© 1993 Byron Belitsos
© 1993 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Significant Books: The Mind of God by Paul Davies | Spring 1993 — Index | The Quest for Indigeneity: The Missionary Challenge |
The term “soul” in the Christian faith is a somewhat ambiguous concept but usually refers to the vital principle in human nature which has immortal potential. The authors of The Urantia Book define the soul as a “morontia” substance, a state existing between the material and the spiritual. The soul evolves as a joint creation of the Thought Adjuster (indwelling spirit of God) and the human will, and is immortal. The following propositions are taken from various sources and are presented to stimulate thinking about the soul.
“We have lost our soul.” So say the prophets of each generation. The soulless condition is the condition of indifference to the natural impulses of soul. Never have so many distractions imperiled the material mind’s recognition of its true calling: to consciously cooperate with the indwelling spirit in the fostering of the growth of an immortal soul. But never have so many spiritual gifts been given to help man recover and care for his soul. (Cf. Robert Moore, The Care of the Soul, HarperCollins, 1992)
False values in perfectly-tailored suits. Phony media personalities who secretly know the difference. Greed that does not know itself. Religious hypocrites who cannot feel. A civilization dominated by the values of commerce. Against this stands the questing soul. “How then are souls to be made? How but in the medium of a world like this?” In such a world, the impulses of soul strike the mind as odd, uncalled-for, unnecessary, and often unacceptable. But the soul persists.
“Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways!” (John Keats, Letter to his brother, April 21,1819)
Soul-expansion begins when we question the meaning of these strange, self-existing impulses of our soulsthese troubling and surprising urges to serve an unknown God, to love those who do not love us, to understand the apparently incomprehensible, to stop the daily routine and appreciate the world’s endless beauty.
Soul-expansion begins when we question the meaning of these strange, self-existing impulses of our souls — these troubling and surprising urges to serve an unknown God, to love those who do not love us, to understand the apparently incomprehensible, to stop the daily routine and appreciate the world’s endless beauty. We navigate within this cosmic terrain of the soul by asking “questions, more questions, and hopefully profound questions.” The questing soul is the questioning soul-a soul activated by a need to know and motivated by the desire to serve.
Meeting God half-way. The soul as the meeting point between the two wills, human and divine. A half-way home, a place to recover from the vicissitudes of material struggle, a place to refresh and purify the human will, and to turn again to the quest of knowing the Father’s will. A place wherein the Creator may come to “know man and attain the experience of the creature.” (UB 111:2.8)
The soul as the meeting point between the two wills, human and divine. A half-way home, a place to recover from the vicissitudes of material struggle, a place to refresh and purify the human will, and to turn again to the quest of knowing the Father’s will.
Soul as responsiveness to leadings. As the Father reaches down, we increasingly reach up in response. Moral consciousness, decisions to know the Father’s will, create the soul. “Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul.” (UB 196:3.20)
Soul as mystery. But how and why do moral decisions effect contact with the indwelling Adjuster, thereby giving birth to the soul? How does the soul actually grow? How and why does it come to be a “new, original, and unique universe value” (UB 111:2.3), altogether distinct from mind and indwelling spirit? What is morontia substance? Which qualities does the soul derive from the material mind? Which is from the indwelling spirit?
“The secrets of Ascendington include the mystery of the gradual and certain building up in the material and mortal mind of a spiritual and potentially immortal counterpart of character and identity. This phenomenon constitutes one of the most perplexing mysteries of the universes…” (UB 13:1.22)
“Our distinctions are Cartesian: between outer and tangible reality and inner states of mind, or between body and a fuzzy conglomerate of mind, psyche and spirit. We have lost the third, the middle position which earlier in our tradition, and in others too, was the place of the soul: a world of imagination, passion, fantasy, reflection, that is neither physical and material on the one hand, nor spiritual or abstract on the other, yet bound to them both.” (From James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, HarperCollins, 1975)
We are told that the soul resides between the indwelling spirit and human mind, that it acts as a repository of “spiritual counterparts [of our] careers, morontia transcripts of [our] true advancing selves…” These records are unceasingly produced by the Adjuster using as its working material “every concept of the mortal intellect.” What then is happening in this “middle position”, this “mid-mind”? The soul is online storage for morontia concept-duplicates. The Adjuster as transcriber and editor, hand-picking higher concepts of the mortal intellect, converting them to morontia substance, then downloading these exalted concept-copies to the soul’s meanings and values database. Here, the “worthy treasures of the mortal mind” become an eternal resource, endlessly retrievable by the surviving personality in its ascent toward fusion. (Cf. UB 110:2.4-5)
“The supreme value of human life consists in growth of values, progress in meanings, and realization of the cosmic interrelatedness of both of these experiences. And such an experience is the equivalent of God-consciousness. Such a mortal, while not supernatural, is truly becoming superhuman; an immortal soul is evolving.” (UB 100:3.6)
Values are felt without mediation of mind; the perception of value is immediate and existential. The mind adds meaning to values felt by the soul.
And Phaedrus knew something about values. Before he had gone up into the mountains he had written a whole book on values. Quality. Quality was value. They were the same thing…Quality doesn’t have to be defined. You understand it without definition. Quality is a direct experience independent of and prior to all intellectual abstractions…Of all experience, it is the least ambiguous, least mistakable there is. (Robert M. Pirsig, Lila, an Inquiry Into Morals, Bantam Books, 1992, pp. 67 — 76.)
The locus of value-identification is in the soul of the one whoexperiences value. But soul is not mind. Mind as subject grasps objects, yielding meanings. The perception of value has no object and no subject, for values are self-existing. The activity of the soul in relation to the discovery of higher values is the experience of the Beingness of values — a sensitivity to existential qualities of experience.
The notion of Quality denotes existential realities independent of any particular subject or object. Values are discovered in and by the soul, not invented and held as an object by the material mind.
The notion of Quality denotes existential realities independent of any particular subject or object. Values are discovered in and by the soul, not invented and held as an object by the material mind. “Concerning…the recognition of moral values…all that the human mind can do is discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.” (UB 196:3.10) Philosophy might provide an unbroken explanation of things, meanings, and values, but values when first apprehended by soul bear no explanation, are prior to any explanation.
If dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, intuiting-feeling is the royal road to the soul. While the soul is much more than a registry for emotion, feeling is a guide to the soul’s concerns. Feelings and intuitions — the distant echoes of soul-impulses now recognized by mind-lead to questions formulated by mind, and questions posed to the soul lead to progress in meanings.
…intuitive insights are registrations within consciousness of a loving guidance that is continually assisting and supporting growth…The first step to this is becoming aware of what you are feeling. Following feelings will lead you to their source. Only through emotions can you encounter the force field of your own soul. (Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, p. 81; Cf. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.)
Through a questioning, dynamic relationship to Being — the feelings and leadings of soul-material mind recognizes the values felt by soul. Through interpretation and choice, mind achieves new levels in the comprehension of the meanings of these values. Quantitative growth of the soul is impossible where the range of human feelingintuition is ignored, repressed or trivialized. When readily available and realizable meanings of experience are lost, the soul languishes, and the range of decision-action is diminished.
Soul-development occurs in two dimensions: God-consciousness and consciousness of the Supreme-quality of value-realization, and quantity of relation to cosmic actuality. But this growth is always conditioned by decisions, by the human will to do the divine will: the decision to intuit, then to think, and then to act in the light of faith. (UB 110:6.17)
“The common cognomen of this world…is a ‘vale of tears’… What a little, circumscribed, straightened notion! …Call the world a ‘vale of soul-making,’ then you will find out the use of the world.” (John Keats, Letter to his brother, April 21, 1819.)
“Jesus hardly regarded this world as a ‘vale of tears.’ He rather looked upon it as the birth sphere of the eternal and immortal spirits of Paradise ascension, the ‘vale of soul-making.’” (UB 149:5.5) As the soul evolves, we develop another aspect of mind, a secondary or “mid-mind” awareness, and our identity gradually shifts from material self-consciousness to value, soul, or spirit consciousness. We are psychologically living more and more in “the kingdom of God.”
Byron has been a journalist and television producer and is presently a consultant in the telecommunicaitons industry.
| Significant Books: The Mind of God by Paul Davies | Spring 1993 — Index | The Quest for Indigeneity: The Missionary Challenge |