PART II. The Local Universe

Please see the general introduction to these questions preceding the questions for Part I. Why is Part II separated from Part I? Note the ways in which Part II prepares Part III.

Paper 32. The Evolution of Local Universes

1. How does 360.2 comment on 354.6 regarding mortal destiny?

2. Why can it be so vital to us to hold on to the truth-fact of the presence of the Father in the Creator Son (361.2)? What factors lead us to grow weary, entertain spiritual doubts, stumble into confusion, and isolate ourselves?

3. How does the teaching in #5 help us crystallize our thoughts about "those values which are of infinite nature and eternal import"?

4. What are the implications of 364.0-2 for us mortals and as a guideline for leaders?

5. Why race for perfection (365L)?

Paper 33. Administration of the Local Universe

1. In what ways do the Creator Son and Universe Mother Spirit provide a pattern for human marriage?

2. What can human systems of justice learn from this paper?

3. What can we learn about administration here?

Paper 34. The Local Universe Mother Spirit

1. How does this paper help you appreciate our Local Universe Mother Spirit?

2. What additional aspects of pattern for cooperation do you find in 376#3? Do men tend to me more time oriented and women more spatially oriented?

3. Analyze the structure of sections 5-7 (at the level of groups of paragraphs). How does the sequence of teachings add meaning and power to your favorite passages? What variables affect the function of the spirit? Can we distinguish the Deities in our personal experience? If the Spirit does not quicken our theories, what do we have left? What is it to be spirit born? Spirit filled? What qualities mark the leadership of the Spirit? What extremes of conscientiousness should we avoid?

4. What kind of relationship can we have with the Holy Spirit?

5. What help does this paper offer to someone struggling with a self-mastery issue?

Paper 35. The Local Universe Sons of God

1. Compare the procedure of correction for Melchizedeks who err (386.7) with the procedure for rehabilitating Lanonandeks who default (394.3,7). Are there any implications for responding to mortal wrongdoing?

2. The character of the Vorondadeks is sketched on 391.1. Do you see any possible connection between the different traits mentioned? Analogies to mortal personality types?

3. Study the theodicy (account showing how universe evil can be consistent with the Creators’ goodness) presented on 393.8-9, and compare 1222.3 with 1268.1-2. Does the first passage help reconcile the latter two?

4. What can you infer about the discipline of history from 390.5?

5. What are the connotations of the term "paternal" in 393.6?

6. What will it be like to review this life with other Urantians (388.1-6)?

7. What gospel do the evangels of destiny proclaim (388.9)? What kind of training do they receive?

8. What pattern for an "eldest son" is given in 386.2-6?

Paper 36. The Life Carriers

1. Focus on 398.4 and #5.

2. Does 399.0 definitely teach that genes significantly help determine one’s receptivity to the various adjutant mind-spirits? And that spirit response depends on mind endowment?

3. How do the teachings about life in this paper differ from current scientific speculations?

4. How do the various adjutant mind-spirits relate to each other? What difference would it make in education to honor the functions of mind to which the Adjutants minister?

5. How does "biological" life relate to the life that is "in the Sons" (2097.last)?

Paper 37. Personalities of the Local Universe

1. What do we learn about mercy, justice, and fairness from the description of the High Commissioners?

2. What do the race commissioners do?

3. Design an educational unit based on the principles of universe education (412#6).

4. “Enough of the life and administration of this universe is being herewith portrayed to afford the mortal mind a grasp of the reality and grandeur of the survival existence” (417.1). Put this statement with other thoughts in the book explaining the rationale for the information we are being given (1.2; 1162.1; 2090.4).

Paper 38. Ministering Spirits of the Local Universe

1. How can good come from our efforts to understand and love the seraphim (419.1)?

2. Why are angels called daughters of God (419.2)? In what sense are seraphim “negative and positive” (420.4)?

3. Why are military images apparently used in describing the organization of seraphim?

4. While this paper contributes to some of the philosophic themes of ongoing interest (justice and mercy, 419.4; pair relationships, 420.4, 422.3; the quest for perfection 422.6), the primary opportunity with this paper is to learn about those unseen friends who are so near us. Let us try to retain as much detail from these sections as we can and ask: How can we facilitate the divine purposes in our interaction with them?

Paper 39. The Seraphic Hosts

1. What do seraphim study who are preparing to serve humankind in association with the mission of a Planetary Prince (427.1)? Can we do less?

2. What do we learn about justice and mercy in this paper (428.1-2; 430.1; 432.5; 434.4-5)?

3. What would it be like to be consciously unconscious (431.0)?

4. If you were to pause now (see 428.4-5 and 435.1-2) what achievements would you consider behind you? What ahead?

5. What are the differences between pair relationship and social systems of three or more (433.0)?

6. What is the relation between morality, ethics, and social and governmental progress (433.2)?

7. What are the implications of the paragraphs on the Quickeners of Morality for epochal revelation management (435.4-8)? What if sincerity is divorced from loyalty and patience?

8. Comment on the evolution of trust (437.6, 1747.5, 317-18).

9. Suppose your friend reads 438.2, says s/he understands it intellectually, but has trouble identifying with such an attitude about the uncertain future. How could you respond?

Paper 40. The Ascending Sons of God

1. Paragraphs 2 and 3 in the introduction characterize the rest of the paper. What is it like to view the story of the ascending sons as (a) a recital of “the unstinted bestowal of divine love and gracious condescension” (443.2) and (b) as a recital of the eternal purpose of the Gods respecting the ascending orders of sonship? (443.3)

2. How is the gospel illuminated by 447#6? What are the meanings of sonship—and the bases for sonship--provided in this paper? (443.5; 447#6)

3. Why should the ascension career be “the supreme study of mortal man”? Is this consistent with 2090.4?

4. What further implications can you draw from the teaching about the love of God for the individual, which “utterly eclipses all other facts”? (454.3)

Paper 41. Physical Aspects of the Local Universe

1. Could Urantian astronomers ever formulate equations to describe stellar phenomena capable of taking into account the intelligent activities of the Nebadon Power Centers and the Satania Physical Controllers and others? If not, is this a fundamental limit on science’s ability to predict and understand stellar phenomena?

2. How are suns used by the power centers and physical controllers? (458.4)

3. How is density independent of the state of matter (gas, liquid, solid)? (459.7)

4. Why do we perceive energy as waves? (461.2-4)

5. Why is the language used to describe calcium nearly “anthropomorphic” language? (cf. 1437.4; 102.5)

6. Do you find analogies to other levels of reality in any of the descriptions of section 7?

Paper 42. Energy—Mind and Matter

1. How does the author work to bring our concepts of material energy and spirit closer together? (see 467.2; 467.3-4; 468.3; 479.L; 480.5; 481.5; 483#12)

2. What lessons for thinking do you find here? Any comment on 483.1?

3. What does section 12 teach about the body? (cf. pp. 8; 261d; 404b; 419a; 431b; 542; 544; 1303b).

Paper 43. The Constellations

1. Describe the rule of the Most Highs in the kingdoms of men: see 488.7; 491.12-13; 1209d; 1255; 1257; 1882b; 1906.5; 1910.2; 1912.3; 1913.2.

2. What ideals of beauty (625b) are revealed in this paper that could be more exemplified on Urantia?

3. What lessons in socialization are learned in the Edentia training worlds? How does the knowledge of such things affect our attitude to socialization now?

Paper 44. The Celestial Artisans

1. How is the attitude of the Archangel author toward human beings progressively revealed in this paper?

2. What practical consequences should follow from the revelations concerning Urantian music (500.3-6)?

3. How can we expand our comprehension of personal experience in the light of the note about the life-story tellers (501b)?

4. What does The Urantia Book say and imply about the laws of spiritual energy intake (505.2,6-506.2)?

5. What lessons on feeling are to be found in the note on the emotion designers (506c)?

6. Explicate all the meanings and values you can discern in section 7 on the Harmony Workers. How are beauty, rhythm, and harmony spiritually akin? How are truth, fact, and relationship related to beauty? How does the teaching on unifying truth, beauty, and goodness in our lives help us understand how gifted and accomplished people can be so impressive while lacking real soul expression?

7. Can you distinguish sincere from egotistical ambition for excellence in self-expression (508.2-3; cf. 21.3; 557.3; 1758.4)?

Paper 45. The Local System Administration

1. What can you infer about humankind from the descriptions of the four and twenty (513#4)? What do they have to do with us? Why did the great leaders so consistently lead their people in worship? Why does worship unify people?

2. Why is parental experience essential? What ideas about sex relations do you derive from section 6?

3. What implications about the Father concept are contained in the requirement of parental experience (516.3)?

4. Who is Lanaforge? What does he do? What relation do we have with him?

Paper 46. Local System Headquarters

1. What are the key functions of the local system headquarters?

2. What happens during the quiet hour on Jerusem (520.3)? In the theater of morontia activities devoted to rest and recreation (526.5)

3. How do the beauties of nature change on Jerusem (520#2; 526.6)?

4. Of which elements—work, progress, play—do you think the following are composite: social intercourse, group entertainment, divine worship (526.5)?

5. Is there any evidence in the book that helps us predict what effect lifting the quarantine will have on Urantia mortals?

Paper 47. The Seven Mansion Worlds

1. Summarize the sequence of achievements that we complete in the mansion worlds.

2. What do you learn about child rearing from this paper?

3. Comment on 536.4: Why are all these aspects linked in the description of a new social order?

4. To what extent can we begin these experiences in our lives? “Bona fide experiential enthusiasm for the Havona ascent . . . . Study is becoming voluntary, unselfish service natural, and worship spontaneous” (537.5).

5. Why does “coming up through great tribulation” serve to make us “very kind and understanding,” “sympathetic and tolerant”?

6. Comment on the sequences of verbs pertaining to morontia achievement: “fully mobilized, realized, unified.” What do these verbs mean? Is there any significance in the sequence?

Paper 48. The Morontia Life

1. Why did so few learn of heavenly things in the past (542.5; 553.1,4)?

2. List the lessons implicit in section 4 on the reversion directors (cf. 1558.6; 1562.1; 1610#3).

3. Try organizing some teachings you cherish, for example about God or the philosophy of living or the religion of Jesus--into headings that would fit in the schools of thinking, the schools of feeling, and the schools of doing (551.1).

4. What is the leading theme in the gospel of the seraphic evangels (552-3)? What are the supporting aspects of their gospel teaching? How do these aspects form a unity? What do they have to do with the gospel as presented in Part IV?

5. Give an example of a situation in which rectification of an error by revelation might jeopardize emerging truths (555.1).

6. Explain how souls get kindled by the divine fire of the will to service (555.3).

7. How can you let pressure develop stability and certainty (555.4)?

8. How can the planting of a seed ever necessitate its death (555.5)?

9. What exhausts immature creatures (555.6; cf. 380.7; 548.5)?

10. What additional insight can you derive from the human statements of philosophy associated with morontia mota by considering (a) the justaposition of sentences within a given teaching and (b) the sequence of teachings?

Paper 49. The Inhabited Worlds

1. What are the eugenic implications of section 1?

2. What clue to humor do you note in section 2?

3. Where may our solar system harbor non-breathers?

4. What is the import of the fact that we stand erect on two feet?

5. What teachings about sex equality do you derive from section 4?

6. What are the implications for understanding human nature from the teaching on the brain on p. 566?

7. Does 570.1 imply that parents have a special responsibility to survive if their children die before receiving Adjusters?

8. Finaliters are sent to administer such a variety of worlds as these. What transformations will have taken place before we are ready to do so?

Paper 50. The Planetary Princes

1. What risks go along with being so far from Paradise (573.0)? Is there any implication here for epochal revelation management?

2. If humankind are “halfway” between primitive conditions and advanced civilization, should we expect that every aspect of early “autocratic” rule (573.4) should be left behind?

3. Knowing that “culture presupposes quality of mind” (578.4), the Prince’s staff select “the cream of the evolutionary races” (575.2). What analogies and disanalogies are there between this policy and our wisdom in selecting people to whom to introduce The Urantia Book?

4. What reforms would make Urantian education more like the education established by the Prince’s staff?

5. The Prince’s work is independent of the missions of the higher Sons (576.4). Does this fact carry any implications about the relation between the movement of students of The Urantia Book and the gospel movement?

6. How can religious teaching reflect the fact that struggle, effort, and decision (578.4) are essential to progress?

7. “Reward follows effort as a result of causes.” What causes do you need to attend to in your project?

Paper 51. The Planetary Adams

1. Study this paper for every principle of epochal revelation management you can discern.

2. Since the Nazi era, eugenics has been largely taboo, though change is gradually emerging. Reflect on the eugenics teachings here until you can experience that “all truth—material, philosophic, or spiritual—is both beautiful and good” (43.4).

3. What reason for race differentiation is given at 584L? What desirable traits do you see emerging from such differentiation?

4. Single-matedness is an Adamic norm (586.2). What will it take to make that ideal effective today?

5. What seven fathers do we recognize (587c)?

Paper 52. Planetary Mortal Epochs

1. How shall we recover the courage of the mighty hunters and fierce fighters of primitive man?

2. What principle of revelation would you formulate from the observation that the Planetary Prince’s staff teaches only as much as their pupils can receive (591.3)?

3. What implications might possibly be drawn about a vegetarian diet from 593.7?

4. Normally, intellectual culture should be at a very high level to prepare for the Bestowal Son. What intellectual background would you consider ideal for understanding the teachings of Jesus?

5. In what sense is the golden rule impractical today (596.6)?

6. Study and discuss section 6 as carefully as possible; it offers Part II’s main recipe for planetary transformation—without making any reference to The Urantia Papers. What is the difference between spiritual brotherhood and social brotherhood? How has Jesus shown the way to the immediate realization of spiritual brotherhood?

Paper 53. The Lucifer Rebellion

1. Why is self-contemplation “most disastrous” (601.5)?

2. What are the steps leading from pride to sin (603.1)? What is pride? Given the fact that the word “pride” today is commonly used to denote self-respect or self-esteem, how can we express the danger of pride in popular discourse? Can we keep ourselves from pride? All by ourselves?

3. What themes of the Lucifer rebellion can we observe in planetary history and in our culture today? How do self-assertion and unbridled personal liberty continue to cause us problems? What can be done?

4. Explain the division of labor: Why did Michael remain aloof and Gabriel undertake the exposure of rebel sophistries?

5. “It’s all relative.” How is this slogan—despite its kinship with insight (42.2; 1039.3)—pressed into the service of false freedom?

6. Have you ever been spiritually blinded by someone’s brilliance and charming ways?

7. In the encounter on Urantia of Jesus of Nazareth and his universe enemies, given the fact Jesus elected to meet his enemies simply as the Son of Man, and given the fact that in any contest between a higher being and a lower being, the higher wins out, what does it say about the power of faith that can make a mortal with faith higher than a Lanondek Son without faith?

8. Have you observed enough of life to begin to confirm that “the way of the transgressor is hard” and that “every sin contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction”? Explain.

Paper 54. Problems of the Lucifer Rebellion

1. Explain the distinction between true and false liberty. How may this Luciferian sophistry be observed in present-day society?

2. What was the contradiction in Lucifer’s program of tyranny?

3. Why does righteous adjudication take time?

4. What are the benefits of the mercy time lag?

5. What kinds of reasons do you find in the list of reasons explaining the wisdom of delay?

6. Can you wholeheartedly embrace the Creator’s love that permits you to suffer the consequences of others’ misuse of creature freedom? Reflect on your own missteps. What does it take to participate in the mercy process on a planet gone astray?

Paper 55. The Spheres of Light and Life

1. How can you explain to someone that our destiny is not just an eternal condition of static bliss?

2. 624.0 proposes that we learn to view natural death with something of the “cheerfulness and lightheartedness” of the era of light and life. How can we make progress toward that goal? What obstacles are there? What ways around them?

3. Notice what areas of activity are classified on p. 625 under the headings of truth, beauty, and goodness.

4. How can we communicate a positive sense of planetary destiny today?

5. How are we unconsciously compromised by our own accommodation to this planet, characterized as “sin-stricken, evil-dominated, [and] self-seeking” (629d)?

6. To what extent can we personally grow into a way of living akin to that portrayed on 630.1-2, even though our planet is far removed from such culture?

7. Humanists sometimes say that life is worthwhile (without the prospect of life after death) if one can only make a contribution to a grand future for humanity. How close to that sentiment does the author comes at 631.6?

Paper 56. Universal Unity

1. Why is a paper on universal unity needed after the preceding papers? How does this paper culminate Part II and unify it with Part I?

2. How does the last section integrate on the level of individual experience the grand achievements on higher levels discussed in the previous sections?

3. Contemplate the unity of God—a unifying theme for many of the world’s religions. 640.4 tells us that despite the fact that we are told of many universe fathers, experientially, we can only have one father. Why are many of us in practice more at ease with the intellectual idea of the plurality of beings revealed in the papers than with the truth of the spiritual, experiential unity of God?

4. 641.5 presents a remarkable sequence of steps for us to follow in developing our concept of God. Why this sequence?

5. Sometimes a human beings experiences impersonal levels of Deity before becoming able to recognize the Deity personality (642.4). How does this thought help unify our understanding of the different types of religious experience highlighted among the world’s religions?

6. If our destiny is to reveal the Supreme, how can we start now?

7. Are you prepared to believe it? “All that God the Father and his Paradise Sons do for us, we in turn and in spirit have the opportunity to do for and in the emerging Supreme Being” (644.1). What would this mean?

8. Notice that the major philosophic proposition of the master universe is a question! What does that imply about the character of philosophy?

9. Note, in the last four paragraphs of 645, a summary statement of creation and, in the last paragraph, a summary statement of the essence of human living. Note the sequence here, different from that at 21.2: loving God precedes knowing God. How might you harmonize this apparent tension?

10. How is your conception of your chosen project affected by the integration of truth, beauty, and goodness?

11. List the teachings on beauty given in section 10 and list possible ways in which you could live beauty more fully.

12. In a world where specializations often become increasingly narrow, how can we show the blessings of the holistic perspective of 647.4-7?

13. Discuss the concept of love that emerges here. Why are truth, beauty, and goodness essential to love? How does the revealed concept of love differ from popular concepts? Explain the implications of the closing definition of love—the desire to do good to others: what is the place of the heart, the place of action, and the importance of the plural?