Forgive me if I speak bluntly. Life on your world has a way of making life-changing decisions manifest out of the most unlikely circumstances. Just now, such a circumstance is at hand on your world. What you make of it will be entirely up to you. Perhaps your world is ready to go a new way; the eternal way— that beckons you onward toward your own personal and planetary destiny. We shall see.
Like all other mortals, you were born into this world totally ignorant of whence you came, where you are, or what it is you are doing here. Very likely you began, at some point, maybe even unconsciously, to piece together a story, a philosophy that tries to answer these questions, and the more true information you’re able to incorporate into your picture, well, the more useful it becomes.
Basically you find yourselves as living, relatively sentient creatures, on a singular, tiny blue dot of a planet, whirling along at some remarkable rate of your kilometers per hour through space, somewhere in the uncharted outskirts of an incomprehensibly vast spiral arm of a staggeringly enormous galaxy; which is just one of many trillions of such gigantic structures in your current but still quite limited vision of what you are able to discern of the universe.
And even with substantial strides in cosmic understanding, the vast majority of us still don’t fathom we are all a part of an immense plan— a gigantic enterprise— an eternal project— which the Gods are supervising and outworking. And it’s the very incomprehensible vastness of the undertaking that renders it impossible for us to see very much of it at any one time, and more poignantly, during any one life. Essentially this means you humans are now, and for the foreseeable future, on the bottom rung of an eternal ladder.
If you can claim to know anything for certain, deep down you must know you’re a “person.” Fundamentally it’s true, because each of us possess something we call “personality.” Personality is easily among the least understood concepts expressed in your language, when it comes to understanding what we—you—really are. That’s also true because, current psychology really doesn’t understand yet what personality essentially is— not to mention the other critically important components of being a person—say them with me now: body; mind; soul; and spirit. Personality is able to unify these various integral components, and, through our many experiences and decisions, good and bad, big and small, we each create our potentially eternal identity as a personal being.
But: Who are you? When you carefully think about your identity— your actual self— you should be able to recognize that there’s no one else exactly like you, anywhere; not in the eternal past, not in the internal future; you are already eternally unique by virtue of the very nature of your personality. Coincidentally, that’s really the one invaluable thing you have to offer the being you call “God”—an eternally unique, personally unique, finite perspective of reality. And the one-of-a-kind gift bestowed upon those who willingly (or unwillingly) share your finite perspective with an infinite God?
Eternal life.
Are you seeing the bargain, here, my friends?
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We are all children of an Infinite Creator. Consequently, whether you know it or not, that makes us all potentially eternal beings. Whatever ideas you have stitched together of your core “self” at this point in your really short life here, it has to be far less than the magnificent destiny that is being offered you by the Infinite Creator/Father: That of a creature achieving perfection— while actually climbing rung by evolutionary rung— all the way to the eternal shores of Paradise.
Still, you could reason, eternity might really suck— if there was nothing to do— if there weren’t a lot of astonishingly interesting places to see, indescribable things to do, and countless amazing beings to meet in the vastness of the universe. It so happens that the universe is, like its Creator, infinite— and therefore full of unending wonder, countless personal beings both human and divine, and utterly matchless, and endless, adventure and self fulfillment. Here’s the most cogent clue I know of:
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
nor has it even entered into the mind of man,
what the universal Father has prepared
for those who survive the life in the flesh.”
The watchword of the universe is progress. All that incomprehensible vastness beyond our imaginations should suggest to any clear thinking mind that there’s got to be a way to get out there and explore. The great news is there really is a way; the one proviso is, you have to want it. Sure, it’s pretty hard to want something you can’t really know anything about. Which, surprise, brings us right back to learning about what’s really going on in the universe from an authentically spiritual point of view. The truly great part is, you can experience it all from your own point of view. My advice is simple. Read The Urantia Book. All of it. And preferably before you are forced to leave your planet, Urantia.
Perhaps you don’t have a real cosmology. Yet. But you need one; every last one of us does. Some people may have to relearn what the word cosmology really means. Eventually “cosmology” must be personally redefined— by you— to include everything there is to know about reality, and the universe.
Let’s digress a moment. Although no human beings were around to actually hear the “Big Bang,” the problem-riddled theory of the Big Bang currently dominates “physical cosmology,” to the extent that many people may think the mystery of creation has been resolved by science, and that’s all there is to it.
Sadly, no. But a true spiritual cosmology must try to ascend to the very pinnacle of human understanding. And short of a genuine celestial teacher showing up and teaching cosmology to the masses, (yes, however unlikely may seem, it could happen), the only source I know of for a relatively replete cosmology is waiting for you right now— in the pages of The Urantia Book. There are easily many hundreds of compelling reasons why you should read The Urantia Book, not the least of which is, it is ipso facto the best equivalent of an official user’s guide to this planet you have been standing on your entire life.
I must confess it’s difficult to explain how truly complicated a replete cosmological picture can be, because so much of it simply doesn’t even exist intellectually yet for most people. For instance, the evidence for an intelligently organized and designed universe has yet to be discovered by astronomers; the universe is simply too vast to either adequately observe, or fully comprehend. That means all things that exist beyond our human comprehension still require some degree of faith to intellectually and spiritually ascertain.
Finally, that brings us to another interesting proviso. While one person may have the utmost appreciation for The Urantia Book, and profit immeasurably from it, another person may simply not be ready to grok¹ it all. It can be likened to a toddler trying to comprehend a set of encyclopedias. There is nothing wrong with the encyclopedias, or the child, but of course a young child simply does not yet have the necessary development to read them, let alone comprehend the content.
I would recommend that motivated mortals first try to gain a good working knowledge of The Urantia Book with the assistance of a more experienced reader, if possible. Most experienced readers are usually willing to share their hard-earned insights and suggestions on how to grapple with the Book’s more difficult concepts; and fortunately other readers are increasingly easier to find.
Another little tip. Don’t be too surprised if one or more of your most precious preconceptions about the way you think things are in your personal universe, have to be re-framed, upgraded, or maybe even — and this may be painful— deleted. If it’s any consolation, those of us who’ve already done that will almost always swear it’s totally going to be worth the effort.
So, my Urantian friends: If you might invoke your slumbering desire and integrity to suspend any superficial obstacles just long enough to let the book speak for itself, I believe courageous and intrepid individuals out there could very soon be compensated with knowing the who, the what, and the why of your personal existence on a world of time and space. And yes, consequently, be changed forever. And in a way that you will come to know it in your very immortal soul.
And if it should turn out that it’s not the most valuable information you can discover for reals, as you say, during your lifetime on this planet, well. . . damn. . . I’d encourage you to keep moving forward the best way you know how.
No matter. I’ll see you in the next world; don’t be late.
Grok: From the book Stranger In A Strange Land by R. Heinlein. A “Martian” word for understanding a thing so fully as to become one with it.
Forgive me if I speak bluntly. Life on your world has a way of making life-changing decisions manifest out of the most unlikely circumstances. Just now, such a circumstance is at hand on your world. What you make of it will be entirely up to you. Perhaps your world is ready to go a new way; the eternal way— that beckons you onward toward your own personal and planetary destiny. We shall see.
