© 2023 Jean Claude Romeuf
© 2023 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
Jean-Claude Romeuf — November 1, 2023
All the thinkers of yesteryear, philosophers and theologians of the Age of Enlightenment; all the scholars, astrologers, prophets and magicians of nonsense who have reproduced themselves from the Middle Ages to the present day, have asked themselves the following question: is man good by nature?
An intellectual war made up of ideas generating assassinations, civil wars, genocides, nuclear explosions, has separated the intelligentsia into different groups of partisans from all sides, who continue to bombard us with more or less far-fetched, mendacious and destructive theories, despite past experience.
We are always fighting for or against human ideals full of trickery. However, almost a hundred years ago, The Urantia Book came to remind humanity of Jesus’ divine ideal, and to confirm his message of love, the same as two thousand years ago: Love one another as brothers and sisters because God is your Father. He loves you because you are his Sons and Daughters.
personality allows the will to blossom like a flower, when it is dominated by love and the thirst for truth. The need to serve, without seeking reward or glory, is the measuring stick of a love that grows deep within oneself, over the years. Volition is the act by which the will can manifest itself; it is the voluntary act that allows the person to act freely and to participate in the emergence of the Supreme.
Personality is immutable, but will allows the whole being to change, for the worse or the better. It depends on the choices we make! In the absence of will, personality would be nothing, if not a tombstone in the middle of an infinite path strewn with wonderful adventures.
Everything that is impersonal seems subject to the absolute sovereignty of human free will!
1. Human will functions on the personality level of universal reality and, throughout the cosmos, the impersonal
that’s to say :
the nonpersonal, the subpersonal and the prepersonal — is always responsive to the will and acts of the existing personality. [UB 107:7.4]
But to say that the impersonal cannot enjoy or at least depend on a will particularly adapted to its nature and functioning on different levels, would be to make a regrettable error.
Was I wrong in thinking that the Solitary Messenger responsible for the quote we just read in booklet 107 wanted to talk about things, objects? Therefore, about the influence of the will on material nature?
No need to be a scientist to understand why the Earth and all the planets revolve around a sun and why atoms do the same around a nuclear nucleus. It is because an original intention wanted it that way and because physical laws were defined once and for all, in the seven superuniverses and in the four levels of uninhabited space. The universal material Reality was made possible by the will of a creative personality. In the Bible, Genesis already develops this idea.
In The Urantia Book, are there not beings who are said to be material, living and intelligent at the same time, but who are nevertheless incapable of choosing, and therefore of exercising a personal will? Would someone think and choose for them?
Let us remember the Master Physical Organizers, those characters who are difficult to mentally represent. The last four groups are barely people in the sense of an acceptable definition of this word (UB 29:4.26). The term “people” escaped from the mouth of the Universal Censor. He had to think while writing it. So let us remain in doubt for the moment.
Among these four groups, the Frandalanks are the most numerous and are found in the central universe, the superuniverses, but also in the exterior spaces where, it seems, no personality is present since these spaces are uninhabited and still remain a domain that the Unqualified Absolute does not share with the two other Absolutes of Potentiality. Their existence beyond the borders of the seven superuniverses is therefore proof that these beings do not possess a personality in themselves and for this reason are not people! The Frandalanks nevertheless live and act intelligently while remaining attached to the orders and therefore to the will of the physical controllers! They can receive messages, but cannot respond to them.
Fortunately for him, the Universal Censor makes up for it a little further, otherwise we would have been entitled to refer it to the Ancients of Days! Faced with the threat of the Imperial Tribunal, he admits his fault:
I recognize that the frandalanks are intelligent, but I cannot classify them as other than living machines. About the only way I can help you to understand these living mechanisms is to compare them to your own mechanical contrivances which perform with almost intelligentlike precision and accuracy. Then if you would conceive of these beings, draw upon your imagination to the extent of recognizing that in the grand universe we actually have intelligent and living mechanisms (entities) that can perform more intricate tasks involving more stupendous computations with even greater delicacy of accuracy, even with ultimacy of precision. (UB 29:4.38)
What would be the explanation of the author of booklet 29 today, if we refer to our modern robots and computers?
In this chapter, another sentence deserves to be quoted, because it concerns everything that is non-personal, but be careful, it does not concern the following two chapters in which the impersonal is also treated!
Throughout a universe of created beings and nonpersonal energies we do not observe will, volition, choice, and love manifested apart from personality. Except in the Adjusters and other similar entities we do not witness these attributes of personality functioning in association with impersonal realities. It would not be correct to designate an Adjuster as subpersonal, neither would it be proper to allude to such an entity as superpersonal, but it would be entirely permissible to term such a being prepersonal. (UB 107:7.5)
Of course, this is what is below the level of personality and concerns the will of the animal mind subject to the first five adjutant-minds. A lion knows whether it wants to go hunting for food or whether it is going to take a shady nap under a rock, before looking for food.
In this, he is the equal of the man who possesses a personality. As for me, it is after eating that I take a nap, not before! But like the lion, I could decide to change my habits. It is therefore not in this sense that I assert a will concerning my personality. My subpersonal will is sufficient for the needs of my animal condition.
Thanks to a human, physical, mental and spiritual evolution that has lasted for a million years, all the decisions, the choices that we have had to make, have brought us to the top of the pyramid of the animal kingdom.
There is no need for a long speech. All readers know that the Thought Adjuster is a prepersonal entity hoping to become a person by fusion with his or her chosen one.
No one forced mine to choose me! So, before knowing me, my Adjuster was capable of exercising an intention that was made possible by a voluntary act. But, strangely enough, I did not have the choice to accept this Adjuster rather than another, nor to be able to say to him: “get the hell out of here”! So I did not yet have the ability to exercise my free will, because at the level of moral choices that can lead to spiritual values, free will is king.
But rest assured, no, no, nothing at all, no, I regret nothing! Because I am sure that if I had to make my choice among so many others, it is him among all of them that I would have wanted. He is so patient with me; it is true, you have to put up with me! I say this frankly and without constraint, although I know that it is very difficult to divorce an Adjuster.
Every man or woman will become One with Him. He will enjoy for eternity the human attributes of personality and we will enjoy an absolute memory which will be diffused little by little, according to the needs of our experiential existence; first in supremacy, then in ultimacy when all the universes of the Finite will be anchored in light.
Since it is he who has chosen us, it is no longer necessary to demonstrate that the Adjuster possesses a volition. Would he then be capable of opposing our will? To say that the free will of a personality is sovereign and that it must be respected is correct but incomplete. We can trust the opinion of the Solitary Messenger on page 1183, 6:
Why then, if Thought Adjusters possess volition, are they subservient to the mortal will? We believe it is because Adjuster volition, though absolute in nature, is prepersonal in manifestation. Human will functions on the personality level of universe reality, and throughout the cosmos the impersonal—the nonpersonal, the subpersonal, and the prepersonal—is ever responsive to the will and acts of existent personality. ([UB 107:7.4)
It would therefore be because they are prepersonal, that they cannot oppose a personality. But the result is the same, because celestial personalities are not used to and do not want to oppose human free will.
Throughout a universe of created beings and nonpersonal energies we do not observe will, volition, choice, and love manifested apart from personality. Except in the Adjusters and other similar entities we do not witness these attributes of personality functioning in association with impersonal realities. It would not be correct to designate an Adjuster as subpersonal, neither would it be proper to allude to such an entity as superpersonal, but it would be entirely permissible to term such a being prepersonal. (UB 107:7.5)
Moreover, there are no superpersonalities in the personality circuit of the Universal Father, yet this term is found to designate the Paradise Sons who represent the Eternal Son in the local universes.
This term also designates transcendental beings currently residing in Paradise.
We have just seen that the will can reflect in a mirror, the image of several faces. Only a mind sensitive to the spirit can impose the fullness of its will: free will!
Free will justifies at the same time the power to make choices with a spiritual dimension. It is inseparable from the gift of personality. The Universal Father gives this gift to whomever he wants and whenever he wants. Therefore, it is useless to try to know precisely at what age personality arrives. What we are sure of is that it appears very early in the child’s life. Like Santa Claus, it comes down from the sky and goes through the chimney.
No doubt (but this is a personal belief and may therefore be different from yours), the Holy Spirit comes to illuminate the mind shortly after. I know that its source is in the Divine Minister, because The Urantia Book revealed it to me, but I have not yet understood what the Holy Spirit really is. Nor am I aware of the experience I have had of it. Perhaps, I believe, it is because I cannot picture to myself a personality encompassing the spatial totality of the local universe and assign it a precise location. I know that Michael is in Nebadon and that my Adjuster is in me. It is easy for me to look them up. I have their electronic addresses and can send them an email or leave a message on their telephone number. I believe that the Divine Minister is especially connected to the spirit-mental-adjutants, because from time to time I receive an email from her which is accompanied by: noreply@divineministre.com
I therefore answer in the affirmative to the question of Smilblick, which Pierre Dac asked me one day on television and to which I answered successfully: Yes, man is good by nature, because the Holy Spirit nourishes him from his earliest childhood and because everything that comes from God, even if it is of the feminine gender, cannot be bad!
The relative free will which characterizes the self-consciousness of human personality is involved in:
- Moral decision, highest wisdom.
- Spiritual choice, truth discernment.
- Unselfish love, brotherhood service.
- Purposeful co-operation, group loyalty.
- Cosmic insight, the grasp of universe meanings.
- Personality dedication, wholehearted devotion to doing the Father’s will.
- Worship, the sincere pursuit of divine values and the wholehearted love of the divine Value-Giver. ([UB 16:8.7-14)
The spirit of intuition, then the spirit of wisdom will allow the mind to make its first moral choice which will trigger the coming of the Adjuster. Then, I’m not telling you anything new, the desires of animal tendency will come into conflict with the ideals of divine tendency. We have become moral beings, that is to say that we have the capacity to differentiate between good and evil. Doing good requires strength, courage. It is perhaps in this sense that the adjustment and change of our mind by the spirit is exercised.
I would be unable to describe the work of the Adjuster, but I know that his desire is that we cooperate with him as much as possible. It is for this reason that the Mystery Monitors do not choose us at random. They first inquire about our potentiality, that is, about what we can become. The Adjuster is also interested in our genealogy, but above all, before making an association with a human being, he analyzes how the intellectual capacity of the latter can be combined with an adequate spiritual perception. It is only in this way that the human mind will find enough strength to permit the development of a morontia soul which will allow the human personality to fuse with the divine fragment of the Universal Father.
If it does not reject survival, a human personality who has chosen on earth to cooperate with an Adjuster, by an act of will, that is to say by volition, is certain to merge with him, in a more or less long time. Whatever our degree of intelligence, it is ridiculous compared to that of a seraph or a midwayer. The foolishest among us, provided that his mind does not prevent him from knowing God, has as much chance of fusing as the greatest philosopher. All men between the seventh and the first circle have a normal mind and have received an Adjuster, a pledge of immortality.
Better to be an imbecile doing what he can to love God, than a great thinker refusing to follow divine directives. By blocking one’s ears to the call of the divine, there is no longer any reason for collaboration to continue. The Adjuster then leaves his tabernacle. Man consequently becomes a beast. Like all beasts, he has no empathy for his prey; he often plays with it, before killing it. Compassion does not exist in the animal kingdom!
The man deprived of an Adjuster is easily distinguished:
The worst part is that perhaps, among these abominable beings, some resemble our children! Because, it is not necessary to possess power among men to cultivate feelings of hatred and desires for revenge. There are perhaps more than we think! To realize this, you only have to read the newspapers or watch television.
Joy came as the sentences flowed through my fingers, simple and quiet like a mouth opening its lips to express a smile or give a kiss.
Hope has never left me, even in the most difficult moments and I have been fortunate to never have doubted the existence of God. My religion has developed without any remarkable hitch through different currents of spirituality. I moved very early from a traditional religion that no longer suited me, to a personal religion open to the world. I stopped searching when I was presented with the booklets.
It is only through them that I have continued my research on God and developed my spirituality. Today, certain passages, but especially their in-depth analysis, immerse me in an intellectual reality in which the goodness of God is revealed more and more to me. I have experienced mercy through the Spirit of Truth of a divine love so great, that no human being could describe.
I have met some extraordinary people in my life. But the greatest, often unknown to the general public, I have met among the readers of The Urantia Book. I fear that I have not always conformed to God’s ideal, because His will is not always easy to accomplish, nor am I totally sincere when I write. I have the excuse of not having been created perfect and of not having yet become so.
What does it matter! If I am not always able to follow the path that God had planned for me, I will trace my own; the important thing is to move forward. Too bad if it does not go straight and is drawn in zigzags like the winding roads of the Cévennes. God will still manage to follow me. And if he overtakes me, I will not try to catch up with him, he will wait for me at the last turn!