The Morontia Life

48:6.1While all or­ders of an­gels, from the plan­e­tary helpers to the su­preme ser­a­phim, min­is­ter on the mor­ontia worlds, the tran­si­tion min­is­ters are more ex­clu­sively as­signed to these ac­tiv­i­ties. These an­gels are of the sixth or­der of se­raphic servers, and their min­istry is de­voted to fa­cil­i­tat­ing the tran­sit of ma­te­rial and mor­tal crea­tures from the tem­po­ral life in the flesh on into the early stages of mor­ontia ex­is­tence on the seven man­sion worlds.

48:6.2You should un­der­stand that the mor­ontia life of an as­cend­ing mor­tal is re­ally ini­ti­ated on the in­hab­ited worlds at the con­cep­tion of the soul, at that mo­ment when the crea­ture mind of moral sta­tus is in­dwelt by the spirit Ad­juster. And from that mo­ment on, the mor­tal soul has po­ten­tial ca­pac­ity for super­mor­tal func­tion, even for rec­og­ni­tion on the higher lev­els of the mor­ontia spheres of the lo­cal uni­verse.

48:6.3You will not, how­ever, be con­scious of the min­istry of the tran­si­tion ser­a­phim un­til you at­tain the man­sion worlds, where they la­bor un­tir­ingly for the ad­vance­ment of their mor­tal pupils, be­ing as­signed for ser­vice in the fol­low­ing seven di­vi­sions:

48:6.41. Se­raphic Evan­gels. The mo­ment you con­sciou­size on the man­sion worlds, you are clas­si­fied as evolv­ing spir­its in the rec­ords of the sys­tem. True, you are not yet spir­its in re­al­ity, but you are no longer mor­tal or ma­te­rial be­ings; you have em­barked upon the pre­spirit ca­reer and have been duly ad­mit­ted to the mor­ontia life.

48:6.5On the man­sion worlds the se­raphic evan­gels will help you to choose wisely among the op­tional routes to Eden­tia, Sal­ving­ton, Uversa, and Ha­vona. If there are a num­ber of equally ad­vis­able routes, these will be put be­fore you, and you will be per­mit­ted to se­lect the one that most ap­peals to you. These ser­a­phim then make rec­om­men­da­tions to the four and twenty ad­vis­ers on Je­ru­sem con­cern­ing that course which would be most ad­van­ta­geous for each as­cend­ing soul.

48:6.6You are not given un­re­stricted choice as to your fu­ture course; but you may choose within the lim­its of that which the tran­si­tion min­is­ters and their su­pe­ri­ors wisely de­ter­mine to be most suit­able for your fu­ture spirit at­tain­ment. The spirit world is gov­erned on the prin­ci­ple of re­spect­ing your free­will choice pro­vided the course you may choose is not detri­men­tal to you or in­ju­ri­ous to your fel­lows.

48:6.7These se­raphic evan­gels are ded­i­cated to the procla­ma­tion of the gospel of eter­nal pro­gres­sion, the tri­umph of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. On the man­sion worlds they pro­claim the great law of the con­ser­va­tion and dom­i­nance of good­ness: No act of good is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly an­nulled, and it is eter­nally po­tent in pro­por­tion to the di­vin­ity of its mo­ti­va­tion.

48:6.8Even on Uran­tia they coun­sel the hu­man teach­ers of truth and righ­teous­ness to ad­here to the preach­ing of “the good­ness of God, which leads to re­pen­tance,” to pro­claim “the love of God, which casts out all fear.” Even so have these truths been de­clared on your world:

48:6.20That is the story whis­pered in the night sea­son to the shep­herd boy. He could not re­tain it word for word, but to the best of his mem­ory he gave it much as it is re­corded to­day.

48:6.21These ser­a­phim are also the evan­gels of the gospel of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment for the whole sys­tem as well as for the in­di­vid­ual as­cender. Even now in the young sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia their teach­ings and plans en­com­pass pro­vi­sions for the fu­ture ages when the man­sion worlds will no longer serve the mor­tal as­cend­ers as step­ping­stones to the spheres on high.

48:6.222. Racial In­ter­preters. All races of mor­tal be­ings are not alike. True, there is a plan­e­tary pat­tern run­ning through the phys­i­cal, men­tal, and spir­i­tual na­tures and ten­den­cies of the var­i­ous races of a given world; but there are also dis­tinct racial types, and very def­i­nite so­cial ten­den­cies char­ac­ter­ize the off­spring of these dif­fer­ent ba­sic types of hu­man be­ings. On the worlds of time the se­raphic racial in­ter­preters fur­ther the ef­forts of the race com­mis­sion­ers to har­mo­nize the var­ied view­points of the races, and they con­tinue to func­tion on the man­sion worlds, where these same dif­fer­ences tend to per­sist in a mea­sure. On a con­fused planet, such as Uran­tia, these bril­liant be­ings have hardly had a fair op­por­tu­nity to func­tion, but they are the skill­ful so­ci­ol­o­gists and the wise eth­nic ad­vis­ers of the first heaven.

48:6.23You should con­sider the state­ment about “heaven” and the “heaven of heav­ens.” The heaven con­ceived by most of your proph­ets was the first of the man­sion worlds of the lo­cal sys­tem. When the apos­tle spoke of be­ing “caught up to the third heaven,” he re­ferred to that ex­pe­ri­ence in which his Ad­juster was de­tached dur­ing sleep and in this un­usual state made a pro­jec­tion to the third of the seven man­sion worlds. Some of your wise men saw the vi­sion of the greater heaven, “the heaven of heav­ens,” of which the sev­en­fold man­sion world ex­pe­ri­ence was but the first; the sec­ond be­ing Je­ru­sem; the third, Eden­tia and its satel­lites; the fourth, Sal­ving­ton and the sur­round­ing ed­u­ca­tional spheres; the fifth, Uversa; the sixth, Ha­vona; and the sev­enth, Par­a­dise.

48:6.243. Mind Plan­ners. These ser­a­phim are de­voted to the ef­fec­tive group­ing of mor­ontia be­ings and to or­ga­niz­ing their team­work on the man­sion worlds. They are the psy­chol­o­gists of the first heaven. The ma­jor­ity of this par­tic­u­lar di­vi­sion of se­raphic min­is­ters have had pre­vi­ous ex­pe­ri­ence as guard­ian an­gels to the chil­dren of time, but their wards, for some rea­son, failed to per­son­al­ize on the man­sion worlds or else sur­vived by the tech­nique of Spirit fu­sion.

48:6.25It is the task of the mind plan­ners to study the na­ture, ex­pe­ri­ence, and sta­tus of the Ad­juster souls in tran­sit through the man­sion worlds and to fa­cil­i­tate their group­ing for as­sign­ment and ad­vance­ment. But these mind plan­ners do not scheme, ma­nip­u­late, or oth­er­wise take ad­van­tage of the ig­no­rance or other lim­i­ta­tions of man­sion world stu­dents. They are wholly fair and em­i­nently just. They re­spect your new­born mor­ontia will; they re­gard you as in­de­pen­dent vo­li­tional be­ings, and they seek to en­cour­age your speedy de­vel­op­ment and ad­vance­ment. Here you are face to face with true friends and un­der­stand­ing coun­selors, an­gels who are re­ally able to help you “to see your­self as oth­ers see you” and “to know your­self as an­gels know you.”

48:6.26Even on Uran­tia, these ser­a­phim teach the ev­er­last­ing truth: If your own mind does not serve you well, you can ex­change it for the mind of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who al­ways serves you well.

48:6.274. Mor­ontia Coun­selors. These min­is­ters re­ceive their name be­cause they are as­signed to teach, di­rect, and coun­sel the sur­viv­ing mor­tals from the worlds of hu­man ori­gin, souls in tran­sit to the higher schools of the sys­tem head­quar­ters. They are the teach­ers of those who seek in­sight into the ex­pe­ri­en­tial unity of di­ver­gent life lev­els, those who are at­tempt­ing the in­te­gra­tion of mean­ings and the uni­fi­ca­tion of val­ues. This is the func­tion of phi­los­o­phy in mor­tal life, of mota on the mor­ontia spheres.

48:6.28Mota is more than a su­pe­rior phi­los­o­phy; it is to phi­los­o­phy as two eyes are to one; it has a stereo­scopic ef­fect on mean­ings and val­ues. Ma­te­rial man sees the uni­verse, as it were, with but one eye—flat. Man­sion world stu­dents achieve cos­mic per­spec­tive—depth—by super­im­pos­ing the per­cep­tions of the mor­ontia life upon the per­cep­tions of the phys­i­cal life. And they are en­abled to bring these ma­te­rial and mor­ontial view­points into true fo­cus largely through the un­tir­ing min­istry of their se­raphic coun­selors, who so pa­tiently teach the man­sion world stu­dents and the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. Many of the teach­ing coun­selors of the su­preme or­der of ser­a­phim be­gan their ca­reers as ad­vis­ers of the newly lib­er­ated souls of the mor­tals of time.

48:6.295. Tech­ni­cians. These are the ser­a­phim who help new as­cend­ers ad­just them­selves to the new and com­par­a­tively strange en­vi­ron­ment of the mor­ontia spheres. Life on the tran­si­tion worlds en­tails real con­tact with the en­er­gies and ma­te­ri­als of both the phys­i­cal and mor­ontia lev­els and to a cer­tain ex­tent with spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. As­cend­ers must ac­cli­ma­tize to ev­ery new mor­ontia level, and in all of this they are greatly helped by the se­raphic tech­ni­cians. These ser­a­phim act as li­aisons with the Mor­ontia Power Super­vi­sors and with the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers and func­tion ex­ten­sively as in­struc­tors of the as­cend­ing pil­grims con­cern­ing the na­ture of those en­er­gies which are uti­lized on the tran­si­tion spheres. They serve as emer­gency space tra­versers and per­form nu­mer­ous other reg­u­lar and spe­cial du­ties.

48:6.306. Re­corder-Teach­ers. These ser­a­phim are the re­cord­ers of the bor­der­land trans­ac­tions of the spir­i­tual and the phys­i­cal, of the re­la­tion­ships of men and an­gels, of the mor­ontia trans­ac­tions of the lower uni­verse realms. They also serve as in­struc­tors re­gard­ing the ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive tech­niques of fact record­ing. There is an artistry in the in­tel­li­gent as­sem­bly and co-or­di­na­tion of re­lated data, and this art is height­ened in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ce­les­tial ar­ti­sans, and even the as­cend­ing mor­tals be­come thus af­fil­i­ated with the record­ing ser­a­phim.

48:6.31The re­cord­ers of all the se­raphic or­ders de­vote a cer­tain amount of time to the ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing of the mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. These an­gelic cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time are the ideal in­struc­tors of all fact seek­ers. Be­fore leav­ing Je­ru­sem, you will be­come quite fa­mil­iar with the his­tory of Sa­ta­nia and its 619 in­hab­ited worlds, and much of this story will be im­parted by the se­raphic re­cord­ers.

48:6.32These an­gels are all in the chain of re­cord­ers ex­tend­ing from the low­est to the high­est cus­to­di­ans of the facts of time and the truths of eter­nity. Some day they will teach you to seek truth as well as fact, to ex­pand your soul as well as your mind. Even now you should learn to wa­ter the gar­den of your heart as well as to seek for the dry sands of knowl­edge. Forms are val­ue­less when lessons are learned. No chick may be had with­out the shell, and no shell is of any worth af­ter the chick is hatched. But some­times er­ror is so great that its rec­ti­fi­ca­tion by rev­e­la­tion would be fa­tal to those slowly emerg­ing truths which are es­sen­tial to its ex­pe­ri­en­tial over­throw. When chil­dren have their ide­als, do not dis­lodge them; let them grow. And while you are learn­ing to think as men, you should also be learn­ing to pray as chil­dren.

48:6.33Law is life it­self and not the rules of its con­duct. Evil is a trans­gres­sion of law, not a vi­o­la­tion of the rules of con­duct per­tain­ing to life, which is the law. False­hood is not a mat­ter of nar­ra­tion tech­nique but some­thing pre­med­i­tated as a per­ver­sion of truth. The cre­ation of new pic­tures out of old facts, the re­state­ment of pa­ren­tal life in the lives of off­spring—these are the artis­tic tri­umphs of truth. The shadow of a hair’s turn­ing, pre­med­i­tated for an un­true pur­pose, the slight­est twist­ing or per­ver­sion of that which is prin­ci­ple—these con­sti­tute false­ness. But the fe­tish of fac­tu­al­ized truth, fos­silized truth, the iron band of so-called un­chang­ing truth, holds one blindly in a closed cir­cle of cold fact. One can be tech­ni­cally right as to fact and ev­er­last­ingly wrong in the truth.

48:6.347. Min­is­ter­ing Re­serves. A large corps of all or­ders of the tran­si­tion ser­a­phim is held on the first man­sion world. Next to the des­tiny guard­i­ans, these tran­si­tion min­is­ters draw the near­est to hu­mans of all or­ders of ser­a­phim, and many of your leisure mo­ments will be spent with them. An­gels take de­light in ser­vice and, when un­as­signed, of­ten min­is­ter as vol­un­teers. The soul of many an as­cend­ing mor­tal has for the first time been kin­dled by the di­vine fire of the will-to-ser­vice through per­sonal friend­ship with the vol­un­teer servers of the se­raphic re­serves.

48:6.35From them you will learn to let pres­sure de­velop sta­bil­ity and cer­tainty; to be faith­ful and earnest and, withal, cheer­ful; to ac­cept chal­lenges with­out com­plaint and to face dif­fi­cul­ties and un­cer­tain­ties with­out fear. They will ask: If you fail, will you rise in­domitably to try anew? If you suc­ceed, will you main­tain a well-bal­anced poise—a sta­bi­lized and spir­i­tu­al­ized at­ti­tude—through­out ev­ery ef­fort in the long strug­gle to break the fet­ters of ma­te­rial in­er­tia, to at­tain the free­dom of spirit ex­is­tence?

48:6.36Even as mor­tals, so have these an­gels been fa­ther to many dis­ap­point­ments, and they will point out that some­times your most dis­ap­point­ing dis­ap­point­ments have be­come your great­est bless­ings. Some­times the plant­ing of a seed ne­ces­si­tates its death, the death of your fond­est hopes, be­fore it can be re­born to bear the fruits of new life and new op­por­tu­nity. And from them you will learn to suf­fer less through sor­row and dis­ap­point­ment, first, by mak­ing fewer per­sonal plans con­cern­ing other per­son­al­i­ties, and then, by ac­cept­ing your lot when you have faith­fully per­formed your duty.

48:6.37You will learn that you in­crease your bur­dens and de­crease the like­li­hood of suc­cess by tak­ing your­self too se­ri­ously. Noth­ing can take prece­dence over the work of your sta­tus sphere—this world or the next. Very im­por­tant is the work of prepa­ra­tion for the next higher sphere, but noth­ing equals the im­por­tance of the work of the world in which you are ac­tu­ally liv­ing. But though the work is im­por­tant, the self is not. When you feel im­por­tant, you lose en­ergy to the wear and tear of ego dig­nity so that there is lit­tle en­ergy left to do the work. Self-im­por­tance, not work-im­por­tance, ex­hausts im­ma­ture crea­tures; it is the self el­e­ment that ex­hausts, not the ef­fort to achieve. You can do im­por­tant work if you do not be­come self-im­por­tant; you can do sev­eral things as eas­ily as one if you leave your­self out. Va­ri­ety is rest­ful; mo­not­ony is what wears and ex­hausts. Day af­ter day is alike—just life or the al­ter­na­tive of death.