What is spiritual brotherhood?

[Sabinatu]

Vern wrote:

Sabinatu wrote: choosing NOT to know God becomes that person’s personal religion…

Sorry Sabinatu, this to me is an illogical statement, like saying a blind man chooses blindness having never experienced seeing.

I will accept being too logical because I fell into the logical conclusion of “religion is a personal experience, a personal relationship with the Divine” through to the conclusion that we all end up with a personal religion if religion is a personal relationship with God, so choosing NOT to know God (also logical – we do not date and mate with every ONE, do we?) – then ipsofacto that is the person’s religion, a non-relationship with God, person to person – religion being confined to the God issue as contrasted with philosophy and physics….

[Vern]

Sabinatu wrote:  …the person’s religion, a non-relationship with God, person to person…

Hi Sabinatu I really appreciate this additional post which does make clear what you were meaning in a logical way. Thanks.

My thinking, building upon your statement about personal religion, to be logically consistent, if there was such a person who chose a non-relationship with God, they would also be expending effort in resisting every Divine impulse, conscious and unconscious, awake and during sleep.

In my posts and quotes shared so far, I have made reference to the morality of non-believers and have been building a case to support the proposition, that even self-proclaimed “atheists” who love their family, wives, husbands, children, friends, are in reality co-operating with God within, despite what they say.

If an “atheist” loves, how can they?

If an “atheist” is sincere, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is honest, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is truthful, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is alturistic, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is compassionate, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is wise, how can they be?

If an “atheist” is balanced, how can they be?

Sabinatu wrote: religion is a personal experience…

Yes, and then as you say, and as Jesus said, each person has their own “personal”religion—differential response to identical spirit motivation.

Sabinatu, you started with drawing attention to the spirit motivation in animals, suggesting that there are people who choose to or can only function at this seventh psychic circle of Adjutant mind spirit ministry.

Denying God does not mean he does not exist. To deny something a person must have substantiated the thing denied sufficient to differentiate themselves from it. I really don’t classify every “atheist” I know by every godless concept I can think of, killer, terrorist, liar, rapist, torturer, enslaver etc. I doubt it you do either.

In my reply to you a few days ago I shared the following quote in support of the fact everything a person experiences is “subjective,” including God, who, bidden or unbidden, is there.

Contact with highest objective reality, God, is only through subjective experience of knowing him.

The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man’s contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him. ^{[Paper196:3.21, page 2095:5]}

Sabinatu I hope this reply to you goes some way towards our mutual understanding of each other. Being unique personalities it’s as it should be that we have diversity in the ideas we share. Unity encourages diversity. Remember all the different interpretations the apostles had when Jesus presented his parables. The different interpretations the apostles had threw light on the depth of meaning as each registered differentially in the mind and soul of each individual. So it is, with our merry band of Forum participants.

Sabinatu I take delight in sharing ideas with you, may we continue on this, or any other topic.

[Mara]

Sabinatu wrote:  We are talking about “brotherhood”, here, after all…which means that we have a duty to each other to NOT allow another revolutionary overthrow of the social order with atheism or “greed is good” absolutisms.

They tell us that materialism is waning.  The social order is not going to be overthrown by secularism or materialism, even though this has been the trend for the past three hundred years.*  There are unseen, unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual workings going on every single moment.

( 27:7:1 )  But secularism is not the sole parent of all these recent gains in the enlargement of living. Behind the gains of the twentieth century are not only science and secularism but also the unrecognized and unacknowledged spiritual workings of the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth.

You might have a sense of duty or a calling to go out and save Christians and capitalists.  It’s up to the individual to interpret the will of God.  It’s not my thing.  I shun the discussion of political, social or economic situations, because such discussions are too granular and fail to account for what you and I know to be the grand plan for our world.  It’s easy to find flaws in the management of our present world and horrible things are happening every single day in every country.  I think we also need to be mindful this is an international forum and we need to find the best and broadest applications of our ideas and ideals to the goal of inspiring all readers.

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Regarding duty:  Worship is the highest privilege and the first duty of all created intelligences.  (27:7:1 )

* At the time of this revelation, the prevailing intellectual and philosophical climate of both European and American life is decidedly secular–humanistic. For three hundred years Western thinking has been progressively secularized. Religion has become more and more a nominal influence, largely a ritualistic exercise. The majority of professed Christians of Western civilization are unwittingly actual secularists. (195:8:3)

[Mara]

Sabinatu wrote:  Scientifically speaking, the mental baseline of the human mind, according to The Urantia Book, begins with Andon and Fonta. This information is definitely a “revelation” – new info for all of humanity if it happens to be the truth.

I am wondering if you have taken into account the sovereignty of human will and personality focal point of the Adjuster?  In your thinking, do you include these factors in your “baseline” dating back roughly a million years?  Didn’t primitive minds adjust the human will and make necessary transformations of the potentially spirit phases of the mortal mind into the morontia realities of the immortal soul, because they had personality and were indwelt?  They were self-conscious. (133:7:6)

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(111:3:2)  […] During life the mortal will, the personality power of decision-choice, is resident in the material mind circuits; as terrestrial mortal growth proceeds, this self, with its priceless powers of choice, becomes increasingly identified with the emerging morontia-soul entity. . . .

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( 1:3:7 )  […] This evolution of the human mind from matter association to spirit union results in the transmutation of the potentially spirit phases of the mortal mind into the morontia realities of the immortal soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter is destined to become increasingly material and consequently to suffer eventual personality extinction; mind yielded to spirit is destined to become increasingly spiritual and ultimately to achieve oneness with the surviving and guiding divine spirit and in this way to attain survival and eternity of personality existence.

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( 107:7:4 )  Why then, if Thought Adjusters possess volition, are they subservient to the mortal will? We believe it is because Adjuster volition, though absolute in nature, is prepersonal in manifestation. Human will functions on the personality level of universe reality, and throughout the cosmos the impersonal–the nonpersonal, the subpersonal, and the prepersonal–is ever responsive to the will and acts of existent personality.

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Even a million years ago, Adjusters respected the sovereignty of personality; they were then and always have been  subservient to human will. (110:2:1)  And such human free will is not fully predictable.  ( 12:6:5 )

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Mind is a temporary intellect system…. ( 111:1:5 )  That’s a revelation too.

 

[Sabinatu]

Yes, there has been a lot of spiritualizing of the human mind, but we still are not speaking the same language – a BASELINE reading is mandatory in order to make any sense of the metadata collection that follows.  Just because we do not have the metadata from the past 1 million years does not mean that the baseline data is invalid as a baseline data.  Of course we can still make a BIOLOGIC diagnosis  with an accurate BASELINE reading – the activation of the Sixth and Seventh Adjutant connections in the mind of Andon and Fonta.  Are we not talking about a specific “spiritual brotherhood” that goes above and beyond – even Andon and Fonta escaped becoming fire worshippers…

Atheism is a stance taken by a free will mind that is indicative of how they have chosen to be in relation to others – from the childish denial that people exist who believe in God and are still SMARTER than them, all the way to getting as violently radical as putting a law in place that made it a crime to WORSHIP GOD – like in the former USSR.  “Greed is good”, imo, is just as pernicious and a “spiritual brotherhood” has as much “right” to “free will” acts as have the atheist political brotherhoods.

“Spiritual brotherhood” is an organization where the entrance into the club is decided upon by the INDIVIDUAL, right?

I have lived the majority of my life in the USA surrounded by over 19 million people from the 4 corners of the earth so I am quite comfortable with “international”.  I know I might forget one or two religions, but it is true for me to say that I have been invited to worship with people who belong to every organized religion mentioned in The Urantia Book, and then some. So I lean towards the conclusion that the “spiritual brotherhood” is populated with God-knowing souls who made the free will choice to be in relation with each other in the brotherhood based on the way that they have a relationship with God.

Pretty much would have to cut and paste most of The Urantia Book to list all the diversity of material being’s combinations that come from exhibiting the “fruits of the spirit” – trillions of ways…how a spiritualized brother can hang on to the fruits of honest work in the material world – AKA life-maintenance – is not complex at all in comparison and something JESUS left to be worked out in the “brotherhood”.

[Sabinatu]

Paper 101 is a wonderful read to clarify “religion” in a “spiritual brotherhood”:

 

^{101:1.5 (1105.2)} While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational insight which originates in man’s mind-experience. Religion is born neither of mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man’s moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man’s spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind.

^{101:1.6 (1105.3)} Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the believing personality.

^{101:1.7 (1105.4)} Thus it may be seen that religious longings and spiritual urges are not of such a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a profound impression upon man’s moral nature that he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God. The higher and superphilosophic wisdom of such enlightened and disciplined individuals ultimately instructs them that to doubt God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul — the divine Adjuster.

[Vern]

Mara wrote: …priceless powers of choice…

Hello Mara beautifully put, thank you for your additional insight.

It all comes down to how integrated/balanced is the ability of a person to relate to other persons and the universe at large, in terms of thing, meaning, value decisions in their exercise of the priceless powers of choice.

It is by exercise of the priceless powers of choice that we gain progressive comprehension of reality.

I maintain, persons comprising the spiritual brotherhood are likewise, exercising their priceless powers of choice, making real mankind’s indefatigable approach to God. They achieve this by consecrating their choices to align with spirit leading—wholehearted co-operation with the Father who delights in his children’s progress as all loving parents do.

There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith — physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value. ^{[Paper 196:3.2, page 2094:1]}

The progressive comprehension of reality is the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion — self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total reality is the full realization of God, the finality of the God-knowing experience. ^{[Paper 196:3.3, page 2094:2]}

The more a person comprehends reality, the closer they approach God, the more a person identifies with God the more “real” they become.

[Vern]

Sabinatu wrote: …spiritual urges are not of such a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a profound impression upon man’s moral nature that he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God.…

Sabinatu I’m so glad you’ve shared this methodical and philosophically sound application of rational thought to experience of the religious impulse. Thanks, it profoundly resonated with me when I first read it in my youth.

Sabinatu wrote: …he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God.

The sincere truth seeker is fully equipped to arrive at this conclusion no matter what dead ends curiosity may attract him/her to.

Sabinatu wrote: …instructs them that to doubt God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul — the divine Adjuster.

Truth never suffers from honest examination and to be true to the …realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul…, invites honest examination of living experience. Being true to self leads to the source of all Truth.

[Mara]

Sabinatu wrote:. . .a BASELINE reading is mandatory in order to make any sense of the metadata collection that follows.

Your idea of a BASELINE reading and the idea of metadata appears to me to be a quantitative collection of information, as against that which is qualitative, personal and subjective – religious experience in relation to God and our fellows which relationships are living experiences and such relatedness is an end in and of itself, not a means to an end.

195:6:5   Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause — the Universal Father of Paradise.

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Spiritual brotherhood isn’t a club, though one reader suggested using the term to describe it.  Is it an organization?  Hmmm.  In thinking about this I say it is an invisible (to us) organization  I think it is a mistake to think of it as a human organization.  It is destined to be  a living organism ( 195:10:11 )  and living organisms are efficient and highly organized.  They were designed that way.

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I think spiritual brotherhood is highly organized all the way from here to Paradise, as we progress through our training on the billion-plus worlds of the ascension career. This is our natal world where we weakly or strongly discover, recognize, interpret and choose to go to God, to do his will, to consecrate ourselves to loving service of our fellows in whatever form we are invited to participate.  Every day God is extending an invitation to us to serve.  We have to develop service habits of living.  We probably already do this unconsciously.  The right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing.

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I like your idea of spiritual brotherhood being a state of relatedness, as in 1.) me-and-God and 2.) me-and-God- and-you, my fellows.

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Sabinatu wrote:. . . and a “spiritual brotherhood” has as much “right” to “free will” acts as have the atheist political brotherhoods.

Interesting you say “a ‘spiritual brotherhood'” as though there were more than one spiritual brotherhood.  I think there is only one spiritual brotherhood. And yes it is specific. But brotherhood, whether spiritual or otherwise, does not have free will.  Only persons have free will.

[Sabinatu]

Mara wrote:

Sabinatu wrote:. . .a BASELINE reading is mandatory in order to make any sense of the metadata collection that follows.

Your idea of a BASELINE reading and the idea of metadata appears to me to be a quantitative collection of information, as against that which is qualitative, personal and subjective – religious experience in relation to God and our fellows which relationships are living experiences and such relatedness is an end in and of itself, not a means to an end.

A quantitative collection of information is not *against* qualitative, personal, subjective – it is what it is – a qualitative collection and the only VALID way to discover whether the biologic part of a LIVING organism is progressive, static and balanced as it functions in a living organism, or whether it is diseased and acting upon the LIVING organism in a way that is retrogressive and degenerate.  Our biology on Urantia has been messed with “free will” so blaming God for what others has done is not going to get us to Light and Life.

195:6:5 Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause — the Universal Father of Paradise.

We have a “cause” for “physical phenomena” that really happened.  Your quote is about the error of a philosophy that invents speculative causes for physical phenomena…the metaphysical error….just sayin’….here’s the cut and paste from The Urantia Book that I provide for clarity:

^{12:9.3 (141.4)} Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance — liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

Spiritual brotherhood isn’t a club, though one reader suggested using the term to describe it. Is it an organization? Hmmm. In thinking about this I say it is an invisible (to us) organization I think it is a mistake to think of it as a human organization. It is destined to be a living organism ( 195:10:11 ) and living organisms are efficient and highly organized. They were designed that way.

The living systems weren’t designed by us, I’ll go with that truthful fact

Paper 12, Section 7 – The Part and the Whole:

^{12:7.8 (138.3)} The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves each individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves every individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood.

I keep using “spiritual brotherhood” because we do not want to make the mistake made in ancient Rome by the first Christians…and also it is the Ascender “quality”, whereas the Descender qualifies it as a “universal brotherhood”

I think spiritual brotherhood is highly organized all the way from here to Paradise, as we progress through our training on the billion-plus worlds of the ascension career. This is our natal world where we weakly or strongly discover, recognize, interpret and choose to go to God, to do his will, to consecrate ourselves to loving service of our fellows in whatever form we are invited to participate.

Wait, who is doing the “inviting”?!

Every day God is extending an invitation to us to serve. We have to develop service habits of living. We probably already do this unconsciously. The right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing.

This is how you are experiencing it at this point in time, Mara.  Should I put God on my dance card today at #8 after all the other-than-God invites….it helps to personalize….not preach….

Do we need an invitation to LOVE from God, or are we still engaging in the million year old battle of fighting for the freedom to love and be loved that our fellow willful Urantians periodically get all violent about denying…?  I am rather surprised and disappointed (in a concerned way about biologic retrogression and degeneration) that such a puerile and QUALITY-less philosophic concoction as “greed is good” ever got the better of modern man…if we do not know better by now then it is only because our biologic mind has become diseased.

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I like your idea of spiritual brotherhood being a state of relatedness, as in 1.) me-and-God and 2.) me-and-God- and-you, my fellows.

.

Sabinatu wrote:. . . and a “spiritual brotherhood” has as much “right” to “free will” acts as have the atheist political brotherhoods.

Interesting you say “a ‘spiritual brotherhood’” as though there were more than one spiritual brotherhood. I think there is only one spiritual brotherhood. But brotherhood, whether spiritual or otherwise, does not have free will. Only persons have free will.

The “spiritual brotherhood” is like water, and as noted in TUB, by examining oxygen and hydrogen to the exhaustion of their material facts, we will not find that there was a built in prediction that the combo would produce water.

[Sabinatu]

Sabinatu wrote:

Mara wrote:

Sabinatu wrote:. . .a BASELINE reading is mandatory in order to make any sense of the metadata collection that follows.

Your idea of a BASELINE reading and the idea of metadata appears to me to be a quantitative collection of information, as against that which is qualitative, personal and subjective – religious experience in relation to God and our fellows which relationships are living experiences and such relatedness is an end in and of itself, not a means to an end.

A quantitative collection of information is not *against* qualitative, personal, subjective – it is what it is – a qualitative collection and the only VALID way to discover whether the biologic part of a LIVING organism is progressive, static and balanced as it functions in a living organism, or whether it is diseased and acting upon the LIVING organism in a way that is retrogressive and degenerate. Our biology on Urantia has been messed with “free will” so blaming God for what others has done is not going to get us to Light and Life.

195:6:5 Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of ultimates and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause — the Universal Father of Paradise.

We have a “cause” for “physical phenomena” that really happened. Your quote is about the error of a philosophy that invents speculative causes for physical phenomena…the metaphysical error….just sayin’….here’s the cut and paste from The Urantia Book that I provide for clarity:

 

^{12:9.3 (141.4)} Mathematics, material science, is indispensable to the intelligent discussion of the material aspects of the universe, but such knowledge is not necessarily a part of the higher realization of truth or of the personal appreciation of spiritual realities. Not only in the realms of life but even in the world of physical energy, the sum of two or more things is very often something more than, or something different from, the predictable additive consequences of such unions. The entire science of mathematics, the whole domain of philosophy, the highest physics or chemistry, could not predict or know that the union of two gaseous hydrogen atoms with one gaseous oxygen atom would result in a new and qualitatively superadditive substance — liquid water. The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

 

Spiritual brotherhood isn’t a club, though one reader suggested using the term to describe it. Is it an organization? Hmmm. In thinking about this I say it is an invisible (to us) organization I think it is a mistake to think of it as a human organization. It is destined to be a living organism ( 195:10:11 ) and living organisms are efficient and highly organized. They were designed that way.

The living systems weren’t designed by us, I’ll go with that truthful fact

 

Paper 12, Section 7 – The Part and the Whole:

^{12:7.8 (138.3)} The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves each individual as an individual child in the heavenly family. Yet God thus loves every individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the universal brotherhood.

 

I keep using “spiritual brotherhood” because we do not want to make the mistake made in ancient Rome by the first Christians…and also it is the Ascender “quality”, whereas the Descender qualifies it as a “universal brotherhood”

I think spiritual brotherhood is highly organized all the way from here to Paradise, as we progress through our training on the billion-plus worlds of the ascension career. This is our natal world where we weakly or strongly discover, recognize, interpret and choose to go to God, to do his will, to consecrate ourselves to loving service of our fellows in whatever form we are invited to participate.

Wait, who is doing the “inviting”?!

Every day God is extending an invitation to us to serve. We have to develop service habits of living. We probably already do this unconsciously. The right hand doesn’t need to know what the left hand is doing.

This is how you are experiencing it at this point in time, Mara. Should I put God on my dance card today at #8 after all the other-than-God invites….it helps to personalize….not preach….

Do we need an invitation to LOVE from God, or are we still engaging in the million year old battle of fighting for the freedom to love and be loved that our fellow willful Urantians periodically get all violent about denying…? I am rather surprised and disappointed (in a concerned way about biologic retrogression and degeneration) that such a puerile and QUALITY-less philosophic concoction as “greed is good” ever got the better of modern man…if we do not know better by now then it is only because our biologic mind has become diseased.

.

I like your idea of spiritual brotherhood being a state of relatedness, as in 1.) me-and-God and 2.) me-and-God- and-you, my fellows.

.

Sabinatu wrote:. . . and a “spiritual brotherhood” has as much “right” to “free will” acts as have the atheist political brotherhoods.

Interesting you say “a ‘spiritual brotherhood’” as though there were more than one spiritual brotherhood. I think there is only one spiritual brotherhood. But brotherhood, whether spiritual or otherwise, does not have free will. Only persons have free will.

The “spiritual brotherhood” is like water, and as noted in TUB, by examining oxygen and hydrogen to the exhaustion of their material facts, we will not find that there was a built in prediction that the combo would produce water.

[Sabinatu]

oooops – sorry for the triple posting, still trying to figure out the edit function – please feel free to delete 1 and 2, was just trying to clear up visually who was saying what in the conversation thread…

[Vern]

Sabinatu wrote:  I keep using “spiritual brotherhood” because we do not want to make the mistake made in ancient Rome by the first Christians…and also it is the Ascender “quality”, whereas the Descender qualifies it as a “universal brotherhood” I think spiritual brotherhood is highly organized all the way from here to Paradise, as we progress through our training on the billion-plus worlds of the ascension career. This is our natal world where we weakly or strongly discover, recognize, interpret and choose to go to God, to do his will, to consecrate ourselves to loving service of our fellows in whatever form we are invited to participate.

This paragraph on the term “spiritual brotherhood” is instructive as the revelators have considered the time has arrived for presenting unadorned truth with the confidence we are sufficiently socially evolved to comprehend it. Jesus lived in the time of kings and emperors, therefor a representative body of believers were designated members of “the kingdom of heaven.” That is both erroneous—God is not a king—and anachronistic—does not relate to this generation nor will it to future generations, the “spiritual brotherhood” is prosaic and clear. Clarity is what we need in these times of complexity and confusion.

The work of the kingdom now prepared to enter upon its terminal phase under the personal leadership of Jesus. And this present phase was one of spiritual depth in contrast with the miracle-minded and wonder-seeking multitudes who followed after the Master during the former days of popularity in Galilee. However, there were still any number of his followers who were material-minded, and who failed to grasp the truth that the kingdom of heaven is the spiritual brotherhood of man founded on the eternal fact of the universal fatherhood of God.^{[Paper163:7.4, page 1808:6]}

So, what we get from this paragraph is a neat answer to the question What is spiritual brotherhood?

Spiritual brotherhood of man founded on the eternal fact of the universal fatherhood of God.

Material-mindedness is the obstacle to a greater realisation of spiritual brotherhood. At present the secular world is having difficulty accepting the “fact” of God—the most self-evident of all realities.

Jesus always had trouble trying to explain to the apostles that, while they proclaimed the establishment of the kingdom of God, the Father in heaven was not a king. At the time Jesus lived on earth and taught in the flesh, the people of Urantia knew mostly of kings and emperors in the governments of the nations, and the Jews had long contemplated the coming of the kingdom of God. For these and other reasons, the Master thought best to designate the spiritual brotherhood of man as the kingdom of heaven and the spirit head of this brotherhood as the Father in heaven. Never did Jesus refer to his Father as a king. In his intimate talks with the apostles he always referred to himself as the Son of Man and as their elder brother. He depicted all his followers as servants of mankind and messengers of the gospel of the kingdom. ^{[Paper 169:4.1, page 1855:2]}

From the following paragraph it can be appreciated that the spiritual brotherhood as that place of mutual knowing where it can be taken for granted everyone believes in the Father.

Jesus never gave his apostles a systematic lesson concerning the personality and attributes of the Father in heaven. He never asked men to believe in his Father; he took it for granted they did. Jesus never belittled himself by offering arguments in proof of the reality of the Father. His teaching regarding the Father all centered in the declaration that he and the Father are one; that he who has seen the Son has seen the Father; that the Father, like the Son, knows all things; that only the Son really knows the Father, and he to whom the Son will reveal him; that he who knows the Son knows also the Father; and that the Father sent him into the world to reveal their combined natures and to show forth their conjoint work. He never made other pronouncements about his Father except to the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s well, when he declared, “God is spirit.” ^{[Paper 169:4.2, page 1855:3]}

This goes to confirm the obvious—if God were a man, that man is Jesus. Outworking the principle that the Father knows our needs before we ask. With his spirit presence within us—our Thought Adjuster—he has already spanned the universe from Paradise to here, to share our lives, to guide us back to meet him personally and recognise him as the original personality, father of all personalities, before we even formed a concept of who we are or where we are going. The Thought Adjuster is the perfection of our unique self already in place.

…These heavenly helpers are dedicated to the stupendous task of guiding you safely inward and upward to the celestial haven of happiness. These tireless toilers are consecrated to the future personification of the triumph of divine truth in your life everlasting. They are the watchful workers who pilot the God-conscious human mind away from the shoals of evil while expertly guiding the evolving soul of man toward the divine harbors of perfection on far-distant and eternal shores. The Adjusters are loving leaders, your safe and sure guides through the dark and uncertain mazes of your short earthly career; they are the patient teachers who so constantly urge their subjects forward in the paths of progressive perfection. They are the careful custodians of the sublime values of creature character. I wish you could love them more, co-operate with them more fully, and cherish them more affectionately. ^{([Paper 110:1.2, page 1203.4]}

Such is the Adjuster’s plea, that we …love them more, co-operate with them more fully, and cherish them more affectionately.

[Mara]

Sabinatu wrote:  I keep using “spiritual brotherhood” because we do not want to make the mistake made in ancient Rome by the first Christians…and also it is the Ascender “quality”, whereas the Descender qualifies it as a “universal brotherhood”

I’m thinking along the same line as you on this point of not wanting to make a mistake.  Vern pointed out that the phrase “kingdom of heaven” is familiar in the mainstream of Christianity, so perhaps over time as more people grasp the enlarged concept of it, as explicated by Jesus, as the heavenly family under the Fatherhood of God.  ( 142:7:4 )  And, as explicated by us, as we sweat through the comprehension of the spiritual brotherhood, as we learn it and live it.  Interesting point about spiritual brotherhood and universal brotherhood.

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Sabinatu wrote:

This is how you are experiencing it at this point in time, Mara. Should I put God on my dance card today at #8 after all the other-than-God invites….it helps to personalize….not preach….

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I know this bothers you.

 

Sabinatu wrote:Do we need an invitation to LOVE from God, or are we still engaging in the million year old battle of fighting for the freedom to love and be loved that our fellow willful Urantians periodically get all violent about denying…?

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The invitation to which I referred is the still small voice within.  I do think we are invited every day by Him who indwells us.  Invited to do what? To do something, whether it is on your dance card or not.

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(140:10:1) […] But it was a difficult task to persuade these Galilean fishermen that, in the kingdom, being righteous, by faith, must precede doing righteousness in the daily life of the mortals of earth.

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.Sabinatu wrote:  I am rather surprised and disappointed (in a concerned way about biologic retrogression and degeneration) that such a puerile and QUALITY-less philosophic concoction as “greed is good” ever got the better of modern man…if we do not know better by now then it is only because our biologic mind has become diseased.

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I think it is poppycock that our biologic mind has become diseased.  My opinion.  It is wonderful to have the 5th Epochal to help us unravel what has thus far been hidden from mortal understanding, especially about mind and spirit.  Why have regrets about where we are on the evolutionary continuum?  This is merely a paragraph in a chapter of countless chapters of our history.

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Sabinatu wrote:  The “spiritual brotherhood” is like water, and as noted in TUB, by examining oxygen and hydrogen to the exhaustion of their material facts, we will not find that there was a built in prediction that the combo would produce water.

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Amazing, isn’t it? You did, however, cite the following reference that informs us that had we known about that one particular physiochemical phenomenon, we should have prevented such materialistic philosophies and mechanistic cosmologies from developing.

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Sabinatu wrote:   ( ^{12:9.3(141.4)} ) […] The understanding knowledge of this one physiochemical phenomenon should have prevented the development of materialistic philosophy and mechanistic cosmology.

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The good news is that we now know about it.  Science is amazing.  Maybe it will help us get past dead-end philosophies and cosmologies.

[Mara]

Mara wrote:  Science is amazing. Maybe it will help us get past dead-end philosophies and cosmologies.

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Such as *

118:10:14    2. Man’s increasing control — the gradual accumulation of the knowledge of the laws of the material world, the purposes of spiritual existence, and the possibilities of the philosophic co-ordination of these two realities. Man, the savage, was helpless before the onslaughts of natural forces, was slavish before the cruel mastery of his own inner fears. Semicivilized man is beginning to unlock the storehouse of the secrets of the natural realms, and his science is slowly but effectively destroying his superstitions while at the same time providing a new and enlarged factual basis for the comprehension of the meanings of philosophy and the values of true spiritual experience. Man, the civilized, will someday achieve relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be effectively outpoured as love for his fellow men, while the values of human existence will be nearing the limits of mortal capacity.

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* ( 118:10:0 )

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