© 2000 Chris Ragetly
© 200 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 15 — Autumn 2000 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 15 — Autumn 2000 | A Small, Well-Filled Bottle |
That afternoon Jesus and Ganid had both enjoyed playing with a very intelligent shepherd dog, and Ganid wanted to know whether the dog had a soul, whether it had a will, and in response to his questions Jesus said: “The dog has a mind which can know material man, his master, but cannot know God, who is spirit; therefore the dog does not possess a spiritual nature and cannot enjoy a spiritual experience. The dog may have a will derived from nature and augmented by training, but such a power of mind is not a spiritual force, neither is it comparable to the human will, inasmuch as it is not *reflective—*it is not the result of discriminating higher and moral meanings or choosing spiritual and eternal values. It is the possession of such powers of spiritual discrimination and truth choosing that makes mortal man a moral being, a creature endowed with the attributes of spiritual responsibility and the potential of eternal survival.” Jesus went on to explain that it is the absence of such mental powers in the animal which makes it forever impossible for the animal world to develop language in time or to experience anything equivalent to personality survival in eternity. As a result of this day’s instruction Ganid never again entertained belief in the transmigration of the souls of men into the bodies of animals. (UB 130:2.8)
Note: This will provide an answer to all those who today still believe in transmigration or metempsychosis.
“The Eternal Son is spirit and has mind, but not a mind or a spirit which mortal mind can comprehend. Mortal man perceives mind on the finite, cosmic, material, and personal levels. Man also observes mind phenomena in living organisms functioning on the subpersonal (animal) level, but it is difficult for him to grasp the nature of mind when associated with supermaterial beings and as a part of exclusive spirit personalities. Mind must, however, be differently defined when it refers to the spirit level of existence, and when it is used to denote spirit functions of intelligence. That kind of mind which is directly allied with spirit is comparable neither to that mind which co-ordinates spirit and matter nor to that mind which is allied only with matter.” (UB 6:6.1)
The adjutant mind-spirits experientially grow, but they never become personal. They evolve in function, and the function of the first five in the animal orders is to a certain extent essential to the function of all seven as human intellect. This animal relationship makes the adjutants more practically effective as human mind; hence animals are to a certain extent indispensable to man’s intellectual as well as to his physical evolution. (UB 36:5.13)
Note: Although the animal mind is not directly alluded to here, it is interesting to note that the animal is (to a certain extent) indispensable to the human mind as well as to its physical evolution. When one is a child, having the joy of owning a dog is undoubtedly a precious help for the evolution of patience, curiosity, friendship etc.
Life Carriers can organize the material forms, or physical patterns, of living beings, but the Spirit provides the initial spark of life and bestows the endowment of mind. Even the living forms of experimental life which the Life Carriers organize on their Salvington worlds are always devoid of reproductive powers. When the life formulas and the vital patterns are correctly assembled and properly organized, the presence of a Life Carrier is sufficient to initiate life, but all such living organisms are lacking in two essential attributes—mind endowment and reproductive powers. Animal mind and human mind are gifts of the local universe Mother Spirit, functioning through the seven adjutant mind-spirits, while creature ability to reproduce is the specific and personal impartation of the Universe Spirit to the ancestral life plasm inaugurated by the Life Carriers. (UB 36:6.3)
Note: The origin of the animal mind is the same as that of the human mind, but functions only through five of the seven adjutant mind-spirits, the last two, the adjutant of worship and that of wisdom being reserved for the human mind.
The life bestowed upon plants and animals by the Life Carriers does not return to the Life Carriers upon the death of plant or animal. The departing life of such a living thing possesses neither identity nor personality; it does not individually survive death. During its existence and the time of its sojourn in the body of matter, it has undergone a change; it has undergone energy evolution and survives only as a part of the cosmic forces of the universe; it does not survive as individual life. The survival of mortal creatures is wholly predicated on the evolvement of an immortal soul within the mortal mind. (UB 36:6.5)
Note: Not possessing a soul, an animal cannot survive after death.
“The higher the universe mind associated with any universe phenomenon, the more difficult it is for the lower types of mind to discover it. And since the mind of the universe mechanism is creative spirit-mind (even the mindedness of the Infinite), it can never be discovered or discerned by the lower-level minds of the universe, much less by the lowest mind of all, the human. The evolving animal mind, while naturally God-seeking, is not alone and of itself inherently God-knowing.” (UB 42:11.8)
Note: I think that the evolving animal mind that the author speaks to us about (here a Mighty Messenger) is the human material mind which can only know God with the help of the Adjuster, the guardian seraphim, the Spirit of Truth etc.
Again, on an average evolutionary world the seven adjutant spirits are far better synchronized with the advancing stages of animal development than they were on Urantia. With but a single exception, the adjutants experienced the greatest difficulty in contacting with the evolving minds of Urantia organisms that they had ever had in all their functioning throughout the universe of Nebadon. On this world there developed many forms of border phenomena—confusional combinations of the mechanical-nonteachable and the nonmechanical-teachable types of organismal response. (UB 65:7.4)
Note: Here is a piece of information which often goes unnoticed, the confused combinations referred to here, are of the type which developed in the time of primitive man during a period of evolutionary recession, when some of him interbred with animals, producing these confused combinations of organic reactions.
The acquisition of the potential of the ability to learn from experience marks the beginning of the functioning of the adjutant spirits, and they function from the lowliest minds of primitive and invisible existences up to the highest types in the evolutionary scale of human beings. They are the source and pattern for the otherwise more or less mysterious behavior and incompletely understood quick reactions of mind to the material environment. Long must these faithful and always dependable influences carry forward their preliminary ministry before the animal mind attains the human levels of spirit receptivity. (UB 65:7.6)
Note: Apparently the process of the journey from the animal mind to the human mind, if it is rapid in the passage itself (see the fate of Andon and Fanta in relation to their direct parents, who remained animals), is relatively long in terms of the amount of effort that the mental adjutants must make in their prior ministry in the animal mind.
Probably the greatest single factor in the evolution of human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams greatly perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream actually terrorized early men, driving these superstitious dreamers into each other’s arms in willing and earnest association for mutual protection against the vague and unseen imaginary dangers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the earliest appearing differences between the animal and human types of mind. Animals do not visualize survival after death. (UB 68:3.2)
Note: If, like humans, animals have dreams, these are not transformed by their minds into ghosts. Hence the difference with the primitive human mind.
Man’s earliest prereligious fear of the forces of nature gradually became religious as nature became personalized, spiritized, and eventually deified in human consciousness. Religion of a primitive type was therefore a natural biologic consequence of the psychologic inertia of evolving animal minds after such minds had once entertained concepts of the supernatural. (UB 86:0.2)
Note: For the most part, these concepts of the supernatural took place in dream memories.
“Religious perplexities are inevitable; there can be no growth without psychic conflict and spiritual agitation. The organization of a philosophic standard of living entails considerable commotion in the philosophic realms of the mind. Loyalties are not exercised in behalf of the great, the good, the true, and the noble without a struggle. Effort is attendant upon clarification of spiritual vision and enhancement of cosmic insight. And the human intellect protests against being weaned from subsisting upon the nonspiritual energies of temporal existence. The slothful animal mind rebels at the effort required to wrestle with cosmic problem solving.” (UB 100:4.2)
Note: It is from the moment when the human will takes over the animal mind that loyalty to what is great, good, true and noble, takes precedence over the indolence of the animal mind. As for the struggle in the philosophical domain, it is the daily life of every mortal as long as he wants to make it a valid basis for life. (UB 101:6.4) “…Wisdom encompasses the ideas formulated by the protoplasmic memory in a process of new associations and recombinations; this phenomenon differentiates the human mind from the simply animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses the aptitude for wisdom. Truth is made accessible to the individual gifted with wisdom by the effusion upon such a mind of the Spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.”
Note: Truth is here made available not only through the Spirit of Truth from the Father and the Creator Sons, but also through the Thought Adjusters and the Spirits of other Sons, such as the Daynals, who are the Trinity Teacher Sons, and the Avonals, the Magisterial Sons.
“When a moral being chooses to be unselfish when confronted by the urge to be selfish, that is primitive religious experience. No animal can make such a choice; such a decision is both human and religious. It embraces the fact of God-consciousness and exhibits the impulse of social service, the basis of the brotherhood of man. When mind chooses a right moral judgment by an act of the free will, such a decision constitutes a religious experience.” (UB 103:2.8)
Note: Such an altruistic act is here considered a primitive religious experience. There are undoubtedly many others, but the author, a Melchizedek, chose this example, no doubt to make us feel our primitive level, because this act of altruism accomplished in the face of a selfish incentive, is not easy to achieve for a first religious step.
“Certain abrupt presentations of thoughts, conclusions, and other pictures of mind are sometimes the direct or indirect work of the Adjuster; but far more often they are the sudden emergence into consciousness of ideas which have been grouping themselves together in the submerged mental levels, natural and everyday occurrences of normal and ordinary psychic function inherent in the circuits of the evolving animal mind. (In contrast with these subconscious emanations, the revelations of the Adjuster appear through the realms of the superconscious.)” (UB 110:4.3)
Note: Mortals often confuse the subconscious with the superconscious. The Urantia Book offers us the most rational explanation available.
But with the vast majority of Urantians the Adjuster must patiently await the arrival of death deliverance; must await the liberation of the emerging soul from the well-nigh complete domination of the energy patterns and chemical forces inherent in your material order of existence. The chief difficulty you experience in contacting with your Adjusters consists in this very inherent material nature. So few mortals are real thinkers; you do not spiritually develop and discipline your minds to the point of favorable liaison with the divine Adjusters. The ear of the human mind is almost deaf to the spiritual pleas which the Adjuster translates from the manifold messages of the universal broadcasts of love proceeding from the Father of mercies. The Adjuster finds it almost impossible to register these inspiring spirit leadings in an animal mind so completely dominated by the chemical and electrical forces inherent in your physical natures. (UB 110:7.6)
Note: The universal broadcasts of love from the Father of mercies is a somewhat unusual way of representing both the messages and the Father; the author, a Solitary Messenger, doubtless uses them in this way because he has to describe the ministry of the Adjuster, which (to us Urantians) has the greatest difficulty in circumventing our chemical and electrical reactions of our physical nature.
“Only in degree does man possess mind above the animal level aside from the higher and quasi-spiritual ministrations of intellect. Therefore animals (not having worship and wisdom) cannot experience superconsciousness, consciousness of consciousness. The animal mind is only conscious of the objective universe.” (UB 130:4.9)
Note: This is one of the teachings that Jesus gave to Ganid during their trip to Rome. The last sentence would lead one to admit that if the animal mind is only aware of the objective universe, then the human mind would also be aware of the subjective universe. Wisdom then consists in demonstrating objectivity in subjectivity, which is the awareness of awareness applied in practice.
“My son, I have already told you much about the mind of man and the divine spirit that lives therein, but now let me emphasize that self-consciousness is a reality. When any animal becomes self-conscious, it becomes a primitive man. Such an attainment results from a co-ordination of function between impersonal energy and spirit-conceiving mind, and it is this phenomenon which warrants the bestowal of an absolute focal point for the human personality, the spirit of the Father in heaven.” (UB 133:7.6)
Note: This gift of an absolute focal point is the Thought Adjuster who indwells the mind of each of us; although primitive man does not enjoy this gift right away, as soon as he asks for it, a Thought Adjuster will come and indwell his mind. On page 1479:7 we read, “An evolving individuality begins to manifest symptoms approaching unity, and this unity is derived from the inner presence of a fragment of absolute unity which spiritually animates such an animal-derived self-conscious mind.”
- Humanitarian fellowship—love. The purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving. (UB 196:3.7)
Note: Altruism is supergregarious, and can only exist through the existence of the spirit that inhabits our mind.
Morality is the essential pre-existent soil of personal God-consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster’s inner presence, but such morality is not the source of religious experience and the resultant spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but subspiritual. Morality is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the realization of the existence of right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes between the animal and the human types of mind as morontia functions between the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment. (UB 196:3.25)
Note: The moral zone is like morontia, an essential step-level before reaching the level of the human mind ready to decide to follow the divine will.
“When physical conditions are ripe, sudden mental evolutions may take place; when mind status is propitious, sudden spiritual transformations may occur; when spiritual values receive proper recognition, then cosmic meanings become discernible, and increasingly the personality is released from the handicaps of time and delivered from the limitations of space.” (UB 65:8.6)
Note: The physical, the mental and the spiritual are, in man, much more intimately linked than we think. Sudden evolutions of the mind are possible and do indeed occur. These sudden (or progressive) evolutions occur on all levels of evolution: material, morontial and spiritual, during our ascending career. It should be noted that the mind never ceases to progress, it is the experiential technique of endless progress. (UB 116:1.5). In the very distant future of the post-ultimate ages, which will undoubtedly be those of the subabsolute or even the coabsolute, the mind will continue to progress always.
Chris Ragetly
| Le Lien Urantien — Issue 15 — Autumn 2000 — Contents | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 15 — Autumn 2000 | A Small, Well-Filled Bottle |