death

• spiritual death › not sealed until power lost to choose Father’s will

5:1.11Mor­tal man may draw near God and may re­peat­edly for­sake the di­vine will so long as the power of choice re­mains. Man’s fi­nal doom is not sealed un­til he has lost the power to choose the Fa­ther’s will. There is never a clo­sure of the Fa­ther’s heart to the need and the pe­ti­tion of his chil­dren. Only do his off­spring close their hearts for­ever to the Fa­ther’s draw­ing power when they fi­nally and for­ever lose the de­sire to do his di­vine will—to know him and to be like him. Like­wise is man’s eter­nal des­tiny as­sured when Ad­juster fu­sion pro­claims to the uni­verse that such an as­cender has made the fi­nal and ir­re­vo­ca­ble choice to live the Fa­ther’s will.

• physical death › body remains on planet

12:8.16The brighter the shin­ing of the spir­i­tu­al­ized per­son­al­ity (the Fa­ther in the uni­verse, the frag­ment of po­ten­tial spirit per­son­al­ity in the in­di­vid­ual crea­ture), the greater the shadow cast by the in­ter­ven­ing mind upon its ma­te­rial in­vest­ment. In time, man’s body is just as real as mind or spirit, but in death, both mind (iden­tity) and spirit sur­vive while the body does not. A cos­mic re­al­ity can be nonex­is­tent in per­son­al­ity ex­pe­ri­ence. And so your Greek fig­ure of speech—the ma­te­rial as the shadow of the more real spirit sub­stance—does have a philo­sophic sig­nif­i­cance.

• spiritual death › doom final only after self-concepts fully displace spirit nucleus

12:9.6Mor­tal man has a spirit nu­cleus. The mind is a per­sonal-en­ergy sys­tem ex­ist­ing around a di­vine spirit nu­cleus and func­tion­ing in a ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment. Such a liv­ing re­la­tion­ship of per­sonal mind and spirit con­sti­tutes the uni­verse po­ten­tial of eter­nal per­son­al­ity. Real trou­ble, last­ing dis­ap­point­ment, se­ri­ous de­feat, or in­es­cap­able death can come only af­ter self-con­cepts pre­sume fully to dis­place the gov­ern­ing power of the cen­tral spirit nu­cleus, thereby dis­rupt­ing the cos­mic scheme of per­son­al­ity iden­tity.

• physical death › significance of death › only the beginning of endless career

14:5.10Love 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 so­journ 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.

• physical death › significance of death › part of mortal life

20:6.7When be­stowal Sons are not put to death by vi­o­lence, they vol­un­tar­ily re­lin­quish their lives and pass through the por­tals of death, not to sat­isfy the de­mands of “stern jus­tice” or “di­vine wrath,” but rather to com­plete the be­stowal, “to drink the cup” of the ca­reer of in­car­na­tion and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in all that con­sti­tutes a crea­ture’s life as it is lived on the plan­ets of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Be­stowal is a plan­e­tary and a uni­verse ne­ces­sity, and phys­i­cal death is noth­ing more than a nec­es­sary part of a be­stowal mis­sion.

• physical death › no d. on Paradise

27:1.5The last rest of time has been en­joyed; the last tran­si­tion sleep has been ex­pe­ri­enced; now you awake to life ev­er­last­ing on the shores of the eter­nal abode. “And there shall be no more sleep. The pres­ence of God and his Son are be­fore you, and you are eter­nally his ser­vants; you have seen his face, and his name is your spirit. There shall be no night there; and they need no light of the sun, for the Great Source and Cen­ter gives them light; they shall live for­ever and ever. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nei­ther sor­row nor cry­ing, nei­ther shall there be any more pain, for the for­mer things have passed away.”

• physical death › body remains on planet

30:4.15The phys­i­cal body of mor­tal flesh is not a part of the re­assem­bly of the sleep­ing sur­vivor; the phys­i­cal body has re­turned to dust. The ser­a­phim of as­sign­ment spon­sors the new body, the mor­ontia form, as the new life ve­hi­cle for the im­mor­tal soul and for the in­dwelling of the re­turned Ad­juster. The Ad­juster is the cus­to­dian of the spirit tran­script of the mind of the sleep­ing sur­vivor. The as­signed ser­a­phim is the keeper of the sur­viv­ing iden­tity—the im­mor­tal soul—as far as it has evolved. And when these two, the Ad­juster and the ser­a­phim, re­unite their per­son­al­ity trusts, the new in­di­vid­ual con­sti­tutes the res­ur­rec­tion of the old per­son­al­ity, the sur­vival of the evolv­ing mor­ontia iden­tity of the soul. Such a re­as­so­ci­a­tion of soul and Ad­juster is quite prop­erly called a res­ur­rec­tion, a re­assem­bly of per­son­al­ity fac­tors; but even this does not en­tirely ex­plain the reap­pear­ance of the sur­viv­ing per­son­al­ity. Though you will prob­a­bly never un­der­stand the fact of such an in­ex­pli­ca­ble trans­ac­tion, you will some­time ex­pe­ri­en­tially know the truth of it if you do not re­ject the plan of mor­tal sur­vival.

• physical death › significance of death › technique of escape from material life

32:5.4To me it seems more fit­ting, for pur­poses of ex­pla­na­tion to the mor­tal mind, to con­ceive of eter­nity as a cy­cle and the eter­nal pur­pose as an end­less cir­cle, a cy­cle of eter­nity in some way syn­chro­nized with the tran­sient ma­te­rial cy­cles of time. As re­gards the sec­tors of time con­nected with, and form­ing a part of, the cy­cle of eter­nity, we are forced to rec­og­nize that such tem­po­rary epochs are born, live, and die just as the tem­po­rary be­ings of time are born, live, and die. Most hu­man be­ings die be­cause, hav­ing failed to achieve the spirit level of Ad­juster fu­sion, the meta­mor­pho­sis of death con­sti­tutes the only pos­si­ble pro­ce­dure whereby they may es­cape the fet­ters of time and the bonds of ma­te­rial cre­ation, thereby be­ing en­abled to strike spir­i­tual step with the pro­gres­sive pro­ces­sion of eter­nity. Hav­ing sur­vived the trial life of time and ma­te­rial ex­is­tence, it be­comes pos­si­ble for you to con­tinue on in touch with, even as a part of, eter­nity, swing­ing on for­ever with the worlds of space around the cir­cle of the eter­nal ages.

• physical death › body remains on planet
• spiritual death › Adjuster proceeds to bosom of Father upon

39:2.13The an­gels can­not trans­port com­bus­tion bod­ies—flesh and blood—such as you now have, but they can trans­port all oth­ers, from the low­est mor­ontia to the higher spirit forms. They do not func­tion in the event of nat­u­ral death. When you fin­ish your earthly ca­reer, your body re­mains on this planet. Your Thought Ad­juster pro­ceeds to the bo­som of the Fa­ther, and these an­gels are not di­rectly con­cerned in your sub­se­quent per­son­al­ity re­assem­bly on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion man­sion world. There your new body is a mor­ontia form, one that can en­seraphim. You “sow a mor­tal body” in the grave; you “reap a mor­ontia form” on the man­sion worlds.

• physical death › reflective phenomenon may occurs just prior to

39:5.11Your con­ven­tional idea of an­gels has been de­rived in the fol­low­ing way: Dur­ing mo­ments just prior to phys­i­cal death a re­flec­tive phe­nom­e­non some­times oc­curs in the hu­man mind, and this dim­ming con­scious­ness seems to vi­su­al­ize some­thing of the form of the at­tend­ing an­gel, and this is im­me­di­ately trans­lated into terms of the ha­bit­ual con­cept of an­gels held in that in­di­vid­ual’s mind.

• physical death › significance of death › gains man nothing except experience of survival

47:3.7On man­sion world num­ber one (or an­other in case of ad­vanced sta­tus) you will re­sume your in­tel­lec­tual train­ing and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment at the ex­act level whereon they were in­ter­rupted by death. Be­tween the time of plan­e­tary death or trans­la­tion and res­ur­rec­tion on the man­sion world, mor­tal man gains ab­so­lutely noth­ing aside from ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the fact of sur­vival. You be­gin over there right where you leave off down here.

• physical death › significance of death › technique of escape from material life

47:10.7Mor­tal death is a tech­nique of es­cape from the ma­te­rial life in the flesh; and the man­so­nia ex­pe­ri­ence of pro­gres­sive life through seven worlds of cor­rec­tive train­ing and cul­tural ed­u­ca­tion rep­re­sents the in­tro­duc­tion of mor­tal sur­vivors to the mor­ontia ca­reer, the tran­si­tion life which in­ter­venes be­tween the evo­lu­tion­ary ma­te­rial ex­is­tence and the higher spirit at­tain­ment of the as­cend­ers of time who are des­tined to achieve the por­tals of eter­nity.

• physical death › significance of death › gains man nothing except experience of survival

48:0.2The mor­ontia life, ex­tend­ing as it does over the var­i­ous stages of the lo­cal uni­verse ca­reer, is the only pos­si­ble ap­proach whereby ma­te­rial mor­tals could at­tain the thresh­old of the spirit world. What magic could death, the nat­u­ral dis­so­lu­tion of the ma­te­rial body, hold that such a sim­ple step should in­stantly trans­form the mor­tal and ma­te­rial mind into an im­mor­tal and per­fected spirit? Such be­liefs are but ig­no­rant su­per­sti­tions and pleas­ing fa­bles.

• physical death › significance of death › gains man nothing except experience of survival

48:7.2523. Death added noth­ing to the in­tel­lec­tual pos­ses­sion or to the spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, but it did add to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial sta­tus the con­scious­ness of sur­vival.

49:6.1All of the dif­fer­ing phys­i­cal types and plan­e­tary se­ries of mor­tals alike en­joy the min­istry of Thought Ad­justers, guard­ian an­gels, and the var­i­ous or­ders of the mes­sen­ger hosts of the In­fi­nite Spirit. All alike are lib­er­ated from the bonds of flesh by the eman­ci­pa­tion of nat­u­ral death, and all alike go thence to the mor­ontia worlds of spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion and mind prog­ress.

49:6.2From time to time, on mo­tion of the plan­e­tary au­thor­i­ties or the sys­tem rulers, spe­cial res­ur­rec­tions of the sleep­ing sur­vivors are con­ducted. Such res­ur­rec­tions oc­cur at least ev­ery mil­len­nium of plan­e­tary time, when not all but “many of those who sleep in the dust awake.” These spe­cial res­ur­rec­tions are the oc­ca­sion for mo­bi­liz­ing spe­cial groups of as­cend­ers for spe­cific ser­vice in the lo­cal uni­verse plan of mor­tal as­cen­sion. There are both prac­ti­cal rea­sons and sen­ti­men­tal as­so­ci­a­tions con­nected with these spe­cial res­ur­rec­tions.

49:6.3Through­out the ear­lier ages of an in­hab­ited world, many are called to the man­sion spheres at the spe­cial and the mil­len­nial res­ur­rec­tions, but most sur­vivors are reper­son­al­ized at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of a new dis­pen­sa­tion as­so­ci­ated with the ad­vent of a di­vine Son of plan­e­tary ser­vice.

49:6.41. Mor­tals of the dis­pen­sa­tional or group or­der of sur­vival. With the ar­rival of the first Ad­juster on an in­hab­ited world the guard­ian ser­a­phim also make their ap­pear­ance; they are in­dis­pens­able to ter­res­trial es­cape. Through­out the life-lapse pe­riod of the sleep­ing sur­vivors the spir­i­tual val­ues and eter­nal re­al­i­ties of their newly evolved and im­mor­tal souls are held as a sa­cred trust by the per­sonal or by the group guard­ian ser­a­phim.

49:6.5The group guard­i­ans of as­sign­ment to the sleep­ing sur­vivors al­ways func­tion with the judg­ment Sons on their world ad­vents. “He shall send his an­gels, and they shall gather to­gether his elect from the four winds.” With each ser­a­phim of as­sign­ment to the reper­son­al­iza­tion of a sleep­ing mor­tal there func­tions the re­turned Ad­juster, the same im­mor­tal Fa­ther frag­ment that lived in him dur­ing the days in the flesh, and thus is iden­tity re­stored and per­son­al­ity res­ur­rected. Dur­ing the sleep of their sub­jects these wait­ing Ad­justers serve on Di­vin­ing­ton; they never in­dwell an­other mor­tal mind in this in­terim.

49:6.6While the older worlds of mor­tal ex­is­tence har­bor those highly de­vel­oped and ex­qui­sitely spir­i­tual types of hu­man be­ings who are vir­tu­ally ex­empt from the mor­ontia life, the ear­lier ages of the an­i­mal-ori­gin races are char­ac­ter­ized by prim­i­tive mor­tals who are so im­ma­ture that fu­sion with their Ad­justers is im­pos­si­ble. The reawak­en­ing of these mor­tals is ac­com­plished by the guard­ian ser­a­phim in con­junc­tion with an in­di­vid­u­al­ized por­tion of the im­mor­tal spirit of the Third Source and Cen­ter.

• spiritual death › guardian angel responds to dispensational roll call, but Adjuster makes no answer

49:6.7Thus are the sleep­ing sur­vivors of a plan­e­tary age reper­son­al­ized in the dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls. But with re­gard to the non­salv­able per­son­al­i­ties of a realm, no im­mor­tal spirit is pres­ent to func­tion with the group guard­i­ans of des­tiny, and this con­sti­tutes ces­sa­tion of crea­ture ex­is­tence. While some of your rec­ords have pic­tured these events as tak­ing place on the plan­ets of mor­tal death, they all re­ally oc­cur on the man­sion worlds.

49:6.82. Mor­tals of the in­di­vid­ual or­ders of as­cen­sion. The in­di­vid­ual prog­ress of hu­man be­ings is mea­sured by their suc­ces­sive at­tain­ment and traver­sal (mas­tery) of the seven cos­mic cir­cles. These cir­cles of mor­tal pro­gres­sion are lev­els of as­so­ci­ated in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, spir­i­tual, and cos­mic-in­sight val­ues. Start­ing out in the sev­enth cir­cle, mor­tals strive for the first, and all who have at­tained the third im­me­di­ately have per­sonal guard­i­ans of des­tiny as­signed to them. These mor­tals may be reper­son­al­ized in the mor­ontia life in­de­pen­dent of dis­pen­sa­tional or other ad­ju­di­ca­tions.

49:6.9Through­out the ear­lier ages of an evo­lu­tion­ary world, few mor­tals go to judg­ment on the third day. But as the ages pass, more and more the per­sonal guard­i­ans of des­tiny are as­signed to the ad­vanc­ing mor­tals, and thus in­creas­ing num­bers of these evolv­ing crea­tures are reper­son­al­ized on the first man­sion world on the third day af­ter nat­u­ral death. On such oc­ca­sions the re­turn of the Ad­juster sig­nal­izes the awak­en­ing of the hu­man soul, and this is the reper­son­al­iza­tion of the dead just as lit­er­ally as when the en masse roll is called at the end of a dis­pen­sa­tion on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

49:6.10There are three groups of in­di­vid­ual as­cend­ers: The less ad­vanced land on the ini­tial or first man­sion world. The more ad­vanced group may take up the mor­ontia ca­reer on any of the in­ter­me­di­ate man­sion worlds in ac­cor­dance with pre­vi­ous plan­e­tary pro­gres­sion. The most ad­vanced of these or­ders re­ally be­gin their mor­ontia ex­pe­ri­ence on the sev­enth man­sion world.

49:6.113. Mor­tals of the pro­ba­tion­ary-de­pen­dent or­ders of as­cen­sion. The ar­rival of an Ad­juster con­sti­tutes iden­tity in the eyes of the uni­verse, and all in­dwelt be­ings are on the roll calls of jus­tice. But tem­po­ral life on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds is un­cer­tain, and many die in youth be­fore choos­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer. Such Ad­juster-in­dwelt chil­dren and youths fol­low the par­ent of most ad­vanced spir­i­tual sta­tus, thus go­ing to the sys­tem fi­nal­i­ter world (the pro­ba­tion­ary nurs­ery) on the third day, at a spe­cial res­ur­rec­tion, or at the reg­u­lar mil­len­nial and dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls.

49:6.12Chil­dren who die when too young to have Thought Ad­justers are reper­son­al­ized on the fi­nal­i­ter world of the lo­cal sys­tems con­comi­tant with the ar­rival of ei­ther par­ent on the man­sion worlds. A child ac­quires phys­i­cal en­tity at mor­tal birth, but in the mat­ter of sur­vival all Ad­juster­less chil­dren are reck­oned as still at­tached to their par­ents.

49:6.13In due course Thought Ad­justers come to in­dwell these lit­tle ones, while the se­raphic min­istry to both groups of the pro­ba­tion­ary-de­pen­dent or­ders of sur­vival is in gen­eral sim­i­lar to that of the more ad­vanced par­ent or is equiv­a­lent to that of the par­ent in case only one sur­vives. Those at­tain­ing the third cir­cle, re­gard­less of the sta­tus of their par­ents, are ac­corded per­sonal guard­i­ans.

49:6.14Sim­i­lar pro­ba­tion nurs­eries are main­tained on the fi­nal­i­ter spheres of the con­stel­la­tion and the uni­verse head­quar­ters for the Ad­juster­less chil­dren of the pri­mary and sec­ondary mod­i­fied or­ders of as­cend­ers.

49:6.154. Mor­tals of the sec­ondary mod­i­fied or­ders of as­cen­sion. These are the pro­gres­sive hu­man be­ings of the in­ter­me­di­ate evo­lu­tion­ary worlds. As a rule they are not im­mune to nat­u­ral death, but they are ex­empt from pass­ing through the seven man­sion worlds.

49:6.16The less per­fected group reawaken on the head­quar­ters of their lo­cal sys­tem, pass­ing by only the man­sion worlds. The in­ter­me­di­ate group go to the con­stel­la­tion train­ing worlds; they pass by the en­tire mor­ontia regime of the lo­cal sys­tem. Still far­ther on in the plan­e­tary ages of spir­i­tual striv­ing, many sur­vivors awaken on the con­stel­la­tion head­quar­ters and there be­gin the Par­a­dise as­cent.

49:6.17But be­fore any of these groups may go for­ward, they must jour­ney back as in­struc­tors to the worlds they missed, gain­ing many ex­pe­ri­ences as teach­ers in those realms which they passed by as stu­dents. They all sub­se­quently pro­ceed to Par­a­dise by the or­dained routes of mor­tal pro­gres­sion.

• physical death › advanced mortals exempt from

49:6.185. Mor­tals of the pri­mary mod­i­fied or­der of as­cen­sion. These mor­tals be­long to the Ad­juster-fused type of evo­lu­tion­ary life, but they are most of­ten rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fi­nal phases of hu­man de­vel­op­ment on an evolv­ing world. These glo­ri­fied be­ings are ex­empt from pass­ing through the por­tals of death; they are sub­mit­ted to Son seizure; they are trans­lated from among the liv­ing and ap­pear im­me­di­ately in the pres­ence of the Sov­er­eign Son on the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse.

49:6.19These are the mor­tals who fuse with their Ad­justers dur­ing mor­tal life, and such Ad­juster-fused per­son­al­i­ties tra­verse space freely be­fore be­ing clothed with mor­ontia forms. These fused souls go by di­rect Ad­juster tran­sit to the res­ur­rec­tion halls of the higher mor­ontia spheres, where they re­ceive their ini­tial mor­ontia in­vesti­ture just as do all other mor­tals ar­riv­ing from the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds.

49:6.20This pri­mary mod­i­fied or­der of mor­tal as­cen­sion may ap­ply to in­di­vid­u­als in any of the plan­e­tary se­ries from the low­est to the high­est stages of the Ad­juster-fu­sion worlds, but it more fre­quently func­tions on the older of these spheres af­ter they have re­ceived the ben­e­fits of nu­mer­ous so­journs of the di­vine Sons.

49:6.21With the es­tab­lish­ment of the plan­e­tary era of light and life, many go to the uni­verse mor­ontia worlds by the pri­mary mod­i­fied or­der of trans­la­tion. Fur­ther along in the ad­vanced stages of set­tled ex­is­tence, when the ma­jor­ity of the mor­tals leav­ing a realm are em­braced in this class, the planet is re­garded as be­long­ing to this se­ries. Nat­u­ral death be­comes de­creas­ingly fre­quent on these spheres long set­tled in light and life.

49:6.22[Pre­sented by a Mel­chiz­e­dek of the Je­ru­sem School of Plan­e­tary Ad­min­is­tra­tion.]

• physical death › advanced mortals exempt from

55:2.1Nat­u­ral, phys­i­cal death is not a mor­tal in­evitabil­ity. The ma­jor­ity of ad­vanced evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings, cit­i­zens on worlds ex­ist­ing in the fi­nal era of light and life, do not die; they are trans­lated di­rectly from the life in the flesh to the mor­ontia ex­is­tence.

55:2.2This ex­pe­ri­ence of trans­la­tion from the ma­te­rial life to the mor­ontia state—fu­sion of the im­mor­tal soul with the in­dwelling Ad­juster—in­creases in fre­quency com­men­su­rate with the evo­lu­tion­ary prog­ress of the planet. At first only a few mor­tals in each age at­tain trans­la­tion lev­els of spir­i­tual prog­ress, but with the on­set of the suc­ces­sive ages of the Teacher Sons, more and more Ad­juster fu­sions oc­cur be­fore the ter­mi­na­tion of the length­en­ing lives of these pro­gress­ing mor­tals; and by the time of the ter­mi­nal mis­sion of the Teacher Sons, ap­prox­i­mately one quar­ter of these su­perb mor­tals are ex­empt from nat­u­ral death.

55:2.3Far­ther along in the era of light and life the mid­way crea­tures or their as­so­ciates sense the ap­proach­ing sta­tus of prob­a­ble soul-Ad­juster union and sig­nify this to the des­tiny guard­i­ans, who in turn com­mu­ni­cate these mat­ters to the fi­nal­i­ter group un­der whose ju­ris­dic­tion this mor­tal may be func­tion­ing; then there is is­sued the sum­mons of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign for such a mor­tal to re­sign all plan­e­tary du­ties, bid farewell to the world of his ori­gin, and re­pair to the in­ner tem­ple of the Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eign, there to await mor­ontia tran­sit, the trans­la­tion flash, from the ma­te­rial do­main of evo­lu­tion to the mor­ontia level of pre­spirit pro­gres­sion.

55:2.4When the fam­ily, friends, and work­ing group of such a fu­sion can­di­date have for­gath­ered in the mor­ontia tem­ple, they are dis­tributed around the cen­tral stage whereon the fu­sion can­di­dates are rest­ing, mean­time freely con­vers­ing with their as­sem­bled friends. A cir­cle of in­ter­ven­ing ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties is ar­ranged to pro­tect the ma­te­rial mor­tals from the ac­tion of the en­er­gies man­i­fest at the in­stant of the “life flash” which de­liv­ers the as­cen­sion can­di­date from the bonds of ma­te­rial flesh, thereby do­ing for such an evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tal ev­ery­thing that nat­u­ral death does for those who are thereby de­liv­ered from the flesh.

• physical death › helpful to view with cheerfulness

55:2.5Many fu­sion can­di­dates may be as­sem­bled in the spa­cious tem­ple at the same time. And what a beau­ti­ful oc­ca­sion when mor­tals thus for­gather to wit­ness the as­cen­sion of their loved ones in spir­i­tual flames, and what a con­trast to those ear­lier ages when mor­tals must com­mit their dead to the em­brace of the ter­res­trial el­e­ments! The scenes of weep­ing and wail­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of ear­lier epochs of hu­man evo­lu­tion are now re­placed by ec­static joy and the sub­limest en­thu­si­asm as these God-know­ing mor­tals bid their loved ones a tran­sient farewell as they are re­moved from their ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tions by the spir­i­tual fires of con­sum­ing grandeur and as­cend­ing glory. On worlds set­tled in light and life, “fu­ner­als” are oc­ca­sions of su­preme joy, pro­found sat­is­fac­tion, and in­ex­press­ible hope.

55:2.6The souls of these pro­gress­ing mor­tals are in­creas­ingly filled with faith, hope, and as­sur­ance. The spirit per­me­at­ing those gath­ered around the trans­la­tion shrine re­sem­bles that of the joy­ful friends and rel­a­tives who might as­sem­ble at a grad­u­at­ing ex­er­cise for one of their group, or who might come to­gether to wit­ness the con­fer­ring of some great honor upon one of their num­ber. And it would be de­cid­edly help­ful if less ad­vanced mor­tals could only learn to view nat­u­ral death with some­thing of this same cheer­ful­ness and light­heart­ed­ness.

55:2.7Mor­tal ob­servers can see noth­ing of their trans­lated as­so­ciates sub­se­quent to the fu­sion flash. Such trans­lated souls pro­ceed by Ad­juster tran­sit di­rect to the res­ur­rec­tion hall of the ap­pro­pri­ate mor­ontia-train­ing world. These trans­ac­tions con­cerned with the trans­la­tion of liv­ing hu­man be­ings to the mor­ontia world are super­vised by an arch­an­gel who was as­signed to such a world on the day when it was first set­tled in light and life.

55:2.8By the time a world at­tains the fourth stage of light and life, more than half the mor­tals leave the planet by trans­la­tion from among the liv­ing. Such di­min­ish­ment of death con­tin­ues on and on, but I know of no sys­tem whose in­hab­ited worlds, even though long set­tled in life, are en­tirely free from nat­u­ral death as the tech­nique of es­cape from the bonds of flesh. And un­til such a high state of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion is uni­formly at­tained, the mor­ontia-train­ing worlds of the lo­cal uni­verse must con­tinue in ser­vice as ed­u­ca­tional and cul­tural spheres for the evolv­ing mor­ontia pro­gres­sors. The elim­i­na­tion of death is the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble, but it has not yet oc­curred ac­cord­ing to my ob­ser­va­tion. Per­haps such a sta­tus may be at­tained dur­ing the far­away stretches of the suc­ceed­ing epochs of the sev­enth stage of set­tled plan­e­tary life.

55:2.9The trans­lated souls of the flow­er­ing ages of the set­tled spheres do not pass through the man­sion worlds. Nei­ther do they so­journ, as stu­dents, on the mor­ontia worlds of the sys­tem or con­stel­la­tion. They do not pass through any of the ear­lier phases of mor­ontia life. They are the only as­cend­ing mor­tals who so nearly es­cape the mor­ontia tran­si­tion from ma­te­rial ex­is­tence to semispirit sta­tus. The ini­tial ex­pe­ri­ence of such Son-seized mor­tals in the as­cen­sion ca­reer is in the ser­vices of the pro­gres­sion worlds of the uni­verse head­quar­ters. And from these study worlds of Sal­ving­ton they go back as teach­ers to the very worlds they passed by, sub­se­quently go­ing on in­ward to Par­a­dise by the es­tab­lished route of mor­tal as­cen­sion.

55:2.10Could you but visit a planet in an ad­vanced stage of de­vel­op­ment, you would quickly grasp the rea­sons for pro­vid­ing for the dif­fer­en­tial re­cep­tion of as­cend­ing mor­tals on the man­sion and higher mor­ontia worlds. You would read­ily un­der­stand that be­ings pass­ing on from such highly evolved spheres are pre­pared to re­sume their Par­a­dise as­cent far in ad­vance of the av­er­age mor­tal ar­riv­ing from a dis­or­dered and back­ward world like Uran­tia.

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.

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.

86:3.1Death was the su­preme shock to evolv­ing man, the most per­plex­ing com­bi­na­tion of chance and mys­tery. Not the sanc­tity of life but the shock of death in­spired fear and thus ef­fec­tively fos­tered re­li­gion. Among sav­age peo­ples death was or­di­nar­ily due to vi­o­lence, so that non­vi­o­lent death be­came in­creas­ingly mys­te­ri­ous. Death as a nat­u­ral and ex­pected end of life was not clear to the con­scious­ness of prim­i­tive peo­ple, and it has re­quired age upon age for man to re­al­ize its in­evitabil­ity.

86:3.2Early man ac­cepted life as a fact, while he re­garded death as a vis­i­ta­tion of some sort. All races have their leg­ends of men who did not die, ves­ti­gial tra­di­tions of the early at­ti­tude to­ward death. Al­ready in the hu­man mind there ex­isted the neb­u­lous con­cept of a hazy and un­or­ga­nized spirit world, a do­main whence came all that is in­ex­pli­ca­ble in hu­man life, and death was added to this long list of un­ex­plained phe­nom­ena.

86:3.3All hu­man dis­ease and nat­u­ral death was at first be­lieved to be due to spirit in­flu­ence. Even at the pres­ent time some civ­i­lized races re­gard dis­ease as hav­ing been pro­duced by “the en­emy” and de­pend upon re­li­gious cer­e­monies to ef­fect heal­ing. Later and more com­plex sys­tems of the­ol­ogy still as­cribe death to the ac­tion of the spirit world, all of which has led to such doc­trines as orig­i­nal sin and the fall of man.

86:3.4It was the re­al­iza­tion of im­po­tency be­fore the mighty forces of na­ture, to­gether with the rec­og­ni­tion of hu­man weak­ness be­fore the vis­i­ta­tions of sick­ness and death, that im­pelled the sav­age to seek for help from the super­ma­te­rial world, which he vaguely vi­su­al­ized as the source of these mys­te­ri­ous vi­cis­si­tudes of life.

86:4.1The con­cept of a super­ma­te­rial phase of mor­tal per­son­al­ity was born of the un­con­scious and purely ac­ci­den­tal as­so­ci­a­tion of the oc­cur­rences of ev­ery­day life plus the ghost dream. The si­mul­ta­ne­ous dream­ing about a de­parted chief by sev­eral mem­bers of his tribe seemed to con­sti­tute con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence that the old chief had re­ally re­turned in some form. It was all very real to the sav­age who would awaken from such dreams reek­ing with sweat, trem­bling, and scream­ing.

86:4.2The dream ori­gin of the be­lief in a fu­ture ex­is­tence ex­plains the ten­dency al­ways to imag­ine un­seen things in the terms of things seen. And pres­ently this new dream-ghost-fu­ture-life con­cept be­gan ef­fec­tively to an­ti­dote the death fear as­so­ci­ated with the bi­o­logic in­stinct of self-preser­va­tion.

86:4.3Early man was also much con­cerned about his breath, es­pe­cially in cold cli­mates, where it ap­peared as a cloud when ex­haled. The breath of life was re­garded as the one phe­nom­e­non which dif­fer­en­ti­ated the liv­ing and the dead. He knew the breath could leave the body, and his dreams of do­ing all sorts of queer things while asleep con­vinced him that there was some­thing im­ma­te­rial about a hu­man be­ing. The most prim­i­tive idea of the hu­man soul, the ghost, was de­rived from the breath-dream idea-sys­tem.

86:4.4Even­tu­ally the sav­age con­ceived of him­self as a dou­ble—body and breath. The breath mi­nus the body equaled a spirit, a ghost. While hav­ing a very def­i­nite hu­man ori­gin, ghosts, or spir­its, were re­garded as super­hu­man. And this be­lief in the ex­is­tence of dis­em­bod­ied spir­its seemed to ex­plain the oc­cur­rence of the un­usual, the ex­traor­di­nary, the in­fre­quent, and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble.

86:4.5The prim­i­tive doc­trine of sur­vival af­ter death was not nec­es­sar­ily a be­lief in im­mor­tal­ity. Be­ings who could not count over twenty could hardly con­ceive of in­fin­ity and eter­nity; they rather thought of re­cur­ring in­car­na­tions.

86:4.6The or­ange race was es­pe­cially given to be­lief in trans­mi­gra­tion and rein­car­na­tion. This idea of rein­car­na­tion orig­i­nated in the ob­ser­vance of hered­i­tary and trait re­sem­blance of off­spring to an­ces­tors. The cus­tom of nam­ing chil­dren af­ter grand­par­ents and other an­ces­tors was due to be­lief in rein­car­na­tion. Some later-day races be­lieved that man died from three to seven times. This be­lief (resid­ual from the teach­ings of Adam about the man­sion worlds), and many other rem­nants of re­vealed re­li­gion, can be found among the oth­er­wise ab­surd doc­trines of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury bar­bar­ians.

86:4.7Early man en­ter­tained no ideas of hell or fu­ture pun­ish­ment. The sav­age looked upon the fu­ture life as just like this one, mi­nus all ill luck. Later on, a sep­a­rate des­tiny for good ghosts and bad ghosts—heaven and hell—was con­ceived. But since many prim­i­tive races be­lieved that man en­tered the next life just as he left this one, they did not rel­ish the idea of be­com­ing old and de­crepit. The aged much pre­ferred to be killed be­fore be­com­ing too in­firm.

86:4.8Al­most ev­ery group had a dif­fer­ent idea re­gard­ing the des­tiny of the ghost soul. The Greeks be­lieved that weak men must have weak souls; so they in­vented Hades as a fit place for the re­cep­tion of such ane­mic souls; these un­ro­bust spec­i­mens were also sup­posed to have shorter shad­ows. The early And­ites thought their ghosts re­turned to the an­ces­tral home­lands. The Chi­nese and Egyp­tians once be­lieved that soul and body re­mained to­gether. Among the Egyp­tians this led to care­ful tomb con­struc­tion and ef­forts at body preser­va­tion. Even mod­ern peo­ples seek to ar­rest the de­cay of the dead. The He­brews con­ceived that a phan­tom replica of the in­di­vid­ual went down to Sheol; it could not re­turn to the land of the liv­ing. They did make that im­por­tant ad­vance in the doc­trine of the evo­lu­tion of the soul.

• among primitives › feared d., which liberated another ghost

86:5.2The ghost soul could be heard and seen, but not touched. Grad­u­ally the dream life of the race so de­vel­oped and ex­panded the ac­tiv­i­ties of this evolv­ing spirit world that death was fi­nally re­garded as “giv­ing up the ghost.” All prim­i­tive tribes, ex­cept those lit­tle above an­i­mals, have de­vel­oped some con­cept of the soul. As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vances, this su­per­sti­tious con­cept of the soul is de­stroyed, and man is wholly de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion and per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence for his new idea of the soul as the joint cre­ation of the God-know­ing mor­tal mind and its in­dwelling di­vine spirit, the Thought Ad­juster.

• among primitives › feared d., which liberated another ghost

87:1.1Death was feared be­cause death meant the lib­er­a­tion of an­other ghost from its phys­i­cal body. The an­cients did their best to pre­vent death, to avoid the trou­ble of hav­ing to con­tend with a new ghost. They were al­ways anx­ious to in­duce the ghost to leave the scene of death, to em­bark on the jour­ney to dead­land. The ghost was feared most of all dur­ing the sup­posed tran­si­tion pe­riod be­tween its emer­gence at the time of death and its later de­par­ture for the ghost home­land, a vague and prim­i­tive con­cept of pseudo heaven.

• among primitives › house destroyed in which d. occurred

87:1.3The prim­i­tives feared sick­ness be­cause they ob­served it was of­ten a har­bin­ger of death. If the tribal med­i­cine man failed to cure an af­flicted in­di­vid­ual, the sick man was usu­ally re­moved from the fam­ily hut, be­ing taken to a smaller one or left in the open air to die alone. A house in which death had oc­curred was usu­ally de­stroyed; if not, it was al­ways avoided, and this fear pre­vented early man from build­ing sub­stan­tial dwellings. It also mil­i­tated against the es­tab­lish­ment of per­ma­nent vil­lages and cities.

• among primitives › inexplicable

88:4.7Magic gained such a strong hold upon the sav­age be­cause he could not grasp the con­cept of nat­u­ral death. The later idea of orig­i­nal sin helped much to weaken the grip of magic on the race in that it ac­counted for nat­u­ral death. It was at one time not at all un­com­mon for ten in­no­cent per­sons to be put to death be­cause of sup­posed re­spon­si­bil­ity for one nat­u­ral death. This is one rea­son why an­cient peo­ples did not in­crease faster, and it is still true of some African tribes. The ac­cused in­di­vid­ual usu­ally con­fessed guilt, even when fac­ing death.

• among primitives › d. believed to be penalty of sin

89:2.2As the sav­age mind evolved to that point where it en­vis­aged both good and bad spir­its, and when the taboo re­ceived the solemn sanc­tion of evolv­ing re­li­gion, the stage was all set for the ap­pear­ance of the new con­cep­tion of sin. The idea of sin was uni­ver­sally es­tab­lished in the world be­fore re­vealed re­li­gion ever made its en­try. It was only by the con­cept of sin that nat­u­ral death be­came log­i­cal to the prim­i­tive mind. Sin was the trans­gres­sion of taboo, and death was the penalty of sin.

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

90:3.2Viewed in this light, much of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble and ir­ra­tional in the an­cient cults is un­der­stand­able. The cer­e­monies of the cult were prim­i­tive man’s at­tempt to con­trol the ma­te­rial world in which he found him­self. And many of his ef­forts were di­rected to the end of pro­long­ing life and in­sur­ing health. Since all dis­eases and death it­self were orig­i­nally re­garded as spirit phe­nom­ena, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the shamans, while func­tion­ing as med­i­cine men and priests, should also have la­bored as doc­tors and sur­geons.

90:3.3The prim­i­tive mind may be hand­i­capped by lack of facts, but it is for all that log­i­cal. When thought­ful men ob­serve dis­ease and death, they set about to de­ter­mine the causes of these vis­i­ta­tions, and in ac­cor­dance with their un­der­stand­ing, the shamans and the sci­en­tists have pro­pounded the fol­low­ing the­o­ries of af­flic­tion:

90:3.41. Ghosts—di­rect spirit in­flu­ences. The ear­li­est hy­poth­e­sis ad­vanced in ex­pla­na­tion of dis­ease and death was that spir­its caused dis­ease by en­tic­ing the soul out of the body; if it failed to re­turn, death en­sued. The an­cients so feared the malev­o­lent ac­tion of dis­ease-pro­duc­ing ghosts that ail­ing in­di­vid­u­als would of­ten be de­serted with­out even food or wa­ter. Re­gard­less of the er­ro­neous ba­sis for these be­liefs, they did ef­fec­tively iso­late af­flicted in­di­vid­u­als and pre­vent the spread of con­ta­gious dis­ease.

90:3.52. Vi­o­lence—ob­vi­ous causes. The causes for some ac­ci­dents and deaths were so easy to iden­tify that they were early re­moved from the cat­e­gory of ghost ac­tion. Fa­tal­i­ties and wounds at­ten­dant upon war, an­i­mal com­bat, and other read­ily iden­ti­fi­able agen­cies were con­sid­ered as nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences. But it was long be­lieved that the spir­its were still re­spon­si­ble for de­layed heal­ing or for the in­fec­tion of wounds of even “nat­u­ral” cau­sa­tion. If no ob­serv­able nat­u­ral agent could be dis­cov­ered, the spirit ghosts were still held re­spon­si­ble for dis­ease and death.

90:3.6To­day, in Africa and else­where may be found prim­i­tive peo­ples who kill some­one ev­ery time a non­vi­o­lent death oc­curs. Their med­i­cine men in­di­cate the guilty par­ties. If a mother dies in child­birth, the child is im­me­di­ately stran­gled—a life for a life.

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

90:3.95. Nat­u­ral cau­sa­tion. Man­kind has been very slow to learn the ma­te­rial se­crets of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of cause and ef­fect in the phys­i­cal do­mains of en­ergy, mat­ter, and life. The an­cient Greeks, hav­ing pre­served the tra­di­tions of Adam­son’s teach­ings, were among the first to rec­og­nize that all dis­ease is the re­sult of nat­u­ral causes. Slowly and cer­tainly the un­fold­ing of a sci­en­tific era is de­stroy­ing man’s age-old the­o­ries of sick­ness and death. Fever was one of the first hu­man ail­ments to be re­moved from the cat­e­gory of super­nat­u­ral dis­or­ders, and pro­gres­sively the era of sci­ence has bro­ken the fet­ters of ig­no­rance which so long im­pris­oned the hu­man mind. An un­der­stand­ing of old age and con­ta­gion is grad­u­ally oblit­er­at­ing man’s fear of ghosts, spir­its, and gods as the per­sonal per­pe­tra­tors of hu­man mis­ery and mor­tal suf­fer­ing.

90:3.10Evo­lu­tion unerringly achieves its end: It im­bues man with that su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­known and dread of the un­seen which is the scaf­fold­ing for the God con­cept. And hav­ing wit­nessed the birth of an ad­vanced com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity, through the co-or­di­nate ac­tion of rev­e­la­tion, this same tech­nique of evo­lu­tion then unerringly sets in mo­tion those forces of thought which will in­ex­orably oblit­er­ate the scaf­fold­ing, which has served its pur­pose.

• physical death › occurs upon cessation of measurable brain energies, vital motion

101:3.3It is this same spirit per­son­al­ity, in prim­i­tive and em­bry­onic form, the Ad­juster pos­ses­sion of which sur­vives the nat­u­ral death in the flesh. This com­pos­ite en­tity of spirit ori­gin in as­so­ci­a­tion with hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is en­abled, by means of the liv­ing way pro­vided by the di­vine Sons, to sur­vive (in Ad­juster cus­tody) the dis­so­lu­tion of the ma­te­rial self of mind and mat­ter when such a tran­sient part­ner­ship of the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual is di­vorced by the ces­sa­tion of vi­tal mo­tion.

• physical death › significance of death › gains man nothing except experience of survival

103:5.7The pur­suit of the ideal—the striv­ing to be God­like—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 in­do­lence and spir­i­tual lazi­ness by en­cour­ag­ing the vain hope of hav­ing all the virtues of a no­ble char­ac­ter be­stowed upon one as a re­sult of pass­ing through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death. True re­li­gion does not be­lit­tle man’s ef­forts to pro­gress dur­ing the mor­tal lease on life. Ev­ery mor­tal gain is a di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the en­rich­ment of the first stages of the im­mor­tal sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence.

• spiritual death › Adjuster, seraphim must concur in, Censors verify
• spiritual death › Adjuster released after rejection of survival; seraphim stays

112:3.21. Spir­i­tual (soul) death. If and when mor­tal man has fi­nally re­jected sur­vival, when he has been pro­nounced spir­i­tu­ally in­sol­vent, mor­ontially bankrupt, in the con­joint opin­ion of the Ad­juster and the sur­viv­ing ser­a­phim, when such co-or­di­nate ad­vice has been re­corded on Uversa, and af­ter the Cen­sors and their re­flec­tive as­so­ciates have ver­i­fied these find­ings, there­upon do the rulers of Or­von­ton or­der the im­me­di­ate re­lease of the in­dwelling Mon­i­tor. But this re­lease of the Ad­juster in no way af­fects the du­ties of the per­sonal or group ser­a­phim con­cerned with that Ad­juster-aban­doned in­di­vid­ual. This kind of death is fi­nal in its sig­nif­i­cance ir­re­spec­tive of the tem­po­rary con­tin­u­a­tion of the liv­ing en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal and mind mech­a­nisms. From the cos­mic stand­point the mor­tal is al­ready dead; the con­tin­u­ing life merely in­di­cates the per­sis­tence of the ma­te­rial mo­men­tum of cos­mic en­er­gies.

• physical death › Adjuster departs for Divinington after destruction of mind circuits

112:3.32. In­tel­lec­tual (mind) death. When the vi­tal cir­cuits of higher ad­ju­tant min­istry are dis­rupted through the aber­ra­tions of in­tel­lect or be­cause of the par­tial de­struc­tion of the mech­a­nism of the brain, and if these con­di­tions pass a cer­tain crit­i­cal point of ir­repara­bil­ity, the in­dwelling Ad­juster is im­me­di­ately re­leased to de­part for Di­vin­ing­ton. On the uni­verse rec­ords a mor­tal per­son­al­ity is con­sid­ered to have met with death when­ever the es­sen­tial mind cir­cuits of hu­man will-ac­tion have been de­stroyed. And again, this is death, ir­re­spec­tive of the con­tin­u­ing func­tion of the liv­ing mech­a­nism of the phys­i­cal body. The body mi­nus the vo­li­tional mind is no longer hu­man, but ac­cord­ing to the prior choos­ing of the hu­man will, the soul of such an in­di­vid­ual may sur­vive.

• physical death › occurs upon cessation of measurable brain energies, vital motion

112:3.43. Phys­i­cal (body and mind) death. When death over­takes a hu­man be­ing, the Ad­juster re­mains in the citadel of the mind un­til it ceases to func­tion as an in­tel­li­gent mech­a­nism, about the time that the mea­sur­able brain en­er­gies cease their rhyth­mic vi­tal pul­sa­tions. Fol­low­ing this dis­so­lu­tion the Ad­juster takes leave of the van­ish­ing mind, just as un­cer­e­mo­ni­ously as en­try was made years be­fore, and pro­ceeds to Di­vin­ing­ton by way of Uversa.

• physical death › no time consciousness in

112:3.7Upon death the Thought Ad­juster tem­porar­ily loses per­son­al­ity, but not iden­tity; the hu­man sub­ject tem­porar­ily loses iden­tity, but not per­son­al­ity; on the man­sion worlds both re­unite in eter­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion. Never does a de­parted Thought Ad­juster re­turn to earth as the be­ing of for­mer in­dwelling; never is per­son­al­ity man­i­fested with­out the hu­man will; and never does a dis-Ad­jus­tered hu­man be­ing af­ter death man­i­fest ac­tive iden­tity or in any man­ner es­tab­lish com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the liv­ing be­ings of earth. Such dis-Ad­jus­tered souls are wholly and ab­so­lutely un­con­scious dur­ing the long or short sleep of death. There can be no ex­hi­bi­tion of any sort of per­son­al­ity or abil­ity to en­gage in com­mu­ni­ca­tions with other per­son­al­i­ties un­til af­ter com­ple­tion of sur­vival. Those who go to the man­sion worlds are not per­mit­ted to send mes­sages back to their loved ones. It is the pol­icy through­out the uni­verses to for­bid such com­mu­ni­ca­tion dur­ing the pe­riod of a cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion.

• physical death › Adjuster departs for Divinington after destruction of mind circuits

112:4.1When death of a ma­te­rial, in­tel­lec­tual, or spir­i­tual na­ture oc­curs, the Ad­juster bids farewell to the mor­tal host and de­parts for Di­vin­ing­ton. From the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse and the super­uni­verse a re­flec­tive con­tact is made with the super­vi­sors of both gov­ern­ments, and the Mon­i­tor is reg­is­tered out by the same num­ber that re­corded en­try into the do­mains of time.

• physical death › Adjuster departs for Divinington after destruction of mind circuits

112:4.3Sub­se­quent to phys­i­cal death, ex­cept in in­di­vid­u­als trans­lated from among the liv­ing, the re­leased Ad­juster goes im­me­di­ately to the home sphere of Di­vin­ing­ton. The de­tails of what tran­spires on that world dur­ing the time of await­ing the fac­tual reap­pear­ance of the sur­viv­ing mor­tal de­pend chiefly on whether the hu­man be­ing as­cends to the man­sion worlds in his own in­di­vid­ual right or awaits a dis­pen­sa­tional sum­mon­ing of the sleep­ing sur­vivors of a plan­e­tary age.

• physical death › no time consciousness in

112:5.13This child of per­sist­ing mean­ing and sur­viv­ing value is wholly un­con­scious dur­ing the pe­riod from death to reper­son­al­iza­tion and is in the keep­ing of the se­raphic des­tiny guard­ian through­out this sea­son of wait­ing. You will not func­tion as a con­scious be­ing, fol­low­ing death, un­til you at­tain the new con­scious­ness of mor­ontia on the man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia.

• physical death › occurs upon cessation of measurable brain energies, vital motion

112:5.14At death the func­tional iden­tity as­so­ci­ated with the hu­man per­son­al­ity is dis­rupted through the ces­sa­tion of vi­tal mo­tion. Hu­man per­son­al­ity, while tran­scend­ing its con­stituent parts, is de­pen­dent on them for func­tional iden­tity. The stop­page of life de­stroys the phys­i­cal brain pat­terns for mind en­dow­ment, and the dis­rup­tion of mind ter­mi­nates mor­tal con­scious­ness. The con­scious­ness of that crea­ture can­not sub­se­quently reap­pear un­til a cos­mic sit­u­a­tion has been ar­ranged which will per­mit the same hu­man per­son­al­ity again to func­tion in re­la­tion­ship with liv­ing en­ergy.

113:6.1Hav­ing told you some­thing of the min­istry of ser­a­phim dur­ing nat­u­ral life, I will en­deavor to in­form you about the con­duct of the guard­i­ans of des­tiny at the time of the mor­tal dis­so­lu­tion of their hu­man as­so­ciates. Upon your death, your rec­ords, iden­tity spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and the mor­ontia en­tity of the hu­man soul—con­jointly evolved by the min­istry of mor­tal mind and the di­vine Ad­juster—are faith­fully con­served by the des­tiny guard­ian to­gether with all other val­ues re­lated to your fu­ture ex­is­tence, ev­ery­thing that con­sti­tutes you, the real you, ex­cept the iden­tity of con­tin­u­ing ex­is­tence rep­re­sented by the de­part­ing Ad­juster and the ac­tu­al­ity of per­son­al­ity.

• physical death › pilot light in human mind disappears upon

113:6.2The in­stant the pi­lot light in the hu­man mind dis­ap­pears, the spirit lu­mi­nos­ity which ser­a­phim as­so­ciate with the pres­ence of the Ad­juster, the at­tend­ing an­gel re­ports in per­son to the com­mand­ing an­gels, suc­ces­sively, of the group, com­pany, bat­tal­ion, unit, le­gion, and host; and af­ter be­ing duly reg­is­tered for the fi­nal ad­ven­ture of time and space, such an an­gel re­ceives cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the plan­e­tary chief of ser­a­phim for re­port­ing to the Evening Star (or other lieu­tenant of Ga­briel) in com­mand of the se­raphic army of this can­di­date for uni­verse as­cen­sion. And upon be­ing granted per­mis­sion from the com­man­der of this high­est or­ga­ni­za­tional unit, such a guard­ian of des­tiny pro­ceeds to the first man­sion world and there awaits the con­sciou­siz­ing of her for­mer ward in the flesh.

113:6.3In case the hu­man soul fails of sur­vival af­ter hav­ing re­ceived the as­sign­ment of a per­sonal an­gel, the at­tend­ing ser­a­phim must pro­ceed to the head­quar­ters of the lo­cal uni­verse, there to wit­ness to the com­plete rec­ords of her com­ple­ment as pre­vi­ously re­ported. Next she goes be­fore the tri­bu­nals of the arch­an­gels, to be ab­solved from blame in the mat­ter of the sur­vival fail­ure of her sub­ject; and then she goes back to the worlds, again to be as­signed to an­other mor­tal of as­cend­ing po­ten­tial­ity or to some other di­vi­sion of se­raphic min­istry.

113:6.4But an­gels min­is­ter to evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures in many ways aside from the ser­vices of per­sonal and group guardian­ship. Per­sonal guard­i­ans whose sub­jects do not go im­me­di­ately to the man­sion worlds do not tarry there in idle­ness await­ing the dis­pen­sa­tional roll calls of judg­ment; they are re­as­signed to nu­mer­ous min­is­ter­ing mis­sions through­out the uni­verse.

113:6.5The guard­ian ser­a­phim is the cus­to­dial trus­tee of the sur­vival val­ues of mor­tal man’s slum­ber­ing soul as the ab­sent Ad­juster is the iden­tity of such an im­mor­tal uni­verse be­ing. When these two col­lab­o­rate in the res­ur­rec­tion halls of man­so­nia in con­junc­tion with the newly fab­ri­cated mor­ontia form, there oc­curs the re­assem­bly of the con­stituent fac­tors of the per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal as­cender.

113:6.6The Ad­juster will iden­tify you; the guard­ian ser­a­phim will reper­son­al­ize you and then re-pres­ent you to the faith­ful Mon­i­tor of your earth days.

113:6.7And even so, when a plan­e­tary age ends, when those in the lower cir­cles of mor­tal achieve­ment are for­gath­ered, it is their group guard­i­ans who re­assem­ble them in the res­ur­rec­tion halls of the man­sion spheres, even as your rec­ord tells: “And he shall send his an­gels with a great voice and shall gather to­gether his elect from one end of the realm to an­other.”

• spiritual death › guardian angel responds to dispensational roll call, but Adjuster makes no answer

113:6.8The tech­nique of jus­tice de­mands that per­sonal or group guard­i­ans shall re­spond to the dis­pen­sa­tional roll call in be­half of all non­sur­viv­ing per­son­al­i­ties. The Ad­justers of such non­sur­vivors do not re­turn, and when the rolls are called, the ser­a­phim re­spond, but the Ad­justers make no an­swer. This con­sti­tutes the “res­ur­rec­tion of the un­just,” in re­al­ity the for­mal rec­og­ni­tion of the ces­sa­tion of crea­ture ex­is­tence. This roll call of jus­tice al­ways im­me­di­ately fol­lows the roll call of mercy, the res­ur­rec­tion of the sleep­ing sur­vivors. But these are mat­ters which are of con­cern to none but the su­preme and all-know­ing Judges of sur­vival val­ues. Such prob­lems of ad­ju­di­ca­tion do not re­ally con­cern us.

113:6.9Group guard­i­ans may serve on a planet age af­ter age and even­tu­ally be­come cus­to­di­ans of the slum­ber­ing souls of thou­sands upon thou­sands of sleep­ing sur­vivors. They can so serve on many dif­fer­ent worlds in a given sys­tem since the res­ur­rec­tion re­sponse oc­curs on the man­sion worlds.

113:6.10All per­sonal and group guard­i­ans in the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia who went astray in the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, not­with­stand­ing that many sin­cerely re­pented of their folly, are to be de­tained on Je­ru­sem un­til the fi­nal ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the re­bel­lion. Al­ready have the Uni­ver­sal Cen­sors ar­bi­trar­ily taken from these dis­obe­di­ent and un­faith­ful guard­i­ans all as­pects of their soul trusts and lodged these mor­ontia re­al­i­ties for safe­keep­ing in the cus­tody of vol­un­teer se­con­a­phim.

• spiritual death › Adjuster released after rejection of survival; seraphim stays

130:4.8Mis­adap­ta­tion of self-con­scious life to the uni­verse re­sults in cos­mic dishar­mony. Fi­nal di­ver­gence of per­son­al­ity will from the trend of the uni­verses ter­mi­nates in in­tel­lec­tual iso­la­tion, per­son­al­ity seg­re­ga­tion. Loss of the in­dwelling spirit pi­lot super­venes in spir­i­tual ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence. In­tel­li­gent and pro­gress­ing life be­comes then, in and of it­self, an in­con­tro­vert­ible proof of the ex­is­tence of a pur­pose­ful uni­verse ex­press­ing the will of a di­vine Cre­ator. And this life, in the ag­gre­gate, strug­gles to­ward higher val­ues, hav­ing for its fi­nal goal the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• physical death › in physical battle is easy

143:1.6“Be­cause my Fa­ther is a God of love and de­lights in the prac­tice of mercy, do not im­bibe the idea that the ser­vice of the king­dom is to be one of monotonous ease. The Par­a­dise as­cent is the su­preme ad­ven­ture of all time, the rugged achieve­ment of eter­nity. The ser­vice of the king­dom on earth will call for all the coura­geous man­hood that you and your cowork­ers can muster. Many of you will be put to death for your loy­alty to the gospel of this king­dom. It is easy to die in the line of phys­i­cal bat­tle when your cour­age is strength­ened by the pres­ence of your fight­ing com­rades, but it re­quires a higher and more pro­found form of hu­man cour­age and de­vo­tion calmly and all alone to lay down your life for the love of a truth en­shrined in your mor­tal heart.

• spiritual death › Jesus warned of spiritual doom

153:2.3“The priests and teach­ers of that day sought to kill Jeremiah, but the judges would not con­sent, al­beit, for his words of warn­ing, they did let him down by cords in a filthy dun­geon un­til he sank in mire up to his armpits. That is what this peo­ple did to the Prophet Jeremiah when he obeyed the Lord’s com­mand to warn his breth­ren of their im­pend­ing po­lit­i­cal down­fall. To­day, I de­sire to ask you: What will the chief priests and re­li­gious lead­ers of this peo­ple do with the man who dares to warn them of the day of their spir­i­tual doom? Will you also seek to put to death the teacher who dares to pro­claim the word of the Lord, and who fears not to point out wherein you refuse to walk in the way of light which leads to the en­trance to the king­dom of heaven?

• physical death › no time consciousness in

168:2.5Laz­a­rus greeted Je­sus and the apos­tles and asked the mean­ing of the grave cloths and why he had awak­ened in the gar­den. Je­sus and the apos­tles drew to one side while Martha told Laz­a­rus of his death, burial, and res­ur­rec­tion. She had to ex­plain to him that he had died on Sun­day and was now brought back to life on Thurs­day, inas­much as he had had no con­scious­ness of time since falling asleep in death.

• physical death › no time consciousness in

168:2.9Laz­a­rus could hardly com­pre­hend what had oc­curred. He knew he had been very sick, but he could re­call only that he had fallen asleep and been awak­ened. He was never able to tell any­thing about these four days in the tomb be­cause he was wholly un­con­scious. Time is nonex­is­tent to those who sleep the sleep of death.

• physical death › significance of death › brings new dispensation of service

176:2.7“But what is the sig­nif­i­cance of this teach­ing hav­ing to do with the com­ing of the Sons of God? Do you not per­ceive that, when each of you is called to lay down his life strug­gle and pass through the por­tal of death, you stand in the im­me­di­ate pres­ence of judg­ment, and that you are face to face with the facts of a new dis­pen­sa­tion of ser­vice in the eter­nal plan of the in­fi­nite Fa­ther? What the whole world must face as a lit­eral fact at the end of an age, you, as in­di­vid­u­als, must each most cer­tainly face as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence when you reach the end of your nat­u­ral life and thereby pass on to be con­fronted with the con­di­tions and de­mands in­her­ent in the next rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal pro­gres­sion of the Fa­ther’s king­dom.”

• physical death › significance of death › precipitates events which lead to Jesus

176:4.7The sec­ond ad­vent of Mi­chael on earth is an event of tremen­dous sen­ti­men­tal value to both mid­way­ers and hu­mans; but oth­er­wise it is of no im­me­di­ate mo­ment to mid­way­ers and of no more prac­ti­cal im­por­tance to hu­man be­ings than the com­mon event of nat­u­ral death, which so sud­denly pre­cip­i­tates mor­tal man into the im­me­di­ate grasp of that suc­ces­sion of uni­verse events which leads di­rectly to the pres­ence of this same Je­sus, the sov­er­eign ruler of our uni­verse. The chil­dren of light are all des­tined to see him, and it is of no se­ri­ous con­cern whether we go to him or whether he should chance first to come to us. Be you there­fore ever ready to wel­come him on earth as he stands ready to wel­come you in heaven. We con­fi­dently look for his glo­ri­ous ap­pear­ing, even for re­peated com­ings, but we are wholly ig­no­rant as to how, when, or in what con­nec­tion he is des­tined to ap­pear.

• physical death › no time consciousness in

188:3.94. We think the hu­man or mor­tal con­scious­ness of Je­sus slept dur­ing these thirty-six hours. We have rea­son to be­lieve that the hu­man Je­sus knew noth­ing of what tran­spired in the uni­verse dur­ing this pe­riod. To the mor­tal con­scious­ness there ap­peared no lapse of time; the res­ur­rec­tion of life fol­lowed the sleep of death as of the same in­stant.

• physical death › significance of death › part of mortal life

188:4.2Je­sus de­sired to live a full mor­tal life in the flesh on Uran­tia. Death is, or­di­nar­ily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mor­tal drama. In your well-meant ef­forts to es­cape the su­per­sti­tious er­rors of the false in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the mean­ing of the death on the cross, you should be care­ful not to make the great mis­take of fail­ing to per­ceive the true sig­nif­i­cance and the gen­uine im­port of the Mas­ter’s death.

• physical death › body remains on planet

189:1.2Af­ter the res­ur­rected Je­sus emerged from his burial tomb, the body of flesh in which he had lived and wrought on earth for al­most thirty-six years was still ly­ing there in the sepul­chre niche, undis­turbed and wrapped in the linen sheet, just as it had been laid to rest by Joseph and his as­so­ciates on Fri­day af­ter­noon. Nei­ther was the stone be­fore the en­trance of the tomb in any way dis­turbed; the seal of Pi­late was still un­bro­ken; the sol­diers were still on guard. The tem­ple guards had been on con­tin­u­ous duty; the Ro­man guard had been changed at mid­night. None of these watch­ers sus­pected that the ob­ject of their vigil had risen to a new and higher form of ex­is­tence, and that the body which they were guard­ing was now a dis­carded outer cov­er­ing which had no fur­ther con­nec­tion with the de­liv­ered and res­ur­rected mor­ontia per­son­al­ity of Je­sus.