© 2024 André Desjardins
© 2024 Urantia Association of Quebec
André Desjardins
St-Alexis-des-Monts
¶ Foreword
The Urantia Book is probably the only book in which the designation “Thought Adjuster” is used, and few equivalents exist in religious or philosophical literature. From the spiritual standpoint, it is represented as the essence of the highest level of divinity bestowed upon personalities at the lowest hierarchy of will-living beings. Will-mortals are the only personality type in which the Thought Adjuster can dwell in their minds and amalgamate into a single entity. Several variations of its designation are described and used in The Urantia Book, such as Mystery Monitors, Presence of God, Bestowal of the Universal Father, Image of God, Spiritual Presence of the Universal Father. UB 108:6.3. All of these designations represent the Thought Adjuster to the will-mortals of time and space according to their own conception. Although their origin is a perfect reflection of the divine personality of God, they are prepersonal and can manifest and express themselves only through a mortal volition personality, and only through them can they experience living perfection. The bestowal of personality by the Universal Father decreed that the self-will of volition beings predominates over the prepersonal origin of the Thought Adjuster.
Although he may be called by various names, the Thought Adjuster concerns all God-knowing mortals; he represents the ideal of God within us, but his conception is often misunderstood and misunderstood among mortal personalities. The difficulty in establishing real contact depends entirely on the mental attitude due to their mortal origin as opposed to that of the Immortal Thought Adjuster. UB 110:7.6 “The chief difficulty you have in contacting your Adjuster is this material nature that is so deeply entrenched.” At first glance, the term “Thought Adjuster” may seem like a mechanism capable of adjusting our thinking as if there were another indwelling presence that could manipulate us and direct our will, but the will personality has complete choice in directing its destiny. UB 66:8.6 “Even the indwelling Thought Adjuster refuses to compel man to think a single thought or to perform a single act against the choosing of man’s own will.”
Curiosity and interest in this Indwelling Presence have led me to investigate the relationship between the higher source of divinity and the lower material source of volitional mind. In seeking to know the interest and advantage of this dual relationship, I have divided the Thought Adjuster into three sections according to my point of view.
- What does the Thought Adjuster do with man?
- What does man do with the Thought Adjuster?
- What do man and the Thought Adjuster do together?
The first section concerns the Thought Adjuster and his relationship to man; the second is man’s relationship to the Thought Adjuster; and the third deals with this intimate relationship; the final consecration between man and the Thought Adjuster.
¶ Section 1 — The Thought Adjuster and Man
“Spirit. The divine spirit that indwells the mind of man—the Thought Adjuster. This immortal spirit is prepersonal—not a personality, though destined to become a part of the personality of the surviving mortal creature.” Man is qualified and has the power to express himself through the unrestricted attribution of personality with all its prerogative to act for himself and choose his destiny. (UB 0:5.9)
Thought Adjusters are of divine and perfect origin, pure fragments of divinity from the Heavenly Father. Notwithstanding this origin of innate perfection and for the present epoch of the Supreme, they must submit and conform to this supreme injunction of practical living by living the experience of perfection; no universe personality can evade this injunction for the present epoch of the Supreme, including the Thought Adjusters. UB 109:1.3 “Actual living experience has no cosmic substitute. The perfection of the divinity of a newly formed Thought Adjuster does not in any manner endow this Mystery Monitor with experienced ministrative ability. Experience is inseparable from a living existence; it is the one thing which no amount of divine endowment can absolve you from the necessity of securing by actual living. Therefore, in common with all beings living and functioning within the present sphere of the Supreme, Thought Adjusters must acquire experience.”
The best way to gain practical experience of the living perfection of the prepersonal Adjusters is to indwell a human mind in order to have this concrete experience of actual living in submission to the human will; they must experience perfection, for “actual living experience has no cosmic substitute” no matter how high one may be spiritually in the divine hierarchy.
In order to establish a personal relationship, the Universal Father planned to personally release fragments of his Spirit Presence without discrimination to mortal personalities in order to experience a concrete personal relationship with his will creatures; he also reserved for himself the privilege of intimate contact with his will creatures through his personality circuit. Prior to the bestowal of his divinity fragments, the Universal Father had to establish a means of communication for personal contact with will personalities. In designing his personality circuit prior to the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, the Father created personal communication with his will creatures; it is like establishing a communication network before having access to personal contact.
The Thought Adjusters of existential origin are an inalienable gift from God Himself and classified as impersonal, hence their designation “prepersonal.” UB 2:1.7 … the impersonal Mystery Monitors, the Thought Adjusters, the actual gift of the great God Himself, sent to indwell such beings as the humans of Urantia, and this without warning or explanation. This partly explains the handicap of the Thought Adjusters of being born without a personality as such even though they are endowed with will and the capacity to reveal themselves. Consequently, they are thus deprived of this mechanism by which to achieve self-expression; they lack this personal aspect by which to express and manifest themselves.
It is for this reason that the Thought Adjuster must unite with a personality of will mortal origin, for he possesses within himself the requisite quality of this personality mechanism for self-expression. The inner manifestation of a prepersonal Thought Adjuster is entirely subject to the personality of a will mortal for expression. UB 112:7.12 “The human member was the first to enjoy personality and, therefore, outranks the Adjuster in all matters concerned with the recognition of personality.”
It is by his will to act alone and without intermediaries in the attribution of his divine fragments that God himself reserved the privilege of having a personal and exclusive relationship with each being endowed with will; He shared everything, except this intimate, personal and exclusive contact. UB 5:1.8 “The Father desires that all his creatures be in personal communion with him.” It is through his personality circuit and through the presence of his Divine Fragments of existential origin that the Heavenly Father manages to manifest himself in time and space.
These Divine Manifestations of God are independent of time and space, and they manifest individually whenever a will personality makes a moral commitment to sincerely live the will of the Heavenly Father. Thought Adjusters have no restrictions on their bestowal except that they may go against the will of the mortal personality. These Divine Spirits emanate directly from the Heavenly Father and operate independently of the gravity circuits of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit in bestowal but may utilize them because this is often the best way for man to commune with God in time and space.
Since the bestowal of Michael on Urantia, these Pure Spirits of Divinity have been more capable of functioning in the human mind. They “were there” before the creation of time and are therefore unconscious and independent of time. Nor is space an obstacle to them, for they act instantaneously as soon as man makes his first moral decision which coincides with the formation of his soul by subordinating his will to that of God. UB 108:6.2 “Whatever may have been the previous status of the inhabitants of a world, following the bestowal of a divine Son and after the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth upon all mankind, the Adjusters flock to that world to indwell the minds of all normal will creatures.” Following the completion of the mission of a Paradise bestowal Son, these Monitors truly become the “kingdom of heaven within you.”
Since Michael’s bestowal on Urantia, these God Fragments are truly “the kingdom of heaven within us”; they “were there” before his bestowal on Urantia, and many mortals have benefited from their Indwelling Presence. It was only after Michael’s bestowal that the Adjusters spread unrestrictedly across time and space to indwell every will mortal. This indwelling divine presence inspires every will mortal in correlation with the outward presences of the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Ghost as spirit guide.
¶ Section 2 — The Man and The Adjuster
This second aspect of this human-divine relationship concerns the human personality personally; it is the subject adopted by the Adjuster to indwell a volitional mind. The material origin of a mortal personality is completely opposed to the divine origin of the Thought Adjuster. By his material origin, the human perception of the Thought Adjuster is limited by his human nature unless he sincerely consents to seek to know his divine nature by placing his human will in the service of the Heavenly Father. UB 110:7.6 “The chief difficulty you have in contacting your Adjuster is this material nature which is so entrenched. You do not develop and discipline your mind to the point where you can link up with the divine Adjusters. ” By his own will and the unconstrained choice of his destiny through the personality bestowal of the Universal Father, the prepersonal Thought Adjuster is subordinate to the human will and patiently awaits its sincere decision to make a moral choice in seeking to consciously do the will of God.
These Fragments, termed absolute, spring directly from God, but cannot compel the human personality to act against its will or impose any form of submission on it. Each human personality must consecrate its will in service to the will of God. UB 111:1.8 “However, man does not slavishly and passively surrender his will to the Adjuster. Rather, he actively, positively, and cooperatively chooses to follow the Adjuster’s leading, when he is aware that such leading differs from the desires and impulses of the natural mortal mind. Adjusters manipulate the mind of man, but never dominate it against its will. To the Adjusters, man’s will is supreme.” The persistence in seeking to do the will of God becomes a mantra for a human personality as it declares: UB 118:8.11 “It is my will that thy will be done.”
The Thought Adjuster indwells the human mind because it is the only immaterial part of the human body transmitted from the local universe Mother Spirit resting on the wholly material brain; it is the receiving terminal to which the human mind is connected. The human mind is not bound by time by its ability to transcend time; it has the abilities to form ideas, to produce mental reflections, to exercise a form of judgment and reasoning, and to plan projects. The recipient of the gift of personality is the unifying point between the prepersonal Thought Adjuster and the self-will of the human volition personality. The human mind is the only field of action where the Thought Adjuster can exert his influence for the purpose of forming the immortal soul and ensuring its survival.
The formation of the morontia soul is the only reality of mortal personality survival; it is a blending of the time origin of a mortal will personality with the existential origin will of God, the Adjuster. It is through the mind that the Indwelling Adjuster spiritualizes the spiritual values of the progressive evolution of the morontia soul acquired by the human personality in the effort to attain experiential perfection. UB 111:1.1 “Though the work of Adjusters is spiritual in nature, they must, perforce, do all their work upon an intellectual foundation. Mind is the human soil from which the spirit Monitor must evolve the morontia soul with the co-operation of the indwelt personality.”
The immortal soul thus becomes the new imperishable receiving terminal of the mortal-born personality for all mental activity and the seat of memory, storing and retaining all experience of survival value, ensuring the continuity of the personality’s ascending career. This soul belongs in right to the volitional personality, but it is the indwelling Adjuster who is charged with spiritualizing and eternalizing the acquisitions of co-perfection experience of this morontia birth.
Material wear and tear due to various diseases or physical and mental disabilities cannot interfere with the inner work of the Thought Adjuster; he is ever present until the material brain is completely degraded or the personality has irrevocably rejected survival. The Thought Adjuster is never involved in the rejection of spiritual survival by the human personality; he is entirely dependent upon the will personality’s desire for destiny choice. UB 16:9.3 “If mortal man fails to survive natural death, the real spiritual values of his human experience survive as a part of the continuing experience of the Thought Adjuster.”
“Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated, if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly wants to do the Father’s will, there exists no negative influence of mortal deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals of Paradise.” In order to further the inner work of the Thought Adjuster, the personality must adopt practices to foster its contact with its inner Presence in order to acquire real spiritual values. It is always through the human personality according to its daily behaviors and mental attitudes which constitute the chief obstacle to the inner work of the Adjuster; its perfect nature cannot act when its human associate tends to react to the vicissitudes of material life. The animal origin of a human personality does not naturally carry a spiritual will; its mental attitude manifests itself in material or physical desires and impulsive reactions. (UB 5:1.7)
Any impulsive mental attitude interferes with the inner work of the Thought Adjuster, and any physical poison or noxious substance can damage the brain receptors that serve as the earthly tabernacle of the human personality. UB 110:1.5 “The Adjuster remains with you in all disaster and through every sickness which does not wholly destroy the mentality. But how unkind knowingly to defile or otherwise deliberately to pollute the physical body, which must serve as the earthly tabernacle of this marvelous gift from God. All physical poisons greatly retard the efforts of the Adjuster to exalt the material mind, while the mental poisons of fear, anger, envy, jealousy, suspicion, and intolerance likewise tremendously interfere with the spiritual progress of the evolving soul.”
Generally, physical poisons are used in an individual context unlike mental poisons which manifest themselves through relationships between individuals. These mental poisons manifest themselves most of the time by feelings of rancor, animosity, hostility, resentment by an attitude in one’s ties and relationships among one’s fellow men or towards social groupings, religious communities, cultural associations, in the workplace and in a family context. All these inner mental poisons are always provoked by an external cause necessarily involving other personalities leading to interpersonal conflicts between individuals. Every form of behavior and mental attitude of a human personality interacts with the inner work of the Thought Adjuster in proportion to the type of current relationship and in correlation with the immediate material environment.
“But your unsteady and rapidly shifting mental attitudes often result in thwarting the plans and interrupting the work of the Adjusters. Their work is not only interfered with by the innate natures of the mortal races, but this ministry is also greatly retarded by your own preconceived opinions, settled ideas, and long-standing prejudices.” Every mental attitude comes from a personal conception focused on the “me” towards a tendency to judge other “me’s”. (UB 109:5.3)
The subtlety of our principles and prejudices may even extend to meanness, segregation, and intolerance toward our fellowmen, preventing us from truly experiencing brotherly love. All these mental conflicts always concern human relationships and deprive the Indwelling Adjuster of the benefit of a living spiritual experience.
The consciousness of the spirit domination of a human life is presently attended by an increasing exhibition of the characteristics of the Spirit in the life reactions of such a spirit-led mortal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” Human nature by its animal origin is not naturally disposed to manifest these fruits of the spirit and to acquire these riches of the spirit, it is necessary to fight courageously the vicissitudes of its daily life by reforming its character of animal origin towards these divine mental manifestations of the fruits of the spirit. Among these fruits of the spirit, it is also possible to manifest others such as patience, tenderness, meekness, humility, benevolence and forgiveness. For the human personality, there is no limit to the production of fruits of the spirit in wisdom and experience except the limitations imposed by itself. (UB 34:6.13)
In his eighteenth morontia appearance of the Master Michael, he invoked upon his disciples other forms of manifestation of the fruits of the spirit, emphasizing the qualifying aspect: UB 193:2.2 “And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace.” All of these fruits of the spirit are built up through daily personal experiences among human contacts which foster human relationships and give the indwelling Adjuster the privilege of actually experiencing the living experience of perfection with his human associate.
The indwelling Adjuster experiences perfection together with his human partner, and this experience of perfection always begins with the production of the fruits of the spirit, which are considered as antidotes to physical and mental poisons. The commitment of the personality to enhance the production of the fruits of the spirit is based on his collaboration with his Adjuster in harmony with his surrounding environment according to his abilities and talents. UB 101:2.14 “Your deepest nature—the divine Adjuster—creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection.” The desire for divine perfection is a desire to ennoble our nature of human origin by the production of the fruits of the spirit.
¶ Section 3 — The Adjuster Man
The eternal union of an animal-origin human personality with a divine fragment of the God Presence is the most intriguing phenomenon among the various divine sources. Adjuster man is the indispensable symbiosis of the survival of the mortal personality; the eternal union of temporal human nature with the existential nature of the Divine Adjuster. This eternal union with this Indwelling Presence is entirely dependent upon the desire of the human-origin personality to choose the eternal path of perfection, to combine its sovereign will with the execution of the will of the Heavenly Father here on Urantia during its mortal life.
UB 107:6.2 “The Adjuster is man’s eternity possibility; man is the Adjuster’s personality possibility.” This conjuncture predisposes a potential for eternal union with the Adjuster from the formation of the morontia soul. Thus, by sincerely recognizing the presence of a God Fragment of God within him, the human personality can realize that man-Adjuster association is possible right here on Urantia and no limit can be placed on the spiritual evolution of the mortal associated with God by sharing his inner life of mental meanings and spiritual values with his Divine Adjuster.
Although the soul is described as morontia, its birth actually belongs to the human personality, but the Thought Adjuster takes charge of spiritualizing the soul’s morontia experience during its earth life even while under the influence of the adjutant mind-spirits. The destiny of a will personality depends entirely on its prerogatives of personal choices in its human life, whether material or spiritual, through the unconstrained bestowal of personality by the Universal Father. UB 66:8.6 “The free will of man is supreme in moral affairs; even the indwelling Thought Adjuster refuses to compel man to think a single thought or to perform a single act against the choosing of man’s own will.”
Since the final bestowal of our Creator Son on Urantia, Adjusters “have flocked to indwell the minds of all normal will creatures.” The solemn commitment of a personality of mortal origin to consecrate his will to that of God becomes the indissoluble link with his indwelling Adjuster in his ascending career. UB 111:3.1 “Adjuster fusion denotes that the ascender has eternally and irrevocably chosen to do the will of the Father.” Human-divine fusion represents the human will unified with the will of the Adjuster bound together in one common will: the pursuit of experiential perfection with and for God the Supreme.
“And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choosing son find inner union (fusion) with the indwelling God fragment, while this same perfecting son will find supreme personality satisfaction in the worship communion of the personality of man and the personality of his Maker, two personalities whose creative attributes have eternally joined in self-willed mutuality of expression—the birth of another eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God.” The human will taking precedence over the will of the Adjuster indicates that the alliance between these two different wills is entirely dependent upon the beneficiary of the personality gift from the Universal Father. The irrevocable choice and dedication of a human personality to do the will of God during his planetary mortal life, whether fixed here on Urantia during his earth life or in some eternal future, this supreme choice will persist; the human will will ever subsist according to its own aspirations. (UB 111:5.6)
¶ Summary
- The best method for prepersonal Adjusters to attain personality is to associate with a will personality of human origin to find personal expression by indwelling a human mind in order to have that concrete experience of actual living in submission to the will of man for the present epoch of the Supreme.
- For the personality of mortal origin, the Thought Adjuster testifies to its survival through the formation of the morontia soul in progress toward the perfect nature of the God of Perfection. UB 1:0.5 “Such perfection may not be universal in the material sense, unlimited in intellectual grasp, or final in spiritual experience, but it is final and complete in all finite aspects of divinity of will, perfection of personality motivation, and God-consciousness.”
- The common goal of Adjuster man is to experience the eternal marriage, a final human-divine union in one entity: son of man and son of God. UB 101:6.6 “With man, the eventual fusion and resultant oneness with the indwelling Adjuster—the personality synthesis of man and the essence of God—constitute him, in potential, a living part of the Supreme and insure for such a onetime mortal being the eternal birthright of the endless pursuit of finality of universe service for and with the Supreme.”
Human-divine fusion is the first stage of joint attainment and does not reveal that all is accomplished for a personality of mortal origin; it is only the first step toward constancy in continuing the evolution of human origin toward the higher levels of attainment in the search for the Eternal Father and in the eternal future. UB 106:7.5 “No matter how much of God you may attain, there will always remain much more of him, the existence of which you will not even suspect. And we believe that this is just as true on transcendental levels as it is in the domains of finite existence. The quest for God is endless!”
A Solitary Messenger from Orvonton mentions concerning Thought Adjusters: UB 110:1.2 “I wish that you could love them more, cooperate more widely with them, and cherish them more affectionately.
