3. Spiritual Living
3. Spiritual Experience and Truth: Quotes and Questions
1. “Are all men sons of God?” Meanings in the concept of the brotherhood of man
Our dominant impression of the gospel derives from our repeated reading and hearing of the key phrase contained in the following quote from Jesus: “the greatest truths mortal man can ever hear—the living gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. (195:10.21/2086.7)
This dual phrase has simplicity which appeals to heart, mind, and soul.
We normally assume that Jesus’ answer to the question of Simon Zelotes is obviously correct.
Simon Zelotes asked, “But, Master, are all men the sons of God?” And Jesus answered: “Yes, Simon, all men are the sons of God, and that is the good news you are going to proclaim.” But the apostles could not grasp such a doctrine; it was a new, strange, and startling announcement. And it was because of his desire to impress this truth upon them that Jesus taught his followers to treat all men as their brothers. (140:10.1585.5)
Why were the apostles shocked by this teaching? Although they had already heard it before (e.g., 138:4.2/1541.4), they had, as a result of the teaching of John the Baptist, focused on the kingdom of heaven, which is a subset of humankind: you enter it by the faith of a child; and you remain in it by growing in righteousness.
But there is a second meaning of sonship: “faith-quickened mortals are the sons of God” (181:2.12/1957.2).
These two meanings are each illustrated by many statements. This statement expresses their synthesis.
I admonish you ever to remember that your mission among men is to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom--the reality of the fatherhood of God and the truth of the sonship of man. Proclaim the whole truth of the good news, not just a part of the saving gospel. Your message is not changed by my resurrection experience. Sonship with God, by faith, is still the saving truth of the gospel of the kingdom. You are to go forth preaching the love of God and the service of man. That which the world needs most to know is: Men are the sons of God, and through faith they can actually realize, and daily experience, this ennobling truth. (193:0.4/2052.4)
And there is a third meaning of sonship, which was emphasized after the epochal sermon: “the higher and more spiritual phases of the new gospel of the kingdom--divine sonship, spiritual liberty, and eternal salvation”(1704.5). For example: “The theme of Jesus' instructions during the sojourn at Sidon was spiritual progression. . . . He besought them not to be content with their childhood in the gospel but to strive for the attainment of the full stature of divine sonship in the communion of the spirit and in the fellowship of believers.”(1736.3)
Question: What is your experience as you take the time to realize meaning and value in each of these phases of the many-sided concept of sonship? As always, feel free to modify the language to suit what you feel is appropriate to your spiritual discovery of your relation with God, to your personal history, and to your place in this generation of planetary history.
I do not regard the concept of divine sonship as implying thatwe have become divine. Divinity is the unifying, coordinating quality of Deity. Divinity, therefore, is the quality of God’s relationship with us, once we have attained a certain level.
2. The cosmological side of the gospel
I highlight Jesus’ down-to-earth understanding of fact for reasons that you understand, having read chapter one of Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. There is overlooked cosmological dimension to the gospel, which was imparted to the Greek-speaking Syrophoenicians, who “achieved a good understanding of Jesus’ teachings about the uniformity of the laws of this world and the entire universe[;] . . . that the universe is wholly and ever law-abiding and unfailingly dependable” (156:2.3/1736.1).
Question: What reflections and experiential practice would help youapproach the realization of the universe as wholly and ever law-abiding and unfailing dependable?
3. The Back-and-Forth of Communion
On page 78 of LTBG, I speak of faith’s receptive and active phases as a back-and-forth with God that I compare to tennis. Here’s the passage I have in mind.
Man does not achieve union with God as a drop of water might find unity with the ocean. Man attains divine union by progressive reciprocal spiritual communion, by personality intercourse with the personal God, by increasingly attaining the divine nature through wholehearted and intelligent conformity to the divine will. Such a sublime relationship can exist only between personalities. (1:7.2/31.2)
Question. How do you attempt communion between your mind-soul and the spirit? Do you send a soul pulse from your side? Do you wait for the soul to receive something (even if it does not have the articulateness that the mind might prefer)? (Yes, the term mind-soul does occur: see 110:6.6/1210.1)
4. Spiritual Centering in Soul and Spirit
Man does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul’s contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence [an actual fragment of the living God] to find God and attempt communion with him. (5:0.1/62.1)
Man’s greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of spirit-consciousness—contact with the divine presence.” (196:3.34/2097.2)
Question. Why do the authors sometimes include reference to the soul when they describe the path of spiritual experience from the mind to God? How do you identify the soul in your experience? Man “experiences spiritual reality in the soul but becomes conscious of this experience in his mind” (103:6.6/1136.1).
5. Friendship with God
In preaching the gospel of the kingdom, you are simply teaching friendship with God. And this fellowship will appeal alike to men and women in that both will find that which most truly satisfies their characteristic longings and ideals. (159:3.9/1766.5)
Question. How do you experience friendship with God? What does this add to your experience of being a son or daughter of God?
6. Prayer: What It Is, How It Is Answered, and Conditions of Effectiveness
“The truest prayer is in reality a communion between man and his Maker” (91:2.5/996.3).
“Genuine prayer . . . is a spontaneous outburst of God-consciousness.
“God answers man’s prayer by giving him an increased revelation of truth, an enhanced appreciation of beauty, and an augmented concept of goodness.” (91:8.11/1002.3)
9. Conditions of Effective Prayer
91:9.1 (1002.6) If you would engage in effective praying, you should bear in mind the laws of prevailing petitions:
91:9.2 (1002.7) 1. You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
91:9.3 (1002.8) 2. You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
91:9.4 (1002.9) 3. You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.
91:9.5 (1002.10) 4. You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
91:9.6 (1002.11) 5. You not only recognize the Father’s will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father’s will.
91:9.7 (1002.12) 6. Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension — the attainment of divine perfection.
91:9.8 (1002.13) 7. And you must have faith — living faith.
Questions. The truth, beauty, and goodness dimensions of the answer to prayer do not arrive in segregated packages. Think about some answers to prayer that you have received. How can they be interpreted in terms of these supreme values?
What questions or problems arise for you as you study the conditions of effective prayer? What is your experience as you work toward satisfying these conditions?
7. True Worship
5:3.3 (65.5) Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.
Question. In what various ways can we recognize the Father’s matchless personality?
5:3.7 (66.3) Sincere worship connotes the mobilization of all the powers of the human personality under the dominance of the evolving soul and subject to the divine directionization of the associated Thought Adjuster. . . .
Questions. Worship connotes. . . . What are the powers of the human personality? What is it to mobilize these powers? Why the betrothed Adjuster? Why is it important for the soul to dominate? Why might the Adjuster have occasion to directionize worship?
5:3.8 (66.4) The worship experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the human soul — the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the material mind’s assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith son of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal — the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality.
Questions. Worship is initially said to consist insomething that the Adjuster is attempting to do, to communicate the longings and aspirations of the soul. Next we are told that worship is the act of the mind’s assenting to what the soul is trying to do—(but cannot do, since the soul’s longings and desires are inexpressible). Is that shift from the initial statement to the following one because the Adjuster cannot conductthe worship until the mind has consented and the soul has initiated it. What is your experience of consenting to worship? As worship gets under way, some people report feeling a surgeand a shift from the mind’s sublime thinking into something higher; if you experience that surge, would you identify it as the soul’s initiating worship? If you identify in your experience a phase in which the Adjuster might be conducting the worship, by what marks do you identify this phase?
8. Truth as Spiritual; Its Intellectual Dimension; and Cosmic Truth
Truth is a many-sided concept. Do the following quotes and notes help you to piece together something approaching a coherent concept?
The word “truth” is commonly used to name a spiritual reality.
Faith most willingly carries reason along as far as reason can go and then goes on with wisdom to the full philosophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the limitless and never-ending universe journey in the sole company of TRUTH. (103:9.7/1141.5)
The new helper which Jesus promised to send into the hearts of believers, to pour out upon all flesh, is the Spirit of Truth. This divine endowment is not the letter or law of truth, neither is it to function as the form or expression of truth. The new teacher is the conviction of truth, the consciousness and assurance of true meanings on real spirit levels. And this new teacher is the spirit of living and growing truth, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative truth.
Divine truth is a spirit-discerned and living reality. Truth exists only on high spiritual levels of the realization of divinity and the consciousness of communion with God. You can know the truth, and you can live the truth; you can experience the growth of truth in the soul and enjoy the liberty of its enlightenment in the mind, but you cannot imprison truth in formulas, codes, creeds, or intellectual patterns of human conduct. When you undertake the human formulation of divine truth, it speedily dies. The post-mortem salvage of imprisoned truth, even at best, can eventuate only in the realization of a peculiar form of intellectualized glorified wisdom. Static truth is dead truth, and only dead truth can be held as a theory. Living truth is dynamic and can enjoy only an experiential existence in the human mind.
180:5.3 (19Intelligence grows out of a material existence which is illuminated by the presence of the cosmic mind. Wisdom comprises the consciousness of knowledge elevated to new levels of meaning and activated by the presence of the universe endowment of the adjutant of wisdom. Truth is a spiritual reality value experienced only by spirit-endowed beings who function upon supermaterial levels of universe consciousness, and who, after the realization of truth, permit its spirit of activation to live and reign within their souls. (180:5.1-3/1949.3-5)
Questions. Do you know truth at this level? If so, how would you describe your experience of it? If not, what do you think would enable you to experience truth at this level?
And why is truth characterized as growing, expanding, unfolding, and adaptative?
Do you think that the flexibility of truth as explained, in part, by the capacity of truth to adapt to the situation and the capacity of receptivity of the human mind and soul? Wise beings generally reveal truth according to the human’s capacity of receptivity.
Does the following quote account for the flexibility—and stability—of truth?
All finite knowledge and creature understanding are relative. Information and intelligence, gleaned from even high sources, is only relatively complete, locally accurate, and personally true.
2:7.2 (42.3) Physical facts are fairly uniform, but truth is a living and flexible factor in the philosophy of the universe. Evolving personalities are only partially wise and relatively true in their communications. They can be certain only as far as their personal experience extends. That which apparently may be wholly true in one place may be only relatively true in another segment of creation.
2:7.3 (42.4) Divine truth, final truth, is uniform and universal, but the story of things spiritual, as it is told by numerous individuals hailing from various spheres, may sometimes vary in details owing to this relativity in the completeness of knowledge and in the repleteness of personal experience as well as in the length and extent of that experience. While the laws and decrees, the thoughts and attitudes, of the First Great Source and Center are eternally, infinitely, and universally true; at the same time, their application to, and adjustment for, every universe, system, world, and created intelligence, are in accordance with the plans and technique of the Creator Sons as they function in their respective universes, as well as in harmony with the local plans and procedures of the Infinite Spirit and of all other associated celestial personalities. (2:7.1-3/42.2-4.)
Note: the relativity of truth as taught in The Urantia Book is not the gross relativism that reduces truth to whatever a person or culture believes—a serious intellectual confusion, sometimes present when a person speaks of “the truth for him” or “my truth,” as though there were no divine standard, no reality to be recognized. This error travels easily with false freedom.
There is also an aspect of truth that is intellectual, since truth is meaningful; truth, beauty, and goodness are the comprehensible aspects of divinity (0:1.17/3.4).
Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only by the philosophic consistency of its concepts, but more certainly and surely by the unerring response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth. . . . Divine truth is best known by its spiritual flavor. (42:7.6/42.7).
Throughout this glorious age [of light and life] the chief pursuit of the ever-advancing mortals is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity — truth, beauty, and goodness. This represents man’s effort to discern God in mind, matter, and spirit. And as the mortal pursues this quest, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity. (56:10.2/646.3)
The meanings of eternal truth make a combined appeal to the intellectual and spiritual natures of mortal man.
Truth is the basis of science and philosophy, presenting the intellectual foundation of religion. (56:10.9-10/646.10-647.1)
All truth is God’s truth. When we think of truth in the comprehensive sense, encompassing “the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience,” that is called “cosmic truth” (2:7.9-10/43.2-3). Note that “the acid test for any religious philosophy consists in whether or not it distinguishes between the realities of the material and the spiritual worlds while at the same moment recognizing their unification in intellectual striving and in social serving” (101:7.5/1114.3).
Finally, it may help you put these pieces together in your concept of truth if you distinguish truth as a living reality and a truth in the singular or truths in the plural as statements.
9. The Possibility of Error in Spiritual Discernment on the Joyous Adventure
We are equipped with the capacities and endowments for spiritual experience. We have the spirit nucleus of our personality sent straight from the Paradise Father, the Spirit of Truth of the Creator Son, the Holy Spirit of our Mother. In addition our mind is blessed by her ministry of the mind-spirit of worship, which is described in the context of the cosmic mind, where religious experience is said to embrace “the personal realization of divine fellowship, the recognition of spirit values, the assurance of eternal survival, [and] the ascent from the status of servants of God to the joy and liberty of the sons of God” (16:6/192). And we have the divine promise that the self-mastery achieved by transformation of the Spirit of Truth endows us “with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God” (143:2/1609).
We are eternally grateful for these capacities and spirit blessings, and we thrill to cultivate our capacity for spiritual intuition, insight.
At the same time, we should proceed in a well-balanced and sane manner to cultivate these capacities. Many students of The Urantia Book do so. Some do not know how to proceed. And some neglect the warnings, which I have collected as a sobering contribution to the balance of scientific realism in the realm of psychology with the idealism of spiritual realities.
Question. The great question posed by this concluding essay is this: How can you take in the psychological realism of the warnings that follow and integrate that realism with a joyous progress in your adventure as an evolutionary mortal with a gradually clarifying spiritual experience?
Abraham mistakenly interpreted his “call” to sacrifice his son Isaac as a message from God. Peter thought that his dream of Jesus walking on the water was a real experience. The great revelation given to John on Patmos was distorted at moments. Paul mistakenly thought that the Spirit was turning him away from going into Asia. If great ones err, how much more often do the rest of us make mistakes in discernment regarding spiritual experience? Have you ever made a mistake of this sort? What did it feel like as you made the mistake? What awakened you to the truth of what had happened? How did you respond to your discovery?
The human mind may perform in response to so-called inspiration when it is sensitive either to the uprisings of the subconscious or to the stimulus of the superconscious. In either case it appears to the individual that such augmentations of the content of consciousness are more or less foreign. Unrestrained mystical enthusiasm and rampant religious ecstasy are not the credentials of inspiration, supposedly divine credentials.
91:7.5 (1000.6) The practical test of all these strange religious experiences of mysticism, ecstasy, and inspiration is to observe whether these phenomena cause an individual:
91:7.6 (1000.7) 1. To enjoy better and more complete physical health.
91:7.7 (1000.8) 2. To function more efficiently and practically in his mental life.
91:7.8 (1000.9) 3. More fully and joyfully to socialize his religious experience.
91:7.9 (1000.10) 4. More completely to spiritualize his day-by-day living while faithfully discharging the commonplace duties of routine mortal existence.
91:7.10 (1001.1) 5. To enhance his love for, and appreciation of, truth, beauty, and goodness.
91:7.11 (1001.2) 6. To conserve currently recognized social, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
91:7.12 (1001.3) 7. To increase his spiritual insight — God-consciousness. 91:7.4-12/1000.5-1001.3
This is the broadest set of criteria for evaluating religious experience that the Book gives; and these criteria cannot be applied immediately on the spot, once a particular experience is over.
100:5.4 (1099.2) Most of the spectacular phenomena associated with so-called religious conversions are entirely psychologic in nature, but now and then there do occur experiences which are also spiritual in origin. When the mental mobilization is absolutely total on any level of the psychic upreach toward spirit attainment, when there exists perfection of the human motivation of loyalties to the divine idea, then there very often occurs a sudden down-grasp of the indwelling spirit to synchronize with the concentrated and consecrated purpose of the superconscious mind of the believing mortal. And it is such experiences of unified intellectual and spiritual phenomena that constitute the conversion which consists in factors over and above purely psychologic involvement.
100:5.5 (1099.3) But emotion alone is a false conversion; one must have faith as well as feeling. To the extent that such psychic mobilization is partial, and in so far as such human-loyalty motivation is incomplete, to that extent will the experience of conversion be a blended intellectual, emotional, and spiritual reality.
100:5.6 (1099.4) If one is disposed to recognize a theoretical subconscious mind as a practical working hypothesis in the otherwise unified intellectual life, then, to be consistent, one should postulate a similar and corresponding realm of ascending intellectual activity as the superconscious level, the zone of immediate contact with the indwelling spirit entity, the Thought Adjuster. The great danger in all these psychic speculations is that visions and other so-called mystic experiences, along with extraordinary dreams, may be regarded as divine communications to the human mind. In times past, divine beings have revealed themselves to certain God-knowing persons, not because of their mystic trances or morbid visions, but in spite of all these phenomena.
If most of our religious experiences are more or less blended, then we can simply regard them as giving us the opportunity to see what truth, beauty, and goodness we can find in them, whether it derives from the superconscious or the subconscious. What do you think of this idea?
109:5.3 (1199.4) Your unsteady and rapidly shifting mental attitudes often result in thwarting the plans and interrupting the work of the Adjusters. Their work is not only interfered with by the innate natures of the mortal races, but this ministry is also greatly retarded by your own preconceived opinions, settled ideas, and long-standing prejudices. Because of these handicaps, many times only their unfinished creations emerge into consciousness, and confusion of concept is inevitable. Therefore, in scrutinizing mental situations, safety lies only in the prompt recognition of each and every thought and experience for just what it actually and fundamentally is, disregarding entirely what it might have been.
What might the impressive experience have been? By contrast, what is the experience actually and fundamentally? How can we describe it without bringing in the postulate of spirit origin?
110:4.2 (1207.2) The Thought Adjuster is engaged in a constant effort so to spiritualize your mind as to evolve your morontia soul; but you yourself are mostly unconscious of this inner ministry. You are quite incapable of distinguishing the product of your own material intellect from that of the conjoint activities of your soul and the Adjuster.
110:4.3 (1207.3) Certain abrupt presentations of thoughts, conclusions, and other pictures of mind are sometimes the direct or indirect work of the Adjuster; but far more often they are the sudden emergence into consciousness of ideas which have been grouping themselves together in the submerged mental levels, natural and everyday occurrences of normal and ordinary psychic function inherent in the circuits of the evolving animal mind. (In contrast with these subconscious emanations, the revelations of the Adjuster appear through the realms of the superconscious.)
110:4.4 (1207.4) Trust all matters of mind beyond the dead level of consciousness to the custody of the Adjusters. In due time, if not in this world then on the mansion worlds, they will give good account of their stewardship, and eventually will they bring forth those meanings and values intrusted to their care and keeping. They will resurrect every worthy treasure of the mortal mind if you survive.
110:4.5 (1207.5) There exists a vast gulf between the human and the divine, between man and God. The Urantia races are so largely electrically and chemically controlled, so highly animallike in their common behavior, so emotional in their ordinary reactions, that it becomes exceedingly difficult for the Monitors to guide and direct them. You are so devoid of courageous decisions and consecrated co-operation that your indwelling Adjusters find it next to impossible to communicate directly with the human mind. Even when they do find it possible to flash a gleam of new truth to the evolving mortal soul, this spiritual revelation often so blinds the creature as to precipitate a convulsion of fanaticism or to initiate some other intellectual upheaval which results disastrously. Many a new religion and strange “ism” has arisen from the aborted, imperfect, misunderstood, and garbled communications of the Thought Adjusters.
110:5.5 (1208.4) It is extremely dangerous to postulate as to the Adjuster content of the dream life. . . . Likewise, it is hazardous to attempt the differentiation of the Adjusters’ concept registry from the more or less continuous and conscious reception of the dictations of mortal conscience. These are problems which will have to be solved through individual discrimination and personal decision. But a human being would do better to err in rejecting an Adjuster’s expression through believing it to be a purely human experience than to blunder into exalting a reaction of the mortal mind to the sphere of divine dignity. Remember, the influence of a Thought Adjuster is for the most part, though not wholly, a superconscious experience.
110:5.6 (1208.5) More often, in beings of your order, that which you accept as the Adjuster’s voice is in reality the emanation of your own intellect. This is dangerous ground, and every human being must settle these problems for himself in accordance with his natural human wisdom and superhuman insight.
There are some experiences that are so spiritual that we cannot doubt their spiritual, even though we may learn to suspect our own distorting tendencies regarding some phase or other of such an experience. Most experiences that we regard as religious are blended. If we resist the impulse to identify an impressive experience as being certainly a direct product of spirit, then we can take them as opportunities for a discernment in which we simply take responsibility for evaluating its truth, beauty, and goodness.