Adapted from the Urantia Book original paper here
The Talk on Reality
Before leaving Alexandria, Jesus and Ganid had a long talk with one of the government professors at the library. This man lectured on Plato’s teachings, and Ganid had a lot of questions about the Greek’s philosophy. Jesus said that parts of Plato’s ideas were on the right track, but most of them weren’t. So he used this chance to explain to Ganid the nature of reality in the universe.
Jesus taught that the source of all true reality is the Infinite, which is the base of all being. Material things are just time-space approximations of the Paradise pattern in the universal mind of God. The reality of the Supreme being projected across the universe combines the realities of the physical, mental, and spiritual realms - which are causation, self-consciousness, and progressing selfhood – all in perfect and divine order. But while our universe is ever-changing, the original source of causation, which is self-consciousness, and the subsequent spiritual experience, is always changeless.
When we know the Universal Father by always keeping God’s will foremost in our minds and hearts, and we conform our finite will to God’s divine will in harmonious perfection, we reach our highest state of divinity in time and eternity. To achieve this oneness with God we must integrate the causation forming the physical world, with the self-consciousness arising from our mind, with the divine gift of personality that we receive from God.
Personality is what makes us, as individual souls, unique. Personality is the essence, the flavor, of our progressive selfhood that allows us to coexist with other entities in a universe that is both ever-changing and forever changeless. Our personality is our identity.
Life is adaptable, and always progressive to God consciousness. Neither a singular focus on science, or a singular focus on spirit can help a person recognize the depth of true universe reality.
To adapt to this universe reality, we have to continue our struggle for higher values because that’s how we attain onement with God. When a person doesn’t make the effort to continually reach for God, it causes a cosmic disturbance. That person instead moves away from God, and in time they become more and more mentally isolated and segregated from the family of God. These people will eventually lose their spirit guide – not as some sort of punishment, but because in the process of continually moving themselves away from God they lose any desire they had to know God. The end result is the annihilation of their existence.
In other words, their personality will cease to exist because instead of their daily decisions adding to their potential to serve God, those decisions instead, day-by-day, destroyed their reason for being until eventually there’ll be none left. This is not punishment from God, this is the result of our own free will choices.
Then Jesus went on to tell Ganid about the difference between truth and knowledge. Jesus explained that knowledge comes from the mind, that it’s not spiritual. Knowledge is knowing facts that you can show to others. Truth, though, is experienced. It can’t be known by just reading about it or someone telling us what is true. Truth is not a thing, it’s rather the experience of a developing soul in a mind that is conscious of knowing God. And when we take the knowledge we learn, and we combine it with our experience of living God’s will, it becomes wisdom.
Jesus and Ganid then talked about evil. Jesus told Ganid that evil was imperfection, and that it happens when a person misinterprets universe realities. In other words, evil is simply error. If our goal is for the universe to eventually become one with God in perfection, and if we’re not there yet, then anything not perfect with God is error, or evil, and has the potential of becoming sin.
In the material realm this imperfection and misinterpretation of universe reality is seen through science and observation, and at the moral level it’s known through our human experience. The possibility of error is an inherent part of learning in our journey from the temporal to the eternal. We aren’t yet perfect, but rather we’re on our personal path to perfection.
Evil is not something that God made, it’s rather anything that God didn’t create. The potential for evil exists because we’re incomplete beings and we have to gain wisdom through experience, in other words, by making mistakes. But actual evil becomes sin when we don’t learn, or we deliberately make choices against God’s will. And since we are in a universe that is continually progressing, that means our ideas must also continually progress.
Any idea that remains static - whether it’s in science, politics, religion, or society – eventually becomes false and potentially evil. We are supposed to continually peel away the layers of our partial understanding of God, and this means that our highest ideas of correctness should also be refined as we’re able to do so.
The next morning Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid set sail for Lasea on the island of Crete.
On the Island of Crete
Our three friends stopped at Crete to take a break. They needed a vacation, and time to play and wander around the countryside. While they were there, they spoke to many people and planted the seeds of the Fatherhood of God in their minds. These talks that they had with the Cretans made the island fertile ground for the first preachers who, after Jesus’ death, came from Jerusalem to spread the gospel of Paul’s new Christian religion. It was during this time on Crete that Gonod first asked Jesus to return to India with him and Ganid after they completed their journey to Rome.
Ganid again asked Jesus why he wasn’t out in public teaching the people. Instead of just giving Ganid his standard response, that it wasn’t yet time, Jesus explained to him why everything has to happen on its own time. For example, Jesus said, a person might be anxious to grow up but no amount of impatience will speed up the process. Some things just take more time before they can come into existence. Like with the fruit on a tree that can only ripen if given the time to do so. If not, it’s still hard, green, immature, and inedible. As for me right now, being here with you and your Father and taking this fantastic journey to Rome is enough…this is my time to ripen and mature and become palatable for the people’s minds.
But regardless, what happens tomorrow is in my Father’s hands, not mine. To further explain why so many things had to wait their own time, Jesus told Ganid the story of Moses and how for forty years Moses had to wait, watch, and prepare for the time when his people ripened, and they grew to trust God more than man.
One day when the three of them were out site-seeing, they ran into a drunk guy hitting a slave girl. When Jesus saw this, he ran over to the scene and got the girl away from the man. He then held the drunk off with a strong straight right arm until the guy wore himself out. Ganid wanted to rush over and help Jesus, but his dad held him back. Later that evening, Ganid wanted to know why Jesus hadn’t hit the man at least as many times as he had hit the girl. Jesus tried to explain his reasoning to Ganid, but the lad never did really understand. Still, this episode caused Ganid to start thinking about how he could change the caste system in his own country when he got back to India.
The Young Man Who Was Afraid
Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid were out hiking up in the mountains one day when they came across a young man named Fortune. This guy had had some tough times in his life, the hardest thing being the fact that his father had died when he was twelve years old. As a result, this lad was afraid and depressed, and he’d shied away from people for most of his life preferring instead to hang out by himself up there on the mountain. When the three of them came upon Fortune, Jesus asked him why he looked so depressed on such a beautiful day, and Jesus offered to help him if he could.
But Fortune just ignored him, so Jesus tried a second time. Jesus said he knew that Fortune was up there on the mountain because he wanted to be alone, and that that was all right. But Jesus then asked Fortune if he’d be kind enough to help the three of them find their way through the mountains to Phenix so they wouldn’t get lost. Now this request got the Fortune’s attention, because he knew all of the trails across the mountain by heart. By the time he was done, Fortune had drawn out all of the paths leading to Phenix, and told Jesus and the others everything they needed to know to make the trip through the mountains.
After they said their good-byes to Fortune and Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid turned to leave, Jesus stopped and looked back at the young man. This time, Jesus said that he knew that Fortune wanted to be left alone up on the mountain in his sorrow, and like he’d said before, that was okay. But Jesus also said that it wouldn’t be right for the three of them to have accepted Fortune’s help and guidance, without them at least returning the favor and answering Fortune’s question on how to find the destiny in his heart. Jesus told Fortune that he knew the way to the hopes in his heart just as well as Fortune knew the paths to Phenix, and since Fortune had asked Jesus to show him the way, he wouldn’t disappoint him.
This put Fortune in a spot because he didn’t think that he’d asked Jesus for anything, and he managed to stammer that out in reply. But Jesus said that Fortune didn’t ask him for help in words, but rather with the look in his eyes. Jesus then asked Fortune to sit with him as he explained how to be in joyful service to God in heaven. After hearing what Jesus had to say, the young man dropped to his knees at Jesus’ feet, and pleaded for a way out of his sorrow and defeat. At this point, Jesus told Fortune to get up off his knees and stand tall like a man. Jesus told Fortune that everything he was afraid of was insignificant when compared to the big and real things that were on his side right here and in the universe.
Jesus continued to lecture Fortune, and he told him what he needed to hear and accept if he was find his way out of depression. Jesus told him that he was trying to run away from his problems, but that no one can do that. Our problems in life are real, and we have to face them when and where we find them. Jesus told Fortune that the sun rises on him every morning just like it does on those people who are rich or who are in power. He said that Fortune had a better mind and body than most men, and that could he do many great things with them if they weren’t sitting useless on that mountain as he wallowed in self-pity. Fortune could also train his mind to solve his problems and to have courage in the face of adversity rather than submitting to fear, defeat, and depression. But for this to happen, Jesus said, Fortune had to make the decision to put aside his human fears and open himself to the divine sprit living inside of him. If he did this it would free Fortune’s spiritual nature to come forth as living faith in love of his fellows, release him from the error - or evil – that comes with inaction, and fill Fortune’s heart with the consciousness that he is a child of God.
Ending his personal sermon, Jesus told Fortune that he was now reborn of the spirit in service to man for the sake of God. That by casting aside his fear and cowardice for service to God, he would bring himself in-line with the universe and in fact be born again, but this time born of the spirit of God. And forevermore, regardless of the troubles, disappointments, difficulties, or obstacles that may happen in the future, Fortune will overcome all of them in his service to man on Earth, and in his eternal service to God in eternity. And this Fortune did by becoming one of the early Christian leaders in Crete.
Our three travelers, now refreshed from their leisure time on Crete, next set sail for Carthage in northern Africa. On the way they stopped at Cyrene for two days. While out exploring, Jesus and Ganid came across an accident where a loaded oxcart had broken down and injured a boy named Rufus. The two of them gave this lad first aid, and then took him home to his parents. Unknown to everyone, the father, Simon, was later the man the Roman soldier would order to carry Jesus’ cross to his crucifixion.
At Carthage: The Talk about Time and Space
On the journey to Carthage, Jesus talked with the others on the boat about almost everything except religion. He told them all the stories of his childhood in Galilee, and that was when Gonod and Ganid learned that Jesus was raised there, and not in Jerusalem or Damascus. It was obvious to Ganid that people were attracted to Jesus, so on this part of the voyage he asked Jesus about how a person could make friends. Jesus told Ganid that to make friends a person had to be interested in other people, learn to love them, and when possible to do something for them - provided of course it was something that they wanted. Jesus then told Ganid the Jewish proverb that if someone wants to have friends, they themselves have to be friendly.
When they disembarked at Carthage, Jesus ran into a Mithraic priest from Persia who had been educated in Alexandria. This man was interested in Jesus’ teachings about time, eternity, and immortality. In response to his questions, Jesus explained the following:
In Paradise, which is the fixed center of everything and where God and the Paradise Deities live, there is no time or space. But everything outside of Paradise is perceived as time and space, or what seems to be a straight line of events moving one after the other through space. We see this motion of time through space when we contrast it to something outside of time and space. The only thing in the universe that can transcend that sequence of non-spiritual time space events is the human personality. That’s because we’re paired-up with the spirit of God, which is outside of the effects of time and space. In other words, God can transcend time and space, and since our personality is tied to our Thought Adjust, which is God, so can we.
Our consciousness, when it’s paired with God, doesn’t need a physical brain to exist.
Furthermore, as we grow in our spiritual understanding of time and space, what at first seemed to us to be a succession of events happening in a straight line is later understood to be a whole and perfectly related cycle. Space is measured by time, and to us it seems like space has a beginning and an end. But as we grow, our understanding of both time and space evolves into the timeless and spaceless experience of ultimate reality.
On the Way to Naples and Rome
Jesus continued to lead people to God as he met them along the way. On the island of Malta, Jesus inspired another man, Claudus, to later in life preach Jesus’ gospel. Claudus never knew that the later Jesus that he believed in, and the man on Malta who inspired him, were one and the same person. When Claudus met Jesus, he’d been thinking about killing himself. But after talking with Jesus, he vowed that he was done being a coward. Claudus said that he was going to go home, start over again, and this time face life like a real man. And this he did, promoting Christianity with Peter in Rome and Naples, and later preaching by himself in Spain.
In Syracuse, Jesus met Ezra. Ezra was a backslidden Jew. In other words, he was a Jew who had fallen away from the Jewish faith. Ezra had the tavern where Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid were staying. When talking with Jesus, Ezra said that he wanted to be a good Jew but he just hadn’t been able to find God.
Jesus said that if Ezra really wanted to find God, then that in itself showed that he had already found him. Or rather, that God had found Ezra.
His problem, Jesus told Ezra, wasn’t that he couldn’t find God, it was that Ezra didn’t know God. But if he wanted to learn, he could do so by listening to the voice in his heart. Ezra heeded Jesus’ words, and later went on to build the first Christian church in Syracuse.
At Messina, Jesus bought some fruit from a vendor boy. This lad never forgot Jesus’ kind look and his words to have courage as he grew into manhood, or his advice to feed his soul just like he fed his body. And if he did so, Jesus said, his Father in heaven would guide the lad’s way. This boy took Jesus’ teachings to heart, later joining the Christian faith.
When they reached Naples, Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid found a city filled with poverty. As they explored Naples, they gave money to a lot of the beggars on the street. At one point, Ganid got confused when there was this one beggar that Jesus gave a coin to, but who Jesus wouldn’t stop and speak to like he had with the other beggars.
Jesus tried to explain to Ganid that it didn’t make sense to waste words on someone who couldn’t understand them. In other words, Jesus had sensed that this man didn’t have a mind capable of having a Thought Adjuster, and because of that, the man couldn’t respond to spiritual leading. He wasn’t someone capable of sonship with God.
After Jesus, Gonod, and Ganid left Naples for Rome they stopped at Capua for several days. From there they continued along the Appian Way with their pack animals to Rome. All three of them were excited to finally see the greatest city in all of their world.
Okay, folks, that’s it for Son of Man: Urantia, Chapter 9, “On the Way to Rome,” part 2.
Next week’s Chapter 10 is titled, “The World’s Religions.”
Have a fantastic week out there.
Bob