The Life Carriers

36:5.1It 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.

36:5.2The 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.

36:5.3The 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.

36:5.4The 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.

36:5.5We 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:

36:5.61. 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.

36:5.72. 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.

36:5.83. 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.

36:5.94. 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.

36:5.105. 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.

36:5.116. 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.

36:5.127. 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.

36:5.13The 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.

36:5.14These 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.

36:5.15Liv­ing 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.

36:5.16The 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.

36:5.17Non­spir­i­tual 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.