ascension plan

48:5.8One of the pur­poses of the mor­ontia ca­reer is to ef­fect the per­ma­nent erad­i­ca­tion from the mor­tal sur­vivors of such an­i­mal ves­ti­gial traits as pro­cras­ti­na­tion, equiv­o­ca­tion, in­sin­cer­ity, prob­lem avoid­ance, un­fair­ness, and ease seek­ing. The man­so­nia life early teaches the young mor­ontia pupils that post­pone­ment is in no sense avoid­ance. Af­ter the life in the flesh, time is no longer avail­able as a tech­nique of dodg­ing sit­u­a­tions or of cir­cum­vent­ing dis­agree­able obli­ga­tions.

77:9.12The en­tire or­ga­ni­za­tion of high spir­its, an­gelic hosts, and mid­way fel­lows is en­thu­si­as­ti­cally de­voted to the fur­ther­ance of the Par­a­dise plan for the pro­gres­sive as­cen­sion and per­fec­tion at­tain­ment of evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals, one of the su­per­nal busi­nesses of the uni­verse—the su­perb sur­vival plan of bring­ing God down to man and then, by a sub­lime sort of part­ner­ship, car­ry­ing man up to God and on to eter­nity of ser­vice and di­vin­ity of at­tain­ment—alike for mor­tal and mid­wayer.

• elevation and perfection of mortals

7:4.1The Eter­nal Son is in ev­er­last­ing li­ai­son with the Fa­ther in the suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of the di­vine plan of prog­ress: the uni­ver­sal plan for the cre­ation, evo­lu­tion, as­cen­sion, and per­fec­tion of will crea­tures. And, in di­vine faith­ful­ness, the Son is the eter­nal equal of the Fa­ther.

• helping those just behind

30:3.9The en­tire as­cen­dant plan of mor­tal pro­gres­sion is char­ac­ter­ized by the prac­tice of giv­ing out to other be­ings new truth and ex­pe­ri­ence just as soon as ac­quired. You work your way through the long school of Par­a­dise at­tain­ment by serv­ing as teach­ers to those pupils just be­hind you in the scale of pro­gres­sion.

• helping those just behind

35:4.1A highly spe­cial­ized branch of Mel­chiz­e­dek ac­tiv­i­ties has to do with the super­vi­sion of the pro­gres­sive mor­ontia ca­reer of the as­cend­ing mor­tals. Much of this train­ing is con­ducted by the pa­tient and wise se­raphic min­is­ters, as­sisted by mor­tals who have as­cended to rel­a­tively higher lev­els of uni­verse at­tain­ment, but all of this ed­u­ca­tional work is un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of the Mel­chiz­e­deks in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Trin­ity Teacher Sons.

• helping those just behind

37:10.5Al­ways there is at­tached to the uni­verse ser­vice a corps of as­cend­ing mor­tals, in­clud­ing the glo­ri­fied mid­way crea­tures. These as­cend­ers, af­ter at­tain­ing Sal­ving­ton, are used in an al­most end­less va­ri­ety of ac­tiv­i­ties in the con­duct of uni­verse af­fairs. From each level of achieve­ment these ad­vanc­ing mor­tals reach back and down to ex­tend a help­ing hand to their fel­lows who fol­low them in the up­ward climb. Such mor­tals of tem­po­rary so­journ on Sal­ving­ton are as­signed on req­ui­si­tion to prac­ti­cally all corps of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties as helpers, stu­dents, ob­servers, and teach­ers.

• graduated opportunity to master universe administration

48:8.2There is a def­i­nite and di­vine pur­pose in all this mor­ontia and sub­se­quent spirit scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion, this elab­o­rate uni­verse train­ing school for as­cend­ing crea­tures. It is the de­sign of the Cre­ators to af­ford the crea­tures of time a grad­u­ated op­por­tu­nity to mas­ter the de­tails of the op­er­a­tion and ad­min­is­tra­tion of the grand uni­verse, and this long course of train­ing is best car­ried for­ward by hav­ing the sur­viv­ing mor­tal climb up grad­u­ally and by ac­tual par­tic­i­pa­tion in ev­ery step of the as­cent.

• privilege of participating in creating own destiny

54:2.4In short, what God had given men and an­gels Lu­cifer would have taken away from them, that is, the di­vine priv­i­lege of par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cre­ation of their own des­tinies and of the des­tiny of this lo­cal sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds.

• helping those just behind

55:2.11No mat­ter from what level of plan­e­tary at­tain­ment hu­man be­ings may as­cend to the mor­ontia worlds, the seven man­sion spheres af­ford them am­ple op­por­tu­nity to gain in ex­pe­ri­ence as teacher-stu­dents all of ev­ery­thing which they failed to pass through be­cause of the ad­vanced sta­tus of their na­tive plan­ets.

• elevation and perfection of mortals

113:0.1Hav­ing pre­sented the nar­ra­tives of the Min­is­ter­ing Spir­its of Time and the Mes­sen­ger Hosts of Space, we come to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the guard­ian an­gels, ser­a­phim de­voted to the min­istry to in­di­vid­ual mor­tals, for whose el­e­va­tion and per­fec­tion all of the vast sur­vival scheme of spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion has been pro­vided. In past ages on Uran­tia, these des­tiny guard­i­ans were about the only group of an­gels that had rec­og­ni­tion. The plan­e­tary ser­a­phim are in­deed min­is­ter­ing spir­its sent forth to do ser­vice for those who shall sur­vive. These at­tend­ing ser­a­phim have func­tioned as the spir­i­tual helpers of mor­tal man in all the great events of the past and the pres­ent. In many a rev­e­la­tion “the word was spo­ken by an­gels”; many of the man­dates of heaven have been “re­ceived by the min­istry of an­gels.”

7:4.2The Fa­ther and his Son are as one in the for­mu­la­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of this gi­gan­tic at­tain­ment plan for ad­vanc­ing the ma­te­rial be­ings of time to the per­fec­tion of eter­nity. This project for the spir­i­tual el­e­va­tion of the as­cen­dant souls of space is a joint cre­ation of the Fa­ther and the Son, and they are, with the co-op­er­a­tion of the In­fi­nite Spirit, en­gaged in as­so­cia­tive ex­e­cu­tion of their di­vine pur­pose.

7:4.3This di­vine plan of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment em­braces three unique, though mar­velously cor­re­lated, en­ter­prises of uni­ver­sal ad­ven­ture:

7:4.41. The Plan of Pro­gres­sive At­tain­ment. This is the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther’s plan of evo­lu­tion­ary as­cen­sion, a pro­gram un­re­servedly ac­cepted by the Eter­nal Son when he con­curred in the Fa­ther’s pro­posal, “Let us make mor­tal crea­tures in our own im­age.” This pro­vi­sion for up­step­ping the crea­tures of time in­volves the Fa­ther’s be­stowal of the Thought Ad­justers and the en­dow­ing of ma­te­rial crea­tures with the pre­rog­a­tives of per­son­al­ity.

7:4.52. The Be­stowal Plan. The next uni­ver­sal plan is the great Fa­ther-rev­e­la­tion en­ter­prise of the Eter­nal Son and his co-or­di­nate Sons. This is the pro­posal of the Eter­nal Son and con­sists of his be­stowal of the Sons of God upon the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ations, there to per­son­al­ize and fac­tu­al­ize, to in­car­nate and make real, the love of the Fa­ther and the mercy of the Son to the crea­tures of all uni­verses. In­her­ent in the be­stowal plan, and as a pro­vi­sional fea­ture of this min­is­tra­tion of love, the Par­a­dise Sons act as re­ha­bil­i­ta­tors of that which mis­guided crea­ture will has placed in spir­i­tual jeop­ardy. When­ever and wher­ever there oc­curs a de­lay in the func­tion­ing of the at­tain­ment plan, if re­bel­lion, per­chance, should mar or com­pli­cate this en­ter­prise, then do the emer­gency pro­vi­sions of the be­stowal plan be­come ac­tive forth­with. The Par­a­dise Sons stand pledged and ready to func­tion as re­triev­ers, to go into the very realms of re­bel­lion and there re­store the spir­i­tual sta­tus of the spheres. And such a heroic ser­vice a co-or­di­nate Cre­ator Son did per­form on Uran­tia in con­nec­tion with his ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­stowal ca­reer of sov­er­eignty ac­quire­ment.

7:4.63. The Plan of Mercy Min­istry. When the at­tain­ment plan and the be­stowal plan had been for­mu­lated and pro­claimed, alone and of him­self, the In­fi­nite Spirit pro­jected and put in op­er­a­tion the tremen­dous and uni­ver­sal en­ter­prise of mercy min­istry. This is the ser­vice so es­sen­tial to the prac­ti­cal and ef­fec­tive op­er­a­tion of both the at­tain­ment and the be­stowal un­der­tak­ings, and the spir­i­tual per­son­al­i­ties of the Third Source and Cen­ter all par­take of the spirit of mercy min­istry which is so much a part of the na­ture of the Third Per­son of De­ity. Not only in cre­ation but also in ad­min­is­tra­tion, the In­fi­nite Spirit func­tions truly and lit­er­ally as the con­joint ex­ec­u­tive of the Fa­ther and the Son.

7:4.7The Eter­nal Son is the per­sonal trus­tee, the di­vine cus­to­dian, of the Fa­ther’s uni­ver­sal plan of crea­ture as­cen­sion. Hav­ing pro­mul­gated the uni­ver­sal man­date, “Be you per­fect, even as I am per­fect,” the Fa­ther in­trusted the ex­e­cu­tion of this tremen­dous un­der­tak­ing to the Eter­nal Son; and the Eter­nal Son shares the fos­ter­ing of this su­per­nal en­ter­prise with his di­vine co-or­di­nate, the In­fi­nite Spirit. Thus do the De­i­ties ef­fec­tively co-op­er­ate in the work of cre­ation, con­trol, evo­lu­tion, rev­e­la­tion, and min­is­tra­tion—and if re­quired, in restora­tion and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

7:3.2The spir­i­tual-grav­ity pull of the Eter­nal Son con­sti­tutes the in­her­ent se­cret of the Par­a­dise as­cen­sion of sur­viv­ing hu­man souls. All gen­uine spirit val­ues and all bona fide spir­i­tu­al­ized in­di­vid­u­als are held within the un­fail­ing grasp of the spir­i­tual grav­ity of the Eter­nal Son. The mor­tal mind, for ex­am­ple, ini­ti­ates its ca­reer as a ma­te­rial mech­a­nism and is even­tu­ally mus­tered into the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity as a well-nigh per­fected spirit ex­is­tence, be­com­ing pro­gres­sively less sub­ject to ma­te­rial grav­ity and cor­re­spond­ingly more re­spon­sive to the in­ward pulling urge of spirit grav­ity dur­ing this en­tire ex­pe­ri­ence. The spirit-grav­ity cir­cuit lit­er­ally pulls the soul of man Par­adis­e­ward.

15:11.3Never have I known of a dis­agree­ment be­tween the Or­von­ton ex­ec­u­tives and the Uversa as­sem­bly. Never yet, in the his­tory of our super­uni­verse, has the de­lib­er­a­tive body ever passed a rec­om­men­da­tion that the ex­ec­u­tive di­vi­sion of the super­gov­ern­ment has even hes­i­tated to carry out. There al­ways has pre­vailed the most per­fect har­mony and work­ing agree­ment, all of which tes­ti­fies to the fact that evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings can re­ally at­tain the heights of per­fected wis­dom which qual­i­fies them to con­sort with the per­son­al­i­ties of per­fect ori­gin and di­vine na­ture. The pres­ence of the de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­blies on the super­uni­verse head­quar­ters re­veals the wis­dom, and fore­shad­ows the ul­ti­mate tri­umph, of the whole vast evo­lu­tion­ary con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and his Eter­nal Son.

8:3.5The In­fi­nite Spirit is the ef­fec­tive agent of the all-lov­ing Fa­ther and the all-mer­ci­ful Son for the ex­e­cu­tion of their con­joint project of draw­ing to them­selves all truth-lov­ing souls on all the worlds of time and space. The very in­stant the Eter­nal Son ac­cepted his Fa­ther’s plan of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment for the crea­tures of the uni­verses, the mo­ment the as­cen­sion project be­came a Fa­ther-Son plan, that in­stant the In­fi­nite Spirit be­came the con­joint ad­min­is­tra­tor of the Fa­ther and the Son for the ex­e­cu­tion of their united and eter­nal pur­pose. And in so do­ing the In­fi­nite Spirit pledged all his re­sources of di­vine pres­ence and of spirit per­son­al­i­ties to the Fa­ther and the Son; he has ded­i­cated all to the stu­pen­dous plan of ex­alt­ing sur­viv­ing will crea­tures to the di­vine heights of Par­a­dise per­fec­tion.

55:2.12The uni­verse is un­fail­ing in the ap­pli­ca­tion of these equal­iz­ing tech­niques de­signed to in­sure that no as­cender shall be de­prived of aught which is es­sen­tial to his as­cen­sion ex­pe­ri­ence.

48:5.7Those things which you might have learned on earth, but which you failed to learn, must be ac­quired un­der the tute­lage of these faith­ful and pa­tient teach­ers. There are no royal roads, short cuts, or easy paths to Par­a­dise. Ir­re­spec­tive of the in­di­vid­ual vari­a­tions of the route, you mas­ter the lessons of one sphere be­fore you pro­ceed to an­other; at least this is true af­ter you once leave the world of your na­tiv­ity.

4:0.3The amaz­ing plan for per­fect­ing evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals and, af­ter their at­tain­ment of Par­a­dise and the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity, pro­vid­ing fur­ther train­ing for some undis­closed fu­ture work, does seem to be, at pres­ent, one of the chief con­cerns of the seven super­uni­verses and their many sub­di­vi­sions; but this as­cen­sion scheme for spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing and train­ing the mor­tals of time and space is by no means the ex­clu­sive oc­cu­pa­tion of the uni­verse in­tel­li­gences. There are, in­deed, many other fas­ci­nat­ing pur­suits which oc­cupy the time and en­list the en­er­gies of the ce­les­tial hosts.

48:8.3The mor­tal-sur­vival plan has a prac­ti­cal and ser­vice­able ob­jec­tive; you are not the re­cip­i­ents of all this di­vine la­bor and painstak­ing train­ing only that you may sur­vive just to en­joy end­less bliss and eter­nal ease. There is a goal of tran­scen­dent ser­vice con­cealed be­yond the hori­zon of the pres­ent uni­verse age. If the Gods de­signed merely to take you on one long and eter­nal joy ex­cur­sion, they cer­tainly would not so largely turn the whole uni­verse into one vast and in­tri­cate prac­ti­cal train­ing school, req­ui­si­tion a sub­stan­tial part of the ce­les­tial cre­ation as teach­ers and in­struc­tors, and then spend ages upon ages pi­lot­ing you, one by one, through this gi­gan­tic uni­verse school of ex­pe­ri­en­tial train­ing. The fur­ther­ance of the scheme of mor­tal pro­gres­sion seems to be one of the chief busi­nesses of the pres­ent or­ga­nized uni­verse, and the ma­jor­ity of in­nu­mer­able or­ders of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences are ei­ther di­rectly or in­di­rectly en­gaged in ad­vanc­ing some phase of this pro­gres­sive per­fec­tion plan.

40:10.3The mys­te­ri­ous vari­able in as­so­cia­tive tech­nique whereby a mor­tal be­ing does not or can­not be­come eter­nally fused with the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster may seem to dis­close a flaw in the as­cen­sion scheme; Son and Spirit fu­sion do, su­per­fi­cially, re­sem­ble com­pen­sa­tions of un­ex­plained fail­ures in some de­tail of the Par­a­dise-at­tain­ment plan; but all such con­clu­sions stand in er­ror; we are taught that all these hap­pen­ings un­fold in obe­di­ence to the es­tab­lished laws of the Su­preme Uni­verse Rulers.

40:10.4We have an­a­lyzed this prob­lem and have reached the un­doubted con­clu­sion that the con­sign­ment of all mor­tals to an ul­ti­mate Par­a­dise des­tiny would be un­fair to the time-space uni­verses inas­much as the courts of the Cre­ator Sons and of the An­cients of Days would then be wholly de­pen­dent on the ser­vices of those who were in tran­sit to higher realms. And it does seem to be no more than fit­ting that the lo­cal and the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ments should each be pro­vided with a per­ma­nent group of as­cen­dant cit­i­zen­ship; that the func­tions of these ad­min­is­tra­tions should be en­riched by the ef­forts of cer­tain groups of glo­ri­fied mor­tals who are of per­ma­nent sta­tus, evo­lu­tion­ary com­ple­ments of the aban­don­ters and of the susa­tia. Now it is quite ob­vi­ous that the pres­ent as­cen­sion scheme ef­fec­tively pro­vides the time-space ad­min­is­tra­tions with just such groups of as­cen­dant crea­tures; and we have many times won­dered: Does all this rep­re­sent an in­tended part of the all-wise plans of the Ar­chi­tects of the Mas­ter Uni­verse de­signed to pro­vide the Cre­ator Sons and the An­cients of Days with a per­ma­nent as­cen­dant pop­u­la­tion? with evolved or­ders of cit­i­zen­ship that will be­come in­creas­ingly com­pe­tent to carry for­ward the af­fairs of these realms in the uni­verse ages to come?

• in that no fused mortals fell in Lucifer rebellion

53:7.10The as­cend­ing mor­tals were vul­ner­a­ble, but they with­stood the soph­ist­ries of re­bel­lion bet­ter than the lower spir­its. While many on the lower man­sion worlds, those who had not at­tained fi­nal fu­sion with their Ad­justers, fell, it is re­corded to the glory of the wis­dom of the as­cen­sion scheme that not a sin­gle mem­ber of the Sa­ta­nia as­cen­dant cit­i­zen­ship res­i­dent on Je­ru­sem par­tic­i­pated in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion.

• in that no fused mortals fell in Lucifer rebellion

53:7.12It was over two years of sys­tem time from the be­gin­ning of the “war in heaven” un­til the in­stal­la­tion of Lu­cifer’s suc­ces­sor. But at last the new Sov­er­eign came, land­ing on the sea of glass with his staff. I was among the re­serves mo­bi­lized on Eden­tia by Ga­briel, and I well re­mem­ber the first mes­sage of Lanaforge to the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther of Nor­la­ti­adek. It read: “Not a sin­gle Je­ru­sem cit­i­zen was lost. Ev­ery as­cen­dant mor­tal sur­vived the fiery trial and emerged from the cru­cial test tri­umphant and al­to­gether vic­to­ri­ous.” And on to Sal­ving­ton, Uversa, and Par­a­dise went this mes­sage of as­sur­ance that the sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tal as­cen­sion is the great­est se­cu­rity against re­bel­lion and the surest safe­guard against sin. This no­ble Je­ru­sem band of faith­ful mor­tals num­bered just 187,432,811.

• by worlds in light and life

55:6.9If the mor­tals of dis­traught Uran­tia could only view one of these more ad­vanced worlds long set­tled in light and life, they would nev­er­more ques­tion the wis­dom of the evo­lu­tion­ary scheme of cre­ation. Were there no fu­ture of eter­nal crea­ture pro­gres­sion, still the su­perb evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ments of the mor­tal races on such set­tled worlds of per­fected achieve­ment would am­ply jus­tify man’s cre­ation on the worlds of time and space.

• by performance of Amadon

67:8.5And all this is a beau­ti­fully touch­ing and su­perbly mag­nif­i­cent il­lu­mi­na­tion of the wis­dom of the Fa­ther’s uni­ver­sal plan for mo­bi­liz­ing the Corps of Mor­tal Fi­nal­ity on Par­a­dise and for re­cruit­ing this vast group of mys­te­ri­ous ser­vants of the fu­ture largely from the com­mon clay of the mor­tals of as­cend­ing pro­gres­sion—just such mor­tals as the im­preg­nable Amadon.