© 1978 Marilyn Hauck, John M. Andrews, Gene Joyce, Emmanuel Desurvire, Jay Newbern
© 1978 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
From my first reading of The URANTIA Book, I was captivated with the Supreme-with the idea of the Almighty Supreme actualizing in the realms of time and space while the ideal of the character and spirit of the deity had already personalized in Havona. The mystery beckoned and I traced the footsteps of supremacy all through the book, paper by paper. Sometimes the trace was elusive and sometimes evident, but always it was a delight-an ah-ha! The second persistent puzzle (among many lesser ones) is the outworking of this muddled planet. All the superuniverse structure can be called the outworking and inworking of the Supreme in time and space. But is our native sphere so particularly destined?
Why are we so different? Page 1250 lists seven major anomalies of this dust speck, and URANTIA Book readers can easily find many more. Granted each world, system, constellation, local universe, and superuniverse is unique. But our development seems to go much farther than “normal.” Even the gift of The URANTIA Book seems to portend other than the usual progression of evolution.
—Marilyn Hauck
Denver, Colorado
All of finite reality is vibratory; even our personal interactions with our environment are cyclic, in the sense of there being an ebb and flow in our relationships over time. In any duality or dimension that we can imagine, there is movement along that line-even to the changing of direction-although some of the periods may be so long as for us not to have experienced the fullness of their complete cycle. Everything changes; and everyone interacts with his environment or he ceases to exist. Taken together, all these interactions are finite reality, and their cumulative and super-additive effect is the Supreme Being.
We become conscious of the Supreme as we become aware of the fact, meaning, and value of all the finite interactions that we experience. Our environment acts on us through the vibrations that impinge upon us, and we perceive this flow tide through the various levels of our consciousnes5. Likewise, in all our willful reactions to our environment, we put out an ebb tide of vibrations that contributes back to this sea of finite reality.
-John M. Andrews
Juneau, Alaska
The Supreme Being is inextricably involved with the good of the whole. As we endeavor to become a better neighbor and a better citizen of our nation it becomes obvious that we are each a citizen of our world, Urantia; and from that insight we discern the necessity of becoming a contributing member of God’s cosmic family-a citizen of the universe. In other words we must get into the action through the intelligent use of mind. This constitutes our experiential relationship to the Supreme as we embark on our journey of everlasting progress. All meaningful experience at the finite level is integrated in the Supreme,
The Chief of Seraphim on Urantia postulates that this synthesis of creature experience is largely manifested to the individual will creature through the ministry of the seraphim in their role as coordinators, correlators of mind and morontia, and interpreters. We can avail ourselves of this marvelous assistance by making our plans and then putting those plans into action. In some little understood technique this enables our guardian angels to assist in bringing those plans to fruition for the good of all those who love God. In this way, and even now on our initial sphere, we can initiate our activities as junior members of a team composed of angels and men. We can share the joy of this adventure in cooperation as we gradually wean ourselves from animal inertia and preoccupation with self.
-Gene Joyce
Richardson, Texas
“But no God-knowing mortal can ever be lonely in his journey through the cosmos, for he knows that the Father walks beside him each step of the way, while the very way that he is traversing is the presence of the Supreme.” (UB 117:6.27)
Like water seeks a point located lower than its source, thus the Infinite can spread toward the finite, flowing downwards in space-time. The Supreme should be then the centrifugal movement of Infinity toward the Finite, and the Supremacy the centripetal reaction of the finite creation to the call of the Infinite.
An isolated pole can’t give any current. That is why the Supreme exteriorizes himself only by virtue of the simultaneous existence of the Finite and Infinite as a current between two potentials immensely removed by which his power (Almighty 5upreme) pulls us up from fugitive realities of space-time, up to the realms of spaceless and timeless realities of Paradise.
—Emmanuel Desurvire
Yves Chauvin
Boulogne, France
Notwithstanding that “man’s intellectual comprehension capacity is exhausted by the maximum conception of the Supreme Being” (UB 115:3.4), I know quite simply that we are related because we both have the same last designation —BEING. Even though I as a human being am but a speck of sand and he as the Supreme Being is the Sahara of sand, yet are we of the same family.
In attempting to visualize the unseen finite God I have yet to discern, I picture in my mind’s eye Michelangelo’s Vatican painting of a human, fatherlike God reaching out to touch the hand of man, his earthly son. It is as if we are the fingertips of the Supreme as he stretches himself way out to farflung Urantia of distant Nebadon on the extreme superuniverse border limits of Orvonton and we increasingly actualize our God-given potentials. Our material consciousnesses become part of the nervous system of the Supreme Being.
—Jay Newbern
Petaluma, California
The universe value of each mortal citizen is underscored by a single act of the Universal Father: he willed that each Father fragment — Thought Adjuster — should be responsive to creature will and dependent upon the creature for the attainment of personality. We would like to devote an upcoming issue to the initial exploration of our understanding of the Thought Adjuster and would welcome your contributions.
The Editors
“With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status-one must do something as well as be something.” (UB 115:0.1)