Jesus' Discourse on Science in Athens- the Capital of Greece!

The gospels of new testament bible gives only some limited and partial information about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ when he lived in this world, as a perfect human being for a short while of just over three decades, some 2000 years ago. 

The narratives in the gospels are written by human beings of limited abilities, even though they might have been strengthened in their abilities by some divine blessings. The Bible gives only very little information about Jesus Christ, especially about those 28 odd years before he actually began to preach and teach in and around the land of the Israelite people.

At the same time there are many non-biblical books and the so-called apocrypha books telling the stories about Jesus that are available to mankind. But these books have many things which could be well judged as human imaginations or exaggerations by a closer study by any unbiased and logical probe.

But in the latter half of the twentieth century AD, something miraculous happened in this context. This was the publication of the Urantia Book in 1955. The last part of this great volume of information in English language depicts the life and teachings of Jesus Christ- a much treasured historical information that was hitherto unrecorded or lost from being recorded.

My purpose is not to discuss about how this detailed history got prepared and published. My purpose in this blog is to provide my readers an exposure to what Jesus taught those with him, as given in the book that I mentioned above.

Please read carefully the following passages, directly quoted from the Urantia Book, Paper-133:

They [Jesus and his Indian merchant friend Gonod and his son Ganid) shortly arrived at the olden center of Greek science and learning, and Ganid was thrilled with the thought of being in Athens, of being in Greece, the cultural center of the onetime Alexandrian empire, which had extended its borders even to his own land of India. There was little business to transact; so Gonod spent most of his time with Jesus and Ganid, visiting the many points of interest and listening to the interesting discussions of the lad and his versatile teacher.

A great university still thrived in Athens, and the trio made frequent visits to its halls of learning. Jesus and Ganid had thoroughly discussed the teachings of Plato when they attended the lectures in the museum at Alexandria. They all enjoyed the art of Greece, examples of which were still to be found here and there about the city.

Both the father and the son greatly enjoyed the discussion on science which Jesus had at their inn one evening with a Greek philosopher. After this pedant had talked for almost three hours, and when he had finished his discourse, Jesus, in terms of modern thought [the concepts of the discourse when translated to English language as understood in the 20th Century AD], said:

Scientists may some day measure the energy, or force manifestations, of gravitation, light, and electricity, but these same scientists can never (scientifically) tell you what these universe phenomena are. Science deals with physical-energy activities; religion deals with eternal values. True philosophy grows out of the wisdom which does its best to correlate these quantitative and qualitative observations. There always exists the danger that the purely physical scientist may become afflicted with mathematical pride and statistical egotism, not to mention spiritual blindness.

Logic is valid in the material world, and mathematics is reliable when limited in its application to physical things; but neither is to be regarded as wholly dependable or infallible when applied to life problems. Life embraces phenomena which are not wholly material. Arithmetic says that, if one man could shear a sheep in ten minutes, ten men could shear it in one minute. That is sound mathematics, but it is not true, for the ten men could not so do it; they would get in one another’s way so badly that the work would be greatly delayed.

Mathematics asserts that, if one person stands for a certain unit of intellectual and moral value, ten persons would stand for ten times this value. But in dealing with human personality it would be nearer the truth to say that such a personality association is a sum equal to the square of the number of personalities concerned in the equation rather than the simple arithmetical sum. A social group of human beings in co-ordinated working harmony stands for a force far greater than the simple sum of its parts.

Quantity may be identified as a fact, thus becoming a scientific uniformity. Quality, being a matter of mind interpretation, represents an estimate of values, and must, therefore, remain an experience of the individual. When both science and religion become less dogmatic and more tolerant of criticism, philosophy will then begin to achieve unity in the intelligent comprehension of the universe.

There is unity in the cosmic universe if you could only discern its workings in actuality. The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God. The real problem is: How can the finite mind of man achieve a logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought? This universe-knowing state of mind can be had only by conceiving that the quantitative fact and the qualitative value have a common causation in the Paradise Father [God]. Such a conception of reality yields a broader insight into the purposeful unity of universe phenomena; it even reveals a spiritual goal of progressive personality achievement. And this is a concept of unity which can sense the unchanging background of a living universe of continually changing impersonal relations and evolving personal relationships.

Matter and spirit and the state intervening between them are three interrelated and interassociated levels of the true unity of the real universe. Regardless of how divergent the universe phenomena of fact and value may appear to be, they are, after all, unified in the Supreme [manifestation of God].

Reality of material existence attaches to unrecognized energy as well as to visible matter. When the energies of the universe are so slowed down that they acquire the requisite degree of motion, then, under favorable conditions, these same energies become mass. And forget not, the mind which can alone perceive the presence of apparent realities is itself also real. And the fundamental cause of this universe of energy-mass, mind, and spirit, is eternal—it exists and consists in the nature and reactions of the Universal Father and his absolute co-ordinates.

They were all more than astounded at the words of Jesus, and when the Greek [Philosopher]  took leave of them, he said: “At last my eyes have beheld a Jew who thinks something besides racial superiority and talks something besides religion.” And they retired for the night.

My dear reader! After reading this much, could you get a feeling deep in your mind for exploring more about what is written in this book?

If so, it would perhaps be a good idea to nurture that feeling and proceed accordingly.

Best Wishes!

Something to Think for Those Seriously Concerned with Science, Humanity and Religion !

[The following are some concluding remarks made by the authors of my favorite book of life guidance, which I reproduce below in part and with some minor editing. Click on the book link to visit the site which gives more information on the book and its authors. This book's original manuscript in English was provided some time in the beginning of the 20th century while it got printed in 1955. The passages below may not be illuminating the ordinary people, but it should do so for a few of those with a superior mind level concerned with science, humanity and religion who happen to read these. Those few of the latter kind may also be inclined to find the book and read it in whole. The link above would help them to find the book for an online reading. You would also find many blogs based on this book which you can find and read by clicking the Blog Archive on the right side of this page.]

The twentieth century has brought new problems for Christianity and all other religions to solve.

The higher a civilization climbs, the more it  becomes the duty of man to 'seek first the realities of the Kingdom of God' which means putting efforts to stabilize the society and facilitate the solutions for its material problems.

Truth often becomes confusing and even misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and too much analyzed. Living truth teaches the truth seeker accurately only when it is embraced in wholeness and as a living spiritual reality, not as a fact of material science or an inspiration of intervening art.

Religion is a purely personal and spiritual experience and must forever be distinguished from man’s other high forms of thought, such as:

1. His logical attitude toward the things of material reality.
2. His aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness.
3. His ethical recognition of social obligations and political duty.

Even his sense of human morality is not, in and of itself, religious.

Religion discovers for the soul those supreme values which are in contrast with the relative values discovered by the mind. Such superhuman insight can be had only through genuine religious experience.

A lasting social system without a morality founded on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity.

Do not try to satisfy the curiosity or gratify all the latent adventure that rise up within your mind in one short life in the flesh. Be patient! Do not get tempted to indulge in a lawless plunge into cheap and sordid adventure. Harness your energies and restrain your passions; be calm while you await the majestic unfolding of an endless career of progressive adventure and thrilling discovery (awaiting you ahead, even after your short life in your material world)

In confusion over man’s origin, do not lose sight of his eternal destiny. Forget not that Jesus (the sovereign of this universe when he lived among you as one of you)  loved even little children, and that he forever made clear the great worth of human personality.

As you view (your) world, remember that the black patches of evil which you see are shown against a white background of ultimate good. You do not view merely white patches of good which show up miserably against a black background of evil.

When there is so much good truth to publish and proclaim, why should men dwell so much upon the evil in the world just because it appears to be a fact? The beauties of the spiritual values of truth are more pleasurable and uplifting than is the phenomenon of evil.

In religion, Jesus advocated and followed the method of experience, even as modern science pursues the technique of experiment. We find God through the leading of spiritual insight, but we approach this insight of the soul through the love of the beautiful, the pursuit of truth, loyalty to duty, and the worship of divine goodness. But of all these values, love is the true guide to real insight.

(Your) scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race.

No matter what the apparent conflict between materialism and the teachings of Jesus may be, you can rest assured that, in the ages to come, the teachings of Jesus will fully triumph. 

In reality, true religion cannot become involved in any controversy with science; it is in no way concerned with material things. 

Religion is simply indifferent to, but sympathetic with, science, while it supremely concerns itself with the scientist.

The pursuit of mere knowledge, without the attendant interpretation of wisdom and the spiritual insight of religious experience, eventually leads to pessimism and human despair. A little knowledge is truly disconcerting (or a cause of emotional disturbances).

At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings.

But this age of physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.

Science is a quantitative experience, religion a qualitative experience, as regards man’s life on earth. Science deals with phenomena; religion, with origins, values, and goals. To assign causes as an explanation of physical phenomena is to confess ignorance of the ultimate and in the end only leads the scientist straight back to the first great cause—the Universal Father  (God).

The violent swing from an age of miracles to an age of machines has proved altogether upsetting to man. The cleverness and dexterity of the false philosophies of mechanism belie their very mechanistic contentions. 

The mechanistic naturalism of some supposedly educated men and the thoughtless secularism of the man in the street are both exclusively concerned with things; they are barren of all real values, sanctions, and satisfactions of a spiritual nature, as well as being devoid of faith, hope, and eternal assurances. 

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.

Materialism reduces man to a soulless automaton and constitutes him merely an arithmetical symbol finding a helpless place in the mathematical formula of an unromantic and mechanistic universe. 

But whence comes all this vast universe of mathematics without a Master Mathematician? Science may expatiate on the conservation of matter, but religion validates the conservation of men’s souls—it concerns their experience with spiritual realities and eternal values.

But religious leaders are making a great mistake when they try to call modern man to spiritual battle with the trumpet blasts of the Middle Ages. 

Religion must provide itself with new and up-to-date slogans. 

Neither democracy nor any other political panacea will take the place of spiritual progress. 

False religions may represent an evasion of reality, but Jesus in his gospel introduced mortal man to the very entrance upon an eternal reality of spiritual progression.

To say that mind “emerged” from matter explains nothing. If the universe were merely a mechanism and mind were not separated from matter, we would never have two differing interpretations of any observed phenomenon. 

The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness.

Science may be physical, but the mind of the truth-discerning scientist is at once super-material. 

Matter knows not truth, neither can it love mercy nor delight in spiritual realities. 

Moral convictions based on spiritual enlightenment and rooted in human experience are just as real and certain as mathematical deductions based on physical observations, but on another and higher level.

 Freedom or initiative in any realm of existence is directly proportional to the degree of spiritual influence and cosmic-mind control; that is, in human experience, the degree of the actuality of doing 'the Father’s will' (God's will).  And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the conclusive proof that God has already found you.

The sincere pursuit of goodness, beauty, and truth leads to God. 

And every scientific discovery demonstrates the existence of both freedom and uniformity in the universe. 

The discoverer was free to make the discovery. The thing discovered is real and apparently uniform, or else it could not have become known as a thing.

Facts never quarrel with real spiritual faith; theories may. Better that science should be devoted to the destruction of superstition rather than attempting the overthrow of religious faith—human belief in spiritual realities and divine values.

Science should do for man materially what religion does for him spiritually: extend the horizon of life and enlarge his personality. 

True science can have no lasting quarrel with true religion. 

The 'scientific method' is merely an intellectual yardstick wherewith to measure material adventures and physical achievements. But being material and wholly intellectual, it is utterly useless in the evaluation of spiritual realities and religious experiences.

Science lives by the mathematics of the mind; music expresses the tempo of the emotions. Religion is the spiritual rhythm of the soul in time-space harmony with the higher and eternal melody measurements of Infinity. Religious experience is something in human life which is truly super-mathematical.

 In language, an alphabet represents the mechanism of materialism, while the words expressive of the meaning of a thousand thoughts, grand ideas, and noble ideals—of love and hate, of cowardice and courage—represent the performances of mind within the scope defined by both material and spiritual law, directed by the assertion of the will of personality, and limited by the inherent ability as per situation.

The universe is not like the laws, mechanisms, and the uniformities which the scientist discovers, and which he comes to regard as science, but rather like the curious, thinking, choosing, creative, combining, and discriminating scientist who thus observes universe phenomena and classifies the mathematical facts inherent in the mechanistic phases of the material side of creation.

The scientist, not science, perceives the reality of an evolving and advancing universe of energy and matter.  The religionist, not religion, proves the existence of the spirit realities and divine values which are to be encountered in the progress of eternity.

Secular social and political optimism is an illusion. Without God, neither freedom and liberty, nor property and wealth will lead to peace.

The complete secularization of science, education, industry, and society can lead only to disaster. During the first third of the twentieth century humans killed more human beings (e.g the first and second world wars)  than were killed during the whole of the Christian dispensation up to that time. And this is only the beginning of the dire harvest of materialism and secularism; still more terrible destruction is yet to come.

Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth. 

But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus’ teachings will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.

Some Interesting Information About Our Sun That Even Our Scientists May Not Know !

Today I was refreshing my reading of my favorite revelatory book of life guidance-the Urantia Book- where the invisible revelators of the book have described some interesting aspects of our sun in our solar system. Many our our physicists are breaking their heads with their theories to explain the solar physical phenomena for the last few decades. But the divine beings are now telling us some aspects of the physical organization of the stars in their effort to make us understand just incase some of us are willing to listen.

The following paras they wrote some time in the 1920's when 99.99 % of the human beings were not in a capacity to understand the complexities of physical sciences that existed in nature to be discovered by humans some time in the future. But the divine beings while revealing this information to us were telling us the manner in which the living God and his invisible divine beings create and nurture the physical aspects of the universes just as they manage the non-physical aspects.

Now those of you who are interested may read the following that I have quoted from the book in the words of the divine beings telling us about our sun from which we get our energy for live sustenance:

The mass of your sun is slightly greater than the estimate of your physicists, who have reckoned it as about two octillion (2 x 10²⁷) tons. It now exists about halfway between the most dense and the most diffuse stars, having about one and one-half times the density of water. But your sun is neither a liquid nor a solid—it is gaseous—and this is true notwithstanding the difficulty of explaining how gaseous matter can attain this and even much greater densities.

Gaseous, liquid, and solid states are matters of atomic-molecular relationships, but density is a relationship of space and mass. Density varies directly with the quantity of mass in space and inversely with the amount of space in mass, the space between the central cores of matter and the particles which whirl around these centers as well as the space within such material particles.

Cooling stars can be physically gaseous and tremendously dense at the same time. You are not familiar with the solar supergases, but these and other unusual forms of matter explain how even nonsolid suns can attain a density equal to iron—about the same as Urantia (earth)—and yet be in a highly heated gaseous state and continue to function as suns. The atoms in these dense supergases are exceptionally small; they contain few electrons. Such suns have also largely lost their free ultimatonic stores of energy.

One of your near-by suns, which started life with about the same mass as yours, has now contracted almost to the size of Urantia (earth), having become forty thousand times as dense as your sun. The weight of this hot-cold gaseous-solid is about one ton per cubic inch. And still this sun shines with a faint reddish glow, the senile glimmer of a dying monarch of light.

Most of the suns, however, are not so dense. One of your nearer neighbors has a density exactly equal to that of your atmosphere at sea level. If you were in the interior of this sun, you would be unable to discern anything. And temperature permitting, you could penetrate the majority of the suns which twinkle in the night sky and notice no more matter than you perceive in the air of your earthly living rooms.

The massive sun of Veluntia, one of the largest in Orvonton ( one of the seven material super universes that makes up the whole of the present Physical Universe) , has a density only one one-thousandth that of Urantia's atmosphere. Were it in composition similar to your atmosphere and not superheated, it would be such a vacuum that human beings would speedily suffocate if they were in or on it.

Another of the Orvonton giants now has a surface temperature a trifle under three thousand degrees. Its diameter is over three hundred million miles—ample room to accommodate your sun and the present orbit of the earth. And yet, for all this enormous size, over forty million times that of your sun, its mass is only about thirty times greater. These enormous suns have an extending fringe that reaches almost from one to the other.

That the suns of space are not very dense is proved by the steady streams of escaping light-energies. Too great a density would retain light by opacity until the light-energy pressure reached the explosion point. There is a tremendous light or gas pressure within a sun to cause it to shoot forth such a stream of energy as to penetrate space for millions upon millions of miles to energize, light, and heat the distant planets. Fifteen feet of surface of the density of Urantia would effectually prevent the escape of all X rays and light- energies from a sun until the rising internal pressure of accumulating energies resulting from atomic dismemberment overcame gravity with a tremendous outward explosion.

Light, in the presence of the propulsive gases, is highly explosive when confined at high temperatures by opaque retaining walls. Light is real. As you value energy and power on your world, sunlight would be economical at a million dollars a pound.(Cost as prevailing in the 1920's)

The interior of your sun is a vast X-ray generator. The suns are supported from within by the incessant bombardment of these mighty emanations.

It requires more than one-half million years for an X-ray-stimulated electron to work its way from the very center of an average sun up to the solar surface, whence it starts out on its space adventure, maybe to warm an inhabited planet, to be captured by a meteor, to participate in the birth of an atom, to be attracted by a highly charged dark island of space, or to find its space flight terminated by a final plunge into the surface of a sun similar to the one of its origin.

The X rays of a sun's interior charge the highly heated and agitated electrons with sufficient energy to carry them out through space, past the hosts of detaining influences of intervening matter and, in spite of divergent gravity attractions, on to the distant spheres of the remote systems. The great energy of velocity required to escape the gravity clutch of a sun is sufficient to insure that the sunbeam will travel on with unabated velocity until it encounters considerable masses of matter; whereupon it is quickly transformed into heat with the liberation of other energies.

Energy, whether as light or in other forms, in its flight through space moves straight forward. The actual particles of material existence traverse space like a fusillade. They go in a straight and unbroken line or procession except as they are acted on by superior forces, and except as they ever obey the linear-gravity pull inherent in material mass and the circular-gravity presence of the Isle of Paradise.

Solar energy may seem to be propelled in waves, but that is due to the action of coexistent and diverse influences. A given form of organized energy does not proceed in waves but in direct lines. The presence of a second or a third form of force-energy may cause the stream under observation to appear to travel in wavy formation, just as, in a blinding rainstorm accompanied by a heavy wind, the water sometimes appears to fall in sheets or to descend in waves. The raindrops are coming down in a direct line of unbroken procession, but the action of the wind is such as to give the visible appearance of sheets of water and waves of raindrops.

The action of certain secondary and other undiscovered energies present in the space regions of your local universe is such that solar-light emanations appear to execute certain wavy phenomena as well as to be chopped up into infinitesimal portions of definite length and weight. And, practically considered, that is exactly what happens. You can hardly hope to arrive at a better understanding of the behavior of light until such a time as you acquire a clearer concept of the interaction and interrelationship of the various space-forces and solar energies operating in the space regions of Nebadon. Your present confusion is also due to your incomplete grasp of this problem as it involves the interassociated activities of the personal and nonpersonal control of the master universe—the presences, the performances, and the co-ordination of the Conjoint Actor (Third Member of the Triune Diety) and the Unqualified Absolute ( A kind of Diety Manifestation) .

Dear reader, you may not have read to the last unless you are a bit scientifically learned having a quest to understand the unknown.

If you did, then you should consider reading and understanding the book I mentioned above- marvellous master piece of revealed knowledge from superior divine beings about whom we know pretty little. Once you start understanding what they want to communicate with us, then the apparent complexities of life that perplex you would start becoming clearer to you.

I have experienced it and am experiencing it. That is a wonderful transformation !


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