An Eye to the Keyhole of Eternity

By Fr. Robert J. Schuer
General Conference 1990 Snowmass, Colorado

It is with great pleasure that I stand here on Urantia and speak to a special group of Andon and Fonta's descendants. Your "Walk with God" has brought you here from many states and even distant countries. You are interested in ways in which spiritual life is promoted and in particular the habits which cause your spiritual life to progress. The habit of meditating on cosmic meanings is the one with which we are concerned right now.

To meditate means to perceive truth and how you fit into it--how your being, your person, your spirit, your life, your family, your country, your world fit into it. Meanings have to do with the identification which you make with true values and purposes so that they become a structure and guide for your life now and for eternity. We all seek to find "meaning" for life and existence. Those who have found no "meaning" for their lives are in danger of wasting them.

When the word "cosmic" is applied to meanings it is to denote that they are far reaching and include the whole cosmos. This has to be because all truth is one and is centered in the one true God. Since you are interested in God, you find that you are interested in the entire cosmos, your place in it, and your function in it.

As I stand here on Urantia I see a great light. It is shining from each one of you. Its source is the Spirit of God within you--the Spirit of God the Father within you, the Thought Adjuster. He came when you made your first moral decision and began your life as a child of God being reborn in the Spirit. He teamed up with your mind to develop your soul by making more good decisions, gaining high values and true ideals.

The light that I now see coming from you indicates to me the presence of the real you--your spirit--with whom you are learning to identify. It is distinct from your body and especially from your ego. It gives you identity as a Child of God and you give it your personality. So it is the real you which has come from God and will be returning to God. Whether your personality will be present or not on this return to God is entirely up to you. If you continue to acknowledge your true relationship with the Father and with all of his other children your safe return is practically assured. Your relationship with the Father and with all of his children is one of love: your desire and decision to do good for him and for all of them.

As you identify with your Spirit you begin to realize that your main purpose in this life is healing. As you refuse to identify with your ego or with your body you accept healing for yourself. As you see and acknowledge the Spirit of God within other people you bring healing to them. As you give them acceptance, respect and help--because of the Spirit of God within them--they learn to accept themselves as children of God because of this same Spirit. They learn to identify with their Spirit rather than with their bodies or with their egos. They learn to get rid of their false illusions caused by their egos. They learn to perceive truth as through God's eyes.

As you know, everyone's life is pretty well governed by the way in which they perceive reality. If your perceptions are false, then you are living life under an illusion. One of the reasons why God has given us the Fifth Epochal Revelation is that it is time for us to see truth through his eyes. If we were not ready for it, he would not have given it.

Let's take a look now and see what we can see.

Putting an eye of faith to the keyhole of eternity we see ourselves and every other human being on the planet as a child of God who is destined to acknowledge his relationship with God and thereby gain the benefits of that relationship. This act of acknowledgement is called faith and reminds us of the truth of the revelation which states, "without faith no one can be saved." This act of acknowledgment also leads us to acknowledge our relationship with all the rest of God's children--living on this planet and elsewhere--and reminds us of our privilege and duty of giving them acceptance, respect and help.

So we find ourselves in agreement with Jesus' great commandment of love: to love everyone regardless of their race, creed or the mistakes that they may have made in life. We feel no compulsion to like everyone or everything that everyone says or does, but we have sincerely desired and decided to do good for them.

Keeping our eye at the keyhole of eternity we now look at our material body. We have already seen our Spirit and our mind, and we see our soul which these two are developing. Now we see the body clearly and realize that it was given to us in time, to be used for communication. It came to us indirectly from our first parents, Andon and Fonta, unlike our personality which came to us from God the Father; unlike our Spirit which came to us from the Son; and unlike our mind which came to us from the Spirit.

We now see our bodies as aggregations of organized energy: material, electrical, mental and psychological. With the psalmist we realize that we are "wondrously made." But we also realize that these bodies are only temporary and that on graduation we will receive a new morontia body. So we do not consider the loss of parts of it or of all of it to be any kind of catastrophe. In the meantime we take reasonably good care of it and avoid poisons, acids and drugs which could harm it. If for some reason we decide to use alcohol, nicotine or caffeine, we do so with moderation, knowing that these substances are extremely addictive and could make it difficult for the Thought Adjuster to communicate with us.

The more deadly substances such as marijuana, crack, cocaine and heroin can easily make it impossible for the Thought Adjuster to communicate with a human being. So if a human being wishes to bury himself in materiality and forever lose all contact with divinity and the possibility of a future happy life, these are the deadly chains with which to bind himself. The sad thing is that such persons have not only tried to throw away peace, joy and happiness for all eternity but that they have evidently succeeded in throwing away whatever peace, joy and happiness that they could have had right now, in this life. They could have lived in communication with a loving Father, a loyal Brother, Jesus, and an enlightening Spirit. Those who accept God into their lives live on a perpetual high of faith and love and do not need devilish substitutes or imitations of God. "I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no strange gods before me."

Next we turn our eye of faith to the next sphere we will wake up on after we graduate from this life. We see mansion world number one to which our guardian seraphim takes our soul upon graduation. Our Thought Adjuster, with our mortal mind transcripts and active creature memory patterns, has returned to the Father but comes to this first mansion world for our resurrection.

It is the reuniting of the morontia-soul trust of the seraphim and the spirit-mind trust of the Adjuster that reassembles creature personality and constitutes resurrection of the sleeping survivor. Throughout all eternity you will recall the profound memory impressions of your first witnessing of these resurrection mornings. On mansion world number one (or another in case of advanced status) you will resume your intellectual training and spiritual development at the exact level whereon they were interrupted by death.

Between the time of planetary death or translation and resurrection on the mansion world mortal man gains absolutely nothing aside from experiencing the fact of survival. You begin over there right where you left off down here. So, descendants of Andon and Fonta, continue to love and serve your heavenly Father and all of his children. Accept whatever environmental or social situation you find yourself in today and ask yourself, "What would Jesus do today if he were wearing my shoes and my flesh?"

All you have to do in any situation that you find yourself in is to react to it the best you can in a God-like way. Then whenever and however you graduate from this life, you will find yourself well prepared. If you feel that you have had unusual trials, tests and difficulties in this life, know that this was only permitted because of your great physical, mental and spiritual potentials which needed opportunities for fruition. With Lacordaire you can now exclaim, "What a life on what a planet!"

Now if your eye of faith is not too tired looking through the keyhole of eternity we will take a look at the heaven of your culture and dreams. We see a real place called Jerusem. It is the capital of the system of 619 inhabited planets of which Urantia--our earth--is one. This is a beautiful sphere--an architectural sphere created perfect, it is the place where our Adam and Eve were employed in the trial-and-testing physical laboratories before they volunteered to come to Urantia to upgrade the human race.

Looking on Jerusem you see beauteous highlands and other unique variations of topography and landscape. You see thousands upon thousands of small lakes shimmering in the light of several nearby suns, not too bright but something like brilliant starlight, as Jerusem is not dependent on them for light or heat. You see transports arriving on the crystal field, the so-called sea of glass. Around this area are the receiving stations for the various orders of beings who traverse space by seraphic transport.

Near the polar crystal station you see student visitors ascending to the pearly observatory to view the immense relief map of the entire headquarters planet. You see all types of beings present in the central broadcast amphitheater listening in and discerning the never-ending stream of universe space reports. All is peace, joy and harmony among all types of material, morontial and spiritual beings. There are no forms of conflicting life, no struggle for existence, no survival of the fittest. Rather there is a creative adaptation which foreshadows the beauty, harmony and the perfection of the eternal worlds of the central and divine universe. What a heaven!

Now we take a look through our keyhole at our constellation capital, Edentia; at our local universe capital, Salvington; at the capital of our minor sector called Uminor the third; at the capital of our major sector called Umajor the fifth; and at the capital of our superuniverse, Uversa. We could look at the one billion Havona worlds in linear procession in seven concentric circles about the capital of capitals called Paradise, but we won't. We have to save something for you to see for yourself.

Finally, can you imagine Christ Michael coming from his Father on Paradise past all these wonderful places to:

A little-known star system on the outer edge of the seventh superuniverse?
The third planet circling around a comparatively small sun and known to its inhabitants as Earth?
A planet listed as number 606 of its system?
One of the 35 planets that joined in the Lucifer rebellion?
A planet whose grand universe number was 5,342,482,337,666?
A planet whose Adam and Eve defaulted in their mission?
The planet on which you are now living?
The planet to which was sent an incredible fifth epochal revelation?
And the planet from which you are now gazing through the keyhole of eternity because of that revelation?

A service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship