© 2024 Robert Gallo
© 2024 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
(By Robert Gallo)
In terms of survival, from the first reading the philosophy which emerges from the teachings of the Urantia Book has always seemed clear to me; namely that as soon as we are equipped with our Personality and our Adjuster, the paths of post-mortem ascension are, with some exceptions, widely accessible to all as it is revealed to us that mercies, benevolence and compassion are great among our divine administrators and the following quote goes in this direction:
“The governments of Orvonton and Nebadon do not claim absolute perfection for the detail working of the universal plan of mortal repersonalization, but they do claim to, and actually do, manifest patience, tolerance, understanding, and merciful sympathy. We had rather assume the risk of a system rebellion than to court the hazard of depriving one struggling mortal from any evolutionary world of the eternal joy of pursuing the ascending career.” (UB 112:5.8)
While I was still a new reader, I had the opportunity to cross paths several times with Jacques WEISS (the first translator of the Urantia Book into French) who claimed to have had, for this project, encouraging manifestations which he attributed to Machiventa Melchizedek.
One day, when he was congratulating me on having finally read the whole Book, I approached the problem of survival in these terms: “The Book does not mention it explicitly, but from your point of view what is the average percentage of survival after physical death?” His answer fell immediately like a guillotine “One in a thousand”…
Since then I have always wondered on what elements he could rely to affirm such a selection rate?
Recently, during a UBIS course led by Claude Flibotte on “the survival of the Personality”, I unearthed a paragraph which seemed explicit to me on this subject:
“When the more spiritually and cosmically advanced mortals die, they proceed immediately to the mansion worlds; in general, this provision operates with those who have had assigned to them personal seraphic guardians. Other mortals may be detained until such time as the adjudication of their affairs has been completed, after which they may proceed to the mansion worlds, or they may be assigned to the ranks of the sleeping survivors who will be repersonalized en masse at the end of the current planetary dispensation.” (UB 112:5.10)
If we analyze this paragraph carefully, it emerges that physical deaths are apparently divided into three cases:
Case 1: Those who, after reaching at least the third psychic circle, immediately go to the mansion worlds.
Case 2: Those who do not have the required level and who are assigned directly to the ranks of sleeping survivors.
Case 3: Those who are retained for the judgment of “their affairs”; which judgment will decide to assign them to case 1 or case 2.
The common point of these three cases is that all of the physical deaths are survivors who will be repersonalized on different dates.
At this point, the question that immediately comes to mind is: “Are there non-survivors?” “Are there non-survivors on the plane (Earth)?” In truth the Book mentions two specific cases of non-survival, but they occur before physical death:
“1. Spiritual (soul) death. If and when mortal man has finally rejected survival, when he has been pronounced spiritually insolvent, morontially bankrupt, in the conjoint opinion of the Adjuster and the surviving seraphim, when such co-ordinate advice has been recorded on Uversa, and after the Censors and their reflective associates have verified these findings, thereupon do the rulers of Orvonton order the immediate release of the indwelling Monitor. But this release of the Adjuster in no way affects the duties of the personal or group seraphim concerned with that Adjuster-abandoned individual. This kind of death is final in its significance irrespective of the temporary continuation of the living energies of the physical and mind mechanisms. From the cosmic standpoint the mortal is already dead; the continuing life merely indicates the persistence of the material momentum of cosmic energies.” (UB 112:3.2)
“2. Intellectual (mind) death. When the vital circuits of higher adjutant ministry are disrupted through the aberrations of intellect or because of the partial destruction of the mechanism of the brain, and if these conditions pass a certain critical point of irreparability, the indwelling Adjuster is immediately released to depart for Divinington. On the universe records a mortal personality is considered to have met with death whenever the essential mind circuits of human will-action have been destroyed. And again, this is death, irrespective of the continuing function of the living mechanism of the physical body. The body minus the volitional mind is no longer human, but according to the prior choosing of the human will, the soul of such an individual may survive.” (UB 112:3.3)
I do not think that these two cases are superfluous and I have difficulty adhering to the thesis of a strong selectivity in our lifetime due to the short time allotted to us:
“And it is this very power of choice, the universe insignia of freewill creaturehood, that constitutes man’s greatest opportunity and his supreme cosmic responsibility. Upon the integrity of the human volition depends the eternal destiny of the future finaliter; upon the sincerity of the mortal free will the divine Adjuster depends for eternal personality; upon the faithfulness of mortal choice the Universal Father depends for the realization of a new ascending son; upon the steadfastness and wisdom of decision-actions the Supreme Being depends for the actuality of experiential evolution.” (UB 112:5.5)
So, to conclude, a fitting aria from Michel Polnareff comes to mind:
We will all go to Heaven, you and me
Whether we are blessed or cursed, we will go…
“In the inner experience of man, mind is joined to matter. Such material-linked minds cannot survive mortal death. The technique of survival is embraced in those adjustments of the human will and those transformations in the mortal mind whereby such a God-conscious intellect gradually becomes spirit taught and eventually spirit led. This evolution of the human mind from matter association to spirit union results in the transmutation of the potentially spirit phases of the mortal mind into the morontia realities of the immortal soul. Mortal mind subservient to matter is destined to become increasingly material and consequently to suffer eventual personality extinction; mind yielded to spirit is destined to become increasingly spiritual and ultimately to achieve oneness with the surviving and guiding divine spirit and in this way to attain survival and eternity of personality existence.” ([UB 1:3.7)