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P.62 – §1 If the finite mind of man
is unable to comprehend how so great and so majestic a God as the Universal
Father can descend from his eternal abode in infinite perfection to fraternize
with the individual human creature, then must such a finite intellect
rest assurance of divine fellowship upon the truth of the fact that an
actual fragment of the living God resides within the intellect of every
normal-minded and morally conscious Urantia mortal. The indwelling Thought
Adjusters are a part of the eternal Deity of the Paradise Father. Man
does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul’s
contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence to find God and attempt
communion with him.
P.62 – §2 God has distributed the infinity of his
eternal nature throughout the existential realities of his six absolute
co-ordinates, but he may, at any time, make direct personal contact with
any part or phase or kind of creation through the agency of his prepersonal
fragments. And the eternal God has also reserved to himself the prerogative
of bestowing personality upon the divine Creators and the living creatures
of the universe of universes, while he has further reserved the prerogative
of maintaining direct and parental contact with all these personal beings
through the personality circuit.
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1. THE APPROACH TO GOD – P.62
P.62 – §3 The inability of the finite creature to
approach the infinite Father is inherent, not in the Father’s aloofness,
but in the finiteness and material limitations of created beings. The
magnitude of the spiritual difference between the highest personality
of universe existence and the lower groups of created intelligences is
inconceivable. Were it possible for the lower orders of intelligence to
be transported instantly into the presence of the Father himself, they
would not know they were there. They would there be just as oblivious
of the presence of the Universal Father as where they now are. There is
a long, long road ahead of mortal man before he can consistently and within
the realms of possibility ask for safe conduct into the Paradise presence
of the Universal Father. Spiritually, man must be translated many times
before he can attain a plane that will yield the spiritual vision which
will enable him to see even any one of the Seven Master Spirits.
P.62 – §4 Our Father is not in hiding; he is not
in arbitrary seclusion. He has mobilized the resources of divine wisdom
in a never-ending effort to reveal himself to the children of his universal
domains. There is an infinite grandeur and an inexpressible generosity
connected with the majesty of his love which causes him to yearn for the
association of every created being who can comprehend, love, or
P.63 – §0 approach him; and it is, therefore, the
limitations inherent in you, inseparable from your finite personality
and material existence, that determine the time and place and circumstances
in which you may achieve the goal of the journey of mortal ascension and
stand in the presence of the Father at the center of all things.
P.63 – §1 Although the approach to the Paradise presence
of the Father must await your attainment of the highest finite levels
of spirit progression, you should rejoice in the recognition of the ever-present
possibility of immediate communion with the bestowal spirit of the Father
so intimately associated with your inner soul and your spiritualizing
self.
P.63 – §2 The mortals of the realms of time and space
may differ greatly in innate abilities and intellectual endowment, they
may enjoy environments exceptionally favorable to social advancement and
moral progress, or they may suffer from the lack of almost every human
aid to culture and supposed advancement in the arts of civilization; but
the possibilities for spiritual progress in the ascension career are equal
to all; increasing levels of spiritual insight and cosmic meanings are
attained quite independently of all such sociomoral differentials of the
diversified material environments on the evolutionary worlds.
P.63 – §3 However Urantia mortals may differ in their
intellectual, social, economic, and even moral opportunities and endowments,
forget not that their spiritual endowment is uniform and unique. They
all enjoy the same divine presence of the gift from the Father, and they
are all equally privileged to seek intimate personal communion with this
indwelling spirit of divine origin, while they may all equally choose
to accept the uniform spiritual leading of these Mystery Monitors.
P.63 – §4 If mortal man is wholeheartedly spiritually
motivated, unreservedly consecrated to the doing of the Father’s will,
then, since he is so certainly and so effectively spiritually endowed
by the indwelling and divine Adjuster, there cannot fail to materialize
in that individual’s experience the sublime consciousness of knowing God
and the supernal assurance of surviving for the purpose of finding God
by the progressive experience of becoming more and more like him.
P.63 – §5 Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving
Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated,
if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly
wants to do the Father’s will, there exists no negative influence of mortal
deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent
such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals
of Paradise.
P.63 – §6 The Father desires all his creatures to
be in personal communion with him. He has on Paradise a place to receive
all those whose survival status and spiritual nature make possible such
attainment. Therefore settle in your philosophy now and forever: To each
of you and to all of us, God is approachable, the Father is attainable,
the way is open; the forces of divine love and the ways and means of divine
administration are all interlocked in an effort to facilitate the advancement
of every worthy intelligence of every universe to the Paradise presence
of the Universal Father.
P.63 – §7 The fact that vast time is involved in
the attainment of God makes the presence and personality of the Infinite
none the less real. Your ascension is a part of the circuit of the seven
superuniverses, and though you swing around it countless times, you may
expect, in spirit and in status, to be ever swinging inward. You can depend
upon being translated from sphere to sphere, from the outer circuits
P.64 – §0 ever nearer the inner center, and some
day, doubt not, you shall stand in the divine and central presence and
see him, figuratively speaking, face to face. It is a question of the
attainment of actual and literal spiritual levels; and these spiritual
levels are attainable by any being who has been indwelt by a Mystery Monitor,
and who has subsequently eternally fused with that Thought Adjuster.
P.64 – §1 The Father is not in spiritual hiding,
but so many of his creatures have hidden themselves away in the mists
of their own willful decisions and for the time being have separated themselves
from the communion of his spirit and the spirit of his Son by the choosing
of their own perverse ways and by the indulgence of the self-assertiveness
of their intolerant minds and unspiritual natures.
P.64 – §2 Mortal man may draw near God and may repeatedly
forsake the divine will so long as the power of choice remains. Man’s
final doom is not sealed until he has lost the power to choose the Father’s
will. There is never a closure of the Father’s heart to the need and the
petition of his children. Only do his offspring close their hearts forever
to the Father’s drawing power when they finally and forever lose the desire
to do his divine will–to know him and to be like him. Likewise is man’s
eternal destiny assured when Adjuster fusion proclaims to the universe
that such an ascender has made the final and irrevocable choice to live
the Father’s will.
P.64 -§3 The great God makes direct contact with
mortal man and gives a part of his infinite and eternal and incomprehensible
self to live and dwell within him. God has embarked upon the eternal adventure
with man. If you yield to the leadings of the spiritual forces in you
and around you, you cannot fail to attain the high destiny established
by a loving God as the universe goal of his ascendant creatures from the
evolutionary worlds of space.
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2. THE PRESENCE OF GOD – P.64
P.64 – §4 The physical presence of the Infinite is
the reality of the material universe. The mind presence of Deity must
be determined by the depth of individual intellectual experience and by
the evolutionary personality level. The spiritual presence of Divinity
must of necessity be differential in the universe. It is determined by
the spiritual capacity of receptivity and by the degree of the consecration
of the creature’s will to the doing of the divine will.
P.64 – §5 God lives in every one of his spirit-born
sons. The Paradise Sons always have access to the presence of God, "the
right hand of the Father," and all of his creature personalities
have access to the "bosom of the Father." This refers to the
personality circuit, whenever, wherever, and however contacted, or otherwise
entails personal, self-conscious contact and communion with the Universal
Father, whether at the central abode or at some other designated place,
as on one of the seven sacred spheres of Paradise.
P.64 – §6 The divine presence cannot, however, be
discovered anywhere in nature or even in the lives of God-knowing mortals
so fully and so certainly as in your attempted communion with the indwelling
Mystery Monitor, the Paradise Thought Adjuster. What a mistake to dream
of God far off in the skies when the spirit of the Universal Father lives
within your own mind!
P.64 – §7 It is because of this God fragment that
indwells you that you can hope, as you progress in harmonizing with the
Adjuster’s spiritual leadings, more fully to discern the presence and
transforming power of those other spiritual influences that surround you
and impinge upon you but do not function as an integral part of
P.65 – §0 you. The fact that you are not intellectually
conscious of close and intimate contact with the indwelling Adjuster does
not in the least disprove such an exalted experience. The proof of fraternity
with the divine Adjuster consists wholly in the nature and extent of the
fruits of the spirit which are yielded in the life experience of the individual
believer. "By their fruits you shall know them."
P.65 – §1 It is exceedingly difficult for the meagerly
spiritualized, material mind of mortal man to experience marked consciousness
of the spirit activities of such divine entities as the Paradise Adjusters.
As the soul of joint mind and Adjuster creation becomes increasingly existent,
there also evolves a new phase of soul consciousness which is capable
of experiencing the presence, and of recognizing the spirit leadings and
other supermaterial activities, of the Mystery Monitors.
P.65 – §2 The entire experience of Adjuster communion
is one involving moral status, mental motivation, and spiritual experience.
The self-realization of such an achievement is mainly, though not exclusively,
limited to the realms of soul consciousness, but the proofs are forthcoming
and abundant in the manifestation of the fruits of the spirit in the lives
of all such inner-spirit contactors.
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3. TRUE WORSHIP – P.65
P.65 – §3 Though the Paradise Deities, from the universe
standpoint, are as one, in their spiritual relations with such beings
as inhabit Urantia they are also three distinct and separate persons.
There is a difference between the Godheads in the matter of personal appeals,
communion, and other intimate relations. In the highest sense, we worship
the Universal Father and him only. True, we can and do worship the Father
as he is manifested in his Creator Sons, but it is the Father, directly
or indirectly, who is worshiped and adored.
P.65 – §4 Supplications of all kinds belong to the
realm of the Eternal Son and the Son’s spiritual organization. Prayers,
all formal communications, everything except adoration and worship of
the Universal Father, are matters that concern a local universe; they
do not ordinarily proceed out of the realm of the jurisdiction of a Creator
Son. But worship is undoubtedly encircuited and dispatched to the person
of the Creator by the function of the Father’s personality circuit. We
further believe that such registry of the homage of an Adjuster-indwelt
creature is facilitated by the Father’s spirit presence. There exists
a tremendous amount of evidence to substantiate such a belief, and I know
that all orders of Father fragments are empowered to register the bona
fide adoration of their subjects acceptably in the presence of the Universal
Father. The Adjusters undoubtedly also utilize direct prepersonal channels
of communication with God, and they are likewise able to utilize the spirit-gravity
circuits of the Eternal Son.
P.65 – §5 Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies
a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between
worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element
of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we
comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the
worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive
from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship
as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s
matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.
P.65 – §6 The moment the element of self-interest
intrudes upon worship, that instant devotion translates from worship to
prayer and more appropriately should be directed
P.66 – §0 to the person of the Eternal Son or the
Creator Son. But in practical religious experience there exists no reason
why prayer should not be addressed to God the Father as a part of true
worship.
P.66 – §1 When you deal with the practical affairs
of your daily life, you are in the hands of the spirit personalities having
origin in the Third Source and Center; you are co-operating with the agencies
of the Conjoint Actor. And so it is: You worship God; pray to, and commune
with, the Son; and work out the details of your earthly sojourn in connection
with the intelligences of the Infinite Spirit operating on your world
and throughout your universe.
P.66 – §2 The Creator or Sovereign Sons who preside
over the destinies of the local universes stand in the place of both the
Universal Father and the Eternal Son of Paradise. These Universe Sons
receive, in the name of the Father, the adoration of worship and give
ear to the pleas of their petitioning subjects throughout their respective
creations. To the children of a local universe a Michael Son is, to all
practical intents and purposes, God. He is the local universe personification
of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Infinite Spirit maintains
personal contact with the children of these realms through the Universe
Spirits, the administrative and creative associates of the Paradise Creator
Sons.
P.66 – §3 Sincere worship connotes the mobilization
of all the powers of the human personality under the dominance of the
evolving soul and subject to the divine directionization of the associated
Thought Adjuster. The mind of material limitations can never become highly
conscious of the real significance of true worship. Man’s realization
of the reality of the worship experience is chiefly determined by the
developmental status of his evolving immortal soul. The spiritual growth
of the soul takes place wholly independently of the intellectual self-consciousness.
P.66 – §4 The worship experience consists in the
sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine
Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the
human soul–the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the
God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the
material mind’s assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under
the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith
son of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the
immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence
conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal
soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized
on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual,
and the personal–the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their
unification in personality.
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4. GOD IN RELIGION – P.66
P.66 – §5 The morality of the religions of evolution
drives men forward in the God quest by the motive power of fear. The religions
of revelation allure men to seek for a God of love because they crave
to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of "absolute
dependence" and "surety of survival"; it is a living and
dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.
P.66 – §6 The great and immediate service of true
religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience,
a lasting peace and a profound assurance.
P.67 – §0 With primitive man, even polytheism is
a relative unification of the evolving concept of Deity; polytheism is
monotheism in the making. Sooner or later, God is destined to be comprehended
as the reality of values, the substance of meanings, and the life of truth.
P.67 – §1 God is not only the determiner of destiny;
he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek
to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious
individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate
the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family
of fellow beings, human and superhuman.
P.67 – §2 The domains of philosophy and art intervene
between the nonreligious and the religious activities of the human self.
Through art and philosophy the material-minded man is inveigled into the
contemplation of the spiritual realities and universe values of eternal
meanings.
P.67 – §3 All religions teach the worship of Deity
and some doctrine of human salvation. The Buddhist religion promises salvation
from suffering, unending peace; the Jewish religion promises salvation
from difficulties, prosperity predicated on righteousness; the Greek religion
promised salvation from disharmony, ugliness, by the realization of beauty;
Christianity promises salvation from sin, sanctity; Mohammedanism provides
deliverance from the rigorous moral standards of Judaism and Christianity.
The religion of Jesus is salvation from self, deliverance from the evils
of creature isolation in time and in eternity.
P.67 – §4 The Hebrews based their religion on goodness;
the Greeks on beauty; both religions sought truth. Jesus revealed a God
of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness.
P.67 – §5 The Zoroastrians had a religion of morals;
the Hindus a religion of metaphysics; the Confucianists a religion of
ethics. Jesus lived a religion of service. All these religions are of
value in that they are valid approaches to the religion of Jesus. Religion
is destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all
that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience.
P.67 – §6 The Greek religion had a watchword "Know
yourself"; the Hebrews centered their teaching on "Know your
God"; the Christians preach a gospel aimed at a "knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ"; Jesus proclaimed the good news of "knowing
God, and yourself as a son of God." These differing concepts of the
purpose of religion determine the individual’s attitude in various life
situations and foreshadow the depth of worship and the nature of his personal
habits of prayer. The spiritual status of any religion may be determined
by the nature of its prayers.
P.67 – §7 The concept of a semihuman and jealous
God is an inevitable transition between polytheism and sublime monotheism.
An exalted anthropomorphism is the highest attainment level of purely
evolutionary religion. Christianity has elevated the concept of anthropomorphism
from the ideal of the human to the transcendent and divine concept of
the person of the glorified Christ. And this is the highest anthropomorphism
that man can ever conceive.
P.67 – §8 The Christian concept of God is an attempt
to combine three separate teachings:
P.67 – §9 1. The Hebrew concept–God as a vindicator
of moral values, a righteous God.
P.67 – §10 2. The Greek concept–God as a unifier,
a God of wisdom.
P.68 – §1 3. Jesus’ concept–God as a living friend,
a loving Father, the divine presence.
P.68 – §2 It must therefore be evident that composite
Christian theology encounters great difficulty in attaining consistency.
This difficulty is further aggravated by the fact that the doctrines of
early Christianity were generally based on the personal religious experience
of three different persons: Philo of Alexandria, Jesus of Nazareth, and
Paul of Tarsus.
P.68 – §3 In the study of the religious life of Jesus,
view him positively. Think not so much of his sinlessness as of his righteousness,
his loving service. Jesus upstepped the passive love disclosed in the
Hebrew concept of the heavenly Father to the higher active and creature-loving
affection of a God who is the Father of every individual, even of the
wrongdoer.
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5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD – P.68
P.68 – §4 Morality has its origin in the reason of
self-consciousness; it is superanimal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution
embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of
the Adjusters and to the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth. But the attainment
of levels of morality does not deliver man from the real struggles of
mortal living. Man’s physical environment entails the battle for existence;
the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations
require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual
experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely
strive to be like him.
P.68 – §5 Religion is not grounded in the facts of
science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or
the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human
response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages
of human development which are postmoral. Religion may permeate all four
levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship:
the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional
level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual
level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.
P.68 – §6 The fact-seeking scientist conceives of
God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emotional artist sees God
as the ideal of beauty, a God of aesthetics. The reasoning philosopher
is sometimes inclined to posit a God of universal unity, even a pantheistic
Deity. The religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival,
the Father in heaven, the God of love.
P.68 – §7 Moral conduct is always an antecedent of
evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole
of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking
and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher
spiritual levels of religious experience. The adoration of the abstract
beautiful is not the worship of God; neither is exaltation of nature nor
the reverence of unity the worship of God.
P.68 – §8 Evolutionary religion is the mother of
the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity
to revealed religion, including the bestowal of Adjusters and the coming
of the Spirit of Truth. The evolutionary picture of human existence begins
and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one
evolutional and biological, the other revelational
P.69 – §0 and periodical. And so, while religion
is normal and natural to man, it is also optional. Man does not have to
be religious against his will.
P.69 – §1 Religious experience, being essentially
spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind; hence the
function of theology, the psychology of religion. The essential doctrine
of the human realization of God creates a paradox in finite comprehension.
It is well-nigh impossible for human logic and finite reason to harmonize
the concept of divine immanence, God within and a part of every individual,
with the idea of God’s transcendence, the divine domination of the universe
of universes. These two essential concepts of Deity must be unified in
the faith-grasp of the concept of the transcendence of a personal God
and in the realization of the indwelling presence of a fragment of that
God in order to justify intelligent worship and validate the hope of personality
survival. The difficulties and paradoxes of religion are inherent in the
fact that the realities of religion are utterly beyond the mortal capacity
for intellectual comprehension.
P.69 – §2 Mortal man secures three great satisfactions
from religious experience, even in the days of his temporal sojourn on
earth:
P.69 – §3 1. Intellectually he acquires the satisfactions
of a more unified human consciousness.
P.69 – §4 2. Philosophically he enjoys the substantiation
of his ideals of moral values.
P.69 – §5 3. Spiritually he thrives in the experience
of divine companionship, in the spiritual satisfactions of true worship.
P.69 – §6 God-consciousness, as it is experienced
by an evolving mortal of the realms, must consist of three varying factors,
three differential levels of reality realization. There is first the mind
consciousness–the comprehension of the idea of God. Then follows the
soul consciousness–the realization of the ideal of God. Last, dawns the
spirit consciousness–the realization of the spirit reality of God. By
the unification of these factors of the divine realization, no matter
how incomplete, the mortal personality at all times overspreads all conscious
levels with a realization of the personality of God. In those mortals
who have attained the Corps of the Finality all this will in time lead
to the realization of the supremacy of God and may subsequently eventuate
in the realization of the ultimacy of God, some phase of the absonite
superconsciousness of the Paradise Father.
P.69 – §7 The experience of God-consciousness remains
the same from generation to generation, but with each advancing epoch
in human knowledge the philosophic concept and the theologic definitions
of God must change. God-knowingness, religious consciousness, is a universe
reality, but no matter how valid (real) religious experience is, it must
be willing to subject itself to intelligent criticism and reasonable philosophic
interpretation; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the totality of
human experience.
P.69 – §8 Eternal survival of personality is wholly
dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose decisions determine
the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind believes God
and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all
desire God, then is survival assured. Limitations of intellect, curtailment
of education, deprivation of culture, impoverishment of social status,
even inferiority of the human standards of morality resulting from the
unfortunate lack of educational, cultural, and social advantages, cannot
invalidate the presence of the divine spirit in such unfortunate and humanly
handicapped but believing individuals. The indwelling of the Mystery Monitor
constitutes
P.70 – §0 the inception and insures the possibility
of the potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul.
P.70 – §1 The ability of mortal parents to procreate
is not predicated on their educational, cultural, social, or economic
status. The union of the parental factors under natural conditions is
quite sufficient to initiate offspring. A human mind discerning right
and wrong and possessing the capacity to worship God, in union with a
divine Adjuster, is all that is required in that mortal to initiate and
foster the production of his immortal soul of survival qualities if such
a spirit-endowed individual seeks God and sincerely desires to become
like him, honestly elects to do the will of the Father in heaven.
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6. THE GOD OF PERSONALITY – P.70
P.70 – §2 The Universal Father is the God of personalities.
The domain of universe personality, from the lowest mortal and material
creature of personality status to the highest persons of creator dignity
and divine status, has its center and circumference in the Universal Father.
God the Father is the bestower and the conservator of every personality.
And the Paradise Father is likewise the destiny of all those finite personalities
who wholeheartedly choose to do the divine will, those who love God and
long to be like him.
P.70 – §3 Personality is one of the unsolved mysteries
of the universes. We are able to form adequate concepts of the factors
entering into the make-up of various orders and levels of personality,
but we do not fully comprehend the real nature of the personality itself.
We clearly perceive the numerous factors which, when put together, constitute
the vehicle for human personality, but we do not fully comprehend the
nature and significance of such a finite personality.
P.70 – §4 Personality is potential in all creatures
who possess a mind endowment ranging from the minimum of self-consciousness
to the maximum of God-consciousness. But mind endowment alone is not personality,
neither is spirit nor physical energy. Personality is that quality and
value in cosmic reality which is exclusively bestowed by God the Father
upon these living systems of the associated and co-ordinated energies
of matter, mind, and spirit. Neither is personality a progressive achievement.
Personality may be material or spiritual, but there either is personality
or there is no personality. The other-than-personal never attains the
level of the personal except by the direct act of the Paradise Father.
P.70 – §5 The bestowal of personality is the exclusive
function of the Universal Father, the personalization of the living energy
systems which he endows with the attributes of relative creative consciousness
and the freewill control thereof. There is no personality apart from God
the Father, and no personality exists except for God the Father. The fundamental
attributes of human selfhood, as well as the absolute Adjuster nucleus
of the human personality, are the bestowals of the Universal Father, acting
in his exclusively personal domain of cosmic ministry.
P.70 – §6 The Adjusters of prepersonal status indwell
numerous types of mortal creatures, thus insuring that these same beings
may survive mortal death to personalize as morontia creatures with the
potential of ultimate spirit attainment. For, when such a creature mind
of personality endowment is indwelt by a fragment of the spirit of the
eternal God, the prepersonal bestowal of the personal Father, then does
this finite personality possess the potential of the divine and the eternal
and aspire to a destiny akin to the Ultimate, even reaching out for a
realization of the Absolute.
P.71 – §1 Capacity for divine personality is inherent
in the prepersonal Adjuster; capacity for human personality is potential
in the cosmic-mind endowment of the human being. But the experiential
personality of mortal man is not observable as an active and functional
reality until after the material life vehicle of the mortal creature has
been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father, being
thus launched upon the seas of experience as a self-conscious and a (relatively)
self-determinative and self-creative personality. The material self is
truly and unqualifiedly personal.
P.71 – §2 The material self has personality and identity,
temporal identity; the prepersonal spirit Adjuster also has identity,
eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit prepersonality
are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence
the surviving identity of the immortal soul.
P.71 – §3 Having thus provided for the growth of
the immortal soul and having liberated man’s inner self from the fetters
of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside.
Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response,
at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made
for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself
to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and
eternal self which is his for the choosing. No other being, force, creator,
or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree
with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal free will, as it operates
within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality
of the choosing mortal. As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed
the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.
P.71 – §4 The bestowal of creature personality confers
relative liberation from slavish response to antecedent causation, and
the personalities of all such moral beings, evolutionary or otherwise,
are centered in the personality of the Universal Father. They are ever
drawn towards his Paradise presence by that kinship of being which constitutes
the vast and universal family circle and fraternal circuit of the eternal
God. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.
P.71 – §5 The personality circuit of the universe
of universes is centered in the person of the Universal Father, and the
Paradise Father is personally conscious of, and in personal touch with,
all personalities of all levels of self-conscious existence. And this
personality consciousness of all creation exists independently of the
mission of the Thought Adjusters.
P.71 – §6 As all gravity is circuited in the Isle
of Paradise, as all mind is circuited in the Conjoint Actor and all spirit
in the Eternal Son, so is all personality circuited in the personal presence
of the Universal Father, and this circuit unerringly transmits the worship
of all personalities to the Original and Eternal Personality.
P.71 – §7 Concerning those personalities who are
not Adjuster indwelt: The attribute of choice-liberty is also bestowed
by the Universal Father, and such persons are likewise embraced in the
great circuit of divine love, the personality circuit of the Universal
Father. God provides for the sovereign choice of all true personalities.
No personal creature can be coerced into the eternal adventure; the portal
of eternity opens only in response to the freewill choice of the freewill
sons of the God of free will.
P.72 – §1 And this represents my efforts to present the relation
of the living God to the children of time. And when all is said and done,
I can do nothing more helpful than to reiterate that God is your universe
Father, and that you are all his planetary children.
P.72 – §2 [This is the fifth and last of the series
presenting the narrative of the Universal Father by a Divine Counselor
of Uversa.]
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