© 1958-1959 William S. Sadler Jr.
© 1975 Urantia Foundation
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There’s a lot of things we should do down here that would make us more human. And I suspect that we are sufficiently slothful not to do many of them. And we may still survive. We’ll survive with qualifications. I think the nearest to the pain of purgatory will be experienced by those of us who are slothful, and who have to do up there some corrective things which we should have done down here.
Now, let’s reason by analogy. When a baby is born into the world, it is assumed that it has absolutely no control over its plumbing. And we provide didies, and all that sort of thing. But it’s also assumed that that child, at a reasonably early age, will get a valve built in there, you know, so that they are able to control this plumbing equipment. As long as that happens, nobody thinks anything of it. There’s a period when bedwetting is expected and normal and perfectly natural–it’s childlike. I have a friend of mine who has a son who went to college, and he carried this habit into the fraternity house. And can you imagine his mortification?
Now, I think many of us are going to wind up on the first mansion world and others as spiritual bedwetters. And I think our humiliation will be even deeper there than the social humiliation of my friend’s son.
As I started to say, when I said the book does teach that if survival is attained, all other losses can be retrieved–
Audience: Yes, that’s wonderful–
And I don’t want to be interrupted until I’ve explained what that means to me.
Audience: Laughter.
Jesus lived and he taught in a way that illuminates that. He didn’t ask the same of everyone. And that’s why I refuse to sit in judgment on anyone, because I don’t really know the gut of that person. He sent the Alpheus twins back to their nets, and promised them they were going to survive.
He made it pretty tough for Simon Peter. In fact, he put Simon Peter through a pretty horrible experience to vaccinate him, because Peter’s vacillating tendency was fatal to the future. He put Peter through great pain. And then, he got Peter all mad, and he said, “Peter, be a good shepherd. Feed my sheep.”
He pointed out that of the teacher more is expected than of the pupil. Of the master, more than of the servant. Jesus taught two levels of ethics–two distinct levels of ethics. To the believer, he said, love your neighbour as yourself. To those who would attempt to represent him in the world, he said, you must love men as I have loved men, and these are your credential. He didn’t expect all men to love with Father-like affection. He’s willing to settle for fraternal affection–that’s the minimum ethic. The maximum ethic is Father- like.
I think any human being who is failing to try to live up to his capacities is gambling with non-survival. This is my personal opinion. I don’t think any human being has to achieve his capacities, because it says, Abraham believed faintly, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And maybe that’s as much as old Abe could do right then.
But I can only tell you how I feel. I don’t sit in judgment on you folks. If I fail to try to do my best, I’m not so sure I’m going to make it. I don’t believe I can sit on my dead duff and count on God’s love to pull me through. That is not a childlike faith; that is childish presumption.
And just remember, you cannot sit in judgment on the sincerity of another human being. This is folly. As well as darn near sinful. There’s only one person I can sit in judgment on. That’s Bill Sadler. And you’d be amazed if you knew how harsh a judgment that was.
That’s up to each one of you folks. You gotta own your own hook, and there is no magic formula, except: of the teacher more is expected than of the pupil. The parable of the five talents is a good example.
That is why Jesus made the paradoxical statement which he made. Peter had been talking about the straight and narrow way, you remember? And the broad path that leadeth unto destruction–the old primrose freeway. And Jesus commented on Peter’s teaching and he said, it’s not without merit. And then he said, the doorway to survival is indeed a narrow one. But he said it’s also wide enough to accommodate anyone who really wants to make it, because, “I am that door.”
Audience: And that’s the significant part of it.
You see, I think for the little guy, the doorway is big. And for the big guy, the doorway is small.
Audience: Yes.
I don’t feel discouraged about this survival business, but I sure don’t feel smug. I feel thoroughly challenged. That’s my feeling.
Audience: Well, that’s wonderful.
Because I think the price of my survival is going to be to jump across that parallel bar just about as high as I can jump. They’re not going to set the bar low for me, I don’t believe. This much intellectual conceit I have. I’m afraid the bar’s going to be pretty high for me.
I’m running extremely challenged–not scared, but very challenged. That’s my reaction. And if somebody else feels very comfortable and secure in the love of God, by golly, I’m not so sure that won’t work for them. It won’t work for me. You know what I’m glad of?
Audience: What?
I’m glad they’ve got some very wonderful beings who decide such cases. Who can look inside a person’s heart.
Audience: The infallible IBM machine.
Yes, I’m glad the Thought Adjuster gives testimony. I’m glad that everybody–that they can be really short. And I always remember they say, in case of doubt, we always advance the creature. But I’m going to try not to use my grace period of thirty days on survival.
You superimpose on a real mammalian critter a spark of infinity–I don’t think anyone this side of God would have the courage to do that. The indwelling of the Adjuster, to me, testifies to God’s originality and to God’s amazing courage.
Stop and think: We are the farthest out. We are the lowest on the totem pole. There is nothing below us which can know God. And yet, he’s given us a part of himself, something which I would expect him to do to folks that were way up on topside. And yet, he doesn’t indwell them. He doesn’t even indwell our near of kin, unless they’ve done time, so to speak. The Adams usually have to serve on a world. The secondary midwayers wait a long time to get this. And yet, it’s our birthright. Isn’t it amazing?
We who are the very lowest should have the closest spiritual relationship to God– something which even a Lanonandek Son does not have. He’s not indwelt by the Universal Father. A Solitary Messenger, in speaking of Adjusters, says, “No one, no one wouldn’t but delight to be host to a Thought Adjuster.” UB 107:7.7
This thing is hard to understand. It’s hard for me to understand how Jesus got here. The author of the paper dealing with the worlds of the Father says the evolution of the immortal soul, its fusion with the Adjuster, and the making of these two antipathal creatures one being is a great mystery to us. Now, he said, obviously it’s not a great mystery to you, because all of Ascendington is open to you. But there’s a sector of Ascendington that’s forever closed to me. And he said furthermore it’s interesting to observe that you never tell us how this happened. I do not know that you can not; I only know that you do not.
This Thought Adjuster, like personality, has got the potential for all future time in it. This is a gas tank that’s, for all practical intents and purposes–spiritually–bottomless. This Thought Adjuster is a fragment of the First Source and Center on pre-personal levels.
Now, in talking about Adjusters, we’ve got this pre-personal function of the Father, or of God–of Deity. How can you say pre-personal, and then use the word Father in the same sentence? I would speculate that this is the level at which Adjusters are fragmented, because remember, all of these are present. When this happened, this did not stop. It just went right on. All of these things happened, and yet the preceding thing continued in existence.
This, of course, we can’t do. But we’re not talking about us. We’re talking about God. God is still pre-personal. God is also personal. And the best super-personal function I can think of of God is the Trinity. It’s not a person. It’s beyond personality. But that doesn’t mean he’s stopped being a person simply because he’s pre and post. God exists before personality, as personality, and after personality.
Audience: Dave S, who is a (can’t understand tape) in the group in Chicago, said that he had been so floundering around in his religious thinking before he found The Urantia Book, and that he was helped so much by the statement in the Urantia Book about the personality of God–that God cannot be less than a personal God. He’s much, much more than a person–but he can’t be less. And it’s that much more that took in Paul Tillich that he had been reading so much, and other people that had made him flounder.
There are three aspects of God as a sub-absolute being. One is personality. And the other two are related to personality, before and after. They never speak of the Adjuster as non-personal, or sub-personal. Tiglath is sub-personal. The Adjuster is pre-personal. The Adjuster, while not a person, has full capacity to achieve personality, to receive personality, either through fusion, or in his own name and right. And if I’ve got to use a pronoun, I’ve got to use the word “he” for a Thought Adjuster. I can’t use the word “it.” But technically, maybe it is better than he. But it violates my feelings.
Audience: Can you say them?
Them is the best. I would be inclined to derive Adjusters at this level because the Adjuster seems to operate in relation to Paradise circuits just as well as to the circuits of the Eternal Son. When the Adjuster travels, he travels on a circuit. We think of the Adjuster as a spiritual entity. But the Adjuster doesn’t choose to travel on the spirit- gravity circuits of the Eternal Son. The Adjuster elects to travel on the material circuits of the Isle of Paradise, because the Adjuster stems from a level which is antecedent to both the Son and Paradise. He’s just as much at home operating over the Paradise circuits as he is over spiritual circuits. The Adjuster is a part of the incomprehensibleness of the First Source and Center at this level.
Audience: Can he travel on a spiritual plane?
I assume he could. I assume for some reason the Paradise circuits are just more convenient for him. And that’s why I derive him from this level, a level which is conceptually antecedent to the Son and to Paradise. He centered physical gravity in the Isle of Paradise. He centered spiritual gravity in the Eternal Son. Mind gravity is inherent in the Infinite Spirit. But personality gravity, or the personality circuit, centers in the Universal Father.
Audience: Oh, and the Father doesn’t want to travel on the personality gravity, no?
No. I don’t think anybody travels on personality gravity. You see, there are four realities: mind, matter, spirit, and personality. Personality differs from the other three in that the three have quantity as well as quality, but personality has quality only. That’s why personality, the most potent of the three, is so dependable.
If you want to think of personality, let’s think of the abstract color yellow. Don’t think of a yellow anything, just think of yellow. Can you feel that abstraction in your mind? All right. That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about personality as such, alone, isolated. It can’t register, because you cannot have yellow, you can only have a yellow something. Am I right?
You cannot have personality alone. You can only have personality if it’s got a life vehicle to color. And given a life vehicle, it dominates that life vehicle. It determines the color of that vehicle.
“Personality Gravity is non-computable. We recognize the circuit, but we cannot measure either qualitative or quantitative realities responsive thereto.” UB 12:3.12
So, to me, personality, as I find it convenient to think about it, is quality, pure quality. Non-quantity. When I think of a color all by itself, it’s like thinking of personality all by itself. In actuality, you can’t have it. You’ve got to have a something which is that color. And something has to have that personality.
When death disassembles a human being, the body oxidizes, eventually. The mind ceases to be an individuation. I symbolize that in my mind by saying the seven Adjutants which are working in each of our cortexes–what is the plural of cortex? –I think of a rope which has a loop. That loop symbolizes a human mind, and when that person dies, I think they pull the rope out straight. There’s no loop any more.
In other words, the circuit is there, but my individualized portion of the circuit is gone when I die.
My soul, the (can’t understand tape) and seraphim group are personal, takes that into custody. The Adjuster goes back to Divinington and stands by. The personality–the Archangels have taken the fingerprints of personality. They can identify it again, but they have no custody of it, merely a record. They can be sure it’s the same person.
Let’s kill Bud off. He won’t mind.
Audience: I’m about ready.
Audience: He’s had a full life.
When they get ready to reassemble Bud, the seraphim arrives in the resurrection hall on the first mansion world. The proper technicians go over to the quartermaster department, and say, we would like one g.i.–general issue–body suitable for an ex- sodium chloride life pattern emerging from a sphere having these co-ordinates. Then they go on and give them the physical type on Urantia–he’s a mid-breather, he operated at such and such a thermal level, the electrical potential of the planet was such and such–in other words, they give him a body he’ll feel at home in, see? A suit that fits.
I think these differences diminish as you go up the mansion worlds, but on the first mansion worlds it’s very important that you get something you’ll feel right in. So they take this g.i. body, and they lay it down on a slab–I think of a marble slab. This thing looks like a morgue to me, because–reasoning by analogy–that’s where we left here, and that’s where we take off up there. The seraphim plunks Bud’s soul in the appropriate upper end of this forked body. I think it’ll look very human. It’s got legs, hands, and what not. If they wake me up too different, it’ll frighten me, you know? We’ve got to be gentle.
Audience: How big is Bud at this point?
I think he’s the right size for Bud. Normal sized. He’s an adult.
Audience: He’s not six pounds, three ounces?
No, no, no. He’s about a hundred and twenty pounds or so.
Audience: Wasn’t it Jesus’ morontia body that the people saw?
Yes, but they fixed it so they could see it. And he didn’t look unhuman.
Audience: Well, wouldn’t that be the same morontia body he might have?
Yes, exactly the same. So the seraphim plunks Bud’s soul down in his brain, I think of it–some sort of morontia cortex. This is almost a physical body. You could break a leg. It is just technically not physical. They get a morontia mind circuit. They get an electrician in there with this mind circuit, and they throw the loop in there, see?
The Thought Adjuster’s returned. He takes up his position in the citadel of the mind. And then, personality reaches out and seizes this mind circuit. And that’s the return of consciousness. They go over and they take the fingerprint of the personality, and the archangels can testify this is the same guy, Kagen, who made it, God knows how. We’re all surprised, didn’t expect him. This shows the Father’s love, passes all understanding.
Audience: Laughter.
Now, where personality is during this span, no one knows. No one knows.
Audience: Why couldn’t this body be electrical?
It is. It is, basically, whatever system. The real humanity of all of us is electrical.
Audience: I mean the new one.
Well, it would be too shocking. It would be too shocking to us. We’re used to something preferable.
Audience: Well, I’d call it electrical physical.
Well, Ruth, if we woke up with the physical body of a secondary midwayer, it would be a profound shock. It would be a traumatic experience. A midwayer is a living electrical pattern–a secondary midwayer. A completely physical being. Here, let’s analyze out what is the true human part of man. It’s his nervous system. Now, have you ever seen a picture of a human nervous system? All right. Visualize that apart from the corporeal body, somehow endowed with the ability to hang together without the body.
Now you’re trying to visualize the physical body of a secondary midwayer. He’s an electrical pattern. You see, a secondary midwayer is a human being minus all mammalian factors, best symbolized by the fact that he has none of the mammalian adjutants but the top two adjutants. Worship and wisdom function in the mind of a secondary midwayer.
Audience: Now what happens to Mr. Kegan’s accumulated experiences? His traumatic experiences–
All right. Bud Kegan’s soul–there are two living factors. There are three factors that persist. The soul, the Adjuster, and personality.
The soul, from a functional standpoint, has two kinds of memory. As far as the soul is concerned, it’s one kind. All these tapes which Bud has been cutting, and which are registered electrically probably in the cortex, have been re-taped on the soul level. Not all of them. All the significant ones have. And some of those have been re-taped on the Adjuster level. So you have progressive (can’t understand tape).
Example: Bud might have an experience which is morally significant but not spiritually significant. I’m sure that the soul would tape an experience of moral significance, because it’s super-animal. But we’re told that morality is sub-spiritual, so I don’t think the Adjuster would tape it. You get the difference?
I don’t think the soul would tape the spinal-reflex memories involved in tying a bowknot in shoe laces. You follow me. I’m trying to get a feeling for selectivity.
This means that when Bud wakes up up there, to the extent that the Adjuster has taped things, that immediately activates the corresponding tapes on the level of the soul. So the morontia consciousness is in immediate possession of that fraction of memory. Some memory is completely gone. I think it would be a damned nuisance to retain it– tying shoelaces symbolizes that. Or remembering–oh–I have a pretty good memory about the movement of transportation all over the United States. I know about what line I’m going to take. I see no value to that on the first mansion world. It’s handy to me here now. I can say, I want to point out such and such a line, or I want to catch such a train. I’ve been there. Of course the trains, now, they’re all gone. I remember so many trains that don’t exist any more.
This leaves the inactive tapes at the soul level. They can be activated. There are two ways in which, I think, they’re activated.
Number one: Bud bumps into Ruth Burton up there, and they’re reminiscing. They had a common experience, which was of moral and ethical significance to Bud, but of spiritual to Ruth. For whatever reason. And as they get into this point of renascence, Ruth starts talking about this episode, and Bud says, now wait a minute, say that again? And as she repeats that episode, it activates this tape. And a feeling of reality and emotional fact is attached to it as Bud hears this tape activated in his own memory, and from then on, it’s an active tape. Ruth resurrected it.
I think there’s one other way–your seraphim can tell you a lot of stories, too, you know.
There’s another way in which this happens. And this is the most mysterious of all.
Personality, I think, can in some way, in some degree, activate these dormant tapes. Bud is walking down some morontia promenade. And all of a sudden, he’ll stop, and you will turn around. I think this is a common miracle, you know? In other words, it’s an ordinary thing, but no one can explain it. You can’t explain something that’s miraculous, like human conception–a common miracle–and divine incarnation, an uncommon miracle.
All of a sudden, he’ll stop, and you’ll turn around. He didn’t know you’d gotten there. He hasn’t been down there checking over new arrivals, see? And in each of your memories will be activated a remembrance of who in the dickens you are in relation to each other. You were friends down here and knew about the blue book together.
Audience: Personal relationships are supposed to be eternal, of eternal value, not survival value.
We’re told that we will remember. We’re told that the relationships between personalities is always an end, never a means. It has final value. Little by little, I think, in the course of a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years, I think all of the significant dormant tapes we have will be reactivated. Even that which is dormant in terms of concrete memory still functions in terms of character, and I would describe character as the pattern of the soul, containing all of the beauty and all of the ugliness which characterizes the souls of each of us at the moment of death. All of the good work we’ve done, and all of the unfinished business goes right on over there.
Our weaknesses persist. Remember? They inventory them. Equivocation, procrastination, unfairness, ease-seeking, problem avoidance. Our actions will be unethical and sub-moral to the extent that these deficiencies persist. Our actions will be ethical and moral and excellent to the extent that we have developed sound character down here. The early decisions of the morontia soul, or the personality working at the level of the soul, are largely determined by the character momentum persisting from this life into the next life.
You almost might borrow a Buddhist term. You might say our karma persists. Causality, continuity. The Buddhists are awfully close to the truth there. I don’t like their end objective, which is nothingness, but the notion that your unfinished business goes on is quite sound. The papers validate that. Only, they don’t validate a circularity of reincarnation. It’s a linear thing, leading from here to Paradise.
Audience: Then Bud will not come back, be transported, say, through a Thought Adjuster to someone else?
No, Bud will be himself. You know the Buddhist concept of karma is good here. Bud’s actions will be–he will begin working out his karma on the first mansion world. I never used that word in this connection before, but it’s a good one. Yes, there is no Christian theological word that expresses it. In the Christian concept, you’re purged, or you burn. The Buddhist concept is much better. You pick up your package where you left it and start on the same journey.
Audience: How do you explain genius, Mozart and so on.
Geniuses are explained, I think, first of all by the genes, the gene pattern produced a cortex, a physical cortex which would take more loop of mind in some area. Then, I think, up on Divinington, when the Thought Adjusters volunteer, if an Adjuster had indwelt some mortal somewhere and had experience which would be valuable to this genius, I think that Adjuster would be given the assignment.
Let’s say that at the time of the twelve Apostles, a Thought Adjuster on Divinington who had indwelt a great orator volunteered for the Alpheus twins, I don’t think they would have let him serve. All that experience would be wasted. They’d assign him to Peter. Of course, I think the Adjuster would have volunteered for Peter. The Alpheus twins got Adjusters, but I don’t think they would waste experience on the Alpheus twins, since all Adjusters are identical in quality of divinity.
Plus, starting out with basic human aptitude, the Adjuster may contribute something, and the celestial artisans may further contribute something. They work with these folks. In other words, if you’ve got a lot, they give you a lot more. But they don’t waste. The Adjuster of a great writer–why waste him on a ditch digger? Let’s give him to Milton.
These Adjusters volunteer, and they do so with pretty good foreknowledge, because they assemble a blueprint of the projection of the human being.
Audience: Isn’t that a projection of the possibilities of the potentialities–
Audience: Yes, but somebody’s watching the genes.
Let’s see what it says.
“Although we do not definitely know, we firmly believe that all Thought Adjusters are volunteers. But before ever they volunteer, they are in possession of full data respecting the candidate for indwelling. The seraphic drafts of ancestry and projected patterns of life conduct are transmitted via Paradise to the reserve corps of Adjusters on Divinington by the reflectivity technique extending inward from the capitals of the local universes to the headquarters of the superuniverses. This forecast covers not only the hereditary antecedents of the mortal candidate but also the estimate of probable intellectual endowment and spiritual capacity. The Adjusters thus volunteer to indwell minds of whose intimate natures they have been fully appraised.” UB 108:1.2
They have the courage of the Universal Father, who is the source of courage as well as the (can’t understand tape), I think.
Audience: The patience, the patience.
Well, now, wait a minute, Ruth. You can’t say an Adjuster has patience; they’re not time conscious.
Audience: It just seems to me they must have patience.
You remember it says that patience is exercised only by humans whose time units are short. I don’t think the soul tapes too much on the lower Adjutant level, level five. That’s mammalian thinking. And a whole heck of our thinking takes place on that level. I’m pretty sure the top two Adjutants register. And of course, there must be many confusional episodes. They’re an emulsion.
It says here, “Patience is exercised by those mortals whose time units are short. True maturity transcends patience by a forbearance born of real understanding.”
They’re discussing time and eternity. That’s true, too, you know it? If you understand how things are going to work out, pretty well, you’re not patient, you’re understanding. If you don’t understand, then you’ve got to be patient. And if you haven’t got that much wisdom, you’re impatient.
Audience: You’re frustrated.
You’re frustrated, yes.
I think the best definition of personality that’s given in these papers is, “Permanence in the presence of change.” UB 112:0.1 That appears in the last two lines of the first paragraph.
How can our personalities be unchanging when we change so? Well, let’s look at it this way. Let’s compare a human being to a necklace of beads. The beads are changing. Character changes. We grow, I hope, in knowledge, and perhaps in wisdom. Certainly we profit by our errors, our judgment improves. Our attitudes change.
The beads are continually changing. But personality is the strand on which are strung these beads of worship, and wisdom, and character, and memory, and love, and devotion, and other things not so nice. If the strand changed, it wouldn’t be us.
There are two things that are never going to change, if we fuse with our Thought Adjusters. One is the quality of divinity in the Thought Adjuster. The other is our personality. The Adjuster will change experientially, as he experiences. Our soul will grow. The relationship between the surviving self, the soul, and the Adjuster is an ever- changing thing. It’s nothing but change. And if it stopped changing, this would be dead. But the personality is changeless, only expanding into new levels of function, but it’s the same personality.
Audience: That is not what psychologists think.
No. We often use the word personality synonymous with sex appeal, or with friendliness, or extroversion. They’re doing to personality what they’ve done to space– they’ve attached new meaning to it.
Audience: Bill, on page 1223, there’s a bunch of whys–I wonder if you could answer satisfactorily please–it’s the third paragraph of the Adjuster’s problem.
Yes. I’ll tell you why we don’t do this. We’re animals. We’re lazy. We’re inert. The papers point out that primitive man only thought when he was hungry. We require the stimulus of pain. We do most of our thinking when we’re hurt. Hunger isn’t such a problem anymore, but primitive man went into action when he got hungry his tummy hurt, he was uncomfortable. The same principle applies to so-called civilized man, or– better still–man in process of civilization, which is what we are. When all goes well, we tend to become fat, dumb, and happy.
Best symbolized: Consider a Cro-Magnon, a beautiful specimen. Intelligent, artistic. The guy paints on cave walls. It’s been a rough hunting season. This guy is really down to red meat. He hasn’t eaten for several days, and he’s got a family. He’s picked up a spear. Watch that guy, every movement is poetry. Every iota of his high intelligence is concentrated on the kill. Look at him perched on the branch of a tree. Hutch could carve a statue of this character. Every muscle is etched there. His timing–you can see that keen intelligence figuring the motion of the animal. The arc of the spear. He draws back ever so silently. Wham. It’s a kill.
Audience: You could hypnotize me.
And now, I want you to look at him two hours later. He’s got blood on his mouth. His gut is distended. He’s gorged himself. He’s lying there asleep under the tree. The flies are buzzing around his dirty face.
Which one would you pick to paint?
Audience: I liked him in that poised, ready for the attack–
Of course. Why was he so mobilized? He had a problem. He hurt. Now, do you perceive why they say in these papers that civilization is being forged out between the anvils of anguish and the hammers of suffering? Because this is the only time we get up off of our dead backsides and do something. We have to hurt.
It takes this kind of a stimulus to cope with animals like us. And it takes this whiplash to cope with us until we catch fire. There are better stimuli, but until we respond to them, they ask these questions. Why don’t you do something about this? Yes, here we go. We are on the fifth mansion world now. Imagine. On the fifth mansion world.
“A real birth of cosmic consciousness takes place on mansonia number five. You are becoming universe minded. This is indeed a time of expanding horizons. It is beginning to dawn upon the enlarging minds of the ascending mortals that some stupendous and magnificent, some supernal and divine, destiny awaits all who complete the progressive Paradise ascension, which has been so laboriously but so joyfully and auspiciously begun. At about this point the average mortal ascender begins to manifest bona fide experiential enthusiasm for the Havona ascent. Study is becoming voluntary, unselfish service natural, and worship spontaneous. A real morontia character is budding; a real morontia creature is evolving.” UB 47:7.5
They’re talking about our fraternization with the morontia–with the transition ministers, the seraphim up there. They’re talking about the ones that are not on assignment. These are seraphim that are unassigned. They’re in reserve.
“Next to the destiny guardians, these transition ministers draw the nearest to humans of all orders of seraphim, and many of your leisure moments will be spent with them. Angels take delight in service and, when unassigned, often minister as volunteers. The soul of many an ascending mortal has for the first time been kindled by the divine fire of the will-to-service through personal friendship with the volunteer servers of the seraphic reserves.” UB 48:6.34
You like your buddy, and it rubs off on you.
Now, this is my feeling about these whys. We seem to alternate between Cro- magnon mobilized for the kill, and Cro-magnon with his gut full. And while we all crave the full gut, the poetry is not there. The artistry is not there. The beauty is not there. And that’s just as true of civilized man as it was of our primitive ancestors. Because we aren’t civilized.
I don’t know why this statement is true, but it is. It’s certainly true in my experience. I spent so much of my life being a slob and so little of my life being civilized. I’m a great disappointment to myself, as I’m sure you are to yourself. Sure. I think we all are terribly disappointed in ourselves. And that’s why the psychological technique of rationalization is so vital. It helps us live with ourselves without actually hating ourselves. Some rationalization, I think, is indispensable as crutches to this particular level of being a tadpole. As long as there isn’t too much of it.