© 2005 Stephen Zendt
© 2005 The Urantia Book Fellowship
Have you considered how you fit into the scheme of things? Do you have a sense of your place in the wider realm of cosmic evolution? What function do you, as a personality, fulfill? I would like to invite you into the complex but richly satisfying study of the many things the Urantia revelation has to say about pattern.
(We will be presenting a lecture/workshop at IC05 in Philadelphia to more fully explore how this vital concept helps to develop our sense of universe awareness, the ways in which the pattern revelation connects us to God. If this engages your interest, we’d like for you to join us.)
From the Foreword on through Parts I, II, and III the unfolding and extension of the material reality of Paradise Pattern weaves through the pages of The Urantia Book.
Pattern begins to show forth from the Isle of Paradise. The Infinite Spirit activates Paradise Pattern and that pattern declares the basis for all atomic structure everywhere.
Our revelation tells us that Paradise is Absolute Pattern, that the Eternal Son is Absolute Personality. The Universal Father has set before the Havona universe and the seven time-space creations the absolutes of personal and material reality. He has given to the Infinite Spirit the cosmic task of promulgating and energizing the pattern of Paradise to all creation.
When the Father commanded that we all become perfect, like unto his perfection, he had already established the perfect pattern for all reality, and he proceeded to invite each mortal will creature to return home to him, with the cosmic reality of Paradise Pattern as the underpinning of evolution and of personal spiritual attainment.
Our own local Universe Mother Spirit and the Master Physical Controllers have early on established the physical reality of Nebadon, have brought energy and mass into equilibrium, so that our local creation could sometime conform to Superuniverse design.
The Life Carriers brought an evolutionary pattern to our planet, a decimal world with unique potentials, and gave us our DNA helix, from which Urantia life forms evolved.
My own experience studying PATTERN with friends has opened up new and challenging concepts of evolutionary reality and spiritual symmetry.
One huge hint the revelators give to us, as we wrestle with theoretical physics, time-space relativity, and quantum mechanics, is the remark that appears in Paper 42, Section 1 “Energy, Mind, and Matter,” “The ultimaton, the first measurable form of energy, has Paradise as its nucleus.” [UB 42:1.2] They would seem to be saying that Paradise permeates all material reality. Its pattern pervades all space and time.
Our place in the order of our local universe is assured because of our Creator Son’s seventh bestowal of himself here on our world. We have become the “place where it happened.” Urantia is the sentimental shrine of all Nebadon, as we are told. Pattern appears in the achievement of Supreme Sovereignty for our Creator Son, who went through seven bestowals as various created beings within his universe, culminating in the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, Jesus of Nazareth.
Until the bestowal pattern had been completed, Michael possessed full sovereignty as a reality “potential”. Yet, when the human life ended with his resurrection, Michael had achieved his rightful place as sovereign, and he opened the cosmic doors to the Supreme as a new and open way to fulfillment of our mortal potential, the way to eternal life and perfection attainment.
Paradise Pattern is a basic component of all reality for it declares the context of creation, the matrix for atomic structure. The Isle of Paradise is the nuclear center of all things, the perfect place, the ultimate goal of our spiritual transformation into Finaliters, the destiny of all Adjuster-fused mortals, and the home of our Universal Father.
As we become more and more aligned with the Father’s will, we mature as spiritual beings, achieving Thought Adjuster fusion in eternal agreement with God. The dependable basis of the real, the true, the beautiful, and the good is the pattern which the Father creates through his home on the Paradise Isle, spread abroad throughout all universal creation: an eternal harmonic atomic structural integrity which fosters evolution in time and space, and guides cosmic pilgrims home to Havona.
Now, it is true, the first reaction for many people who open The Urantia Book and start to read the Foreword, is bewildering and overwhelming. Clearly, the whole cosmic panorama is far more complex and complicated than our mythologies or our evolutionary religions have predicted. Yet, we are possessors of mind, something which permits us to utilize insight into reality and revelation, and this leads us to larger, more inclusive concepts of God and universe. Mind is a bestowal, a gift of thinking power that uses the brain but is not confined to our craniums. Mind is aided by the presence of a pattern of seven Adjutant Mind Spirits, and we are enabled to rise above our animal origins to realize our kinship with our Creator and our fellow humans.
Therefore, we are urged by our revelators to put this gift of mind to work at sincere comprehension of truth through experience, to put faith to the test of reality, to live as a beloved child of God.
I am persuaded that the authors of The Urantia Book knew we would find difficulty in opening up to new concepts, new relationships with the universe, new powers of spiritual growth and maturation. They wrote the dense and difficult passages not to discourage us, but to assure us that we can actually comprehend universe levels of reality.
PATTERN is a key conceptual framework, appearing in the Foreword, and flowing through many of the Papers in the book. It offers clues to how things work, why things are the way they exist at the present time, and it points us toward future potentials for which we ought to strive.
That is why study of PATTERN is vital to our growing appreciation and comprehension of cosmic citizenship.
A student of The Urantia Book since 1971, Stephen Zendt lives in the Bay Area of northern California. He has been involved in Fellowship activities for many years, and also participated in the recording of The Urantia Book for Urantia Foundation in 1994. He currently serves as a member of the Education Committee of the Fellowship.