© 2012 Meredith J. Sprunger
© 2012 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
Human beings are material organisms. We are the creation of a long and controlled evolutionary process, divinely implemented. Homo sapiens has achieved rational intelligence and a perception of the values of truth, beauty and goodness. Through these cognitive abilities we have built an enduring civilization and culture. However, we are as individuals, temporary inhabitants of planet Earth. Our material bodies and minds are transient phenomena. We are laying the foundations for a more permanent existence. The only surviving aspects of our mortal experience are our spiritual superconscious, our semi-spiritual soul and our divinely bestowed personality, which carry our identity, value and interpersonal memories to the next stage of our development.
One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is that a fragment of God lives within the human mind. The Ultimate Reality furthest from us is at once the Inner Spirit intimately associated with us. This Father Fragment is the absolute focal point of human destiny. It is the kingdom of God within us. The Superconscious Mind is the deepest and most real aspect of the human mind. This inner presence is the means by which we can know God and fellowship with Him. Our Inner Light is the cosmic window through which we can glimpse the realities of eternity. It is the source through which we can gain an eternal perspective while we live amidst the limitations and handicaps of time.
The Inner Spirit is the core of our superconscious mind. All ideas, concepts, values, and relationships that are in harmony with the Inner Spirit are part of our superconscious mind. Our superconscious psychological activities are permanent in the universe. The Father’s Spirit always respects our will and never tries to dominate our thinking, but seeks to spiritualize and eternalize it. When our will coincides with the Father’s will, we receive the reinforcement of the Spirit’s support. Through the presence of the Inner Spirit, we can live in uninterrupted communion and association with our heavenly Father. When we are attentive to His inner presence and love, we are never alone.
When we first attempt to commune with the Indwelling Presence of God, it is difficult, and rarely produces conscious success. Nevertheless, these sincere attempts at fellowship with the Indwelling Spirit are effective. We gradually establish harmonious relations with our Indwelling Guide who ministers effectively on the higher levels of our mind. This faithful guardian of the values of our future career, establishes a spiritual counterpart to every mental creation worth preserving. Thus, the Father slowly and surely renews us with those values of spirit reality which are the basis of our resurrection on higher levels of the universe. The Indwelling Spirit, while interested in our temporal welfare and our real earthly achievements, is primarily devoted to the growth of our soul and our eternal progress. This loving Divine Guide is the essence of the eternal development of our personality.
The partnership between the Indwelling Spirit and our mind and personality is the most incredible phenomenon in human experience. Its eternal potential is simply beyond our mortal understanding and comprehension. This divine-human enterprise makes possible the transformation of character; and through this transcendence, our animal nature, our planetary environment, and our relationships can also be transformed. Therefore, we should do everything possible to cooperate with the presence of God in our lives.
How thoughtless we are in contaminating our bodies with physical poisons, which are the temporary residence of the Spirit of God and our potentially immortal soul. How irresponsible we are in allowing the psychological poisons of anxiety, fear, hatred, bigotry and a host of other negative attitudes to taint and dominate our minds. These physical and psychological poisons greatly handicap the activity of the Spirit in the development of our personality.
As we gradually avoid the pitfalls of evil and sin and increasingly identify with truth, beauty, and goodness and realize these values in our lives, we become more unified in the growth of our spiritual life and more and more in harmony with the will of God. The supreme goal and objective of our mortal adventure is to unite with the Indwelling Spirit of God. When, without reservation, our will truly becomes one with the will of the Father and our personality growth harmonizes with this unifying reality, we experience fusion with the Spirit Entity that God has bestowed upon us. For most of us, this will occur on higher universe levels. Fusion with the Father’s Spirit marks the end of the probationary period of human destiny. We are then granted eternal status in the universe, and our advanced spiritual education begins.
People of all races and cultures have always believed that there is something substantial in human nature that survives physical death. Many names have been given to this vital aspect of life. In Western civilization, we refer to this enduring entity as the soul. When the English word psychology is literally translated from its Greek origins, it means “the study of the soul.” However, scientific psychology, with its objective methodology, will never discover the existence of the soul. It can only be known through superconscious perception and spiritual awareness. It is difficult to demonstrate the existence of the soul, but it can be experienced personally.
The soul is the aspect of self-awareness, discernment of truth, affirmation of goodness and perception of spirit in the human mind. It is made factual by the divine-human partnership. The Inner Light reveals truth, beauty and goodness to the human mind, and the human will in experiencing these spiritual realities affirms it wholeheartedly. It is because of the divine role in the development of the soul that there exists a semi-spiritual reality that transcends material existence. With our cooperation, the material mind is the earth in which the Inner Spirit develops the immortal soul. By analogy, the mind is our vehicle with which we experience; the Inner Spirit is our road map and compass; our will is the pilot that chooses our destination and the roads by which we travel.
The evolutionary growth of the soul is not a conscious process. As the soul develops its functions much like a second mind, it partially displaces the subconscious mind we have inherited from our animal origins. New phases of soul consciousness allow us to experience spirit consciousness on higher levels. To facilitate the growth of the soul in human experience, we must subordinate in our decisions and our lives the material and temporal to the spiritual and eternal. The spiritual goal of human life is to develop an individuality of survival value. As the soul matures there is an increasing transfer of the seat of identity from the perishable physical body and material mind to the spiritual soul which survives the death of our transitory vehicle of life.
Personality is the gift of the Universal Father. It is absolutely unique in each individual and is the permanent aspect of each person in the midst of constant change. Personal beings can transcend material experience because spirit is the fundamental quality of personality. Personality can be associated with material, mental and spiritual realities and has many functions of organization, integration, synergies and domination. Personality is the characteristic pattern of being, determining the psychophysiological dispositions of expression of energies and behavior. It organizes and integrates our psychophysical systems and unifies our sense of self-identity and self-continuity. This divine gift gives value to identity and conveys meanings to our constancy in experience. The bestowal of personality gives human beings the capacity for self-determination, soul growth and self-identity with the Indwelling Spirit of the Father.
Personality is not entirely subject to the conditioning of antecedent causality; it is not a mechanistic slave to material cause-and-effect relationships. Persons can transcend the deterministic sequence of events. There are no natural limits due to the evolving realities of personality. The dynamic free will of personalities makes it impossible to completely predict their decisions and actions. The uniqueness of personality stimulates originality and creativity in life. The same spiritual truth finds different interpretations and expressions in each person.
In the evolving universe, the purpose of the Supreme is to unify the personality through the increasing dominance of the spirit. Personality is the gift of the Father who possesses inherent abilities to utilize spiritual resources for the mastery of our physical nature through the mediation of the mind. The development of dominance is an innate tendency of the personality over every psychophysical system and the unification of all experience. In human experience, everything that is purely material and not associated with spiritual reality is a means to an end. The personality has spiritual relationships and is destined to unite with the Indwelling Spirit; therefore it possesses immortal potentials.
Personality develops through experience, especially in the growth of the soul and attunement with spirit. From this spiritual maturation there follows a superb integration of the personality and an increase in its effectiveness. In practice, our lives become more real, more authentic, and more fruitful. Such integrity of character is produced by increasing personal freedom, while it is associated with a greater perception of reality, self-understanding, and self-mastery. The general intention of the mortal experience is to develop an integrated personality, well-balanced, and well-grounded in spiritual reality.
In spiritual psychology, the dominant elements are: the Inner Spirit, the evolving soul and the personality. Amid the vicissitudes of life, we must keep in mind these fundamental and determining realities of our destiny. The Inner Spirit is our guide and our compass. With our cooperation and our assertion of spiritual truth our soul is actualized. Through the domination of the personality, all our possibilities and potentialities are organized, integrated and demonstrate synergy. These permanent aspects of our life prepare us for the struggles of time and the adventures of eternity. (to be continued)
Meredith J. Sprunger