socially served. It requires the enlightenment of reason, morality, and the urge of religion, Godknowingness, to generate an unselfish and altruistic social order. Man’s own personality awareness, self-consciousness, is also directly dependent on this very fact of innate other-awareness, this innate ability to recognize and grasp the reality of other personality, ranging from the human to the divine. UB 16:9.7
Unselfish social consciousness must be, at bottom, a religious consciousness; that is, if it is objective; otherwise it is a purely subjective philosophic abstraction and therefore devoid of love. Only a God-knowing individual can love another person as he loves himself. UB 16:9.8
All work can be considered vital, sacred, a joy. While attitude is powerful, it is of even greater consequence when it is faithful to supreme values rather than material successes.
In the spiritual world there is no such thing as menial work; all service is sacred and exhilarating; neither do the higher orders of beings look down upon the lower orders of existence. UB 25:1.1
The satisfying joy of high duty is the eclipsing emotion of spiritual beings. Sorrow cannot exist in the face of the consciousness of divine duty faithfully performed. And when man’s ascending soul stands before the Supreme Judge, the decision of eternal import will not be determined by material successes or quantitative achievements; the verdict reverberating through the high courts declares: “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few essentials; you shall be made ruler over universe realities.” UB 25:1.6
The interacting and alternating student-teacher roles indicate sharing, growth, generosity, education, communication. Compare companies with and without such attributes in their cultures.
As you journey toward your Paradise goal, constantly acquiring added knowledge and enhanced skill, you are continuously afforded the opportunity to give out to others the wisdom and experience you have already accumulated; all the way in to Havona you enact the role of a pupil-teacher. You will work your way through the ascending levels of this vast experiential university by imparting to those just below you the new-found knowledge of your advancing career. In the universal regime you are not reckoned as having possessed yourself of knowledge and truth until you have demonstrated your ability and your willingness to impart this knowledge and truth to others. UB 25:4.12
Can good management be reduced to the simple slogan of ‘the best and right way’?
Technical Advisers are dedicated to the work of preventing delay, facilitating progress, and counseling achievement. There is always a best and right way to do things; there is always the technique of perfection, a divine method, and these advisers know how to direct us all in the finding of this better way. UB 25:4.17
This is what we are working towards. And all stages conduct exemplary induction courses with teachers who lovingly guide us toward the best career options. Our guidance officers know a plan that is perfect for us.
On Paradise, disappointment is never regarded as defeat; postponement is never looked upon as disgrace; the apparent failures of time are never confused with the significant delays of eternity. UB 26:8.3
Step by step, life by life, world by world, the ascendant career has been mastered, and the goal of Deity has been attained. Survival is complete in perfection, and perfection is replete in the supremacy of divinity. UB 26:9.4
All Paradise conduct is wholly spontaneous, in every sense natural and free. But there still is a proper and perfect way of doing things on the eternal Isle, and the directors of conduct are ever by the side of the “strangers within the gates” to instruct them and so guide their steps as to put them at perfect ease and at the same time to enable the pilgrims to avoid that confusion and uncertainty which would otherwise be inevitable. Only by such an arrangement could endless confusion be avoided; and confusion never appears on Paradise. UB 27:4.3
Even the processes of dispute resolution, impartial mediation, and imposition of penalties, can be conducted with great wisdom.
You should realize that there is a great reward of personal satisfaction in being first just, next fair, then patient, then kind. And then, on that foundation, if you choose and have it in your heart, you can take the next step and really show mercy; but you cannot exhibit mercy in and of itself. These steps must be traversed; otherwise there can be no genuine mercy. There may be patronage, condescension, or charity — even pity — but not mercy. True mercy comes only as the beautiful climax to these preceding adjuncts to group understanding, mutual appreciation, fraternal fellowship, spiritual communion, and divine harmony. UB 28:6.8
Demonstrate trustworthiness and responsibility, and complete each and every mission you are given.
On Urantia, you grotesquely essay to read character and to estimate specific abilities, but on Uversa we actually do these things in perfection. These seconaphim weigh trustworthiness in the living scales of unerring character appraisal, and when they have looked at you, we have only to look at them to know the limitations of your ability to discharge responsibility, execute trust, and fulfill missions. Your assets of trustworthiness are clearly set forth alongside your liabilities of possible default or betrayal. UB 28:6.14
To avoid disappointment, wise superiors do not allow promotion beyond capacity. Spiritual advancement shall be forever based on merit.
It is the plan of your superiors to advance you by augmented trusts just as fast as your character is sufficiently developed to gracefully bear these added responsibilities, but to overload the individual only courts disaster and insures disappointment. And the mistake of placing responsibility prematurely upon either man or angel may be avoided by utilizing the ministry of these infallible estimators of the trust capacity of the individuals of time and space. These seconaphim ever accompany Those High in Authority, and never do these executives make assignments until their candidates have been weighed in the secoraphic balances and pronounced “not wanting.” UB 28:6.15
Then follows the great privilege of service. It is never static or boring, it is adventurous, exciting. But beware, our real motives are known.
The Sanctity of Service. The privilege of service immediately follows the discovery of trustworthiness. Nothing can stand between you and opportunity for increased service except your own untrustworthiness, your lack of capacity for appreciation of the solemnity of trust. UB 28:6.16
Service — purposeful service, not slavery — is productive of the highest satisfaction and is expressive of the divinest dignity. Service — more service, increased service, difficult service, adventurous service, and at last divine and perfect service — is the goal of time and the destination of space. UB 28:6.17
The universal economy is based on intake and output; throughout the eternal career you will never encounter monotony of inaction or stagnation of personality. Progress is made possible by inherent motion, advancement grows out of the divine capacity for action, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the necessity for recognizing that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of differing types of beings. All of this magnificent creation, including yourself, was not made just for you. This is not an egocentric universe. The Gods have decreed, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and said your Master Son, “He who would be greatest among you let him be server of all.” UB 28:6.18
The real nature of any service, be it rendered by man or angel, is fully revealed in the faces of these secoraphic service indicators, the Sanctities of Service. The full analysis of the true and of the hidden motives is clearly shown. These angels are indeed the mind readers, heart searchers, and soul revealers of the universe. Mortals may employ words to conceal their thoughts, but these high seconaphim lay bare the deep motives of the human heart and of the angelic mind. UB 28:6.19
Then comes greatness through mastery of self.
The Secret of Greatness and the Soul of Goodness. The ascending pilgrims having awakened to the import of time, the way is prepared for the realization of the solemnity of trust and for the appreciation of the sanctity of service. While these are the moral elements of greatness, there are also secrets of greatness. When the spiritual tests of greatness are applied, the moral elements are not disregarded, but the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one’s earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness. And the manifestation of greatness on a world like Urantia is the exhibition of self-control. The great man is not he who “takes a city” or “overthrows a nation,” but rather “he who subdues his own tongue.” UB 28:6.20
And goodness is its equivalent.
Greatness is synonymous with divinity. God is supremely great and good. Greatness and goodness simply cannot be divorced. They are forever made one in God. This truth is literally and strikingly illustrated by the reflective interdependence of the Secret of Greatness and the Soul of Goodness, for neither can function without the other. UB 28:6.21
The estimate of greatness varies from sphere to sphere. To be great is to be Godlike. And since the quality of greatness is wholly determined by the content of goodness, it follows that, even in your present human estate, if you can through grace become good, you are thereby becoming great. The more steadfastly you behold, and the more persistently you pursue, the concepts of divine goodness, the more certainly will you grow in greatness, in true magnitude of genuine survival character. UB 28:6.22