The Seven Master Spirits

16:6.1The Mas­ter Spir­its are the sev­en­fold source of the cos­mic mind, the in­tel­lec­tual po­ten­tial of the grand uni­verse. This cos­mic mind is a sub­ab­so­lute man­i­fes­ta­tion of the mind of the Third Source and Cen­ter and, in cer­tain ways, is func­tion­ally re­lated to the mind of the evolv­ing Su­preme Be­ing.

16:6.2On a world like Uran­tia we do not en­counter the di­rect in­flu­ence of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its in the af­fairs of the hu­man races. You live un­der the im­me­di­ate in­flu­ence of the Cre­ative Spirit of Neb­a­don. Nev­er­the­less these same Mas­ter Spir­its dom­i­nate the ba­sic re­ac­tions of all crea­ture mind be­cause they are the ac­tual sources of the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual po­ten­tials which have been spe­cial­ized in the lo­cal uni­verses for func­tion in the lives of those in­di­vid­u­als who in­habit the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of time and space.

16:6.3The fact of the cos­mic mind ex­plains the kin­ship of var­i­ous types of hu­man and super­hu­man minds. Not only are kin­dred spir­its at­tracted to each other, but kin­dred minds are also very fra­ter­nal and in­clined to­wards co-op­er­a­tion the one with the other. Hu­man minds are some­times ob­served to be run­ning in chan­nels of as­ton­ish­ing sim­i­lar­ity and in­ex­pli­ca­ble agree­ment.

16:6.4There ex­ists in all per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tions of the cos­mic mind a qual­ity which might be de­nom­i­nated the “re­al­ity re­sponse.” It is this uni­ver­sal cos­mic en­dow­ment of will crea­tures which saves them from be­com­ing help­less vic­tims of the im­plied a pri­ori as­sump­tions of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. This re­al­ity sen­si­tiv­ity of the cos­mic mind re­sponds to cer­tain phases of re­al­ity just as en­ergy-ma­te­rial re­sponds to grav­ity. It would be still more cor­rect to say that these super­ma­te­rial re­al­i­ties so re­spond to the mind of the cos­mos.

16:6.5The cos­mic mind un­fail­ingly re­sponds (rec­og­nizes re­sponse) on three lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. These re­sponses are self-ev­i­dent to clear-rea­son­ing and deep-think­ing minds. These lev­els of re­al­ity are:

16:6.61. Cau­sa­tion—the re­al­ity do­main of the phys­i­cal senses, the sci­en­tific realms of log­i­cal uni­for­mity, the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the fac­tual and the non­fac­tual, re­flec­tive con­clu­sions based on cos­mic re­sponse. This is the math­e­mat­i­cal form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.72. Duty—the re­al­ity do­main of morals in the philo­sophic realm, the arena of rea­son, the rec­og­ni­tion of rel­a­tive right and wrong. This is the ju­di­cial form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.83. Wor­ship—the spir­i­tual do­main of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of di­vine fel­low­ship, the rec­og­ni­tion of spirit val­ues, the as­sur­ance of eter­nal sur­vival, the as­cent from the sta­tus of ser­vants of God to the joy and lib­erty of the sons of God. This is the high­est in­sight of the cos­mic mind, the rev­er­en­tial and wor­ship­ful form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

16:6.9These sci­en­tific, moral, and spir­i­tual in­sights, these cos­mic re­sponses, are in­nate in the cos­mic mind, which en­dows all will crea­tures. The ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing never fails to de­velop these three cos­mic in­tu­itions; they are con­sti­tu­tive in the self-con­scious­ness of re­flec­tive think­ing. But it is sad to re­cord that so few per­sons on Uran­tia take de­light in cul­ti­vat­ing these qual­i­ties of coura­geous and in­de­pen­dent cos­mic think­ing.

16:6.10In the lo­cal uni­verse mind be­stowals, these three in­sights of the cos­mic mind con­sti­tute the a pri­ori as­sump­tions which make it pos­si­ble for man to func­tion as a ra­tio­nal and self-con­scious per­son­al­ity in the realms of sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, and re­li­gion. Stated oth­er­wise, the rec­og­ni­tion of the re­al­ity of these three man­i­fes­ta­tions of the In­fi­nite is by a cos­mic tech­nique of self-rev­e­la­tion. Mat­ter-en­ergy is rec­og­nized by the math­e­mat­i­cal logic of the senses; mind-rea­son in­tu­itively knows its moral duty; spirit-faith (wor­ship) is the re­li­gion of the re­al­ity of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. These three ba­sic fac­tors in re­flec­tive think­ing may be uni­fied and co-or­di­nated in per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment, or they may be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and vir­tu­ally un­re­lated in their re­spec­tive func­tions. But when they be­come uni­fied, they pro­duce a strong char­ac­ter con­sist­ing in the cor­re­la­tion of a fac­tual sci­ence, a moral phi­los­o­phy, and a gen­uine re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. And it is these three cos­mic in­tu­itions that give ob­jec­tive va­lid­ity, re­al­ity, to man’s ex­pe­ri­ence in and with things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

16:6.11It is the pur­pose of ed­u­ca­tion to de­velop and sharpen these in­nate en­dow­ments of the hu­man mind; of civ­i­liza­tion to ex­press them; of life ex­pe­ri­ence to re­al­ize them; of re­li­gion to en­no­ble them; and of per­son­al­ity to unify them.