soul

• ascends with divine spirit to Father

0:5.104. Soul. The soul of man is an ex­pe­ri­en­tial ac­quire­ment. As a mor­tal crea­ture chooses to “do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven,” so the in­dwelling spirit be­comes the fa­ther of a new re­al­ity in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. The mor­tal and ma­te­rial mind is the mother of this same emerg­ing re­al­ity. The sub­stance of this new re­al­ity is nei­ther ma­te­rial nor spir­i­tual—it is mor­ontial. This is the emerg­ing and im­mor­tal soul which is des­tined to sur­vive mor­tal death and be­gin the Par­a­dise as­cen­sion.

• soul is what survives death

36:6.5The life be­stowed upon plants and an­i­mals by the Life Car­ri­ers does not re­turn to the Life Car­ri­ers upon the death of plant or an­i­mal. The de­part­ing life of such a liv­ing thing pos­sesses nei­ther iden­tity nor per­son­al­ity; it does not in­di­vid­u­ally sur­vive death. Dur­ing its ex­is­tence and the time of its so­journ in the body of mat­ter, it has un­der­gone a change; it has un­der­gone en­ergy evo­lu­tion and sur­vives only as a part of the cos­mic forces of the uni­verse; it does not sur­vive as in­di­vid­ual life. The sur­vival of mor­tal crea­tures is wholly pred­i­cated on the evolve­ment of an im­mor­tal soul within the mor­tal mind.

• no memory, but response to past experience

40:9.4There is, how­ever, one par­tic­u­lar in which Spirit-fused mor­tals dif­fer from their as­cen­dant breth­ren: Mor­tal mem­ory of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on the ma­te­rial worlds of ori­gin sur­vives death in the flesh be­cause the in­dwelling Ad­juster has ac­quired a spirit coun­ter­part, or tran­script, of those events of hu­man life which were of spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance. But with Spirit-fused mor­tals there ex­ists no such mech­a­nism whereby hu­man mem­ory may per­sist. The Ad­juster tran­scripts of mem­ory are full and in­tact, but these ac­qui­si­tions are ex­pe­ri­en­tial pos­ses­sions of the de­parted Ad­justers and are not avail­able to the crea­tures of their for­mer in­dwelling, who there­fore awaken in the res­ur­rec­tion halls of the mor­ontia spheres of Neb­a­don as if they were newly cre­ated be­ings, crea­tures with­out con­scious­ness of for­mer ex­is­tence.

40:9.5Such chil­dren of the lo­cal uni­verse are en­abled to re­pos­sess them­selves of much of their for­mer hu­man mem­ory ex­pe­ri­ence through hav­ing it re­told by the as­so­ci­ated ser­a­phim and cheru­bim and by con­sult­ing the rec­ords of the mor­tal ca­reer filed by the record­ing an­gels. This they can do with un­doubted as­sur­ance be­cause the sur­viv­ing soul, of ex­pe­ri­en­tial ori­gin in the ma­te­rial and mor­tal life, while hav­ing no mem­ory of mor­tal events, does have a resid­ual ex­pe­ri­en­tial-rec­og­ni­tion-re­sponse to these un­re­mem­bered events of past ex­pe­ri­ence.

40:9.6When a Spirit-fused mor­tal is told about the events of the un­re­mem­bered past ex­pe­ri­ence, there is an im­me­di­ate re­sponse of ex­pe­ri­en­tial rec­og­ni­tion within the soul (iden­tity) of such a sur­vivor which in­stantly in­vests the nar­rated event with the emo­tional tinge of re­al­ity and with the in­tel­lec­tual qual­ity of fact; and this dual re­sponse con­sti­tutes the re­con­struc­tion, rec­og­ni­tion, and val­i­da­tion of an un­re­mem­bered facet of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence.

40:9.7Even with Ad­juster-fu­sion can­di­dates, only those hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences which were of spir­i­tual value are com­mon pos­ses­sions of the sur­viv­ing mor­tal and the re­turn­ing Ad­juster and hence are im­me­di­ately re­mem­bered sub­se­quent to mor­tal sur­vival. Con­cern­ing those hap­pen­ings which were not of spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance, even these Ad­juster-fusers must de­pend upon the at­tri­bute of rec­og­ni­tion-re­sponse in the sur­viv­ing soul. And since any one event may have a spir­i­tual con­no­ta­tion to one mor­tal but not to an­other, it be­comes pos­si­ble for a group of con­tem­po­rary as­cend­ers from the same planet to pool their store of Ad­juster-re­mem­bered events and thus to re­con­struct any ex­pe­ri­ence which they had in com­mon, and which was of spir­i­tual value in the life of any one of them.

40:9.8While we un­der­stand such tech­niques of mem­ory re­con­struc­tion fairly well, we do not grasp the tech­nique of per­son­al­ity rec­og­ni­tion. Per­son­al­i­ties of one­time as­so­ci­a­tion mu­tu­ally re­spond quite in­de­pen­dently of the op­er­a­tion of mem­ory, al­beit, mem­ory it­self and the tech­niques of its re­con­struc­tion are nec­es­sary to in­vest such mu­tual per­son­al­ity re­sponse with the full­ness of rec­og­ni­tion.

40:9.9A Spirit-fused sur­vivor is also able to learn much about the life he lived in the flesh by re­vis­it­ing his na­tiv­ity world sub­se­quent to the plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion in which he lived. Such chil­dren of Spirit fu­sion are en­abled to en­joy these op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­ves­ti­gat­ing their hu­man ca­reers since they are in gen­eral con­fined to the ser­vice of the lo­cal uni­verse. They do not share your high and ex­alted des­tiny in the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity; only Ad­juster-fused mor­tals or other es­pe­cially em­braced as­cen­dant be­ings are mus­tered into the ranks of those who await the eter­nal De­ity ad­ven­ture. Spirit-fused mor­tals are the per­ma­nent cit­i­zens of the lo­cal uni­verses; they may as­pire to Par­a­dise des­tiny, but they can­not be sure of it. In Neb­a­don their uni­verse home is the eighth group of worlds en­cir­cling Sal­ving­ton, a des­tiny-heaven of na­ture and lo­ca­tion much like the one en­vi­sioned by the plan­e­tary tra­di­tions of Uran­tia.

• sleeping survivors’ souls held by personal or group guardian seraphim

47:3.3The mor­tal-mind tran­scripts and the ac­tive crea­ture-mem­ory pat­terns as trans­formed from the ma­te­rial lev­els to the spir­i­tual are the in­di­vid­ual pos­ses­sion of the de­tached Thought Ad­justers; these spir­i­tized fac­tors of mind, mem­ory, and crea­ture per­son­al­ity are for­ever a part of such Ad­justers. The crea­ture mind-ma­trix and the pas­sive po­ten­tials of iden­tity are pres­ent in the mor­ontia soul in­trusted to the keep­ing of the se­raphic des­tiny guard­i­ans. And it is the re­unit­ing of the mor­ontia-soul trust of the ser­a­phim and the spirit-mind trust of the Ad­juster that re­assem­bles crea­ture per­son­al­ity and con­sti­tutes res­ur­rec­tion of a sleep­ing sur­vivor.

• no mortal survival apart from evolution of s.

49:4.9But mor­tal mind with­out im­mor­tal spirit can­not sur­vive. The mind of man is mor­tal; only the be­stowed spirit is im­mor­tal. Sur­vival is de­pen­dent on spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion by the min­istry of the Ad­juster—on the birth and evo­lu­tion of the im­mor­tal soul; at least, there must not have de­vel­oped an an­tag­o­nism to­wards the Ad­juster’s mis­sion of ef­fect­ing the spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion of the ma­te­rial mind.

• sleeping survivors’ souls held by personal or group guardian seraphim

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.

• no self-consciousness without Adjuster

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.

• soul makes final decisions only after physical death, except as permitted by mortal will

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.

• survival gained by transferring seat of personality identity from material body to s.

112:2.20The ma­te­rial self, the ego-en­tity of hu­man iden­tity, is de­pen­dent dur­ing the phys­i­cal life on the con­tin­u­ing func­tion of the ma­te­rial life ve­hi­cle, on the con­tin­ued ex­is­tence of the un­bal­anced equi­lib­rium of en­er­gies and in­tel­lect which, on Uran­tia, has been given the name life. But self­hood of sur­vival value, self­hood that can tran­scend the ex­pe­ri­ence of death, is only evolved by es­tab­lish­ing a po­ten­tial trans­fer of the seat of the iden­tity of the evolv­ing per­son­al­ity from the tran­sient life ve­hi­cle—the ma­te­rial body—to the more en­dur­ing and im­mor­tal na­ture of the mor­ontia soul and on be­yond to those lev­els whereon the soul be­comes in­fused with, and even­tu­ally at­tains the sta­tus of, spirit re­al­ity. This ac­tual trans­fer from ma­te­rial as­so­ci­a­tion to mor­ontia iden­ti­fi­ca­tion is ef­fected by the sin­cer­ity, per­sis­tence, and stead­fast­ness of the God-seek­ing de­ci­sions of the hu­man crea­ture.

• sleeping survivors’ souls held by personal or group guardian seraphim

112:3.5Af­ter death the ma­te­rial body re­turns to the el­e­men­tal world from which it was de­rived, but two non­ma­te­rial fac­tors of sur­viv­ing per­son­al­ity per­sist: The pre-ex­is­tent Thought Ad­juster, with the mem­ory tran­scrip­tion of the mor­tal ca­reer, pro­ceeds to Di­vin­ing­ton; and there also re­mains, in the cus­tody of the des­tiny guard­ian, the im­mor­tal mor­ontia soul of the de­ceased hu­man. These phases and forms of soul, these once ki­netic but now static for­mu­las of iden­tity, are es­sen­tial to reper­son­al­iza­tion on the mor­ontia worlds; and it is the re­union of the Ad­juster and the soul that re­assem­bles the sur­viv­ing per­son­al­ity, that re­con­sciou­sizes you at the time of the mor­ontia awak­en­ing.

• unconscious from death to repersonalization

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.

• unconscious from death to repersonalization

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.

• no self-consciousness without Adjuster
• possesses continuing character derived from former associated adjutant mind

112:6.7Mor­tal mind, prior to death, is self-con­sciously in­de­pen­dent of the Ad­juster pres­ence; ad­ju­tant mind needs only the as­so­ci­ated ma­te­rial-en­ergy pat­tern to en­able it to op­er­ate. But the mor­ontia soul, be­ing super­ad­ju­tant, does not re­tain self-con­scious­ness with­out the Ad­juster when de­prived of the ma­te­rial-mind mech­a­nism. This evolv­ing soul does, how­ever, pos­sess a con­tin­u­ing char­ac­ter de­rived from the de­ci­sions of its for­mer as­so­ci­ated ad­ju­tant mind, and this char­ac­ter be­comes ac­tive mem­ory when the pat­terns thereof are en­er­gized by the re­turn­ing Ad­juster.

• soul is what survives death

133:6.5“The soul is the self-re­flec­tive, truth-dis­cern­ing, and spirit-per­ceiv­ing part of man which for­ever el­e­vates the hu­man be­ing above the level of the an­i­mal world. Self-con­scious­ness, in and of it­self, is not the soul. Moral self-con­scious­ness is true hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion and con­sti­tutes the foun­da­tion of the hu­man soul, and the soul is that part of man which rep­re­sents the po­ten­tial sur­vival value of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Moral choice and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, the abil­ity to know God and the urge to be like him, are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soul. The soul of man can­not ex­ist apart from moral think­ing and spir­i­tual ac­tiv­ity. A stag­nant soul is a dy­ing soul. But the soul of man is dis­tinct from the di­vine spirit which dwells within the mind. The di­vine spirit ar­rives si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the first moral ac­tiv­ity of the hu­man mind, and that is the oc­ca­sion of the birth of the soul.

• ascends with divine spirit to Father

149:6.9“Out of your wrong con­cepts of the Fa­ther in heaven grow your false ideas of hu­mil­ity and springs much of your hypocrisy. Man may be a worm of the dust by na­ture and ori­gin, but when he be­comes in­dwelt by my Fa­ther’s spirit, that man be­comes di­vine in his des­tiny. The be­stowal spirit of my Fa­ther will surely re­turn to the di­vine source and uni­verse level of ori­gin, and the hu­man soul of mor­tal man which shall have be­come the re­born child of this in­dwelling spirit shall cer­tainly as­cend with the di­vine spirit to the very pres­ence of the eter­nal Fa­ther.

• transcript of human experience

188:3.4We are not able fully to ex­plain just what hap­pened to Je­sus of Naz­a­reth dur­ing this pe­riod of a day and a half when he was sup­posed to be rest­ing in Joseph’s new tomb. Ap­par­ently he died the same nat­u­ral death on the cross as would any other mor­tal in the same cir­cum­stances. We heard him say, “Fa­ther, into your hands I com­mend my spirit.” We do not fully un­der­stand the mean­ing of such a state­ment inas­much as his Thought Ad­juster had long since been per­son­al­ized and so main­tained an ex­is­tence apart from Je­sus’ mor­tal be­ing. The Mas­ter’s Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster could in no sense be af­fected by his phys­i­cal death on the cross. That which Je­sus put in the Fa­ther’s hands for the time be­ing must have been the spirit coun­ter­part of the Ad­juster’s early work in spir­i­tiz­ing the mor­tal mind so as to pro­vide for the trans­fer of the tran­script of the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence to the man­sion worlds. There must have been some spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus which was anal­o­gous to the spirit na­ture, or soul, of the faith-grow­ing mor­tals of the spheres. But this is merely our opin­ion—we do not re­ally know what Je­sus com­mended to his Fa­ther.

131:10.2“The Lord our God is one Lord, and you should love him with all your mind and heart while you do your very best to love all his chil­dren as you love your­self. This one God is our heav­enly Fa­ther, in whom all things con­sist, and who dwells, by his spirit, in ev­ery sin­cere hu­man soul. And we who are the chil­dren of God should learn how to com­mit the keep­ing of our souls to him as to a faith­ful Cre­ator. With our heav­enly Fa­ther all things are pos­si­ble. Since he is the Cre­ator, hav­ing made all things and all be­ings, it could not be oth­er­wise. Though we can­not see God, we can know him. And by daily liv­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, we can re­veal him to our fel­low men.

• following spirit leading transmutes spirit phases into s.

1:3.7In the in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of man, mind is joined to mat­ter. Such ma­te­rial-linked minds can­not sur­vive mor­tal death. The tech­nique of sur­vival is em­braced in those ad­just­ments of the hu­man will and those trans­for­ma­tions in the mor­tal mind whereby such a God-con­scious in­tel­lect grad­u­ally be­comes spirit taught and even­tu­ally spirit led. This evo­lu­tion of the hu­man mind from mat­ter as­so­ci­a­tion to spirit union re­sults in the trans­mu­ta­tion of the po­ten­tially spirit phases of the mor­tal mind into the mor­ontia re­al­i­ties of the im­mor­tal soul. Mor­tal mind sub­servient to mat­ter is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly ma­te­rial and con­se­quently to suf­fer even­tual per­son­al­ity ex­tinc­tion; mind yielded to spirit is des­tined to be­come in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual and ul­ti­mately to achieve one­ness with the sur­viv­ing and guid­ing di­vine spirit and in this way to at­tain sur­vival and eter­nity of per­son­al­ity ex­is­tence.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

5:2.5It is ex­ceed­ingly dif­fi­cult for the mea­gerly spir­i­tu­al­ized, ma­te­rial mind of mor­tal man to ex­pe­ri­ence marked con­scious­ness of the spirit ac­tiv­i­ties of such di­vine en­ti­ties as the Par­a­dise Ad­justers. As the soul of joint mind and Ad­juster cre­ation be­comes in­creas­ingly ex­is­tent, there also evolves a new phase of soul con­scious­ness which is ca­pa­ble of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the pres­ence, and of rec­og­niz­ing the spirit lead­ings and other super­ma­te­rial ac­tiv­i­ties, of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tors.

• grows independently of mental culture

5:3.7Sin­cere wor­ship con­notes the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity un­der the dom­i­nance of the evolv­ing soul and sub­ject to the di­vine di­rec­tion­iza­tion of the as­so­ci­ated Thought Ad­juster. The mind of ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions can never be­come highly con­scious of the real sig­nif­i­cance of true wor­ship. Man’s re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence is chiefly de­ter­mined by the de­vel­op­men­tal sta­tus of his evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. The spir­i­tual growth of the soul takes place wholly in­de­pen­dently of the in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

5:3.8The wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in the sub­lime at­tempt of the be­trothed Ad­juster to com­mu­ni­cate to the di­vine Fa­ther the in­ex­press­ible long­ings and the un­ut­ter­able as­pi­ra­tions of the hu­man soul—the con­joint cre­ation of the God-seek­ing mor­tal mind and the God-re­veal­ing im­mor­tal Ad­juster. Wor­ship is, there­fore, the act of the ma­te­rial mind’s as­sent­ing to the at­tempt of its spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing self, un­der the guid­ance of the as­so­ci­ated spirit, to com­mu­ni­cate with God as a faith son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The mor­tal mind con­sents to wor­ship; the im­mor­tal soul craves and ini­ti­ates wor­ship; the di­vine Ad­juster pres­ence con­ducts such wor­ship in be­half of the mor­tal mind and the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. True wor­ship, in the last anal­y­sis, be­comes an ex­pe­ri­ence re­al­ized on four cos­mic lev­els: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, the spir­i­tual, and the per­sonal—the con­scious­ness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their uni­fi­ca­tion in per­son­al­ity.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

5:5.14The abil­ity of mor­tal par­ents to pro­cre­ate is not pred­i­cated on their ed­u­ca­tional, cul­tural, so­cial, or eco­nomic sta­tus. The union of the pa­ren­tal fac­tors un­der nat­u­ral con­di­tions is quite suf­fi­cient to ini­ti­ate off­spring. A hu­man mind dis­cern­ing right and wrong and pos­sess­ing the ca­pac­ity to wor­ship God, in union with a di­vine Ad­juster, is all that is re­quired in that mor­tal to ini­ti­ate and fos­ter the pro­duc­tion of his im­mor­tal soul of sur­vival qual­i­ties if such a spirit-en­dowed in­di­vid­ual seeks God and sin­cerely de­sires to be­come like him, hon­estly elects to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

5:6.7The ma­te­rial self has per­son­al­ity and iden­tity, tem­po­ral iden­tity; the preper­sonal spirit Ad­juster also has iden­tity, eter­nal iden­tity. This ma­te­rial per­son­al­ity and this spirit preper­son­al­ity are ca­pa­ble of so unit­ing their cre­ative at­tri­butes as to bring into ex­is­tence the sur­viv­ing iden­tity of the im­mor­tal soul.

• man must will creation of the s.

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.

• mystery of Ascendington
• potentially immortal spiritual counterpart built up in mortal mind

13:1.22The se­crets of As­cend­ing­ton in­clude the mys­tery of the grad­ual and cer­tain build­ing up in the ma­te­rial and mor­tal mind of a spir­i­tual and po­ten­tially im­mor­tal coun­ter­part of char­ac­ter and iden­tity. This phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tutes one of the most per­plex­ing mys­ter­ies of the uni­verses—the evo­lu­tion of an im­mor­tal soul within the mind of a mor­tal and ma­te­rial crea­ture.

13:1.23You will never fully un­der­stand this mys­te­ri­ous trans­ac­tion un­til you reach As­cend­ing­ton. And that is just why all As­cend­ing­ton will be open to your won­der­ing gaze. One sev­enth of As­cend­ing­ton is for­bid­den to me—that sec­tor con­cerned with this very se­cret which is (or will be) the ex­clu­sive ex­pe­ri­ence and pos­ses­sion of your type of be­ing. This ex­pe­ri­ence be­longs to your hu­man or­der of ex­is­tence. My or­der of per­son­al­ity is not di­rectly con­cerned with such trans­ac­tions. It is there­fore for­bid­den to me and even­tu­ally re­vealed to you. But even af­ter it is re­vealed to you, for some rea­son it for­ever re­mains your se­cret. You do not re­veal it to us nor to any other or­der of be­ings. We know about the eter­nal fu­sion of a di­vine Ad­juster and an im­mor­tal soul of hu­man ori­gin, but the as­cen­dant fi­nal­i­ters know this very ex­pe­ri­ence as an ab­so­lute re­al­ity.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster
• man’s supreme undertaking

16:9.2The God-dis­cern­ing mor­tal is able to sense the uni­fi­ca­tion value of these three cos­mic qual­i­ties in the evo­lu­tion of the sur­viv­ing soul, man’s su­preme un­der­tak­ing in the phys­i­cal taber­na­cle where the moral mind col­lab­o­rates with the in­dwelling di­vine spirit to du­al­ize the im­mor­tal soul. From its ear­li­est in­cep­tion the soul is real; it has cos­mic sur­vival qual­i­ties.

• Adjuster fosters s. in mortals destined for Spirit fusion

37:5.1The High Com­mis­sion­ers are Spirit-fused as­cen­dant mor­tals; they are not Ad­juster fused. You quite well un­der­stand about the uni­verse-as­cen­sion ca­reer of a mor­tal can­di­date for Ad­juster fu­sion, that be­ing the high des­tiny in prospect for all Uran­tia mor­tals since the be­stowal of Christ Mi­chael. But this is not the ex­clu­sive des­tiny of all mor­tals in the pre­be­stowal ages of worlds like yours, and there is an­other type of world whose in­hab­i­tants are never per­ma­nently in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers. Such mor­tals are never per­ma­nently joined in union with a Mys­tery Mon­i­tor of Par­a­dise be­stowal; nev­er­the­less, the Ad­justers do tran­siently in­dwell them, serv­ing as guides and pat­terns for the du­ra­tion of the life in the flesh. Dur­ing this tem­po­rary so­journ they fos­ter the evo­lu­tion of an im­mor­tal soul just as in those be­ings with whom they hope to fuse, but when the mor­tal race is run, they take eter­nal leave of the crea­tures of tem­po­rary as­so­ci­a­tion.

37:5.2Sur­viv­ing souls of this or­der at­tain im­mor­tal­ity by eter­nal fu­sion with an in­di­vid­u­al­ized frag­ment of the spirit of the lo­cal uni­verse Mother Spirit. They are not a nu­mer­ous group, at least not in Neb­a­don. On the man­sion worlds you will meet and frat­er­nize with these Spirit-fused mor­tals as they as­cend the Par­a­dise path with you as far as Sal­ving­ton, where they stop. Some of them may sub­se­quently as­cend to higher uni­verse lev­els, but the ma­jor­ity will for­ever re­main in the ser­vice of the lo­cal uni­verse; as a class they are not des­tined to at­tain Par­a­dise.

37:5.3Not be­ing Ad­juster fused, they never be­come fi­nal­i­ters, but they do even­tu­ally be­come en­rolled in the lo­cal uni­verse Corps of Per­fec­tion. They have in spirit obeyed the Fa­ther’s com­mand, “Be you per­fect.”

37:5.4Af­ter at­tain­ing the Neb­a­don Corps of Per­fec­tion, Spirit-fused as­cend­ers may ac­cept as­sign­ment as Uni­verse Aids, this be­ing one of the av­enues of con­tin­u­ing ex­pe­ri­en­tial growth which is open to them. Thus do they be­come can­di­dates for com­mis­sions to the high ser­vice of in­ter­pret­ing the view­points of the evolv­ing crea­tures of the ma­te­rial worlds to the ce­les­tial au­thor­i­ties of the lo­cal uni­verse.

• grows independently of mental culture

65:8.4As mind evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on, and de­layed by, the slow de­vel­op­ment of phys­i­cal con­di­tions, so is spir­i­tual prog­ress de­pen­dent on men­tal ex­pan­sion and un­fail­ingly de­layed by in­tel­lec­tual re­tar­da­tion. But this does not mean that spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is de­pen­dent on ed­u­ca­tion, cul­ture, or wis­dom. The soul may evolve re­gard­less of men­tal cul­ture but not in the ab­sence of men­tal ca­pac­ity and de­sire—the choice of sur­vival and the de­ci­sion to achieve ever-in­creas­ing per­fec­tion—to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Al­though sur­vival may not de­pend on the pos­ses­sion of knowl­edge and wis­dom, pro­gres­sion most cer­tainly does.

• moral choice causes divine invasion of

65:8.6When phys­i­cal con­di­tions are ripe, sud­den men­tal evo­lu­tions may take place; when mind sta­tus is pro­pi­tious, sud­den spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tions may oc­cur; when spir­i­tual val­ues re­ceive proper rec­og­ni­tion, then cos­mic mean­ings be­come dis­cern­i­ble, and in­creas­ingly the per­son­al­ity is re­leased from the hand­i­caps of time and de­liv­ered from the lim­i­ta­tions of space.

• embryonic during mortal life

66:4.9This group, while en­joy­ing pro­vi­sional cit­i­zen­ship on Je­ru­sem, were as yet un­fused with their Thought Ad­justers; and when they vol­un­teered and were ac­cepted for plan­e­tary ser­vice in li­ai­son with the de­scend­ing or­ders of son­ship, their Ad­justers were de­tached. But these Jerusemites were super­hu­man be­ings—they pos­sessed souls of as­cen­dant growth. Dur­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh the soul is of em­bry­onic es­tate; it is born (res­ur­rected) in the mor­ontia life and ex­pe­ri­ences growth through the suc­ces­sive mor­ontia worlds. And the souls of the Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred had thus ex­panded through the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ences of the seven man­sion worlds to cit­i­zen­ship sta­tus on Je­ru­sem.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

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.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

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.

• Adjuster is eternal ancestor of the s.

108:6.7The Ad­justers are the eter­nal an­ces­tors, the di­vine orig­i­nals, of your evolv­ing im­mor­tal souls; they are the un­ceas­ing urge that leads man to at­tempt the mas­tery of the ma­te­rial and pres­ent ex­is­tence in the light of the spir­i­tual and fu­ture ca­reer. The Mon­i­tors are the pris­on­ers of undy­ing hope, the founts of ev­er­last­ing pro­gres­sion. And how they do en­joy com­mu­ni­cat­ing with their sub­jects in more or less di­rect chan­nels! How they re­joice when they can dis­pense with sym­bols and other meth­ods of in­di­rec­tion and flash their mes­sages straight to the in­tel­lects of their hu­man part­ners!

• evolves as psychic circles attained

110:6.92. Soul evo­lu­tion. The emer­gence of the mor­ontia soul in­di­cates the ex­tent and depth of cir­cle mas­tery.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

111:2.10The in­ev­i­ta­ble re­sult of such a con­tac­tual spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the hu­man mind is the grad­ual birth of a soul, the joint off­spring of an ad­ju­tant mind dom­i­nated by a hu­man will that craves to know God, work­ing in li­ai­son with the spir­i­tual forces of the uni­verse which are un­der the over­con­trol of an ac­tual frag­ment of the very God of all cre­ation—the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor. And thus does the ma­te­rial and mor­tal re­al­ity of the self tran­scend the tem­po­ral lim­i­ta­tions of the phys­i­cal-life ma­chine and at­tain a new ex­pres­sion and a new iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in the evolv­ing ve­hi­cle for self­hood con­ti­nu­ity, the mor­ontia and im­mor­tal soul.

• mistakes and errors may delay evolution of s., but cannot inhibit it once initiated

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.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

112:5.12There is some­thing real, some­thing of hu­man evo­lu­tion, some­thing ad­di­tional to the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor, which sur­vives death. This newly ap­pear­ing en­tity is the soul, and it sur­vives the death of both your phys­i­cal body and your ma­te­rial mind. This en­tity is the con­joint child of the com­bined life and ef­forts of the hu­man you in li­ai­son with the di­vine you, the Ad­juster. This child of hu­man and di­vine parent­age con­sti­tutes the sur­viv­ing el­e­ment of ter­res­trial ori­gin; it is the mor­ontia self, the im­mor­tal soul.

• by man’s urge for Paradise perfection, striving for God-attainment

116:7.6Man’s urge for Par­a­dise per­fec­tion, his striv­ing for God-at­tain­ment, cre­ates a gen­uine di­vin­ity ten­sion in the liv­ing cos­mos which can only be re­solved by the evo­lu­tion of an im­mor­tal soul; this is what hap­pens in the ex­pe­ri­ence of a sin­gle mor­tal crea­ture. But when all crea­tures and all Cre­ators in the grand uni­verse like­wise strive for God-at­tain­ment and di­vine per­fec­tion, there is built up a pro­found cos­mic ten­sion which can only find res­o­lu­tion in the sub­lime syn­the­sis of al­mighty power with the spirit per­son of the evolv­ing God of all crea­tures, the Su­preme Be­ing.

• grows in and of itself

117:3.6Mor­tal man, be­ing a crea­ture, is not ex­actly like the Su­preme Be­ing, who is de­ity, but man’s evo­lu­tion does in some ways re­sem­ble the growth of the Su­preme. Man con­sciously grows from the ma­te­rial to­ward the spir­i­tual by the strength, power, and per­sis­tency of his own de­ci­sions; he also grows as his Thought Ad­juster de­vel­ops new tech­niques for reach­ing down from the spir­i­tual to the mor­ontial soul lev­els; and once the soul comes into be­ing, it be­gins to grow in and of it­self.

117:3.7This is some­what like the way in which the Su­preme Be­ing ex­pands. His sov­er­eignty grows in and out of the acts and achieve­ments of the Su­preme Cre­ator Per­son­al­i­ties; that is the evo­lu­tion of the majesty of his power as the ruler of the grand uni­verse. His de­ity na­ture is like­wise de­pen­dent on the pre-ex­is­tent unity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity. But there is still an­other as­pect to the evo­lu­tion of God the Su­preme: He is not only Cre­ator-evolved and Trin­ity-de­rived; he is also self-evolved and self-de­rived. God the Su­preme is him­self a vo­li­tional, cre­ative par­tic­i­pant in his own de­ity ac­tu­al­iza­tion. The hu­man mor­ontial soul is like­wise a vo­li­tional, cocre­ative part­ner in its own im­mor­tal­iza­tion.

• evolves its eternal destiny by our decisions

117:3.10The Su­preme Be­ing evolves by virtue of his li­ai­son with the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and in con­se­quence of the di­vin­ity suc­cesses of the cre­ator and ad­min­is­tra­tor chil­dren of that Trin­ity. Man’s im­mor­tal soul evolves its own eter­nal des­tiny by as­so­ci­a­tion with the di­vine pres­ence of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther and in ac­cor­dance with the per­son­al­ity de­ci­sions of the hu­man mind. What the Trin­ity is to God the Su­preme, the Ad­juster is to evolv­ing man.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

117:5.3The evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul of man, the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the Ad­juster, as­cends as such to Par­a­dise and sub­se­quently, when mus­tered into the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity, be­comes al­lied in some new way with the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuit of the Eter­nal Son by a tech­nique of ex­pe­ri­ence known as fi­nal­i­ter tran­scen­da­tion. Such fi­nal­i­ters thus be­come ac­cept­able can­di­dates for ex­pe­ri­en­tial rec­og­ni­tion as per­son­al­i­ties of God the Su­preme. And when these mor­tal in­tel­lects in the un­re­vealed fu­ture as­sign­ments of the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity at­tain the sev­enth stage of spirit ex­is­tence, such dual minds will be­come tri­une. These two at­tuned minds, the hu­man and the di­vine, will be­come glo­ri­fied in union with the ex­pe­ri­en­tial mind of the then ac­tu­al­ized Su­preme Be­ing.

• child of Adjuster and Supreme

117:6.5The mor­ontia soul of an evolv­ing mor­tal is re­ally the son of the Ad­juster ac­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the child of the cos­mic re­ac­tion of the Su­preme Be­ing, the Uni­ver­sal Mother. The mother in­flu­ence dom­i­nates the hu­man per­son­al­ity through­out the lo­cal uni­verse child­hood of the grow­ing soul. The in­flu­ence of the De­ity par­ents be­comes more equal af­ter the Ad­juster fu­sion and dur­ing the super­uni­verse ca­reer, but when the crea­tures of time be­gin the traver­sal of the cen­tral uni­verse of eter­nity, the Fa­ther na­ture be­comes in­creas­ingly man­i­fest, at­tain­ing its height of fi­nite man­i­fes­ta­tion upon the rec­og­ni­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the ad­mis­sion into the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

• joint creation of God-knowing mortal mind and indwelling Adjuster

132:3.4Re­vealed truth, per­son­ally dis­cov­ered truth, is the su­preme de­light of the hu­man soul; it is the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the in­dwelling spirit. The eter­nal sal­va­tion of this truth-dis­cern­ing and beauty-lov­ing soul is as­sured by that hunger and thirst for good­ness which leads this mor­tal to de­velop a sin­gle­ness of pur­pose to do the Fa­ther’s will, to find God and to be­come like him. There is never con­flict be­tween true knowl­edge and truth. There may be con­flict be­tween knowl­edge and hu­man be­liefs, be­liefs col­ored with prej­u­dice, dis­torted by fear, and dom­i­nated by the dread of fac­ing new facts of ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• severe strain on s. to serve both good and evil

133:7.12The hu­man mind does not well stand the con­flict of dou­ble al­le­giance. It is a se­vere strain on the soul to un­dergo the ex­pe­ri­ence of an ef­fort to serve both good and evil. The su­premely happy and ef­fi­ciently uni­fied mind is the one wholly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Un­re­solved con­flicts de­stroy unity and may ter­mi­nate in mind dis­rup­tion. But the sur­vival char­ac­ter of a soul is not fos­tered by at­tempt­ing to se­cure peace of mind at any price, by the sur­ren­der of no­ble as­pi­ra­tions, and by the com­pro­mise of spir­i­tual ide­als; rather is such peace at­tained by the stal­wart as­ser­tion of the tri­umph of that which is true, and this vic­tory is achieved in the over­com­ing of evil with the po­tent force of good.

• measured by faith in truth and love for man

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.

• moral choice causes divine invasion of

196:3.20Ev­ery time man makes a re­flec­tive moral choice, he im­me­di­ately ex­pe­ri­ences a new di­vine in­va­sion of his soul. Moral choos­ing con­sti­tutes re­li­gion as the mo­tive of in­ner re­sponse to outer con­di­tions. But such a real re­li­gion is not a purely sub­jec­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. It sig­ni­fies the whole of the sub­jec­tiv­ity of the in­di­vid­ual en­gaged in a mean­ing­ful and in­tel­li­gent re­sponse to to­tal ob­jec­tiv­ity—the uni­verse and its Maker.

165:4.9Je­sus sent the young man away, say­ing to him, “My son, what shall it profit you if you gain the whole world and lose your own soul?”

• men believed women did not have souls

84:4.5Men have long re­garded women as pe­cu­liar, even ab­nor­mal. They have even be­lieved that women did not have souls; there­fore were they de­nied names. Dur­ing early times there ex­isted great fear of the first sex re­la­tion with a woman; hence it be­came the cus­tom for a priest to have ini­tial in­ter­course with a vir­gin. Even a woman’s shadow was thought to be dan­ger­ous.

• primitive concept was breath-dream

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.

• early Hebrew conception

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.

• early man’s dream double
• primitive concept was breath-dream
• termed ghost, spirit, shade, phantom, specter

86:5.1The non­ma­te­rial part of man has been var­i­ously termed ghost, spirit, shade, phan­tom, specter, and lat­terly soul. The soul was early man’s dream dou­ble; it was in ev­ery way ex­actly like the mor­tal him­self ex­cept that it was not re­spon­sive to touch. The be­lief in dream dou­bles led di­rectly to the no­tion that all things an­i­mate and inan­i­mate had souls as well as men. This con­cept tended long to per­pet­u­ate the na­ture-spirit be­liefs; the Es­ki­mos still con­ceive that ev­ery­thing in na­ture has a spirit.

• methods of s. leaving body according to primitives

86:5.4The soul was thought of as be­ing re­lated to the body as the per­fume to the flower. The an­cients be­lieved that the soul could leave the body in var­i­ous ways, as in:

86:5.51. Or­di­nary and tran­sient faint­ing.

86:5.62. Sleep­ing, nat­u­ral dream­ing.

86:5.73. Coma and un­con­scious­ness as­so­ci­ated with dis­ease and ac­ci­dents.

86:5.84. Death, per­ma­nent de­par­ture.

• ancients believed s. to reside in various parts of body

86:5.15The soul was gen­er­ally thought of as be­ing iden­ti­fied with the breath, but it was also lo­cated by var­i­ous peo­ples in the head, hair, heart, liver, blood, and fat. The “cry­ing out of Abel’s blood from the ground” is ex­pres­sive of the one­time be­lief in the pres­ence of the ghost in the blood. The Semites taught that the soul resided in the bod­ily fat, and among many the eat­ing of an­i­mal fat was taboo. Head hunt­ing was a method of cap­tur­ing an en­emy’s soul, as was scalp­ing. In re­cent times the eyes have been re­garded as the win­dows of the soul.

• doctrine of 3 or 4 souls

86:5.16Those who held the doc­trine of three or four souls be­lieved that the loss of one soul meant dis­com­fort, two ill­ness, three death. One soul lived in the breath, one in the head, one in the hair, one in the heart. The sick were ad­vised to stroll about in the open air with the hope of re­cap­tur­ing their strayed souls. The great­est of the med­i­cine men were sup­posed to ex­change the sick soul of a dis­eased per­son for a new one, the “new birth.”

86:5.17The chil­dren of Bado­nan de­vel­oped a be­lief in two souls, the breath and the shadow. The early Nod­ite races re­garded man as con­sist­ing of two per­sons, soul and body. This phi­los­o­phy of hu­man ex­is­tence was later re­flected in the Greek view­point. The Greeks them­selves be­lieved in three souls; the veg­e­ta­tive resided in the stom­ach, the an­i­mal in the heart, the in­tel­lec­tual in the head. The Es­ki­mos be­lieve that man has three parts: body, soul, and name.

• ancients believed s. to reside in various parts of body

111:0.3Be­fore man re­al­ized that his evolv­ing soul was fa­thered by a di­vine spirit, it was thought to re­side in dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal or­gans—the eye, liver, kid­ney, heart, and later, the brain. The sav­age as­so­ci­ated the soul with blood, breath, shad­ows and with re­flec­tions of the self in wa­ter.

• Hinduism failed to distinguish

111:0.4In the con­cep­tion of the at­man the Hindu teach­ers re­ally ap­prox­i­mated an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the na­ture and pres­ence of the Ad­juster, but they failed to dis­tin­guish the co­p­res­ence of the evolv­ing and po­ten­tially im­mor­tal soul. The Chi­nese, how­ever, rec­og­nized two as­pects of a hu­man be­ing, the yang and the yin, the soul and the spirit. The Egyp­tians and many African tribes also be­lieved in two fac­tors, the ka and the ba; the soul was not usu­ally be­lieved to be pre-ex­is­tent, only the spirit.

156:5.9Make not the mis­take of es­ti­mat­ing the soul’s worth by the im­per­fec­tions of the mind or by the ap­petites of the body. Judge not the soul nor eval­u­ate its des­tiny by the stan­dard of a sin­gle un­for­tu­nate hu­man episode. Your spir­i­tual des­tiny is con­di­tioned only by your spir­i­tual long­ings and pur­poses.

48:7.64. Few mor­tals ever dare to draw any­thing like the sum of per­son­al­ity cred­its es­tab­lished by the com­bined min­istries of na­ture and grace. The ma­jor­ity of im­pov­er­ished souls are truly rich, but they refuse to be­lieve it.

42:12.12On a ma­te­rial world you think of a body as hav­ing a spirit, but we re­gard the spirit as hav­ing a body. The ma­te­rial eyes are truly the win­dows of the spirit-born soul. The spirit is the ar­chi­tect, the mind is the builder, the body is the ma­te­rial build­ing.

111:0.7Ev­ery race of evolv­ing Uran­tia mor­tals has a word equiv­a­lent to the con­cept of soul. Many prim­i­tive peo­ples be­lieved the soul looked out upon the world through hu­man eyes; there­fore did they so cravenly fear the malev­o­lence of the evil eye. They have long be­lieved that “the spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord.” The Rig-Veda says: “My mind speaks to my heart.”

• spiritual insight is faculty of the s.

12:8.4The be­stowal of spirit and the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of per­son­al­i­ties, the do­main of spir­i­tual grav­ity, is the realm of the Eter­nal Son. And this spirit grav­ity of the Son, ever draw­ing all spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties to him­self, is just as real and ab­so­lute as is the all-pow­er­ful ma­te­rial grasp of the Isle of Par­a­dise. But ma­te­rial-minded man is nat­u­rally more fa­mil­iar with the ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions of a phys­i­cal na­ture than with the equally real and mighty op­er­a­tions of a spir­i­tual na­ture which are dis­cerned only by the spir­i­tual in­sight of the soul.

• discerns unification of energy, mind, spirit realities

16:9.1The cos­mic-mind-en­dowed, Ad­juster-in­dwelt, per­sonal crea­ture pos­sesses in­nate rec­og­ni­tion-re­al­iza­tion of en­ergy re­al­ity, mind re­al­ity, and spirit re­al­ity. The will crea­ture is thus equipped to dis­cern the fact, the law, and the love of God. Aside from these three in­alien­ables of hu­man con­scious­ness, all hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence is re­ally sub­jec­tive ex­cept that in­tu­itive re­al­iza­tion of va­lid­ity at­taches to the uni­fi­ca­tion of these three uni­verse re­al­ity re­sponses of cos­mic rec­og­ni­tion.

• spirit counterpart of mortal nature

40:9.2The fact that these types of mor­tal crea­tures are not Ad­juster-fu­sion can­di­dates does not pre­vent the Ad­justers from in­dwelling them dur­ing the life in the flesh. Ad­justers do work in the minds of such be­ings dur­ing the span of ma­te­rial life but never be­come ev­er­last­ingly one with their pupil souls. Dur­ing this tem­po­rary so­journ the Ad­justers ef­fec­tively build up the same spirit coun­ter­part of mor­tal na­ture—the soul—that they do in the can­di­dates for Ad­juster fu­sion. Up to the time of mor­tal death the work of the Ad­justers is wholly akin to their func­tion in your own races, but upon mor­tal dis­so­lu­tion the Ad­justers take eter­nal leave of these Spirit-fu­sion can­di­dates and, pro­ceed­ing di­rectly to Di­vin­ing­ton, the head­quar­ters of all di­vine Mon­i­tors, there await the new as­sign­ments of their or­der.

• morontia life initiated on conception of

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

• made divine by what it strives to do

48:7.2422. The evolv­ing soul is not made di­vine by what it does, but by what it strives to do.

• cannot be satisfied with physical pleasures

84:8.4There is real dan­ger in the com­bi­na­tion of rest­less­ness, cu­rios­ity, ad­ven­ture, and plea­sure-aban­don char­ac­ter­is­tic of the post-And­ite races. The hunger of the soul can­not be sat­is­fied with phys­i­cal plea­sures; the love of home and chil­dren is not aug­mented by the un­wise pur­suit of plea­sure. Though you ex­haust the re­sources of art, color, sound, rhythm, mu­sic, and adorn­ment of per­son, you can­not hope thereby to el­e­vate the soul or to nour­ish the spirit. Van­ity and fash­ion can­not min­is­ter to home build­ing and child cul­ture; pride and ri­valry are pow­er­less to en­hance the sur­vival qual­i­ties of suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions.

• requires spiritual exercise, spiritual nourishment

91:7.2The great re­li­gious teach­ers and the proph­ets of past ages were not ex­treme mys­tics. They were God-know­ing men and women who best served their God by un­selfish min­istry to their fel­low mor­tals. Je­sus of­ten took his apos­tles away by them­selves for short pe­ri­ods to en­gage in med­i­ta­tion and prayer, but for the most part he kept them in ser­vice-con­tact with the mul­ti­tudes. The soul of man re­quires spir­i­tual ex­er­cise as well as spir­i­tual nour­ish­ment.

• morontial counterpart of mortal personality

94:3.7In the doc­trine of the merg­ing of the self-soul with the Over­soul, the the­olo­gians of In­dia failed to pro­vide for the sur­vival of some­thing hu­man, some­thing new and unique, some­thing born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teach­ing of the soul’s re­turn to the Brah­man is closely par­al­lel to the truth of the Ad­juster’s re­turn to the bo­som of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but there is some­thing dis­tinct from the Ad­juster which also sur­vives, the mor­ontial coun­ter­part of mor­tal per­son­al­ity. And this vi­tal con­cept was fa­tally ab­sent from Brah­manic phi­los­o­phy.

• s. intelligence is endowment of Holy Spirit

101:3.2Faith-in­sight, or spir­i­tual in­tu­ition, is the en­dow­ment of the cos­mic mind in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, which is the Fa­ther’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual rea­son, soul in­tel­li­gence, is the en­dow­ment of the Holy Spirit, the Cre­ative Spirit’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy, the wis­dom of spirit re­al­i­ties, is the en­dow­ment of the Spirit of Truth, the com­bined gift of the be­stowal Sons to the chil­dren of men. And the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of these spirit en­dow­ments con­sti­tute man a spirit per­son­al­ity in po­ten­tial des­tiny.

• man experiences spiritual reality in his s.

103:6.6Al­ways must man’s in­ner spirit de­pend for its ex­pres­sion and self-re­al­iza­tion upon the mech­a­nism and tech­nique of the mind. Like­wise must man’s outer ex­pe­ri­ence of ma­te­rial re­al­ity be pred­i­cated on the mind con­scious­ness of the ex­pe­ri­enc­ing per­son­al­ity. There­fore are the spir­i­tual and the ma­te­rial, the in­ner and the outer, hu­man ex­pe­ri­ences al­ways cor­re­lated with the mind func­tion and con­di­tioned, as to their con­scious re­al­iza­tion, by the mind ac­tiv­ity. Man ex­pe­ri­ences mat­ter in his mind; he ex­pe­ri­ences spir­i­tual re­al­ity in the soul but be­comes con­scious of this ex­pe­ri­ence in his mind. The in­tel­lect is the har­mo­nizer and the ever-pres­ent con­di­tioner and qual­i­fier of the sum to­tal of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence. Both en­ergy-things and spirit val­ues are col­ored by their in­ter­pre­ta­tion through the mind me­dia of con­scious­ness.

• spirit counterpart of mortal nature

108:6.5These faith­ful cus­to­di­ans of the fu­ture ca­reer un­fail­ingly du­pli­cate ev­ery men­tal cre­ation with a spir­i­tual coun­ter­part; they are thus slowly and surely re-cre­at­ing you as you re­ally are (only spir­i­tu­ally) for res­ur­rec­tion on the sur­vival worlds. And all of these ex­qui­site spirit re-cre­ations are be­ing pre­served in the emerg­ing re­al­ity of your evolv­ing and im­mor­tal soul, your mor­ontia self. These re­al­i­ties are ac­tu­ally there, not­with­stand­ing that the Ad­juster is sel­dom able to ex­alt these du­pli­cate cre­ations suf­fi­ciently to ex­hibit them to the light of con­scious­ness.

108:6.6And as you are the hu­man par­ent, so is the Ad­juster the di­vine par­ent of the real you, your higher and ad­vanc­ing self, your bet­ter mor­ontial and fu­ture spir­i­tual self. And it is this evolv­ing mor­ontial soul that the judges and cen­sors dis­cern when they de­cree your sur­vival and pass you up­ward to new worlds and never-end­ing ex­is­tence in eter­nal li­ai­son with your faith­ful part­ner—God, the Ad­juster.

• known only through spiritual insight

111:0.1The pres­ence of the di­vine Ad­juster in the hu­man mind makes it for­ever im­pos­si­ble for ei­ther sci­ence or phi­los­o­phy to at­tain a sat­is­fac­tory com­pre­hen­sion of the evolv­ing soul of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. The mor­ontia soul is the child of the uni­verse and may be re­ally known only through cos­mic in­sight and spir­i­tual dis­cov­ery.

• faithfully portrays harvest of temporal decisions

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.

111:2.1Through­out the mind func­tions of cos­mic in­tel­li­gence, the to­tal­ity of mind is dom­i­nant over the parts of in­tel­lec­tual func­tion. Mind, in its essence, is func­tional unity; there­fore does mind never fail to man­i­fest this con­sti­tu­tive unity, even when ham­pered and hin­dered by the un­wise ac­tions and choices of a mis­guided self. And this unity of mind in­vari­ably seeks for spirit co-or­di­na­tion on all lev­els of its as­so­ci­a­tion with selves of will dig­nity and as­cen­sion pre­rog­a­tives.

111:2.2The ma­te­rial mind of mor­tal man is the cos­mic loom that car­ries the mor­ontia fab­rics on which the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster threads the spirit pat­terns of a uni­verse char­ac­ter of en­dur­ing val­ues and di­vine mean­ings—a sur­viv­ing soul of ul­ti­mate des­tiny and un­end­ing ca­reer, a po­ten­tial fi­nal­i­ter.

111:2.3The hu­man per­son­al­ity is iden­ti­fied with mind and spirit held to­gether in func­tional re­la­tion­ship by life in a ma­te­rial body. This func­tion­ing re­la­tion­ship of such mind and spirit does not re­sult in some com­bi­na­tion of the qual­i­ties or at­tri­butes of mind and spirit but rather in an en­tirely new, orig­i­nal, and unique uni­verse value of po­ten­tially eter­nal en­durance, the soul.

111:2.4There are three and not two fac­tors in the evo­lu­tion­ary cre­ation of such an im­mor­tal soul. These three an­tecedents of the mor­ontia hu­man soul are:

111:2.51. The hu­man mind and all cos­mic in­flu­ences an­te­ced­ent thereto and im­ping­ing thereon.

111:2.62. The di­vine spirit in­dwelling this hu­man mind and all po­ten­tials in­her­ent in such a frag­ment of ab­so­lute spir­i­tu­al­ity to­gether with all as­so­ci­ated spir­i­tual in­flu­ences and fac­tors in hu­man life.

111:2.73. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween ma­te­rial mind and di­vine spirit, which con­notes a value and car­ries a mean­ing not found in ei­ther of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors to such an as­so­ci­a­tion. The re­al­ity of this unique re­la­tion­ship is nei­ther ma­te­rial nor spir­i­tual but mor­ontial. It is the soul.

• morontial counterpart of mortal personality

111:2.8The mid­way crea­tures have long de­nom­i­nated this evolv­ing soul of man the mid-mind in con­tradis­tinc­tion to the lower or ma­te­rial mind and the higher or cos­mic mind. This mid-mind is re­ally a mor­ontia phe­nom­e­non since it ex­ists in the realm be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual. The po­ten­tial of such a mor­ontia evo­lu­tion is in­her­ent in the two uni­ver­sal urges of mind: the im­pulse of the fi­nite mind of the crea­ture to know God and at­tain the di­vin­ity of the Cre­ator, and the im­pulse of the in­fi­nite mind of the Cre­ator to know man and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of the crea­ture.

111:2.9This su­per­nal trans­ac­tion of evolv­ing the im­mor­tal soul is made pos­si­ble be­cause the mor­tal mind is first per­sonal and sec­ond is in con­tact with super­an­i­mal re­al­i­ties; it pos­sesses a super­ma­te­rial en­dow­ment of cos­mic min­istry which in­sures the evo­lu­tion of a moral na­ture ca­pa­ble of mak­ing moral de­ci­sions, thereby ef­fect­ing a bona fide cre­ative con­tact with the as­so­ci­ated spir­i­tual min­istries and with the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

• is increasingly conscious of material mind and Adjuster

111:3.4Both the hu­man mind and the di­vine Ad­juster are con­scious of the pres­ence and dif­fer­en­tial na­ture of the evolv­ing soul—the Ad­juster fully, the mind par­tially. The soul be­comes in­creas­ingly con­scious of both the mind and the Ad­juster as as­so­ci­ated iden­ti­ties, pro­por­tional to its own evo­lu­tion­ary growth. The soul par­takes of the qual­i­ties of both the hu­man mind and the di­vine spirit but per­sis­tently evolves to­ward aug­men­ta­tion of spirit con­trol and di­vine dom­i­nance through the fos­ter­ing of a mind func­tion whose mean­ings seek to co-or­di­nate with true spirit value.

• feels quality, values

111:3.6Mind knows quan­tity, re­al­ity, mean­ings. But qual­ity—val­ues—is felt. That which feels is the mu­tual cre­ation of mind, which knows, and the as­so­ci­ated spirit, which re­al­ity-izes.

• to extent permeated by truth, beauty, and goodness, s. is indestructible

111:3.7In so far as man’s evolv­ing mor­ontia soul be­comes per­me­ated by truth, beauty, and good­ness as the value-re­al­iza­tion of God-con­scious­ness, such a re­sul­tant be­ing be­comes in­de­struc­tible. If there is no sur­vival of eter­nal val­ues in the evolv­ing soul of man, then mor­tal ex­is­tence is with­out mean­ing, and life it­self is a tragic il­lu­sion. But it is for­ever true: What you be­gin in time you will as­suredly fin­ish in eter­nity—if it is worth fin­ish­ing.

• ceases if growth ceases
• relationship between Adjuster and personality continually changes

112:0.1513. Per­son­al­ity may sur­vive mor­tal death with iden­tity in the sur­viv­ing soul. The Ad­juster and the per­son­al­ity are change­less; the re­la­tion­ship be­tween them (in the soul) is noth­ing but change, con­tin­u­ing evo­lu­tion; and if this change (growth) ceased, the soul would cease.

• faithfully portrays harvest of temporal decisions

112:6.9The soul of sur­vival value faith­fully re­flects both the qual­i­ta­tive and the quan­ti­ta­tive ac­tions and mo­ti­va­tions of the ma­te­rial in­tel­lect, the for­mer seat of the iden­tity of self­hood. In the choos­ing of truth, beauty, and good­ness, the mor­tal mind en­ters upon its pre­moron­tia uni­verse ca­reer un­der the tute­lage of the seven ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its uni­fied un­der the di­rec­tion of the spirit of wis­dom. Sub­se­quently, upon the com­ple­tion of the seven cir­cles of pre­moron­tia at­tain­ment, the super­im­po­si­tion of the en­dow­ment of mor­ontia mind upon ad­ju­tant mind ini­ti­ates the prespir­i­tual or mor­ontia ca­reer of lo­cal uni­verse pro­gres­sion.

• Jesus’ discourse on the s. at Ephesus

133:6.4There was a pro­gres­sive thinker con­nected with this lo­cal school of phi­los­o­phy, and Je­sus had sev­eral prof­itable ses­sions with him. In the course of these talks Je­sus had re­peat­edly used the word “soul.” This learned Greek fi­nally asked him what he meant by “soul,” and he replied:

133:6.6“The sav­ing or los­ing of a soul has to do with whether or not the moral con­scious­ness at­tains sur­vival sta­tus through eter­nal al­liance with its as­so­ci­ated im­mor­tal spirit en­dow­ment. Sal­va­tion is the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the self-re­al­iza­tion of the moral con­scious­ness, which thereby be­comes pos­sessed of sur­vival value. All forms of soul con­flict con­sist in the lack of har­mony be­tween the moral, or spir­i­tual, self-con­scious­ness and the purely in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

• faith sons know existence of s.
• not discoverable by science

133:6.7“The hu­man soul, when ma­tured, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized, ap­proaches the heav­enly sta­tus in that it comes near to be­ing an en­tity in­ter­ven­ing be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, the ma­te­rial self and the di­vine spirit. The evolv­ing soul of a hu­man be­ing is dif­fi­cult of de­scrip­tion and more dif­fi­cult of dem­on­stra­tion be­cause it is not dis­cov­er­able by the meth­ods of ei­ther ma­te­rial in­ves­ti­ga­tion or spir­i­tual prov­ing. Ma­te­rial sci­ence can­not demon­strate the ex­is­tence of a soul, nei­ther can pure spirit-test­ing. Not­with­stand­ing the fail­ure of both ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual stan­dards to dis­cover the ex­is­tence of the hu­man soul, ev­ery morally con­scious mor­tal knows of the ex­is­tence of his soul as a real and ac­tual per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.”

• spirit counterpart of mortal nature

152:6.4Je­sus taught the ap­peal to the emo­tions as the tech­nique of ar­rest­ing and fo­cus­ing the in­tel­lec­tual at­ten­tion. He des­ig­nated the mind thus aroused and quick­ened as the gate­way to the soul, where there re­sides that spir­i­tual na­ture of man which must rec­og­nize truth and re­spond to the spir­i­tual ap­peal of the gospel in or­der to af­ford the per­ma­nent re­sults of true char­ac­ter trans­for­ma­tions.

• cannot exist apart from moral thinking and spiritual activity

156:5.2It was dur­ing this same ser­mon that Je­sus made use of his first and only para­ble hav­ing to do with his own trade—car­pen­try. In the course of his ad­mo­ni­tion to “Build well the foun­da­tions for the growth of a no­ble char­ac­ter of spir­i­tual en­dow­ments,” he said: “In or­der to yield the fruits of the spirit, you must be born of the spirit. You must be taught by the spirit and be led by the spirit if you would live the spirit-filled life among your fel­lows. But do not make the mis­take of the fool­ish car­pen­ter who wastes valu­able time squar­ing, mea­sur­ing, and smooth­ing his worm-eaten and in­wardly rot­ting tim­ber and then, when he has thus be­stowed all of his la­bor upon the un­sound beam, must re­ject it as un­fit to en­ter into the foun­da­tions of the build­ing which he would con­struct to with­stand the as­saults of time and storm. Let ev­ery man make sure that the in­tel­lec­tual and moral foun­da­tions of char­ac­ter are such as will ad­e­quately sup­port the super­struc­ture of the en­larg­ing and en­nobling spir­i­tual na­ture, which is thus to trans­form the mor­tal mind and then, in as­so­ci­a­tion with that re-cre­ated mind, is to achieve the evolve­ment of the soul of im­mor­tal des­tiny. Your spirit na­ture—the jointly cre­ated soul—is a liv­ing growth, but the mind and morals of the in­di­vid­ual are the soil from which these higher man­i­fes­ta­tions of hu­man de­vel­op­ment and di­vine des­tiny must spring. The soil of the evolv­ing soul is hu­man and ma­te­rial, but the des­tiny of this com­bined crea­ture of mind and spirit is spir­i­tual and di­vine.”

144:2.3“Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be per­sis­tent in your at­tempt to as­cer­tain the Fa­ther’s will. If any one of you has a neigh­bor, and you go to him at mid­night and say: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a jour­ney has come to see me, and I have noth­ing to set be­fore him’; and if your neigh­bor an­swers, ‘Trou­ble me not, for the door is now shut and the chil­dren and I are in bed; there­fore I can­not rise and give you bread,’ you will per­sist, ex­plain­ing that your friend hungers, and that you have no food to of­fer him. I say to you, though your neigh­bor will not rise and give you bread be­cause he is your friend, yet be­cause of your im­por­tu­nity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you need. If, then, per­sis­tence will win fa­vors even from mor­tal man, how much more will your per­sis­tence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from the will­ing hands of the Fa­ther in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For ev­ery one who asks re­ceives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door of sal­va­tion will be opened.

100:5.1The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the the­o­logic sense but lost in the di­rec­tional mean­ing, wan­der­ing about in con­fu­sion among the isms and cults of a frus­trated philo­sophic era. Too few have learned how to in­stall a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing in the place of re­li­gious au­thor­ity. (The sym­bols of so­cial­ized re­li­gion are not to be de­spised as chan­nels of growth, al­beit the river bed is not the river.)