JESUS STYLE MEDITATION:

What the word really means!

“Meditation” Definition: Old vs. New

The URANTIA Book uses the word “meditation” in it a number of times. And Jesus speaks of “the value of meditation” (2047 D). There is, however, much confusion today as to the exact meaning of the word. Not only that, but it appears that The URANTIA Book actually warns against the practice of a form of “meditation” which is not only prevalent today, but which after the book was written and published became the word’s whole definition in may peoples’ minds. In other words, Jesus seems to be advocating what The URANTIA Book specifically warns against.

The Word Has Changed In Meaning

 

All URANTIA Book readers should understand that in 1934-1935, when the Papers which became The URANTIA Book were supernally indited into a “circumscribed language of the realm” (English) the word “meditation” did not mean what we now recognize as Eastern Religion-style, thought-stilling, inward-looking, so-called “meditation”! That idea had not yet found an enduring terminology in English, although “contemplation” was sometimes used (as in “contemplating” one’s navel, which practice The URANTIA Book links to self-hypnosis (ref. 987 B)). The concept was still pretty much confined to India and the East. It was only after the book had been published for at least a decade that the new meaning took over the word and left its previous definition behind. At that time various celebrities and others had began to popularize mind-stilling practices of “meditation”, and it was this use of the word which caught on.

The 1936 edition of the two-volume Webster’s Universal Dictionary of the English Language defines the word “meditation” as:

Jesus-style meditation requires active thought

“1. The act of meditating; close or continued thought; the turning or revolving of a subject in the mind; serious contemplation; mental reflection; often, specifically, thought devoted to religious subjects.”

Its synonyms for the verb, “meditate” are: “Study, ponder, consider, ruminate, revolve, contemplate, intend”. And the definition in a 1955 single volume desk dictionary -- the year The URANTIA Book was first published -- is the same.

Jesus-Style Meditation

 

That the use of the word “meditation” contains the idea of dynamic thought is clearly illustrated in the following incident in Jesus’ life as related in The URANTIA Book:

“That night Jesus did not sleep. Donning his evening wraps, he sat out on the lake shore thinking, thinking until the dawn of the next day. In the long hours of that night of meditation Jesus came clearly to comprehend that he never would be able to make his followers see him in any other light than as the long-expected Messiah” (1532 A).

Jesus spent the “long hours of that night of meditation” “thinking, thinking”!

 

And in another incident, immediately following his baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, Jesus had come to clearly and fully recall and comprehend his bestowal charge and all of the far-flung relationships congruent with his superhuman identity. Therefore he immediately retired to the hills “for a season of quiet meditation so that he could think out the plans and decide upon the procedures for the prosecution of his public labors” (1513 A). When Jesus “meditated” he planned and decided and thought! This meditation period lasted forty days. Jesus-style meditation consists of having thoughts … not stilling them! The thoughts are just directed Godward until -- sooner or later -- God takes over the direction, both “adjusting” and “controlling” them.

The URANTIA Book says that “one should postulate a … realm of ascending intellectual activity as the superconscious level, the zone of immediate contact with the indwelling entity [of God], the Thought Adjuster.” (1099 C)

It is this active-mind form of meditation which Jesus says has “value”, which the philosopher, Rodan, learned from Jesus, and says that Jesus “constantly practiced” and “faithfully taught”. Rodan calls it “worshipful meditation” (wherein Jesus went “off so frequently by himself to commune with the Father in heaven”), and he claimed that it is a technique for “gathering strength and wisdom for the ordinary conflicts of living, [and] also appropriating the energy for the solution of higher problems of a moral and spiritual nature” (1774 A-B), which he said is to be found on “every mountaintop of intellectual thought”, where “the very best that is resident in man’s nature” is called forth. (1778 B)

 

“So few mortals are real thinkers!”

What It Is and Is Not

 

When The URANTIA Book says: “One of the great troubles with modern life is that man thinks he is too busy to find time for spiritual meditation and religious devotion” (2077 B) , it is NOT referring to isolating, inward-viewing, thought-silencing, so-called meditative practices, but simply and sincerely talking things over with God! For it also says:

“The chief difficulty you experience in contacting with your Adjusters consists in this very inherent material nature. So few mortals are real thinkers; (1313 A).

 

The “worship” part of “worshipful meditation”, the term by which Rodan refers to Jesus-style meditation, is one of three levels of cosmic mind insight which are “constructive in the self-consciousness of reflective thinking” (my emphasis). The URANTIA Book laments that “it is sad to record that so few persons on Urantia (earth) take delight in cultivating these qualities of courageous and independent cosmic thinking.” (192 B)

Look, if you will, with me at the deeper meaning of the following sentence: “Man can never wisely decide temporal issues or transcend the selfishness of personal interests unless he meditates in the presence of the sovereignty of God and reckons with the realities of divine meanings and spiritual values” (1093 A). Nearly every important term in this sentence indicates ACTIVE thinking or expression: “wisely decide”, “reckons with”, “divine meanings”. These activities cannot be performed with thought-stilling techniques!

We are taught that the “more healthful attitude of spiritual meditation is to be found in reflective worship and the prayer of thanksgiving” (1100 A). What are we being told here? Meditation is similar to, or included in, “reflective worship” and the “prayer of thanksgiving”. Here the idea of reflection is used in its ordinary sense, and hardly refers to “universe reflectivity” (the “unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things”) which mortals cannot experience on their own (refs. 105 A and 202 C).

The 1936 dictionary defines this use of the word “reflect” as:

“3. To turn or throw back the thoughts upon anything; to revolve matters in the mind; to think seriously; to ponder; to meditate, especially with regard to conduct.

 

“4. To pay attention to what passes in the mind; to attend to the facts or phenomena of consciousness”.

Its synomyms are “consider”, “contemplate”, “ponder”. Definitions 1 and 2 (not given here) refer to non-mental types of reflection (as of light by mirrors, etc.).

 

At the same time that we worship and pray, we must pay attention to what is happening in our minds. In all likelihood the level of our understanding will be upstepped during this process, and we become “inspired” with the new, or higher spiritual concepts which we have “discovered”.

“All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, insights, and spirit strivings of evolving sons of God.”(1105 A)

 

“The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man … in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking”

Upstepped Thinking

 

“You are quite incapable of distinguishing the product of your own material intellect from that of the conjoint activities of your soul and the Adjuster”

 

What we must understand about worship, which The URANTIA Book by the way, refers in one place to as “superthinking”, is that we only assent to worship, and that it is actually “conducted” by our Thought Adjuster on our behalf. Therefore if we are to derive the highest benefits from this transaction we need to pay attention to what is going on! Jesus taught that we “worship God by the aid of the Father’s indwelling spirit and by the illumination of the human mind through the ministry of truth” (1641 A). What is important about this is that we “are quite incapable of distinguishing the product of [our] own material intellect from that of the conjoint activities of [our] soul and the Adjuster (1207 A). That is, during worship the thoughts we perceive seem just like our own but they are being “conducted” by our Adjuster and they are the “illuminations” of the Spirit of Truth.

 

“Why not allow the Adjuster to spiritualize your thinking?”

 

And that is why we need to be reflective, to be conscious of what is going on in our minds, and to seriously ponder what we learn by observing what appears to be our own thinking -- in fact, we cannot tell them apart. The Thought Adjusters interface with our highest thinking. This same phenomenon takes place when one writes about spiritual values as a service to one’s fellows. It is also reported to take place during the preaching of extemporaneous sermons. Writing and speaking, after all, are not much more than projections of our inner reality. And we can hardly serve our spiritual siblings if our truth is not made outwardly manifest in the material world. Jesus taught that when his followers would be brought before judges that the “spirit will teach you in that very hour what you should say to your adversaries” (1912 D). The phenomenon is hardly to be limited to court cases, but includes all forms of “witnessing” or verbal/written service of the communication of truth to ourselves and to our siblings in God’s family:

“The contact of the mortal mind with its indwelling Adjuster, while often favored by devoted meditation [note: 1934-35 definition applies], is more frequently facilitated by wholehearted and loving service in unselfish ministry to one’s fellow creatures.” (1000 B).

 

Religious ecstasy, of the type said to be produced by thought-stilling techniques, may indeed be permissible when it results from sane antecedents (ref. 1000 C), but notice that although “the god-knowing believer increasingly experiences the ecstasy and grandeur of spiritual socialization on a universal scale” (1985 B), that Jesus, who represented the perfect human (ref. 1103 C and 1511 B), only had “rare moments of emotional ecstasy” (1807 B). Likewise notice that true prophetic visions are definitely and specifically NOT “trancelike ecstasies”. (1000 C)

Words

 

Also, although The URANTIA Book teaches that words themselves are not always necessary to prayer, which The URANTIA Book, by the way, terms “sublime thinking”, it is nevertheless almost inconceivable that words may be dispensed with in the case of prayers of thanksgiving! Sometimes prayers are little more than heartfelt groans. But how do we thank God for what we have received without words? And how can we reflect or ponder without words? The URANTIA Book says that “words are irrelevant to prayer”. But it also adds that “they are merely the intellectual channel in which the river of spiritual supplication may chance to flow.” And it explains that “God answers the soul’s attitude, not the words” (1002 B). We can gain more insight into the meaning of that statement where we are told in the first part of The URANTIA Book that “it is the motivating thought, the spiritual content, that validates [prayer]. Words are valueless” (85 A).

This does not mean that words, or other mental/aural symbols of thought content, can be dispensed with by quieting the mind artificially any more than a riverbank may be demolished and the river expected to flow. What is being said about the lack of value of words is possibly better expressed in Jesus’ instruction that prayers are not “rendered more efficacious by ornate repetitions [or] eloquent phraseology” (1640 C). The way this inner communication works seems to be that “if anything originates in your consciousness that is fraught with supreme spiritual value, when you give expression to it, no power in the universe can prevent its flashing directly to the Absolute Spirit Personality of all creation.” But “the content of any petition which is not ’spirit indited’ can find no place in the universal spiritual circuitry” (84 D). That is, it is the content that matters, but nevertheless it must be “expressed”, that is, put into words, thoughts. The specific words one uses to do this are not at all important in themselves. Obviously there is no need for words to be spoken out loud in personal prayer or worship.

Again, we are taught that “the word value of a prayer is purely autosuggestive in private devotions” (1002 B). That is, we learn from our prayer and worship. The spirit indites concepts “fraught with supreme spiritual value” in our consciousness and within our minds we hear the words which comprise them as our own “thinking”. These words are not “important” per se in that they only serve to communicate those values to ourselves, not to God. But as we express them, their content flashes directly to the Paradise Father.

“ Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein thought in concepts, not words”

 

Whatever feelings we may experience during any form of meditation are likely to be deceptive:

“The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward” (1104 D)

Those who appeal to other than intellectual experience of divine contact as evidence thereof are in direct conflict with this teaching.

 

It is true that some people (Albert Einstein was said to be one) apparently do not have their thoughts in words but in complete concepts. But this abnormality might only be suited to tightly-woven abstract logical systems such as mathematics. Nevertheless this is still indicative of intense intellectual activity in which mental quietude plays no substantial part.

“Worshipful Meditation vs. Thought-Stilling Techniques” (Continued:)