© 2000 Catherine Jones
© 2000 Urantia Association International (IUA)
Catherine Jones, U.S.A.
What if I told you this moming that you have a personal, special message from a spirit personality, one who was created by the Infinite Spirit at the Third Source and Center. This spirit personality is a Solitary Messenger, part of a corps of Solitary Messengers who were created to possess the most efficient and fastest means of communication within the master universe, having the capacity to travel at 841,621,642,000 miles [1.354.458.739.000 kilometres] per second of our time, and that this Solitary Messenger was attached to the commission sent to our world, Urantia, around 1934 to enlarge the revelation of truth to our world.
Would this get your attention? It did mine.
This message is Paper 111, “The Adjuster and the Soul,” starting on UB 111:0.1 of The Urantia Book.
What does the world know about Thought Adjusters, personality and the evolving soul? For many years scientists and philosophers have tried to give satisfactory answers to these questions. The answers will come only through our cosmic insight and spiritual discovery.
From the study of The Urantia Book we have learned that:
a. Personality is a gift bestowed only by the Eternal Father to us at birth. No two personalities are identical.
b. Thought Adjusters are also a gift from the Father at the time we make our first decision of survival value.
c. The Soul is what is evolving in our minds, as we live and make decisions of spirit quality. It is the “me” that follows us after death.
As we look at evolutionary religions, both oriental and occidental, we see they share a common belief that man has a divine nature residing in a human body. They all realize there is something growing inside man’s mind that will continue to live after his death, while recognizing there is a Deity presence outside the body.
Most modern men on Urantia believe their soul comes from some sort of divine spirit. Throughout the ages people have believed that man’s soul lived in different organs of the body—the eye, liver, kidney, heart, and later, the brain. Man not too long ago associated the soul with blood, breath, shadows, and even his reflection in the water.
When we look at the Hindus, Chinese, Egyptians and African tribes, we can see a recognition of the presence of the Adjuster, with different interpretations. The Hindus, while accepting the concept of the atman failed to also see there was an evolving and potentially immortal soul. The Chinese accepted two aspects of a human being — the yang (the soul) and the yin (the spirit). Egyptians and many African tribes believed in two factors—the ka or soul was in existence before them, but not the ba, the spirit.
Many ancient Nile valley carvings have been discovered by archeologists. A relief, carved in the 15th century before Christ, depicts the birth of a prince on the arm of a Nile God, and near the child is another child, identical in appearance—a protecting spirit that is a symbol of that entity that the Egyptians called the ka.
The Egyptians believed this ka guided them into better paths of life and especially influenced their fortunes in the hereafter. Upon death this spirit genius was expected to be waiting for him on the other side of the Great River. First, only kings were supposed to have kas, but later it was believed that all righteous men possessed them.
One Egptian ruler, speaking of the ka within bis heart said “I did not disregard its speech, I feared to transgress its guidance. I prospered thereby greatly; I was thus successful by reason of that which it caused me to do; I was distinguished by its guidance.” UB 111:0.6
Many believed that the ka was an oracle from God in everybody. They also believed they were to spend eternity in gladness of heart in the favor of the God that is in you UB 111:0.6
Have you heard of the “evil eye”? The term, still in use today, was believed by many of our ancestors to be the soul looking out upon the world through human eyes. They feared the malevolence of the evil eye.
How important are our choices?
The brain is material—the mind is its product and is the human soil upon which the spirit Monitor does the work of evolving the morontia soul. This can only be done with the cooperation of the indwelt personality.
To fully understand the workings of the mind we must understand the seven adjutant mind spirits. When the Life Carriers initiate life on a planet, the Infinite Spirit through the Universe Mother Spirit sends seven circuits. They are:
- a. The spirit of intuition.
- b. The spirit of understanding.
- c. The spirit of courage.
- d. The spirit of knowledge.
- e. The spirit of counsel.
- f. The spirit of worship.
- g. The spirit of wisdom.
Only mortals are given the spirits of worship and wisdom. These two circuits separate us from the lower animal kingdom.
So, in conjunction with the mind, the soul can evolve. Material mind is the arena in whicb human personalities tive, are self-conscious, make decisions, choose God or forsake him, eternalize or destroy themselves [UB 111:1.3].
We have evolved as a human race, have been given a life machine (our body). The Eternal Father has given a part of himself in the form of our Thought Adjusters. Into our hands, subject to our decisions, we have been given mind, and it is by our own hands that we live or die! We, and we alone, within our minds, can make those moral decisions that enable us to achieve Adjuster—likeness—and that is Godlikeness.
Did we ever think these bodies we feed, dress and preserve are ours? No, they are on loan during our material lifetime. And as we use this material mind we are either accepting or rejecting the potential of eternal existence. You see, mind is about all we have of universe reality that is subject to our will, and the soul—the morontia self—will take with it the harvest of the day-to-day decisions which our mortal selves are making. Does that make you stop and think before making quick, irrational decisions?
Our physical form is operated by an electrochemical mechanism and delicately touches the spirit-morontia energy system above. We are almost completely unconscious of these systems in our mortal life—so we must work in our minds — in which we are conscious.
And it is not so much what mind comprehends as what mind desires to comprebend that insures survival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striving to be like that constitutes spirit identification. It is not so much that man is conscious of God as that man yearns for God that results in universe ascension. What you are today is not so important as what you are becoming day by day and in eternity. [UB 111:1.5]
Do you realize that we can decide to let the spirit illuminate us as we make day-by-day decisions, that our lives may become noble, beautiful, true and goodactually great, actually impervious to evil and incapable of sin. Or we have the free-will choice to allow our mortal mind to be twisted, distorted and rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will. The choice is ours!
The Adjusters will never manipulate or dominate man’s mind against his will; to them the human mind reigns supreme. While regarding and respecting free will they constantly strive to help us achieve spiritual goals of thought adjustment and character transformation in the almost limitless arena of our evolving human intellect.
Mind is your ship, the Adjuster is your pilot, the human will is captain. The master of the mortal vessel should bave the wisdom to trust the divine pilot to guide the ascending soul into the morontia harbors of eternal survival. Only by selfishness, slothfulness, and sinfulness can the will of man reject the guidance of such a loving pilot and eventually wreck the mortal career upon the evil shoals of rejected mery and upon the rocks of embraced sin. With your consent, this faithful pilot will safely carry you across the barriers of time and the handicaps of space to the very source of the divine mind and on beyond, even to the Paradise Father of Adjusters. [UB 111:1.9]
Even when we are unwise in our actions and decisions, our minds are striving for unity with the spirit which is forever attempting to unify the spirit and mind.
The material mind of mortal man is the cosmic loom that carries the morontia fabrics on which the indwelling Thought Adjuster threads the spirit patterns of a universe character of enduring values and divine meanings— a surviving soul of ultimate destiny and unending career, a potential finaliter. [UB 111:2.2]
So personality—combined with mind and spirit, held together by the material body—forms a new, original, and unique universe value, which has the potential of eternal endurance: the soul.
The midway creatures—those personalities that are closer to us than any other spiritual being, having been born of spirit and man—have called the soul the mid-mind because it exists between the material and the spiritual. This is because we have the desire to know God and attain divinity, while still wanting to gain life’s experiences.
This is all possible because our minds are personal and we are in contact with superanimal realities. The wonder of all this is that we are working with the actual fragment of the very God of all creation—the Mystery Monitor.
Let’s further consider the evolving soul.
Even though we have sincerely made the decision to follow our indwelling Adjuster, there are times when everything around us may be in turmoil and, in spite of all efforts, we make unwise decisions and mistakes. These mistakes will not hinder our survival unless, at any time prior to mortal death, we decide to rescind our choice and reject survival. And even after survival, we still maintain the right to choose to reject eternal life up until the time of fusion with our Adjuster. Fusion with the Adjuster signalizes the fact that the ascending mortal bas eternally and unreservedly chosen to do the Father’s will. [1219.0]
The soul does not make choices! It is only able to reinforce the supermaterial decisions of the mortal mind, with the recording power of the Thought Adjuster. It stores our thoughts and deeds. The Thought Adjuster is completely conscious of the evolving soul and the mind is partially conscious of its presence. And thus does the material and mortal reality of the self transcend the temporal limitations of the plysical-life machine and attain a new expression and a new identification in the evolving vebicle for selfhood continuity, the morontia and immortal soul. [UB 111:2.10]
The core of religion is faith in the survival of supreme values. Mind knows quantity, reality, meanings. But quality—values—is felt. [UB 111:3.6]
In so far as man’s evolving morontia soul becomes permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness as the value-realization of Godconsciousness, such a resultant being becomes indestructible. If there is no survival of eternal values in the evolving soul of man, then mortal existence is without meaning, and life itself is a tragic illusion. But it is forever true: What you begin in time you will assuredly finish in eternity—if it is worth finishing. [UB 111:3.7]
Few (if any) mortals fully understand the miracle of the human mind and how the sensory impressions and their memory pattems have become organized into a dynamic network of principles. Meanings and values are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. They are only perceived in the inner or supermaterial spheres of human experience.
It is in mankind’s inner world that civilizations advance. Civilization can bardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pursuits of the sensory or outer world [UB 111:4.3]. Only in the spirit realm of human experience can you find those higher concepts that will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization.
Ideas may take origin in the outer world, but ideals are bom only in the creative realms of the inner world. It appears that today’s world is poverty—stricken in ideals. That is the explanation of poverty, divorce, war and racial hatreds [UB 111:4.10].
When creativity is turned to destructivity you are face-to-face with the devastation of evil, sin-oppression, war and destruction. [UB 111:4.11]
The past is unchangeable, only the future can be changed by the ministry of the present creativity of the inner self. [UB 111:4.12]
Very simply said:
The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exbibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God. [UB 111:5.1]
The imitation of God is the key to perfection; the doing of bis will is the secret of survival and of perfection in sumival. [UB 111:5.2]
Mortals live in God, and so God bas willed to live in mortals. [UB 111:5.3]
Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in eternity—all these are acbieved (in the spirit) now when the creature personality consents chooses — to subject the creature will to the Father’s will. [UB 111:5.4]
We do not surrender our will, but choose to consecrate our will, causing an expansion of will, a glorification of will, a perfecting of will—raising our will from the temporal level to that higher estate wherein the creature son communes with the personality of the spirit Father, the birth of another eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God (UB 111:5.5).
¶ Man is faced with a paradox.
The mortal dilemma consists in the double fact that man is in bondage to nature while at the same time be possesses a unique liberty-freedom of spiritual choice and action. On material levels man finds himself subservient to nature, while on spiritual levels be is triumphant over nature and over all things temporal and finite. Such a paradox is inseparable from temptation, potential evil, decisional errors, and when self becomes proud and arrogant, sin may evolve. [UB 111:6.2]
Of all the dangers which beset man’s mortal nature and jeopardize bis spiritual integrity, pride is the greatest. Courage is valorous, but egotism is vainglorious and suicidal. . . . [A bealthy and reasonable self-confidence is good.] . . . Man’s ability to transcend himself is the one thing which distinguishes him from the animal kingdom. [UB 111:6.9]
Pride is deceitful, intoxicating, and sin—breeding whether found in an individual, a group, a race, or a nation. It is literally true, “Pride goes before a fall.” [UB 111:6.10]
On UB 111:7.1 of The Urantia Book, the Solitary Messenger tells us “The Adjuster’s Problem.” This is one of the most beautiful and personal sections of the book. Please take time to read it in its entirety. I will give you just a glimpse. He tells us:
The higher human races of Urantia are complexly admixed; they are a blend of many races and stocks of different origin. This composite nature renders it exceedingly diffecult for the Monitors to work efficiently during life and adds definitely to the problems of both the Adjuster and the guardian seraphim after death. Not long since I was present on Salvington and beard a guardian of destiny present a formal statement in extenuation of the difficulties of ministering to ber mortal subject. This seraphim said:
“Much of my difficulty was due to the unending conflict between the two natures of my subject: the urge of ambition opposed by animal indolence; the ideals of a superior people crossed by the instincts of an inferior race; the bigh purposes of a great mind antagonized by the urge of a primitive inberitance; the long-distance view of a far-seeing Monitor counteracted by the nearsightedness of a creature of time; the progressive plans of an ascending being modified by the desires and longings of a material nature; the flashes of universe intelligence cancelled by the chemical-energy mandates of the evolving race; the urge of angels opposed by the emotions of an animal; the training of an intellect annulled by the tendencies of instinct; the experience of the individual opposed by the accumulated propensities of the race; the aims of the best overshadowed by the drift of the worst; the flight of genius neutralized by the gravity of mediocrity; the progress of the good retarded by the inertia of the bad; the art of the beautiful besmirched by the presence of evil; the buoyancy of bealth neutralized by the debility of disease; the fountain of faith polluted by the poisons of fear; the spring of joy embittered by the waters of sorrow; the gladness of anticipation disillusioned by the bitterness of realization; the joys of living ever threatened by the sorrows of death. Such a life on such a planet! And yet, because of the ever-present help and urge of the Thought Adjuster, this soul did acbieve a fair degree of happiness and success and bas even now ascended to the judgment balls of mansonia. ” [UB 111:7.4-5]
