© 1978 David Glass, Mark Kulieke, Irene Sprunger, Virginia Varnum, Frances Huttington, Thomas Wicks
© 1978 The Urantia Book Fellowship (formerly Urantia Brotherhood)
“‘The kingdom of God is within you’ was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit.” (UB 195:10.4)
In Jesus’ teachings about the “kingdom of God within,” he imparted a great deal of truth and wisdom respecting this inner realm of spirit reality, contactable by our minds, which the Father has bestowed upon each of us. And our knowledge about the Father’s inner spirit presence has been greatly augmented by our fifth epochal revelation. At the center of the inner kingdom, there dwells an actual, perfect spirit fragment of the living God. The inner spirit kingdom is the source of the inspiration and the ideals by which our planetary civilizations are advanced, and the spirit fragments of God within us are the indispensable sources upon which we draw for the evolution of our human wisdom.
There are four realms of spiritual life relevant to the human attempt to contact the Father’s indwelling kingdom. These are the exercise of faith, the consecration of will, the experience of love, and the ministry of service.
David Glass
Bradenton, Florida
The above material excerpted from a speech prepared for the Third State Conference of Florida. The editors are grateful for permission to use them and wish that space had been available to reprint the text in its entirety.
The process of spiritualizing our personalities unfolds in our relationships among men. “If once you understand your neighbor, you will become tolerant, and this tolerance will grow into friendship and ripen into love.” (UB 100:4.4) And, said Jesus: “Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful.” (UB 192:2.1)
We are further told that “It is not so important to love all men today as it is that each day you learn to love one more human being.” (UB 100:4.6) To keep up production on love implies that we must be learning to tolerate one more person each day, and this in turn implies that we are learning to understand one more person each day. The key to tolerance, love, and spiritual goodness is understanding — a function of mind.
Mark Kulieke
Evanston, Illinois
Truth has its origin in reality relationships. Truth is an attempt to understand the greatest relationship in the universe: divine love. The most significant revelation of love and truth to man on our world is Jesus of Nazareth. His Spirit of Truth unerringly guides us to all truth.
From an experiential point of view, we often empathize with Pilot’s observation, “Truth, what is truth — who knows?” (UB 185:3.5) In our experience we proceed from facts (knowledge) to truth, to wisdom in the progressive realization of reality — God. Truth is a universe value perceived by the spirit-stimulated mind, and is an experience of the soul. The discovery of truth is a supreme delight of evolving man. Experience leads man to hunger for truth.
Truth is basic to both science and philosophy, the intellectual foundation of religion. Truth is coherent and consistent and, therefore, a reliable criterion for action. It is lived with highly beneficial results. When truth, beauty, and goodness are integrated in human experience they tend to produce health and happiness. Truth achieves its highest expression in living. Truth is a living universe reality which cannot be imprisoned in dogma, creed, or philosophic expression.
Irene Sprunger
Fort Wayne, Indiana
God-wardness is a kind of goodness: “the pursuit of the ideal.” It uses different muscles, it thrives on love. “Until you attain Paradise levels, goodness will always be more of a quest than a possession…” (UB 132:2.8) God-wardness is a “thirst for divine perfection” (UB 150:5.5) accomplished with God’s own help together with the whole hierarchy of spirit beings and the God-expression from within you.
God-wardness is the total, forever, onward, growth with room for you and for me. An all-together growth finding God’s purposes small and large, acting on them with trust, and thirsting for God. My purposes may seem to conflict with others sometimes, but we come with certainty, clarity of purpose, love for God as the over-ride and grace the result.
Virginia Varnum
Staten Island, New York
There is such a great temptation to let The URANTIA Book, a poet, philosopher, artist, or some other majestic intellect answer this question for me, but this would not involve the love of self-sharing, so much in my life now. I begin with the gift of life — God’s spirit in all of us.
Back in my experience, back where I well recollect the beginning of sense awareness, there was a small town in Michigan with easy access to a country road. I was eight years old.
What sights — miles of blue sky, clouds and more clouds, rainbows, varieties of birds, wild flowers, great stacks of hay, fields of com and alfalfa! What sounds — surely this is the beginning of my great love of music! What wonderful (and some not so wonderful) fragrances! Such touching — cats and kittens, dogs, horses, cows, caterpillars, and ourselves! And taste — all those berries and deep purple grapes. Such joyous investigative activity! This was a glorious childhood preparation for a personal definition of beauty.
There are many school years in this defining. In these growth years, there are hints of spiritual awakening, a desire for more than random sense experience. Hopefully, we all have memories of teachers, loved ones, and friends who were adequately attentive to our curiosities, who were perceptive of our yearning — the yearning for expression, for creating.
Frances Huttington
Portland, Oregon
Sophistication is not just an echo from the past, a place marker in history reserved for Socrates and the Sophists. It is alive and well and continues to permeate our daily lives. Sophistication can be found in economics, politics, philosophy, music, and every other by-product of the free-willed mind. It masquerades as truth, wisdom, and love when, in reality, it is self-deception and fallacy. The Lucifer manifesto was pure sophistication. More often than not, it is borne out of selfishness, ego, pride, and gross ignorance. Hence, “Coke adds life.”
In this sophistry drunk world, we all see the need for a Foundation to protect the purity and life of The URANTIA Book text. I declare that we all are ‘foundations,’ in and of ourselves. Our responsibility lies not only with what is written but also with what will be written and said.
Thomas Wicks
Florence, Arizona
“God is the first truth and the last fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him… God is absolute truth.” (UB 102:6.6)