survival (of mortal death)

• true concept of God indispensable to

1:2.7The ex­is­tence of God can never be proved by sci­en­tific ex­per­i­ment or by the pure rea­son of log­i­cal de­duc­tion. God can be re­al­ized only in the realms of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence; nev­er­the­less, the true con­cept of the re­al­ity of God is rea­son­able to logic, plau­si­ble to phi­los­o­phy, es­sen­tial to re­li­gion, and in­dis­pens­able to any hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

• attained by › transferring seat of identity from material intellect to soul
• rejecting survival › humans fully occupied with material problems will perish

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.

• attained by › s. of part depends on co-operation with purpose of whole

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.

• assurance of survival › Father is not willing that any should perish

4:4.7In sci­ence, God is the First Cause; in re­li­gion, the uni­ver­sal and lov­ing Fa­ther; in phi­los­o­phy, the one be­ing who ex­ists by him­self, not de­pen­dent on any other be­ing for ex­is­tence but benef­i­cently con­fer­ring re­al­ity of ex­is­tence on all things and upon all other be­ings. But it re­quires rev­e­la­tion to show that the First Cause of sci­ence and the self-ex­is­tent Unity of phi­los­o­phy are the God of re­li­gion, full of mercy and good­ness and pledged to ef­fect the eter­nal sur­vival of his chil­dren on earth.

• attained by › supremely desiring to be Godlike, willingness to do and be anything

5:1.6If mor­tal man is whole­heart­edly spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, un­re­servedly con­se­crated to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will, then, since he is so cer­tainly and so ef­fec­tively spir­i­tu­ally en­dowed by the in­dwelling and di­vine Ad­juster, there can­not fail to ma­te­ri­al­ize in that in­di­vid­ual’s ex­pe­ri­ence the sub­lime con­scious­ness of know­ing God and the su­per­nal as­sur­ance of sur­viv­ing for the pur­pose of find­ing God by the pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing more and more like him.

5:1.7Man is spir­i­tu­ally in­dwelt by a sur­viv­ing Thought Ad­juster. If such a hu­man mind is sin­cerely and spir­i­tu­ally mo­ti­vated, if such a hu­man soul de­sires to know God and be­come like him, hon­estly wants to do the Fa­ther’s will, there ex­ists no neg­a­tive in­flu­ence of mor­tal de­pri­va­tion nor pos­i­tive power of pos­si­ble in­ter­fer­ence which can pre­vent such a di­vinely mo­ti­vated soul from se­curely as­cend­ing to the por­tals of Par­a­dise.

• assurance of survival › Father is not willing that any should perish

5:1.8The Fa­ther de­sires all his crea­tures to be in per­sonal com­mu­nion with him. He has on Par­a­dise a place to re­ceive all those whose sur­vival sta­tus and spir­i­tual na­ture make pos­si­ble such at­tain­ment. There­fore set­tle in your phi­los­o­phy now and for­ever: To each of you and to all of us, God is ap­proach­able, the Fa­ther is at­tain­able, the way is open; the forces of di­vine love and the ways and means of di­vine ad­min­is­tra­tion are all in­ter­locked in an ef­fort to fa­cil­i­tate the ad­vance­ment of ev­ery wor­thy in­tel­li­gence of ev­ery uni­verse to the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• fusion proclaims irrevocable choice to do Father’s will

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

• assurance of survival › s. assured if individual knows God and desires to become like him

5:5.13Eter­nal sur­vival of per­son­al­ity is wholly de­pen­dent on the choos­ing of the mor­tal mind, whose de­ci­sions de­ter­mine the sur­vival po­ten­tial of the im­mor­tal soul. When the mind be­lieves God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fos­ter­ing Ad­juster, they all de­sire God, then is sur­vival as­sured. Lim­i­ta­tions of in­tel­lect, cur­tail­ment of ed­u­ca­tion, de­pri­va­tion of cul­ture, im­pov­er­ish­ment of so­cial sta­tus, even in­fe­ri­or­ity of the hu­man stan­dards of moral­ity re­sult­ing from the un­for­tu­nate lack of ed­u­ca­tional, cul­tural, and so­cial ad­van­tages, can­not in­val­i­date the pres­ence of the di­vine spirit in such un­for­tu­nate and hu­manly hand­i­capped but be­liev­ing in­di­vid­u­als. The in­dwelling of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor con­sti­tutes the in­cep­tion and in­sures the pos­si­bil­ity of the po­ten­tial of growth and sur­vival of the im­mor­tal soul.

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.

• attained by › freewill choice
• gift of God which must be desired; never forced on anyone

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.

• adjudication of survival › Magisterial Sons render judgment on

7:6.5Much as the Cre­ator Sons are per­son­al­ized by the Fa­ther and the Son, so are the Mag­is­te­rial Sons per­son­al­ized by the Son and the Spirit. These are the Sons who, in the ex­pe­ri­ences of crea­ture in­car­na­tion, earn the right to serve as the judges of sur­vival in the cre­ations of time and space.

• eye has not seen what God has prepared for survivors

11:4.5But a fur­ther at­tempt to vi­su­al­ize to you the glo­ries of Par­a­dise would be fu­tile. You must wait, and as­cend while you wait, for truly, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nei­ther has it en­tered into the mind of mor­tal man, the things which the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther has pre­pared for those who sur­vive the life in the flesh on the worlds of time and space.”

• attained by › living relationship of personal mind and spirit

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

• adjudication of survival › Creator Sons may decree survival

15:12.2The courts of the An­cients of Days are the high re­view tri­bu­nals for the spir­i­tual ad­ju­di­ca­tion of all com­po­nent uni­verses. The Sov­er­eign Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses are su­preme in their own do­mains; they are sub­ject to the super­gov­ern­ment only in so far as they vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit mat­ters for coun­sel or ad­ju­di­ca­tion by the An­cients of Days ex­cept in mat­ters in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures. Man­dates of judg­ment orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses, but sen­tences in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures are al­ways for­mu­lated on, and ex­e­cuted from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse. The Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses can de­cree the sur­vival of mor­tal man, but only the An­cients of Days may sit in ex­ec­u­tive judg­ment on the is­sues of eter­nal life and death.

• attained by › s. of soul

16:9.3If mor­tal man fails to sur­vive nat­u­ral death, the real spir­i­tual val­ues of his hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence sur­vive as a part of the con­tin­u­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the Thought Ad­juster. The per­son­al­ity val­ues of such a non­sur­vivor per­sist as a fac­tor in the per­son­al­ity of the ac­tu­al­iz­ing Su­preme Be­ing. Such per­sist­ing qual­i­ties of per­son­al­ity are de­prived of iden­tity but not of ex­pe­ri­en­tial val­ues ac­cu­mu­lated dur­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh. The sur­vival of iden­tity is de­pen­dent on the sur­vival of the im­mor­tal soul of mor­ontia sta­tus and in­creas­ingly di­vine value. Per­son­al­ity iden­tity sur­vives in and by the sur­vival of the soul.

• adjudication of survival › Magisterial Sons render judgment on

20:3.2When they sit in judg­ment on the des­tinies of an age, the Avo­nals de­cree the fate of the evo­lu­tion­ary races, but though they may ren­der judg­ments ex­tin­guish­ing the iden­tity of per­sonal crea­tures, they do not ex­e­cute such sen­tences. Ver­dicts of this na­ture are ex­e­cuted by none but the au­thor­i­ties of a super­uni­verse.

• eye has not seen what God has prepared for survivors

24:6.2I am not for­bid­den to un­der­take to tell you of the work of these Grad­u­ate Guides, but it is so ul­tra­spir­i­tual that I de­spair of be­ing able to ad­e­quately por­tray to the ma­te­rial mind a con­cept of their man­i­fold ac­tiv­i­ties. On the man­sion worlds, af­ter your vi­sion range is ex­tended and you are freed from the fet­ters of ma­te­rial com­par­isons, you can be­gin to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those re­al­i­ties which “eye can­not see nor ear hear, and which have never en­tered the con­cept of hu­man minds,” even those things which “God has pre­pared for those who love such eter­nal ver­i­ties.” You are not al­ways to be so lim­ited in the range of your vi­sion and spir­i­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

• assurance of survival › all-perfected plan designed to effect our s.

24:6.9Grad­u­ate Guides never leave the Ha­vona worlds; they are ded­i­cated to the ser­vice of the grad­u­ate pil­grims of time and space. And you will some­time meet these no­ble be­ings face to face if you do not re­ject the cer­tain and all-per­fected plan de­signed to ef­fect your sur­vival and as­cen­sion.

• attained by › acceptance of sonship

26:4.15Abil­ity to com­pre­hend is the mor­tal pass­port to Par­a­dise. Will­ing­ness to be­lieve is the key to Ha­vona. The ac­cep­tance of son­ship, co-op­er­a­tion with the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the price of evo­lu­tion­ary sur­vival.

• complete in perfection

26:9.4Step by step, life by life, world by world, the as­cen­dant ca­reer has been mas­tered, and the goal of De­ity has been at­tained. Sur­vival is com­plete in per­fec­tion, and per­fec­tion is re­plete in the su­prem­acy of di­vin­ity. Time is lost in eter­nity; space is swal­lowed up in wor­ship­ful iden­tity and har­mony with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The broad­casts of Ha­vona flash forth the space re­ports of glory, the good news that in very truth the con­sci­en­tious crea­tures of an­i­mal na­ture and ma­te­rial ori­gin have, through evo­lu­tion­ary as­cen­sion, be­come in re­al­ity and eter­nally the per­fected sons of God.

• assurance of survival › Sons of God establish lavish mercy credits sufficient for all

28:6.52. The Mem­ory of Mercy. These are the ac­tual, full and re­plete, liv­ing rec­ords of the mercy which has been ex­tended to in­di­vid­u­als and races by the ten­der min­is­tra­tions of the in­stru­men­tal­i­ties of the In­fi­nite Spirit in the mis­sion of adapt­ing the jus­tice of righ­teous­ness to the sta­tus of the realms, as dis­closed by the por­tray­als of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins. The Mem­ory of Mercy dis­closes the moral debt of the chil­dren of mercy—their spir­i­tual li­a­bil­i­ties—to be set down against their as­sets of the sav­ing pro­vi­sion es­tab­lished by the Sons of God. In re­veal­ing the Fa­ther’s pre-ex­is­tent mercy, the Sons of God es­tab­lish the nec­es­sary credit to in­sure the sur­vival of all. And then, in ac­cor­dance with the find­ings of the Sig­nif­i­cance of Ori­gins, a mercy credit is es­tab­lished for the sur­vival of each ra­tio­nal crea­ture, a credit of lav­ish pro­por­tions and one of suf­fi­cient grace to in­sure the sur­vival of ev­ery soul who re­ally de­sires di­vine cit­i­zen­ship.

• gained, all other losses can be retrieved

28:6.93. The Im­port of Time. Time is the one uni­ver­sal en­dow­ment of all will crea­tures; it is the “one tal­ent” in­trusted to all in­tel­li­gent be­ings. You all have time in which to in­sure your sur­vival; and time is fa­tally squan­dered only when it is buried in ne­glect, when you fail so to uti­lize it as to make cer­tain the sur­vival of your soul. Fail­ure to im­prove one’s time to the fullest ex­tent pos­si­ble does not im­pose fa­tal penal­ties; it merely re­tards the pil­grim of time in his jour­ney of as­cent. If sur­vival is gained, all other losses can be re­trieved.

• attained by › self-identification with indwelling spirit by choosing to do Father’s will

36:5.17Non­spir­i­tual mind is ei­ther a spirit-en­ergy man­i­fes­ta­tion or a phys­i­cal-en­ergy phe­nom­e­non. Even hu­man mind, per­sonal mind, has no sur­vival qual­i­ties apart from spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Mind is a di­vin­ity be­stowal, but it is not im­mor­tal when it func­tions with­out spirit in­sight, and when it is de­void of the abil­ity to wor­ship and crave sur­vival.

• attained by › s. of soul

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.

• adjudication of survival › justice guides defend cases of doubtful

39:4.42. Jus­tice Guides. These are the an­gels who pre­sent the sum­mary of ev­i­dence con­cern­ing the eter­nal wel­fare of men and an­gels when such mat­ters come up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion in the tri­bu­nals of a sys­tem or a planet. They pre­pare the state­ments for all pre­lim­i­nary hear­ings in­volv­ing mor­tal sur­vival, state­ments which are sub­se­quently car­ried with the rec­ords of such cases to the higher tri­bu­nals of the uni­verse and the super­uni­verse. The de­fense of all cases of doubt­ful sur­vival is pre­pared by these ser­a­phim, who have a per­fect un­der­stand­ing of all the de­tails of ev­ery fea­ture of ev­ery count in the in­dict­ments drawn by the ad­min­is­tra­tors of uni­verse jus­tice.

• attained by › achieved (in spirit) now in doing Father’s will

40:5.4Spirit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion con­sti­tutes the se­cret of per­sonal sur­vival and de­ter­mines the des­tiny of spir­i­tual as­cen­sion. And since the Thought Ad­justers are the only spir­its of fu­sion po­ten­tial to be iden­ti­fied with man dur­ing the life in the flesh, the mor­tals of time and space are pri­mar­ily clas­si­fied in ac­cor­dance with their re­la­tion to these di­vine gifts, the in­dwelling Mys­tery Mon­i­tors. This clas­si­fi­ca­tion is as fol­lows:

• assurance of survival › God is merciful with primitive mortals

40:5.11The Gods who or­dained that mor­tal man should climb to higher lev­els of spir­i­tual in­tel­li­gence through long ages of evo­lu­tion­ary tri­als and tribu­la­tions, take note of his sta­tus and needs at ev­ery stage of the as­cent; and al­ways are they di­vinely fair and just, even charm­ingly mer­ci­ful, in the fi­nal judg­ments of these strug­gling mor­tals of the early days of the evolv­ing races.

• assurance of survival › first faint flicker of faith assures s.

40:5.19As to the chances of mor­tal sur­vival, let it be made for­ever clear: All souls of ev­ery pos­si­ble phase of mor­tal ex­is­tence will sur­vive pro­vided they man­i­fest will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate with their in­dwelling Ad­justers and ex­hibit a de­sire to find God and to at­tain di­vine per­fec­tion, even though these de­sires be but the first faint flick­ers of the prim­i­tive com­pre­hen­sion of that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.”

• assurance of survival › every facility and all power provided to insure

40:10.14As mor­tals you can now rec­og­nize your place in the fam­ily of di­vine son­ship and be­gin to sense the obli­ga­tion to avail your­selves of the ad­van­tages so freely pro­vided in and by the Par­a­dise plan for mor­tal sur­vival, which plan has been so en­hanced and il­lu­mi­nated by the life ex­pe­ri­ence of a be­stowal Son. Ev­ery fa­cil­ity and all power have been pro­vided for in­sur­ing your ul­ti­mate at­tain­ment of the Par­a­dise goal of di­vine per­fec­tion.

• attained by › supremely desiring to be Godlike, willingness to do and be anything

42:12.15Mind uni­ver­sally dom­i­nates mat­ter, even as it is in turn re­spon­sive to the ul­ti­mate over­con­trol of spirit. And with mor­tal man, only that mind which freely sub­mits it­self to the spirit di­rec­tion can hope to sur­vive the mor­tal time-space ex­is­tence as an im­mor­tal child of the eter­nal spirit world of the Su­preme, the Ul­ti­mate, and the Ab­so­lute: the In­fi­nite.

• eye has not seen what God has prepared for survivors

43:6.8If you en­joy the flow­ers, shrubs, and trees of Uran­tia, then will you feast your eyes upon the botan­i­cal beauty and the flo­ral grandeur of the su­per­nal gar­dens of Eden­tia. But it is be­yond my pow­ers of de­scrip­tion to un­der­take to con­vey to the mor­tal mind an ad­e­quate con­cept of these beau­ties of the heav­enly worlds. Truly, eye has not seen such glo­ries as await your ar­rival on these worlds of the mor­tal-as­cen­sion ad­ven­ture.

• eye has not seen what God has prepared for survivors

44:2.1Mor­tal man can hardly hope for more than a mea­ger and dis­torted con­cept of the func­tions of the heav­enly re­pro­duc­ers, which I must at­tempt to il­lus­trate through the gross and lim­ited sym­bol­ism of your ma­te­rial lan­guage. The spirit-mor­ontia world has a thou­sand and one things of su­preme value, things wor­thy of re­pro­duc­tion but un­known on Uran­tia, ex­pe­ri­ences that be­long in the cat­e­gory of the ac­tiv­i­ties which have hardly “en­tered into the mind of man,” those re­al­i­ties which God has in wait­ing for those who sur­vive the life in the flesh.

• animalistic memories perish with physical brain

47:4.5Your Ad­juster mem­ory re­mains fully in­tact as you as­cend the mor­ontia life. Those men­tal as­so­ci­a­tions that were purely an­i­mal­is­tic and wholly ma­te­rial nat­u­rally per­ished with the phys­i­cal brain, but ev­ery­thing in your men­tal life which was worth while, and which had sur­vival value, was coun­ter­parted by the Ad­juster and is re­tained as a part of per­sonal mem­ory all the way through the as­cen­dant ca­reer. You will be con­scious of all your worth-while ex­pe­ri­ences as you ad­vance from one man­sion world to an­other and from one sec­tion of the uni­verse to an­other—even to Par­a­dise.

• intellectual and spiritual development resumed in morontia where interrupted by death

48:1.4The early mor­ontia life in the lo­cal sys­tems is very much like that of your pres­ent ma­te­rial world, be­com­ing less phys­i­cal and more truly mor­ontial on the con­stel­la­tion study worlds. And as you ad­vance to the Sal­ving­ton spheres, you in­creas­ingly at­tain spir­i­tual lev­els.

• not to enjoy bliss and ease, but for transcendent service

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

• assurance of survival › only conscious resistance to Adjuster’s leading can prevent 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• attained by › effort and decision

50:6.3Be­cause of your plan­e­tary mis­for­tunes, Uran­tians are pre­vented from un­der­stand­ing very much about the cul­ture of nor­mal worlds. But you should not en­vis­age the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds, even the most ideal, as spheres whereon life is a flow­ery bed of ease. The ini­tial life of the mor­tal races is al­ways at­tended by strug­gle. Ef­fort and de­ci­sion are an es­sen­tial part of the ac­quire­ment of sur­vival val­ues.

• historically › Lucifer maintained immortality was inherent

53:3.5He con­tended that the ex­e­cu­tion­ers of the An­cients of Days could be de­barred from func­tion­ing in the lo­cal sys­tems if the na­tive be­ings would only as­sert their in­de­pen­dence. He main­tained that im­mor­tal­ity was in­her­ent in the sys­tem per­son­al­i­ties, that res­ur­rec­tion was nat­u­ral and au­to­matic, and that all be­ings would live eter­nally ex­cept for the ar­bi­trary and un­just acts of the ex­e­cu­tion­ers of the An­cients of Days.

• gift of God which must be desired; never forced on anyone
• not all accept

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.

• historically › vague Andonite ideas

63:3.5Upon the death of his par­ents, Son­tad, de­spite a se­ri­ously in­jured foot, im­me­di­ately as­sumed the lead­er­ship of the clan and was ably as­sisted by his wife, his el­dest sis­ter. Their first task was to roll up stones to ef­fec­tively en­tomb their dead par­ents, broth­ers, sis­ters, and chil­dren. Un­due sig­nif­i­cance should not at­tach to this act of burial. Their ideas of sur­vival af­ter death were very vague and in­def­i­nite, be­ing largely de­rived from their fan­tas­tic and var­ie­gated dream life.

• historically › Onagar’s concept of the Great Beyond

63:6.7On­a­gar main­tained head­quar­ters on the north­ern shores of the an­cient Med­i­ter­ra­nean in the re­gion of the pres­ent Caspian Sea at a set­tle­ment called Oban, the tar­ry­ing place on the west­ward turn­ing of the travel trail lead­ing up north­ward from the Mes­o­po­ta­mian south­land. From Oban he sent out teach­ers to the re­mote set­tle­ments to spread his new doc­trines of one De­ity and his con­cept of the here­after, which he called the Great Be­yond. These emis­saries of On­a­gar were the world’s first mis­sion­ar­ies; they were also the first hu­man be­ings to cook meat, the first reg­u­larly to use fire in the prepa­ra­tion of food. They cooked flesh on the ends of sticks and also on hot stones; later on they roasted large pieces in the fire, but their de­scen­dants al­most en­tirely re­verted to the use of raw flesh.

• assurance of survival › s. assured if individual knows God and desires to become like him
• not dependent on knowledge or wisdom

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.

65:8.5In the cos­mic evo­lu­tion­ary lab­o­ra­to­ries mind is al­ways dom­i­nant over mat­ter, and spirit is ever cor­re­lated with mind. Fail­ure of these di­verse en­dow­ments to syn­chro­nize and co-or­di­nate may cause time de­lays, but if the in­di­vid­ual re­ally knows God and de­sires to find him and be­come like him, then sur­vival is as­sured re­gard­less of the hand­i­caps of time. Phys­i­cal sta­tus may hand­i­cap mind, and men­tal per­ver­sity may de­lay spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, but none of these ob­sta­cles can de­feat the whole-souled choice of will.

• rejecting survival › s. jeopardized only by mind decisions, soul choices

67:7.5Evil and sin visit their con­se­quences in ma­te­rial and so­cial realms and may some­times even re­tard spir­i­tual prog­ress on cer­tain lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity, but never does the sin of any be­ing rob an­other of the re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine right of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. Eter­nal sur­vival can be jeop­ar­dized only by the de­ci­sions of the mind and the choice of the soul of the in­di­vid­ual him­self.

• historically › primitives believed only rich experienced s.

69:9.42. Re­li­gious ten­den­cies. Prim­i­tive man also wanted to save up prop­erty as a nu­cleus for start­ing life in the next ex­is­tence. This mo­tive ex­plains why it was so long the cus­tom to bury a man’s per­sonal be­long­ings with him. The an­cients be­lieved that only the rich sur­vived death with any im­me­di­ate plea­sure and dig­nity. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion, more es­pe­cially the Chris­tian teach­ers, were the first to pro­claim that the poor could have sal­va­tion on equal terms with the rich.

• historically › primitive doctrine was reincarnation

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

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

• historically › primitives believed man entered next life just as he left this one

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

• historically › Jewish doctrine took form at Babylon

97:9.28The doc­trine of im­mor­tal­ity also took form at Baby­lon. The Jews had thought that the idea of the fu­ture life de­tracted from the em­pha­sis of their gospel of so­cial jus­tice. Now for the first time the­ol­ogy dis­placed so­ci­ol­ogy and eco­nomics. Re­li­gion was tak­ing shape as a sys­tem of hu­man thought and con­duct more and more to be sep­a­rated from pol­i­tics, so­ci­ol­ogy, and eco­nomics.

• nature does not afford ground for belief in

101:2.9The con­tem­pla­tion of na­ture can only re­veal a God of na­ture, a God of mo­tion. Na­ture ex­hibits only mat­ter, mo­tion, and an­i­ma­tion—life. Mat­ter plus en­ergy, un­der cer­tain con­di­tions, is man­i­fested in liv­ing forms, but while nat­u­ral life is thus rel­a­tively con­tin­u­ous as a phe­nom­e­non, it is wholly tran­sient as to in­di­vid­u­al­i­ties. Na­ture does not af­ford ground for log­i­cal be­lief in hu­man-per­son­al­ity sur­vival. The re­li­gious man who finds God in na­ture has al­ready and first found this same per­sonal God in his own soul.

• Thought Adjuster possession of spirit personality survives natural death

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.

• not detectable in nature or mind, only spiritually

101:10.2A hu­man be­ing is also aware that he is a part of the ide­a­tional cos­mos, but though con­cept may en­dure be­yond a mor­tal life span, there is noth­ing in­her­ent in con­cept which in­di­cates the per­sonal sur­vival of the con­ceiv­ing per­son­al­ity. Nor will the ex­haus­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of logic and rea­son ever re­veal to the lo­gi­cian or to the rea­soner the eter­nal truth of the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity.

101:10.3The ma­te­rial level of law pro­vides for causal­ity con­ti­nu­ity, the un­end­ing re­sponse of ef­fect to an­te­ced­ent ac­tion; the mind level sug­gests the per­pet­u­a­tion of ide­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity, the un­ceas­ing flow of con­cep­tual po­ten­tial­ity from pre-ex­is­tent con­cep­tions. But nei­ther of these lev­els of the uni­verse dis­closes to the in­quir­ing mor­tal an av­enue of es­cape from par­tial­ity of sta­tus and from the in­tol­er­a­ble sus­pense of be­ing a tran­sient re­al­ity in the uni­verse, a tem­po­ral per­son­al­ity doomed to be ex­tin­guished upon the ex­haus­tion of the lim­ited life en­er­gies.

101:10.4It is only through the mor­ontial av­enue lead­ing to spir­i­tual in­sight that man can ever break the fet­ters in­her­ent in his mor­tal sta­tus in the uni­verse. En­ergy and mind do lead back to Par­a­dise and De­ity, but nei­ther the en­ergy en­dow­ment nor the mind en­dow­ment of man pro­ceeds di­rectly from such Par­a­dise De­ity. Only in the spir­i­tual sense is man a child of God. And this is true be­cause it is only in the spir­i­tual sense that man is at pres­ent en­dowed and in­dwelt by the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. Man­kind can never dis­cover di­vin­ity ex­cept through the av­enue of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence and by the ex­er­cise of true faith. The faith ac­cep­tance of the truth of God en­ables man to es­cape from the cir­cum­scribed con­fines of ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions and af­fords him a ra­tio­nal hope of achiev­ing safe con­duct from the ma­te­rial realm, whereon is death, to the spir­i­tual realm, wherein is life eter­nal.

• life after death no different in essentials than mortal existence

103:5.7The pur­suit of the ideal—the striv­ing to be God­like—is a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort be­fore death and af­ter. The life af­ter death is no dif­fer­ent in the es­sen­tials than the mor­tal ex­is­tence. Ev­ery­thing we do in this life which is good con­tributes di­rectly to the en­hance­ment of the fu­ture life. Real re­li­gion does not fos­ter moral in­do­lence and spir­i­tual lazi­ness by en­cour­ag­ing the vain hope of hav­ing all the virtues of a no­ble char­ac­ter be­stowed upon one as a re­sult of pass­ing through the por­tals of nat­u­ral death. True re­li­gion does not be­lit­tle man’s ef­forts to pro­gress dur­ing the mor­tal lease on life. Ev­ery mor­tal gain is a di­rect con­tri­bu­tion to the en­rich­ment of the first stages of the im­mor­tal sur­vival ex­pe­ri­ence.

• rejecting survival › disqualification by disinheritance due to inferior ancestors

109:3.8But with those be­ings who are vir­tu­ally dis­qual­i­fied for sur­vival by dis­in­her­i­tance through the agency of un­fit and in­fe­rior an­ces­tors, many a vir­gin Ad­juster has served a valu­able pre­lim­i­nary ex­pe­ri­ence in con­tact­ing evo­lu­tion­ary mind and thus has be­come bet­ter qual­i­fied for a sub­se­quent as­sign­ment to a higher type of mind on some other world.

• rejecting survival › s. may be rejected any time prior to fusion

109:6.1Ad­justers never fail; noth­ing worth sur­viv­ing is ever lost; ev­ery mean­ing­ful value in ev­ery will crea­ture is cer­tain of sur­vival, ir­re­spec­tive of the sur­vival or non­sur­vival of the mean­ing-dis­cov­er­ing or eval­u­at­ing per­son­al­ity. And so it is, a mor­tal crea­ture may re­ject sur­vival; still the life ex­pe­ri­ence is not wasted; the eter­nal Ad­juster car­ries the worth-while fea­tures of such an ap­par­ent life of fail­ure over into some other world and there be­stows these sur­viv­ing mean­ings and val­ues upon some higher type of mor­tal mind, one of sur­vival ca­pac­ity. No worth-while ex­pe­ri­ence ever hap­pens in vain; no true mean­ing or real value ever per­ishes.

• gift of God which must be desired; never forced on anyone

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.

• attained by › supremely desiring to be Godlike, willingness to do and be anything

110:3.2The suc­cess of your Ad­juster in the en­ter­prise of pi­lot­ing you through the mor­tal life and bring­ing about your sur­vival de­pends not so much on the the­o­ries of your be­liefs as upon your de­ci­sions, de­ter­mi­na­tions, and stead­fast faith. All these move­ments of per­son­al­ity growth be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­ences aid­ing in your ad­vance­ment be­cause they help you to co-op­er­ate with the Ad­juster; they as­sist you in ceas­ing to re­sist. Thought Ad­justers suc­ceed or ap­par­ently fail in their ter­res­trial un­der­tak­ings just in so far as mor­tals suc­ceed or fail to co-op­er­ate with the scheme whereby they are to be ad­vanced along the as­cend­ing path of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. The se­cret of sur­vival is wrapped up in the su­preme hu­man de­sire to be God­like and in the as­so­ci­ated will­ing­ness to do and be any and all things which are es­sen­tial to the fi­nal at­tain­ment of that over­mas­ter­ing de­sire.

• assurance of survival › only conscious resistance to Adjuster’s leading can prevent s.

110:3.5Con­fu­sion, be­ing puz­zled, even some­times dis­cour­aged and dis­tracted, does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify re­sis­tance to the lead­ings of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. Such at­ti­tudes may some­times con­note lack of ac­tive co-op­er­a­tion with the di­vine Mon­i­tor and may, there­fore, some­what de­lay spir­i­tual prog­ress, but such in­tel­lec­tual emo­tional dif­fi­cul­ties do not in the least in­ter­fere with the cer­tain sur­vival of the God-know­ing soul. Ig­no­rance alone can never pre­vent sur­vival; nei­ther can con­fu­sional doubts nor fear­ful un­cer­tainty. Only con­scious re­sis­tance to the Ad­juster’s lead­ing can pre­vent the sur­vival of the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul.

• attained by › not what mind comprehends but what it desires to comprehend insures

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.

• rejecting survival › rejected only by selfishness, slothfulness, sinfulness

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.

• rejecting survival › s. may be rejected any time prior to 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.

• attained by › achieved (in spirit) now in doing Father’s will

111:5.4Peace in this life, sur­vival in death, per­fec­tion in the next life, ser­vice in eter­nity—all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the crea­ture per­son­al­ity con­sents—chooses—to sub­ject the crea­ture will to the Fa­ther’s will. And al­ready has the Fa­ther cho­sen to make a frag­ment of him­self sub­ject to the will of the crea­ture per­son­al­ity.

• attained by › sincerity, steadfastness of God-seeking decisions
• attained by › transferring seat of identity from material intellect to soul

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.

• attained by › transferring seat of identity from material intellect to soul

112:5.4Hu­man be­ings pos­sess iden­tity only in the ma­te­rial sense. Such qual­i­ties of the self are ex­pressed by the ma­te­rial mind as it func­tions in the en­ergy sys­tem of the in­tel­lect. When it is said that man has iden­tity, it is rec­og­nized that he is in pos­ses­sion of a mind cir­cuit which has been placed in sub­or­di­na­tion to the acts and choos­ing of the will of the hu­man per­son­al­ity. But this is a ma­te­rial and purely tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion, just as the hu­man em­bryo is a tran­sient par­a­sitic stage of hu­man life. Hu­man be­ings, from a cos­mic per­spec­tive, are born, live, and die in a rel­a­tive in­stant of time; they are not en­dur­ing. But mor­tal per­son­al­ity, through its own choos­ing, pos­sesses the power of trans­fer­ring its seat of iden­tity from the pass­ing ma­te­rial-in­tel­lect sys­tem to the higher mor­ontia-soul sys­tem which, in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, is cre­ated as a new ve­hi­cle for per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tion.

• adjudication of survival › in doubt, universe governments invariably rule in personal interests of individual

112:5.7If ever there is doubt as to the ad­vis­abil­ity of ad­vanc­ing a hu­man iden­tity to the man­sion worlds, the uni­verse gov­ern­ments in­vari­ably rule in the per­sonal in­ter­ests of that in­di­vid­ual; they un­hesi­tat­ingly ad­vance such a soul to the sta­tus of a tran­si­tional be­ing, while they con­tinue their ob­ser­va­tions of the emerg­ing mor­ontia in­tent and spir­i­tual pur­pose. Thus di­vine jus­tice is cer­tain of achieve­ment, and di­vine mercy is ac­corded fur­ther op­por­tu­nity for ex­tend­ing its min­istry.

112:5.8The gov­ern­ments of Or­von­ton and Neb­a­don do not claim ab­so­lute per­fec­tion for the de­tail work­ing of the uni­ver­sal plan of mor­tal reper­son­al­iza­tion, but they do claim to, and ac­tu­ally do, man­i­fest pa­tience, tol­er­ance, un­der­stand­ing, and mer­ci­ful sym­pa­thy. We had rather as­sume the risk of a sys­tem re­bel­lion than to court the haz­ard of de­priv­ing one strug­gling mor­tal from any evo­lu­tion­ary world of the eter­nal joy of pur­su­ing the as­cend­ing ca­reer.

• adjudication of survival › all must experience one true opportunity to make an undoubted, final choice
• adjudication of survival › no second opportunity in face of rejection of first

112:5.9This does not mean that hu­man be­ings are to en­joy a sec­ond op­por­tu­nity in the face of the re­jec­tion of a first, not at all. But it does sig­nify that all will crea­tures are to ex­pe­ri­ence one true op­por­tu­nity to make one un­doubted, self-con­scious, and fi­nal choice. The sov­er­eign Judges of the uni­verses will not de­prive any be­ing of per­son­al­ity sta­tus who has not fi­nally and fully made the eter­nal choice; the soul of man must and will be given full and am­ple op­por­tu­nity to re­veal its true in­tent and real pur­pose.

• attained by › joint effort by Adjuster and human

112:7.9Has the tri­umphant Ad­juster won per­son­al­ity by the mag­nif­i­cent ser­vice to hu­man­ity, or has the valiant hu­man ac­quired im­mor­tal­ity through sin­cere ef­forts to achieve Ad­juster­like­ness? It is nei­ther; but they to­gether have achieved the evo­lu­tion of a mem­ber of one of the unique or­ders of the as­cend­ing per­son­al­i­ties of the Su­preme, one who will ever be found ser­vice­able, faith­ful, and ef­fi­cient, a can­di­date for fur­ther growth and de­vel­op­ment, ever rang­ing up­ward and never ceas­ing the su­per­nal as­cent un­til the seven cir­cuits of Ha­vona have been tra­versed and the one­time soul of earthly ori­gin stands in wor­ship­ful rec­og­ni­tion of the ac­tual per­son­al­ity of the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

• attained by › joint effort by Adjuster and human

112:7.11On the Ad­juster-fu­sion worlds the des­tiny of the Mys­tery Mon­i­tor is iden­ti­cal with that of the as­cend­ing mor­tal—the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. And nei­ther Ad­juster nor mor­tal can at­tain that unique goal with­out the full co-op­er­a­tion and faith­ful help of the other. This ex­traor­di­nary part­ner­ship is one of the most en­gross­ing and amaz­ing of all the cos­mic phe­nom­ena of this uni­verse age.

• attained by › accepting participation in adventure of eternity

117:4.11The great strug­gle of this uni­verse age is be­tween the po­ten­tial and the ac­tual—the seek­ing for ac­tu­al­iza­tion by all that is as yet un­ex­pressed. If mor­tal man pro­ceeds upon the Par­a­dise ad­ven­ture, he is fol­low­ing the mo­tions of time, which flow as cur­rents within the stream of eter­nity; if mor­tal man re­jects the eter­nal ca­reer, he is mov­ing counter to the stream of events in the fi­nite uni­verses. The me­chan­i­cal cre­ation moves on in­ex­orably in ac­cor­dance with the un­fold­ing pur­pose of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, but the vo­li­tional cre­ation has the choice of ac­cept­ing or of re­ject­ing the role of per­son­al­ity par­tic­i­pa­tion in the ad­ven­ture of eter­nity. Mor­tal man can­not de­stroy the su­preme val­ues of hu­man ex­is­tence, but he can very def­i­nitely pre­vent the evo­lu­tion of these val­ues in his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. To the ex­tent that the hu­man self thus re­fuses to take part in the Par­a­dise as­cent, to just that ex­tent is the Su­preme de­layed in achiev­ing di­vin­ity ex­pres­sion in the grand uni­verse.

• attained by › self-identification with indwelling spirit by choosing to do Father’s will

118:1.2The per­son­al­ity of the mor­tal crea­ture may eter­nal­ize by self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the in­dwelling spirit through the tech­nique of choos­ing to do the will of the Fa­ther. Such a con­se­cra­tion of will is tan­ta­mount to the re­al­iza­tion of eter­nity-re­al­ity of pur­pose. This means that the pur­pose of the crea­ture has be­come fixed with re­gard to the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments; stated oth­er­wise, that the suc­ces­sion of mo­ments will wit­ness no change in crea­ture pur­pose. A mil­lion or a bil­lion mo­ments makes no dif­fer­ence. Num­ber has ceased to have mean­ing with re­gard to the crea­ture’s pur­pose. Thus does crea­ture choice plus God’s choice even­tu­ate in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of the never-end­ing union of the spirit of God and the na­ture of man in the ev­er­last­ing ser­vice of the chil­dren of God and of their Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

• as creature becomes God-identified, he becomes real

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.

• rejecting survival › humans fully occupied with material problems will perish

130:2.9The next day Ga­nid talked all this over with his fa­ther, and it was in an­swer to Gonod’s ques­tion that Je­sus ex­plained that “hu­man wills which are fully oc­cu­pied with pass­ing only upon tem­po­ral de­ci­sions hav­ing to do with the ma­te­rial prob­lems of an­i­mal ex­is­tence are doomed to per­ish in time. Those who make whole­hearted moral de­ci­sions and un­qual­i­fied spir­i­tual choices are thus pro­gres­sively iden­ti­fied with the in­dwelling and di­vine spirit, and thereby are they in­creas­ingly trans­formed into the val­ues of eter­nal sur­vival—un­end­ing pro­gres­sion of di­vine ser­vice.”

• assurance of survival › Father is not willing that any should perish

131:10.4“The Fa­ther in heaven will not suf­fer a sin­gle child on earth to per­ish if that child has a de­sire to find the Fa­ther and truly longs to be like him. Our Fa­ther even loves the wicked and is al­ways kind to the un­grate­ful. If more hu­man be­ings could only know about the good­ness of God, they would cer­tainly be led to re­pent of their evil ways and for­sake all known sin. All good things come down from the Fa­ther of light, in whom there is no vari­able­ness nei­ther shadow of chang­ing. The spirit of the true God is in man’s heart. He in­tends that all men should be broth­ers. When men be­gin to feel af­ter God, that is ev­i­dence that God has found them, and that they are in quest of knowl­edge about him. We live in God and God dwells in us.

• attained by › choosing values selected by Adjuster

132:2.2My brother, good and evil are merely words sym­bol­iz­ing rel­a­tive lev­els of hu­man com­pre­hen­sion of the ob­serv­able uni­verse. If you are eth­i­cally lazy and so­cially in­dif­fer­ent, you can take as your stan­dard of good the cur­rent so­cial us­ages. If you are spir­i­tu­ally in­do­lent and morally un­pro­gres­sive, you may take as your stan­dards of good the re­li­gious prac­tices and tra­di­tions of your con­tem­po­raries. But the soul that sur­vives time and emerges into eter­nity must make a liv­ing and per­sonal choice be­tween good and evil as they are de­ter­mined by the true val­ues of the spir­i­tual stan­dards es­tab­lished by the di­vine spirit which the Fa­ther in heaven has sent to dwell within the heart of man. This in­dwelling spirit is the stan­dard of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

132:2.3Good­ness, like truth, is al­ways rel­a­tive and un­fail­ingly evil-con­trasted. It is the per­cep­tion of these qual­i­ties of good­ness and truth that en­ables the evolv­ing souls of men to make those per­sonal de­ci­sions of choice which are es­sen­tial to eter­nal sur­vival.

• attained by › supremely desiring to be Godlike, willingness to do and be anything

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.

• attained by › transferring seat of identity from material intellect to soul

132:3.6Faith acts to re­lease the super­hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties of the di­vine spark, the im­mor­tal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival. Plants and an­i­mals sur­vive in time by the tech­nique of pass­ing on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other iden­ti­cal par­ti­cles of them­selves. The hu­man soul (per­son­al­ity) of man sur­vives mor­tal death by iden­tity as­so­ci­a­tion with this in­dwelling spark of di­vin­ity, which is im­mor­tal, and which func­tions to per­pet­u­ate the hu­man per­son­al­ity upon a con­tin­u­ing and higher level of pro­gres­sive uni­verse ex­is­tence. The con­cealed seed of the hu­man soul is an im­mor­tal spirit. The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the soul is the first of a suc­ces­sion of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tions of spir­i­tual and pro­gress­ing ex­is­tences, ter­mi­nat­ing only when this di­vine en­tity at­tains the source of its ex­is­tence, the per­sonal source of all ex­is­tence, God, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• adjudication of survival › in doubt, universe governments invariably rule in personal interests of individual
• attained by › faith only

139:12.7To Je­sus, Ju­das was a faith ad­ven­ture. From the be­gin­ning the Mas­ter fully un­der­stood the weak­ness of this apos­tle and well knew the dan­gers of ad­mit­ting him to fel­low­ship. But it is the na­ture of the Sons of God to give ev­ery cre­ated be­ing a full and equal chance for sal­va­tion and sur­vival. Je­sus wanted not only the mor­tals of this world but the on­look­ers of in­nu­mer­able other worlds to know that, when doubts ex­ist as to the sin­cer­ity and whole­heart­ed­ness of a crea­ture’s de­vo­tion to the king­dom, it is the in­vari­able prac­tice of the Judges of men fully to re­ceive the doubt­ful can­di­date. The door of eter­nal life is wide open to all; “whoso­ever will may come”; there are no re­stric­tions or qual­i­fi­ca­tions save the faith of the one who comes.

• attained by › faith only

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

• attained by › faith only

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• assurance of survival › Jesus is surety for our s.

142:5.4“Said the Prophet Isa­iah, speak­ing of these times: ‘When the spirit is poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righ­teous­ness be­come peace, quiet­ness, and as­sur­ance for­ever.’ And for all who truly be­lieve this gospel, I will be­come surety for their re­cep­tion into the eter­nal mer­cies and the ev­er­last­ing life of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. You, then, who hear this mes­sage and be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom are the sons of God, and you have life ev­er­last­ing; and the ev­i­dence to all the world that you have been born of the spirit is that you sin­cerely love one an­other.”

• gift of God which must be desired; never forced on anyone

146:2.54. There is a ba­sic law of jus­tice in the uni­verse which mercy is pow­er­less to cir­cum­vent. The un­selfish glo­ries of Par­a­dise are not pos­si­ble of re­cep­tion by a thor­oughly self­ish crea­ture of the realms of time and space. Even the in­fi­nite love of God can­not force the sal­va­tion of eter­nal sur­vival upon any mor­tal crea­ture who does not choose to sur­vive. Mercy has great lat­i­tude of be­stowal, but, af­ter all, there are man­dates of jus­tice which even love com­bined with mercy can­not ef­fec­tively ab­ro­gate. Again Je­sus quoted from the He­brew scrip­tures: “I have called and you re­fused to hear; I stretched out my hand, but no man re­garded. You have set at naught all my coun­sel, and you have re­jected my re­proof, and be­cause of this re­bel­lious at­ti­tude it be­comes in­ev­i­ta­ble that you shall call upon me and fail to re­ceive an an­swer. Hav­ing re­jected the way of life, you may seek me dili­gently in your times of suf­fer­ing, but you will not find me.”

• presence of evil is sufficient test for

148:5.2“Na­than­iel, you and many oth­ers are thus per­plexed be­cause you do not com­pre­hend how the nat­u­ral or­der of this world has been so many times up­set by the sin­ful ad­ven­tures of cer­tain re­bel­lious traitors to the Fa­ther’s will. And I have come to make a be­gin­ning of set­ting these things in or­der. But many ages will be re­quired to re­store this part of the uni­verse to for­mer paths and thus re­lease the chil­dren of men from the ex­tra bur­dens of sin and re­bel­lion. The pres­ence of evil alone is suf­fi­cient test for the as­cen­sion of man—sin is not es­sen­tial to sur­vival.

• attained by › faith only

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

• attained by › supremely desiring to be Godlike, willingness to do and be anything

156:5.7Force­ful am­bi­tion, in­tel­li­gent judg­ment, and sea­soned wis­dom are the es­sen­tials of ma­te­rial suc­cess. Lead­er­ship is de­pen­dent on nat­u­ral abil­ity, dis­cre­tion, will power, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. Spir­i­tual des­tiny is de­pen­dent on faith, love, and de­vo­tion to truth—hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness—the whole­hearted de­sire to find God and to be like him.

• attained by › faith only
• rejecting survival › choice between sinful pleasures, righteous realities

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• assurance of survival › Father is not willing that any should perish

159:1.2“If a kind­hearted man has a hun­dred sheep and one of them goes astray, does he not im­me­di­ately leave the ninety and nine and go out in search of the one that has gone astray? And if he is a good shep­herd, will he not keep up his quest for the lost sheep un­til he finds it? And then, when the shep­herd has found his lost sheep, he lays it over his shoul­der and, go­ing home re­joic­ing, calls to his friends and neigh­bors, ‘Re­joice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ I de­clare that there is more joy in heaven over one sin­ner who re­pents than over ninety and nine righ­teous per­sons who need no re­pen­tance. Even so, it is not the will of my Fa­ther in heaven that one of these lit­tle ones should go astray, much less that they should per­ish. In your re­li­gion God may re­ceive re­pen­tant sin­ners; in the gospel of the king­dom the Fa­ther goes forth to find them even be­fore they have se­ri­ously thought of re­pen­tance.

• attained by › faith only

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

• attained by › loving God with all one’s heart, and one’s neighbor as oneself

164:1.1That evening a con­sid­er­able com­pany gath­ered about Je­sus and the two apos­tles to ask ques­tions, many of which the apos­tles an­swered, while oth­ers the Mas­ter dis­cussed. In the course of the evening a cer­tain lawyer, seek­ing to en­tan­gle Je­sus in a com­pro­mis­ing dis­pu­ta­tion, said: “Teacher, I would like to ask you just what I should do to in­herit eter­nal life?” Je­sus an­swered, “What is writ­ten in the law and the proph­ets; how do you read the Scrip­tures?” The lawyer, know­ing the teach­ings of both Je­sus and the Phar­isees, an­swered: “To love the Lord God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your neigh­bor as your­self.” Then said Je­sus: “You have an­swered right; this, if you re­ally do, will lead to life ev­er­last­ing.”

• attained by › faith only

170:2.20Je­sus taught that, by faith, the be­liever en­ters the king­dom now. In the var­i­ous dis­courses he taught that two things are es­sen­tial to faith-en­trance into the king­dom:

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

170:2.222. Truth hunger. The thirst for righ­teous­ness, a change of mind, the ac­quire­ment of the mo­tive to be like God and to find God.

• attained by › faith only

170:5.13Je­sus fore­saw that a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, or church, would fol­low the prog­ress of the true spir­i­tual king­dom, and that is why he never op­posed the apos­tles’ prac­tic­ing the rite of John’s bap­tism. He taught that the truth-lov­ing soul, the one who hungers and thirsts for righ­teous­ness, for God, is ad­mit­ted by faith to the spir­i­tual king­dom; at the same time the apos­tles taught that such a be­liever is ad­mit­ted to the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion of dis­ci­ples by the out­ward rite of bap­tism.

• rejecting survival › one-time sonship will not save a person without progressive fruit-bearing

176:3.3“Each gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers should carry on their work, in view of the pos­si­ble re­turn of the Son of Man, ex­actly as each in­di­vid­ual be­liever car­ries for­ward his life­work in view of in­ev­i­ta­ble and ever-im­pend­ing nat­u­ral death. When you have by faith once es­tab­lished your­self as a son of God, noth­ing else mat­ters as re­gards the surety of sur­vival. But make no mis­take! this sur­vival faith is a liv­ing faith, and it in­creas­ingly man­i­fests the fruits of that di­vine spirit which first in­spired it in the hu­man heart. That you have once ac­cepted son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom will not save you in the face of the know­ing and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of those truths which have to do with the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual fruit-bear­ing of the sons of God in the flesh. You who have been with me in the Fa­ther’s busi­ness on earth can even now desert the king­dom if you find that you love not the way of the Fa­ther’s ser­vice for man­kind.

• attained by › having been born of spirit

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

• attained by › having been born of spirit

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• attained by › choosing values selected by Adjuster

196:3.17Moral eval­u­a­tion with a re­li­gious mean­ing—spir­i­tual in­sight—con­notes the in­di­vid­ual’s choice be­tween good and evil, truth and er­ror, ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual, hu­man and di­vine, time and eter­nity. Hu­man sur­vival is in great mea­sure de­pen­dent on con­se­crat­ing the hu­man will to the choos­ing of those val­ues se­lected by this spirit-value sorter—the in­dwelling in­ter­preter and uni­fier. Per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in two phases: dis­cov­ery in the hu­man mind and rev­e­la­tion by the in­dwelling di­vine spirit. Through over­so­phis­ti­ca­tion or as a re­sult of the ir­re­li­gious con­duct of pro­fessed re­li­gion­ists, a man, or even a gen­er­a­tion of men, may elect to sus­pend their ef­forts to dis­cover the God who in­dwells them; they may fail to pro­gress in and at­tain the di­vine rev­e­la­tion. But such at­ti­tudes of spir­i­tual non­pro­gres­sion can­not long per­sist be­cause of the pres­ence and in­flu­ence of the in­dwelling Thought Ad­justers.