Excerpts are from Wieman's Chapter II: Living Together which parallel
The Urantia Book: Paper 160, Rodan of Alexandria, Section 2; The Art of Living
(With Study Questions)
David Kantor 07/00

The purpose of this study is to provide an introduction to the use of so-called "source materials" in The Urantia Book. The study of the construction of the text in The Urantia Book is likely to consume significant intellectual resources before it is complete enough to present a coherent picture of the way in which the book was assembled. This brief study is an introduction to this intriguing topic. See also, What Does The Urantia Book Say About its Origin and Purpose? by David Kantor, 07/00

---

The Urantia Book [160:2.1] There are just two ways in which mortals may live together: the material or animal way and the spiritual or human way. By the use of signals and sounds animals are able to communicate with each other in a limited way. But such forms of communication do not convey meanings, values, or ideas. The one distinction between man and the animal is that man can communicate with his fellows by means of symbols which most certainly designate and identify meanings, values, ideas, and even ideals.

Source (Wieman 1) There are two ways of living together. One is practiced by all the lower animals. Men also live together in this way. But there is another way in which men can live together, in addition to this way of the lower animals. Let us call the first the low way and the other the high way. The low way is by anticipatory adjustments which are mutually adaptive to one other. The high way is by communication through which meanings are shared. These two ways of associating are radically different, although the difference is rather difficult to put into words. The second kind of association, which we call the high way, is what makes all the difference between the distinctively human and the merely animal way of living. Personality as something peculiar to man is developed out of this high way of living together. Human culture, the progressive accumulation of a social heritage, art, religion, philosophy, science, political and economic organization all develop out of this high way of living together and cannot develop when the low way is the only kind of association which is practiced.

The Urantia Book [160:2.2] Since animals cannot communicate ideas to each other, they cannot develop personality. Man develops personality because he can thus communicate with his fellows concerning both ideas and ideals.

Source (Wieman 2) Perhaps the difference between these two ways of living together can best be made plain by an illustration. When an angry man shakes his fist at me, he is making an anticipatory adjustment, which may issue in a fight. He is not necessarily trying to communicate anything to me any more than does a rattlesnake when he sounds his rattle. The clenched fist is an automatic, anticipatory adjustment to trouble when the man is angry, like the growl and bared teeth of a dog. My organism also makes automatic, anticipatory adjustments to the impending attack. Glandular functions are automatically quickened and I may start to run, or I may stand tense and ready, or cast about for a weapon. According as I act one way or another the angry man will do something further to counter my efforts. Thus we make anticipatory adjustments which are mutually adaptive to one another. But there is not necessarily any communication. Of course, between human beings there generally is some communication, but if the interaction were limited to what we have described, there need not be.

(Wieman 3) But, now, suppose a man shakes his fist at me not in anger, but to serve as a symbol to make me understand that there was a fight here on this street corner yesterday and one man shook his fist at the other in the way which he is now representing by his fist. Here at last we have genuine communication and not merely anticipatory adjustments which are adaptive to one another. The shaken fist when thus used does not quicken the glandular functions of my organism preparatory to flight or defense or attack. I do not stand tense or start to run or cast about for a weapon. There is some mutual adaptation of anticipatory adjustments between us, but they are not the important thing necessarily. They are chiefly practiced merely to serve as symbols, to represent something wholly different from themselves. What we are doing is not merely to make mutual adaptation of organic adjustments, but what we chiefly are doing is to communicate with one another in such a way that we can share a common meaning. This is something quite strange and new and wonderful in the world. It opens up a new way of life with vast possibilities of value which men have scarcely yet begun to explore. It gives rise to community of thought and purpose and to a creative synthesis of ideas.

The Urantia Book [160:2.3] It is this ability to communicate and share meanings that constitutes human culture and enables man, through social associations, to build civilizations. Knowledge and wisdom become cumulative because of man's ability to communicate these possessions to succeeding generations. And thereby arise the cultural activities of the race: art, science, religion, and philosophy.

Source (Wieman 4) This new thing called communication enables us to transmit to the next generation what we have acquired in the way of technique, sentiment, vision, ideal, and thus accumulate in history a social heritage which mounts from more to more through successive generations. It is communication by symbols which enables two or more to integrate their thoughts and purposes and thus achieve by creative synthesis a new and wider vision and more profound thought. Thus progress becomes possible, the development of culture, the arts and sciences, religion and philosophy. It makes possible ideals and aspiration and releases imagination from bondage to the immediate situation.

The Urantia Book [160:2.4] Symbolic communication between human beings predetermines the bringing into existence of social groups. The most effective of all social groups is the family, more particularly the two parents. Personal affection is the spiritual bond which holds together these material associations. Such an effective relationship is also possible between two persons of the same sex, as is so abundantly illustrated in the devotions of genuine friendships.

Source (Wieman 5) This kind of association achieved by communication can be considered in two ways, first as an association of a few intimate acquaintances who know one another personally. This small personal group finds its highest attainment in the group of two. Then there is the larger group which may be extended to include all mankind in so far as all men can communicate with one another either directly or indirectly or at least are potentially able to communicate. We shall first consider the small group of friends between whom there is personal affection, especially the group of two. Some of the most precious values of life can be found only in that community of heart and mind which two people are able to achieve by communication through many years of intimate association.

(Wieman 6) Mutual understanding may be of all degrees. Two people may have the most tragic misunderstandings on some points just because they have such a profound mutual understanding in other matters. Two people may share in common more than any other two and yet still have much which they cannot share and concerning which they cannot achieve mutual understanding. However, simply to be aware of misunderstanding or, perhaps we can say, even to have misunderstanding, implies a certain degree of community of mind and is more hopeful than the mutual interactions between a man and a fish where there is not even misunderstanding,

The Urantia Book [160:2.5] These associations of friendship and mutual affection are socializing and ennobling because they encourage and facilitate the following essential factors of the higher levels of the art of living:

Source (Wieman 7) Personal affection represents some of the greatest positive values and some of the greatest negative values. Here, again, we see that the road to greatest worth is also the dangerous road which brings us often into the greatest evils. No anguish is so great as that of misunderstanding and treachery between people who have come to share a great wealth of meaning in common and thus have become peculiarly dependent upon one another and participant in one another's lives.

(Wieman 8) There are seven great values which every friendship ought to achieve. Every case of personal affection ought to be cultivated in such a way as to bring these values to the maximum.

The Urantia Book [160:2.6] 1. Mutual self-expression and self-understanding. Many noble human impulses die because there is no one to hear their expression. Truly, it is not good for man to be alone. Some degree of recognition and a certain amount of appreciation are essential to the development of human character. Without the genuine love of a home, no child can achieve the full development of normal character. Character is something more than mere mind and morals. Of all social relations calculated to develop character, the most effective and ideal is the affectionate and understanding friendship of man and woman in the mutual embrace of intelligent wedlock. Marriage, with its manifold relations, is best designed to draw forth those precious impulses and those higher motives which are indispensable to the development of a strong character. I do not hesitate thus to glorify family life, for your Master has wisely chosen the father-child relationship as the very cornerstone of this new gospel of the kingdom. And such a matchless community of relationship, man and woman in the fond embrace of the highest ideals of time, is so valuable and satisfying an experience that it is worth any price, any sacrifice, requisite for its possession.

Source (Wieman 9) The first of these we would mention is mutual self-expression and mutual appreciation. [UB 160:2.6 Number 1: Mutual self-expression and self-understanding] The rich possibilities of personality can be developed only when the individual can express himself to another. Many an impulse which might have made a rich contribution to life is suffocated at birth or perverted into an evil because it finds no way of connecting with the process of life. The mutual intimate understanding of two friends provides a process of life in which many delicate and hidden impulses and thoughts can be developed into structures of value. If an individual has no one who understands him intimately and profoundly and to whom he can communicate hopes, suggestions, aspirations, these latter must die for lack of sustenance. It is necessary to have the warm sky and rain of personal affection overarching and fostering the buds and tendrils and delicate flowers of a richly developed personal life. Without such affection a man may develop a high degree of efficiency and power of a sort, but there is a coldness and barrenness about him, an impoverished and mechanical efficiency that excludes the full richness of value which personal life ought to achieve.

(Wieman 10) This full richness can be fostered only through the mutual expression and mutual appreciation which intimate friends provide one another through communication. A child that is reared in a public institution without the hovering love of personal affection surrounding him like an atmosphere, eliciting and nourishing the budding impulses by quick and tender sympathetic understanding, never becomes a fully developed personality. The mature adult also requires this kind of personal understanding between himself and someone else with whom he can communicate intimately if his life is not to be greatly impoverished. This kind of mutual understanding is one of the greatest values of married life for those couples who are able to achieve it. It is a value often ignored, for it is something over and above love as that is ordinarily understood and something other than the rearing of children.

(Wieman 11) But whether it be in marriage or elsewhere, this kind of friendship is needed if the highest and best possibilities of which an individual is capable are ever to be elicited and developed. If he does not find such a friend, and so misses this mutual self-expression and appreciation, much that he might have been will remain stunted, starved, and maimed. He who has no one with whom he can communicate otherwise inarticulate and undeveloped meanings, falls just so far short of being the personality he might have been, and has missed just that much of the possible richness of life.

(Wieman 12) There are certain powers and qualities and achievements which find recognition and appreciation in public life. Consequently, these powers and qualities find nourishment and stimulus in public life and are exercised and developed there. But the best part of a good man's life, the hidden motivation, the tender sentiment, the reach that exceeded the grasp, the quick, deep sympathetic insight into the need of another personality-all these most precious powers- will never be developed; on the contrary they will be trampled and crushed to death beneath the feet of the hard, cold world unless that individual has someone who can understand him as none other can understand, someone who can share his heart with an unutterable understanding. "All I had hoped to be, all that men ignored in me" that was I to my best friend. Such a community of heart and mind can be achieved, for it has been achieved, but only if two people live together intimately for many years, each constantly striving to understand the other, drawing upon all the powers of sympathy and insight to achieve it. Such a community of spirit is precious and so vital that it is worth every sacrifice. For of all the rare and high consummations of great living the rarest and the highest is the consummation of such a friendship.

The Urantia Book [160:2.7] 2. Union of souls -- the mobilization of wisdom. Every human being sooner or later acquires a certain concept of this world and a certain vision of the next. Now it is possible, through personality association, to unite these views of temporal existence and eternal prospects. Thus does the mind of one augment its spiritual values by gaining much of the insight of the other. In this way men enrich the soul by pooling their respective spiritual possessions. Likewise, in this same way, man is enabled to avoid that ever-present tendency to fall victim to distortion of vision, prejudice of viewpoint, and narrowness of judgment. Fear, envy, and conceit can be prevented only by intimate contact with other minds. I call your attention to the fact that the Master never sends you out alone to labor for the extension of the kingdom; he always sends you out two and two. And since wisdom is superknowledge, it follows that, in the union of wisdom, the social group, small or large, mutually shares all knowledge.

Source (Wieman 13) The second value to be achieved by two people living together is integration of visions. [UB 160:2.7 Number 2: Union of souls--the mobilization of wisdom] Each individual sees things differently from any other. Each discerns qualities and forms and aspects which the other misses because of difference in their interests, aptitudes, meanings. There are beauties which some eyes can catch but others must miss. There are expressions and traits of personality in the world round about which come within the purview of one pair of eyes, but are not accessible to another. There are social movements, there are opportunities of service, there is all the rich world with its infinite manifold of objects and movements and signs and qualities, which no single mind can compass.

(Wieman 14) Now, if two or more persons can integrate their visions so that each perceives not only what falls within the scope of his own native discernment, but also learns through intimate communication to apprehend what the other has gathered, so that they can pool their findings, then it is plain that each can live in a far richer and more significant world. Then the height and depth and fullness of the world opens up, not only the world that now exists, but the world of ideals and imagination and possibilities.

(Wieman 15) Every individual has prejudices and obsessions that distort his vision and make him blind to many things. He has fears and envies and conceits that pervert his judgment and lead him astray. But if there is another mind with whom he can communicate concerning these most difficult and delicate and personal matters, the prejudices of the one mind will be corrected by the other. The blindness of the one will be covered by the vision of the other. While each may have envies and conceits, they will not be of the same sort, so will tend to correct one another, provided they appreciate the value of this mutual correction and mutual supplementation and seek it out and cultivate it through all things and cherish it as something very precious and very important for the good of life.

(Wieman 16) We all know the difference between looking through one eye and looking through two. Through one eye alone the world looks flat. It has no depth, no perspective, no third dimension. Through two eyes all this is restored. But looking through four eyes instead of through two alone adds even more to the perspective and richness of the world. If I see the mountain from my little valley and the other man from his, we see two aspects of the mountain. I say the mountain has a meadow and a forest and a flock of sheep. The other man may ridicule my statement. No, he says, it is plain as day that the mountain is barren rock with a terrible precipice down the side. To talk about meadow and forest and grazing sheep is pure nonsense. And yet both of us may be right. We simply see different sides of the mountain. And neither of us will ever see the mountain as it is until we see it not only through our own eyes, but also through the eyes of another. Many a quarrel and misunderstanding has no other ground than this. This difference in viewpoint is one of the most precious values that friendship has to offer if we learn to integrate our visions.

(Wieman 17) A third value to be sought and magnified in friendship is mutual self-knowledge. No man can know himself unless he is able to view himself through the eyes of others. That does not mean necessarily that the idea which the other person has of me is correct. It only means that I will never discover my own characteristics unless I note how other people react to me and through this reaction am led to observe certain qualities in myself. I may come to see that the other person was mistaken, but even in the discovery of the other's mistake, I come to know myself.

(Wieman 18) Now, this attainment of self-knowledge through association applies to all manner of association. But there is no association that can reach certain levels of the self and bring one to self-knowledge concerning the deeper and most important features of his personality except that of close and long-continued friendship. I may note in the reaction of my friend to me a sign of pain or disgust or fear or dislike. Forthwith I have further light on certain characteristics of myself. All such reactions should be treated purely as sources of information about oneself and about the other and never cause of resentment. They should be treated simply as guides and clues to the organization of a more satisfactory association and to the mutual reconstruction of personality so that the two can live more happily together. Self-knowledge has been said by some to be the matter of greatest importance. It can be attained at the deeper levels only through the long-continued association of two who cultivate a high degree of mutuality in all living.

The Urantia Book [160:2.8] 3. The enthusiasm for living. Isolation tends to exhaust the energy charge of the soul. Association with one's fellows is essential to the renewal of the zest for life and is indispensable to the maintenance of the courage to fight those battles consequent upon the ascent to the higher levels of human living. Friendship enhances the joys and glorifies the triumphs of life. Loving and intimate human associations tend to rob suffering of its sorrow and hardship of much of its bitterness. The presence of a friend enhances all beauty and exalts every goodness. By intelligent symbols man is able to quicken and enlarge the appreciative capacities of his friends. One of the crowning glories of human friendship is this power and possibility of the mutual stimulation of the imagination. Great spiritual power is inherent in the consciousness of wholehearted devotion to a common cause, mutual loyalty to a cosmic Deity.

Source (Wieman 19) A fourth value to be sought and found through communication in intimate personal relations is the renewal of zest and courage for living. [UB 160:2.8 Number 3: The enthusiasm for living.] There come times of discouragement for everyone. It may be due to some bitter disappointment or some misunderstanding. Someone you trusted may have turned against you. It may be due to physiological conditions of illness. But whatever be the cause there are times when the zest for high enterprise ebbs away, when a sense of futility creeps over the mind and the world turns gray. But if in such an hour there is someone to whom you can go and talk it over, someone who understands and who can see all these matters as you see them, from your viewpoint, but also with the supplementary vision of another, then you will find recovery and renewal of spirit. Black despair will scarcely clutch and hold for long if one can talk it out with a friend who understands.

(Wieman 20) A fifth value to be sought through long-continued association of friends is the glorification of the joys and triumphs of life. Every good thing is multiplied many fold in its goodness if there is someone with whom you can share it. Every triumph takes on splendor when there is someone else who is glad because of your success. The quickening of appreciation and sensitivity to the beauty and goodness of life is the work of communication and that cultivation of the mind which comes from the use of symbols. If we were cut off from communication and were reduced to that kind of association which consists of anticipatory adjustments of the organism in response to signals, the beauty of the world would fade before our eyes, the melody of music would fail and die, the shining structures of far possibilities would sink beneath the horizon. It is communication which releases the imagination, deepens our appreciation, and opens to our experience all the higher values. The kind of communication which two friends are able to develop will add a glamorous and tender light, transfiguring all the world. But this does not come of itself. Two friends must work together to develop such an appreciation and sensitivity, and they must make it a lifelong undertaking of devoted endeavor.

The Urantia Book [160:2.9] 4. The enhanced defense against all evil. Personality association and mutual affection is an efficient insurance against evil. Difficulties, sorrow, disappointment, and defeat are more painful and disheartening when borne alone. Association does not transmute evil into righteousness, but it does aid in greatly lessening the sting. Said your Master, "Happy are they who mourn" -- if a friend is at hand to comfort. There is positive strength in the knowledge that you live for the welfare of others, and that these others likewise live for your welfare and advancement. Man languishes in isolation. Human beings unfailingly become discouraged when they view only the transitory transactions of time. The present, when divorced from the past and the future, becomes exasperatingly trivial. Only a glimpse of the circle of eternity can inspire man to do his best and can challenge the best in him to do its utmost. And when man is thus at his best, he lives most unselfishly for the good of others, his fellow sojourners in time and eternity.

Source (Wieman 21) The sixth value to cultivate in personal affection is the transmutation of evil. [UB 160:3.9 Number 4: The enhanced defense against all evil.] Grief, sorrow, disappointment, failure, pain are all evils. We do not mean to suggest that these evils cease to be evils when they are experienced by two people who are able to share profoundly all that may befall them. But we do claim that while these are certainly evils, they take on a different quality when they are shared by two who have deep affection for one another. Communication in deep affection has a magic touch which gives to sorrow and pain a kind of blessedness. "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." But what is comfort? Is it not just this deep mutual understanding and sympathy of two or more who can find in their sorrow a deeper level of community? Bitter experience acquires a sweetness, and tragedy a high nobility, and pain may even take on a glory when they are interpreted by communication and become a shared experience.

(Wieman 22) The last of the seven values of personal affection is co-operative devotion to a common cause. Two can unite their lives in a lifetime's endeavor in such a way as constantly to reinterpret, develop, and magnify the cause to which they are devoted. By communication and development of meanings they can make the purpose of their lives to include more and more of the possibilities of the world so that the effort of the present moment will have the significance and value of far reaches of future attainment. No life can ever experience the greater values if it is limited in its enjoyment to that which happens to exist at the present moment. The present when cut off from the past and future is too trivial and transitory to constitute any great value. Only when the present is integrated as one essential component in a vast structure of achievement which is continued from the past and reaches far into the future, can any great value be experienced. But the development of such a life purpose, at least for the ordinary man, is impossible unless he lives for the sake of others whose interests he shares. By thus identifying himself with the protection and fostering care of a group of loved ones he finds the horizons of his life expanding farther and farther into the future, gathering up more of the heritage of the past, and being filled with a rich fullness of what now exists and of what shall exist in the future.

(Wieman 23) We have described the seven precious values to be attained by living together in personal affection. But to achieve such a friendship and to experience such values three conditions must be met. First of all, the association must be one that is long-continued and intimate. A few years is not sufficient. Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years of association is needed. Indeed, it is impossible for a person to have more than one such friendship in a lifetime if he is going to bring it to highest fulfillment. It is a work of art which requires a life's devotion and to try to achieve two or more of them in a single life is simply to mar each one and to miss the greater values which personal affection can yield.

(Wieman 24) The second condition to be met is that this association must be one in which the two individuals share together the great problems of life and death. Even a lifetime of association will not yield the values we have described if all the interests which are shared are trivial or are anything less than the greatest problems which human kind must face.

(Wieman 25) The third requirement is that these two individuals must have some object which is very precious to the both of them, and to which their lives are committed. This knitting together of the two by a common object of love promotes all the values we have described. Where is it possible to find opportunity for this kind of association in which these three conditions are met? There is only one place in the whole expanse of modern life where it is possible for the ordinary man to have the kind of association we have been describing. We say the ordinary man, because there may be a few exceptions.

The Urantia Book [160:2.10] I repeat, such inspiring and ennobling association finds its ideal possibilities in the human marriage relation. True, much is attained out of marriage, and many, many marriages utterly fail to produce these moral and spiritual fruits. Too many times marriage is entered by those who seek other values which are lower than these superior accompaniments of human maturity. Ideal marriage must be founded on something more stable than the fluctuations of sentiment and the fickleness of mere sex attraction; it must be based on genuine and mutual personal devotion. And thus, if you can build up such trustworthy and effective small units of human association, when these are assembled in the aggregate, the world will behold a great and glorified social structure, the civilization of mortal maturity. Such a race might begin to realize something of your Master's ideal of "peace on earth and good will among men." While such a society would not be perfect or entirely free from evil, it would at least approach the stabilization of maturity.

Source (Wieman 26) But omitting these rare exceptions it is impossible for two people to have lifelong and intimate association in which they face together the greatest problems of life and death and where they cherish together objects most precious to both, except in one place, and that is in marriage. In marriage all these conditions are met. In wedlock is the golden opportunity for the kind of association we have described, offering the greatest values of communication that life can give.

(Wieman 27) We do not mean to suggest that in married life this kind of friendship is always achieved. It may be only very rarely achieved. It may be only one in two or one in ten or one in a hundred marriages that ever succeeds in developing this precious community of mind. The proportion may be less than that. In the nature of the case it is impossible to gather statistics. Therefore it is foolish to try to make any estimate. The cynic who says it is scarcely ever achieved between married people is just as foolish as the glowing optimist who thinks it occurs very frequently. All we can say is that it seems very plain that many fail to attain to it and also equally plain that some succeed. More than that we cannot say. But we can say that marriage provides the opportunity for this sort of friendship.

(Wieman 28) Marriage provides the opportunity, and for the vast majority of people there is no such opportunity anywhere else in all the world. But such a friendship is exceedingly difficult under any circumstances and therefore it is difficult of attainment in marriage. It is difficult because all things most rare and excellent are difficult. It is difficult, but we believe many people could achieve it if they realized how great and precious were the values to be attained and set themselves earnestly and deliberately to develop such a fellowship as has been described. The reason why most people miss these values is because they never dream that such values of friendship are to be had. Such a timing simply never enters their heads. They seek entirely other values when they marry. They seek and cherish romantic love as that is understood, with its beauty and glamour and tenderness. There are the children and the honie and all the social and economic advantages of marriage. All these are sought in marriage. But all these are other and, so far as the value for the individual personality is concerned, all these are less than the values of personal affection through communication when this affection reaches its highest consummation. Because most people probably do not know this, because they do not know there are such values, and do not even dream of them, they do not seek them and consequently do not find them.

(Wieman 29) What are the difficulties in the way of achieving such a community of life in marriage or anywhere else for that matter? They are legion and we cannot delay to discuss them here. We can only briefly mention a few. There is the complexity of personality which is probably becoming more complex as modern life is complicated. The more complex the personalities the richer may be the values when community is attained, but the greater the complexity the more difficult it becomes to produce such profound and inclusive mutual understanding.

(Wieman 30) There is the sentimental tradition that in love one must be blind to the faults of the other. This is perfidy, and this sentimental tradition should be rooted out as quickly as possible. It is one of the worst obstructions to the development of most complete mutual understanding.

(Wieman 31) Finally, there are the fickleness, the uncertainty and the propulsive power of sex attraction, which comes and goes.

(Wieman 32) It is assumed by many that the one justifiable ground for dissolving a marriage is sexual infidelity. 'We believe such a claim implies a totally mistaken notion of what is the chief foundation and justification for monogamic marriage. It implies that this basic foundation is the sexual relation. But sex attraction can never be the basis of monogamy. Some few individuals may find it adequate, but the great majority never can. Sex attraction is altogether too unstable and precarious to be the fundamental basis of marriage.

(Wieman 33) Furthermore, sexual relations have been grotesquely overemphasized and have been given an importance out of all proportion to their due. When man was much more of a beast than he is now, the function of biological reproduction was perhaps the chief thing he had to do in life. The biological reproduction of the species is the relentless requirement imposed upon every kind of animal if it is not to become extinct. But man has long passed the level where mere biological reproduction is the chief requirement for the perpetuation of the species. When it was one very important requirement there was some justification for surrounding the sexual relation with all the importance that it has had. But to-day the emphasis that is given to it is simply a monstrosity and surely cannot long endure.

(Wieman 34) The moving pictures and light fiction, the popular stories and poems and customs of sentimentalists are not the only causes responsible for this absurd disproportion of emphasis. The energetic Puritans, the professional sustainers of law and order are just as guilty, if not more. The reformers have magnified the importance of sex until the sentimentalists and dilettantes and rebels could not do otherwise but follow in their train.

(Wieman 35) The ultimate basis and justification of marriage is not sex, it is personal affection. The sooner that is recognized the sooner will some of our present difficulties of married life be surmounted. We do not mean, of course, that sex can be excluded. Sex is an important part of life and always will be and will always have its important place in marriage. We are only suggesting that it has been given a place that is disproportionate to other interests. It has been placed at the forefront and everything else relegated to the background. That is a mistake. It may not be relegated to the background, but it is certainly making the play a burlesque to give it tile whole stage, as has been done. Sex is one of the exceedingly valuable ingredients in that community of life which marriage provides. But it is only one. The chief thing is an all-inclusive system of community in personal affection with sex as one component.

---

Study Questions

1. How do you feel about the alleged correspondence between this material from Henry Nelson Wieman and Section 2 of Paper 160? Does it seem to you that the correspondence is significant, or is there reasonable room for doubt? On what are you basing your evaluation?

2. Create your own summarized statement of (W2) and (W3) above. Compare your summary with what the Midwayer's have done at [160:2.2]

3. Compare Wieman's "Seven Great Values of Friendship" with the Midwayer's "Essential Factors of the Higher Levels of the Art of Living." Why do you suppose the Midwayers omit items 3, 5 and 7 from Wieman's list? Can you find the essence of items 3, 5 and 7 embedded in the Midwayer's presentation of the other items from Wieman's list?

4. Are items 3, 5 and 7 from Wieman's supported by the teachings of The Urantia Book or do they conflict with those teachings? Provide quotes from the book to support your conclusion.

5. By the time we get to (W31) above, the author has begun to moralize about the role of sexuality in intimate relationships. This material does not appear to have been used by the revelators. Does this material conflict with the general teachings of The Urantia Book? Are the basic ideas in this material successfully communicated elsewhere in the Rodan paper?

6. What of Rodan of Alexandria -- do you think he really existed? Is it possible that the Wieman material is simply the best contemporary expression of Rodan's thought, or do you think that the Midwayers created Rodan in order to present a composite of the best Greek thought of Jesus' time?

7. Why do you suppose that, in the story as it is told in The Urantia Book, Jesus is never depicted as directly interacting with Rodan? The opening paragraph of Paper 160 indicates that Rodan had hoped to secure from Jesus "a firsthand and authoritative version of the gospel" but that Jesus "declined to enter into such a conference with Rodan." Why would Jesus decline to enter into such a conversation with this Greek philosopher?

---