The Spirit in Man
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.
A 10 lesson course about man's relation to Divinity and Spirit.
- LESSON 1: Spirit Foundation & Support Infrastructure
- LESSON 2: Father's Gift to Man — His Spirit Fragment
- LESSON 3: Man's Gift to the Father — Doing of the will of God
- LESSON 4: The Universe Mother Spirit
- LESSON 5: The Adjutant Mind Spirits & The Holy Spirit
- LESSON 6: The Creator Son
- LESSON 7: The Spirit of Truth
- LESSON 8: The Most Highs
- LESSON 9: The Planetary Manager & the 24 Elders
- LESSON 10: Angels — Lots and Lots of Angels
LESSON 1: Spirit Foundation & Support Infrastructure
Spirit foundation: The sevenfold spirit influence
Holy Spirit in the Bible
The terms Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, and the Spirit of God are used somewhat interchangeably in the Bible. These designations cover the references in the Urantia Book of the following different Spirit realities:
- Personality circuit of the Universal Father.
- The spirit circuit of the Eternal Son.
- The omnipresence of the Infinite Spirit.
- The Thought Adjuster bestowals of the Father.
- The Holy Spirit presence of the local universe Mother Spirit.
- The Spirit of Truth.
- The seven adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe mind endowment.
Some main attributes of Spirit are (with Biblical references):
- Spirit has creative functions
And the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. Genesis 1:2.
When thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground. Psalm 104:30.
The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life. Job 33:4. - Spirit imparts intelligence and ability
And he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability, with intelligence, with knowledge, and with all craftsmanship. Exodus 35:31.
Thou gavest thy good Spirit to instruct them. Nehemiah 9:20.
But it is the spirit in a man, the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand. Job 32:8.
But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things. John 14:26. - Spirit provides endowments
The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts. Proverbs 20:27.
Let thy good spirit lead me on a level path. Psalm 143:10.
The spirit of the Lord speaks by me, his word is upon my tongue. 2 Samuel 23:2.
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. Acts 1:8. - Spirit establishes Divine presence
For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 1 Corinthians 2:10.
In him you also, who...were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1:13.
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? Psalm 139:7.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10. - Spirit gets poured out upon all flesh
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Joel 2:28.
I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. Acts 2:18.
The Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. Acts 10:44.
The Urantia Book expands our comprehension of Spirit
In a way, mankind is subject to the double influence of the sevenfold appeal of the universe spirit influences. The early evolutionary races of mortals are subject to the progressive contact of the seven adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe Mother Spirit. As man progresses upward in the scale of intelligence and spiritual perception, there eventually come to hover over him and dwell within him the seven higher spirit influences.
And these seven spirits of the advancing worlds are:
- The bestowed spirit of the Universal Father — the Thought Adjusters.
- The spirit presence of the Eternal Son — the spirit gravity of the universe of universes and the certain channel of all spirit communion.
- The spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit — the universal spirit-mind of all creation, the spiritual source of the intellectual kinship of all progressive intelligences.
- The spirit of the Universal Father and the Creator Son — the Spirit of Truth, generally regarded as the spirit of the Universe Son.
- The spirit of the Infinite Spirit and the Universe Mother Spirit — the Holy Spirit, generally regarded as the spirit of:
- The mind-spirit of the Universe Mother Spirit — the seven adjutant mind-spirits of the local universe.
- The spirit of the Father, Sons, and Spirits — the new-name spirit of the ascending mortals of the realms after the fusion of the mortal spirit-born soul with the Paradise Thought Adjuster and after the subsequent attainment of the divinity and glorification of the status of the Paradise Corps of the Finality.
There are three distinct spirit circuits in the local universe of Nebadon (the first three Spirits in the above list are part of circuits originating beyond the boundaries of Nebadon):
- The bestowal spirit of the Creator Son, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth.
- The spirit circuit of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit.
- The intelligence-ministry circuit, including the more or less unified activities but diverse functioning of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. These are the 7 spirits mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
The Urantia Book names these seven adjutant mind-spirits of the Book of Revelation.
These spirits function in the human mind in accordance with its capacity of receptivity.
- Spirit of Intuition.
- Spirit of Understanding.
- Spirit of Courage.
- Spirit of Knowledge.
- Spirit of Counsel.
- Spirit of Worship.
- Spirit of Wisdom.
This simple chart illustrates the relationships between these various Spirits. In combination they form the Spiritual infrastructure which guides all intelligent life to discover itself and the very source of life and creation. Spirits-chart.pdf
A solid Spiritual foundation provides the Divine downreach to man, but does not begin and end merely in the Spirit realm. Man finds himself in the mortal-physical realm, and as such must also provide his own upreach to Divinity through his own initiatives, and co-creative efforts in response to the gentle and loving promptings of his Spirit helpers. One such co-creative initiative is known as A Spiritual Bill of Rights for Humanity.
This Spiritual Bill of Rights can help prepare the way for many to discover their own relationship with the Creator, regardless of their religious status. The principles of spiritual freedom they offer encourage people to consider perspectives beyond their own tradition, and express truth from their own personal experience. Go to: A Spiritual Bill of Rights
/media/bdg/Busy Bee/My Passport backup/Urantia/UB studies/Holy Spirit.pdf
/media/bdg/Busy Bee/My Passport backup/Urantia/UB studies/Spirit of Truth.pdf
/media/bdg/Busy Bee/My Passport backup/Urantia/UB studies/Thought Adjusters.pdf
Lots of stuff in this one:
/media/bdg/Busy Bee/My Passport backup/Urantia/UB studies/Religious Experience.pdf
Discourse on the mind by Jessona in the GLoW Stillness category -- edit and summarize it accordingly
Tom: As we get older at least some of our minds seem to diminish like our bodies whether through improper diet or lack of use of the mind or overuse of it or substance abuse. Our text in the Rodan papers says the master's worshipful practice brings relaxation that renews the mind. Does the mind need renewing? I thought the mind was a circuit from the Mother Spirit that's perfect. It's the brain that's not functioning. Is stillness able to renew the mind to overcome deterioration?
Jessona: It is helpful. I must place it in context in that your mind has a physical receptive mechanism that is your brain which is intimately associated with all else that is your body, and it is the body which is first to run out of its energy, its life force, to deteriorate. Since the mind must use this receptive organ to engage into your physical form and enact events initiated by your will in this world, it becomes hampered as the physical dimension of your mental, mindal, makeup declines. Relaxation renews the mind because it refreshes the brain. When the neural circuits are able to reset themselves through passivity, through the release of the tension of grappling with thought and method and events and their coordination, the mind is able to turn away from the outward focus and to be attracted to the inner impulses of the Divine Monitor. Relaxation in a sense closes the door on the noise of the outer world so that you can hear the subtle sounds of the spirit dimension.
The mind itself does not degenerate; the platform upon which the mind rests undergoes deterioration. Your mind is circuit-like, and as you age your patterns of thinking will remain, though your effectiveness at thinking may slip away.
I will return to my lesson and point out that the effort to be still and know that I am God is a knowledge that is grounded in awareness and not grounded in thinking, that stream of constructed expression of awareness. The knowledge or perhaps better the awareness of God subsequently is developed into a stream of thought often aided by a stream of words that express that knowledge. The awareness is in the mind; the expression is composed in the craft-room of the brain. You may encounter difficulty as your biologic form will deteriorate, for physical life is of a finite duration.
Your mind will never lose its patterns of thinking that it developed in the experience of the physical life. When you receive your morontia vehicle, you will receive the new mind circuit, but your patterns of thought will be installed in this circuit, and you will continue the consciousness that you had prior to your death. In a sense, your operating system will change, but your software will be reinstalled. Then your work begins to transform these patterns of thought that were born in your nativity life on an evolutionary world into those
morontia patterns that will elevate you in awareness to this pure spirit form of consciousness. That, my friend, is a great task.
To aid in the preservation of the organ through which your mind functions it is good to practice those habits of health and well-being, be it nutritionally, be it through activity, and be it through the exercise of thinking, of problem solving, of wrestling in the mind conceptually. This will burn the rust off the circuits or at least prevent further rust development.
The Spirit of Truth — The Comforter
"And so did the bestowal of the Spirit of Truth bring to the world and its peoples the last of the spirit endowment designed to aid in the ascending search for God.” Urantia Book 194:2.20
LESSON 2: Father's Gift to Man — His Spirit Fragment
It all begins with personality
Personality always seeks unification. The relative free will which characterizes the self-consciousness of human personality is involved in:
- Moral decision, highest wisdom.
- Spiritual choice, truth discernment.
- Unselfish love, brotherhood service.
- Purposeful co-operation, group loyalty.
- Cosmic insight, the grasp of universe meanings.
- Personality dedication, wholehearted devotion to doing the Father’s will.
- Worship, the sincere pursuit of divine values and the wholehearted love of the divine Value-Giver.
Personality is difficult to define — but it is recognized as functioning on diverse levels:
- Physical level — the physique.
- Intellectual level — the mind.
- Emotional level — temperament.
- Social level — ethical disposition.
- Moral level — the character.
Father's downreach to man via His TAs
Discuss the 7 psychic circles.
TAs guide us through the 7 circles (inward)
Spirit of Truth guide us through the 4 levels of growth (outward)
The purpose of life
There is in the mind of the Creator a plan which embraces every creature of all the vast domains of the universe, and this plan is an eternal purpose of boundless opportunity, unlimited progress, and endless life.
Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony — these traits inherent in evolving human nature — were not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short time on earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.
Throughout the eternal career you will never encounter monotony of inaction or stagnation of personality. Progress is made possible by inherent motion, advancement grows out of the capacity for action, and achievement is the child of imaginative adventure. But inherent in this capacity for achievement is the responsibility of ethics, the necessity for recognizing that the world and the universe are filled with a multitude of differing types of beings. All of this magnificent creation, including yourself, was not made just for you.
Ascending mortals gradually progress from the physical to the spiritual. As they progress, they serve on countless assignments in association with their teachers and in company with their more advanced and senior fellows.
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 you will be gently and lovingly led along the pathway of spiritual progress. Every step you take must be one of willingness, intelligent and cheerful co-operation. This process is never tainted with coercion nor compromised by compulsion.
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 environmental differences.
The pursuit of the ideal is a continuous effort before death and after. The life after death is no different in the essentials than the mortal existence. Everything we do in this life which is good contributes directly to the enhancement of the future life. Real religion does not foster moral and spiritual laziness by encouraging the vain hope of having all the virtues of a noble character bestowed upon you as a result of passing through the portals of natural death. True religion does not belittle one’s efforts to progress during the mortal life. Every mortal gain is a direct contribution to the enrichment of the first stages of the immortal survival experience.
LESSON 3: Man's Gift to the Father — Doing of the will of God
The upreach of man to God
Personal religion
Every different culture of humanity has its own unique religious perspective on human existence, and these religions can never come to intellectual unification. Human unity can only be achieved through the religion of the Spirit. Human minds may differ, but all humanity is indwelt by the same Spirit. The hope of human unity can only be realized when the divergent religions become transformed by the unifying and ennobling religion of the Spirit — the religion of personal spiritual experience.
- The religions of authority can only divide people and set them against each other;
- the religion of the Spirit will progressively draw people together and cause them to become understandingly sympathetic with one another.
- The religions of authority require uniformity in belief, but this is impossible to realize in the present state of the world.
- The religion of the Spirit requires only unity of experience — uniformity of destiny — making full allowance for diversity of belief.
- The religion of the Spirit requires only uniformity of insight, not uniformity of viewpoint and outlook.
- The religions of authority crystallize their beliefs into lifeless creeds;
- the religion of the Spirit grows into the increasing joy of loving service.
The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the end of false gods and to the eventual destruction of that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living Creator of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. Religious convictions may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes certain only through personal experience.
Marks of religious living
- The religionist is conscious of universe citizenship and aware of contact with the supernatural.
- The most amazing earmarks of religion are dynamic peace and cosmic poise.
- Genuine religious experience is evidenced by twelve characteristics.
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- Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent animalistic tendencies.
- Produces sublime trust in the goodness of God in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.
- Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.
- Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquility notwithstanding baffling diseases and acute physical suffering.
- Maintains a mysterious composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.
- 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.
- Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.
- Exhibits undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.
- Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.
- Contributes to the survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.
- Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.
- Goes right on worshipping God in spite of anything and everything. Declares: “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”
~ All references are from the Urantia Book.
Religion in relation to social institutions
- Religion is not directly concerned with creating new social orders or with preserving old ones.
- The primary mission of religion is the stabilization of ideals.
- Religion is the cosmic salt which prevents the destruction of the cultural savor of civilization.
- Religionists function in human affairs as individuals — not as religious groups.
- Sectarianism is a disease of institutional religion.
- Religion is always dynamic.
- Religion leads to service and revelation to the eternal adventure.
Characteristics of true religion
- The chief inhibitors of spiritual growth are prejudice and ignorance.
- Growth is indicated not by products but by progress.
- Religion takes nothing away from life — but it does add new meanings to all of it.
- Evolutionary religion drives men, revelation allures them.
- It requires faith and revelation to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation.
What of faith and belief
- Our senses tell us of things, mind discovers meanings, but spiritual experience reveals true values.
- You must have faith as well as feeling.
- Belief has become faith when it motivates life. Belief fixates, faith liberates.
- Faith is the bridge between moral consciousness and spiritual reality.
- There is a great difference between the will-to-believe and the will that believes.
- Faith transforms a God of probability into a God of certainty.
- The individual becomes God-knowing only by faith.
- Man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved by faith.
Religious insight
- Religion persists in the absence of learning.
- Religion may be the feeling of experience, but it is not the experience of feeling.
- The liberated religious soul begins to feel at home in the universe.
- There is a sharp contrast between spiritual liberation and the despair of materialism.
Religious experience
- Religious experience can never be fully understood by the material mind.
- Religious experience ranges from the primitive to the superb consciousness of sonship with God.
- Avoid allowing your religious experience to become egocentric.
- Spiritual birth may be either complacent or “stormy.”
- The experiencing of God may be valid, even when its theology is fallacious.
- The reality of religious experience transcends reason, science, philosophy, and wisdom.
- Personal religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties.
- Religious experience knows God as a Father, and man as a brother.
- Dynamic religion transforms the mediocre individual into a person of idealistic power.
- Religion is the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God.
- Reason and logic can never validate the values of religious experience.
- Religionists live as if already in the presence of the Eternal.
Science and religion
- Neither science nor philosophy can validate the personality of God, only the personal experience of faith sons.
- However men view God, the religionist believes in a God who fosters survival.
- Nature offers no option for believing in human survival.
- To science and philosophy God may be possible and probable, but to religion he is a certainty.
Philosophy and religion
- Religion becomes the unification of all that is good, true, and beautiful in human experience.
- Religion becomes real as it emerges from the slavery of fear and the bondage of superstition.
- Philosophy transforms primitive religion into ascending values of reality.
- Mortals can experience spiritual unity, but not philosophical uniformity.
- When theology masters religion, religion dies. Reason, wisdom, and faith introduce man to facts, truth, and religion.
- It is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely and heroically facing the vicissitudes of life.
21 Steps to a spiritual awakening
- Recognizing our need
- Believing in God
- Accepting God's grace
- Admitting our shortcomings
- Forgiving others
- Asking others' forgiveness
- Accepting God's forgiveness
- Living new lives
- Committing ourselves
- Praying
- Balancing physical with spiritual
- Persisting in our search
- Gaining perspective
- Gaining faith
- Experiencing assurance
- Deepening fellowship
- Serving others
- Sharing our spiritual experience
- Loving each other
- Loving Jesus
- Loving God
Conditions of effective prayer — The laws of prevailing petitions
- You must qualify as a potent prayer by sincerely and courageously facing the problems of universe reality. You must possess cosmic stamina.
- You must have honestly exhausted the human capacity for human adjustment. You must have been industrious.
- You must surrender every wish of mind and every craving of soul to the transforming embrace of spiritual growth. You must have experienced an enhancement of meanings and an elevation of values.
- You must make a wholehearted choice of the divine will. You must obliterate the dead center of indecision.
- You not only recognize the Father's will and choose to do it, but you have effected an unqualified consecration, and a dynamic dedication, to the actual doing of the Father's will.
- Your prayer will be directed exclusively for divine wisdom to solve the specific human problems encountered in the Paradise ascension — the attainment of divine perfection.
- And you must have faith — living faith.
LESSON 4: The Universe Mother Spirit
Good morning, my dear ones. This is Nebadonia, your Local Universe Mother Spirit. I would be happy to give you a few facts about myself. I am called a single-origin being, which means that my parent — the Infinite Spirit of Paradise — is who long ago created me to fulfill this function of being the Mother Spirit of a Local Universe out here in time and space. I was created, and am always tickled to be, a companion to Michael, a Creator Son of God, a dual origin being whose parents are God the Father and God the Eternal Son. The two of us got to know each other, then left Paradise many hundreds of billions of years ago to come out and organize preexisting material in space to, in time, create the organized systems of worlds in our Local Universe.
I was part of the creation and evolution of life
We also created many orders of spiritual beings who, once the evolutionary worlds were ready for it, helped us create physical life on these planets, and then shepherd the evolution of that life along to human beings. In the case of your world, this was about a million years ago when the first human beings were able to receive God's presence — Thought Adjusters — within them. They were twins — Andon and Fonta. This evolution of life through to the emergence of human beings was directed both by the Life Carriers who started life, and me. So you are by no means an accident, neither in your origin nor in your destiny, which is forever if you so choose. In fact the pattern for your kind of being is quite eternal and existed long before our Local Universe.
You will meet and live with higher spiritual beings
I have been the Nebadon Mother Spirit now for nigh on to four million evolutionary worlds inhabited with your order of beings. As for the orders of higher spiritual beings Michael and I have given birth to, it is your destiny — after your physical death and in your continuing life — to meet and live with them as you work your way up through the transition worlds of our Local Universe. You will be meeting and living with these different orders of spiritual beings, starting with the cherubim and sanobim who will be your companions. When you first regain consciousness after death, you will have these Morontia Companions to lead you to your new living quarters. In time as you evolve yourselves, from being less physical to more purely spiritual, you will be able to visualize and associate with these ever-higher orders of spiritual beings as you grow to acquire their larger dimensions of reality.
Also, as you get more and more spiritual, you and I come into an ever-greater companionship. But even now as a human being in your first life, I'm very much a part of your mentality as an inner spiritual presence throughout the space of our Local Universe. I'm like a bubble in foam since my spirit determines the spatial extent of our Local Universe and, as I am surrounded by other Local Universes, my space impinges upon theirs. Being spiritual, their Mother Spirits and I are quite familiar sisters with each other. In fact, through our mother — the Infinite Spirit of Paradise — we keep in touch with each other throughout our Super Universe of about 100,000 Local Universes. I briefly mention this because your Urantia Book reminds you that a hallmark of wisdom is a sense of proportion.
Acquiring a sense of proportion
This truth personally applies as you grow up through your childhood and adolescence, especially now in your modern electronic age of television, computers and internet. You encounter thousands of concepts concerning scientific facts, and the social/political realms, long before your own living experience gives some substance to them. Here my Mind/Spirit Adjutant of Wisdom augments this function of your mind and soul. You begin to get your own sense of proportion as together we begin to flesh out the sometimes disproportionate and biased viewpoints given in your mass media.
This is why Michael and I encourage you to constantly reach out and foster an inexhaustibly hungry curiosity for ever broader points of view. You live in a big world of literally thousands of different cultures, now so much more available to you. We tease you not to settle for the small picture, but constantly strive for an ever larger one to give you a greater sense of proportion. This is not only for your own personal life, but also for your responsibilities and duties as a citizen of your local community, state, and nation.
Your curiosity and spiritual creativity
With this wonderful aspect of curiosity, this hunger for more experience, you can fulfil your function out here in time and space: You can keep growing. Always remember: your essence — your personality — is unchanging — you will always be you. So too is the presence within you of God himself. We call this presence a Thought Adjuster because God can give you literal, discreet ideas to consider, right along with your own. Being a spiritual/creative being, you have your own original ideas to consider, plus you also have God’s.
While your personality is unchanging, the interaction between you and this presence of God — the co-author of your soul of experience, this relationship is one of constant change, constant growth. This is your function and your purpose here, my children: to experience life. Yet some poor, lazy souls consider curiosity a curse. They want to settle down and say “Enough! I’ve had enough of life!” Yet in this case, shy of dying they are driven on to keep experiencing and growing.
One essential tool you are given as part of your nature is something we call courage. Again, this is part of you, part of your mind, and spirit, and soul that I augment. My dears, always remember you live within me. I am surrounding you and part of your mentality simply because I am a Creator Daughter of God. We are in contact and your spirit and mine are intertwined.
Perception — Knowledge — Understanding — Courage — Counsel
It is my delight to experience your life right along with you, my purpose to augment your dimensions of mind and spirit. I boost your Perceptions and your ability to grow Knowledge — what you've personally experienced in your life. I help your ability to coordinate your knowledge as Understanding, especially what leads to what, what causes what. I help you with the Courage to keep exploring and growing.
Beyond these four is my Mind/Spirit of Counsel with which I augment your abilities to relate with each other. I help you counsel each other by sharing your experiences, your knowledge, and your understanding. This enhances your part in God's great attribute of sharing, here, your life with others — my Spirit of Counsel.
The power and connection of Worship and Wisdom
I help you worship — to feel and express your appreciation for being alive. Think of what you encounter, not only in your immediate environment but now, through your modern technology, the universe with its hundreds of millions of galaxies and their attendant gigantic phenomena. I help you be aware and thankful for all of this, all the way to God our Father. Fundamentally, what we call Worship is simply, yet most profoundly, ”Thank you, Father — for me. Thank you that I am! Thank you for my unique personhood that you created to share so much with me. You’ve made us so much alike — each a center and co-creator of everything we have the ability to experience. So: thank you for me. And thank you for all these others like me with whom to share my life." Finally, in time, along comes my seventh Mind/Spirit Adjutant to help you summarize and effectively use the previous six — Wisdom. It’s the great functioning treasure you are earning by living day to day.
With these adjutants in mind, let’s focus on courage. Think of it as a precious ability. It’s what you need to fulfill your God-given curiosity to extend yourself into — and do — what is yet unknown to you. This is Total Reality, and encompassing to you. It contains you and is infinite to your order of being — no top, no bottom, no sides, no end in time. Your wonderful Urantia Book encourages you to entertain the notion that even the inexorable passing of time can be endless forever — if you so choose — in an Eternal Now.
And now, especially because you are physical and involved in real possibilities called health, and danger, and injury — i.e. mortality — it takes courage to even want to extend yourself, let alone be able to extend yourself. Yet insofar as this is a major demand of your function as a living, soulfully growing, experiential being, you can never have enough courage. It’s always something you want to treasure, appreciate, and above all exercise.
The need to exercise courage
Exercise courage in the physical realm as well as in the intellectual and spiritual realms because it helps you expand in all of these. Physically it helps you with these bodies of yours so susceptible to pain, injury, and aging. Constantly, and ever so carefully, feel your way forward through pain and fear. Get out there and experience this world you live in, full of the others surrounding you. Every single one of them is like you, a unique being directly from God. My dears, these others — family, friends and even strangers passing you on a busy city sidewalk are what truly fill your soul, not only the physical things you own and treasure and have fun with, but these other living unique beings. Through all the aches and pains, courage helps you stretch, stay loose, mobile, and able to get out there — to move and keep moving.
In intellectual realms, you are also in another enormous encompassing of mind and spirit that challenges what you have accepted so far. It takes courage to seek and encounter those things which are directly contradictory to what you believe to be true. This is especially important, not so much in scientific realms of empirical knowledge — things that can be demonstrated — but in the social/political realms where you run into bias at every turn. Not all this bias is necessarily cynical or malicious. It just arises from the enormous variety of human life on your world, everything from living in the center of a great city, to being out on the open farmlands and in the small towns. There are hundreds of different human cultures in all the countries of your world. Now you can internet-contact and enjoy all these different viewpoints that directly challenge what you have accepted so far. Keep reaching. Keep growing.
Here is where you most need to broaden your horizons so your own personal, social and political viewpoint expands and helps you fulfill an ever-greater responsibility to make choices as you mature. This is your intellectual courage. Continue to fearlessly entertain different notions, trusting your ability to sort through things, correlate and compare them, and then come up with agreements and disagreements that add to your wisdom. This is where your curiosity is so valuable, and your courage so necessary.
The courage to act upon God’s suggestions
Michael and I remind you that your spiritual nature is your creative component — to personally come up with something new. This too takes courage to exercise, to put the new ideas into reality and act upon them. The idea is one thing, and the necessary precursor, but then to act upon it sometimes takes enormous courage. It’s why Michael and I have often encouraged keeping an open mind to what comes up, because ideas are partly God’s — right? It’s your Thought Adjuster teasing you with a new idea. So entertain it and keep it in mind — whether you can do it right away, or not.
Both God’s and others’ creativity and control
God’s ideas might be challenging the comfortable mode of life you've evolved so far. Keep them in mind, and let them tease you to act, because they help you grow and add something new to your soul. Remember, my dears, you are in God's Reality, and his creation is not repeating itself. There is something presently and eternally new within what we call his Eternal Now, and not only through God’s incessant, ongoing creativity. There’s the creativity of trillions upon trillions upon trillions of personal beings throughout the universe, co-creating and controlling this whole physical creation. Imagine the spiritual extent of it — some 300 levels to grow into by the time you get to Paradise, some 300 levels of reality that surround you even now. You will grow to recognize and use them, one at a time, in your coming future.
My dears, this is the function and the glory of courage, that loving companion to your curiosity that helps you stay hungry for more — and keep growing. You have an eternity of experience to come, in an ever-new Eternal Now.
LESSON 5: The Adjutant Mind Spirits & The Holy Spirit
Modern man is confronted with the task of making more readjustments of human values in one generation than have been made in 2000 years. And this all influences the social attitude toward religion, for religion is a way of living as well as a technique of thinking. Source: Urantia Book 92:7.14
Local universe spirit circuits
There are three distinct spirit circuits in the local universe of Nebadon:
- The bestowal spirit of the Creator Son, the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth.
- The spirit circuit of the Divine Minister, the Holy Spirit.
- The intelligence-ministry circuit, including the more or less unified activities but diverse functioning of the seven adjutant mind-spirits. Urantia Book 34:4.1
The Spirit of Truth will be covered in LESSON 7.
We will now focus on the intelligence-ministry circuit, commonly referred to as the Adjutant Mind Spirits. These are the same 7 Spirits that John the revelator informed us about.
- Revelation 4:5, “From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. In front of the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.”
- Revelation 5:6, “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.”
Notice that these 7 Spirits are sent out into all the earth. In other words they function in all human minds in accordance with its capacity of receptivity and can be described as:
Designation | Description |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
The domain of human personality
Personality always seeks unification. The relative free will which characterizes the self-consciousness of human personality is involved in:
- Moral decision, highest wisdom.
- Spiritual choice, truth discernment.
- Unselfish love, brotherhood service.
- Purposeful co-operation, group loyalty.
- Cosmic insight, the grasp of universe meanings.
- Personality dedication, wholehearted devotion to doing the Father’s will.
- Worship, the sincere pursuit of divine values and the wholehearted love of the divine Value-Giver.” Urantia Book 16:8.7
Personality is difficult to define — but it is recognized as functioning on diverse levels:
- Physical level — the physique.
- Intellectual level — the mind.
- Emotional level — temperament.
- Social level — ethical disposition.
- Moral level — the character.
LESSON 6: The Creator Son
LESSON 7: The Spirit of Truth
Having embarked on the way of life everlasting, do not fear the limitations of human nature. At every crossroad, the Spirit of Truth will speak — ”This is the way.” (383.2) 34:7.8
The Spirit of Truth in the Bible
Throughout the New Testament the Spirit of Truth is confused with the Holy Spirit. While the two are closely related and work in harmony, they are two distinct Spirits.
Despite this widespread confusion, John did speak the truth about the Spirit of Truth when he stated:
- “When the Counselor comes...he will bear witness to me.” John 15:26.
- “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” John 16:13.
- “The Counselor...whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 14:26.
What happened at Pentecost
Jesus lives in truth-taught believers.
“Many queer and strange teachings became associated with the early narratives of the day of Pentecost. In subsequent times the events of this day, on which the Spirit of Truth, the new teacher, came to dwell with mankind, have become confused with the foolish outbreaks of rampant emotionalism. The chief mission of this outpoured spirit of the Father and the Son is to teach men about the truths of the Father’s love and the Son’s
mercy. These are the truths of divinity which men can comprehend more fully than all the other divine traits of character. The Spirit of Truth is concerned primarily with the revelation of the Father’s spirit nature and the Son’s moral character. The Creator Son, in the flesh, revealed God to men; the Spirit of Truth, in the heart, reveals the Creator Son to men. When man yields the ‘fruits of the spirit’ in his life, he is simply showing forth the traits which the Master manifested in his own earthly life. When Jesus was on earth, he lived his life as one personality — Jesus of Nazareth. As the indwelling spirit of the ‘new teacher,’ the Master has, since Pentecost, been able to live his life anew in the experience of every truth-taught believer.” Urantia Book 194:3.1
You are not conscious of the Spirit of Truth
“Do not make the mistake of expecting to become strongly intellectually conscious of the outpoured Spirit of Truth. The spirit never creates a consciousness of himself, only a consciousness of Michael, the Son. From the beginning Jesus taught that the spirit would not speak of himself. The proof, therefore, of your fellowship with the Spirit of Truth is not to be found in your consciousness of this spirit but rather in your experience of enhanced fellowship with Michael.” (2061.2) 194:2.4