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us and our Thought Adjusters and the revelation of God's nature provided for us in the bestowal life of Jesus of Nazareth. And because of the real difficulties beings such as ourselves have with establishing reliable communication with our Thought Adjuster, that revelatory life of Jesus is our principal source for understanding "spiritual meanings and values" in so far as they can be comprehended by beings whose total experience is dominated by association with matter..
And surely it goes without saying that nothing could be more important for our spiritual progress than an understanding of what spiritual progress really entails.
What is spiritual?
There are two approaches to understanding what spiritual "is." Since God is pure spirit, all that pertains to the character and nature of deity must reflect God's spirituality. This will encompass all deity, including the revelation of the nature of God given to Urantians through the life of Jesus. Our second source is direct statement in the Papers about what spirituality is. The following quotations may be of help:
"But the love of God is an intelligent and farseeing parental affection. The divine love functions in unified association with divine wisdom and all other infinite characteristics of the perfect nature of the Universal Father. God is love, but love is not God. The greatest manifestation of the divine love for mortal beings is observed in the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, but your greatest revelation of the Father's love is seen in the bestowal life of his Son Michael as he lived on earth the ideal spiritual life. It is the indwelling Adjuster who individualizes the love of God to each human soul." (40)
"The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation. Mercy is the essence of the Son's spiritual character. The mandates of the Eternal Son, as they go forth over the spirit circuits of the Second Source and Center, are keyed in tones of mercy." (75)
"The Eternal Son is wholly spiritual; man is very nearly entirely material;" (78)
"Spirit is the basic personal reality in the universes, and personality is basic to all progressing experience with spiritual reality. Every phase of personality experience on every successive level of universe progression swarms with clues to the discovery of alluring personal realities. Man's true destiny consists in the creation of new and spirit goals and then in responding to the cosmic allurements of such supernal goals of nonmaterial value." (141)
"When the spiritual tests of greatness are applied, the moral elements are not disregarded, but the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one's earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness. And the manifestation of greatness on a world like Urantia is the exhibition of self-control. The great man is not he who 'takes a city' or 'overthrows a nation,' but rather 'he who subdues his own tongue.'" (317)
"To finite man, truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom... Advanced mortals have learned that love is the greatest thing in the universe--and they know that God is love. Love is the desire to do good to others." (648)
"Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one's nearness to God and the measure of one's usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love." (1096)
"The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal." (1096)
"One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment. (1101)
"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. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. "Without holiness no man may see the Lord." 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, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God." (1104)
"Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal
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