© 2009 William S. Sadler Jr.
© 2009 Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre d'Urantia
Translation of a recording by Bill Sadler by Chris and Nicole Ragetly (2001)
There are many things we should be doing here that make us more human. And I suspect we are lazy enough not to do them. However, we can survive. We will survive with deficiencies. I think the laziest among us will experience the closest thing to the suffering of Purgatory and undergo the corrections up there that they should have done down here.
Now let’s think by analogy. When a child is born into our world, we assume that he has absolutely no control over his “natural functions.” We provide diapers and all that sort of thing. But we can assume that this child, at a reasonably young age, will be fitted with a valve, you know, so that he can control his evacuation system. As long as that lasts, no one objects. The period of incontinence is expected, normal, and perfectly natural—it’s childhood. A friend of mine’s son carried this habit into middle school. Can you imagine his mortification?
Now I think many of us will find ourselves on the first Mansion World as spiritual incontinents. Our humiliation will then be even deeper than the social humiliation of my friend’s son.
As I began to say, the book teaches us that if survival is achieved, all other faults can be repaired.
Jesus lived and taught in a way that illuminates this. He didn’t ask the same thing of everyone. And that’s why I refuse to pass judgment on anyone, if I don’t really know the depths of that soul. He sent the Alpheus twins home, and promised them that they would survive.
He was much more severe with Simon Peter. In fact, he put Simon Peter through a horrible experience to immunize him, because Peter’s hesitant character would have been fatal to him in the future. He made Peter go through an experience of great suffering. Then he exasperated him, saying to him: “Peter, be a good shepherd. Feed my flock.”
He emphasized that more is expected of the master than of the student. Of the master more than of the servant. Jesus taught that there are two distinct levels of ethics. To the believer he said: love your neighbor as yourself. To those who would try to represent him to the world, he said: “you must love men as I have loved them, and these are your credentials.” He did not expect that all men would love with the affection of the Father. He agreed to establish a brotherly affection - which is the minimum ethic. The maximum ethic is similar to that of the Father.
I think that any human being who fails in trying to live up to his ability, jeopardizes his chances of survival. That’s my personal opinion. I don’t think any human being can go beyond his means, because it says, “Abraham believed moderately, and yet his righteousness was counted.” That may be the most that old Abraham could achieve then. But I can only tell you how I feel. I’m not judging you, friends. If I fail in trying to do my best, I’m not so sure I can do it. I don’t think I can sit there quietly and count on God’s love to pull me through. That’s not childish faith, that’s childish presumption.
Just remember, you can’t pass judgment on the sincerity of another human being. It’s foolishness, as well as sinful. There’s only one person I can pass judgment on. That’s Bill Sadler. And you’d be suffocated if you knew how harsh that judgment is.
It’s up to each of you to play, my friends. You must take responsibility, and there is no magic formula, except: “More is expected of the teacher than of the student.” The parable of the five talents is a good example.
This is why Jesus made this paradoxical statement. Remember, Peter spoke about the straight and narrow way?
And, of the broad way that leads to destruction—“the easy way.” Jesus commented on Peter’s teaching and said that it was not without merit. Then he added: the gate that leads to survival is very narrow indeed. But he added that it is also wide enough to allow the one who really wants to go through it, because “I am the gate.”
You see, I think that for little people, the gate is wide. And for important people, the gate is narrow.
I think the price of my survival is going to be to jump over that bar as high as I can. I don’t think they’re going to lower that bar for me. I have this intellectual vanity. I’m afraid the bar is set very high for me. I’m in a position of extreme defiance — not afraid, but challenged. That’s my reaction. And if somebody feels very comfortable and secure in God’s love, well, oh my! I’m not so sure it’s going to work for them. It’s not going to work for me. Do you know what makes me happy? I’m very happy that they have wonderful beings who decide such cases, who can see inside a person’s heart.
Yes, I’m glad the Thought Adjuster bears witness to that. I’m glad for everybody—that they can really take shortcuts. And I always remember they say, when in doubt, we move the creature forward. But I’m going to try not to use my thirty-day grace period after I survive.
You superimpose upon any mammal a spark of infinity—I do not think that anyone but God would have the courage to do it. To me the indwelling Adjuster bears witness to the amazing originality and courage of God.
Stop and think: We are the furthest away. We are the lowest on the scale. There is nothing below us that can know God. And yet he has given us a piece of himself, something he could have done to others far more advanced than we are. And yet he does not indwell them. He does not even indwell our near cousins, unless they have served a certain probationary period, so to speak. The Adams have to serve on a world. The secondary midwayers have to wait a very long time before they have one. And yet it is our birthright. Is it not amazing? We, who are the lowest, must have the closest spiritual relationship to God—something that even a Lanonandek Son does not possess. He is not indwelt by the Universal Father. Speaking of Adjusters, a Solitary Messenger said: “No one, no one, would be more delighted than to be the guest of a Thought Adjuster.”
This is difficult to understand. It is difficult for me to understand how Jesus got here. The author of the paper dealing with the worlds of the Father, says that the evolution of the immortal soul, its fusion with the Adjuster, and the realization of these two antipodal creatures into one creature is a great mystery to us. Now he says (a Perfecter of Wisdom), “It is obviously not a great mystery to you, because all of Ascendington is open to you. But there is one sector of Ascendington that is forever closed to me.” And he adds, “How interesting it is that you never tell us how it happened. I do not say that you cannot, I only know that you do not.”
And the Thought Adjuster, as a personality, has within him the potential for all future times. This, from a practical standpoint, is a bottomless reservoir of fuel—spiritually. This Thought Adjuster, on prepersonal levels, is a fragment of the First Source and Center.
Now, speaking of the Adjusters, we have this pre-personal function of the Father or God-Deity. How can you say pre-personal and then use the word Father in the same sentence? I speculate that this is the level on which the Adjusters are fragmented, because, remember, they are all present. When it happened, it didn’t stop. It just continued. All these things happened. And yet, this thing that started continues its existence.
Of course, we can’t do that. But we’re not talking about ourselves. We’re talking about God. God is always pre-personal. God is also personal. And the best superpersonal function I can think of for God is the Trinity. He’s not a person. He’s beyond personality. But that doesn’t mean he’s ceased to be a person just because he’s “pre” and “post.” God exists before personality, as personality, and after personality.
Audience: …about the personality of God—that God cannot be less than a personal God. He is much, much more than a person—but He cannot be less…
There are three aspects of God as a subabsolute being, one is personality. And the other two are related to personality, before and after. They never speak of the Adjuster as nonpersonal or subpersonal. Tiglath is subpersonal. The Adjuster is prepersonal. The Adjuster, though not a person, has the full capacity to become a personality, to receive personality, either through fusion or in its own name and in its own right. And if I must use a pronoun, I use the word “him” for a Thought Adjuster. I cannot use the word “it.” Technically, it may be better than “him.” But it violates my feelings.
“They” is better. I would be inclined to place the Adjusters on this level, because the Adjuster seems to operate in connection with the Paradise circuits as well as with those of the Eternal Son. When an Adjuster travels, he does so on a circuit. We think of the Adjuster as a spiritual entity. But the Adjuster does not choose to travel on the spiritual gravity circuits of the Eternal Son. The Adjuster chooses to travel on the material circuits of the Isle of Paradise because the Adjuster’s stock is antecedent to both the Son and Paradise. He is just as comfortable operating on the Paradise circuits as he is on the spiritual circuits. On this level the Adjuster is part of the incomprehensibility of the First Source and Center.
Audience: Can he travel on a spiritual plane?
I think for some reason the Paradise circuits are just more convenient for him. And that’s why I have him emanating from this level, a level, which conceptually is antecedent to the Son and Paradise. He centers physical gravity in the Isle of Paradise. He centers spiritual gravity in the Eternal Son. Mental gravity is inherent in the Infinite Spirit. But personality gravity, or the personality circuit, is centered in the Universal Father.
Audience: Oh! And Father doesn’t want to travel on personality gravity, right?
No. I don’t think anyone travels on the personality gravity circuit. You see, there are four realities: mind, matter, spirit, and personality. Personality differs from the other three in that the latter possess quantity as well as quality, but personality possesses only quality. That is why personality, the most powerful of the four, is so trustworthy.
If you want to think about personality, think of the color yellow in an abstract way. Don’t think of something yellow. Can you feel the abstract in your mind? Good. That’s what we’re talking about, when we talk about personality as such, alone, isolated. It can’t be counted, because you can’t have yellow, you can only have something yellow. Am I understanding?
You cannot have the personality alone. You can only have the personality if she has a living vehicle to color. Once she is in possession of a living vehicle, she dominates it. This determines the color of that vehicle.
“The gravity of personality cannot be counted. We recognize the circuit, but we cannot measure the qualitative or quantitative realities that respond to it.” So, for me, I find it convenient to think of personality as quality, pure quality. A non-quantity. When I think of a color in isolation, all by itself, it’s like thinking of personality all by itself, isolated. In reality, you can’t see it.
You have to have something that has that color. And that something has to have that personality. When death dissolves a human being, eventually the body oxidizes. The mind ceases to be an individuation. I symbolize this in my mind by saying that the seven Adjutants that work in each of our cortexes—what’s the plural of cortex? I think of a rope with a loop. That loop symbolizes a human mind, and when that person dies, I think of them pulling to undo the loop and make the rope straight. There’s no loop anymore.
In other words, the circuit is there, but my individualized portion of the circuit disappears when I die. My soul is given over to the custody of the personal seraphim or the group seraphim. The Adjuster returns to Divinington and remains in waiting. The personality—the Archangels have taken the fingerprints of the personality. They can identify it again, but they have no custody of it, only a record. They can be certain that it is the same person.
When they’re ready to reassemble Kegan Bud, the seraphim goes into the resurrection hall of the first mansion world. The licensed technicians go to the supply store and say, “We’d like a standard body suitable for an ex-sodium chloride life pattern, emerging from a sphere with these coordinates.” Then they go ahead and give them the Urantia physical type—he’s an average breather, he functions at such-and-such a temperature, the electrical potential of the planet was like this—in other words, they give him a body he’ll be comfortable with, you know? A suit that fits him.
I think these differences diminish as you go up on the mansion worlds, but on the first worlds it’s very important that you find something that fits you. Then they take this standard body, they lay it out on a slab—I think of a marble slab. To me, this thing looks like the morgue, because—reasoning by analogy—that’s where we left Urantia from, and that’s where we “restart” up there. The seraphim house Bud’s soul in the appropriate upper end of his elongated body. I think he looks very human. He’s got legs, hands, and everything. If they wake me up, and I’m too different, it’ll scare me, you know? We’ve got to be gentle.
Audience: How big is Bud at this time? Does he weigh 3 kilos or 10 grams?
I think the body is the right size for Bud. Normal size. He is an adult. He is about 60 kilos.
Audience: Wasn’t that the morontia body of Jesus that the people were seeing?
Yes, but they arranged it so that it could be seen. And it didn’t look like something inhuman.
Audience: Okay, but wasn’t that the same morontia body he could have had?
Yes, exactly the same. So the seraphim put Bud’s soul in his brain—I picture it as a kind of morontia cortex. It’s almost like a physical body. You could break a leg. Technically, it’s just non-physical. They put in a morontia mind circuit. They bring an electrician into the hall with his mind circuit, and they fix the loop, you see? The Thought Adjuster has come back. It takes its place in the citadel of the mind. And then the personality takes possession of the mind circuit. That’s the signal for the return of consciousness. They take the fingerprints of the personality, and the Archangels can certify that it’s the same guy, Kegan, who achieved his resurrection, God knows how!
We are all surprised, we did not expect it. This demonstrates that the Father’s love surpasses all understanding.
Well, but where the personality is during this time, nobody knows. Nobody.
(to be continued)
Bill Sadler