© 2008 Yolanda Silva Solano
© 2008 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
Today, when everyone is complaining about everything, eyebrows are furrowed and morale is at its lowest because the skills that are asked of us in all walks of life are too high, we who have the privilege of knowing the teachings of Jesus and who strive to live them, we must be the modern apostles, by our joy of living, our spontaneous and sincere smile, we will sow the seeds of love everywhere, because “When man wishes to modify physical reality, whether it be himself or his environment, he succeeds to the extent that he has discovered the ways and means of controlling matter and directing energy. Without help, the mind is powerless to influence anything material, except its own physical mechanism to which it is ineluctably linked. But, by the intelligent use of the bodily mechanism, the mind can create other mechanisms, even energy relationships and living relationships, by means of which this mind can better and better control and even dominate its physical level in the universe. ”Science is the source of facts and the mind cannot operate in the absence of facts. In the building of wisdom, facts are the building blocks held together by the cement of life experience." UB 111:6.6.
The Urantia Book was not only concerned with the scientific studies of our time, but in 1955, the date on which it was published, it made revelations which were subsequently confirmed by science. For this very reason, we must be attentive to new discoveries and take advantage of existing ones for our own spiritual evolution, because the greater the knowledge of our physical body and its functions, the more conscious we will be of them and the better we will be able to benefit from them in our spiritual life, because we cannot forget that “Although the mind is not the seat of the spiritual nature, it is, in truth, the door which leads to it” UB 155:6.13.
Today we are talking about the cell, because it is the one that gives the quality of life to each organism, because if it does not have at least one of them, it ceases to be alive. Some microscopic organisms, such as bacteria and protozoa are single cells, while animals and plants are formed by millions of cells organized into tissues and organs. Viruses perform many of the functions specific to living cells, but they lack independent life, yet they are not considered living beings.
One of the living cells that has been the most talked about in recent decades is DNA, although we do not yet know all the discoveries that derive from it for the development and evolution of the planet, because “On Urantia, humanity must resolve its problems of mortal development with the help of the human strains that it possesses - no new race will evolve in the future from prehuman sources. But this fact in no way rules out the possibility of reaching much higher levels of human development by intelligently maintaining the evolutionary potentials that still exist in the mortal races” UB 65:3.6.
Our mind must be open to the unknown, because without a doubt what we know is tiny in comparison to the quantity that remains for us to know in the order of things, because “At the mortal stage, nothing can be absolutely proven; science and religion are both based on hypotheses. … But, even then, many things beyond the finite remain unproven”1139. How far are these affirmations of dogmas which freeze and try to lock the human soul in pseudo truths or momentary truths!
What was a great discovery for science was to have found this simple individual cell: DNA. For the UB, it is not because it tells us that it appeared 550 million years ago, at the time when evolution began and life was deliberately implanted, in three places of salt water on Urantia, by spiritual beings called Life Carriers “Although the Life Carriers belong to the family of divine sonship, they are a particular and distinct type of Universal Sons, for they constitute in a local universe the only group of intelligent life in the creation of which the rulers of the superuniverse participate. The Life Carriers are the descendants of three pre-existing personalities: the Creator Son, the Universe Mother Spirit and, by designation, one of the three Ancients of Days presiding over the destinies of the superuniverse concerned” UB 36:1.1.
DNA, this wonderful “messenger molecule”, has something special, non-material, called information through many generations, since its origin in the mind of God, it is the key to understanding what differentiates life from dead matter, and which demonstrates that life goes beyond the obedience of matter to physical and chemical laws, living beings are carriers of vast quantities of information which reside in our mind this is why without it, evolution not only material but spiritual, is not possible without a healthy mind, which at the same time depends on the brain, because “the mind depends entirely on the capacity of the brain obtained by purely physical and evolutionary developments” UB 58:6.7.
It is useful to remember this last consideration, because the mind, like any other organ, develops or atrophies to the extent that we use it or not. Our mind is not something independent. It depends exclusively on each human being as an individuality, because without it we cannot obtain any information. We can program our PC to give the messages received, but this program must be ordered by a mind conscious of what it wants the machine to do.
This something that we call information, it is obvious that it is not material, even if it transmits matter to us. On the other hand, it seems necessary that there is matter on which to travel during its crossing. The matter on which the information travels can change without the information itself changing. It does not matter if the mail is a gmail or a yahoo, the information will always be the same.
Air molecules, compressed into sound waves, electrons traveling through telephone cables; red lights, etc. Cells, tissues and organisms have as their structural basis thousands of molecules whose behavior does not obey any laws other than physics and chemistry. To enter into the knowledge of cells, we must begin by knowing, ultimately, what type of molecules they are made of, for this all efforts to increase knowledge are welcome, because “Civilized man will one day achieve relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet” UB 118:10.14.
There will come a day when we will know the detailed structure and functioning of each of these molecules because “Curiosity - the spirit of inquiry, the need to discover, the impulse to explore - are among the innate and divine gifts of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given to you simply to be frustrated and repressed” UB 14:5.11.
The one that helps us in the incessant search for knowledge and information is the messenger molecule called DNA which is like a long thread threaded by the pearls of information transmitted from generation to generation, but which on the other hand preserves the individuality of each human being, because “Planetary life therefore has many variations on each evolutionary world” UB 36:2.13. There are more than a million fundamental or cosmic chemical formulas that constitute the progenitor molecules and the numerous basic functional variations of the manifestations of DNA, although this seems incredible to us, it is a dead molecule, for this reason it cannot be copied, we need the material of a living cell to make a copy of a DNA molecule because it is the vehicle that transports the information, the means that transports the message, for this the human mind that must decode the human gene, as it is doing with giant steps medical scientific knowledge and with unsuspected discoveries aided by existing technological advances. If a simple cell phone has an infinite number of functions and our PC is capable of storing more information every day, imagine what our DNA can store.
As we can see, nothing in our organism or in our mind is by chance since we were created “evolution is premeditated and not accidental” UB 36:5.1. “Life does not arise spontaneously. It is built according to the plans formulated by the Architects of Being (unrevealed) and appears on the inhabited planets either by direct importation or as a result of the operations of the Life Carriers of the local universes. They are responsible for developing the life of creatures and bringing it to the planetary spheres. After having implanted this life on the new worlds, they remain there for long periods to promote its development” UB 36:0.1. We should not be surprised that every day technological advances are greater every day, because they will appear, without a doubt, as the mind of man is prepared to discover them that the world of computers and telecommunications has simplified life in our world, by making new discoveries available to all.
Now, what can be the spiritual importance of this? The awareness that we are not isolated beings, nor even less the result of chance, that our life ceases to be when we realize that our organism must be treated with care, because not only does it belong to us as an individual, but that every function is part of a Whole and that what happens to us in particular also has repercussions in the macrocosm.
Human beings form a mystical body, in which what happens to one of its members also affects the whole body, just as what happens with the human body, when a nail is ingrown it can completely alter our sensations and emotions, yet we have a cosmic responsibility that we cannot evade, because “No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that can arise as a result of relationships with other people. The part benefits or suffers in proportion to the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil committed by each man increases the tribulations of all men. As the part moves, so moves the whole. As the whole progresses, so progresses the part. The relative speeds of the part and the whole determine whether the part is delayed by the inertia of the whole or carried forward by the living force of cosmic brotherhood”138.
It is worth stopping and consciously asking ourselves: what role am I playing at this moment? Am I bringing positive things or am I an inert burden for All? I am aware that the planet and my organism interact with each other because its poles establish a relationship of unity through forces, not only gravitational but also emotional and electromagnetic? Do I take care of my organism in such a way as to bring and return positive energy that helps the macrocosm of the planet? Do I care for its well-being or do I think that this is the work of those in power and not mine? Concretely, what am I doing to prevent global warming of the earth?
Yolanda Silva Solano - Chile