© 2022 Olga López
© 2022 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — April 2021
¶ In this number
- Editorial – April 2022
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
- Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Michael of Nebadon
- Books – our recommendations of the month
- Other spiritual growth books
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- Navigating through life – The evolutionary levels of emotions
- Urantia Reflections: The Our Father and Its Not Innocent Changes
- My favorite paragraph
- Urantia Questionnaire: Esteban Cotán
- Urantia Talks for the month of April
- New UBIS courses – April quarter
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial – April 2022
M. José Sánchez Santamaría
Let’s start by telling an old story:
The monk asked:
"All these mountains and these rivers and the earth and the stars… where do they come from?
And the Master asked: “And where does your question come from?”
Search within yourself!
This short story shows us a great truth: the perception of the divine is within everyone’s reach. So many people have experienced it in thousands of centuries, without the need for intermediaries, in different cultures, that it should make us reflect on our own approach to divinity. The transcendent experience is something that can be in our hands, yes, but that does not imply that the world encourages us to do so.
Hundreds of years ago, Agustín de Hipona told us these wonderful words that deserve to be reread several times:
"I loved you late, beauty so old, and so new, I loved you late. And behold, You were within me, and I was outside; and outside I was looking for you, and I threw myself on those beauties that you created.
“You were with me, but I was not with you. They kept me away from you those things that, if they were not in you, would not exist.”
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
Review of the general organization of the universe (Jeanmarie Chaise)
This work, as its name indicates, is a brief review of the organization of the master universe, the cosmic creation of the Deity. He begins with Paradise and its gigantic zones and relates them to the dimensions of the great universe and its inhabitants. Dimensions of a size impossible to conceive by our mortal mind. As an example: “On Paradise, and in the second peripheral zone of the Holy Area, the active groups of glorified individuals in their assigned sector (in this case, the sector related to the ascendant personalities of a single superuniverse, say Orvonton) are of the order of 823,543 followed by 45 zeros. To know the number of individuals expected in this sector, surely we should add a few more zeros.” But it does not stop there: the calculations related to the different types of gravity lead him to deduce that the number of worlds in the grand universe is 1/24 part of the worlds in the master universe.
The family of the local universe (Santiago Rodríguez)
This work consists of a diagram with the different beings that populate the local universe and the relationships that are established between them. With the Creative Spirit and the Creator Son at the top of the hierarchy, it goes down through the different orders of beings until we reach human beings. It helps a lot to get an overview of the great family of the local universe and to be clear about the origin of each order of beings.
First migration to Brittany (Halbert Katzen)
In this article appears one of the examples in which science seems to corroborate the affirmations of The Urantia Book, in this case in an aspect as fascinating and unknown as prehistory. In the words of the author: «The Urantia Book, published in 1955, states that human habitation of Great Britain began approximately 900,000 years ago. Noting that there used to be a land bridge between Britain and France, he also points out that although most evidence of human occupancy is now submerged in the English Channel, there are still several sites near the coast that show evidence of this early occupation. This is where recent discoveries have been made that push the date of human habitation back 200,000 years. Additional work by the AHOB (Ancient Human Occupation of Britain) project increasingly supports this aspect of human history in The Urantia Book."
Mary Magdalene (Javier Martinez)
Here we have the presentation that its author gave in 2019 about this female figure that appears in the 4 official gospels and in The Urantia Book. First, he reviews the evangelical and historical sources regarding her (including an alleged apocryphal gospel that she wrote), reviews the legends surrounding her figure, and finally compiles everything that is said about her in The Urantia Book. A very interesting job to have a complete vision of your figure.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicle of the life of Jesus
JOURNALISTIC ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE URANTIA BOOK
We present the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revelators tell us in paper 132 (The stay in Rome). Inside the PDF you will see a button from where you can access the text of the paper from the Urantia Foundation website.
¶ Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Michael of Nebadon
This is the next chapter, dedicated to our Creator Son, Michael of Nebadon, and it begins like this:
«A very special class of Children is a group called Paradise Children or Children of Paradise. They are from Paradise and are perfect like the Father. They also go to “school” but to learn how worlds and all kinds of children are made for the Father. The Father can do everything himself, but he loves to share labor. He trusts that his children in Paradise will work wonderfully for him."
Download the entire chapter in PDF format
¶ Books – our recommendations of the month
The long journey to Eden (Olga López)
This book is intended to be an exercise in imagination regarding how things could happen on a planet very close to ours, which also suffered the consequences of the Lucifer rebellion and as a result plunged into darkness and confusion.
Those who have read The Urantia Book will be able to appreciate many familiar details and characters. The intention of the novel, apart from entertaining the reader, was to make them reflect on what happened in our world in the remote past. As in our world, that world isolated by the rebellion had to face serious problems related to that unfortunate circumstance. But, like us, there were also people and beings who gave their best to help humanity progress.
See full review on our website
The Planetary Prince and Van the Steadfast (Rick Warren)
Long before Adam and Eve came to earth, a planetary prince was sent from the headquarters of our local star system to prepare the way for them. Celestial teachers are sent to all inhabited spheres to foster civilization and lead evolving races from primitive savagery to a golden age of light and life. But the prince grew impatient with God’s plan for the gradual achievement of planetary perfection. Out of pride and impatience he chose to join the “war in heaven” and dragged our world into that dark rebellion.
But there were human and superhuman heroes who kept the light of truth and resisted the temptations of the wicked prince. Their story unfolds in this revealing account of the oldest and greatest saga.
Link to purchase the book on Amazon
¶ Other spiritual growth books
The fourth way (P.D. Ouspensky)
They say that what we don’t know the most is our greatest enemy, and one of the things we don’t know the most is ourselves. Self-knowledge leads us to self-control. Jesus already told us something about it in section 2 of paper 143, entitled “The lesson on self-control.”
P.S. Ouspensky was a student of the well-known mystical teacher George Ivanovich Gurjieff. In this book, the author introduces us to the dimension of self-knowledge based on questions and answers. Despite the fact that there are concepts that may have become outdated with the passage of time, reading them is interesting to test our discernment.
See full review on our website
The art of blessing (Pierre Pradervand)
To live spirituality in everyday life
What a beautiful pleonasm! Indeed, either the spiritual life is lived in everyday life, in the crucible of experiences that are often so vulgar — the office, the factory (there are still some!), the garden, washing the car or washing the dishes, in the business or in marital intimacy, on the bus or on the street, in suffering and in joy—or it really has no reason to exist.
Starting from a personal spiritual experience, the author emphasizes the existence of universal spiritual laws in which we can all rest fully secure. The highest of all of them is that of unconditional love, which we must practice both with ourselves and with others. And it offers a privileged instrument, the simple art of blessing, to make concrete and effective at all times that unconditional love which, being an expression of union with Supreme Love, saves life by taking it to its peak. Then springs up a spirituality of all moments, a spirituality for everyone, which does not need - although neither does it reject - temples, or sacred places, or particular circumstances to express itself and live: being spiritual becomes a state of consciousness, in a way to be in the image and likeness of the unconditional Love that has given us life and sustains us in it so that, in harmony with Him, we fill all the circumstances of our lives and our relationships with positive creativity.
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
Fear Not Nuclear Armageddon (Urantia Writings Studies)
Precisely these days when our hearts are heavy due to the war between Russia (nuclear power) and Ukraine, it is a good idea to take the cosmic perspective of The Urantia Book, which is precisely what this video from the channel Studies of the Urantia Writings. It reminds us that our planet is supervised by celestial beings, that planetary firewalls exist to head off global crises, such as the Destiny Reserve Corps, midwayers, and seraphic transports. We must therefore face these situations with the confidence that insurance for the protection of the planet will be activated when the time comes. And if all resources are exhausted, we are still in the loving hands of the Father.
¶ Navigating Life – Evolutionary Levels of Emotions
In the same way that we are all learning and evolving in our lives, we can also do it in the experience of our emotional world.
To be able to describe it in a simple way, we will say that there are 4 levels in the management of our emotions, through which we go through and advance, each one at its own pace, slower or faster. Hopefully we can get to the fourth level soon.
First level
We define emotions as an instinctive, primary response to external facts or events that touch or cross the thresholds of instinct, those in which the person feels safe and comfortable. To give an example, let’s think about when rage or fear is awakened by an external threat that my senses capture and that make my instinct not feel safe in what I consider my territory or my possessions.
At this level, the natural thing is that the emotion is expressed; now, as we are beings with a culture that marks us, and also instinctive, perhaps the mind conditioned by education and social customs tells us that it is not right to express what we feel, that we have to be brave, and then what we do it is to DENY, hide, bury what we feel.
This is the first level, that is, an evolutionary point of our life path, where we can find emotions that we are often not aware of; they are hidden in a part of our unconscious mind, although this does not mean that they do not affect. In fact, they tend to condition our behaviors, our relationships and even our health.
¶ Urantia Reflections: The Our Father and Its Not Innocent Changes
Olga Lopez
In a blog that I visit from time to time there is a very interesting entry about the words of the Our Father and their changes, which has made me think that these changes are never innocent and obey a purpose.
In case you want to read the original entry, you can read it here.
When I went to school (nuns’ school), I learned a version of the Our Father that is not the one that is prayed in Catholic churches in recent years. In fact I have been unable to learn the new version (or I have not been motivated enough to do so). In my childhood, the Our Father was this:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Our daily bread
give it to us today
and forgive our debts
just as we forgive our debtors.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
In the Our Father that is currently prayed (and that was changed in 1986 during the papacy of John Paul II) debts/debtors were changed for offenses/that offend us. Let’s take a look at this new version, which I’ve taken directly from the Vatican website:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be your Name;
your kingdom come;
your will be done
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today
our daily bread;
forgive our offenses,
as we also forgive
to those who offend us;
Lead us not into temptation,
and deliver us from evil. Amen.
Apparently, the initial version in Greek speaks without a doubt of debts, in no case of offenses. You can see here a Digital Religion blog entry where this change is discussed.
For them, it is clear that those debts referred to in this sentence are not metaphorical or spiritual, but material. I rescue a paragraph here, because I find it very interesting:
Jesus in the mouth of Matthew and in the Our Father did not speak of offenses. He spoke of true and authentic “debts.” Money debts. Money that the poor did not have and without which no spiritual life is possible.
At a time when banks and states are not about to forgive anyone’s debts, but rather the opposite (encourage individuals and states to get even more indebted and to be tied hand and foot to their creditors for decades), it is curious to change the sentence that way.
After reading these entries, I went to The Urantia Book to see what wording of the Our Father was in it (unfortunately, I was only able to memorize my Lord’s Prayer as a child).
It is in document 144 and it says like this:
Our Father who is in heaven,
Hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come; your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our bread for tomorrow;
Refresh our souls with the water of life.
And forgive us every one our debts
As we also have forgiven our debtors.
Save us in temptation, deliver us from evil,
And increasingly make us perfect like yourself. (UB 144:3.3-12)
Well yes, in The Urantia Book the words debts/debtors appear, just like the Our Father prior to 1986 (in the original English, debt/debtors). In addition, there are phrases that do not appear in the Catholic Our Father: Vivify our soul with the water of life and Make us more and more perfect like yourself.
How curious that these two phrases disappeared! TRUE?
I hope that the world (the whole world, not just a few like now) knows the prayer of the Our Father as Jesus offered it, first to his family and then to the apostles. Not only for recovering the allusion to material debts (which are causing so much damage and suffering to those most in need), but also for those lines that disappeared and that are a plea to grow spiritually and follow the mandate to be perfect as our Father is. perfect.
¶ My favorite paragraph
Jordi Prat
The mortal-mind transcripts and the active creature-memory patterns as transformed from the material levels to the spiritual are the individual possession of the detached Thought Adjusters; these spiritized factors of mind, memory, and creature personality are forever a part of such Adjusters. The creature mind-matrix and the passive potentials of identity are present in the morontia soul intrusted to the keeping of the seraphic destiny guardians. And it is the reuniting of the morontia-soul trust of the seraphim and the spirit-mind trust of the Adjuster that reassembles creature personality and constitutes resurrection of a sleeping survivor. UB 47:3.3
In this paragraph he clearly explains that at the moment of death, the Adjuster is the custodian of the personality (“they are the individual possession of the detached Thought Adjuster. These spiritualized factors of creature mind, memory, and personality are part of the always of said Adjuster”).
They also tell us that the seraph guards the soul and in it is “the matrix-mind of the creature and its potential identity liabilities are present in the morontia soul entrusted to the care of the seraphic guardians of destiny.”
In summary: that which is of God goes with the Father: the Adjuster and the personality. What is evolutionary goes with the Creator Son: the soul and the identity potentials entrusted to the seraphim.
¶ Urantia Questionnaire: Esteban Cotán
Esteban Cotán lives in Olivares (Seville). He is retired, he worked in the hospitality industry and as an insurance broker. He is a widower and has had four children and ten grandchildren.
- How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
The book found me in the field of ufology through the mediation of a fellow ufologist, specifically Antonio Moya Cerpa, and it was not the book but photocopies translated from French.
- What was your first impression when reading it?
When I started reading it, I said to myself: I think I have found what I have been looking for all my life, and as I read on, I became convinced of it.
¶ Urantia Talks for the month of April
We are pleased to invite you to our next Urantia talk on the subject: “Is God Dead? Secularism”.
The death of God will lead, says Nietzsche, not only to the rejection of the belief in a cosmic or physical order, but also to the rejection of absolute values—the rejection of the belief in an objectivity and a universal moral law that applies to all. the individuals. God falls and with it the cornerstone, everything is shaken.
Has our current secularized society progressed thanks to this powerful materialist current? Does this paradigm clinging to the material have a future? Are we approaching a collapse as a civilization? What answers does The Urantia Book give us?
We are waiting for you on Friday, April 1, at 7:00 p.m. (Spain). ID Zoom 362 798 144
The next Urantia talk will be held on Friday, April 22nd.
¶ New UBIS courses – April quarter
Registration begins on Monday, April 18 for the April quarter courses at UBIS, which offers five courses in Spanish (one of them in a study group format). Hurry up, places are limited and courses fill up very quickly!
The courses themselves begin on Monday, April 25 and last 10 weeks (except when it is indicated that the course is reduced, and then its duration is 6 weeks).
To enroll, you must go to the school website (http://ubis.urantia.org) and create a user account before requesting a course, as it is necessary to be authenticated as a UBIS user to request the inscription.
Here is the list of courses that will be given in April: https://www.urantia.org/es/education/programacion-de-cursos
¶ About the Light and Life newsletter
Light and Life is the newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. From 2005 to 2016 it was published in PDF format and distributed by mail and email to the association’s reader list, but it is currently distributed in newsletter format from content in HTML format.
If you want to receive the newsletter in your email, contact the association to subscribe to the mailing list.
All papers and news from readers and study groups are welcome, so if you want to share any side work, writing, outline, image, etc., you can send it to the association and we will publish it previous evaluation of its suitability. Likewise, the Communication commission of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain reserves the right to edit it so that it meets minimum spelling quality.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/newsletter/luz-y-vida-abril-2022/