Episode:Jesus Faces Death—Farewell Instruction (Part 2)

From Symmetry of Soul


Said Jesus: "If the world shall hate you, you should recall that it hated me even before it hated you. If you were of this world, then would the world love its own, but because you are not, the world refuses to love you. You are in this world, but your lives are not to be worldlike. I have chosen you out of the world to represent the spirit of another world even to this world from which you have been chosen."

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Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, The Way, The Truth, The Life

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

We reflected on the vine and the branches analogy with respect to the pruning process and its effect of stimulating greater production of the desired fruit, a principle readily recognized by those who enjoy gardening. Comparable processes in the physical world on a much greater scale were noted illustrating the universal application of truths across a broad range of manifold phenomena.

Universe phenomena may appear to be a collection of chaotic and random mechanisms, but could we visualize and observe the three energies in their coordinated interplay we would recognize an organized system functioning holistically. That which we observe in our temporal and material experience is actually a shadow of higher realities. If the 5th ER teaches us anything it is to not judge reality by its appearance, do not absolutize the immediacy of this appearance.

Moving on the the topic of prayer, we explored the physics of prayer as a material technique and a spiritual technique, each intended to produce a more favorable state of mind. As a spiritual technique the freewill wielding of spirit to reframe mind conditions has connections to the eternal, independent of the material. As we are reminded, “Temporal securities are vulnerable, but spiritual sureties are impregnable.” [100:2.7]

180:3. The Enmity of the World

We prefaced our reading with commentary about the way in which love and hate are inextricably linked in human affairs. As we will soon again witness Jesus’ promotion of his gospel of love and service unavoidably evokes both positive and negative responses. This is in the same manner as we have previously noted, the potential for creativity which resides in the fact of personality is shared with an equal potential for destructivity.

Even though the apostolic corps was aware of the turning of the tide of popularity for their proclaimed kingdom, Jesus, painfully aware that time is short emphasizes that they can expect great tribulation in the immediate future. Jesus further sets the eleven apart as citizens not of this world. We noted how the content of the 5th ER contains much which serves to bifurcate its hearers.

Jesus points out to the eleven that the light of heaven is like a two edged sword. This light when accepted is a saving light, but when rejected it condemns, noting that those who recognize and reject the light will not receive salvation. We remarked how it was that those who knowingly rejected this light in effect accelerated their path to iniquity.

In forecasting the arrival of the spirit helper we called attention to the two aspects of the Spirit of Truth (SoT). The foundational aspect of the SoT is a spirit of unification. This is the Comforter, the spirit influence strengthening and unifying the mind, essentially conferring de facto third psychic circle status on the individual such that they can receive a Thought Adjuster. The second aspect of the SoT is that which leads the individual into Truth.

As the Master proceeds with his discourse he delivers more and more which serves to confuse his men. He refers to celestial abodes to which he must go, to send for and receive them in a future age, while promising to return to them very soon in spirit. It is here that Jesus declares himself to be the way the truth and the life, and further that no one goes to the Father save through him. In so doing of course he seeded the future with the stumbling block that acceptance of Christ before death is required for salvation and ascension. The questions of Thomas and Philip illustrate how materially minded the apostles were.

180:4. The Promised Helper

Jesus elaborates further to the apostles on the SoT, suggesting the dual influence of the SoT of spirit of unification as a comfort and as the guide into all truth.

Notwithstanding it was Judas Alpheus who asked the Master how he would show himself to them in spirit, the apostles all demonstrated their lack of comprehension of spirit reality throughout his time with them.

We remarked how it is evident in this address that Jesus is speaking to a greater audience than simply the remaining eleven in a historical context.

Notes by Brad

  • To understand the vine and the branches, the student must have some connection to the idea of living, germinating, growing plants.
    • All worlds of human origin always will be rooted in this, even in advanced light and life.
      • Forget the Jetsons' food pills or Star Trek's food replicators.
    • Why would a sci-fi food replicator be such a problem to advancing civilization?
      • Because this is one coordinated cosmic system. There are inescapable associations in that system.
    • Agriculture is a shadow of something deeper. It isn't merely agriculture.
      • You aren't just really tilling the soil to stick food down a hole in your face. This is more than just matter. There is something far more elaborate going on that just isn't visibly apparent.
      • There is no such thing as some meaningless, surficial triviality. Not in supremacy. Everything is infinitely broad and deep.
    • If you agree "don't judge a book by its cover" then likewise don't judge reality by its appearance.


  • Even vacuuming your house can be reflected upon.
    • The vacuum and the dust aren't really matter. It's a universe of motion, not matter.
    • It isn't just a matter circumstance. Mind and spirit are there too.
    • So what is really going on when you're vacuuming your house??
      • We don't have any answers, we confess. But stay open. Don't absolutize, for all eternity, what you just apparently see.
    • Don't go all mystical here, though. Deep? Yes. Profound? Yes. But don't bring in old ghost cult notions.


  • Prayer is not a material technique.
    • Praying for food isn't the highest use of prayer. And bound to disappointment and sorrow.
    • Prayer is a spiritual technique. It is a way for your mind to be re-framed.
    • You use your free will to wield spirit to re-frame and re-direct your mind.
    • And this doesn't directly affect material matter/molecules at all.
    • So why is this material technique idea so persistent? We imagine a certain arrangement of molecules will provide a more pleasant feeling.
    • So, Instead of rearranging matter so your mind has a different state, try rearranging (wielding) spirit so your mind has a different state.


  • Enmity is a key word this week
    • "not friendly" or "not loving" is the root etymology.
    • If there is the potential for love, there is the potential for hate. It's inescapable--two edges of the sword. That's what Section 3 is about.
  • It isn't that there's a good stuff and a bad stuff (that's dual spiritism). It's in the choice that the duality of choice is present. A duality of choice, not substance.


  • "Knowing that his time was short" does not imply (nor need) some all-seeing eye. There are only 11 apostles. It's not hard to figure out what's up.


  • Why was the world hating Jesus?
    • He was making people's material, subjective lives less pleasant.
    • And soon in this narrative will be a time where it's full love or full hate. Shockingly stark. Very little gray area.
    • This also is finding Jesus pulling a small group out of the "worldlike" main evolutionary stream.
    • The 5th ER would do this for serious students now, too. But don't get all weird about that.
    • There's no such thing as a set of words or ideas that magically bring all people together in love. THings will bifurcate.
      • Gird thy loins appropriately.
    • "It cannot be otherwise." There is no such thing as light that universally saves. It is in the free will of the person the light is handed to. Save or destroy yourself with that light; it's up to you.


  • It might make us squirm, but "deliberate disloyalty to Deity" surely was in play here. There were people contemporary with Jesus who may have been accelerated to iniquity, right there in this mortal life, because they were face to face with Deity incarnate.


  • The Comforter: com + fort -- with + strength
    • A Spirit of Unification can fortify your mind against disruption. That's the Spirit of Truth in its initial "unification" mode.
    • Don't think "comfort=cozy". This isn't that plush quilt on your bed. This is fortification.
      • Instead, consider your mind as a ball of fuzzy "woof" fibers, and it could use some fortification from some "warp" fibers.
    • Initially this is a Spirit of Unification, but "eventually" will lead you into all truth.
      • But you need all three cosmic intuitions active and harmonized before you can really access the truth aspect of the Spirit of Truth. That's a tall order on our world, for our genetics and overall condition.


  • It's obvious why much of Jesus' cosmology statements didn't make it into the Bible's writings, decades later. These words had nowhere in the Apostles' minds to latch onto.
  • And yet "I am the way, the truth, and the life" was heard and was remembered decades later.
    • Can you get past the delightful, mystical notions of this famous phrase? What is the literal-ness of these words?
    • Can you reflect and make this more than a platitude? What is the literal meaning?
    • It's in your freewill hands to choose to interpret this truthfully. Error also is in your freewill hands.
    • And these are the very words that have engendered so much hardened and false doctrine: accept Jesus before you die in this life or you won't get to the Father.


  • Jesus' audience just wasn't understanding much of what he was saying this evening.
    • Which is never unusual. But this subject matter was especially abstract ("I am in the Father and the Father is in me") and filled with unpleasant change ("I'm leaving you").
      • All of us have lived the fact that humans tend to not hear unpleasant or inconvenient things when they'd rather not.
    • And we note that all apostles has Thought Adjusters, so they had souls and a superconscious. The words Jesus was speaking could lodge there.
      • Yet we then note that very few of these words were remembered well enough to be written down in the Bible's gospels.


  • One of the Alpheus twins finally asks a question, yet Jesus gives an abstract, surely inscrutable answer.
    • We observed that is interesting.
    • Interpretation 1: The spirit powers of the universe will only reach down so far.
    • Interpretation 2: Jesus was in teaching mode and repeated the same answer in the hopes it would stick.
    • Interpretation 3: Jesus knew a whole universe was listening, across space and time, and the apostles were not really his audience.


  • Your freewill response to any human is completely in your freewill hands.
    • Will you tend toward love or hate in any interaction? It's always up to you.