free will

112:5.5And it is this very power of choice, the uni­verse in­signia of free­will crea­ture­hood, that con­sti­tutes man’s great­est op­por­tu­nity and his su­preme cos­mic re­spon­si­bil­ity. Upon the in­tegrity of the hu­man vo­li­tion de­pends the eter­nal des­tiny of the fu­ture fi­nal­i­ter; upon the sin­cer­ity of the mor­tal free will the di­vine Ad­juster de­pends for eter­nal per­son­al­ity; upon the faith­ful­ness of mor­tal choice the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther de­pends for the re­al­iza­tion of a new as­cend­ing son; upon the stead­fast­ness and wis­dom of de­ci­sion-ac­tions the Su­preme Be­ing de­pends for the ac­tu­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­en­tial evo­lu­tion.

52:1.6Man’s ac­quire­ment of eth­i­cal judg­ment, moral will, is usu­ally co­in­ci­dent with the ap­pear­ance of early lan­guage. Upon at­tain­ing the hu­man level, af­ter this emer­gence of mor­tal will, these be­ings be­come re­cep­tive to the tem­po­rary in­dwelling of the di­vine Ad­justers, and upon death many are duly elected as sur­vivors and sealed by the arch­an­gels for sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion and Spirit fu­sion. The arch­an­gels al­ways ac­com­pany the Plan­e­tary Princes, and a dis­pen­sa­tional ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm is si­mul­ta­ne­ous with the prince’s ar­rival.

118:6.5Vo­li­tion on any level short of the ab­so­lute en­coun­ters lim­i­ta­tions which are con­sti­tu­tive in the very per­son­al­ity ex­er­cis­ing the power of choice. Man can­not choose be­yond the range of that which is choos­able. He can­not, for in­stance, choose to be other than a hu­man be­ing ex­cept that he can elect to be­come more than a man; he can choose to em­bark upon the voy­age of uni­verse as­cen­sion, but this is be­cause the hu­man choice and the di­vine will hap­pen to be co­in­ci­dent upon this point. And what a son de­sires and the Fa­ther wills will cer­tainly come to pass.

118:9.2Mech­a­nisms pro­duced by higher minds func­tion to lib­er­ate their cre­ative sources but to some de­gree un­vary­ingly limit the ac­tion of all sub­or­di­nate in­tel­li­gences. To the crea­tures of the uni­verses this lim­i­ta­tion be­comes ap­par­ent as the mech­a­nism of the uni­verses. Man does not have un­fet­tered free will; there are lim­its to his range of choice, but within the ra­dius of this choice his will is rel­a­tively sov­er­eign.

1:1.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never im­poses any form of ar­bi­trary rec­og­ni­tion, for­mal wor­ship, or slav­ish ser­vice upon the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses. The evo­lu­tion­ary in­hab­i­tants of the worlds of time and space must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. The Cre­ator re­fuses to co­erce or com­pel the sub­mis­sion of the spir­i­tual free wills of his ma­te­rial crea­tures. The af­fec­tion­ate ded­i­ca­tion of the hu­man will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is man’s choic­est gift to God; in fact, such a con­se­cra­tion of crea­ture will con­sti­tutes man’s only pos­si­ble gift of true value to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In God, man lives, moves, and has his be­ing; there is noth­ing which man can give to God ex­cept this choos­ing to abide by the Fa­ther’s will, and such de­ci­sions, ef­fected by the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses, con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of that true wor­ship which is so sat­is­fy­ing to the love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• ability to know God and power to worship him; to choose eternal survival

3:1.12The fluc­tu­a­tions of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence are not due to the change­able­ness of God. The Fa­ther does not re­tire in seclu­sion be­cause he has been slighted; his af­fec­tions are not alien­ated be­cause of the crea­ture’s wrong­do­ing. Rather, hav­ing been en­dowed with the power of choice (con­cern­ing Him­self), his chil­dren, in the ex­er­cise of that choice, di­rectly de­ter­mine the de­gree and lim­i­ta­tions of the Fa­ther’s di­vine in­flu­ence in their own hearts and souls. The Fa­ther has freely be­stowed him­self upon us with­out limit and with­out fa­vor. He is no re­specter of per­sons, plan­ets, sys­tems, or uni­verses. In the sec­tors of time he con­fers dif­fer­en­tial honor only on the Par­a­dise per­son­al­i­ties of God the Sev­en­fold, the co-or­di­nate cre­ators of the fi­nite uni­verses.

• absolutely sovereign regarding eternal destiny

5:6.8Hav­ing thus pro­vided for the growth of the im­mor­tal soul and hav­ing lib­er­ated man’s in­ner self from the fet­ters of ab­so­lute de­pen­dence on an­te­ced­ent cau­sa­tion, the Fa­ther stands aside. Now, man hav­ing thus been lib­er­ated from the fet­ters of cau­sa­tion re­sponse, at least as per­tains to eter­nal des­tiny, and pro­vi­sion hav­ing been made for the growth of the im­mor­tal self, the soul, it re­mains for man him­self to will the cre­ation or to in­hibit the cre­ation of this sur­viv­ing and eter­nal self which is his for the choos­ing. No other be­ing, force, cre­ator, or agency in all the wide uni­verse of uni­verses can in­ter­fere to any de­gree with the ab­so­lute sov­er­eignty of the mor­tal free will, as it op­er­ates within the realms of choice, re­gard­ing the eter­nal des­tiny of the per­son­al­ity of the choos­ing mor­tal. As per­tains to eter­nal sur­vival, God has de­creed the sov­er­eignty of the ma­te­rial and mor­tal will, and that de­cree is ab­so­lute.

• absolutely sovereign regarding eternal destiny

5:6.12Con­cern­ing those per­son­al­i­ties who are not Ad­juster in­dwelt: The at­tri­bute of choice-lib­erty is also be­stowed by the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and such per­sons are like­wise em­braced in the great cir­cuit of di­vine love, the per­son­al­ity cir­cuit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God pro­vides for the sov­er­eign choice of all true per­son­al­i­ties. No per­sonal crea­ture can be co­erced into the eter­nal ad­ven­ture; the por­tal of eter­nity opens only in re­sponse to the free­will choice of the free­will sons of the God of free will.

• relative; determines actions

7:0.5The Son is not, how­ever, per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for the con­duct of all spirit per­son­al­i­ties. The will of the per­sonal crea­ture is rel­a­tively free and hence de­ter­mines the ac­tions of such vo­li­tional be­ings. There­fore the free­will spirit world is not al­ways truly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter of the Eter­nal Son, even as na­ture on Uran­tia is not truly rev­e­la­tory of the per­fec­tion and im­mutabil­ity of Par­a­dise and De­ity. But no mat­ter what may char­ac­ter­ize the free­will ac­tion of man or an­gel, the Son’s eter­nal grasp of the uni­ver­sal grav­ity con­trol of all spirit re­al­i­ties con­tin­ues as ab­so­lute.

• absolutely sovereign regarding eternal destiny

39:3.32. Law Fore­cast­ers. The in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of jus­tice is law, and in a lo­cal uni­verse law orig­i­nates in the leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies of the con­stel­la­tions. These de­lib­er­a­tive bod­ies cod­ify and for­mally pro­mul­gate the ba­sic laws of Neb­a­don, laws de­signed to af­ford the great­est pos­si­ble co-or­di­na­tion of a whole con­stel­la­tion con­sis­tent with the fixed pol­icy of non­in­fringe­ment of the moral free will of per­sonal crea­tures. It is the duty of the sec­ond or­der of super­vi­sor ser­a­phim to place be­fore the con­stel­la­tion law­mak­ers a fore­cast of how any pro­posed en­act­ment would af­fect the lives of free­will crea­tures. This ser­vice they are well qual­i­fied to per­form by virtue of long ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal sys­tems and on the in­hab­ited worlds. These ser­a­phim seek no spe­cial fa­vors for one group or an­other, but they do ap­pear be­fore the ce­les­tial law­mak­ers to speak for those who can­not be pres­ent to speak for them­selves. Even mor­tal man may con­tribute to the evo­lu­tion of uni­verse law, for these very ser­a­phim do faith­fully and fully por­tray, not nec­es­sar­ily man’s tran­sient and con­scious de­sires, but rather the true long­ings of the in­ner man, the evolv­ing mor­ontia soul of the ma­te­rial mor­tal on the worlds of space.

• not unrestricted, but respected in spirit world provided choices not injurious to self or others

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.

• not unrestricted, but respected in spirit world provided choices not injurious to self or others

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.”

• includes possibility of self-confusion, self-disruption, and self-destruction

54:0.1Evo­lu­tion­ary man finds it dif­fi­cult fully to com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance and to grasp the mean­ings of evil, er­ror, sin, and in­iq­uity. Man is slow to per­ceive that con­trastive per­fec­tion and im­per­fec­tion pro­duce po­ten­tial evil; that con­flict­ing truth and false­hood cre­ate con­fus­ing er­ror; that the di­vine en­dow­ment of free­will choice even­tu­ates in the di­ver­gent realms of sin and righ­teous­ness; that the per­sis­tent pur­suit of di­vin­ity leads to the king­dom of God as con­trasted with its con­tin­u­ous re­jec­tion, which leads to the do­mains of in­iq­uity.

• ability to know God and power to worship him; to choose eternal survival

62:7.6These mes­sages from Sal­ving­ton, Eden­tia, and Je­ru­sem for­mally marked the ter­mi­na­tion of the Life Car­ri­ers’ age­long super­vi­sion of the planet. For ages we had been on duty, as­sisted only by the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its and the Mas­ter Phys­i­cal Con­trol­lers. And now, will, the power of choos­ing to wor­ship and to as­cend, hav­ing ap­peared in the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures of the planet, we re­al­ized that our work was fin­ished, and our group pre­pared to de­part. Uran­tia be­ing a life-mod­i­fi­ca­tion world, per­mis­sion was granted to leave be­hind two se­nior Life Car­ri­ers with twelve as­sis­tants, and I was cho­sen as one of this group and have ever since been on Uran­tia.

• ability to know God and power to worship him; to choose eternal survival

65:0.6The me­chan­i­cal-non­teach­able lev­els of or­gan­is­mal en­vi­ron­men­tal re­sponse are the do­mains of the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers. The ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its ac­ti­vate and reg­u­late the adap­ta­tive or non­me­chan­i­cal-teach­able types of mind—those re­sponse mech­a­nisms of or­gan­isms ca­pa­ble of learn­ing from ex­pe­ri­ence. And as the spirit ad­ju­tants thus ma­nip­u­late mind po­ten­tials, so do the Life Car­ri­ers ex­er­cise con­sid­er­able dis­cre­tionary con­trol over the en­vi­ron­men­tal as­pects of evo­lu­tion­ary pro­cesses right up to the time of the ap­pear­ance of hu­man will—the abil­ity to know God and the power of choos­ing to wor­ship him.

• ability to know God and power to worship him; to choose eternal survival

66:0.1The ad­vent of a La­non­an­dek Son on an av­er­age world sig­ni­fies that will, the abil­ity to choose the path of eter­nal sur­vival, has de­vel­oped in the mind of prim­i­tive man. But on Uran­tia the Plan­e­tary Prince ar­rived al­most half a mil­lion years af­ter the ap­pear­ance of hu­man will.

• absolutely sovereign regarding eternal destiny

66:8.6The doc­trine of a per­sonal devil on Uran­tia, though it had some foun­da­tion in the plan­e­tary pres­ence of the traitorous and in­iq­ui­tous Cali­gas­tia, was nev­er­the­less wholly fic­ti­tious in its teach­ings that such a “devil” could in­flu­ence the nor­mal hu­man mind against its free and nat­u­ral choos­ing. Even be­fore Mi­chael’s be­stowal on Uran­tia, nei­ther Cali­gas­tia nor Dali­gas­tia was ever able to op­press mor­tals or to co­erce any nor­mal in­di­vid­ual into do­ing any­thing against the hu­man will. The free will of man is su­preme in moral af­fairs; even the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster re­fuses to com­pel man to think a sin­gle thought or to per­form a sin­gle act against the choos­ing of man’s own will.

• maximated decision; deliberate choice leading to decision-conduct

107:7.3We have of­ten spec­u­lated that Thought Ad­justers must have vo­li­tion on all preper­sonal lev­els of choice. They vol­un­teer to in­dwell hu­man be­ings, they lay plans for man’s eter­nal ca­reer, they adapt, mod­ify, and sub­sti­tute in ac­cor­dance with cir­cum­stances, and these ac­tiv­i­ties con­note gen­uine vo­li­tion. They have af­fec­tion for mor­tals, they func­tion in uni­verse crises, they are al­ways wait­ing to act de­ci­sively in ac­cor­dance with hu­man choice, and all these are highly vo­li­tional re­ac­tions. In all sit­u­a­tions not con­cerned with the do­main of the hu­man will, they un­ques­tion­ably ex­hibit con­duct which be­to­kens the ex­er­cise of pow­ers in ev­ery sense the equiv­a­lent of will, max­i­mated de­ci­sion.

111:1.1Though the work of Ad­justers is spir­i­tual in na­ture, they must, per­force, do all their work upon an in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion. Mind is the hu­man soil from which the spirit Mon­i­tor must evolve the mor­ontia soul with the co-op­er­a­tion of the in­dwelt per­son­al­ity.

111:1.2There is a cos­mic unity in the sev­eral mind lev­els of the uni­verse of uni­verses. In­tel­lec­tual selves have their ori­gin in the cos­mic mind much as neb­u­lae take ori­gin in the cos­mic en­er­gies of uni­verse space. On the hu­man (hence per­sonal) level of in­tel­lec­tual selves the po­ten­tial of spirit evo­lu­tion be­comes dom­i­nant, with the as­sent of the mor­tal mind, be­cause of the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of the hu­man per­son­al­ity to­gether with the cre­ative pres­ence of an en­tity-point of ab­so­lute value in such hu­man selves. But such a spirit dom­i­nance of the ma­te­rial mind is con­di­tioned upon two ex­pe­ri­ences: This mind must have evolved up through the min­istry of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its, and the ma­te­rial (per­sonal) self must choose to co-op­er­ate with the in­dwelling Ad­juster in cre­at­ing and fos­ter­ing the mor­ontia self, the evo­lu­tion­ary and po­ten­tially im­mor­tal soul.

111:1.3Ma­te­rial mind is the arena in which hu­man per­son­al­i­ties live, are self-con­scious, make de­ci­sions, choose God or for­sake him, eter­nal­ize or de­stroy them­selves.

111:1.4Ma­te­rial evo­lu­tion has pro­vided you a life ma­chine, your body; the Fa­ther him­self has en­dowed you with the purest spirit re­al­ity known in the uni­verse, your Thought Ad­juster. But into your hands, sub­ject to your own de­ci­sions, has been given mind, and it is by mind that you live or die. It is within this mind and with this mind that you make those moral de­ci­sions which en­able you to achieve Ad­juster­like­ness, and that is God­like­ness.

111:1.5Mor­tal mind is a tem­po­rary in­tel­lect sys­tem loaned to hu­man be­ings for use dur­ing a ma­te­rial life­time, and as they use this mind, they are ei­ther ac­cept­ing or re­ject­ing the po­ten­tial of eter­nal ex­is­tence. Mind is about all you have of uni­verse re­al­ity that is sub­ject to your will, and the soul—the mor­ontia self—will faith­fully por­tray the har­vest of the tem­po­ral de­ci­sions which the mor­tal self is mak­ing. Hu­man con­scious­ness rests gen­tly upon the elec­tro­chem­i­cal mech­a­nism be­low and del­i­cately touches the spirit-mor­ontia en­ergy sys­tem above. Of nei­ther of these two sys­tems is the hu­man be­ing ever com­pletely con­scious in his mor­tal life; there­fore must he work in mind, of which he is con­scious. And it is not so much what mind com­pre­hends as what mind de­sires to com­pre­hend that in­sures sur­vival; it is not so much what mind is like as what mind is striv­ing to be like that con­sti­tutes spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. It is not so much that man is con­scious of God as that man yearns for God that re­sults in uni­verse as­cen­sion. What you are to­day is not so im­por­tant as what you are be­com­ing day by day and in eter­nity.

111:1.6Mind is the cos­mic in­stru­ment on which the hu­man will can play the dis­cords of de­struc­tion, or upon which this same hu­man will can bring forth the ex­qui­site mel­o­dies of God iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and con­se­quent eter­nal sur­vival. The Ad­juster be­stowed upon man is, in the last anal­y­sis, im­per­vi­ous to evil and in­ca­pable of sin, but mor­tal mind can ac­tu­ally be twisted, dis­torted, and ren­dered evil and ugly by the sin­ful machi­na­tions of a per­verse and self-seek­ing hu­man will. Like­wise can this mind be made no­ble, beau­ti­ful, true, and good—ac­tu­ally great—in ac­cor­dance with the spirit-il­lu­mi­nated will of a God-know­ing hu­man be­ing.

111:1.7Evo­lu­tion­ary mind is only fully sta­ble and de­pend­able when man­i­fest­ing it­self upon the two ex­tremes of cos­mic in­tel­lec­tu­al­ity—the wholly mech­a­nized and the en­tirely spir­i­tu­al­ized. Be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual ex­tremes of pure me­chan­i­cal con­trol and true spirit na­ture there in­ter­venes that enor­mous group of evolv­ing and as­cend­ing minds whose sta­bil­ity and tran­quil­lity are de­pen­dent upon per­son­al­ity choice and spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

111:1.8But man does not pas­sively, slav­ishly, sur­ren­der his will to the Ad­juster. Rather does he ac­tively, pos­i­tively, and co-op­er­a­tively choose to fol­low the Ad­juster’s lead­ing when and as such lead­ing con­sciously dif­fers from the de­sires and im­pulses of the nat­u­ral mor­tal mind. The Ad­justers ma­nip­u­late but never dom­i­nate man’s mind against his will; to the Ad­justers the hu­man will is su­preme. And they so re­gard and re­spect it while they strive to achieve the spir­i­tual goals of thought ad­just­ment and char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tion in the al­most lim­it­less arena of the evolv­ing hu­man in­tel­lect.

111:1.9Mind is your ship, the Ad­juster is your pi­lot, the hu­man will is cap­tain. The mas­ter of the mor­tal ves­sel should have the wis­dom to trust the di­vine pi­lot to guide the as­cend­ing soul into the mor­ontia har­bors of eter­nal sur­vival. Only by self­ish­ness, sloth­ful­ness, and sin­ful­ness can the will of man re­ject the guid­ance of such a lov­ing pi­lot and even­tu­ally wreck the mor­tal ca­reer upon the evil shoals of re­jected mercy and upon the rocks of em­braced sin. With your con­sent, this faith­ful pi­lot will safely carry you across the bar­ri­ers of time and the hand­i­caps of space to the very source of the di­vine mind and on be­yond, even to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther of Ad­justers.

• empowered to rescind spiritual choice and reject survival at any time before fusion

111:3.1The mis­takes of mor­tal mind and the er­rors of hu­man con­duct may markedly de­lay the evo­lu­tion of the soul, al­though they can­not in­hibit such a mor­ontia phe­nom­e­non when once it has been ini­ti­ated by the in­dwelling Ad­juster with the con­sent of the crea­ture will. But at any time prior to mor­tal death this same ma­te­rial and hu­man will is em­pow­ered to re­scind such a choice and to re­ject sur­vival. Even af­ter sur­vival the as­cend­ing mor­tal still re­tains this pre­rog­a­tive of choos­ing to re­ject eter­nal life; at any time be­fore fu­sion with the Ad­juster the evolv­ing and as­cend­ing crea­ture can choose to for­sake the will of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Fu­sion with the Ad­juster sig­nal­izes the fact that the as­cend­ing mor­tal has eter­nally and un­re­servedly cho­sen to do the Fa­ther’s will.

• residing in material mind circuits in mortal life

111:3.2Dur­ing the life in the flesh the evolv­ing soul is en­abled to re­in­force the super­ma­te­rial de­ci­sions of the mor­tal mind. The soul, be­ing super­ma­te­rial, does not of it­self func­tion on the ma­te­rial level of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Nei­ther can this sub­spir­i­tual soul, with­out the col­lab­o­ra­tion of some spirit of De­ity, such as the Ad­juster, func­tion above the mor­ontia level. Nei­ther does the soul make fi­nal de­ci­sions un­til death or trans­la­tion di­vorces it from ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tion with the mor­tal mind ex­cept when and as this ma­te­rial mind del­e­gates such au­thor­ity freely and will­ingly to such a mor­ontia soul of as­so­ci­ated func­tion. Dur­ing life the mor­tal will, the per­son­al­ity power of de­ci­sion-choice, is res­i­dent in the ma­te­rial mind cir­cuits; as ter­res­trial mor­tal growth pro­ceeds, this self, with its price­less pow­ers of choice, be­comes in­creas­ingly iden­ti­fied with the emerg­ing mor­ontia-soul en­tity; af­ter death and fol­low­ing the man­sion world res­ur­rec­tion, the hu­man per­son­al­ity is com­pletely iden­ti­fied with the mor­ontia self. The soul is thus the em­bryo of the fu­ture mor­ontia ve­hi­cle of per­son­al­ity iden­tity.

• includes possibility of self-confusion, self-disruption, and self-destruction

111:4.11This is the prob­lem: If free­will man is en­dowed with the pow­ers of cre­ativ­ity in the in­ner man, then must we rec­og­nize that free­will cre­ativ­ity em­braces the po­ten­tial of free­will de­struc­tiv­ity. And when cre­ativ­ity is turned to de­struc­tiv­ity, you are face to face with the dev­as­ta­tion of evil and sin—op­pres­sion, war, and de­struc­tion. Evil is a par­tial­ity of cre­ativ­ity which tends to­ward dis­in­te­gra­tion and even­tual de­struc­tion. All con­flict is evil in that it in­hibits the cre­ative func­tion of the in­ner life—it is a species of civil war in the per­son­al­ity.

• relative; determines actions

118:6.4All vo­li­tion is rel­a­tive. In the orig­i­nat­ing sense, only the Fa­ther-I AM pos­sesses fi­nal­ity of vo­li­tion; in the ab­so­lute sense, only the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Spirit ex­hibit the pre­rog­a­tives of vo­li­tion un­con­di­tioned by time and un­lim­ited by space. Mor­tal man is en­dowed with free will, the power of choice, and though such choos­ing is not ab­so­lute, nev­er­the­less, it is rel­a­tively fi­nal on the fi­nite level and con­cern­ing the des­tiny of the choos­ing per­son­al­ity.

118:6.6In the mor­tal life, paths of dif­fer­en­tial con­duct are con­tin­u­ally open­ing and clos­ing, and dur­ing the times when choice is pos­si­ble the hu­man per­son­al­ity is con­stantly de­cid­ing be­tween these many courses of ac­tion. Tem­po­ral vo­li­tion is linked to time, and it must await the pass­ing of time to find op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion. Spir­i­tual vo­li­tion has be­gun to taste lib­er­a­tion from the fet­ters of time, hav­ing achieved par­tial es­cape from time se­quence, and that is be­cause spir­i­tual vo­li­tion is self-iden­ti­fy­ing with the will of God.

118:6.7Vo­li­tion, the act of choos­ing, must func­tion within the uni­verse frame which has ac­tu­al­ized in re­sponse to higher and prior choos­ing. The en­tire range of hu­man will is strictly fi­nite-lim­ited ex­cept in one par­tic­u­lar: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is super­fi­nite; only eter­nity can dis­close whether this choice is also super­ab­so­nite.

• absolutely sovereign regarding eternal destiny

118:7.1The func­tion of Cre­ator will and crea­ture will, in the grand uni­verse, op­er­ates within the lim­its, and in ac­cor­dance with the pos­si­bil­i­ties, es­tab­lished by the Mas­ter Ar­chi­tects. This fore­or­di­na­tion of these max­i­mum lim­its does not, how­ever, in the least abridge the sov­er­eignty of crea­ture will within these bound­aries. Nei­ther does ul­ti­mate fore­knowl­edge—full al­lowance for all fi­nite choice—con­sti­tute an ab­ro­ga­tion of fi­nite vo­li­tion. A ma­ture and farsee­ing hu­man be­ing might be able to fore­cast the de­ci­sion of some younger as­so­ciate most ac­cu­rately, but this fore­knowl­edge takes noth­ing away from the free­dom and gen­uine­ness of the de­ci­sion it­self. The Gods have wisely lim­ited the range of the ac­tion of im­ma­ture will, but it is true will, nonethe­less, within these de­fined lim­its.

• range of choice necessary to enjoy universe progression by making contact with reality

118:7.3Er­ror in fi­nite choos­ing is time bound and time lim­ited. It can ex­ist only in time and within the evolv­ing pres­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Such mis­taken choos­ing is time pos­si­ble and in­di­cates (be­sides the in­com­plete­ness of the Su­preme) that cer­tain range of choice with which im­ma­ture crea­tures must be en­dowed in or­der to en­joy uni­verse pro­gres­sion by mak­ing free­will con­tact with re­al­ity.

• includes possibility of self-confusion, self-disruption, and self-destruction

118:7.7Sub­per­sonal liv­ing things in­di­cate mind ac­ti­vat­ing en­ergy-mat­ter, first as phys­i­cal con­trol­lers, and then as ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its. Per­son­al­ity en­dow­ment comes from the Fa­ther and im­parts unique pre­rog­a­tives of choice to the liv­ing sys­tem. But if per­son­al­ity has the pre­rog­a­tive of ex­er­cis­ing vo­li­tional choice of re­al­ity iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, and if this is a true and free choice, then must evolv­ing per­son­al­ity also have the pos­si­ble choice of be­com­ing self-con­fus­ing, self-dis­rupt­ing, and self-de­stroy­ing. The pos­si­bil­ity of cos­mic self-de­struc­tion can­not be avoided if the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity is to be truly free in the ex­er­cise of fi­nite will.

• increasingly liberated as universes are ascended

118:7.8There­fore is there in­creased safety in nar­row­ing the lim­its of per­son­al­ity choice through­out the lower lev­els of ex­is­tence. Choice be­comes in­creas­ingly lib­er­ated as the uni­verses are as­cended; choice even­tu­ally ap­prox­i­mates di­vine free­dom when the as­cend­ing per­son­al­ity achieves di­vin­ity of sta­tus, su­prem­acy of con­se­cra­tion to the pur­poses of the uni­verse, com­ple­tion of cos­mic-wis­dom at­tain­ment, and fi­nal­ity of crea­ture iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the will and the way of God.

• dangerous, unstable unidentified with spirit

118:8.3The spirit lib­er­ates, and the mech­a­nism lim­its, the func­tion of will. Im­per­fect choice, un­con­trolled by mech­a­nism, uniden­ti­fied with spirit, is dan­ger­ous and un­sta­ble. Me­chan­i­cal dom­i­nance in­sures sta­bil­ity at the ex­pense of prog­ress; spirit al­liance lib­er­ates choice from the phys­i­cal level and at the same time as­sures the di­vine sta­bil­ity pro­duced by aug­mented uni­verse in­sight and in­creased cos­mic com­pre­hen­sion.

118:8.4The great dan­ger that be­sets the crea­ture is that, in achiev­ing lib­er­a­tion from the fet­ters of the life mech­a­nism, he will fail to com­pen­sate this loss of sta­bil­ity by ef­fect­ing a har­mo­nious work­ing li­ai­son with spirit. Crea­ture choice, when rel­a­tively lib­er­ated from me­chan­i­cal sta­bil­ity, may at­tempt fur­ther self-lib­er­a­tion in­de­pen­dent of greater spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

• maximated decision; deliberate choice leading to decision-conduct

130:2.7This was a con­fer­ence which lasted well into the night, in the course of which the young man re­quested Je­sus to tell him the dif­fer­ence be­tween the will of God and that hu­man mind act of choos­ing which is also called will. In sub­stance Je­sus said: The will of God is the way of God, part­ner­ship with the choice of God in the face of any po­ten­tial al­ter­na­tive. To do the will of God, there­fore, is the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like God, and God is the source and des­tiny of all that is good and beau­ti­ful and true. The will of man is the way of man, the sum and sub­stance of that which the mor­tal chooses to be and do. Will is the de­lib­er­ate choice of a self-con­scious be­ing which leads to de­ci­sion-con­duct based on in­tel­li­gent re­flec­tion.

• maximated decision; deliberate choice leading to decision-conduct

130:2.10It was on this same day that we first heard that mo­men­tous truth which, stated in mod­ern terms, would sig­nify: “Will is that man­i­fes­ta­tion of the hu­man mind which en­ables the sub­jec­tive con­scious­ness to ex­press it­self ob­jec­tively and to ex­pe­ri­ence the phe­nom­e­non of as­pir­ing to be God­like.” And it is in this same sense that ev­ery re­flec­tive and spir­i­tu­ally minded hu­man be­ing can be­come cre­ative.

• determining factor in human experience

170:4.102. The will as the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor in man’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

35:9.8Of all the lo­cal uni­verses in Or­von­ton, our uni­verse has, with the ex­cep­tion of Henselon, lost the largest num­ber of this or­der of Sons. On Uversa it is the con­sen­sus that we have had so much ad­min­is­tra­tive trou­ble in Neb­a­don be­cause our Sons of the La­non­an­dek or­der have been cre­ated with such a large de­gree of per­sonal lib­erty in choos­ing and plan­ning. I do not make this ob­ser­va­tion by way of crit­i­cism. The Cre­ator of our uni­verse has full au­thor­ity and power to do this. It is the con­tention of our high rulers that, while such free-choos­ing Sons make ex­ces­sive trou­ble in the ear­lier ages of the uni­verse, when things are fully sifted and fi­nally set­tled, the gains of higher loy­alty and fuller vo­li­tional ser­vice on the part of these thor­oughly tested Sons will far more than com­pen­sate for the con­fu­sion and tribu­la­tions of ear­lier times.

110:0.1The en­dow­ment of im­per­fect be­ings with free­dom en­tails in­ev­i­ta­ble tragedy, and it is the na­ture of the per­fect an­ces­tral De­ity to uni­ver­sally and af­fec­tion­ately share these suf­fer­ings in lov­ing com­pan­ion­ship.

16:8.5Crea­ture per­son­al­ity is dis­tin­guished by two self-man­i­fest­ing and char­ac­ter­is­tic phe­nom­ena of mor­tal re­ac­tive be­hav­ior: self-con­scious­ness and as­so­ci­ated rel­a­tive free will.

13:4.5The de­ter­miner of the dif­fer­en­tial of spir­i­tual pres­ence ex­ists in your own hearts and minds and con­sists in the man­ner of your own choos­ing, in the de­ci­sions of your minds, and in the de­ter­mi­na­tion of your own wills. This dif­fer­en­tial is in­her­ent in the free­will re­ac­tions of in­tel­li­gent per­sonal be­ings, be­ings whom the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has or­dained shall ex­er­cise this lib­erty of choos­ing. And the De­i­ties are ever true to the ebb and flow of their spir­its in meet­ing and sat­is­fy­ing the con­di­tions and de­mands of this dif­fer­en­tial of crea­ture choice, now be­stow­ing more of their pres­ence in re­sponse to a sin­cere de­sire for the same and again with­draw­ing them­selves from the scene as their crea­tures de­cide ad­versely in the ex­er­cise of their di­vinely be­stowed free­dom of choice. And thus does the spirit of di­vin­ity be­come humbly obe­di­ent to the choos­ing of the crea­tures of the realms.

54:1.9How dare the self-willed crea­ture en­croach upon the rights of his fel­lows in the name of per­sonal lib­erty when the Su­preme Rulers of the uni­verse stand back in mer­ci­ful re­spect for these pre­rog­a­tives of will and po­ten­tials of per­son­al­ity! No be­ing, in the ex­er­cise of his sup­posed per­sonal lib­erty, has a right to de­prive any other be­ing of those priv­i­leges of ex­is­tence con­ferred by the Cre­ators and duly re­spected by all their loyal as­so­ciates, sub­or­di­nates, and sub­jects.

54:2.5No be­ing in all the uni­verse has the right­ful lib­erty to de­prive any other be­ing of true lib­erty, the right to love and be loved, the priv­i­lege of wor­ship­ing God and of serv­ing his fel­lows.

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

54:6.9One er­ror of hu­man think­ing re­spect­ing these prob­lems con­sists in the idea that all evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals on an evolv­ing planet would choose to en­ter upon the Par­a­dise ca­reer if sin had not cursed their world. The abil­ity to de­cline sur­vival does not date from the times of the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion. Mor­tal man has al­ways pos­sessed the en­dow­ment of free­will choice re­gard­ing the Par­a­dise ca­reer.

113:5.1An­gels do not in­vade the sanc­tity of the hu­man mind; they do not ma­nip­u­late the will of mor­tals; nei­ther do they di­rectly con­tact with the in­dwelling Ad­justers. The guard­ian of des­tiny in­flu­ences you in ev­ery pos­si­ble man­ner con­sis­tent with the dig­nity of your per­son­al­ity; un­der no cir­cum­stances do these an­gels in­ter­fere with the free ac­tion of the hu­man will. Nei­ther an­gels nor any other or­der of uni­verse per­son­al­ity have power or au­thor­ity to cur­tail or abridge the pre­rog­a­tives of hu­man choos­ing.

163:2.8Thus al­ways it was and for­ever will be: Men must ar­rive at their own de­ci­sions. There is a cer­tain range of the free­dom of choice which mor­tals may ex­er­cise. The forces of the spir­i­tual world will not co­erce man; they al­low him to go the way of his own choos­ing.

165:3.8“How long will you tarry in the val­ley of de­ci­sion? Why do you halt be­tween two opin­ions? Why should Jew or gen­tile hes­i­tate to ac­cept the good news that he is a son of the eter­nal God? How long will it take us to per­suade you to en­ter joy­fully into your spir­i­tual in­her­i­tance? I came into this world to re­veal the Fa­ther to you and to lead you to the Fa­ther. The first I have done, but the last I may not do with­out your con­sent; the Fa­ther never com­pels any man to en­ter the king­dom. The in­vi­ta­tion ever has been and al­ways will be: Whoso­ever will, let him come and freely par­take of the wa­ter of life.”

179:4.6When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, lean­ing over to­ward Ju­das, he said: “What you have de­cided to do, do quickly.” And when Ju­das heard these words, he arose from the ta­ble and hastily left the room, go­ing out into the night to do what he had set his mind to ac­com­plish. When the other apos­tles saw Ju­das has­ten off af­ter Je­sus had spo­ken to him, they thought he had gone to pro­cure some­thing ad­di­tional for the sup­per or to do some other er­rand for the Mas­ter since they sup­posed he still car­ried the bag.

5:6.6Ca­pac­ity for di­vine per­son­al­ity is in­her­ent in the preper­sonal Ad­juster; ca­pac­ity for hu­man per­son­al­ity is po­ten­tial in the cos­mic-mind en­dow­ment of the hu­man be­ing. But the ex­pe­ri­en­tial per­son­al­ity of mor­tal man is not ob­serv­able as an ac­tive and func­tional re­al­ity un­til af­ter the ma­te­rial life ve­hi­cle of the mor­tal crea­ture has been touched by the lib­er­at­ing di­vin­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, be­ing thus launched upon the seas of ex­pe­ri­ence as a self-con­scious and a (rel­a­tively) self-de­ter­mi­na­tive and self-cre­ative per­son­al­ity. The ma­te­rial self is truly and un­qual­i­fiedly per­sonal.

53:4.4While there had been two pre­vi­ous re­bel­lions in Neb­a­don, they were in dis­tant con­stel­la­tions. Lu­cifer held that these in­sur­rec­tions were un­suc­cess­ful be­cause the ma­jor­ity of the in­tel­li­gences failed to fol­low their lead­ers. He con­tended that “ma­jori­ties rule,” that “mind is in­fal­li­ble.” The free­dom al­lowed him by the uni­verse rulers ap­par­ently sus­tained many of his ne­far­i­ous con­tentions. He de­fied all his su­pe­ri­ors; yet they ap­par­ently took no note of his do­ings. He was given a free hand to pros­e­cute his se­duc­tive plan with­out let or hin­drance.

53:4.5All the mer­ci­ful de­lays of jus­tice Lu­cifer pointed to as ev­i­dence of the in­abil­ity of the gov­ern­ment of the Par­a­dise Sons to stop the re­bel­lion. He would openly defy and ar­ro­gantly chal­lenge Mi­chael, Im­manuel, and the An­cients of Days and then point to the fact that no ac­tion en­sued as pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of the im­po­tency of the uni­verse and the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ments.

53:4.6Ga­briel was per­son­ally pres­ent through­out all these dis­loyal pro­ceed­ings and only an­nounced that he would, in due time, speak for Mi­chael, and that all be­ings would be left free and un­mo­lested in their choice; that the “gov­ern­ment of the Sons for the Fa­ther de­sired only that loy­alty and de­vo­tion which was vol­un­tary, whole­hearted, and soph­istry-proof.”

53:4.7Lu­cifer was per­mit­ted fully to es­tab­lish and thor­oughly to or­ga­nize his rebel gov­ern­ment be­fore Ga­briel made any ef­fort to con­test the right of se­ces­sion or to coun­ter­work the rebel pro­pa­ganda. But the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers im­me­di­ately con­fined the ac­tion of these dis­loyal per­son­al­i­ties to the sys­tem of Sa­ta­nia. Nev­er­the­less, this pe­riod of de­lay was a time of great trial and test­ing to the loyal be­ings of all Sa­ta­nia. All was chaotic for a few years, and there was great con­fu­sion on the man­sion worlds.

• Life Carriers may not arbitrarily influence

36:3.8When the Life Car­ri­ers op­er­at­ing on a new world have once suc­ceeded in pro­duc­ing a be­ing with will, with the power of moral de­ci­sion and spir­i­tual choice, then and there their work ter­mi­nates—they are through; they may ma­nip­u­late the evolv­ing life no fur­ther. From this point for­ward the evo­lu­tion of liv­ing things must pro­ceed in ac­cor­dance with the en­dow­ment of the in­her­ent na­ture and ten­den­cies which have al­ready been im­parted to, and es­tab­lished in, the plan­e­tary life for­mu­las and pat­terns. The Life Car­ri­ers are not per­mit­ted to ex­per­i­ment or to in­ter­fere with will; they are not al­lowed to dom­i­nate or ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence moral crea­tures.

• Life Carriers may not arbitrarily influence

62:5.9While we were all greatly con­cerned with what these two lit­tle sav­ages were plan­ning, we were pow­er­less to con­trol the work­ing of their minds; we did not—could not—ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence their de­ci­sions. But within the per­mis­si­ble lim­its of plan­e­tary func­tion, we, the Life Car­ri­ers, to­gether with our as­so­ciates, all con­spired to lead the hu­man twins north­ward and far from their hairy and par­tially tree-dwell­ing peo­ple. And so, by rea­son of their own in­tel­li­gent choice, the twins did mi­grate, and be­cause of our super­vi­sion they mi­grated north­ward to a se­cluded re­gion where they es­caped the pos­si­bil­ity of bi­o­logic degra­da­tion through ad­mix­ture with their in­fe­rior rel­a­tives of the Pri­mates tribes.

• decision of twins to flee was first act of

62:7.3“To the Life Car­ri­ers on Uran­tia—Greet­ings! We trans­mit as­sur­ance of great plea­sure on Sal­ving­ton, Eden­tia, and Je­ru­sem in honor of the reg­is­tra­tion on the head­quar­ters of Neb­a­don of the sig­nal of the ex­is­tence on Uran­tia of mind of will dig­nity. The pur­pose­ful de­ci­sion of the twins to flee north­ward and seg­re­gate their off­spring from their in­fe­rior an­ces­tors has been noted. This is the first de­ci­sion of mind—the hu­man type of mind—on Uran­tia and au­to­mat­i­cally es­tab­lishes the cir­cuit of com­mu­ni­ca­tion over which this ini­tial mes­sage of ac­knowl­edg­ment is trans­mit­ting.”

• decision of twins to flee was first act of

63:1.4The de­ci­sion of An­don and Fonta to flee from the Pri­mates tribes im­plies a qual­ity of mind far above the baser in­tel­li­gence which char­ac­ter­ized so many of their later de­scen­dants who stooped to mate with their re­tarded cousins of the simian tribes. But their vague feel­ing of be­ing some­thing more than mere an­i­mals was due to the pos­ses­sion of per­son­al­ity and was aug­mented by the in­dwelling pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers.

• development of speech usually coincides with acquiring

65:4.11It was our in­ten­tion to pro­duce an early man­i­fes­ta­tion of will in the evo­lu­tion­ary life of Uran­tia, and we suc­ceeded. Or­di­nar­ily, will does not emerge un­til the col­ored races have long been in ex­is­tence, usu­ally first ap­pear­ing among the su­pe­rior types of the red man. Your world is the only planet in Sa­ta­nia where the hu­man type of will has ap­peared in a pre­col­ored race.

• Edentia authorities would not intervene in rebellion until every person made final decision

67:2.6For more than seven years this strug­gle con­tin­ued. Not un­til ev­ery per­son­al­ity con­cerned had made a fi­nal de­ci­sion, would or did the au­thor­i­ties of Eden­tia in­ter­fere or in­ter­vene. Not un­til then did Van and his loyal as­so­ciates re­ceive vin­di­ca­tion and re­lease from their pro­longed anx­i­ety and in­tol­er­a­ble sus­pense.

110:2.1When Thought Ad­justers in­dwell hu­man minds, they bring with them the model ca­reers, the ideal lives, as de­ter­mined and fore­or­dained by them­selves and the Per­son­al­ized Ad­justers of Di­vin­ing­ton, which have been cer­ti­fied by the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of Uran­tia. Thus they be­gin work with a def­i­nite and pre­de­ter­mined plan for the in­tel­lec­tual and spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment of their hu­man sub­jects, but it is not in­cum­bent upon any hu­man be­ing to ac­cept this plan. You are all sub­jects of pre­des­ti­na­tion, but it is not fore­or­dained that you must ac­cept this di­vine pre­des­ti­na­tion; you are at full lib­erty to re­ject any part or all of the Thought Ad­justers’ pro­gram. It is their mis­sion to ef­fect such mind changes and to make such spir­i­tual ad­just­ments as you may will­ingly and in­tel­li­gently au­tho­rize, to the end that they may gain more in­flu­ence over the per­son­al­ity di­rec­tion­iza­tion; but un­der no cir­cum­stances do these di­vine Mon­i­tors ever take ad­van­tage of you or in any way ar­bi­trar­ily in­flu­ence you in your choices and de­ci­sions. The Ad­justers re­spect your sov­er­eignty of per­son­al­ity; they are al­ways sub­servient to your will.

110:2.2They are per­sis­tent, in­ge­nious, and per­fect in their meth­ods of work, but they never do vi­o­lence to the vo­li­tional self­hood of their hosts. No hu­man be­ing will ever be spir­i­tu­al­ized by a di­vine Mon­i­tor against his will; sur­vival is a gift of the Gods which must be de­sired by the crea­tures of time. In the fi­nal anal­y­sis, what­ever the Ad­juster has suc­ceeded in do­ing for you, the rec­ords will show that the trans­for­ma­tion has been ac­com­plished with your co-op­er­a­tive con­sent; you will have been a will­ing part­ner with the Ad­juster in the at­tain­ment of ev­ery step of the tremen­dous trans­for­ma­tion of the as­cen­sion ca­reer.

110:2.3The Ad­juster is not try­ing to con­trol your think­ing, as such, but rather to spir­i­tu­al­ize it, to eter­nal­ize it. Nei­ther an­gels nor Ad­justers are de­voted di­rectly to in­flu­enc­ing hu­man thought; that is your ex­clu­sive per­son­al­ity pre­rog­a­tive. The Ad­justers are ded­i­cated to im­prov­ing, mod­i­fy­ing, ad­just­ing, and co-or­di­nat­ing your think­ing pro­cesses; but more es­pe­cially and specif­i­cally they are de­voted to the work of build­ing up spir­i­tual coun­ter­parts of your ca­reers, mor­ontia tran­scripts of your true ad­vanc­ing selves, for sur­vival pur­poses.

110:2.4Ad­justers work in the spheres of the higher lev­els of the hu­man mind, un­ceas­ingly seek­ing to pro­duce mor­ontia du­pli­cates of ev­ery con­cept of the mor­tal in­tel­lect. There are, there­fore, two re­al­i­ties which im­pinge upon, and are cen­tered in, the hu­man mind cir­cuits: one, a mor­tal self evolved from the orig­i­nal plans of the Life Car­ri­ers, the other, an im­mor­tal en­tity from the high spheres of Di­vin­ing­ton, an in­dwelling gift from God. But the mor­tal self is also a per­sonal self; it has per­son­al­ity.

110:2.5You as a per­sonal crea­ture have mind and will. The Ad­juster as a preper­sonal crea­ture has pre­mind and prewill. If you so fully con­form to the Ad­juster’s mind that you see eye to eye, then your minds be­come one, and you re­ceive the re­in­force­ment of the Ad­juster’s mind. Sub­se­quently, if your will or­ders and en­forces the ex­e­cu­tion of the de­ci­sions of this new or com­bined mind, the Ad­juster’s preper­sonal will at­tains to per­son­al­ity ex­pres­sion through your de­ci­sion, and as far as that par­tic­u­lar project is con­cerned, you and the Ad­juster are one. Your mind has at­tained to di­vin­ity at­tune­ment, and the Ad­juster’s will has achieved per­son­al­ity ex­pres­sion.

110:2.6To the ex­tent that this iden­tity is re­al­ized, you are men­tally ap­proach­ing the mor­ontia or­der of ex­is­tence. Mor­ontia mind is a term sig­ni­fy­ing the sub­stance and sum to­tal of the co-op­er­at­ing minds of di­versely ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual na­tures. Mor­ontia in­tel­lect, there­fore, con­notes a dual mind in the lo­cal uni­verse dom­i­nated by one will. And with mor­tals this is a will, hu­man in ori­gin, which is be­com­ing di­vine through man’s iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the hu­man mind with the mind­ed­ness of God.

118:6.3Within a lo­cal frame, vo­li­tion may ap­pear to func­tion as an un­caused cause, but it un­fail­ingly ex­hibits in­her­i­tance fac­tors which es­tab­lish re­la­tion­ship with the unique, orig­i­nal, and ab­so­lute First Causes.

118:8.5The whole prin­ci­ple of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion makes it im­pos­si­ble for prim­i­tive man to ap­pear on the in­hab­ited worlds with any large en­dow­ment of self-re­straint. There­fore does the same cre­ative de­sign which pur­posed evo­lu­tion like­wise pro­vide those ex­ter­nal re­straints of time and space, hunger and fear, which ef­fec­tively cir­cum­scribe the sub­spir­i­tual choice range of such un­cul­tured crea­tures. As man’s mind suc­cess­fully over­strides in­creas­ingly dif­fi­cult bar­ri­ers, this same cre­ative de­sign has also pro­vided for the slow ac­cu­mu­la­tion of the racial her­itage of painfully gar­nered ex­pe­ri­en­tial wis­dom—in other words, for the main­te­nance of a bal­ance be­tween the di­min­ish­ing ex­ter­nal re­straints and the aug­ment­ing in­ter­nal re­straints.

16:8.7The rel­a­tive free will which char­ac­ter­izes the self-con­scious­ness of hu­man per­son­al­ity is in­volved in:

16:8.81. Moral de­ci­sion, high­est wis­dom.

16:8.92. Spir­i­tual choice, truth dis­cern­ment.

16:8.103. Un­selfish love, broth­er­hood ser­vice.

16:8.114. Pur­pose­ful co-op­er­a­tion, group loy­alty.

16:8.125. Cos­mic in­sight, the grasp of uni­verse mean­ings.

16:8.136. Per­son­al­ity ded­i­ca­tion, whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

16:8.147. Wor­ship, the sin­cere pur­suit of di­vine val­ues and the whole­hearted love of the di­vine Value-Giver.

3:5.15Through­out the uni­verse, ev­ery unit is re­garded as a part of the whole. Sur­vival of the part is de­pen­dent on co-op­er­a­tion with the plan and pur­pose of the whole, the whole­hearted de­sire and per­fect will­ing­ness to do the Fa­ther’s di­vine will. The only evo­lu­tion­ary world with­out er­ror (the pos­si­bil­ity of un­wise judg­ment) would be a world with­out free in­tel­li­gence. In the Ha­vona uni­verse there are a bil­lion per­fect worlds with their per­fect in­hab­i­tants, but evolv­ing man must be fal­li­ble if he is to be free. Free and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­tel­li­gence can­not pos­si­bly at first be uni­formly wise. The pos­si­bil­ity of mis­taken judg­ment (evil) be­comes sin only when the hu­man will con­sciously en­dorses and know­ingly em­braces a de­lib­er­ate im­moral judg­ment.

25:3.7The mo­ment the Cre­ators bring into ex­is­tence evolv­ing in­di­vid­u­als with the power of choice, that mo­ment a de­par­ture is made from the smooth work­ing of di­vine per­fec­tion; mis­un­der­stand­ings are cer­tain to arise, and pro­vi­sion for the fair ad­just­ment of these hon­est dif­fer­ences of view­point must be made. We should all re­mem­ber that the all-wise and all-pow­er­ful Cre­ators could have made the lo­cal uni­verses just as per­fect as Ha­vona. No con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions need func­tion in the cen­tral uni­verse. But the Cre­ators did not choose in their all-wis­dom to do this. And while they have pro­duced uni­verses which abound in dif­fer­ences and teem with dif­fi­cul­ties, they have like­wise pro­vided the mech­a­nisms and the means for com­pos­ing all these dif­fer­ences and for har­mo­niz­ing all this seem­ing con­fu­sion.

103:5.10Man, in his spir­i­tual do­main, does have a free will. Mor­tal man is nei­ther a help­less slave of the in­flex­i­ble sov­er­eignty of an all-pow­er­ful God nor the vic­tim of the hope­less fa­tal­ity of a mech­a­nis­tic cos­mic de­ter­min­ism. Man is most truly the ar­chi­tect of his own eter­nal des­tiny.

118:7.2Even the su­preme cor­re­la­tion of all past, pres­ent, and fu­ture choice does not in­val­i­date the au­then­tic­ity of such choos­ings. It rather in­di­cates the fore­or­dained trend of the cos­mos and sug­gests fore­knowl­edge of those vo­li­tional be­ings who may, or may not, elect to be­come con­trib­u­tory parts of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­tu­al­iza­tion of all re­al­ity.

118:7.4Sin in time-con­di­tioned space clearly proves the tem­po­ral lib­erty—even li­cense—of the fi­nite will. Sin de­picts im­ma­tu­rity daz­zled by the free­dom of the rel­a­tively sov­er­eign will of per­son­al­ity while fail­ing to per­ceive the su­preme obli­ga­tions and du­ties of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship.

118:7.5In­iq­uity in the fi­nite do­mains re­veals the tran­sient re­al­ity of all God-uniden­ti­fied self­hood. Only as a crea­ture be­comes God iden­ti­fied, does he be­come truly real in the uni­verses. Fi­nite per­son­al­ity is not self-cre­ated, but in the super­uni­verse arena of choice it does self-de­ter­mine des­tiny.

118:7.6The be­stowal of life ren­ders ma­te­rial-en­ergy sys­tems ca­pa­ble of self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-prop­a­ga­tion, and self-adap­ta­tion. The be­stowal of per­son­al­ity im­parts to liv­ing or­gan­isms the fur­ther pre­rog­a­tives of self-de­ter­mi­na­tion, self-evo­lu­tion, and self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with a fu­sion spirit of De­ity.

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.

12:8.3What­ever the trans­for­ma­tions of force in the out­ly­ing uni­verses, hav­ing gone out from Par­a­dise, it jour­neys on sub­ject to the never-end­ing, ever-pres­ent, un­fail­ing pull of the eter­nal Isle, obe­di­ently and in­her­ently swing­ing on for­ever around the eter­nal space paths of the uni­verses. Phys­i­cal en­ergy is the one re­al­ity which is true and stead­fast in its obe­di­ence to uni­ver­sal law. Only in the realms of crea­ture vo­li­tion has there been de­vi­a­tion from the di­vine paths and the orig­i­nal plans. Power and en­ergy are the uni­ver­sal ev­i­dences of the sta­bil­ity, con­stancy, and eter­nity of the cen­tral Isle of Par­a­dise.

116:4.8In the lo­cal uni­verses even the Cre­ators evolve: The pres­ence of the Con­joint Ac­tor evolves from a liv­ing power fo­cus to the sta­tus of the di­vine per­son­al­ity of a Uni­verse Mother Spirit; the Cre­ator Son evolves from the na­ture of ex­is­ten­tial Par­a­dise di­vin­ity to the ex­pe­ri­en­tial na­ture of su­preme sov­er­eignty. The lo­cal uni­verses are the start­ing points of true evo­lu­tion, the spawn­ing grounds of bona fide im­per­fect per­son­al­i­ties en­dowed with the free­will choice of be­com­ing cocre­ators of them­selves as they are to be.

116:4.11The lo­cal uni­verse is the start­ing place for those per­son­al­i­ties who are far­thest from God, and who can there­fore ex­pe­ri­ence the great­est de­gree of spir­i­tual as­cent in the uni­verse, can achieve the max­i­mum of ex­pe­ri­en­tial par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cocre­ation of them­selves. These same lo­cal uni­verses like­wise pro­vide the great­est pos­si­ble depth of ex­pe­ri­ence for the de­scend­ing per­son­al­i­ties, who thereby achieve some­thing which is to them just as mean­ing­ful as the Par­a­dise as­cent is to an evolv­ing crea­ture.

5:5.5Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion is the mother of the sci­ence, art, and phi­los­o­phy which el­e­vated man to the level of re­cep­tiv­ity to re­vealed re­li­gion, in­clud­ing the be­stowal of Ad­justers and the com­ing of the Spirit of Truth. The evo­lu­tion­ary pic­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence be­gins and ends with re­li­gion, al­beit very dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties of re­li­gion, one evo­lu­tional and bi­o­log­i­cal, the other rev­e­la­tional and pe­ri­od­i­cal. And so, while re­li­gion is nor­mal and nat­u­ral to man, it is also op­tional. Man does not have to be re­li­gious against his will.

156:5.5“But let me warn you against the folly of un­der­tak­ing to sur­mount temp­ta­tion by the ef­fort of sup­plant­ing one de­sire by an­other and sup­pos­edly su­pe­rior de­sire through the mere force of the hu­man will. If you would be truly tri­umphant over the temp­ta­tions of the lesser and lower na­ture, you must come to that place of spir­i­tual ad­van­tage where you have re­ally and truly de­vel­oped an ac­tual in­ter­est in, and love for, those higher and more ide­al­is­tic forms of con­duct which your mind is de­sirous of sub­sti­tut­ing for these lower and less ide­al­is­tic habits of be­hav­ior that you rec­og­nize as temp­ta­tion. You will in this way be de­liv­ered through spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion rather than be in­creas­ingly over­bur­dened with the de­cep­tive sup­pres­sion of mor­tal de­sires. The old and the in­fe­rior will be for­got­ten in the love for the new and the su­pe­rior. Beauty is al­ways tri­umphant over ug­li­ness in the hearts of all who are il­lu­mi­nated by the love of truth. There is mighty power in the ex­pul­sive en­ergy of a new and sin­cere spir­i­tual af­fec­tion. And again I say to you, be not over­come by evil but rather over­come evil with good.”

54:4.3The very fact that an evil-do­ing crea­ture can ac­tu­ally choose to do wrong—com­mit sin—es­tab­lishes the fact of free-will­ness and fully jus­ti­fies any length de­lay in the ex­e­cu­tion of jus­tice pro­vided the ex­tended mercy might con­duce to re­pen­tance and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.