As a human being, we have initially no sensitivity to spiritual realities. We are sensitive only to material things and in this field, science has come to tell us our limits. What we perceive of this material reality is what our eyes let us see of the visible band, what our ears let us hear of the audible band, what our forgetful memory let us remember while our living cells increasingly lose their vitality year after year. How is it possible under these conditions to understand any relationship with a spiritual reality that is the highest spiritual reality, God Himself?
Moreover, as a human being we have an autonomous consciousness of the reality (of ourselves and other beings and of the creation) and of our innate limitations. And, as a result of this situation the unavoidable and universal question arises, regardless of our color of skin, of the time and place, or culture, regarding only the purpose and the goal of this life itself. It is obvious from the human point of view that there is no human response or solution to that problem. The fact that in the past the men have worshiped successively minerals, trees, physical elements, animals, men, real or supposed spiritual beings sufficiently reflects the ignorance and the obstinacy of men to resolve this issue.
These disorderly forms of worship in the past, illustrate the great difference between the highest spiritual reality (God through the Thought Adjuster) and the least intelligent creatures with a divine destiny (the human being). This observation should lead us to greater humility and temper all forms of human pride, which may interfere with the worship. In fact through the adoration of men, it is the contact between the extremes of universal reality which takes place. Therefore the men in the past and even nowadays develop a universal attitude of reverence and passive submission face to all objects of worship they experienced, and they assumed they were the masters or the secret of eternal life.
Nowadays the things have changed because science has improved the physical security of the humankind but has left intact the feeling of insecurity related to questions about the ultimate fate of the race of men after death. Science could not do otherwise because it operates primarily on the basis of our five first adjutant mind spirits (intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge and counsel) while this human questioning concerns the two last adjutant mind spirits of worship and wisdom. The presence of the adjutant mind spirit of worship completes the activity of the five first mind spirits, and creates new perspectives not understandable by the only logical approach of the scientific methods, and that explains the stubbornness of mankind in the persistence of irrational forms of primitive worships without true revelation. And that brings me to share my personal experience regarding worship.
For years, and like many men and women, I led a solitary quest for final answers to existential questions. My scientific training has proven to be an asset in this research, through the nature of the questioning, but also a terrible handicap by the unconscious expectation of rational responses accordingly with the material approach and the logic of science.
The fundamental problem that I was trying to resolve using various reflections and meditations of famous writers, truth seekers and religious books was: What is the purpose of life? This question, strangely and quickly turned into the following: Why something rather than nothing? The difficulty of obtaining satisfactory answers at that time became clear to me after a greater penetration of the teachings of The Urantia Book a few years later. It came after a best comprehension, not only intellectual, but also based upon my own experience of what really worship is, or how must I conduct the worship as relationship with God.
At that moment I also understood that God answered my worship but I was not yet able to clearly understand it, nevertheless I had a vague intuition of it and that helped me to go on again and again.
Science questions physical reality, using the logic of material facts of the intellect and the first five adjutant mind spirits. Through the worship the men establish a contact with the Spirit through the adjutant mind spirit of worship while wisdom, through the adjutant mind spirit of wisdom helps us to realize the synthesis of the dual wisdom of the world and of the spirit, in our soul first, and then in our human self, using the opportunities of our daily life and our mind openness.
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. [Paper 1:3.7, Page 26:1]
So we can grow by unifying the human and divine logic. Only the synthesis of the activity of the five mind spirits can really satisfy us, after our quest of God has began and that synthesis includes morontial aspects not understandable with human approach but the worship helps a lot for that.
We must always remember that the cosmic wisdom, requiring supra material synthesis, of different realities is conferred only by the Spirit and it is provided to the men mainly by the indwelling Spirit, the Thought Adjuster.
The presence of this divine Adjuster in the human mind is revealed by three experiential phenomena:
1. Intellectual capacity to know God— God-consciousness.
2. The spiritual urge to find God—the search for God.
3. The personality’s intense desire to be like God—the sincere desire to do God’s will. [Paper 1:2.4, Page 24:1]
I realized that this spiritual impulse due to our intellectual capacity to know God linked with the spiritual urge to find God because of the presence of the adjutant mind spirit of worship, are truly the foundation of the worship. This impulse comes naturally and I noticed also that it takes different forms in different individuals (even in some people who consider themselves atheists), and that simply reflects the activity of the mind spirit of worship and the diversity of human personalities. The only God’s requirement to relation with us is our intellectual capacity to know Him that is guaranteed by the gift of the five first adjutant mind spirits (and not by a sterile scholarship), and such capacity is affordable by any normal man who honestly experiences the ministry of the first five adjutants in his daily life. Experiencing the activities of these mind spirits is the key to resolve the problems of our daily life and leads us directly to ask for fundamental questions and to have inner desires whose solutions only exist in spiritual realms.
On the other hand the worship is addressed to the Universal Father, the personality of the First Source and Center. We must avoid both the trap of worship that would compare only to an intellectual reflection due to our daily mental habits, and that of a mystic adoration that would lead quickly to sleep or to a disorderly emergence of associated ideas of the subconscious in our minds. I experienced that all the truths of The Urantia Book teachings concerning the nature, function or attributes of the Father, the Son or the Spirit, or their associations can lead to precise and successful worships. Even if we worship only the Father; let us remember that the Universal Father is present in the Eternal Son and with Him in the Infinite Spirit. It is important to keep in mind the unity of the reality during the worship, including the Creators and the creatures and not oppose intuitions on unity of the reality that emerge during worship.
Moreover, as the school is required to install a mental discipline when we are young and which we then use later and joyfully in our daily life, the worship, to become easier and more efficient must be conducted frequently to allow the inner spirit of making required adjustments. Over the time, I came to realize spiritual incentives to favor specific themes for meditation according to my personal or social life of the moment. My other brothers in spirit with whom I share these teachings made the same observation. It is also important to let our mind be guided by the spirit, in order not to miss the perception of such spiritual incentives of the Thought Adjuster because of the world affairs. It is useful in this regard to worship during our extended free time available while waiting to acquire the control of worshipping in all circumstances of our daily life. If our minds are preoccupied with worries, we must try to analyze them in advance and find outlines of solutions to soothe our minds and prevent them from interfering negatively with the worship. We also must try to get the habit to entrust all these worries and bothers to God before the worship in the form of prayer for further solutions. In no way we must accept to worship with such busy minds.
Although the Adoration does not include a specific request as in a prayer we can be certain that God always responds to worship. The Universal Father is the secret of the reality of personality, the bestowal of personality, and the destiny of personality, [Foreword V:5, Page 8:5] and during the worship, our personality, conferred by God Himself, communes with the very personality of the Universal Father, and the effects of this communion (which are mainly potential due to the difference between us and God) are adjusted to our higher thought within our soul by the inner spirit, waiting for adjustment opportunities of clarification by our Thought Adjuster helped by our guardian angel, to our human mind and with the part of the cosmic mind enlightened by God’s response to our worship and sustained and then conveyed by the Holy Spirit, which more and more coordinates the activity of our adjutant mind spirits.
The worship clarifies the concept and the role of the Universal Father in our daily lives according to the mission of our Thought Adjuster. However, we discover the fullness and the joy of living with God only in cultivating our ability to love and to serve as the Father Himself loves and serves each of us. And it is why the worship often slips into prayer or ideas and plans about the service. In other words, the real issue of worship, beyond the fact of clarifying the concept of the Father in our consciousness is to prepare us to live the will of the Father into the world, and this leads us to consider prayer to the Son and ministry with the Spirit as a part of the expression of God beyond the worship. For us God cannot be understood otherwise than being a Living God. So we will be led to accept the guidance of the Spirit as a transformation of our mind by the Holy Spirit and of our personality by the spirit of truth in order to become really a son of God and a son of man. .
Indeed, if we worship properly and frequently, we feel inevitably the need to share our spiritual beliefs, and to serve freely. Then, we must give God—our Thought Adjuster- time enough to organize the emerging realities and let Him associate them in our soul and in our mind without hurrying, as did Jesus during his life in the flesh. Under these considerations the worship, reinforced by a constant analysis of situations around us, enhances our ability to become a faithful partner of God in the world. We just need to remember that the life is a unification of energy, mind and spirit by personalities on individual, social and more global levels and the partnership with God is the mean which leads us to become actors of this unification for ourselves, our family, our society and all humankind and more global levels.
The personal relationship with the Personality of the Universal Father through the worship is the primary relationship from which are derived all other relationships between creatures. This is why all spiritualized personalities consider worship as the most sacred activity. The existential relationships of the deities in Paradise are revealed to us through the activities of God the Supreme Being of time and space and the worship prepares us to be mind opened for a partnership with God the Supreme Being. So we must always keep in mind that this worship, must be extended in the areas of daily life through another impulse: the desire to be Godlike by doing His will, accordingly with his command: Be you perfect, even as I am perfect. [Paper 56:0.1, Page 637:1] Then the results of all this will create many and various new opportunities for us in our social environment, close or far, and through frequent worships, the inner spirit creates in our soul and adjust to our thought the spiritual feeling for such achievements.
Through worship, God (the Universal Father and our Thought Adjuster) prepares our mind through our soul to an innate peace and insurance in front of all kind of difficulties in the world because we are sure that God’s will always prevails and that we are in the world to do our part of the divine job for that, and thus making us more than we were. In the same way that the baby (the son of man) justifies the fetus, the son of God justifies the son of man through the spiritual birthing process triggered and sustained by the worship.
By this way, the innate limitations of time and space and of the flesh, which prevailed before our quests through the worship, will justify the wisdom of the Father for his human son. Worship will no more be a passive attitude of submission to an unknowable King of Paradise but a preparation for active partnership with God the Universal Father through our Thought Adjuster and with God the Supreme through the ministries of the Son and the Spirit lightened by the life on earth and the present status of Michael, Son of God and son of man.