Podcasts about universe spirit

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https://ivanteller.com/

Do you have a strong intuition, inexplicable knowledge, or an empathetic nature? Do you have an unexplainable connection to the stars, planets, and galaxies when you look at the night sky? If so, you may be a Starseed. Starseeds are advanced alien souls from higher planes of existence, spiritually advanced, intuitive people who were sent to this world to help it heal and grow. Since they are bound to a human form, many Starseeds may not yet realize that they are in fact Starseeds. And while not an entirely new concept, Starseeds have been gaining traction as of late within and outside the New Age community. In today's special guest, Whitney Jefferson Evans' book The Beginner's Guide to Starseeds she offers a look at who starseeds are and where they come from, as well as their innate skills and spiritual sensitivities. She shares fascinating insight into the unique personalities and nature of starseeds and helps you figure out if you're a starseed, too! Perfect for anyone hoping to change the world or curious about different dimensions, this book is an illuminating and enlightening look at life on a higher plane of existence Whitney Jefferson Evans is a spiritual seeker: she spent the years of 2015–2018 studying the energy healing modality of Reiki, where she completed all four levels of training and eventually received the title of Reiki Master. She spends her free time learning about other healing modalities and using herself as a test subject for the latest in wellness trends. Throughout her studies, she's received certificates in Crystal Reiki and Color Psychology. In her day job, Whitney currently serves as Deputy Editorial Director and Director of Pop Culture at BuzzFeed, where she manages a bicoastal team and oversees all entertainment content for BuzzFeed.    

There are many names to describe the higher force - God (in all varieties), the Universe, Spirit, Angels... whatever you call it and them, what are your experiences? Do you believe? Do you see signs? Do you think these things come into play even with the people you get into relationships with? This is one of those episodes where it starts with one thing and all sorts end up being discussed!

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I had the best conversation with a client the other day about noticing all the ways spirit/universe is showing up for you even in the ways that don't exactly feel "positive" in the moment (like being hit by a school bus and totalling my car a month ago the day after J and I decided to move in together!!). We also talked about how wild it is to notice the way you're responding to stressful situations AFTER you've been doing the inner work for awhile. Let's chat about it.STILL A FEW SPOTS OPEN IN MY MASTERMIND AND AT THE NEXT LEVEL MAGIC RETREAT!!!Click here to find out more about the mastermind.Click here to find out more about the retreat.

Have you ever gone through or experienced something with a loved one and found yourself questioning the universal laws or manifestation of God? I believe that this is a healthy line of questioning to follow. It is how we find out what is really true for each of us. Tony Robbins says, “The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.” So ask the questions. Find your purpose, your reason and most importantly your Source. There will never be another one of you. Which is all the more grounds to be connected from within, to your whole picture and find your reason “Why”.Listen up to find out how to make that SHIFT to a Harmonious Hustle!Nichole Sylvester is the bestselling author of “OH SHIFT: A Journey from Chaos to Consciousness” and a renowned life coach and motivational speaker. A survivor of domestic abuse and addiction, Nichole shares her inspirational personal story of healing the unthinkable and creating a thriving business in helping others. Nichole is a global voice helping people remember what they’re made of. Huffington Post, Fox News, Good Morning LaLa Land and Elephant Journal have covered Nichole and her teachings. In her podcast, The Harmonious Hustle, Nichole interviews impactful leaders changing the world. Her message is to redefine the hustle by choosing harmony first. She has studied in India, Bali, Peru and with various teachers in the US to gain the tools to support her community in transformation. To inquire about coaching or retreats email nichole@nicholesylvester.comDownload  your free:  Awaken  your Abundance  Activation Series  Watch  transformation  videos by Nichole  on Youtube  Follow  Nichole on  Social Media:  Facebook  | Youtube   https://nicholesyl.clickfunnels.com/awaken-your-abundance-opt-in19635608Thanks for listening!  Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note in the comment section below!Subscribe to the podcast  If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also subscribe to the podcast app on your mobile device.Leave us an iTunes ReviewRatings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on iTunes, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on iTunes.

Have you ever gone through or experienced something with a loved one and found yourself questioning the universal laws or manifestation of God? I believe that this is a healthy line of questioning to follow. It is how we find out what is really true for each of us. Tony Robbins says, “The quality of your questions determines the quality of your life.” So ask the questions. Find your purpose, your reason and most importantly your Source. There will never be another one of you. Which is all the more grounds to be connected from within, to your whole picture and find your reason “Why”.Listen up to find out how to make that SHIFT to a Harmonious Hustle!Nichole Sylvester is the bestselling author of “OH SHIFT: A Journey from Chaos to Consciousness” and a renowned life coach and motivational speaker. A survivor of domestic abuse and addiction, Nichole shares her inspirational personal story of healing the unthinkable and creating a thriving business in helping others. Nichole is a global voice helping people remember what they’re made of. Huffington Post, Fox News, Good Morning LaLa Land and Elephant Journal have covered Nichole and her teachings. In her podcast, The Harmonious Hustle, Nichole interviews impactful leaders changing the world. Her message is to redefine the hustle by choosing harmony first. She has studied in India, Bali, Peru and with various teachers in the US to gain the tools to support her community in transformation. To inquire about coaching or retreats email nichole@nicholesylvester.comDownload  your free:  Awaken  your Abundance  Activation Series  Watch  transformation  videos by Nichole  on Youtube  Follow  Nichole on  Social Media:  Facebook  | Youtube   https://nicholesyl.clickfunnels.com/awaken-your-abundance-opt-in19635608Thanks for listening!  Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a note in the comment section below!Subscribe to the podcast  If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or Stitcher. You can also subscribe to the podcast app on your mobile device.Leave us an iTunes ReviewRatings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on iTunes, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on iTunes.

  Today’s Guest I'm back again, with another solo episode! Today's episode is inspired by my extensive year-end review that I've been doing. It started around Samhain, when I began reviewing the year and looking at the things I needed to let go of to move into 2019. I talked a bit about this and how you can do something similar in episode 275. I went through my old journals from the last year, and I pulled twelve oracle cards, one for each month of the new year. Then I found some journal prompts online for reviewing the year that I really enjoyed working through. Next, I dug even deeper as I reviewed the past year as it related to my work with the OBOD Bardic Grade course. As I've been going through old journals, reviewing what I wrote, I made some surprising discoveries. A lot of what I'm focusing now came up in my old journals as far back as a year ago! It's taken me the entire year to actually put into practice the ideas I had about my new focus, which really surprised me. It's made me reflect on how I can pay better attention to the signs on my path so I can become more aware of the shifts and changes I need to make in my life. This is very much a work in progress for me, and I thought it might be interesting and useful for you, too! Listen To This Episode      What You'll Learn How to recognize signs from the Universe/Spirit, your Higher Self, etc. How to actually pay attention to the signs so you can interpret their meaning Some specific types of signs you can look out for Why it's so important to be willing to see the truth, even if it's not what you want to hear Why you might want to record what you're seeing, so you can review it in the future Things I Discussed OBOD Bardic Grade course Weekly Messages West Kennet Long Barrow: Decoded and Orbed  Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest and other books  Plant Spirit Healing Apprenticeship  Business Intuition book  Connect With Holly Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Pinterest Google+ LinkedIn  How to Subscribe Click here to subscribe via iTunes Click here to subscribe via RSS Click here to subscribe via Stitcher Help Spread the Word If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and kindly leave us a rating and a review! You can also subscribe, so you'll never miss an episode.

Cathy Anello Author of the book "Six Months to Live -Making Each Day Matter" and Cari Butler Ellis Forgiveness Coach and Teacher of Ho'oponopono Hawiaiin prayers  - will guide you through todays conversation on why things happen that we don't understand -  causing us to proclaim to the Universe "Why me??" and will leave you  with specific tools to work with the Universe and ways to make "friends" with the powers we rely on to guide us through each important situation in our lives. 

The Real Nature of Religion (1104.1) 101:0.1 RELIGION, as a human experience, ranges from the primitive fear slavery of the evolving savage up to the sublime and magnificent faith liberty of those civilized mortals who are superbly conscious of sonship with the eternal God. (1104.2) 101:0.2 Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive social evolution. But religion, as such, is not merely a moral movement, albeit the outward and social manifestations of religion are mightily influenced by the ethical and moral momentum of human society. Always is religion the inspiration of man’s evolving nature, but it is not the secret of that evolution. (1104.3) 101:0.3 Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that “true light which lights every man who comes into the world.” And this spirit leading is distinct from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is faith, trust, and assurance. 1. True Religion (1104.4) 101:1.1 True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh. (1104.5) 101:1.2 The Thought Adjuster has no special mechanism through which to gain self-expression; there is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or expression of religious emotions. These experiences are made available through the naturally ordained mechanism of mortal mind. And therein lies one explanation of the Adjuster’s difficulty in engaging in direct communication with the material mind of its constant indwelling. (1104.6) 101:1.3 The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. “Without holiness no man may see the Lord.” All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God. (1105.1) 101:1.4 Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. (1105.2) 101:1.5 While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational insight which originates in man’s mind-experience. Religion is born neither of mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man’s moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man’s spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind. (1105.3) 101:1.6 Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the believing personality. (1105.4) 101:1.7 Thus it may be seen that religious longings and spiritual urges are not of such a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a profound impression upon man’s moral nature that he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God. The higher and superphilosophic wisdom of such enlightened and disciplined individuals ultimately instructs them that to doubt God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul — the divine Adjuster. 2. The Fact of Religion (1105.5) 101:2.1 The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of rational and average human beings. And this is the only sense in which religion can ever be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit. (1106.1) 101:2.2 Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of the morontia viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical. (1106.2) 101:2.3 Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight. (1106.3) 101:2.4 There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival: (1106.4) 101:2.5 1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster. (1106.5) 101:2.6 2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word. (1106.6) 101:2.7 Science ends its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause. Religion does not stop in its flight of faith until it is sure of a God of salvation. The discriminating study of science logically suggests the reality and existence of an Absolute. Religion believes unreservedly in the existence and reality of a God who fosters personality survival. What metaphysics fails utterly in doing, and what even philosophy fails partially in doing, revelation does; that is, affirms that this First Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are one and the same Deity. (1106.7) 101:2.8 Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality. (1106.8) 101:2.9 The contemplation of nature can only reveal a God of nature, a God of motion. Nature exhibits only matter, motion, and animation — life. Matter plus energy, under certain conditions, is manifested in living forms, but while natural life is thus relatively continuous as a phenomenon, it is wholly transient as to individualities. Nature does not afford ground for logical belief in human-personality survival. The religious man who finds God in nature has already and first found this same personal God in his own soul. (1106.9) 101:2.10 Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation, the substitute for morontia insight on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the same God in nature that faith exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation successfully bridge the gulf between the material and the spiritual, even between the creature and the Creator, between man and God. (1107.1) 101:2.11 The contemplation of nature does logically point in the direction of intelligent guidance, even living supervision, but it does not in any satisfactory manner reveal a personal God. On the other hand, nature discloses nothing which would preclude the universe from being looked upon as the handiwork of the God of religion. God cannot be found through nature alone, but man having otherwise found him, the study of nature becomes wholly consistent with a higher and more spiritual interpretation of the universe. (1107.2) 101:2.12 Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. Divinity functions in mortal personality as the Adjuster gift of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit, while these three supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme. (1107.3) 101:2.13 True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that “the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the soul’s trust. (1107.4) 101:2.14 Your deepest nature — the divine Adjuster — creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good. (1107.5) 101:2.15 The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. It is spiritual insight, and that is just the reason why some of the world’s greatest religious teachers, even the prophets, have sometimes possessed so little of the wisdom of the world. Religious faith is available alike to the learned and the unlearned. (1107.6) 101:2.16 Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly convincing. (1107.7) 101:2.17 Psychology may indeed attempt to study the phenomena of religious reactions to the social environment, but never can it hope to penetrate to the real and inner motives and workings of religion. Only theology, the province of faith and the technique of revelation, can afford any sort of intelligent account of the nature and content of religious experience. 3. The Characteristics of Religion (1107.8) 101:3.1 Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies; it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral consciousness. (1108.1) 101:3.2 Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny. (1108.2) 101:3.3 It is this same spirit personality, in primitive and embryonic form, the Adjuster possession of which survives the natural death in the flesh. This composite entity of spirit origin in association with human experience is enabled, by means of the living way provided by the divine Sons, to survive (in Adjuster custody) the dissolution of the material self of mind and matter when such a transient partnership of the material and the spiritual is divorced by the cessation of vital motion. (1108.3) 101:3.4 Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it: (1108.4) 101:3.5 1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.* (1108.5) 101:3.6 2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat. (1108.6) 101:3.7 3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity. (1108.7) 101:3.8 4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering. (1108.8) 101:3.9 5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice. (1108.9) 101:3.10 6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare. (1108.10) 101:3.11 7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries. (1108.11) 101:3.12 8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy. (1108.12) 101:3.13 9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times. (1108.13) 101:3.14 10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments. (1108.14) 101:3.15 11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin. (1108.15) 101:3.16 12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.” (1108.16) 101:3.17 We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience — religious faith; second, by revelation — personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others. (1109.1) 101:3.18 And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious experience. 4. The Limitations of Revelation (1109.2) 101:4.1 Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented. (1109.3) 101:4.2 Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve. (1109.4) 101:4.3 Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality. (1109.5) 101:4.4 In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine excellence. (1109.6) 101:4.5 Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by: (1109.7) 101:4.6 1. The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error. (1109.8) 101:4.7 2. The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations. (1110.1) 101:4.8 3. The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past. (1110.2) 101:4.9 4. The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge. (1110.3) 101:4.10 5. Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation. 5. Religion Expanded by Revelation (1110.4) 101:5.1 Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths of spirit acquirement. (1110.5) 101:5.2 Science deals with facts; religion is concerned only with values. Through enlightened philosophy the mind endeavors to unite the meanings of both facts and values, thereby arriving at a concept of complete reality. Remember that science is the domain of knowledge, philosophy the realm of wisdom, and religion the sphere of the faith experience. But religion, nonetheless, presents two phases of manifestation: (1110.6) 101:5.3 1. Evolutionary religion. The experience of primitive worship, the religion which is a mind derivative. (1110.7) 101:5.4 2. Revealed religion. The universe attitude which is a spirit derivative; the assurance of, and belief in, the conservation of eternal realities, the survival of personality, and the eventual attainment of the cosmic Deity, whose purpose has made all this possible. It is a part of the plan of the universe that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the spiritual expansion of revelation. (1110.8) 101:5.5 Both science and religion start out with the assumption of certain generally accepted bases for logical deductions. So, also, must philosophy start its career upon the assumption of the reality of three things: (1110.9) 101:5.6 1. The material body. (1110.10) 101:5.7 2. The supermaterial phase of the human being, the soul or even the indwelling spirit. (1110.11) 101:5.8 3. The human mind, the mechanism for intercommunication and interassociation between spirit and matter, between the material and the spiritual. (1110.12) 101:5.9 Scientists assemble facts, philosophers co-ordinate ideas, while prophets exalt ideals. Feeling and emotion are invariable concomitants of religion, but they are not religion. Religion may be the feeling of experience, but it is hardly the experience of feeling. Neither logic (rationalization) nor emotion (feeling) is essentially a part of religious experience, although both may variously be associated with the exercise of faith in the furtherance of spiritual insight into reality, all according to the status and temperamental tendency of the individual mind. (1110.13) 101:5.10 Evolutionary religion is the outworking of the endowment of the local universe mind adjutant charged with the creation and fostering of the worship trait in evolving man. Such primitive religions are directly concerned with ethics and morals, the sense of human duty. Such religions are predicated on the assurance of conscience and result in the stabilization of relatively ethical civilizations. (1111.1) 101:5.11 Personally revealed religions are sponsored by the bestowal spirits representing the three persons of the Paradise Trinity and are especially concerned with the expansion of truth. Evolutionary religion drives home to the individual the idea of personal duty; revealed religion lays increasing emphasis on loving, the golden rule. (1111.2) 101:5.12 Evolved religion rests wholly on faith. Revelation has the additional assurance of its expanded presentation of the truths of divinity and reality and the still more valuable testimony of the actual experience which accumulates in consequence of the practical working union of the faith of evolution and the truth of revelation. Such a working union of human faith and divine truth constitutes the possession of a character well on the road to the actual acquirement of a morontial personality. (1111.3) 101:5.13 Evolutionary religion provides only the assurance of faith and the confirmation of conscience; revelatory religion provides the assurance of faith plus the truth of a living experience in the realities of revelation. The third step in religion, or the third phase of the experience of religion, has to do with the morontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. Increasingly in the morontia progression the truths of revealed religion are expanded; more and more you will know the truth of supreme values, divine goodnesses, universal relationships, eternal realities, and ultimate destinies. (1111.4) 101:5.14 Increasingly throughout the morontia progression the assurance of truth replaces the assurance of faith. When you are finally mustered into the actual spirit world, then will the assurances of pure spirit insight operate in the place of faith and truth or, rather, in conjunction with, and superimposed upon, these former techniques of personality assurance. 6. Progressive Religious Experience (1111.5) 101:6.1 The morontia phase of revealed religion has to do with the experience of survival, and its great urge is the attainment of spirit perfection. There also is present the higher urge of worship, associated with an impelling call to increased ethical service. Morontia insight entails an ever-expanding consciousness of the Sevenfold, the Supreme, and even the Ultimate. (1111.6) 101:6.2 Throughout all religious experience, from its earliest inception on the material level up to the time of the attainment of full spirit status, the Adjuster is the secret of the personal realization of the reality of the existence of the Supreme; and this same Adjuster also holds the secrets of your faith in the transcendental attainment of the Ultimate. The experiential personality of evolving man, united to the Adjuster essence of the existential God, constitutes the potential completion of supreme existence and is inherently the basis for the superfinite eventuation of transcendental personality. (1111.7) 101:6.3 Moral will embraces decisions based on reasoned knowledge, augmented by wisdom, and sanctioned by religious faith. Such choices are acts of moral nature and evidence the existence of moral personality, the forerunner of morontia personality and eventually of true spirit status. (1111.8) 101:6.4 The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness. Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth. (1112.1) 101:6.5 Christ Michael, when bestowed on Urantia, lived under the reign of evolutionary religion up to the time of his baptism. From that moment up to and including the event of his crucifixion he carried forward his work by the combined guidance of evolutionary and revealed religion. From the morning of his resurrection until his ascension he traversed the manifold phases of the morontia life of mortal transition from the world of matter to that of spirit. After his ascension Michael became master of the experience of Supremacy, the realization of the Supreme; and being the one person in Nebadon possessed of unlimited capacity to experience the reality of the Supreme, he forthwith attained to the status of the sovereignty of supremacy in and to his local universe. (1112.2) 101:6.6 With man, the eventual fusion and resultant oneness with the indwelling Adjuster — the personality synthesis of man and the essence of God — constitute him, in potential, a living part of the Supreme and insure for such a onetime mortal being the eternal birthright of the endless pursuit of finality of universe service for and with the Supreme. (1112.3) 101:6.7 Revelation teaches mortal man that, to start such a magnificent and intriguing adventure through space by means of the progression of time, he should begin by the organization of knowledge into idea-decisions; next, mandate wisdom to labor unremittingly at its noble task of transforming self-possessed ideas into increasingly practical but nonetheless supernal ideals, even those concepts which are so reasonable as ideas and so logical as ideals that the Adjuster dares so to combine and spiritize them as to render them available for such association in the finite mind as will constitute them the actual human complement thus made ready for the action of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space manifestations of Paradise truth — universal truth. The co-ordination of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession of a righteous character, the prerequisite for mortal admission to the ever-expanding and increasingly spiritual realities of the morontia worlds. (1112.4) 101:6.8 The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for: (1112.5) 101:6.9 1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit. (1112.6) 101:6.10 2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free. (1112.7) 101:6.11 3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values. (1113.1) 101:6.12 4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona and the perfection of Paradise. (1113.2) 101:6.13 5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings. (1113.3) 101:6.14 6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service. (1113.4) 101:6.15 7. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite. (1113.5) 101:6.16 Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human experience of religion. And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe absolute in so far as such is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space. (1113.6) 101:6.17 Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience, of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus as he was. New potentials were actualized in the universe of Nebadon consequent upon the terminal bestowal of Michael, and one of these was the new illumination of the path of eternity that leads to the Father of all, and which can be traversed even by the mortals of material flesh and blood in the initial life on the planets of space. Jesus was and is the new and living way whereby man can come into the divine inheritance which the Father has decreed shall be his for but the asking. In Jesus there is abundantly demonstrated both the beginnings and endings of the faith experience of humanity, even of divine humanity. 7. A Personal Philosophy of Religion (1113.7) 101:7.1 An idea is only a theoretical plan for action, while a positive decision is a validated plan of action. A stereotype is a plan of action accepted without validation. The materials out of which to build a personal philosophy of religion are derived from both the inner and the environmental experience of the individual. The social status, economic conditions, educational opportunities, moral trends, institutional influences, political developments, racial tendencies, and the religious teachings of one’s time and place all become factors in the formulation of a personal philosophy of religion. Even the inherent temperament and intellectual bent markedly determine the pattern of religious philosophy. Vocation, marriage, and kindred all influence the evolution of one’s personal standards of life. (1113.8) 101:7.2 A philosophy of religion evolves out of a basic growth of ideas plus experimental living as both are modified by the tendency to imitate associates. The soundness of philosophic conclusions depends on keen, honest, and discriminating thinking in connection with sensitivity to meanings and accuracy of evaluation. Moral cowards never achieve high planes of philosophic thinking; it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual living. (1114.1) 101:7.3 Presently new systems of values come into existence; new formulations of principles and standards are achieved; habits and ideals are reshaped; some idea of a personal God is attained, followed by enlarging concepts of relationship thereto. (1114.2) 101:7.4 The great difference between a religious and a nonreligious philosophy of living consists in the nature and level of recognized values and in the object of loyalties. There are four phases in the evolution of religious philosophy: Such an experience may become merely conformative, resigned to submission to tradition and authority. Or it may be satisfied with slight attainments, just enough to stabilize the daily living, and therefore becomes early arrested on such an adventitious level. Such mortals believe in letting well enough alone. A third group progress to the level of logical intellectuality but there stagnate in consequence of cultural slavery. It is indeed pitiful to behold giant intellects held so securely within the cruel grasp of cultural bondage. It is equally pathetic to observe those who trade their cultural bondage for the materialistic fetters of a science, falsely so called. The fourth level of philosophy attains freedom from all conventional and traditional handicaps and dares to think, act, and live honestly, loyally, fearlessly, and truthfully. (1114.3) 101:7.5 The acid test for any religious philosophy consists in whether or not it distinguishes between the realities of the material and the spiritual worlds while at the same moment recognizing their unification in intellectual striving and in social serving. A sound religious philosophy does not confound the things of God with the things of Caesar. Neither does it recognize the aesthetic cult of pure wonder as a substitute for religion. (1114.4) 101:7.6 Philosophy transforms that primitive religion which was largely a fairy tale of conscience into a living experience in the ascending values of cosmic reality. 8. Faith and Belief (1114.5) 101:8.1 Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more. (1114.6) 101:8.2 Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist. (1114.7) 101:8.3 Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine ideals. Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living. Living faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance. (1115.1) 101:8.4 Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation. Faith vitalizes religion and constrains the religionist heroically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is according to knowledge, and its strivings are the preludes to sublime peace. 9. Religion and Morality (1115.2) 101:9.1 No professed revelation of religion could be regarded as authentic if it failed to recognize the duty demands of ethical obligation which had been created and fostered by preceding evolutionary religion. Revelation unfailingly enlarges the ethical horizon of evolved religion while it simultaneously and unfailingly expands the moral obligations of all prior revelations. (1115.3) 101:9.2 When you presume to sit in critical judgment on the primitive religion of man (or on the religion of primitive man), you should remember to judge such savages and to evaluate their religious experience in accordance with their enlightenment and status of conscience. Do not make the mistake of judging another’s religion by your own standards of knowledge and truth. (1115.4) 101:9.3 True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in those morontial realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral concepts, his highest interpretation of life’s greatest values and the universe’s deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual consciousness. (1115.5) 101:9.4 The search for beauty is a part of religion only in so far as it is ethical and to the extent that it enriches the concept of the moral. Art is only religious when it becomes diffused with purpose which has been derived from high spiritual motivation. (1115.6) 101:9.5 The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized man is not concerned so much with some specific intellectual belief or with any one particular mode of living as with discovering the truth of living, the good and right technique of reacting to the ever-recurring situations of mortal existence. Moral consciousness is just a name applied to the human recognition and awareness of those ethical and emerging morontial values which duty demands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day control and guidance of conduct. (1115.7) 101:9.6 Though recognizing that religion is imperfect, there are at least two practical manifestations of its nature and function: (1115.8) 101:9.7 1. The spiritual urge and philosophic pressure of religion tend to cause man to project his estimation of moral values directly outward into the affairs of his fellows — the ethical reaction of religion. (1115.9) 101:9.8 2. Religion creates for the human mind a spiritualized consciousness of divine reality based on, and by faith derived from, antecedent concepts of moral values and co-ordinated with superimposed concepts of spiritual values. Religion thereby becomes a censor of mortal affairs, a form of glorified moral trust and confidence in reality, the enhanced realities of time and the more enduring realities of eternity. (1116.1) 101:9.9 Faith becomes the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual concept of enduring reality. Religion becomes the avenue of man’s escape from the material limitations of the temporal and natural world to the supernal realities of the eternal and spiritual world by and through the technique of salvation, the progressive morontia transformation. 10. Religion as Man’s Liberator (1116.2) 101:10.1 Intelligent man knows that he is a child of nature, a part of the material universe; he likewise discerns no survival of individual personality in the motions and tensions of the mathematical level of the energy universe. Nor can man ever discern spiritual reality through the examination of physical causes and effects. (1116.3) 101:10.2 A human being is also aware that he is a part of the ideational cosmos, but though concept may endure beyond a mortal life span, there is nothing inherent in concept which indicates the personal survival of the conceiving personality. Nor will the exhaustion of the possibilities of logic and reason ever reveal to the logician or to the reasoner the eternal truth of the survival of personality. (1116.4) 101:10.3 The material level of law provides for causality continuity, the unending response of effect to antecedent action; the mind level suggests the perpetuation of ideational continuity, the unceasing flow of conceptual potentiality from pre-existent conceptions. But neither of these levels of the universe discloses to the inquiring mortal an avenue of escape from partiality of status and from the intolerable suspense of being a transient reality in the universe, a temporal personality doomed to be extinguished upon the exhaustion of the limited life energies. (1116.5) 101:10.4 It is only through the morontial avenue leading to spiritual insight that man can ever break the fetters inherent in his mortal status in the universe. Energy and mind do lead back to Paradise and Deity, but neither the energy endowment nor the mind endowment of man proceeds directly from such Paradise Deity. Only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. And this is true because it is only in the spiritual sense that man is at present endowed and indwelt by the Paradise Father. Mankind can never discover divinity except through the avenue of religious experience and by the exercise of true faith. The faith acceptance of the truth of God enables man to escape from the circumscribed confines of material limitations and affords him a rational hope of achieving safe conduct from the material realm, whereon is death, to the spiritual realm, wherein is life eternal. (1116.6) 101:10.5 The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man’s concepts of ideality are endowed with reality. (1116.7) 101:10.6 Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment. (1117.1) 101:10.7 Religion effectually cures man’s sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe. (1117.2) 101:10.8 When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error. (1117.3) 101:10.9 Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality’s triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space. (1117.4) 101:10.10 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]

The Local Universe Mother Spirit (374.1) 34:0.1 WHEN a Creator Son is personalized by the Universal Father and the Eternal Son, then does the Infinite Spirit individualize a new and unique representation of himself to accompany this Creator Son to the realms of space, there to be his companion, first, in physical organization and, later, in creation and ministry to the creatures of the newly projected universe. (374.2) 34:0.2 A Creative Spirit reacts to both physical and spiritual realities; so does a Creator Son; and thus are they co-ordinate and associate in the administration of a local universe of time and space. (374.3) 34:0.3 These Daughter Spirits are of the essence of the Infinite Spirit, but they cannot function in the work of physical creation and spiritual ministry simultaneously. In physical creation the Universe Son provides the pattern while the Universe Spirit initiates the materialization of physical realities. The Son operates in the power designs, but the Spirit transforms these energy creations into physical substances. Although it is somewhat difficult to portray this early universe presence of the Infinite Spirit as a person, nevertheless, to the Creator Son the Spirit associate is personal and has always functioned as a distinct individual. 1. Personalization of the Creative Spirit (374.4) 34:1.1 After the completion of the physical organization of a starry and planetary cluster and the establishment of the energy circuits by the superuniverse power centers, subsequent to this preliminary work of creation by the agencies of the Infinite Spirit, operating through, and under the direction of, his local universe creative focalization, there goes forth the proclamation of the Michael Son that life is next to be projected in the newly organized universe. Upon the Paradise recognition of this declaration of intention, there occurs a reaction of approval in the Paradise Trinity, followed by the disappearance in the spiritual shining of the Deities of the Master Spirit in whose superuniverse this new creation is organizing. Meanwhile the other Master Spirits draw near this central lodgment of the Paradise Deities, and subsequently, when the Deity-embraced Master Spirit emerges to the recognition of his fellows, there occurs what is known as a “primary eruption.” This is a tremendous spiritual flash, a phenomenon clearly discernible as far away as the headquarters of the superuniverse concerned; and simultaneously with this little-understood Trinity manifestation there occurs a marked change in the nature of the creative spirit presence and power of the Infinite Spirit resident in the local universe concerned. In response to these Paradise phenomena there immediately personalizes, in the very presence of the Creator Son, a new personal representation of the Infinite Spirit. This is the Divine Minister. The individualized Creative Spirit helper of the Creator Son has become his personal creative associate, the local universe Mother Spirit. (375.1) 34:1.2 From and through this new personal segregation of the Conjoint Creator there proceed the established currents and the ordained circuits of spirit power and spiritual influence destined to pervade all the worlds and beings of that local universe. In reality, this new and personal presence is but a transformation of the pre-existent and less personal associate of the Son in his earlier work of physical universe organization. (375.2) 34:1.3 This is the relation of a stupendous drama in few words, but it represents about all that can be told regarding these momentous transactions. They are instantaneous, inscrutable, and incomprehensible; the secret of the technique and procedure resides in the bosom of the Paradise Trinity. Of only one thing are we certain: The Spirit presence in the local universe during the time of purely physical creation or organization was incompletely differentiated from the spirit of the Paradise Infinite Spirit; whereas, after the reappearance of the supervising Master Spirit from the secret embrace of the Gods and following the flash of spiritual energy, the local universe manifestation of the Infinite Spirit suddenly and completely changes to the personal likeness of that Master Spirit who was in transmuting liaison with the Infinite Spirit. The local universe Mother Spirit thus acquires a personal nature tinged by that of the Master Spirit of the superuniverse of astronomic jurisdiction. (375.3) 34:1.4 This personalized presence of the Infinite Spirit, the Creative Mother Spirit of the local universe, is known in Satania as the Divine Minister. To all practical intents and spiritual purposes this manifestation of Deity is a divine individual, a spirit person. And she is so recognized and regarded by the Creator Son. It is through this localization and personalization of the Third Source and Center in our local universe that the Spirit could subsequently become so fully subject to the Creator Son that of this Son it was truly said, “All power in heaven and on earth has been intrusted to him.” 2. Nature of the Divine Minister (375.4) 34:2.1 Having undergone marked personality metamorphosis at the time of life creation, the Divine Minister thereafter functions as a person and co-operates in a very personal manner with the Creator Son in the planning and management of the extensive affairs of their local creation. To many universe types of being, even this representation of the Infinite Spirit may not appear to be wholly personal during the ages preceding the final Michael bestowal; but subsequent to the elevation of the Creator Son to the sovereign authority of a Master Son, the Creative Mother Spirit becomes so augmented in personal qualities as to be personally recognized by all contacting individuals. (375.5) 34:2.2 From the earliest association with the Creator Son the Universe Spirit possesses all the physical-control attributes of the Infinite Spirit, including the full endowment of antigravity. Upon the attainment of personal status the Universe Spirit exerts just as full and complete control of mind gravity, in the local universe, as would the Infinite Spirit if personally present. (375.6) 34:2.3 In each local universe the Divine Minister functions in accordance with the nature and inherent characteristics of the Infinite Spirit as embodied in one of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise. While there is a basic uniformity of character in all Universe Spirits, there is also a diversity of function, determined by their origin through one of the Seven Master Spirits. This differential of origin accounts for the diverse techniques in the function of the local universe Mother Spirits in different superuniverses. But in all essential spiritual attributes these Spirits are identical, equally spiritual and wholly divine, irrespective of superuniverse differentiation. (376.1) 34:2.4 The Creative Spirit is coresponsible with the Creator Son in producing the creatures of the worlds and never fails the Son in all efforts to uphold and conserve these creations. Life is ministered and maintained through the agency of the Creative Spirit. “You send forth your Spirit, and they are created. You renew the face of the earth.” (376.2) 34:2.5 In the creation of a universe of intelligent creatures the Creative Mother Spirit functions first in the sphere of universe perfection, collaborating with the Son in the production of the Bright and Morning Star. Subsequently the offspring of the Spirit increasingly approach the order of created beings on the planets, even as the Sons grade downward from the Melchizedeks to the Material Sons, who actually contact with the mortals of the realms. In the later evolution of mortal creatures the Life Carrier Sons provide the physical body, fabricated out of the existing organized material of the realm, while the Universe Spirit contributes the “breath of life.” (376.3) 34:2.6 While the seventh segment of the grand universe may, in many respects, be tardy in development, thoughtful students of our problems look forward to the evolution of an extraordinarily well-balanced creation in the ages to come. We predict this high degree of symmetry in Orvonton because the presiding Spirit of this superuniverse is the chief of the Master Spirits on high, being a spirit intelligence embodying the balanced union and perfect co-ordination of the traits and character of all three of the eternal Deities. We are tardy and backward in comparison with other sectors, but there undoubtedly awaits us a transcendent development and an unprecedented achievement sometime in the eternal ages of the future. 3. The Son and Spirit in Time and Space (376.4) 34:3.1 Neither the Eternal Son nor the Infinite Spirit is limited or conditioned by either time or space, but most of their offspring are. (376.5) 34:3.2 The Infinite Spirit pervades all space and indwells the circle of eternity. Still, in their personal contact with the children of time, the personalities of the Infinite Spirit must often reckon with temporal elements, though not so much with space. Many mind ministries ignore space but suffer a time lag in effecting co-ordination of diverse levels of universe reality. A Solitary Messenger is virtually independent of space except that time is actually required in traveling from one location to another; and there are similar entities unknown to you. (376.6) 34:3.3 In personal prerogatives a Creative Spirit is wholly and entirely independent of space, but not of time. There is no specialized personal presence of such a Universe Spirit on either the constellation or system headquarters. She is equally and diffusely present throughout her entire local universe and is, therefore, just as literally and personally present on one world as on any other. (376.7) 34:3.4 Only as regards the element of time is a Creative Spirit ever limited in her universe ministrations. A Creator Son acts instantaneously throughout his universe; but the Creative Spirit must reckon with time in the ministration of the universal mind except as she consciously and designedly avails herself of the personal prerogatives of the Universe Son. In pure-spirit function the Creative Spirit also acts independently of time as well as in her collaboration with the mysterious function of universe reflectivity. (377.1) 34:3.5 Though the spirit-gravity circuit of the Eternal Son operates independently of both time and space, all functions of the Creator Sons are not exempt from space limitations. If the transactions of the evolutionary worlds are excepted, these Michael Sons seem to be able to operate relatively independent of time. A Creator Son is not handicapped by time, but he is conditioned by space; he cannot personally be in two places at the same time. Michael of Nebadon acts timelessly within his own universe and by reflectivity practically so in the superuniverse. He communicates timelessly with the Eternal Son directly. (377.2) 34:3.6 The Divine Minister is the understanding helper of the Creator Son, enabling him to overcome and atone for his inherent limitations regarding space, for when these two function in administrative union, they are practically independent of time and space within the confines of their local creation. Therefore, as practically observed throughout a local universe, the Creator Son and the Creative Spirit usually function independently of both time and space since there is always available to each the time and the space liberation of the other. (377.3) 34:3.7 Only absolute beings are independent of time and space in the absolute sense. The majority of the subordinate persons of both the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit are subject to both time and space. (377.4) 34:3.8 When a Creative Spirit becomes “space conscious,” she is preparing to recognize a circumscribed “space domain” as hers, a realm in which to be space free in contradistinction to all other space by which she would be conditioned. One is free to choose and act only within the realm of one’s consciousness. 4. The Local Universe Circuits (377.5) 34:4.1 There are three distinct spirit circuits in the local universe of Nebadon: (377.6) 34:4.2 1. The bestowal spirit of the Creator Son, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth. (377.7) 34:4.3 2. The spirit circuit of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit. (377.8) 34:4.4 3. The intelligence-ministry circuit, including the more or less unified activities but diverse functioning of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. (377.9) 34:4.5 The Creator Sons are endowed with a spirit of universe presence in many ways analogous to that of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise. This is the Spirit of Truth which is poured out upon a world by a bestowal Son after he receives spiritual title to such a sphere. This bestowed Comforter is the spiritual force which ever draws all truth seekers towards Him who is the personification of truth in the local universe. This spirit is an inherent endowment of the Creator Son, emerging from his divine nature just as the master circuits of the grand universe are derived from the personality presences of the Paradise Deities. (377.10) 34:4.6 The Creator Son may come and go; his personal presence may be in the local universe or elsewhere; yet the Spirit of Truth functions undisturbed, for this divine presence, while derived from the personality of the Creator Son, is functionally centered in the person of the Divine Minister. (378.1) 34:4.7 The Universe Mother Spirit, however, never leaves the local universe headquarters world. The spirit of the Creator Son may and does function independently of the personal presence of the Son, but not so with her personal spirit. The Holy Spirit of the Divine Minister would become nonfunctional if her personal presence should be removed from Salvington. Her spirit presence seems to be fixed on the universe headquarters world, and it is this very fact that enables the spirit of the Creator Son to function independently of the whereabouts of the Son. The Universe Mother Spirit acts as the universe focus and center of the Spirit of Truth as well as of her own personal influence, the Holy Spirit. (378.2) 34:4.8 The Creator Father-Son and the Creative Mother Spirit both contribute variously to the mind endowment of their local universe children. But the Creative Spirit does not bestow mind until she is endowed with personal prerogatives. (378.3) 34:4.9 The superevolutionary orders of personality in a local universe are endowed with the local universe type of the superuniverse pattern of mind. The human and the subhuman orders of evolutionary life are endowed with the adjutant spirit types of mind ministration. (378.4) 34:4.10 The seven adjutant mind-spirits are the creation of the Divine Minister of a local universe. These mind-spirits are similar in character but diverse in power, and all partake alike of the nature of the Universe Spirit, although they are hardly regarded as personalities apart from their Mother Creator. The seven adjutants have been given the following names: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of worship, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of courage, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of intuition — of quick perception. (378.5) 34:4.11 These are the “seven spirits of God,” “like lamps burning before the throne,” which the prophet saw in the symbols of vision. But he did not see the seats of the four and twenty sentinels about these seven adjutant mind-spirits. This record represents the confusion of two presentations, one pertaining to the universe headquarters and the other to the system capital. The seats of the four and twenty elders are on Jerusem, the headquarters of your local system of inhabited worlds. (378.6) 34:4.12 But it was of Salvington that John wrote: “And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices” — the universe broadcasts to the local systems. He also envisaged the directional control creatures of the local universe, the living compasses of the headquarters world. This directional control in Nebadon is maintained by the four control creatures of Salvington, who operate over the universe currents and are ably assisted by the first functioning mind-spirit, the adjutant of intuition, the spirit of “quick understanding.” But the description of these four creatures — called beasts — has been sadly marred; they are of unparalleled beauty and exquisite form. (378.7) 34:4.13 The four points of the compass are universal and inherent in the life of Nebadon. All living creatures possess bodily units which are sensitive and responsive to these directional currents. These creature creations are duplicated on down through the universe to the individual planets and, in conjunction with the magnetic forces of the worlds, so activate the hosts of microscopic bodies in the animal organism that these direction cells ever point north and south. Thus is the sense of orientation forever fixed in the living beings of the universe. This sense is not wholly wanting as a conscious possession by mankind. These bodies were first observed on Urantia about the time of this narration. 5. The Ministry of the Spirit (379.1) 34:5.1 The Divine Minister co-operates with the Creator Son in the formulation of life and the creation of new orders of beings up to the time of his seventh bestowal and, subsequently, after his elevation to the full sovereignty of the universe, continues to collaborate with the Son and the Son’s bestowed spirit in the further work of world ministry and planetary progression. (379.2) 34:5.2 On the inhabited worlds the Spirit begins the work of evolutionary progression, starting with the lifeless material of the realm, first endowing vegetable life, then the animal organisms, then the first orders of human existence; and each succeeding impartation contributes to the further unfolding of the evolutionary potential of planetary life from the initial and primitive stages to the appearance of will creatures. This labor of the Spirit is largely effected through the seven adjutants, the spirits of promise, the unifying and co-ordinating spirit-mind of the evolving planets, ever and unitedly leading the races of men towards higher ideas and spiritual ideals. (379.3) 34:5.3 Mortal man first experiences the ministry of the Spirit in conjunction with mind when the purely animal mind of evolutionary creatures develops reception capacity for the adjutants of worship and of wisdom. This ministry of the sixth and seventh adjutants indicates mind evolution crossing the threshold of spiritual ministry. And immediately are such minds of worship- and wisdom-function included in the spiritual circuits of the Divine Minister. (379.4) 34:5.4 When mind is thus endowed with the ministry of the Holy Spirit, it possesses the capacity for (consciously or unconsciously) choosing the spiritual presence of the Universal Father — the Thought Adjuster. But it is not until a bestowal Son has liberated the Spirit of Truth for planetary ministry to all mortals that all normal minds are automatically prepared for the reception of the Thought Adjusters. The Spirit of Truth works as one with the presence of the spirit of the Divine Minister. This dual spirit liaison hovers over the worlds, seeking to teach truth and to spiritually enlighten the minds of men, to inspire the souls of the creatures of the ascending races, and to lead the peoples dwelling on the evolutionary planets ever towards their Paradise goal of divine destiny. (379.5) 34:5.5 Though the Spirit of Truth is poured out upon all flesh, this spirit of the Son is almost wholly limited in function and power by man’s personal reception of that which constitutes the sum and substance of the mission of the bestowal Son. The Holy Spirit is partly independent of human attitude and partially conditioned by the decisions and co-operation of the will of man. Nevertheless, the ministry of the Holy Spirit becomes increasingly effective in the sanctification and spiritualization of the inner life of those mortals who the more fully obey the divine leadings. (379.6) 34:5.6 As individuals you do not personally possess a segregated portion or entity of the spirit of the Creator Father-Son or the Creative Mother Spirit; these ministries do not contact with, nor indwell, the thinking centers of the individual’s mind as do the Mystery Monitors. Thought Adjusters are definite individualizations of the prepersonal reality of the Universal Father, actually indwelling the mortal mind as a very part of that mind, and they ever work in perfect harmony with the combined spirits of the Creator Son and Creative Spirit. (380.1) 34:5.7 The presence of the Holy Spirit of the Universe Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, of the Spirit of Truth of the Universe Son of the Eternal Son, and of the Adjuster-spirit of the Paradise Father in or with an evolutionary mortal, denotes symmetry of spiritual endowment and ministry and qualifies such a mortal consciously to realize the faith-fact of sonship with God. 6. The Spirit in Man (380.2) 34:6.1 With the advancing evolution of an inhabited planet and the further spiritualization of its inhabitants, additional spiritual influences may be received by such mature personalities. As mortals progress in mind control and spirit perception, these multiple spirit ministries become more and more co-ordinate in function; they become increasingly blended with the overministry of the Paradise Trinity. (380.3) 34:6.2 Although Divinity may be plural in manifestation, in human experience Deity is singular, always one. Neither is spiritual ministry plural in human experience. Regardless of plurality of origin, all spirit influences are one in function. Indeed they are one, being the spirit ministry of God the Sevenfold in and to the creatures of the grand universe; and as creatures grow in appreciation of, and receptivity for, this unifying ministry of the spirit, it becomes in their experience the ministry of God the Supreme. (380.4) 34:6.3 From the heights of eternal glory the divine Spirit descends, by a long series of steps, to meet you as you are and where you are and then, in the partnership of faith, lovingly to embrace the soul of mortal origin and to embark on the sure and certain retracement of those steps of condescension, never stopping until the evolutionary soul is safely exalted to the very heights of bliss from which the divine Spirit originally sallied forth on this mission of mercy and ministry. (380.5) 34:6.4 Spiritual forces unerringly seek and attain their own original levels. Having gone out from the Eternal, they are certain to return thereto, bringing with them all those children of time and space who have espoused the leading and teaching of the indwelling Adjuster, those who have been truly “born of the Spirit,” the faith sons of God. (380.6) 34:6.5 The divine Spirit is the source of continual ministry and encouragement to the children of men. Your power and achievement is “according to his mercy, through the renewing of the Spirit.” Spiritual life, like physical energy, is consumed. Spiritual effort results in relative spiritual exhaustion. The whole ascendant experience is real as well as spiritual; therefore, it is truly written, “It is the Spirit that quickens.” “The Spirit gives life.” (380.7) 34:6.6 The dead theory of even the highest religious doctrines is powerless to transform human character or to control mortal behavior. What the world of today needs is the truth which your teacher of old declared: “Not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit.” The seed of theoretical truth is dead, the highest moral concepts without effect, unless and until the divine Spirit breathes upon the forms of truth and quickens the formulas of righteousness. (381.1) 34:6.7 Those who have received and recognized the indwelling of God have been born of the Spirit. “You are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you.” It is not enough that this spirit be poured out upon you; the divine Spirit must dominate and control every phase of human experience. (381.2) 34:6.8 It is the presence of the divine Spirit, the water of life, that prevents the consuming thirst of mortal discontent and that indescribable hunger of the unspiritualized human mind. Spirit-motivated beings “never thirst, for this spiritual water shall be in them a well of satisfaction springing up into life everlasting.” Such divinely watered souls are all but independent of material environment as regards the joys of living and the satisfactions of earthly existence. They are spiritually illuminated and refreshed, morally strengthened and endowed. (381.3) 34:6.9 In every mortal there exists a dual nature: the inheritance of animal tendencies and the high urge of spirit endowment. During the short life you live on Urantia, these two diverse and opposing urges can seldom be fully reconciled; they can hardly be harmonized and unified; but throughout your lifetime the combined Spirit ever ministers to assist you in subjecting the flesh more and more to the leading of the Spirit. Even though you must live your material life through, even though you cannot escape the body and its necessities, nonetheless, in purpose and ideals you are empowered increasingly to subject the animal nature to the mastery of the Spirit. There truly exists within you a conspiracy of spiritual forces, a confederation of divine powers, whose exclusive purpose is to effect your final deliverance from material bondage and finite handicaps. (381.4) 34:6.10 The purpose of all this ministration is, “That you may be strengthened with power through His spirit in the inner man.” And all this represents but the preliminary steps to the final attainment of the perfection of faith and service, that experience wherein you shall be “filled with all the fullness of God,” “for all those who are led by the spirit of God are the sons of God.” (381.5) 34:6.11 The Spirit never drives, only leads. If you are a willing learner, if you want to attain spirit levels and reach divine heights, if you sincerely desire to reach the eternal goal, then the divine Spirit will gently and lovingly lead you along the pathway of sonship and spiritual progress. Every step you take must be one of willingness, intelligent and cheerful co-operation. The domination of the Spirit is never tainted with coercion nor compromised by compulsion. (381.6) 34:6.12 And when such a life of spirit guidance is freely and intelligently accepted, there gradually develops within the human mind a positive consciousness of divine contact and assurance of spirit communion; sooner or later “the Spirit bears witness with your spirit (the Adjuster) that you are a child of God.” Already has your own Thought Adjuster told you of your kinship to God so that the record testifies that the Spirit bears witness “with your spirit,” not to your spirit. (381.7) 34:6.13 The consciousness of the spirit domination of a human life is presently attended by an increasing exhibition of the characteristics of the Spirit in the life reactions of such a spirit-led mortal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.” Such spirit-guided and divinely illuminated mortals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in human faithfulness perform the duties of their earthly assignments, have already begun to discern the lights of eternal life as they glimmer on the faraway shores of another world; already have they begun to comprehend the reality of that inspiring and comforting truth, “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And throughout every trial and in the presence of every hardship, spirit-born souls are sustained by that hope which transcends all fear because the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the presence of the divine Spirit. 7. The Spirit and the Flesh (382.1) 34:7.1 The flesh, the inherent nature derived from the animal-origin races, does not naturally bear the fruits of the divine Spirit. When the mortal nature has been upstepped by the addition of the nature of the Material Sons of God, as the Urantia races were in a measure advanced by the bestowal of Adam, then is the way better prepared for the Spirit of Truth to co-operate with the indwelling Adjuster to bring forth the beautiful harvest of the character fruits of the spirit. If you do not reject this spirit, even though eternity may be required to fulfill the commission, “he will guide you into all truth.” (382.2) 34:7.2 Evolutionary mortals inhabiting normal worlds of spiritual progress do not experience the acute conflicts between the spirit and the flesh which characterize the present-day Urantia races. But even on the most ideal planets, pre-Adamic man must put forth positive efforts to ascend from the purely animalistic plane of existence up through successive levels of increasingly intellectual meanings and higher spiritual values. (382.3) 34:7.3 The mortals of a normal world do not experience constant warfare between their physical and spiritual natures. They are confronted with the necessity of climbing up from the animal levels of existence to the higher planes of spiritual living, but this ascent is more like undergoing an educational training when compared with the intense conflicts of Urantia mortals in this realm of the divergent material and spiritual natures. (382.4) 34:7.4 The Urantia peoples are suffering the consequences of a double deprivation of help in this task of progressive planetary spiritual attainment. The Caligastia upheaval precipitated world-wide confusion and robbed all subsequent generations of the moral assistance which a well-ordered society would have provided. But even more disastrous was the Adamic default in that it deprived the races of that superior type of physical nature which would have been more consonant with spiritual aspirations. (382.5) 34:7.5 Urantia mortals are compelled to undergo such marked struggling between the spirit and the flesh because their remote ancestors were not more fully Adamized by the Edenic bestowal. It was the divine plan that the mortal races of Urantia should have had physical natures more naturally spirit responsive. (382.6) 34:7.6 Notwithstanding this double disaster to man’s nature and his environment, present-day mortals would experience less of this apparent warfare between the flesh and the spirit if they would enter the spirit kingdom, wherein the faith sons of God enjoy comparative deliverance from the slave-bondage of the flesh in the enlightened and liberating service of wholehearted devotion to doing the will of the Father in heaven. Jesus showed mankind the new way of mortal living whereby human beings may very largely escape the dire consequences of the Caligastic rebellion and most effectively compensate for the deprivations resulting from the Adamic default. “The spirit of the life of Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of animal living and the temptations of evil and sin.” “This is the victory that overcomes the flesh, even your faith.” (383.1) 34:7.7 Those God-knowing men and women who have been born of the Spirit experience no more conflict with their mortal natures than do the inhabitants of the most normal of worlds, planets which have never been tainted with sin nor touched by rebellion. Faith sons work on intellectual levels and live on spiritual planes far above the conflicts produced by unrestrained or unnatural physical desires. The normal urges of animal beings and the natural appetites and impulses of the physical nature are not in conflict with even the highest spiritual attainment except in the minds of ignorant, mistaught, or unfortunately overconscientious persons. (383.2) 34:7.8 Having started out on the way of life everlasting, having accepted the assignment and received your orders to advance, do not fear the dangers of human forgetfulness and mortal inconstancy, do not be troubled with doubts of failure or by perplexing confusion, do not falter and question your status and standing, for in every dark hour, at every crossroad in the forward struggle, the Spirit of Truth will always speak, saying, “This is the way.” (383.3) 34:7.9 [Presented by a Mighty Messenger temporarily assigned to service on Urantia.]

Administration of the Local Universe (366.1) 33:0.1 WHILE the Universal Father most certainly rules over his vast creation, he functions in a local universe administration through the person of the Creator Son. The Father does not otherwise personally function in the administrative affairs of a local universe. These matters are intrusted to the Creator Son and to the local universe Mother Spirit and to their manifold children. The plans, policies, and administrative acts of the local universe are formed and executed by this Son, who, in conjunction with his Spirit associate, delegates executive power to Gabriel and jurisdictional authority to the Constellation Fathers, System Sovereigns, and Planetary Princes. 1. Michael of Nebadon (366.2) 33:1.1 Our Creator Son is the personification of the 611,121st original concept of infinite identity of simultaneous origin in the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Michael of Nebadon is the “only-begotten Son” personalizing this 611,121st universal concept of divinity and infinity. His headquarters is in the threefold mansion of light on Salvington. And this dwelling is so ordered because Michael has experienced the living of all three phases of intelligent creature existence: spiritual, morontial, and material. Because of the name associated with his seventh and final bestowal on Urantia, he is sometimes spoken of as Christ Michael. (366.3) 33:1.2 Our Creator Son is not the Eternal Son, the existential Paradise associate of the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit. Michael of Nebadon is not a member of the Paradise Trinity. Nevertheless our Master Son possesses in his realm all of the divine attributes and powers that the Eternal Son himself would manifest were he actually to be present on Salvington and functioning in Nebadon. Michael possesses even additional power and authority, for he not only personifies the Eternal Son but also fully represents and actually embodies the personality presence of the Universal Father to and in this local universe. He even represents the Father-Son. These relationships constitute a Creator Son the most powerful, versatile, and influential of all divine beings who are capable of direct administration of evolutionary universes and of personality contact with immature creature beings. (366.4) 33:1.3 Our Creator Son exerts the same spiritual drawing power, spirit gravity, from the headquarters of the local universe that the Eternal Son of Paradise would exert if he were personally present on Salvington, and more; this Universe Son is also the personification of the Universal Father to the universe of Nebadon. Creator Sons are personality centers for the spiritual forces of the Paradise Father-Son. Creator Sons are the final power-personality focalizations of the mighty time-space attributes of God the Sevenfold. (367.1) 33:1.4 The Creator Son is the vicegerent personalization of the Universal Father, the divinity co-ordinate of the Eternal Son, and the creative associate of the Infinite Spirit. To our universe and all its inhabited worlds the Sovereign Son is, to all practical intents and purposes, God. He personifies all of the Paradise Deities which evolving mortals can discerningly comprehend. This Son and his Spirit associate are your creator parents. To you, Michael, the Creator Son, is the supreme personality; to you, the Eternal Son is supersupreme — an infinite Deity personality. (367.2) 33:1.5 In the person of the Creator Son we have a ruler and divine parent who is just as mighty, efficient, and beneficent as would be the Universal Father and the Eternal Son if both were present on Salvington and engaged in the administration of the affairs of the universe of Nebadon. 2. The Sovereign of Nebadon (367.3) 33:2.1 Observation of Creator Sons discloses that some resemble more the Father, some the Son, while others are a blend of both their infinite parents. Our Creator Son very definitely manifests traits and attributes which more resemble the Eternal Son. (367.4) 33:2.2 Michael elected to organize this local universe, and herein he now reigns supreme. His personal power is limited by the pre-existent gravity circuits centering at Paradise and by the reservation on the part of the Ancients of Days of the superuniverse government of all final executive judgments regarding the extinction of personality. Personality is the sole bestowal of the Father, but the Creator Sons, with the approval of the Eternal Son, do initiate new creature designs, and with the working co-operation of their Spirit associates they may attempt new transformations of energy-matter. (367.5) 33:2.3 Michael is the personification of the Paradise Father-Son to and in the local universe of Nebadon; therefore, when the Creative Mother Spirit, the local universe representation of the Infinite Spirit, subordinated herself to Christ Michael upon the return from his final bestowal on Urantia, the Master Son thereby acquired jurisdiction over “all power in heaven and on earth.” (367.6) 33:2.4 This subordination of the Divine Ministers to the Creator Sons of the local universes constitutes these Master Sons the personal repositories of the finitely manifestable divinity of the Father, Son, and Spirit, while the creature-bestowal experiences of the Michaels qualify them to portray the experiential divinity of the Supreme Being. No other beings in the universes have thus personally exhausted the potentials of present finite experience, and no other beings in the universes possess such qualifications for solitary sovereignty. (367.7) 33:2.5 Although Michael’s headquarters is officially located on Salvington, the capital of Nebadon, he spends much of his time visiting the constellation and system headquarters and even the individual planets. Periodically he journeys to Paradise and often to Uversa, where he counsels with the Ancients of Days. When he is away from Salvington, his place is assumed by Gabriel, who then functions as regent of the universe of Nebadon. 3. The Universe Son and Spirit (368.1) 33:3.1 While pervading all the universes of time and space, the Infinite Spirit functions from the headquarters of each local universe as a specialized focalization acquiring full personality qualities by the technique of creative co-operation with the Creator Son. As concerns a local universe, the administrative authority of a Creator Son is supreme; the Infinite Spirit, as the Divine Minister, is wholly co-operative though perfectly co-ordinate. (368.2) 33:3.2 The Universe Mother Spirit of Salvington, the associate of Michael in the control and administration of Nebadon, is of the sixth group of Supreme Spirits, being the 611,121st of that order. She volunteered to accompany Michael on the occasion of his liberation from Paradise obligations and has ever since functioned with him in creating and governing his universe. (368.3) 33:3.3 The Master Creator Son is the personal sovereign of his universe, but in all the details of its management the Universe Spirit is codirector with the Son. While the Spirit ever acknowledges the Son as sovereign and ruler, the Son always accords the Spirit a co-ordinate position and equality of authority in all the affairs of the realm. In all his work of love and life bestowal the Creator Son is always and ever perfectly sustained and ably assisted by the all-wise and ever-faithful Universe Spirit and by all of her diversified retinue of angelic personalities. Such a Divine Minister is in reality the mother of spirits and spirit personalities, the ever-present and all-wise adviser of the Creator Son, a faithful and true manifestation of the Paradise Infinite Spirit. (368.4) 33:3.4 The Son functions as a father in his local universe. The Spirit, as mortal creatures would understand, enacts the role of a mother, always assisting the Son and being everlastingly indispensable to the administration of the universe. In the face of insurrection only the Son and his associated Sons can function as deliverers. Never can the Spirit undertake to contest rebellion or defend authority, but ever does the Spirit sustain the Son in all of everything he may be required to experience in his efforts to stabilize government and uphold authority on worlds tainted with evil or dominated by sin. Only a Son can retrieve the work of their joint creation, but no Son could hope for final success without the incessant co-operation of the Divine Minister and her vast assemblage of spirit helpers, the daughters of God, who so faithfully and valiantly struggle for the welfare of mortal men and the glory of their divine parents. (368.5) 33:3.5 Upon the completion of the Creator Son’s seventh and final creature bestowal, the uncertainties of periodic isolation terminate for the Divine Minister, and the Son’s universe helper becomes forever settled in surety and control. It is at the enthronement of the Creator Son as a Master Son, at the jubilee of jubilees, that the Universe Spirit, before the assembled hosts, first makes public and universal acknowledgment of subordination to the Son, pledging fidelity and obedience. This event occurred in Nebadon at the time of Michael’s return to Salvington after the Urantian bestowal. Never before this momentous occasion did the Universe Spirit acknowledge subordination to the Universe Son, and not until after this voluntary relinquishment of power and authority by the Spirit could it be truthfully proclaimed of the Son that “all power in heaven and on earth has been committed to his hand.” (369.1) 33:3.6 After this pledge of subordination by the Creative Mother Spirit, Michael of Nebadon nobly acknowledged his eternal dependence on his Spirit companion, constituting the Spirit coruler of his universe domains and requiring all their creatures to pledge themselves in loyalty to the Spirit as they had to the Son; and there issued and went forth the final “Proclamation of Equality.” Though he was the sovereign of this local universe, the Son published to the worlds the fact of the Spirit’s equality with him in all endowments of personality and attributes of divine character. And this becomes the transcendent pattern for the family organization and government of even the lowly creatures of the worlds of space. This is, in deed and in truth, the high ideal of the family and the human institution of voluntary marriage. (369.2) 33:3.7 The Son and the Spirit now preside over the universe much as a father and mother watch over, and minister to, their family of sons and daughters. It is not altogether out of place to refer to the Universe Spirit as the creative companion of the Creator Son and to regard the creatures of the realms as their sons and daughters — a grand and glorious family but one of untold responsibilities and endless watchcare. (369.3) 33:3.8 The Son initiates the creation of certain of the universe children, while the Spirit is solely responsible for bringing into existence the numerous orders of spirit personalities who minister and serve under the direction and guidance of this selfsame Mother Spirit. In the creation of other types of universe personalities, both the Son and the Spirit function together, and in no creative act does the one do aught without the counsel and approval of the other. 4. Gabriel — The Chief Executive (369.4) 33:4.1 The Bright and Morning Star is the personalization of the first concept of identity and ideal of personality conceived by the Creator Son and the local universe manifestation of the Infinite Spirit. Going back to the early days of the local universe, before the union of the Creator Son and the Mother Spirit in the bonds of creative association, back to the times before the beginning of the creation of their versatile family of sons and daughters, the first conjoint act of this early and free association of these two divine persons results in the creation of the highest spirit personality of the Son and the Spirit, the Bright and Morning Star. (369.5) 33:4.2 Only one such being of wisdom and majesty is brought forth in each local universe. The Universal Father and the Eternal Son can, in fact do, create an unlimited number of Sons in divinity equal to themselves; but such Sons, in union with the Daughters of the Infinite Spirit, can create only one Bright and Morning Star in each universe, a being like themselves and partaking freely of their combined natures but not of their creative prerogatives. Gabriel of Salvington is like the Universe Son in divinity of nature though considerably limited in the attributes of Deity. (369.6) 33:4.3 This first-born of the parents of a new universe is a unique personality possessing many wonderful traits not visibly present in either ancestor, a being of unprecedented versatility and unimagined brilliance. This supernal personality embraces the divine will of the Son combined with the creative imagination of the Spirit. The thoughts and acts of the Bright and Morning Star will ever be fully representative of both the Creator Son and the Creative Spirit. Such a being is also capable of a broad understanding of, and sympathetic contact with, both the spiritual seraphic hosts and the material evolutionary will creatures. (370.1) 33:4.4 The Bright and Morning Star is not a creator, but he is a marvelous administrator, being the personal administrative representative of the Creator Son. Aside from creation and life impartation the Son and the Spirit never confer upon important universe procedures without Gabriel’s presence. (370.2) 33:4.5 Gabriel of Salvington is the chief executive of the universe of Nebadon and the arbiter of all executive appeals respecting its administration. This universe executive was created fully endowed for his work, but he has gained experience with the growth and evolution of our local creation. (370.3) 33:4.6 Gabriel is the chief officer of execution for superuniverse mandates relating to nonpersonal affairs in the local universe. Most matters pertaining to mass judgment and dispensational resurrections, adjudicated by the Ancients of Days, are also delegated to Gabriel and his staff for execution. Gabriel is thus the combined chief executive of both the super- and the local universe rulers. He has at his command an able corps of administrative assistants, created for their special work, who are unrevealed to evolutionary mortals. In addition to these assistants, Gabriel may employ any and all of the orders of celestial beings functioning in Nebadon, and he is also the commander in chief of “the armies of heaven” — the celestial hosts. (370.4) 33:4.7 Gabriel and his staff are not teachers; they are administrators. They were never known to depart from their regular work except when Michael was incarnated on a creature bestowal. During such bestowals Gabriel was ever attendant on the will of the incarnated Son, and with the collaboration of the Union of Days, he became the actual director of universe affairs during the later bestowals. Gabriel has been closely identified with the history and development of Urantia ever since the mortal bestowal of Michael. (370.5) 33:4.8 Aside from meeting Gabriel on the bestowal worlds and at the times of general- and special-resurrection roll calls, mortals will seldom encounter him as they ascend through the local universe until they are inducted into the administrative work of the local creation. As administrators, of whatever order or degree, you will come under the direction of Gabriel. 5. The Trinity Ambassadors (370.6) 33:5.1 The administration of Trinity-origin personalities ends with the government of the superuniverses. The local universes are characterized by dual supervision, the beginning of the father-mother concept. The universe father is the Creator Son; the universe mother is the Divine Minister, the local universe Creative Spirit. Every local universe is, however, blessed with the presence of certain personalities from the central universe and Paradise. At the head of this Paradise group in Nebadon is the ambassador of the Paradise Trinity — Immanuel of Salvington — the Union of Days assigned to the local universe of Nebadon. In a certain sense this high Trinity Son is also the personal representative of the Universal Father to the court of the Creator Son; hence his name, Immanuel. (370.7) 33:5.2 Immanuel of Salvington, number 611,121 of the sixth order of Supreme Trinity Personalities, is a being of sublime dignity and of such superb condescension that he refuses the worship and adoration of all living creatures. He bears the distinction of being the only personality in all Nebadon who has never acknowledged subordination to his brother Michael. He functions as adviser to the Sovereign Son but gives counsel only on request. In the absence of the Creator Son he might preside over any high universe council but would not otherwise participate in the executive affairs of the universe except as requested. (371.1) 33:5.3 This ambassador of Paradise to Nebadon is not subject to the jurisdiction of the local universe government. Neither does he exercise authoritative jurisdiction in the executive affairs of an evolving local universe except in the supervision of his liaison brethren, the Faithfuls of Days, serving on the headquarters of the constellations. (371.2) 33:5.4 The Faithfuls of Days, like the Union of Days, never proffer advice or offer assistance to the constellation rulers unless it is asked for. These Paradise ambassadors to the constellations represent the final personal presence of the Stationary Sons of the Trinity functioning in advisory roles in the local universes. Constellations are more closely related to the superuniverse administration than local systems, which are administered exclusively by personalities native to the local universe. 6. General Administration (371.3) 33:6.1 Gabriel is the chief executive and actual administrator of Nebadon. Michael’s absence from Salvington in no way interferes with the orderly conduct of universe affairs. During the absence of Michael, as recently on the mission of reunion of Orvonton Master Sons on Paradise, Gabriel is the regent of the universe. At such times Gabriel always seeks the counsel of Immanuel of Salvington regarding all major problems. (371.4) 33:6.2 The Father Melchizedek is Gabriel’s first assistant. When the Bright and Morning Star is absent from Salvington, his responsibilities are assumed by this original Melchizedek Son. (371.5) 33:6.3 The various subadministrations of the universe have assigned to them certain special domains of responsibility. While, in general, a system government looks after the welfare of its planets, it is more particularly concerned with the physical status of living beings, with biologic problems. In turn, the constellation rulers pay especial attention to the social and governmental conditions prevailing on the different planets and systems. A constellation government is chiefly exercised over unification and stabilization. Still higher up, the universe rulers are more occupied with the spiritual status of the realms. (371.6) 33:6.4 Ambassadors are appointed by judicial decree and represent universes to other universes. Consuls are representatives of constellations to one another and to the universe headquarters; they are appointed by legislative decree and function only within the confines of the local universe. Observers are commissioned by executive decree of a System Sovereign to represent that system to other systems and at the constellation capital, and they, too, function only within the confines of the local universe. (371.7) 33:6.5 From Salvington, broadcasts are simultaneously directed to the constellation headquarters, the system headquarters, and to individual planets. All higher orders of celestial beings are able to utilize this service for communication with their fellows scattered throughout the universe. The universe broadcast is extended to all inhabited worlds regardless of their spiritual status. Planetary intercommunication is denied only those worlds under spiritual quarantine. (372.1) 33:6.6 Constellation broadcasts are periodically sent out from the headquarters of the constellation by the chief of the Constellation Fathers. (372.2) 33:6.7 Chronology is reckoned, computed, and rectified by a special group of beings on Salvington. The standard day of Nebadon is equal to eighteen days and six hours of Urantia time, plus two and one-half minutes. The Nebadon year consists of a segment of the time of universe swing in relation to the Uversa circuit and is equal to one hundred days of standard universe time, about five years of Urantia time. (372.3) 33:6.8 Nebadon time, broadcast from Salvington, is the standard for all constellations and systems in this local universe. Each constellation conducts its affairs by Nebadon time, but the systems maintain their own chronology, as do the individual planets. (372.4) 33:6.9 The day in Satania, as reckoned on Jerusem, is a little less (1 hour, 4 minutes, 15 seconds) than three days of Urantia time. These times are generally known as Salvington or universe time, and Satania or system time. Standard time is universe time. 7. The Courts of Nebadon (372.5) 33:7.1 The Master Son, Michael, is supremely concerned with but three things: creation, sustenance, and ministry. He does not personally participate in the judicial work of the universe. Creators never sit in judgment on their creatures; that is the exclusive function of creatures of high training and actual creature experience. (372.6) 33:7.2 The entire judicial mechanism of Nebadon is under the supervision of Gabriel. The high courts, located on Salvington, are occupied with problems of general universe import and with the appellate cases coming up from the system tribunals. There are seventy branches of these universe courts, and they function in seven divisions of ten sections each. In all matters of adjudication there presides a dual magistracy consisting of one judge of perfection antecedents and one magistrate of ascendant experience. (372.7) 33:7.3 As regards jurisdiction, the local universe courts are limited in the following matters: (372.8) 33:7.4 1. The administration of the local universe is concerned with creation, evolution, maintenance, and ministry. The universe tribunals are, therefore, denied the right to pass upon those cases involving the question of eternal life and death. This has no reference to natural death as it obtains on Urantia, but if the question of the right of continued existence, life eternal, comes up for adjudication, it must be referred to the tribunals of Orvonton, and if decided adversely to the individual, all sentences of extinction are carried out upon the orders, and through the agencies, of the rulers of the supergovernment. (372.9) 33:7.5 2. The default or defection of any of the Local Universe Sons of God which jeopardizes their status and authority as Sons is never adjudicated in the tribunals of a Son; such a misunderstanding would be immediately carried to the superuniverse courts. (372.10) 33:7.6 3. The question of the readmission of any constituent part of a local universe — such as a local system — to the fellowship of full spiritual status in the local creation subsequent to spiritual isolation must be concurred in by the high assembly of the superuniverse. (373.1) 33:7.7 In all other matters the courts of Salvington are final and supreme. There is no appeal and no escape from their decisions and decrees. (373.2) 33:7.8 However unfairly human contentions may sometimes appear to be adjudicated on Urantia, in the universe justice and divine equity do prevail. You are living in a well-ordered universe, and sooner or later you may depend upon being dealt with justly, even mercifully. 8. The Legislative and Executive Functions (373.3) 33:8.1 On Salvington, the headquarters of Nebadon, there are no true legislative bodies. The universe headquarters worlds are concerned largely with adjudication. The legislative assemblies of the local universe are located on the headquarters of the one hundred constellations. The systems are chiefly concerned with the executive and administrative work of the local creations. The System Sovereigns and their associates enforce the legislative mandates of the constellation rulers and execute the judicial decrees of the high courts of the universe. (373.4) 33:8.2 While true legislation is not enacted at the universe headquarters, there do function on Salvington a variety of advisory and research assemblies, variously constituted and conducted in accordance with their scope and purpose. Some are permanent; others disband upon the accomplishment of their objective. (373.5) 33:8.3 The supreme council of the local universe is made up of three members from each system and seven representatives from each constellation. Systems in isolation do not have representation in this assembly, but they are permitted to send observers who attend and study all its deliberations. (373.6) 33:8.4 The one hundred councils of supreme sanction are also situated on Salvington. The presidents of these councils constitute the immediate working cabinet of Gabriel. (373.7) 33:8.5 All findings of the high universe advisory councils are referred either to the Salvington judicial bodies or to the legislative assemblies of the constellations. These high councils are without authority or power to enforce their recommendations. If their advice is founded on the fundamental laws of the universe, then will the Nebadon courts issue rulings of execution; but if their recommendations have to do with local or emergency conditions, they must pass down to the legislative assemblies of the constellation for deliberative enactment and then to the system authorities for execution. These high councils are, in reality, the universe superlegislatures, but they function without the authority of enactment and without the power of execution. (373.8) 33:8.6 While we speak of universe administration in terms of “courts” and “assemblies,” it should be understood that these spiritual transactions are very different from the more primitive and material activities of Urantia which bear corresponding names. (373.9) 33:8.7 [Presented by the Chief of the Archangels of Nebadon.]

The Infinite Spirit (90.1) 8:0.1 BACK in eternity, when the Universal Father’s “first” infinite and absolute thought finds in the Eternal Son such a perfect and adequate word for its divine expression, there ensues the supreme desire of both the Thought-God and the Word-God for a universal and infinite agent of mutual expression and combined action. (90.2) 8:0.2 In the dawn of eternity both the Father and the Son become infinitely cognizant of their mutual interdependence, their eternal and absolute oneness; and therefore do they enter into an infinite and everlasting covenant of divine partnership. This never-ending compact is made for the execution of their united concepts throughout all of the circle of eternity; and ever since this eternity event the Father and the Son continue in this divine union. (90.3) 8:0.3 We are now face to face with the eternity origin of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity. The very instant that God the Father and God the Son conjointly conceive an identical and infinite action — the execution of an absolute thought-plan — that very moment, the Infinite Spirit springs full-fledgedly into existence. (90.4) 8:0.4 In thus reciting the order of the origin of the Deities, I do so merely to enable you to think of their relationship. In reality they are all three existent from eternity; they are existential. They are without beginning or ending of days; they are co-ordinate, supreme, ultimate, absolute, and infinite. They are and always have been and ever shall be. And they are three distinctly individualized but eternally associated persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. 1. The God of Action (90.5) 8:1.1 In the eternity of the past, upon the personalization of the Infinite Spirit the divine personality cycle becomes perfect and complete. The God of Action is existent, and the vast stage of space is set for the stupendous drama of creation — the universal adventure — the divine panorama of the eternal ages. (90.6) 8:1.2 The first act of the Infinite Spirit is the inspection and recognition of his divine parents, the Father-Father and the Mother-Son. He, the Spirit, unqualifiedly identifies both of them. He is fully cognizant of their separate personalities and infinite attributes as well as of their combined nature and united function. Next, voluntarily, with transcendent willingness and inspiring spontaneity, the Third Person of Deity, notwithstanding his equality with the First and Second Persons, pledges eternal loyalty to God the Father and acknowledges everlasting dependence upon God the Son. (90.7) 8:1.3 Inherent in the nature of this transaction and in mutual recognition of the personality independence of each and the executive union of all three, the cycle of eternity is established. The Paradise Trinity is existent. The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father through the personality of the Eternal Son and by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Son creator partnership. (91.1) 8:1.4 The God of Action functions and the dead vaults of space are astir. One billion perfect spheres flash into existence. Prior to this hypothetical eternity moment the space-energies inherent in Paradise are existent and potentially operative, but they have no actuality of being; neither can physical gravity be measured except by the reaction of material realities to its incessant pull. There is no material universe at this (assumed) eternally distant moment, but the very instant that one billion worlds materialize, there is in evidence gravity sufficient and adequate to hold them in the everlasting grasp of Paradise. (91.2) 8:1.5 There now flashes through the creation of the Gods the second form of energy, and this outflowing spirit is instantly grasped by the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. Thus the twofold gravity-embraced universe is touched with the energy of infinity and immersed in the spirit of divinity. In this way is the soil of life prepared for the consciousness of mind made manifest in the associated intelligence circuits of the Infinite Spirit. (91.3) 8:1.6 Upon these seeds of potential existence, diffused throughout the central creation of the Gods, the Father acts, and creature personality appears. Then does the presence of the Paradise Deities fill all organized space and begin effectively to draw all things and beings Paradiseward. (91.4) 8:1.7 The Infinite Spirit eternalizes concurrently with the birth of the Havona worlds, this central universe being created by him and with him and in him in obedience to the combined concepts and united wills of the Father and the Son. The Third Person deitizes by this very act of conjoint creation, and he thus forever becomes the Conjoint Creator. (91.5) 8:1.8 These are the grand and awful times of the creative expansion of the Father and the Son by, and in, the action of their conjoint associate and exclusive executive, the Third Source and Center. There exists no record of these stirring times. We have only the meager disclosures of the Infinite Spirit to substantiate these mighty transactions, and he merely verifies the fact that the central universe and all that pertains thereto eternalized simultaneously with his attainment of personality and conscious existence. (91.6) 8:1.9 In brief, the Infinite Spirit testifies that, since he is eternal, so also is the central universe eternal. And this is the traditional starting point of the history of the universe of universes. Absolutely nothing is known, and no records are in existence, regarding any event or transaction prior to this stupendous eruption of creative energy and administrative wisdom that crystallized the vast universe which exists, and so exquisitely functions, at the center of all things. Beyond this event lie the unsearchable transactions of eternity and the depths of infinity — absolute mystery. (91.7) 8:1.10 And we thus portray the sequential origin of the Third Source and Center as an interpretative condescension to the time-bound and space-conditioned mind of mortal creatures. The mind of man must have a starting point for the visualization of universe history, and I have been directed to provide this technique of approach to the historic concept of eternity. In the material mind, consistency demands a First Cause; therefore do we postulate the Universal Father as the First Source and the Absolute Center of all creation, at the same time instructing all creature minds that the Son and the Spirit are coeternal with the Father in all phases of universe history and in all realms of creative activity. And we do this without in any sense being disregardful of the reality and eternity of the Isle of Paradise and of the Unqualified, Universal, and Deity Absolutes. (92.1) 8:1.11 It is enough of a reach of the material mind of the children of time to conceive of the Father in eternity. We know that any child can best relate himself to reality by first mastering the relationships of the child-parent situation and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. Subsequently the growing mind of the child will be able to adjust to the concept of family relations, to relationships of the community, the race, and the world, and then to those of the universe, the superuniverse, even the universe of universes. 2. Nature of the Infinite Spirit (92.2) 8:2.1 The Conjoint Creator is from eternity and is wholly and without qualification one with the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Infinite Spirit reflects in perfection not only the nature of the Paradise Father but also the nature of the Original Son. (92.3) 8:2.2 The Third Source and Center is known by numerous titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Co-ordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action; and on Urantia he is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind. (92.4) 8:2.3 It is altogether proper to denominate the Third Person of Deity the Infinite Spirit, for God is spirit. But material creatures who tend towards the error of viewing matter as basic reality and mind, together with spirit, as postulates rooted in matter, would better comprehend the Third Source and Center if he were called the Infinite Reality, the Universal Organizer, or the Personality Co-ordinator. (92.5) 8:2.4 The Infinite Spirit, as a universe revelation of divinity, is unsearchable and utterly beyond human comprehension. To sense the absoluteness of the Spirit, you need only contemplate the infinity of the Universal Father and stand in awe of the eternity of the Original Son. (92.6) 8:2.5 There is mystery indeed in the person of the Infinite Spirit but not so much as in the Father and the Son. Of all aspects of the Father’s nature, the Conjoint Creator most strikingly discloses his infinity. Even if the master universe eventually expands to infinity, the spirit presence, energy control, and mind potential of the Conjoint Actor will be found adequate to meet the demands of such a limitless creation. (92.7) 8:2.6 Though in every way sharing the perfection, the righteousness, and the love of the Universal Father, the Infinite Spirit inclines towards the mercy attributes of the Eternal Son, thus becoming the mercy minister of the Paradise Deities to the grand universe. Ever and always — universally and eternally — the Spirit is a mercy minister, for, as the divine Sons reveal the love of God, so the divine Spirit depicts the mercy of God. (93.1) 8:2.7 It is not possible that the Spirit could have more of goodness than the Father since all goodness takes origin in the Father, but in the acts of the Spirit we can the better comprehend such goodness. The Father’s faithfulness and the Son’s constancy are made very real to the spirit beings and the material creatures of the spheres by the loving ministry and ceaseless service of the personalities of the Infinite Spirit. (93.2) 8:2.8 The Conjoint Creator inherits all the Father’s beauty of thought and character of truth. And these sublime traits of divinity are co-ordinated in the near-supreme levels of the cosmic mind in subordination to the infinite and eternal wisdom of the unconditioned and limitless mind of the Third Source and Center. 3. Relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son (93.3) 8:3.1 As the Eternal Son is the word expression of the “first” absolute and infinite thought of the Universal Father, so the Conjoint Actor is the perfect execution of the “first” completed creative concept or plan for combined action by the Father-Son personality partnership of absolute thought-word union. The Third Source and Center eternalizes concurrently with the central or fiat creation, and only this central creation is eternal in existence among universes. (93.4) 8:3.2 Since the personalization of the Third Source, the First Source no more personally participates in universe creation. The Universal Father delegates everything possible to his Eternal Son; likewise does the Eternal Son bestow all possible authority and power upon the Conjoint Creator. (93.5) 8:3.3 The Eternal Son and the Conjoint Creator have, as partners and through their co-ordinate personalities, planned and fashioned every post-Havona universe which has been brought into existence. The Spirit sustains the same personal relation to the Son in all subsequent creation that the Son sustains to the Father in the first and central creation. (93.6) 8:3.4 A Creator Son of the Eternal Son and a Creative Spirit of the Infinite Spirit created you and your universe; and while the Father in faithfulness upholds that which they have organized, it devolves upon this Universe Son and this Universe Spirit to foster and sustain their work as well as to minister to the creatures of their own making. (93.7) 8:3.5 The Infinite Spirit is the effective agent of the all-loving Father and the all-merciful Son for the execution of their conjoint project of drawing to themselves all truth-loving souls on all the worlds of time and space. The very instant the Eternal Son accepted his Father’s plan of perfection attainment for the creatures of the universes, the moment the ascension project became a Father-Son plan, that instant the Infinite Spirit became the conjoint administrator of the Father and the Son for the execution of their united and eternal purpose. And in so doing the Infinite Spirit pledged all his resources of divine presence and of spirit personalities to the Father and the Son; he has dedicated all to the stupendous plan of exalting surviving will creatures to the divine heights of Paradise perfection. (93.8) 8:3.6 The Infinite Spirit is a complete, exclusive, and universal revelation of the Universal Father and his Eternal Son. All knowledge of the Father-Son partnership must be had through the Infinite Spirit, the conjoint representative of the divine thought-word union. (93.9) 8:3.7 The Eternal Son is the only avenue of approach to the Universal Father, and the Infinite Spirit is the only means of attaining the Eternal Son. Only by the patient ministry of the Spirit are the ascendant beings of time able to discover the Son. (94.1) 8:3.8 At the center of all things the Infinite Spirit is the first of the Paradise Deities to be attained by the ascending pilgrims. The Third Person enshrouds the Second and the First Persons and therefore must always be first recognized by all who are candidates for presentation to the Son and his Father. (94.2) 8:3.9 And in many other ways does the Spirit equally represent and similarly serve the Father and the Son. 4. The Spirit of Divine Ministry (94.3) 8:4.1 Paralleling the physical universe wherein Paradise gravity holds all things together is the spiritual universe wherein the word of the Son interprets the thought of God and, when “made flesh,” demonstrates the loving mercy of the combined nature of the associated Creators. But in and through all this material and spiritual creation there is a vast stage whereon the Infinite Spirit and his spirit offspring show forth the combined mercy, patience, and everlasting affection of the divine parents towards the intelligent children of their co-operative devising and making. Everlasting ministry to mind is the essence of the Spirit’s divine character. And all the spirit offspring of the Conjoint Actor partake of this desire to minister, this divine urge to service. (94.4) 8:4.2 God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is ministry — the ministry of divine love and endless mercy to all intelligent creation. The Spirit is the personification of the Father’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eternally united for universal service. The Spirit is love applied to the creature creation, the combined love of the Father and the Son. (94.5) 8:4.3 On Urantia the Infinite Spirit is known as an omnipresent influence, a universal presence, but in Havona you shall know him as a personal presence of actual ministry. Here the ministry of the Paradise Spirit is the exemplary and inspiring pattern for each of his co-ordinate Spirits and subordinate personalities ministering to the created beings on the worlds of time and space. In this divine universe the Infinite Spirit fully participated in the seven transcendental appearances of the Eternal Son; likewise did he participate with the original Michael Son in the seven bestowals upon the circuits of Havona, thereby becoming the sympathetic and understanding spirit minister to every pilgrim of time traversing these perfect circles on high. (94.6) 8:4.4 When a Creator Son of God accepts the creatorship charge of responsibility for a projected local universe, the personalities of the Infinite Spirit pledge themselves as the tireless ministers of this Michael Son when he goes forth on his mission of creative adventure. Especially in the persons of the Creative Daughters, the local universe Mother Spirits, do we find the Infinite Spirit devoted to the task of fostering the ascension of the material creatures to higher and higher levels of spiritual attainment. And all this work of creature ministry is done in perfect harmony with the purposes, and in close association with the personalities, of the Creator Sons of these local universes. (94.7) 8:4.5 As the Sons of God are engaged in the gigantic task of revealing the Father’s personality of love to a universe, so is the Infinite Spirit dedicated to the unending ministry of revealing the combined love of the Father and the Son to the individual minds of all the children of each universe. In these local creations the Spirit does not come down to the material races in the likeness of mortal flesh as do certain of the Sons of God, but the Infinite Spirit and his co-ordinate Spirits do downstep themselves, do joyfully undergo an amazing series of divinity attenuations, until they appear as angels to stand by your side and guide you through the lowly paths of earthly existence. (95.1) 8:4.6 By this very diminishing series the Infinite Spirit does actually, and as a person, draw very near to every being of the animal-origin spheres. And all this the Spirit does without in the least invalidating his existence as the Third Person of Deity at the center of all things. (95.2) 8:4.7 The Conjoint Creator is truly and forever the great ministering personality, the universal mercy minister. To comprehend the ministry of the Spirit, ponder the truth that he is the combined portrayal of the Father’s unending love and of the Son’s eternal mercy. The Spirit’s ministry is not, however, restricted solely to the representation of the Eternal Son and the Universal Father. The Infinite Spirit also possesses the power to minister to the creatures of the realm in his own name and right; the Third Person is of divine dignity and also bestows the universal ministry of mercy in his own behalf. (95.3) 8:4.8 As man learns more of the loving and tireless ministry of the lower orders of the creature family of this Infinite Spirit, he will all the more admire and adore the transcendent nature and matchless character of this combined Action of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. Indeed is this Spirit “the eyes of the Lord which are ever over the righteous” and “the divine ears which are ever open to their prayers.” 5. The Presence of God (95.4) 8:5.1 The outstanding attribute of the Infinite Spirit is omnipresence. Throughout all the universe of universes there is everywhere present this all-pervading spirit, which is so akin to the presence of a universal and divine mind. Both the Second Person and the Third Person of Deity are represented on all worlds by their ever-present spirits. (95.5) 8:5.2 The Father is infinite and is therefore limited only by volition. In the bestowal of Adjusters and in the encircuitment of personality, the Father acts alone, but in the contact of spirit forces with intelligent beings, he utilizes the spirits and personalities of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. He is at will spiritually present equally with the Son or with the Conjoint Actor; he is present with the Son and in the Spirit. The Father is most certainly everywhere present, and we discern his presence by and through any and all of these diverse but associated forces, influences, and presences. (95.6) 8:5.3 In your sacred writings the term Spirit of God seems to be used interchangeably to designate both the Infinite Spirit on Paradise and the Creative Spirit of your local universe. The Holy Spirit is the spiritual circuit of this Creative Daughter of the Paradise Infinite Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a circuit indigenous to each local universe and is confined to the spiritual realm of that creation; but the Infinite Spirit is omnipresent. (95.7) 8:5.4 There are many spiritual influences, and they are all as one. Even the work of the Thought Adjusters, though independent of all other influences, unvaryingly coincides with the spirit ministry of the combined influences of the Infinite Spirit and a local universe Mother Spirit. As these spiritual presences operate in the lives of Urantians, they cannot be segregated. In your minds and upon your souls they function as one spirit, notwithstanding their diverse origins. And as this united spiritual ministration is experienced, it becomes to you the influence of the Supreme, “who is ever able to keep you from failing and to present you blameless before your Father on high.” (96.1) 8:5.5 Ever remember that the Infinite Spirit is the Conjoint Actor; both the Father and the Son are functioning in and through him; he is present not only as himself but also as the Father and as the Son and as the Father-Son. In recognition of this and for many additional reasons the spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit is often referred to as “the spirit of God.” (96.2) 8:5.6 It would also be consistent to refer to the liaison of all spiritual ministry as the spirit of God, for such a liaison is truly the union of the spirits of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and God the Sevenfold — even the spirit of God the Supreme. 6. Personality of the Infinite Spirit (96.3) 8:6.1 Do not allow the widespread bestowal and the far-flung distribution of the Third Source and Center to obscure or otherwise detract from the fact of his personality. The Infinite Spirit is a universe presence, an eternal action, a cosmic power, a holy influence, and a universal mind; he is all of these and infinitely more, but he is also a true and divine personality. (96.4) 8:6.2 The Infinite Spirit is a complete and perfect personality, the divine equal and co-ordinate of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Conjoint Creator is just as real and visible to the higher intelligences of the universes as are the Father and the Son; indeed more so, for it is the Spirit whom all ascenders must attain before they may approach the Father through the Son. (96.5) 8:6.3 The Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity, is possessed of all the attributes which you associate with personality. The Spirit is endowed with absolute mind: “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” The Spirit is endowed not only with mind but also with will. In the bestowal of his gifts it is recorded: “But all these works that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally and as he wills.” (96.6) 8:6.4 “The love of the Spirit” is real, as also are his sorrows; therefore “Grieve not the Spirit of God.” Whether we observe the Infinite Spirit as Paradise Deity or as a local universe Creative Spirit, we find that the Conjoint Creator is not only the Third Source and Center but also a divine person. This divine personality also reacts to the universe as a person. The Spirit speaks to you, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” “The Spirit himself makes intercession for you.” The Spirit exerts a direct and personal influence upon created beings, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” (96.7) 8:6.5 Even though we behold the phenomenon of the ministry of the Infinite Spirit to the remote worlds of the universe of universes, even though we envisage this same co-ordinating Deity acting in and through the untold legions of the manifold beings who take origin in the Third Source and Center, even though we recognize the omnipresence of the Spirit, nonetheless, we still affirm that this same Third Source and Center is a person, the Conjoint Creator of all things and all beings and all universes. (96.8) 8:6.6 In the administration of universes the Father, Son, and Spirit are perfectly and eternally interassociated. Though each is engaged in a personal ministry to all creation, all three are divinely and absolutely interlocked in a service of creation and control which forever makes them one. (97.1) 8:6.7 In the person of the Infinite Spirit the Father and the Son are mutually present, always and in unqualified perfection, for the Spirit is like the Father and like the Son, and also like the Father and the Son as they two are forever one. (97.2) 8:6.8 [Presented on Urantia by a Divine Counselor of Uversa commissioned by the Ancients of Days to portray the nature and work of the Infinite Spirit.]

The Life Carriers (396.1) 36:0.1 LIFE does not originate spontaneously. Life is constructed according to plans formulated by the (unrevealed) Architects of Being and appears on the inhabited planets either by direct importation or as a result of the operations of the Life Carriers of the local universes. These carriers of life are among the most interesting and versatile of the diverse family of universe Sons. They are intrusted with designing and carrying creature life to the planetary spheres. And after planting this life on such new worlds, they remain there for long periods to foster its development. 1. Origin and Nature of Life Carriers (396.2) 36:1.1 Though the Life Carriers belong to the family of divine sonship, they are a peculiar and distinct type of universe Sons, being the only group of intelligent life in a local universe in whose creation the rulers of a superuniverse participate. The Life Carriers are the offspring of three pre-existent personalities: the Creator Son, the Universe Mother Spirit, and, by designation, one of the three Ancients of Days presiding over the destinies of the superuniverse concerned. These Ancients of Days, who alone can decree the extinction of intelligent life, participate in the creation of the Life Carriers, who are intrusted with establishing physical life on the evolving worlds. (396.3) 36:1.2 In the universe of Nebadon we have on record the creation of one hundred million Life Carriers. This efficient corps of life disseminators is not a truly self-governing group. They are directed by the life-determining trio, consisting of Gabriel, the Father Melchizedek, and Nambia, the original and first-born Life Carrier of Nebadon. But in all phases of their divisional administration they are self-governing. (396.4) 36:1.3 Life Carriers are graded into three grand divisions: The first division is the senior Life Carriers, the second, assistants, and the third, custodians. The primary division is subdivided into twelve groups of specialists in the various forms of life manifestation. The segregation of these three divisions was effected by the Melchizedeks, who conducted tests for such purposes on the Life Carriers’ headquarters sphere. The Melchizedeks have ever since been closely associated with the Life Carriers and always accompany them when they go forth to establish life on a new planet. (396.5) 36:1.4 When an evolutionary planet is finally settled in light and life, the Life Carriers are organized into the higher deliberative bodies of advisory capacity to assist in the further administration and development of the world and its glorified beings. In the later and settled ages of an evolving universe these Life Carriers are intrusted with many new duties. 2. The Life Carrier Worlds (397.1) 36:2.1 The Melchizedeks have the general oversight of the fourth group of seven primary spheres in the Salvington circuit. These worlds of the Life Carriers are designated as follows: (397.2) 36:2.2 1. The Life Carrier headquarters. (397.3) 36:2.3 2. The life-planning sphere. (397.4) 36:2.4 3. The life-conservation sphere. (397.5) 36:2.5 4. The sphere of life evolution. (397.6) 36:2.6 5. The sphere of life associated with mind. (397.7) 36:2.7 6. The sphere of mind and spirit in living beings. (397.8) 36:2.8 7. The sphere of unrevealed life. (397.9) 36:2.9 Each of these primary spheres is surrounded by six satellites, on which the special phases of all the Life Carrier activities in the universe are centered. (397.10) 36:2.10 World Number One, the headquarters sphere, together with its six tributary satellites, is devoted to the study of universal life, life in all of its known phases of manifestation. Here is located the college of life planning, wherein function teachers and advisers from Uversa and Havona, even from Paradise. And I am permitted to reveal that the seven central emplacements of the adjutant mind-spirits are situated on this world of the Life Carriers. (397.11) 36:2.11 The number ten — the decimal system — is inherent in the physical universe but not in the spiritual. The domain of life is characterized by three, seven, and twelve or by multiples and combinations of these basic numbers. There are three primal and essentially different life plans, after the order of the three Paradise Sources and Centers, and in the universe of Nebadon these three basic forms of life are segregated on three different types of planets. There were, originally, twelve distinct and divine concepts of transmissible life. This number twelve, with its subdivisions and multiples, runs throughout all basic life patterns of all seven superuniverses. There are also seven architectural types of life design, fundamental arrangements of the reproducing configurations of living matter. The Orvonton life patterns are configured as twelve inheritance carriers. The differing orders of will creatures are configured as 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, 384, and 768. On Urantia there are forty-eight units of pattern control — trait determiners — in the sex cells of human reproduction. (397.12) 36:2.12 The Second World is the life-designing sphere; here all new modes of life organization are worked out. While the original life designs are provided by the Creator Son, the actual outworking of these plans is intrusted to the Life Carriers and their associates. When the general life plans for a new world have been formulated, they are transmitted to the headquarters sphere, where they are minutely scrutinized by the supreme council of the senior Life Carriers in collaboration with a corps of consulting Melchizedeks. If the plans are a departure from previously accepted formulas, they must be passed upon, and endorsed by, the Creator Son. The chief of Melchizedeks often represents the Creator Son in these deliberations. (397.13) 36:2.13 Planetary life, therefore, while similar in some respects, differs in many ways on each evolutionary world. Even in a uniform life series in a single family of worlds, life is not exactly the same on any two planets; there is always a planetary type, for the Life Carriers work constantly in an effort to improve the vital formulas committed to their keeping. (398.1) 36:2.14 There are over one million fundamental or cosmic chemical formulas which constitute the parent patterns and the numerous basic functional variations of life manifestations. Satellite number one of the life-planning sphere is the realm of the universe physicists and electrochemists who serve as technical assistants to the Life Carriers in the work of capturing, organizing, and manipulating the essential units of energy which are employed in building up the material vehicles of life transmission, the so-called germ plasm. (398.2) 36:2.15 The planetary life-planning laboratories are situated on the second satellite of this world number two. In these laboratories the Life Carriers and all their associates collaborate with the Melchizedeks in the effort to modify and possibly improve the life designed for implantation on the decimal planets of Nebadon. The life now evolving on Urantia was planned and partially worked out on this very world, for Urantia is a decimal planet, a life-experiment world. On one world in each ten a greater variance in the standard life designs is permitted than on the other (nonexperimental) worlds. (398.3) 36:2.16 World Number Three is devoted to the conservation of life. Here various modes of life protection and preservation are studied and developed by the assistants and custodians of the Life Carrier corps. The life plans for every new world always provide for the early establishment of the life-conservation commission, consisting of custodian specialists in the expert manipulation of the basic life patterns. On Urantia there were twenty-four such custodian commissioners, two for each fundamental or parent pattern of the architectural organization of the life material. On planets such as yours the highest form of life is reproduced by a life-carrying bundle which possesses twenty-four pattern units. (And since the intellectual life grows out of, and upon the foundation of, the physical, there come into existence the four and twenty basic orders of psychic organization.) (398.4) 36:2.17 Sphere Number Four and its tributary satellites are devoted to the study of the evolution of creature life in general and to the evolutionary antecedents of any one life level in particular. The original life plasm of an evolutionary world must contain the full potential for all future developmental variations and for all subsequent evolutionary changes and modifications. The provision for such far-reaching projects of life metamorphosis may require the appearance of many apparently useless forms of animal and vegetable life. Such by-products of planetary evolution, foreseen or unforeseen, appear upon the stage of action only to disappear, but in and through all this long process there runs the thread of the wise and intelligent formulations of the original designers of the planetary life plan and species scheme. The manifold by-products of biologic evolution are all essential to the final and full function of the higher intelligent forms of life, notwithstanding that great outward disharmony may prevail from time to time in the long upward struggle of the higher creatures to effect the mastery of the lower forms of life, many of which are sometimes so antagonistic to the peace and comfort of the evolving will creatures. (398.5) 36:2.18 Number Five World is concerned wholly with life associated with mind. Each of its satellites is devoted to the study of a single phase of creature mind correlated with creature life. Mind such as man comprehends is an endowment of the seven adjutant mind-spirits superimposed on the nonteachable or mechanical levels of mind by the agencies of the Infinite Spirit. The life patterns are variously responsive to these adjutants and to the different spirit ministries operating throughout the universes of time and space. The capacity of material creatures to effect spirit response is entirely dependent on the associated mind endowment, which, in turn, has directionized the course of the biologic evolution of these same mortal creatures. (399.1) 36:2.19 World Number Six is dedicated to the correlation of mind with spirit as they are associated with living forms and organisms. This world and its six tributaries embrace the schools of creature co-ordination, wherein teachers from both the central universe and the superuniverse collaborate with the Nebadon instructors in presenting the highest levels of creature attainment in time and space. (399.2) 36:2.20 The Seventh Sphere of the Life Carriers is dedicated to the unrevealed domains of evolutionary creature life as it is related to the cosmic philosophy of the expanding factualization of the Supreme Being. 3. Life Transplantation (399.3) 36:3.1 Life does not spontaneously appear in the universes; the Life Carriers must initiate it on the barren planets. They are the carriers, disseminators, and guardians of life as it appears on the evolutionary worlds of space. All life of the order and forms known on Urantia arises with these Sons, though not all forms of planetary life are existent on Urantia. (399.4) 36:3.2 The corps of Life Carriers commissioned to plant life upon a new world usually consists of one hundred senior carriers, one hundred assistants, and one thousand custodians. The Life Carriers often carry actual life plasm to a new world, but not always. They sometimes organize the life patterns after arriving on the planet of assignment in accordance with formulas previously approved for a new adventure in life establishment. Such was the origin of the planetary life of Urantia. (399.5) 36:3.3 When, in accordance with approved formulas, the physical patterns have been provided, then do the Life Carriers catalyze this lifeless material, imparting through their persons the vital spirit spark; and forthwith do the inert patterns become living matter. (399.6) 36:3.4 The vital spark — the mystery of life — is bestowed through the Life Carriers, not by them. They do indeed supervise such transactions, they formulate the life plasm itself, but it is the Universe Mother Spirit who supplies the essential factor of the living plasm. From the Creative Daughter of the Infinite Spirit comes that energy spark which enlivens the body and presages the mind. (399.7) 36:3.5 In the bestowal of life the Life Carriers transmit nothing of their personal natures, not even on those spheres where new orders of life are projected. At such times they simply initiate and transmit the spark of life, start the required revolutions of matter in accordance with the physical, chemical, and electrical specifications of the ordained plans and patterns. Life Carriers are living catalytic presences which agitate, organize, and vitalize the otherwise inert elements of the material order of existence. (400.1) 36:3.6 The Life Carriers of a planetary corps are given a certain period in which to establish life on a new world, approximately one-half million years of the time of that planet. At the termination of this period, indicated by certain developmental attainments of the planetary life, they cease implantation efforts, and they may not subsequently add anything new or supplemental to the life of that planet.* (400.2) 36:3.7 During the ages intervening between life establishment and the emergence of human creatures of moral status, the Life Carriers are permitted to manipulate the life environment and otherwise favorably directionize the course of biologic evolution. And this they do for long periods of time. (400.3) 36:3.8 When the Life Carriers operating on a new world have once succeeded in producing a being with will, with the power of moral decision and spiritual choice, then and there their work terminates — they are through; they may manipulate the evolving life no further. From this point forward the evolution of living things must proceed in accordance with the endowment of the inherent nature and tendencies which have already been imparted to, and established in, the planetary life formulas and patterns. The Life Carriers are not permitted to experiment or to interfere with will; they are not allowed to dominate or arbitrarily influence moral creatures. (400.4) 36:3.9 Upon the arrival of a Planetary Prince they prepare to leave, though two of the senior carriers and twelve custodians may volunteer, by taking temporary renunciation vows, to remain indefinitely on the planet as advisers in the matter of the further development and conservation of the life plasm. Two such Sons and their twelve associates are now serving on Urantia. 4. Melchizedek Life Carriers (400.5) 36:4.1 In every local system of inhabited worlds throughout Nebadon there is a single sphere whereon the Melchizedeks have functioned as life carriers. These abodes are known as the system midsonite worlds, and on each of them a materially modified Melchizedek Son has mated with a selected Daughter of the material order of sonship. The Mother Eves of such midsonite worlds are dispatched from the system headquarters of jurisdiction, having been chosen by the designated Melchizedek life carrier from among the numerous volunteers who respond to the call of the System Sovereign addressed to the Material Daughters of his sphere. (400.6) 36:4.2 The progeny of a Melchizedek life carrier and a Material Daughter are known as midsoniters. The Melchizedek father of such a race of supernal creatures eventually leaves the planet of his unique life function, and the Mother Eve of this special order of universe beings also departs upon the appearance of the seventh generation of planetary offspring. The direction of such a world then devolves upon her eldest son. (400.7) 36:4.3 The midsonite creatures live and function as reproducing beings on their magnificent worlds until they are one thousand standard years of age; whereupon they are translated by seraphic transport. Midsoniters are nonreproducing beings thereafter because the technique of dematerialization which they pass through in preparation for enseraphiming forever deprives them of reproductive prerogatives. (400.8) 36:4.4 The present status of these beings can hardly be reckoned as either mortal or immortal, neither can they be definitely classified as human or divine. These creatures are not Adjuster indwelt, hence hardly immortal. But neither do they seem to be mortal; no midsoniter has experienced death. All midsoniters ever born in Nebadon are alive today, functioning on their native worlds, on some intervening sphere, or on the Salvington midsonite sphere in the finaliters’ group of worlds. (401.1) 36:4.5 The Salvington Worlds of the Finaliters. The Melchizedek life carriers, as well as the associated Mother Eves, go from the system midsonite spheres to the finaliters’ worlds of the Salvington circuit, where their offspring are also destined to forgather. (401.2) 36:4.6 It should be explained in this connection that the fifth group of seven primary worlds in the Salvington circuit are the Nebadon worlds of the finaliters. The children of the Melchizedek life carriers and the Material Daughters are domiciled on the seventh world of the finaliters, the Salvington midsonite sphere. (401.3) 36:4.7 The satellites of the seven primary worlds of the finaliters are the rendezvous of the personalities of the super- and central universes who may be executing assignments in Nebadon. While the ascending mortals go about freely on all of the cultural worlds and training spheres of the 490 worlds comprising the Melchizedek University, there are certain special schools and numerous restricted zones which they are not permitted to enter. This is especially true of the forty-nine spheres under the jurisdiction of the finaliters. (401.4) 36:4.8 The purpose of the midsonite creatures is not at present known, but it would appear that these personalities are forgathering on the seventh finaliter world in preparation for some future eventuality in universe evolution. Our inquiries concerning the midsonite races are always referred to the finaliters, and always do the finaliters decline to discuss the destiny of their wards. Regardless of our uncertainty as to the future of the midsoniters, we do know that every local universe in Orvonton harbors such an accumulating corps of these mysterious beings. It is the belief of the Melchizedek life carriers that their midsonite children will some day be endowed with the transcendental and eternal spirit of absonity by God the Ultimate. 5. The Seven Adjutant Mind-Spirits (401.5) 36:5.1 It is the presence of the seven adjutant mind-spirits on the primitive worlds that conditions the course of organic evolution; that explains why evolution is purposeful and not accidental. These adjutants represent that function of the mind ministry of the Infinite Spirit which is extended to the lower orders of intelligent life through the operations of a local universe Mother Spirit. The adjutants are the children of the Universe Mother Spirit and constitute her personal ministry to the material minds of the realms. Wherever and whenever such mind is manifest, these spirits are variously functioning. (401.6) 36:5.2 The seven adjutant mind-spirits are called by names which are the equivalents of the following designations: intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge, counsel, worship, and wisdom. These mind-spirits send forth their influence into all the inhabited worlds as a differential urge, each seeking receptivity capacity for manifestation quite apart from the degree to which its fellows may find reception and opportunity for function. (401.7) 36:5.3 The central lodgments of the adjutant spirits on the Life Carrier headquarters world indicate to the Life Carrier supervisors the extent and quality of the mind function of the adjutants on any world and in any given living organism of intellect status. These life-mind emplacements are perfect indicators of living mind function for the first five adjutants. But with regard to the sixth and seventh adjutant spirits — worship and wisdom — these central lodgments record only a qualitative function. The quantitative activity of the adjutant of worship and the adjutant of wisdom is registered in the immediate presence of the Divine Minister on Salvington, being a personal experience of the Universe Mother Spirit. (402.1) 36:5.4 The seven adjutant mind-spirits always accompany the Life Carriers to a new planet, but they should not be regarded as entities; they are more like circuits. The spirits of the seven universe adjutants do not function as personalities apart from the universe presence of the Divine Minister; they are in fact a level of consciousness of the Divine Minister and are always subordinate to the action and presence of their creative mother. (402.2) 36:5.5 We are handicapped for words adequately to designate these seven adjutant mind-spirits. They are ministers of the lower levels of experiential mind, and they may be described, in the order of evolutionary attainment, as follows: (402.3) 36:5.6 1. The spirit of intuition — quick perception, the primitive physical and inherent reflex instincts, the directional and other self-preservative endowments of all mind creations; the only one of the adjutants to function so largely in the lower orders of animal life and the only one to make extensive functional contact with the nonteachable levels of mechanical mind. (402.4) 36:5.7 2. The spirit of understanding — the impulse of co-ordination, the spontaneous and apparently automatic association of ideas. This is the gift of the co-ordination of acquired knowledge, the phenomenon of quick reasoning, rapid judgment, and prompt decision. (402.5) 36:5.8 3. The spirit of courage — the fidelity endowment — in personal beings, the basis of character acquirement and the intellectual root of moral stamina and spiritual bravery. When enlightened by facts and inspired by truth, this becomes the secret of the urge of evolutionary ascension by the channels of intelligent and conscientious self-direction. (402.6) 36:5.9 4. The spirit of knowledge — the curiosity-mother of adventure and discovery, the scientific spirit; the guide and faithful associate of the spirits of courage and counsel; the urge to direct the endowments of courage into useful and progressive paths of growth. (402.7) 36:5.10 5. The spirit of counsel — the social urge, the endowment of species co-operation; the ability of will creatures to harmonize with their fellows; the origin of the gregarious instinct among the more lowly creatures. (402.8) 36:5.11 6. The spirit of worship — the religious impulse, the first differential urge separating mind creatures into the two basic classes of mortal existence. The spirit of worship forever distinguishes the animal of its association from the soulless creatures of mind endowment. Worship is the badge of spiritual-ascension candidacy. (402.9) 36:5.12 7. The spirit of wisdom — the inherent tendency of all moral creatures towards orderly and progressive evolutionary advancement. This is the highest of the adjutants, the spirit co-ordinator and articulator of the work of all the others. This spirit is the secret of that inborn urge of mind creatures which initiates and maintains the practical and effective program of the ascending scale of existence; that gift of living things which accounts for their inexplicable ability to survive and, in survival, to utilize the co-ordination of all their past experience and present opportunities for the acquisition of all of everything that all of the other six mental ministers can mobilize in the mind of the organism concerned. Wisdom is the acme of intellectual performance. Wisdom is the goal of a purely mental and moral existence. (403.1) 36:5.13 The adjutant mind-spirits experientially grow, but they never become personal. They evolve in function, and the function of the first five in the animal orders is to a certain extent essential to the function of all seven as human intellect. This animal relationship makes the adjutants more practically effective as human mind; hence animals are to a certain extent indispensable to man’s intellectual as well as to his physical evolution. (403.2) 36:5.14 These mind-adjutants of a local universe Mother Spirit are related to creature life of intelligence status much as the power centers and physical controllers are related to the nonliving forces of the universe. They perform invaluable service in the mind circuits on the inhabited worlds and are effective collaborators with the Master Physical Controllers, who also serve as controllers and directors of the preadjutant mind levels, the levels of nonteachable or mechanical mind. (403.3) 36:5.15 Living mind, prior to the appearance of capacity to learn from experience, is the ministry domain of the Master Physical Controllers. Creature mind, before acquiring the ability to recognize divinity and worship Deity, is the exclusive domain of the adjutant spirits. With the appearance of the spiritual response of the creature intellect, such created minds at once become superminded, being instantly encircuited in the spirit cycles of the local universe Mother Spirit. (403.4) 36:5.16 The adjutant mind-spirits are in no manner directly related to the diverse and highly spiritual function of the spirit of the personal presence of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit of the inhabited worlds; but they are functionally antecedent to, and preparatory for, the appearance of this very spirit in evolutionary man. The adjutants afford the Universe Mother Spirit a varied contact with, and control over, the material living creatures of a local universe, but they do not repercuss in the Supreme Being when acting on prepersonality levels. (403.5) 36:5.17 Nonspiritual mind is either a spirit-energy manifestation or a physical-energy phenomenon. Even human mind, personal mind, has no survival qualities apart from spirit identification. Mind is a divinity bestowal, but it is not immortal when it functions without spirit insight, and when it is devoid of the ability to worship and crave survival. 6. Living Forces (403.6) 36:6.1 Life is both mechanistic and vitalistic — material and spiritual. Ever will Urantia physicists and chemists progress in their understanding of the protoplasmic forms of vegetable and animal life, but never will they be able to produce living organisms. Life is something different from all energy manifestations; even the material life of physical creatures is not inherent in matter. (403.7) 36:6.2 Things material may enjoy an independent existence, but life springs only from life. Mind can be derived only from pre-existent mind. Spirit takes origin only from spirit ancestors. The creature may produce the forms of life, but only a creator personality or a creative force can supply the activating living spark. (404.1) 36:6.3 Life Carriers can organize the material forms, or physical patterns, of living beings, but the Spirit provides the initial spark of life and bestows the endowment of mind. Even the living forms of experimental life which the Life Carriers organize on their Salvington worlds are always devoid of reproductive powers. When the life formulas and the vital patterns are correctly assembled and properly organized, the presence of a Life Carrier is sufficient to initiate life, but all such living organisms are lacking in two essential attributes — mind endowment and reproductive powers. Animal mind and human mind are gifts of the local universe Mother Spirit, functioning through the seven adjutant mind-spirits, while creature ability to reproduce is the specific and personal impartation of the Universe Spirit to the ancestral life plasm inaugurated by the Life Carriers. (404.2) 36:6.4 When the Life Carriers have designed the patterns of life, after they have organized the energy systems, there must occur an additional phenomenon; the “breath of life” must be imparted to these lifeless forms. The Sons of God can construct the forms of life, but it is the Spirit of God who really contributes the vital spark. And when the life thus imparted is spent, then again the remaining material body becomes dead matter. When the bestowed life is exhausted, the body returns to the bosom of the material universe from which it was borrowed by the Life Carriers to serve as a transient vehicle for that life endowment which they conveyed to such a visible association of energy-matter. (404.3) 36:6.5 The life bestowed upon plants and animals by the Life Carriers does not return to the Life Carriers upon the death of plant or animal. The departing life of such a living thing possesses neither identity nor personality; it does not individually survive death. During its existence and the time of its sojourn in the body of matter, it has undergone a change; it has undergone energy evolution and survives only as a part of the cosmic forces of the universe; it does not survive as individual life. The survival of mortal creatures is wholly predicated on the evolvement of an immortal soul within the mortal mind. (404.4) 36:6.6 We speak of life as “energy” and as “force,” but it is really neither. Force-energy is variously gravity responsive; life is not. Pattern is also nonresponsive to gravity, being a configuration of energies that have already fulfilled all gravity-responsive obligations. Life, as such, constitutes the animation of some pattern-configured or otherwise segregated system of energy — material, mindal, or spiritual. (404.5) 36:6.7 There are some things connected with the elaboration of life on the evolutionary planets which are not altogether clear to us. We fully comprehend the physical organization of the electrochemical formulas of the Life Carriers, but we do not wholly understand the nature and source of the life-activation spark. We know that life flows from the Father through the Son and by the Spirit. It is more than possible that the Master Spirits are the sevenfold channel of the river of life which is poured out upon all creation. But we do not comprehend the technique whereby the supervising Master Spirit participates in the initial episode of life bestowal on a new planet. The Ancients of Days, we are confident, also have some part in this inauguration of life on a new world, but we are wholly ignorant of the nature thereof. We do know that the Universe Mother Spirit actually vitalizes the lifeless patterns and imparts to such activated plasm the prerogatives of organismal reproduction. We observe that these three are the levels of God the Sevenfold, sometimes designated as the Supreme Creators of time and space; but otherwise we know little more than Urantia mortals — simply that concept is inherent in the Father, expression in the Son, and life realization in the Spirit. (405.1) 36:6.8 [Indited by a Vorondadek Son stationed on Urantia as an observer and acting in this capacity by request of the Melchizedek Chief of the Supervising Revelatory Corps.]

The Seraphic Hosts (426.1) 39:0.1 AS FAR as we are cognizant, the Infinite Spirit, as personalized on the local universe headquarters, intends to produce uniformly perfect seraphim, but for some unknown reason these seraphic offspring are very diverse. This diversity may be a result of the unknown interposition of evolving experiential Deity; if so, we cannot prove it. But we do observe that, when seraphim have been subjected to educational tests and training discipline, they unfailingly and distinctly classify into the following seven groups: (426.2) 39:0.2 1. Supreme Seraphim. (426.3) 39:0.3 2. Superior Seraphim. (426.4) 39:0.4 3. Supervisor Seraphim. (426.5) 39:0.5 4. Administrator Seraphim. (426.6) 39:0.6 5. Planetary Helpers. (426.7) 39:0.7 6. Transition Ministers. (426.8) 39:0.8 7. Seraphim of the Future. (426.9) 39:0.9 To say that any one seraphim is inferior to an angel of any other group would hardly be true. Nevertheless every angel is at first service-limited to the group of original and inherent classification. My seraphic associate in the preparation of this statement, Manotia, is a supreme seraphim and onetime functioned only as a supreme seraphim. By application and devoted service she has, one by one, achieved all seven of the seraphic services, having functioned in well-nigh every avenue of activity open to a seraphim, and now holds the commission of associate chief of seraphim on Urantia. (426.10) 39:0.10 Human beings sometimes find it hard to understand that a created capacity for higher-level ministry does not necessarily imply ability to function on relatively lower service levels. Man begins life as a helpless infant; hence every mortal attainment must embrace all experiential prerequisites; seraphim have no such preadult life — no childhood. They are, however, experiential creatures, and by experience and through additional education they can augment their divine and inherent endowment of ability by the experiential acquirement of functional skill in one or more of the seraphic services. (426.11) 39:0.11 After being commissioned, seraphim are assigned to the reserves of their inherent group. Those of planetary and administrator status often serve for long periods as originally classified, but the higher the inherent function level, the more persistently do the angelic ministers seek assignment to the lower orders of universe service. Especially do they desire assignment to the reserves of the planetary helpers, and if successful they enroll in the celestial schools attached to the headquarters of the Planetary Prince of some evolutionary world. Here they begin the study of the languages, history, and local habits of the races of mankind. Seraphim must acquire knowledge and gain experience much as do human beings. They are not far removed from you in certain personality attributes. And they all crave to start at the bottom, on the lowest possible level of ministry; thus may they hope to achieve the highest possible level of experiential destiny. 1. Supreme Seraphim (427.1) 39:1.1 These seraphim are the highest of the seven revealed orders of local universe angels. They function in seven groups, each of which is closely associated with the angelic ministers of the Seraphic Corps of Completion. (427.2) 39:1.2 1. Son-Spirit Ministers. The first group of the supreme seraphim are assigned to the service of the high Sons and Spirit-origin beings resident and functioning in the local universe. This group of angelic ministers also serve the Universe Son and the Universe Spirit and are closely affiliated with the intelligence corps of the Bright and Morning Star, the universe chief executive of the united wills of the Creator Son and the Creative Spirit. (427.3) 39:1.3 Being of assignment to the high Sons and Spirits, these seraphim are naturally associated with the far-flung services of the Paradise Avonals, the divine offspring of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. The Paradise Avonals are always attended on all magisterial and bestowal missions by this high and experienced order of seraphim, who are at such times devoted to organizing and administering the special work connected with the termination of one planetary dispensation and the inauguration of a new age. But they are not concerned in the work of adjudication which might be incidental to such a change in dispensations. (427.4) 39:1.4 Bestowal Attendants. Paradise Avonals, but not Creator Sons, when on a bestowal mission are always accompanied by a corps of 144 bestowal attendants. These 144 angels are the chiefs of all other Son-Spirit ministers who may be associated with a bestowal mission. There might possibly be legions of angels subject to the command of an incarnated Son of God on a planetary bestowal, but all these seraphim would be organized and directed by the 144 bestowal attendants. Higher orders of angels, supernaphim and seconaphim, might also form a part of the attending host, and though their missions are distinct from those of the seraphim, all these activities would be co-ordinated by the bestowal attendants. (427.5) 39:1.5 These bestowal attendants are completion seraphim; they have all traversed the circles of Seraphington and have attained the Seraphic Corps of Completion. And they have been further especially trained to meet the difficulties and to cope with the emergencies associated with the bestowals of the Sons of God for the advancement of the children of time. Such seraphim have all achieved Paradise and the personal embrace of the Second Source and Center, the Eternal Son. (427.6) 39:1.6 Seraphim equally crave assignment to the missions of the incarnated Sons and attachment as destiny guardians to the mortals of the realms; the latter is the surest seraphic passport to Paradise, while the bestowal attendants have achieved the highest local universe service of the completion seraphim of Paradise attainment. (428.1) 39:1.7 2. Court Advisers. These are the seraphic advisers and helpers attached to all orders of adjudication, from the conciliators up to the highest tribunals of the realm. It is not the purpose of such tribunals to determine punitive sentences but rather to adjudicate honest differences of opinion and to decree the everlasting survival of ascending mortals. Herein lies the duty of the court advisers: to see that all charges against mortal creatures are stated in justice and adjudicated in mercy. In this work they are closely associated with the High Commissioners, Spirit-fused ascendant mortals serving in the local universe. (428.2) 39:1.8 The seraphic court advisers serve extensively as defenders of mortals. Not that there ever exists any disposition to be unfair to the lowly creatures of the realms, but while justice demands the adjudication of every default in the climb towards divine perfection, mercy requires that every such misstep be fairly adjudged in accordance with the creature nature and the divine purpose. These angels are the exponents and exemplification of the element of mercy inherent in divine justice — of fairness based on the knowledge of the underlying facts of personal motives and racial tendencies. (428.3) 39:1.9 This order of angels serves from the councils of the Planetary Princes to the highest tribunals of the local universe, while their associates of the Seraphic Corps of Completion function in the higher realms of Orvonton, even to the courts of the Ancients of Days on Uversa. (428.4) 39:1.10 3. Universe Orientators. These are the true friends and postgraduate counselors of all those ascending creatures who are pausing for the last time on Salvington, in their universe of origin, as they stand on the brink of the spirit adventure stretching out before them in the vast superuniverse of Orvonton. And at such a time many an ascender has a feeling which mortals could understand only by comparison with the human emotion of nostalgia. Behind lie the realms of achievement, realms grown familiar by long service and morontia attainment; ahead lies the challenging mystery of a greater and vaster universe. (428.5) 39:1.11 It is the task of the universe orientators to facilitate the passage of the ascending pilgrims from the attained to the unattained level of universe service, to help these pilgrims in making those kaleidoscopic adjustments in the comprehension of meanings and values inherent in the realization that a first-stage spirit being stands, not at the end and climax of the local universe morontia ascent, but rather at the very bottom of the long ladder of spiritual ascent to the Universal Father on Paradise. (428.6) 39:1.12 Many of the Seraphington graduates, members of the Seraphic Corps of Completion who are associated with these seraphim, engage in extensive teaching in certain Salvington schools concerned with the preparation of the creatures of Nebadon for the relationships of the next universe age. (428.7) 39:1.13 4. The Teaching Counselors. These angels are the invaluable assistants of the spiritual teaching corps of the local universe. Teaching counselors are secretaries to all orders of teachers, from the Melchizedeks and the Trinity Teacher Sons down to the morontia mortals who are assigned as helpers to those of their kind who are just behind them in the scale of ascendant life. You will first see these associate teaching seraphim on some one of the seven mansion worlds surrounding Jerusem. (428.8) 39:1.14 These seraphim become associates of the division chiefs of the numerous educational and training institutions of the local universes, and they are attached in large numbers to the faculties of the seven training worlds of the local systems and of the seventy educational spheres of the constellations. These ministrations extend on down to the individual worlds. Even the true and consecrated teachers of time are assisted, and often attended, by these counselors of the supreme seraphim. (429.1) 39:1.15 The fourth creature bestowal of the Creator Son was in the likeness of a teaching counselor of the supreme seraphim of Nebadon. (429.2) 39:1.16 5. Directors of Assignment. A body of 144 supreme seraphim is elected from time to time by the angels serving on the evolutionary and on the architectural spheres of creature habitation. This is the highest angelic council on any sphere, and it co-ordinates the self-directed phases of seraphic service and assignment. These angels preside over all seraphic assemblies pertaining to the line of duty or the call to worship. (429.3) 39:1.17 6. The Recorders. These are the official recorders for the supreme seraphim. Many of these high angels were born with their gifts fully developed; others have qualified for their positions of trust and responsibility by diligent application to study and faithful performance of similar duties while attached to lower or less responsible orders. (429.4) 39:1.18 7. Unattached Ministers. Large numbers of unattached seraphim of the supreme order are self-directed servers on the architectural spheres and on the inhabited planets. Such ministers voluntarily meet the differential of demand for the service of the supreme seraphim, thus constituting the general reserve of this order. 2. Superior Seraphim (429.5) 39:2.1 Superior seraphim receive their name, not because they are in any sense qualitatively superior to other orders of angels, but because they are in charge of the higher activities of a local universe. Very many of the first two groups of this seraphic corps are attainment seraphim, angels who have served in all phases of training and have returned to a glorified assignment as directors of their kind in the spheres of their earlier activities. Being a young universe, Nebadon does not have many of this order. (429.6) 39:2.2 The superior seraphim function in the following seven groups: (429.7) 39:2.3 1. The Intelligence Corps. These seraphim belong to the personal staff of Gabriel, the Bright and Morning Star. They range the local universe gathering the information of the realms for his guidance in the councils of Nebadon. They are the intelligence corps of the mighty hosts over which Gabriel presides as vicegerent of the Master Son. These seraphim are not directly affiliated with either the systems or the constellations, and their information pours in direct to Salvington upon a continuous, direct, and independent circuit. (429.8) 39:2.4 The intelligence corps of the various local universes can and do intercommunicate but only within a given superuniverse. There is a differential of energy which effectively segregates the business and transactions of the various supergovernments. One superuniverse can ordinarily communicate with another superuniverse only through the provisions and facilities of the Paradise clearinghouse. (430.1) 39:2.5 2. The Voice of Mercy. Mercy is the keynote of seraphic service and angelic ministry. It is therefore fitting that there should be a corps of angels who, in a special manner, portray mercy. These seraphim are the real mercy ministers of the local universes. They are the inspired leaders who foster the higher impulses and holier emotions of men and angels. The directors of these legions are now always completion seraphim who are also graduate guardians of mortal destiny; that is, each angelic pair has guided at least one soul of animal origin during the life in the flesh and has subsequently traversed the circles of Seraphington and has been mustered into the Seraphic Corps of Completion. (430.2) 39:2.6 3. Spirit Co-ordinators. The third group of superior seraphim are based on Salvington but function in the local universe anywhere they can be of fruitful service. While their tasks are essentially spiritual and therefore beyond the real understanding of human minds, you will perhaps grasp something of their ministry to mortals if it is explained that these angels are intrusted with the task of preparing the ascendant sojourners on Salvington for their last transition in the local universe — from the highest morontia level to the status of newborn spirit beings. As the mind planners on the mansion worlds help the surviving creature to adjust to, and make effective use of, the potentials of morontia mind, so do these seraphim instruct the morontia graduates on Salvington regarding the newly attained capacities of the mind of the spirit. And they serve the ascendant mortals in many other ways. (430.3) 39:2.7 4. Assistant Teachers. The assistant teachers are the helpers and associates of their fellow seraphim, the teaching counselors. They are also individually connected with the extensive educational enterprises of the local universe, especially with the sevenfold scheme of training operative on the mansion worlds of the local systems. A marvelous corps of this order of seraphim functions on Urantia for the purpose of fostering and furthering the cause of truth and righteousness. (430.4) 39:2.8 5. The Transporters. All groups of ministering spirits have their transport corps, angelic orders dedicated to the ministry of transporting those personalities who are unable, of themselves, to journey from one sphere to another. The fifth group of the superior seraphim are headquartered on Salvington and serve as space traversers to and from the headquarters of the local universe. Like other subdivisions of the superior seraphim, some were created as such while others have risen from the lower or less endowed groups. (430.5) 39:2.9 The “energy range” of seraphim is wholly adequate for local universe and even for superuniverse requirements, but they could never withstand the energy demands entailed by such a long journey as that from Uversa to Havona. Such an exhaustive journey requires the special powers of a primary seconaphim of transport endowments. Transporters take on energy for flight while in transit and recuperate personal power at the end of the journey. (430.6) 39:2.10 Even on Salvington ascending mortals do not possess personal transit forms. Ascenders must depend upon seraphic transport in advancing from world to world until after the last rest of sleep on the inner circle of Havona and the eternal awakening on Paradise. Subsequently you will not be dependent on angels for transport from universe to universe. (430.7) 39:2.11 The process of being enseraphimed is not unlike the experience of death or sleep except that there is an automatic time element in the transit slumber. You are consciously unconscious during seraphic rest. But the Thought Adjuster is wholly and fully conscious, in fact, exceptionally efficient since you are unable to oppose, resist, or otherwise hinder creative and transforming work. (431.1) 39:2.12 When enseraphimed, you go to sleep for a specified time, and you will awake at the designated moment. The length of a journey when in transit sleep is immaterial. You are not directly aware of the passing of time. It is as if you went to sleep on a transport vehicle in one city and, after resting in peaceful slumber all night, awakened in another and distant metropolis. You journeyed while you slumbered. And so you take flight through space, enseraphimed, while you rest — sleep. The transit sleep is induced by the liaison between the Adjusters and the seraphic transporters. (431.2) 39:2.13 The angels cannot transport combustion bodies — flesh and blood — such as you now have, but they can transport all others, from the lowest morontia to the higher spirit forms. They do not function in the event of natural death. When you finish your earthly career, your body remains on this planet. Your Thought Adjuster proceeds to the bosom of the Father, and these angels are not directly concerned in your subsequent personality reassembly on the identification mansion world. There your new body is a morontia form, one that can enseraphim. You “sow a mortal body” in the grave; you “reap a morontia form” on the mansion worlds. (431.3) 39:2.14 6. The Recorders. These personalities are especially concerned with the reception, filing, and redispatch of the records of Salvington and its associated worlds. They also serve as special recorders for resident groups of superuniverse and higher personalities and as clerks of the courts of Salvington and secretaries to the rulers thereof. (431.4) 39:2.15 Broadcasters — receivers and dispatchers — are a specialized subdivision of the seraphic recorders, being concerned with the dispatch of records and with the dissemination of essential information. Their work is of a high order, being so multicircuited that 144,000 messages can simultaneously traverse the same lines of energy. They adapt the higher ideographic techniques of the superaphic chief recorders and with these common symbols maintain reciprocal contact with both the intelligence co-ordinators of the tertiary supernaphim and the glorified intelligence co-ordinators of the Seraphic Corps of Completion. (431.5) 39:2.16 Seraphic recorders of the superior order thus effect a close liaison with the intelligence corps of their own order and with all subordinate recorders, while the broadcasts enable them to maintain constant communication with the higher recorders of the superuniverse and, through this channel, with the recorders of Havona and the custodians of knowledge on Paradise. Many of the superior order of recorders are seraphim ascended from similar duties in lower sections of the universe. (431.6) 39:2.17 7. The Reserves. Large reserves of all types of the superior seraphim are held on Salvington, instantly available for dispatch to the farthermost worlds of Nebadon as they are requisitioned by the directors of assignment or upon the request of the universe administrators. The reserves of superior seraphim also furnish messenger aids upon requisition by the chief of the Brilliant Evening Stars, who is intrusted with the custody and dispatch of all personal communications. A local universe is fully provided with adequate means of intercommunication, but there is always a residue of messages which requires dispatch by personal messengers. (432.1) 39:2.18 The basic reserves for the entire local universe are held on the seraphic worlds of Salvington. This corps includes all types of all groups of angels. 3. Supervisor Seraphim (432.2) 39:3.1 This versatile order of universe angels is assigned to the exclusive service of the constellations. These able ministers make their headquarters on the constellation capitals but function throughout all Nebadon in the interests of their assigned realms. (432.3) 39:3.2 1. Supervising Assistants. The first order of the supervising seraphim are assigned to the collective work of the Constellation Fathers, and they are the ever-efficient helpers of the Most Highs. These seraphim are primarily concerned with the unification and stabilization of a whole constellation. (432.4) 39:3.3 2. Law Forecasters. The intellectual foundation of justice is law, and in a local universe law originates in the legislative assemblies of the constellations. These deliberative bodies codify and formally promulgate the basic laws of Nebadon, laws designed to afford the greatest possible co-ordination of a whole constellation consistent with the fixed policy of noninfringement of the moral free will of personal creatures. It is the duty of the second order of supervisor seraphim to place before the constellation lawmakers a forecast of how any proposed enactment would affect the lives of freewill creatures. This service they are well qualified to perform by virtue of long experience in the local systems and on the inhabited worlds. These seraphim seek no special favors for one group or another, but they do appear before the celestial lawmakers to speak for those who cannot be present to speak for themselves. Even mortal man may contribute to the evolution of universe law, for these very seraphim do faithfully and fully portray, not necessarily man’s transient and conscious desires, but rather the true longings of the inner man, the evolving morontia soul of the material mortal on the worlds of space. (432.5) 39:3.4 3. Social Architects. From the individual planets up through the morontia training worlds, these seraphim labor to enhance all sincere social contacts and to further the social evolution of universe creatures. These are the angels who seek to divest the associations of intelligent beings of all artificiality while endeavoring to facilitate the interassociation of will creatures on a basis of real self-understanding and genuine mutual appreciation. (432.6) 39:3.5 Social architects do everything within their province and power to bring together suitable individuals that they may constitute efficient and agreeable working groups on earth; and sometimes such groups have found themselves reassociated on the mansion worlds for continued fruitful service. But not always do these seraphim attain their ends; not always are they able to bring together those who would form the most ideal group to achieve a given purpose or to accomplish a certain task; under these conditions they must utilize the best of the material available. (432.7) 39:3.6 These angels continue their ministry on the mansion and higher morontia worlds. They are concerned with any undertaking having to do with progress on the morontia worlds and which concerns three or more persons. Two beings are regarded as operating on the mating, complemental, or partnership basis, but when three or more are grouped for service, they constitute a social problem and therefore fall within the jurisdiction of the social architects. These efficient seraphim are organized in seventy divisions on Edentia, and these divisions minister on the seventy morontia progress worlds encircling the headquarters sphere. (433.1) 39:3.7 4. Ethical Sensitizers. It is the mission of these seraphim to foster and to promote the growth of creature appreciation of the morality of interpersonal relationships, for such is the seed and secret of the continued and purposeful growth of society and government, human or superhuman. These enhancers of ethical appreciation function anywhere and everywhere they may be of service, as volunteer counselors to the planetary rulers and as exchange teachers on the system training worlds. You will not, however, come under their full guidance until you reach the brotherhood schools on Edentia, where they will quicken your appreciation of those very truths of fraternity which you will even then be so earnestly exploring by the actual experience of living with the univitatia in the social laboratories of Edentia, the seventy satellites of the Norlatiadek capital. (433.2) 39:3.8 5. The Transporters. The fifth group of supervisor seraphim operate as personality transporters, carrying beings to and from the headquarters of the constellations. Such transport seraphim, while in flight from one sphere to another, are fully conscious of their velocity, direction, and astronomic whereabouts. They are not traversing space as would an inanimate projectile. They may pass near one another during space flight without the least danger of collision. They are fully able to vary speed of progression and to alter direction of flight, even to change destinations if their directors should so instruct them at any space junction of the universe intelligence circuits. (433.3) 39:3.9 These transit personalities are so organized that they can simultaneously utilize all three of the universally distributed lines of energy, each having a clear space velocity of 186,280 miles per second. These transporters are thus able to superimpose velocity of energy upon velocity of power until they attain an average speed on their long journeys varying anywhere from 555,000 to almost 559,000 of your miles per second of your time. The velocity is affected by the mass and proximity of neighboring matter and by the strength and direction of the near-by main circuits of universe power. There are numerous types of beings, similar to the seraphim, who are able to traverse space, and who also are able to transport other beings who have been properly prepared. (433.4) 39:3.10 6. The Recorders. The sixth order of supervising seraphim act as the special recorders of constellation affairs. A large and efficient corps functions on Edentia, the headquarters of the constellation of Norlatiadek, to which your system and planet belong. (433.5) 39:3.11 7. The Reserves. General reserves of the supervisor seraphim are held on the headquarters of the constellations. Such angelic reservists are in no sense inactive; many serve as messenger aids to the constellation rulers; others are attached to the Salvington reserves of unassigned Vorondadeks; still others may be attached to Vorondadek Sons on special assignment, such as the Vorondadek observer, and sometimes Most High regent, of Urantia. 4. Administrator Seraphim (434.1) 39:4.1 The fourth order of seraphim are assigned to the administrative duties of the local systems. They are indigenous to the system capitals but are stationed in large numbers on the mansion and morontia spheres and on the inhabited worlds. Fourth-order seraphim are by nature endowed with unusual administrative ability. They are the able assistants of the directors of the lower divisions of the universe government of a Creator Son and are mainly occupied with the affairs of the local systems and their component worlds. They are organized for service as follows: (434.2) 39:4.2 1. Administrative Assistants. These able seraphim are the immediate assistants of a System Sovereign, a primary Lanonandek Son. They are invaluable aids in the execution of the intricate details of the executive work of the system headquarters. They also serve as the personal agents of the system rulers, journeying back and forth in large numbers to the various transition worlds and to the inhabited planets, executing many commissions for the welfare of the system and in the physical and biologic interests of its inhabited worlds. (434.3) 39:4.3 These same seraphic administrators are also attached to the governments of the world rulers, the Planetary Princes. The majority of planets in a given universe are under the jurisdiction of a secondary Lanonandek Son, but on certain worlds, such as Urantia, there has been a miscarriage of the divine plan. In the event of the defection of a Planetary Prince, these seraphim become attached to the Melchizedek receivers and their successors in planetary authority. The present acting ruler of Urantia is assisted by a corps of one thousand of this versatile order of seraphim. (434.4) 39:4.4 2. Justice Guides. These are the angels who present the summary of evidence concerning the eternal welfare of men and angels when such matters come up for adjudication in the tribunals of a system or a planet. They prepare the statements for all preliminary hearings involving mortal survival, statements which are subsequently carried with the records of such cases to the higher tribunals of the universe and the superuniverse. The defense of all cases of doubtful survival is prepared by these seraphim, who have a perfect understanding of all the details of every feature of every count in the indictments drawn by the administrators of universe justice. (434.5) 39:4.5 It is not the mission of these angels to defeat or to delay justice but rather to insure that unerring justice is dealt out with generous mercy in fairness to all creatures. These seraphim often function on the local worlds, commonly appearing before the referee trios of the conciliating commissions — the courts for minor misunderstandings. Many who at one time served as justice guides in the lower realms later appear as Voices of Mercy in the higher spheres and on Salvington. (434.6) 39:4.6 In the Lucifer rebellion in Satania very few of the justice guides were lost, but more than one quarter of the other administrator seraphim and of the lower orders of seraphic ministers were misled and deluded by the sophistries of unbridled personal liberty. (434.7) 39:4.7 3. Interpreters of Cosmic Citizenship. When ascending mortals have completed the mansion world training, the first student apprenticeship in the universe career, they are permitted to enjoy the transient satisfactions of relative maturity — citizenship on the system capital. While the attainment of each ascendant goal is a factual achievement, in the larger sense such goals are simply milestones on the long ascending path to Paradise. But however relative such successes may be, no evolutionary creature is ever denied the full though transient satisfaction of goal attainment. Ever and anon there is a pause in the Paradise ascent, a short breathing spell, during which universe horizons stand still, creature status is stationary, and the personality tastes the sweetness of goal fulfillment. (435.1) 39:4.8 The first of such periods in the career of a mortal ascender occurs on the capital of a local system. During this pause you will, as a citizen of Jerusem, attempt to express in creature life those things which you have acquired during the eight preceding life experiences — embracing Urantia and the seven mansion worlds. (435.2) 39:4.9 The seraphic interpreters of cosmic citizenship guide the new citizens of the system capitals and quicken their appreciation of the responsibilities of universe government. These seraphim are also closely associated with the Material Sons in the system administration, while they portray the responsibility and morality of cosmic citizenship to the material mortals on the inhabited worlds. (435.3) 39:4.10 4. Quickeners of Morality. On the mansion worlds you begin to learn self-government for the benefit of all concerned. Your mind learns co-operation, learns how to plan with other and wiser beings. On the system headquarters the seraphic teachers will further quicken your appreciation of cosmic morality — of the interactions of liberty and loyalty. (435.4) 39:4.11 What is loyalty? It is the fruit of an intelligent appreciation of universe brotherhood; one could not take so much and give nothing. As you ascend the personality scale, first you learn to be loyal, then to love, then to be filial, and then may you be free; but not until you are a finaliter, not until you have attained perfection of loyalty, can you self-realize finality of liberty. (435.5) 39:4.12 These seraphim teach the fruitfulness of patience: That stagnation is certain death, but that overrapid growth is equally suicidal; th

The Morontia Life (541.1) 48:0.1 THE Gods cannot — at least they do not — transform a creature of gross animal nature into a perfected spirit by some mysterious act of creative magic. When the Creators desire to produce perfect beings, they do so by direct and original creation, but they never undertake to convert animal-origin and material creatures into beings of perfection in a single step. (541.2) 48:0.2 The morontia life, extending as it does over the various stages of the local universe career, is the only possible approach whereby material mortals could attain the threshold of the spirit world. What magic could death, the natural dissolution of the material body, hold that such a simple step should instantly transform the mortal and material mind into an immortal and perfected spirit? Such beliefs are but ignorant superstitions and pleasing fables. (541.3) 48:0.3 Always this morontia transition intervenes between the mortal estate and the subsequent spirit status of surviving human beings. This intermediate state of universe progress differs markedly in the various local creations, but in intent and purpose they are all quite similar. The arrangement of the mansion and higher morontia worlds in Nebadon is fairly typical of the morontia transition regimes in this part of Orvonton. 1. Morontia Materials (541.4) 48:1.1 The morontia realms are the local universe liaison spheres between the material and spiritual levels of creature existence. This morontia life has been known on Urantia since the early days of the Planetary Prince. From time to time this transition state has been taught to mortals, and the concept, in distorted form, has found a place in present-day religions. (541.5) 48:1.2 The morontia spheres are the transition phases of mortal ascension through the progression worlds of the local universe. Only the seven worlds surrounding the finaliters’ sphere of the local systems are called mansion worlds, but all fifty-six of the system transition abodes, in common with the higher spheres around the constellations and the universe headquarters, are called morontia worlds. These creations partake of the physical beauty and the morontia grandeur of the local universe headquarters spheres. (541.6) 48:1.3 All of these worlds are architectural spheres, and they have just double the number of elements of the evolved planets. Such made-to-order worlds not only abound in the heavy metals and crystals, having one hundred physical elements, but likewise have exactly one hundred forms of a unique energy organization called morontia material. The Master Physical Controllers and the Morontia Power Supervisors are able so to modify the revolutions of the primary units of matter and at the same time so to transform these associations of energy as to create this new substance. (542.1) 48:1.4 The early morontia life in the local systems is very much like that of your present material world, becoming less physical and more truly morontial on the constellation study worlds. And as you advance to the Salvington spheres, you increasingly attain spiritual levels. (542.2) 48:1.5 The Morontia Power Supervisors are able to effect a union of material and of spiritual energies, thereby organizing a morontia form of materialization which is receptive to the superimposition of a controlling spirit. When you traverse the morontia life of Nebadon, these same patient and skillful Morontia Power Supervisors will successively provide you with 570 morontia bodies, each one a phase of your progressive transformation. From the time of leaving the material worlds until you are constituted a first-stage spirit on Salvington, you will undergo just 570 separate and ascending morontia changes. Eight of these occur in the system, seventy-one in the constellation, and 491 during the sojourn on the spheres of Salvington. (542.3) 48:1.6 In the days of the mortal flesh the divine spirit indwells you, almost as a thing apart — in reality an invasion of man by the bestowed spirit of the Universal Father. But in the morontia life the spirit will become a real part of your personality, and as you successively pass through the 570 progressive transformations, you ascend from the material to the spiritual estate of creature life. (542.4) 48:1.7 Paul learned of the existence of the morontia worlds and of the reality of morontia materials, for he wrote, “They have in heaven a better and more enduring substance.” And these morontia materials are real, literal, even as in “the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” And each of these marvelous spheres is “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” 2. Morontia Power Supervisors (542.5) 48:2.1 These unique beings are exclusively concerned with the supervision of those activities which represent a working combination of spiritual and physical or semimaterial energies. They are exclusively devoted to the ministry of morontia progression. Not that they so much minister to mortals during the transition experience, but they rather make possible the transition environment for the progressing morontia creatures. They are the channels of morontia power which sustain and energize the morontia phases of the transition worlds. (542.6) 48:2.2 Morontia Power Supervisors are the offspring of a local universe Mother Spirit. They are fairly standard in design though differing slightly in nature in the various local creations. They are created for their specific function and require no training before entering upon their responsibilities. (542.7) 48:2.3 The creation of the first Morontia Power Supervisors is simultaneous with the arrival of the first mortal survivor on the shores of some one of the first mansion worlds in a local universe. They are created in groups of one thousand, classified as follows: (542.8) 48:2.4 1. Circuit Regulators . . . 400 (542.9) 48:2.5 2. System Co-ordinators . . 200 (542.10) 48:2.6 3. Planetary Custodians . . 100 (543.1) 48:2.7 4. Combined Controllers . . 100 (543.2) 48:2.8 5. Liaison Stabilizers. . . 100 (543.3) 48:2.9 6. Selective Assorters. . . .50 (543.4) 48:2.10 7. Associate Registrars . . .50 (543.5) 48:2.11 The power supervisors always serve in their native universe. They are directed exclusively by the joint spirit activity of the Universe Son and the Universe Spirit but are otherwise a wholly self-governing group. They maintain headquarters on each of the first mansion worlds of the local systems, where they work in close association with both the physical controllers and the seraphim but function in a world of their own as regards energy manifestation and spirit application. (543.6) 48:2.12 They also sometimes work in connection with supermaterial phenomena on the evolutionary worlds as ministers of temporary assignment. But they rarely serve on the inhabited planets; neither do they work on the higher training worlds of the superuniverse, being chiefly devoted to the transition regime of morontia progression in a local universe. (543.7) 48:2.13 1. Circuit Regulators. These are the unique beings who co-ordinate physical and spiritual energy and regulate its flow into the segregated channels of the morontia spheres, and these circuits are exclusively planetary, limited to a single world. The morontia circuits are distinct from, and supplementary to, both physical and spiritual circuits on the transition worlds, and it requires millions of these regulators to energize even a system of mansion worlds like that of Satania. (543.8) 48:2.14 Circuit regulators initiate those changes in material energies which render them subject to the control and regulation of their associates. These beings are morontia power generators as well as circuit regulators. Much as a dynamo apparently generates electricity out of the atmosphere, so do these living morontia dynamos seem to transform the everywhere energies of space into those materials which the morontia supervisors weave into the bodies and life activities of the ascending mortals. (543.9) 48:2.15 2. System Co-ordinators. Since each morontia world has a separate order of morontia energy, it is exceedingly difficult for humans to visualize these spheres. But on each successive transition sphere, mortals will find the plant life and everything else pertaining to the morontia existence progressively modified to correspond with the advancing spiritization of the ascending survivor. And since the energy system of each world is thus individualized, these co-ordinators operate to harmonize and blend such differing power systems into a working unit for the associated spheres of any particular group. (543.10) 48:2.16 Ascending mortals gradually progress from the physical to the spiritual as they advance from one morontia world to another; hence the necessity for providing an ascending scale of morontia spheres and an ascending scale of morontia forms. (543.11) 48:2.17 When mansion world ascenders pass from one sphere to another, they are delivered by the transport seraphim to the receivers of the system co-ordinators on the advanced world. Here in those unique temples at the center of the seventy radiating wings wherein are the chambers of transition similar to the resurrection halls on the initial world of reception for earth-origin mortals, the necessary changes in creature form are skillfully effected by the system co-ordinators. These early morontia-form changes require about seven days of standard time for their accomplishment. (544.1) 48:2.18 3. Planetary Custodians. Each morontia world, from the mansion spheres up to the universe headquarters, is in the custody — as regards morontia affairs — of seventy guardians. They constitute the local planetary council of supreme morontia authority. This council grants material for morontia forms to all ascending creatures who land on the spheres and authorizes those changes in creature form which make it possible for an ascender to proceed to the succeeding sphere. After the mansion worlds have been traversed, you will translate from one phase of morontia life to another without having to surrender consciousness. Unconsciousness attends only the earlier metamorphoses and the later transitions from one universe to another and from Havona to Paradise. (544.2) 48:2.19 4. Combined Controllers. One of these highly mechanical beings is always stationed at the center of each administrative unit of a morontia world. A combined controller is sensitive to, and functional with, physical, spiritual, and morontial energies; and with this being there are always associated two system co-ordinators, four circuit regulators, one planetary custodian, one liaison stabilizer, and either an associate registrar or a selective assorter. (544.3) 48:2.20 5. Liaison Stabilizers. These are the regulators of the morontia energy in association with the physical and spirit forces of the realm. They make possible the conversion of morontia energy into morontia material. The whole morontia organization of existence is dependent on the stabilizers. They slow down the energy revolutions to that point where physicalization can occur. But I have no terms with which I can compare or illustrate the ministry of such beings. It is quite beyond human imagination. (544.4) 48:2.21 6. Selective Assorters. As you progress from one class or phase of a morontia world to another, you must be re-keyed or advance-tuned, and it is the task of the selective assorters to keep you in progressive synchrony with the morontia life. (544.5) 48:2.22 While the basic morontia forms of life and matter are identical from the first mansion world to the last universe transition sphere, there is a functional progression which gradually extends from the material to the spiritual. Your adaptation to this basically uniform but successively advancing and spiritizing creation is effected by this selective re-keying. Such an adjustment in the mechanism of personality is tantamount to a new creation, notwithstanding that you retain the same morontia form. (544.6) 48:2.23 You may repeatedly subject yourself to the test of these examiners, and as soon as you register adequate spiritual achievement, they will gladly certify you for advanced standing. These progressive changes result in altered reactions to the morontia environment, such as modifications in food requirements and numerous other personal practices. (544.7) 48:2.24 The selective assorters are also of great service in the grouping of morontia personalities for purposes of study, teaching, and other projects. They naturally indicate those who will best function in temporary association. (544.8) 48:2.25 7. Associate Registrars. The morontia world has its own recorders, who serve in association with the spirit recorders in the supervision and custody of the records and other data indigenous to the morontia creations. The morontia records are available to all orders of personalities. (545.1) 48:2.26 All morontia transition realms are accessible alike to material and spirit beings. As morontia progressors you will remain in full contact with the material world and with material personalities, while you will increasingly discern and fraternize with spirit beings; and by the time of departure from the morontia regime, you will have seen all orders of spirits with the exception of a few of the higher types, such as Solitary Messengers. 3. Morontia Companions (545.2) 48:3.1 These hosts of the mansion and morontia worlds are the offspring of a local universe Mother Spirit. They are created from age to age in groups of one hundred thousand, and in Nebadon there are at present over seventy billion of these unique beings. (545.3) 48:3.2 Morontia Companions are trained for service by the Melchizedeks on a special planet near Salvington; they do not pass through the central Melchizedek schools. In service they range from the lowest mansion worlds of the systems to the highest study spheres of Salvington, but they are seldom encountered on the inhabited worlds. They serve under the general supervision of the Sons of God and under the immediate direction of the Melchizedeks. (545.4) 48:3.3 The Morontia Companions maintain ten thousand headquarters in a local universe — on each of the first mansion worlds of the local systems. They are almost wholly a self-governing order and are, in general, an intelligent and loyal group of beings; but every now and then, in connection with certain unfortunate celestial upheavals, they have been known to go astray. Thousands of these useful creatures were lost during the times of the Lucifer rebellion in Satania. Your local system now has its full quota of these beings, the loss of the Lucifer rebellion having only recently been made up. (545.5) 48:3.4 There are two distinct types of Morontia Companions; one type is aggressive, the other retiring, but otherwise they are equal in status. They are not sex creatures, but they manifest a touchingly beautiful affection for one another. And while they are hardly companionate in the material (human) sense, they are very close of kin to the human races in the order of creature existence. The midway creatures of the worlds are your nearest of kin; then come the morontia cherubim, and after them the Morontia Companions. (545.6) 48:3.5 These companions are touchingly affectionate and charmingly social beings. They possess distinct personalities, and when you meet them on the mansion worlds, after learning to recognize them as a class, you will soon discern their individuality. Mortals all resemble one another; at the same time each of you possesses a distinct and recognizable personality. (545.7) 48:3.6 Something of an idea of the nature of the work of these Morontia Companions may be derived from the following classification of their activities in a local system: (545.8) 48:3.7 1. Pilgrim Guardians are not assigned to specific duties in their association with the morontia progressors. These companions are responsible for the whole of the morontia career and are therefore the co-ordinators of the work of all other morontia and transition ministers. (546.1) 48:3.8 2. Pilgrim Receivers and Free Associators. These are the social companions of the new arrivals on the mansion worlds. One of them will certainly be on hand to welcome you when you awaken on the initial mansion world from the first transit sleep of time, when you experience the resurrection from the death of the flesh into the morontia life. And from the time you are thus formally welcomed on awakening to that day when you leave the local universe as a first-stage spirit, these Morontia Companions are ever with you. (546.2) 48:3.9 Companions are not assigned permanently to individuals. An ascending mortal on one of the mansion or higher worlds might have a different companion on each of several successive occasions and again might go for long periods without one. It would all depend on the requirements and also on the supply of companions available. (546.3) 48:3.10 3. Hosts to Celestial Visitors. These gracious creatures are dedicated to the entertainment of the superhuman groups of student visitors and other celestials who may chance to sojourn on the transition worlds. You will have ample opportunity to visit within any realm you have experientially attained. Student visitors are allowed on all inhabited planets, even those in isolation. (546.4) 48:3.11 4. Co-ordinators and Liaison Directors. These companions are dedicated to the facilitation of morontia intercourse and to the prevention of confusion. They are the instructors of social conduct and morontia progress, sponsoring classes and other group activities among the ascending mortals. They maintain extensive areas wherein they assemble their pupils and from time to time make requisition on the celestial artisans and the reversion directors for the embellishment of their programs. As you progress, you will come in intimate contact with these companions, and you will grow exceedingly fond of both groups. It is a matter of chance as to whether you will be associated with an aggressive or a retiring type of companion. (546.5) 48:3.12 5. Interpreters and Translators. During the early mansonia career you will have frequent recourse to the interpreters and the translators. They know and speak all the tongues of a local universe; they are the linguists of the realms. (546.6) 48:3.13 You will not acquire new languages automatically; you will learn a language over there much as you do down here, and these brilliant beings will be your language teachers. The first study on the mansion worlds will be the tongue of Satania and then the language of Nebadon. And while you are mastering these new tongues, the Morontia Companions will be your efficient interpreters and patient translators. You will never encounter a visitor on any of these worlds but that some one of the Morontia Companions will be able to officiate as interpreter. (546.7) 48:3.14 6. Excursion and Reversion Supervisors. These companions will accompany you on the longer trips to the headquarters sphere and to the surrounding worlds of transition culture. They plan, conduct, and supervise all such individual and group tours about the system worlds of training and culture. (546.8) 48:3.15 7. Area and Building Custodians. Even the material and morontia structures increase in perfection and grandeur as you advance in the mansonia career. As individuals and as groups you are permitted to make certain changes in the abodes assigned as headquarters for your sojourn on the different mansion worlds. Many of the activities of these spheres take place in the open enclosures of the variously designated circles, squares, and triangles. The majority of the mansion world structures are roofless, being enclosures of magnificent construction and exquisite embellishment. The climatic and other physical conditions prevailing on the architectural worlds make roofs wholly unnecessary. (547.1) 48:3.16 These custodians of the transition phases of ascendant life are supreme in the management of morontia affairs. They were created for this work, and pending the factualization of the Supreme Being, always will they remain Morontia Companions; never do they perform other duties. (547.2) 48:3.17 As systems and universes are settled in light and life, the mansion worlds increasingly cease to function as transition spheres of morontia training. More and more the finaliters institute their new training regime, which appears to be designed to translate the cosmic consciousness from the present level of the grand universe to that of the future outer universes. The Morontia Companions are destined to function increasingly in association with the finaliters and in numerous other realms not at present revealed on Urantia. (547.3) 48:3.18 You can forecast that these beings are probably going to contribute much to your enjoyment of the mansion worlds, whether your sojourn is to be long or short. And you will continue to enjoy them all the way up to Salvington. They are not, technically, essential to any part of your survival experience. You could reach Salvington without them, but you would greatly miss them. They are the personality luxury of your ascending career in the local universe. 4. The Reversion Directors (547.4) 48:4.1 Joyful mirth and the smile-equivalent are as universal as music. There is a morontial and a spiritual equivalent of mirth and laughter. The ascendant life is about equally divided between work and play — freedom from assignment. (547.5) 48:4.2 Celestial relaxation and superhuman humor are quite different from their human analogues, but we all actually indulge in a form of both; and they really accomplish for us, in our state, just about what ideal humor is able to do for you on Urantia. The Morontia Companions are skillful play sponsors, and they are most ably supported by the reversion directors. (547.6) 48:4.3 You would probably best understand the work of the reversion directors if they were likened to the higher types of humorists on Urantia, though that would be an exceedingly crude and somewhat unfortunate way in which to try to convey an idea of the function of these directors of change and relaxation, these ministers of the exalted humor of the morontia and spirit realms. (547.7) 48:4.4 In discussing spirit humor, first let me tell you what it is not. Spirit jest is never tinged with the accentuation of the misfortunes of the weak and erring. Neither is it ever blasphemous of the righteousness and glory of divinity. Our humor embraces three general levels of appreciation: (547.8) 48:4.5 1. Reminiscent jests. Quips growing out of the memories of past episodes in one’s experience of combat, struggle, and sometimes fearfulness, and ofttimes foolish and childish anxiety. To us, this phase of humor derives from the deep-seated and abiding ability to draw upon the past for memory material with which pleasantly to flavor and otherwise lighten the heavy loads of the present. (548.1) 48:4.6 2. Current humor. The senselessness of much that so often causes us serious concern, the joy at discovering the unimportance of much of our serious personal anxiety. We are most appreciative of this phase of humor when we are best able to discount the anxieties of the present in favor of the certainties of the future. (548.2) 48:4.7 3. Prophetic joy. It will perhaps be difficult for mortals to envisage this phase of humor, but we do get a peculiar satisfaction out of the assurance “that all things work together for good” — for spirits and morontians as well as for mortals. This aspect of celestial humor grows out of our faith in the loving overcare of our superiors and in the divine stability of our Supreme Directors. (548.3) 48:4.8 But the reversion directors of the realms are not concerned exclusively with depicting the high humor of the various orders of intelligent beings; they are also occupied with the leadership of diversion, spiritual recreation and morontia entertainment. And in this connection they have the hearty co-operation of the celestial artisans. (548.4) 48:4.9 The reversion directors themselves are not a created group; they are a recruited corps embracing beings ranging from the Havona natives down through the messenger hosts of space and the ministering spirits of time to the morontia progressors from the evolutionary worlds. All are volunteers, giving themselves to the work of assisting their fellows in the achievement of thought change and mind rest, for such attitudes are most helpful in recuperating depleted energies. (548.5) 48:4.10 When partially exhausted by the efforts of attainment, and while awaiting the reception of new energy charges, there is agreeable pleasure in living over again the enactments of other days and ages. The early experiences of the race or the order are restful to reminisce. And that is exactly why these artists are called reversion directors — they assist in reverting the memory to a former state of development or to a less experienced status of being. (548.6) 48:4.11 All beings enjoy this sort of reversion except those who are inherent Creators, hence automatic self-rejuvenators, and certain highly specialized types of creatures, such as the power centers and the physical controllers, who are always and eternally thoroughly businesslike in all their reactions. These periodic releases from the tension of functional duty are a regular part of life on all worlds throughout the universe of universes but not on the Isle of Paradise. Beings indigenous to the central abode are incapable of depletion and are not, therefore, subject to re-energizing. And with such beings of eternal Paradise perfection there can be no such reversion to evolutionary experiences. (548.7) 48:4.12 Most of us have come up through lower stages of existence or through progressive levels of our orders, and it is refreshing and in a measure amusing to look back upon certain episodes of our early experience. There is a restfulness in the contemplation of that which is old to one’s order, and which lingers as a memory possession of the mind. The future signifies struggle and advancement; it bespeaks work, effort, and achievement; but the past savors of things already mastered and achieved; contemplation of the past permits of relaxation and such a carefree review as to provoke spirit mirth and a morontia state of mind verging on merriment. (548.8) 48:4.13 Even mortal humor becomes most hearty when it depicts episodes affecting those just a little beneath one’s present developmental state, or when it portrays one’s supposed superiors falling victim to the experiences which are commonly associated with supposed inferiors. You of Urantia have allowed much that is at once vulgar and unkind to become confused with your humor, but on the whole, you are to be congratulated on a comparatively keen sense of humor. Some of your races have a rich vein of it and are greatly helped in their earthly careers thereby. Apparently you received much in the way of humor from your Adamic inheritance, much more than was secured of either music or art. (549.1) 48:4.14 All Satania, during times of play, those times when its inhabitants refreshingly resurrect the memories of a lower stage of existence, is edified by the pleasant humor of a corps of reversion directors from Urantia. The sense of celestial humor we have with us always, even when engaged in the most difficult of assignments. It helps to avoid an overdevelopment of the notion of one’s self-importance. But we do not give rein to it freely, as you might say, “have fun,” except when we are in recess from the serious assignments of our respective orders. (549.2) 48:4.15 When we are tempted to magnify our self-importance, if we stop to contemplate the infinity of the greatness and grandeur of our Makers, our own self-glorification becomes sublimely ridiculous, even verging on the humorous. One of the functions of humor is to help all of us take ourselves less seriously. Humor is the divine antidote for exaltation of ego. (549.3) 48:4.16 The need for the relaxation and diversion of humor is greatest in those orders of ascendant beings who are subjected to sustained stress in their upward struggles. The two extremes of life have little need for humorous diversions. Primitive men have no capacity therefor, and beings of Paradise perfection have no need thereof. The hosts of Havona are naturally a joyous and exhilarating assemblage of supremely happy personalities. On Paradise the quality of worship obviates the necessity for reversion activities. But among those who start their careers far below the goal of Paradise perfection, there is a large place for the ministry of the reversion directors. (549.4) 48:4.17 The higher the mortal species, the greater the stress and the greater the capacity for humor as well as the necessity for it. In the spirit world the opposite is true: The higher we ascend, the less the need for the diversions of reversion experiences. But proceeding down the scale of spirit life from Paradise to the seraphic hosts, there is an increasing need for the mission of mirth and the ministry of merriment. Those beings who most need the refreshment of periodic reversion to the intellectual status of previous experiences are the higher types of the human species, the morontians, angels, and the Material Sons, together with all similar types of personality. (549.5) 48:4.18 Humor should function as an automatic safety valve to prevent the building up of excessive pressures due to the monotony of sustained and serious self-contemplation in association with the intense struggle for developmental progress and noble achievement. Humor also functions to lessen the shock of the unexpected impact of fact or of truth, rigid unyielding fact and flexible ever-living truth. The mortal personality, never sure as to which will next be encountered, through humor swiftly grasps — sees the point and achieves insight — the unexpected nature of the situation be it fact or be it truth. (549.6) 48:4.19 While the humor of Urantia is exceedingly crude and most inartistic, it does serve a valuable purpose both as a health insurance and as a liberator of emotional pressure, thus preventing injurious nervous tension and overserious self-contemplation. Humor and play — relaxation — are never reactions of progressive exertion; always are they the echoes of a backward glance, a reminiscence of the past. Even on Urantia and as you now are, you always find it rejuvenating when for a short time you can suspend the exertions of the newer and higher intellectual efforts and revert to the more simple engagements of your ancestors. (550.1) 48:4.20 The principles of Urantian play life are philosophically sound and continue to apply on up through your ascending life, through the circuits of Havona to the eternal shores of Paradise. As ascendant beings you are in possession of personal memories of all former and lower existences, and without such identity memories of the past there would be no basis for the humor of the present, either mortal laughter or morontia mirth. It is this recalling of past experiences that provides the basis for present diversion and amusement. And so you will enjoy the celestial equivalents of your earthly humor all the way up through your long morontia, and then increasingly spiritual, careers. And that part of God (the Adjuster) which becomes an eternal part of the personality of an ascendant mortal contributes the overtones of divinity to the joyous expressions, even spiritual laughter, of the ascending creatures of time and space. 5. The Mansion World Teachers (550.2) 48:5.1 The Mansion World Teachers are a corps of deserted but glorified cherubim and sanobim. When a pilgrim of time advances from a trial world of space to the mansion and associated worlds of morontia training, he is accompanied by his personal or group seraphim, the guardian of destiny. In the worlds of mortal existence the seraphim is ably assisted by cherubim and sanobim; but when her mortal ward is delivered from the bonds of the flesh and starts out on the ascendant career, when the postmaterial or morontia life begins, the attending seraphim has no further need of the ministrations of her former lieutenants, the cherubim and sanobim. (550.3) 48:5.2 These deserted assistants of the ministering seraphim are often summoned to universe headquarters, where they pass into th

The Paradise Creator Sons (234.1) 21:0.1 THE Creator Sons are the makers and rulers of the local universes of time and space. These universe creators and sovereigns are of dual origin, embodying the characteristics of God the Father and God the Son. But each Creator Son is different from every other; each is unique in nature as well as in personality; each is the “only-begotten Son” of the perfect deity ideal of his origin. (234.2) 21:0.2 In the vast work of organizing, evolving, and perfecting a local universe, these high Sons always enjoy the sustaining approval of the Universal Father. The relationship of the Creator Sons with their Paradise Father is touching and superlative. No doubt the profound affection of the Deity parents for their divine progeny is the wellspring of that beautiful and well-nigh divine love which even mortal parents bear their children. (234.3) 21:0.3 These primary Paradise Sons are personalized as Michaels. As they go forth from Paradise to found their universes, they are known as Creator Michaels. When settled in supreme authority, they are called Master Michaels. Sometimes we refer to the sovereign of your universe of Nebadon as Christ Michael. Always and forever do they reign after the “order of Michael,” that being the designation of the first Son of their order and nature. (234.4) 21:0.4 The original or first-born Michael has never experienced incarnation as a material being, but seven times he passed through the experience of spiritual creature ascent on the seven circuits of Havona, advancing from the outer spheres to the innermost circuit of the central creation. The order of Michael knows the grand universe from one end to the other; there is no essential experience of any of the children of time and space in which the Michaels have not personally participated; they are in fact partakers not only of the divine nature but also of your nature, meaning all natures, from the highest to the lowest. (234.5) 21:0.5 The original Michael is the presiding head of the primary Paradise Sons when they assemble for conference at the center of all things. Not long since on Uversa we recorded a universal broadcast of a conclave extraordinary on the eternal Isle of one hundred fifty thousand Creator Sons assembled in the parental presence and engaged in deliberations having to do with the progress of the unification and stabilization of the universe of universes. This was a selected group of Sovereign Michaels, sevenfold bestowal Sons. 1. Origin and Nature of Creator Sons (234.6) 21:1.1 When the fullness of absolute spiritual ideation in the Eternal Son encounters the fullness of absolute personality concept in the Universal Father, when such a creative union is finally and fully attained, when such absolute identity of spirit and such infinite oneness of personality concept occur, then, right then and there, without the loss of anything of personality or prerogative by either of the infinite Deities, there flashes into full-fledged being a new and original Creator Son, the only-begotten Son of the perfect ideal and the powerful idea whose union produces this new creator personality of power and perfection. (235.1) 21:1.2 Each Creator Son is the only-begotten and only-begettable offspring of the perfect union of the original concepts of the two infinite and eternal and perfect minds of the ever-existent Creators of the universe of universes. There never can be another such Son because each Creator Son is the unqualified, finished, and final expression and embodiment of all of every phase of every feature of every possibility of every divine reality that could, throughout all eternity, ever be found in, expressed by, or evolved from, those divine creative potentials which united to bring this Michael Son into existence. Each Creator Son is the absolute of the united deity concepts which constitute his divine origin. (235.2) 21:1.3 The divine natures of these Creator Sons are, in principle, derived equally from the attributes of both Paradise parents. All partake of the fullness of the divine nature of the Universal Father and of the creative prerogatives of the Eternal Son, but as we observe the practical outworking of the Michael functions in the universes, we discern apparent differences. Some Creator Sons appear to be more like God the Father; others more like God the Son. For example: The trend of administration in the universe of Nebadon suggests that its Creator and ruling Son is one whose nature and character more resemble that of the Eternal Mother Son. It should be further stated that some universes are presided over by Paradise Michaels who appear equally to resemble God the Father and God the Son. And these observations are in no sense implied criticisms; they are simply a recording of fact. (235.3) 21:1.4 I do not know the exact number of Creator Sons in existence, but I have good reasons for believing that there are more than seven hundred thousand. Now, we know that there are exactly seven hundred thousand Unions of Days and no more are being created. We also observe that the ordained plans of the present universe age seem to indicate that one Union of Days is to be stationed in each local universe as the counseling ambassador of the Trinity. We note further that the constantly increasing number of Creator Sons already exceeds the stationary number of the Unions of Days. But concerning the destiny of the Michaels beyond seven hundred thousand, we have never been informed. 2. The Creators of Local Universes (235.4) 21:2.1 The Paradise Sons of the primary order are the designers, creators, builders, and administrators of their respective domains, the local universes of time and space, the basic creative units of the seven evolutionary superuniverses. A Creator Son is permitted to choose the space site of his future cosmic activity, but before he may begin even the physical organization of his universe, he must spend a long period of observation devoted to the study of the efforts of his older brothers in various creations located in the superuniverse of his projected action. And prior to all this, the Michael Son will have completed his long and unique experience of Paradise observation and Havona training. (235.5) 21:2.2 When a Creator Son departs from Paradise to embark upon the adventure of universe making, to become the head — virtually the God — of the local universe of his own organization, then, for the first time, he finds himself in intimate contact with, and in many respects dependent upon, the Third Source and Center. The Infinite Spirit, though abiding with the Father and the Son at the center of all things, is destined to function as the actual and effective helper of each Creator Son. Therefore is each Creator Son accompanied by a Creative Daughter of the Infinite Spirit, that being who is destined to become the Divine Minister, the Mother Spirit of the new local universe. (236.1) 21:2.3 The departure of a Michael Son on this occasion forever liberates his creator prerogatives from the Paradise Sources and Centers, subject only to certain limitations inherent in the pre-existence of these Sources and Centers and to certain other antecedent powers and presences. Among these limitations to the otherwise all-powerful creator prerogatives of a local universe Father are the following: (236.2) 21:2.4 1. Energy-matter is dominated by the Infinite Spirit. Before any new forms of things, great or small, may be created, before any new transformations of energy-matter may be attempted, a Creator Son must secure the consent and working co-operation of the Infinite Spirit. (236.3) 21:2.5 2. Creature designs and types are controlled by the Eternal Son. Before a Creator Son may engage in the creation of any new type of being, any new design of creature, he must secure the consent of the Eternal and Original Mother Son. (236.4) 21:2.6 3. Personality is designed and bestowed by the Universal Father. (236.5) 21:2.7 The types and patterns of mind are determined by the precreature factors of being. After these have been associated to constitute a creature (personal or otherwise), mind is the endowment of the Third Source and Center, the universal source of mind ministry to all beings below the level of Paradise Creators. (236.6) 21:2.8 The control of spirit designs and types depends on the level of their manifestation. In the last analysis, spiritual design is controlled by the Trinity or by the pre-Trinity spirit endowments of the Trinity personalities — Father, Son, and Spirit. (236.7) 21:2.9 When such a perfect and divine Son has taken possession of the space site of his chosen universe; when the initial problems of universe materialization and of gross equilibrium have been resolved; when he has formed an effective and co-operative working union with the complemental Daughter of the Infinite Spirit — then do this Universe Son and this Universe Spirit initiate that liaison which is designed to give origin to the innumerable hosts of their local universe children. In connection with this event the Creative Spirit focalization of the Paradise Infinite Spirit becomes changed in nature, taking on the personal qualities of the Mother Spirit of a local universe. (236.8) 21:2.10 Notwithstanding that all Creator Sons are divinely like their Paradise parents, none exactly resembles another; each is unique, diverse, exclusive, and original in nature as well as in personality. And since they are the architects and makers of the life plans of their respective realms, this very diversity insures that their domains will also be diverse in every form and phase of Michael-derived living existence which may be created or subsequently evolved therein. Hence the orders of creatures native to the local universes are quite varied. No two are administered or inhabited by dual-origin native beings who are in all respects identical. Within any superuniverse, one half of their inherent attributes are quite alike, being derived from the uniform Creative Spirits; the other half vary, being derived from the diversified Creator Sons. But such diversity does not characterize those creatures of sole origin in the Creative Spirit nor those imported beings who are native to the central or superuniverses. (237.1) 21:2.11 When a Michael Son is absent from his universe, its government is directed by the first-born native being, the Bright and Morning Star, the local universe chief executive. The advice and counsel of the Union of Days is invaluable at such times. During these absences a Creator Son is able to invest the associated Mother Spirit with the overcontrol of his spiritual presence on the inhabited worlds and in the hearts of his mortal children. And the Mother Spirit of a local universe remains always at its headquarters, extending her fostering care and spiritual ministry to the uttermost parts of such an evolutionary domain. (237.2) 21:2.12 The personal presence of a Creator Son in his local universe is not necessary to the smooth running of an established material creation. Such Sons may journey to Paradise, and still their universes swing on through space. They may lay down their lines of power to incarnate as the children of time; still their realms whirl on about their respective centers. No material organization is independent of the absolute-gravity grasp of Paradise or of the cosmic overcontrol inherent in the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute. 3. Local Universe Sovereignty (237.3) 21:3.1 A Creator Son is given the range of a universe by the consent of the Paradise Trinity and with the confirmation of the supervising Master Spirit of the superuniverse concerned. Such action constitutes title of physical possession, a cosmic leasehold. But the elevation of a Michael Son from this initial and self-limited stage of rulership to the experiential supremacy of self-earned sovereignty comes as a result of his own personal experiences in the work of universe creation and incarnated bestowal. Until the achievement of bestowal-earned sovereignty, he rules as vicegerent of the Universal Father. (237.4) 21:3.2 A Creator Son could assert full sovereignty over his personal creation at any time, but he wisely chooses not to. If, prior to passing through the creature bestowals, he assumed an unearned supreme sovereignty, the Paradise personalities resident in his local universe would withdraw. But this has never happened throughout all the creations of time and space. (237.5) 21:3.3 The fact of creatorship implies the fullness of sovereignty, but the Michaels choose to experientially earn it, thereby retaining the full co-operation of all Paradise personalities attached to the local universe administration. We know of no Michael who ever did otherwise; but they all could, they are truly freewill Sons. (237.6) 21:3.4 The sovereignty of a Creator Son in a local universe passes through six, perhaps seven, stages of experiential manifestation. These appear in the following order: (237.7) 21:3.5 1. Initial vicegerent sovereignty — the solitary provisional authority exercised by a Creator Son before the acquirement of personal qualities by the associated Creative Spirit. (237.8) 21:3.6 2. Conjoint vicegerent sovereignty — the joint rule of the Paradise pair subsequent to the personality achievement of the Universe Mother Spirit. (238.1) 21:3.7 3. Augmenting vicegerent sovereignty — the advancing authority of a Creator Son during the period of his seven creature bestowals. (238.2) 21:3.8 4. Supreme sovereignty — the settled authority following the completion of the seventh bestowal. In Nebadon, supreme sovereignty dates from the completion of Michael’s bestowal on Urantia. It has existed just slightly over nineteen hundred years of your planetary time. (238.3) 21:3.9 5. Augmenting supreme sovereignty — the advanced relationship growing out of the settling of a majority of the creature domains in light and life. This stage pertains to the unachieved future of your local universe. (238.4) 21:3.10 6. Trinitarian sovereignty — exercised subsequent to the settling of the entire local universe in light and life. (238.5) 21:3.11 7. Unrevealed sovereignty — the unknown relationships of a future universe age. (238.6) 21:3.12 In accepting the initial vicegerent sovereignty of a projected local universe, a Creator Michael takes an oath to the Trinity not to assume supreme sovereignty until the seven creature bestowals have been completed and certified by the superuniverse rulers. But if a Michael Son could not, at will, assert such unearned sovereignty, there would be no meaning in taking an oath not to do so. (238.7) 21:3.13 Even in the prebestowal ages a Creator Son rules his domain well-nigh supremely when there is no dissent in any of its parts. Limited rulership would hardly be manifest if sovereignty were never challenged. The sovereignty exercised by a prebestowal Creator Son in a universe without rebellion is no greater than in a universe with rebellion; but in the first instance sovereignty limitations are not apparent; in the second, they are. (238.8) 21:3.14 If ever the authority or administration of a Creator Son is challenged, attacked, or jeopardized, he is eternally pledged to uphold, protect, defend, and if necessary retrieve his personal creation. Such Sons can be troubled or harassed only by the creatures of their own making or by higher beings of their own choosing. It might be inferred that “higher beings,” those of origin on levels above a local universe, would be unlikely to trouble a Creator Son, and this is true. But they could if they chose to. Virtue is volitional with personality; righteousness is not automatic in freewill creatures. (238.9) 21:3.15 Before the completion of the bestowal career a Creator Son rules with certain self-imposed limitations of sovereignty, but subsequent to his finished bestowal service he rules by virtue of his actual experience in the form and likeness of his manifold creatures. When a Creator has seven times sojourned among his creatures, when the bestowal career is finished, then is he supremely settled in universe authority; he has become a Master Son, a sovereign and supreme ruler. (238.10) 21:3.16 The technique of obtaining supreme sovereignty over a local universe involves the following seven experiential steps: (238.11) 21:3.17 1. Experientially to penetrate seven creature levels of being through the technique of incarnated bestowal in the very likeness of the creatures on the level concerned. (238.12) 21:3.18 2. To make an experiential consecration to each phase of the sevenfold will of Paradise Deity as it is personified in the Seven Master Spirits. (239.1) 21:3.19 3. To traverse each of the seven experiences on the creature levels simultaneously with the execution of one of the seven consecrations to the will of Paradise Deity. (239.2) 21:3.20 4. On each creature level, experientially to portray the acme of creature life to Paradise Deity and to all universe intelligences. (239.3) 21:3.21 5. On each creature level, experientially to reveal one phase of the sevenfold will of Deity to the bestowal level and to all the universe. (239.4) 21:3.22 6. Experientially to unify the sevenfold creature experience with the sevenfold experience of consecration to the revelation of the nature and will of Deity. (239.5) 21:3.23 7. To achieve new and higher relationship with the Supreme Being. The repercussion of the totality of this Creator-creature experience augments the superuniverse reality of God the Supreme and the time-space sovereignty of the Almighty Supreme and factualizes the supreme local universe sovereignty of a Paradise Michael. (239.6) 21:3.24 In settling the question of sovereignty in a local universe, the Creator Son is not only demonstrating his own fitness to rule but is also revealing the nature and portraying the sevenfold attitude of the Paradise Deities. The finite understanding and creature appreciation of the Father’s primacy is concerned in the adventure of a Creator Son when he condescends to take upon himself the form and experiences of his creatures. These primary Paradise Sons are the real revealers of the Father’s loving nature and beneficent authority, the same Father who, in association with the Son and the Spirit, is the universal head of all power, personality, and government throughout all the universal realms. 4. The Michael Bestowals (239.7) 21:4.1 There are seven groups of bestowal Creator Sons, and they are so classified in accordance with the number of times they have bestowed themselves upon the creatures of their realms. They range from the initial experience up through five additional spheres of progressive bestowal until they attain the seventh and final episode of creature-Creator experience. (239.8) 21:4.2 Avonal bestowals are always in the likeness of mortal flesh, but the seven bestowals of a Creator Son involve his appearing on seven creature levels of being and pertain to the revelation of the seven primary expressions of the will and nature of Deity. Without exception, all Creator Sons pass through this seven times giving of themselves to their created children before they assume settled and supreme jurisdiction over the universes of their own creation. (239.9) 21:4.3 Though these seven bestowals vary in the different sectors and universes, they always embrace the mortal-bestowal adventure. In the final bestowal a Creator Son appears as a member of one of the higher mortal races on some inhabited world, usually as a member of that racial group which contains the largest hereditary legacy of the Adamic stock which has previously been imported to upstep the physical status of the animal-origin peoples. Only once in his sevenfold career as a bestowal Son is a Paradise Michael born of woman as you have the record of the babe of Bethlehem. Only once does he live and die as a member of the lowest order of evolutionary will creatures. (239.10) 21:4.4 After each of his bestowals a Creator Son proceeds to the “right hand of the Father,” there to gain the Father’s acceptance of the bestowal and to receive instruction preparatory to the next episode of universe service. Following the seventh and final bestowal a Creator Son receives from the Universal Father supreme authority and jurisdiction over his universe. (240.1) 21:4.5 It is of record that the divine Son of last appearance on your planet was a Paradise Creator Son who had completed six phases of his bestowal career; consequently, when he gave up the conscious grasp of the incarnated life on Urantia, he could, and did, truly say, “It is finished” — it was literally finished. His death on Urantia completed his bestowal career; it was the last step in fulfilling the sacred oath of a Paradise Creator Son. And when this experience has been acquired, such Sons are supreme universe sovereigns; no longer do they rule as vicegerents of the Father but in their own right and name as “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” With certain stated exceptions these sevenfold bestowal Sons are unqualifiedly supreme in the universes of their abode. Concerning his local universe, “all power in heaven and on earth” was relegated to this triumphant and enthroned Master Son. (240.2) 21:4.6 Creator Sons, subsequent to the completion of their bestowal careers, are reckoned as a separate order, sevenfold Master Sons. In person the Master Sons are identical with the Creator Sons, but they have undergone such a unique bestowal experience that they are commonly regarded as a different order. When a Creator deigns to effect a bestowal, a real and permanent change is destined to take place. True, the bestowal Son is still and none the less a Creator, but he has added to his nature the experience of a creature, which forever removes him from the divine level of a Creator Son and elevates him to the experiential plane of a Master Son, one who has fully earned the right to rule a universe and administer its worlds. Such beings embody all that can be secured from divine parentage and embrace everything to be derived from perfected-creature experience. Why should man bemoan his lowly origin and enforced evolutionary career when the very Gods must pass through an equivalent experience before they are accounted experientially worthy and competent finally and fully to rule over their universe domains! 5. Relation of Master Sons to the Universe (240.3) 21:5.1 The power of a Master Michael is unlimited because derived from experienced association with the Paradise Trinity, is unquestioned because derived from actual experience as the very creatures subject to such authority. The nature of the sovereignty of a sevenfold Creator Son is supreme because it: (240.4) 21:5.2 1. Embraces the sevenfold viewpoint of Paradise Deity. (240.5) 21:5.3 2. Embodies a sevenfold attitude of time-space creatures. (240.6) 21:5.4 3. Perfectly synthesizes Paradise attitude and creature viewpoint. (240.7) 21:5.5 This experiential sovereignty is thus all-inclusive of the divinity of God the Sevenfold culminating in the Supreme Being. And the personal sovereignty of a sevenfold Son is like the future sovereignty of the sometime-to-be-completed Supreme Being, embracing as it does the fullest possible content of the power and authority of the Paradise Trinity manifestable within the time-space limits concerned. (240.8) 21:5.6 With the achievement of supreme local universe sovereignty, there passes from a Michael Son the power and opportunity to create entirely new types of creature beings during the present universe age. But a Master Son’s loss of power to originate entirely new orders of beings in no way interferes with the work of life elaboration already established and in process of unfoldment; this vast program of universe evolution goes on without interruption or curtailment. The acquirement of supreme sovereignty by a Master Son implies the responsibility of personal devotion to the fostering and the administering of that which has already been designed and created, and of that which will subsequently be produced by those who have been thus designed and created. In time there may develop an almost endless evolution of diverse beings, but no entirely new pattern or type of intelligent creature will henceforth take direct origin from a Master Son. This is the first step, the beginning, of a settled administration in any local universe. (241.1) 21:5.7 The elevation of a sevenfold bestowal Son to the unquestioned sovereignty of his universe means the beginning of the end of agelong uncertainty and relative confusion. Subsequent to this event, that which cannot be sometime spiritualized will eventually be disorganized; that which cannot be sometime co-ordinated with cosmic reality will eventually be destroyed. When the provisions of endless mercy and nameless patience have been exhausted in an effort to win the loyalty and devotion of the will creatures of the realms, justice and righteousness will prevail. That which mercy cannot rehabilitate justice will eventually annihilate. (241.2) 21:5.8 The Master Michaels are supreme in their own local universes when once they have been installed as sovereign rulers. The few limitations upon their rule are those inherent in the cosmic pre-existence of certain forces and personalities. Otherwise these Master Sons are supreme in authority, responsibility, and administrative power in their respective universes; they are as Creators and Gods, supreme in virtually all things. There is no penetration beyond their wisdom regarding the functioning of a given universe. (241.3) 21:5.9 After his elevation to settled sovereignty in a local universe a Paradise Michael is in full control of all other Sons of God functioning in his domain, and he may freely rule in accordance with his concept of the needs of his realms. A Master Son may at will vary the order of the spiritual adjudication and evolutionary adjustment of the inhabited planets. And such Sons do make and carry out the plans of their own choosing in all matters of special planetary needs, in particular regarding the worlds of their creature sojourn and still more concerning the realm of terminal bestowal, the planet of incarnation in the likeness of mortal flesh. (241.4) 21:5.10 The Master Sons seem to be in perfect communication with their bestowal worlds, not only the worlds of their personal sojourn but all worlds whereon a Magisterial Son has bestowed himself. This contact is maintained by their own spiritual presence, the Spirit of Truth, which they are able to “pour out upon all flesh.” These Master Sons also maintain an unbroken connection with the Eternal Mother Son at the center of all things. They possess a sympathetic reach which extends from the Universal Father on high to the lowly races of planetary life in the realms of time. 6. Destiny of the Master Michaels (241.5) 21:6.1 No one may with finality of authority presume to discuss either the natures or the destinies of the sevenfold Master Sovereigns of the local universes; nevertheless, we all speculate much regarding these matters. We are taught, and we believe, that each Paradise Michael is the absolute of the dual deity concepts of his origin; thus he embodies actual phases of the infinity of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Michaels must be partial in relation to total infinity, but they are probably absolute in relation to that part of infinity concerned in their origin. But as we observe their work in the present universe age, we detect no action that is more than finite; any conjectured superfinite capacities must be self-contained and as yet unrevealed. (242.1) 21:6.2 The completion of the creature-bestowal careers and the elevation to supreme universe sovereignty must signify the completed liberation of a Michael’s finite-action capacities accompanied by the appearance of capacity for more-than-finite service. For in this connection we note that such Master Sons are then restricted in the production of new types of creature beings, a restriction undoubtedly made necessary by the liberation of their superfinite potentialities. (242.2) 21:6.3 It is highly probable that these undisclosed creator powers will remain self-contained throughout the present universe age. But sometime in the far-distant future, in the now mobilizing universes of outer space, we believe that the liaison between a sevenfold Master Son and a seventh-stage Creative Spirit may attain to absonite levels of service attended by the appearance of new things, meanings, and values on transcendental levels of ultimate universe significance. (242.3) 21:6.4 Just as the Deity of the Supreme is actualizing by virtue of experiential service, so are the Creator Sons achieving the personal realization of the Paradise-divinity potentials bound up in their unfathomable natures. When on Urantia, Christ Michael once said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And we believe that in eternity the Michaels are literally destined to be “the way, the truth, and the life,” ever blazing the path for all universe personalities as it leads from supreme divinity through ultimate absonity to eternal deity finality. (242.4) 21:6.5 [Presented by a Perfector of Wisdom from Uversa.]