translation

• occurs many times before we see God

5:1.1The in­abil­ity of the fi­nite crea­ture to ap­proach the in­fi­nite Fa­ther is in­her­ent, not in the Fa­ther’s aloof­ness, but in the finite­ness and ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions of cre­ated be­ings. The mag­ni­tude of the spir­i­tual dif­fer­ence be­tween the high­est per­son­al­ity of uni­verse ex­is­tence and the lower groups of cre­ated in­tel­li­gences is in­con­ceiv­able. Were it pos­si­ble for the lower or­ders of in­tel­li­gence to be trans­ported in­stantly into the pres­ence of the Fa­ther him­self, they would not know they were there. They would there be just as obliv­i­ous of the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther as where they now are. There is a long, long road ahead of mor­tal man be­fore he can con­sis­tently and within the realms of pos­si­bil­ity ask for safe con­duct into the Par­a­dise pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Spir­i­tu­ally, man must be trans­lated many times be­fore he can at­tain a plane that will yield the spir­i­tual vi­sion which will en­able him to see even any one of the Seven Mas­ter Spir­its.

• occurs many times before we see God

5:1.9The fact that vast time is in­volved in the at­tain­ment of God makes the pres­ence and per­son­al­ity of the In­fi­nite none the less real. Your as­cen­sion is a part of the cir­cuit of the seven super­uni­verses, and though you swing around it count­less times, you may ex­pect, in spirit and in sta­tus, to be ever swing­ing in­ward. You can de­pend upon be­ing trans­lated from sphere to sphere, from the outer cir­cuits ever nearer the in­ner cen­ter, and some day, doubt not, you shall stand in the di­vine and cen­tral pres­ence and see him, fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing, face to face. It is a ques­tion of the at­tain­ment of ac­tual and lit­eral spir­i­tual lev­els; and these spir­i­tual lev­els are at­tain­able by any be­ing who has been in­dwelt by a Mys­tery Mon­i­tor, and who has sub­se­quently eter­nally fused with that Thought Ad­juster.

• examples › Enoch was first mortal to fuse

45:4.1311. Enoch, the first of the mor­tals of Uran­tia to fuse with the Thought Ad­juster dur­ing the mor­tal life in the flesh.

• examples › Elijah called away

45:4.1513. Eli­jah, a trans­lated soul of bril­liant spir­i­tual achieve­ment dur­ing the post-Ma­te­rial Son age.

• defined as › Son seizure from among the living

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.

• majority experience t. on advanced worlds

52:7.4This is the dis­pen­sa­tion when many mor­tals are trans­lated from among the liv­ing. As the era of Trin­ity Teacher Sons pro­gresses, the spir­i­tual al­le­giance of the mor­tals of time be­comes more and more uni­ver­sal. Nat­u­ral death be­comes less fre­quent as the Ad­justers in­creas­ingly fuse with their sub­jects dur­ing the life­time in the flesh. The planet even­tu­ally is classed as of the pri­mary mod­i­fied or­der of mor­tal as­cen­sion.

• in light and life, t. in morontia temple
• spiritual flames instantly consume material body

55:1.5Such a mor­ontia tem­ple also serves as the place of as­sem­bly for wit­ness­ing the trans­la­tion of liv­ing mor­tals to the mor­ontia ex­is­tence. It is be­cause the trans­la­tion tem­ple is com­posed of mor­ontia ma­te­rial that it is not de­stroyed by the blaz­ing glory of the con­sum­ing fire which so com­pletely oblit­er­ates the phys­i­cal bod­ies of those mor­tals who therein ex­pe­ri­ence fi­nal fu­sion with their di­vine Ad­justers. On a large world these de­par­ture flares are al­most con­tin­u­ous, and as the num­ber of trans­la­tions in­creases, sub­sidiary mor­ontia life shrines are pro­vided in dif­fer­ent ar­eas of the planet. Not long since I so­journed on a world in the far north whereon twenty-five mor­ontia shrines were func­tion­ing.

• often occurs in planetary atmosphere

55:1.6On pre­set­tled worlds, plan­ets with­out mor­ontia tem­ples, these fu­sion flashes many times oc­cur in the plan­e­tary at­mo­sphere, where the ma­te­rial body of a trans­la­tion can­di­date is el­e­vated by the mid­way crea­tures and the phys­i­cal con­trol­lers.

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

• defined as › soul’s fusion with Adjuster in mortal life

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

• in light and life, t. in morontia temple
• mortal resigns planetary duties, bids farewell before t.

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

• spiritual flames instantly consume material body

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

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

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

• archangel supervises t. in morontia temple
• defined as › soul’s fusion with Adjuster in mortal life
• souls proceed by Adjuster transit to resurrection hall

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

• translated mortals exempt from passing through education of mansion worlds, system, or constellation

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

• defined as › Son seizure from among the living

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

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

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

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

• some mortals of Adjuster-fusion status exempted from t. to continue in important posts

55:3.185. Mor­tals of Ad­juster-fu­sion sta­tus who, upon their own pe­ti­tion, are tem­porar­ily ex­empted from trans­la­tion by the or­der of the Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster of uni­verse chief­tain­ship in or­der that they may con­tinue on the planet in cer­tain im­por­tant ad­min­is­tra­tive posts.

• majority experience t. on advanced worlds

55:6.4The Ad­justers con­tinue to come as in for­mer evo­lu­tion­ary eras, and as the epochs pass, these mor­tals are in­creas­ingly able to com­mune with the in­dwelling Fa­ther frag­ment. Dur­ing the em­bry­onic and prespir­i­tual stages of de­vel­op­ment the ad­ju­tant mind-spir­its are still func­tion­ing. The Holy Spirit and the min­istry of an­gels are even more ef­fec­tive as the suc­ces­sive epochs of set­tled life are ex­pe­ri­enced. In the fourth stage of light and life the ad­vanced mor­tals seem to ex­pe­ri­ence con­sid­er­able con­scious con­tact with the spirit pres­ence of the Mas­ter Spirit of super­uni­verse ju­ris­dic­tion, while the phi­los­o­phy of such a world is fo­cused upon the at­tempt to com­pre­hend the new rev­e­la­tions of God the Su­preme. More than one half of the hu­man in­hab­i­tants on plan­ets of this ad­vanced sta­tus ex­pe­ri­ence trans­la­tion to the mor­ontia state from among the liv­ing. Even so, “old things are pass­ing away; be­hold, all things are be­com­ing new.”

• examples › 55 Amadonites of immortal status translated upon receivers’ arrival

67:6.3These Ama­don­ites were de­rived from the group of 144 loyal An­don­ites to which Amadon be­longed, and who have be­come known by his name. This group com­prised thirty-nine men and one hun­dred and five women. Fifty-six of this num­ber were of im­mor­tal­ity sta­tus, and all (ex­cept Amadon) were trans­lated along with the loyal mem­bers of the staff. The re­main­der of this no­ble band con­tin­ued on earth to the end of their mor­tal days un­der the lead­er­ship of Van and Amadon. They were the bi­o­logic leaven which mul­ti­plied and con­tin­ued to fur­nish lead­er­ship for the world down through the long dark ages of the postre­bel­lion era.

• examples › Van and Amadon translated to Jerusem

67:6.8Van and Amadon re­mained on earth un­til shortly af­ter the ar­rival of Adam and Eve. Some years there­after they were trans­lated to Je­ru­sem, where Van was re­united with his wait­ing Ad­juster. Van now serves in be­half of Uran­tia while await­ing the or­der to go for­ward on the long, long trail to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion and the un­re­vealed des­tiny of the as­sem­bling Corps of Mor­tal Fi­nal­ity.

• examples › Van and Amadon translated to Jerusem

74:5.2The farewell of the re­ceivers oc­cu­pied the whole of a day, and dur­ing the evening the in­di­vid­ual Mel­chiz­e­deks gave Adam and Eve their part­ing ad­vice and best wishes. Adam had sev­eral times re­quested his ad­vis­ers to re­main on earth with him, but al­ways were these pe­ti­tions de­nied. The time had come when the Ma­te­rial Sons must as­sume full re­spon­si­bil­ity for the con­duct of world af­fairs. And so, at mid­night, the se­raphic trans­ports of Sa­ta­nia left the planet with four­teen be­ings for Je­ru­sem, the trans­la­tion of Van and Amadon oc­cur­ring si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the de­par­ture of the twelve Mel­chiz­e­deks.

• examples › Machiventa Melchizedek

93:8.1It was shortly af­ter the de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah that Ma­chi­venta de­cided to end his emer­gency be­stowal on Uran­tia. Mel­chiz­e­dek’s de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his so­journ in the flesh was in­flu­enced by nu­mer­ous con­di­tions, chief of which was the grow­ing ten­dency of the sur­round­ing tribes, and even of his im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates, to re­gard him as a demigod, to look upon him as a super­nat­u­ral be­ing, which in­deed he was; but they were be­gin­ning to rev­er­ence him un­duly and with a highly su­per­sti­tious fear. In ad­di­tion to these rea­sons, Mel­chiz­e­dek wanted to leave the scene of his earthly ac­tiv­i­ties a suf­fi­cient length of time be­fore Abra­ham’s death to in­sure that the truth of the one and only God would be­come strongly es­tab­lished in the minds of his fol­low­ers. Ac­cord­ingly Ma­chi­venta re­tired one night to his tent at Salem, hav­ing said good night to his hu­man com­pan­ions, and when they went to call him in the morn­ing, he was not there, for his fel­lows had taken him.

• examples › Machiventa Melchizedek

93:9.1It was a great trial for Abra­ham when Mel­chiz­e­dek so sud­denly dis­ap­peared. Al­though he had fully warned his fol­low­ers that he must some­time go as he had come, they were not rec­on­ciled to the loss of their won­der­ful leader. The great or­ga­ni­za­tion built up at Salem nearly dis­ap­peared, though the tra­di­tions of these days were what Moses built upon when he led the He­brew slaves out of Egypt.

• examples › Elijah called away

97:2.1In the tenth cen­tury be­fore Christ the He­brew na­tion be­came di­vided into two king­doms. In both of these po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions many truth teach­ers en­deav­ored to stem the re­ac­tionary tide of spir­i­tual deca­dence that had set in, and which con­tin­ued dis­as­trously af­ter the war of sep­a­ra­tion. But these ef­forts to ad­vance the He­braic re­li­gion did not pros­per un­til that de­ter­mined and fear­less war­rior for righ­teous­ness, Eli­jah, be­gan his teach­ing. Eli­jah re­stored to the north­ern king­dom a con­cept of God com­pa­ra­ble with that held in the days of Samuel. Eli­jah had lit­tle op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent an ad­vanced con­cept of God; he was kept busy, as Samuel had been be­fore him, over­throw­ing the al­tars of Baal and de­mol­ish­ing the idols of false gods. And he car­ried for­ward his re­forms in the face of the op­po­si­tion of an idol­a­trous monarch; his task was even more gi­gan­tic and dif­fi­cult than that which Samuel had faced.

• defined as › soul’s fusion with Adjuster in mortal life

110:5.2Man’s dream ex­pe­ri­ences, that dis­or­dered and dis­con­nected pa­rade of the un-co-or­di­nated sleep­ing mind, pre­sent ad­e­quate proof of the fail­ure of the Ad­justers to har­mo­nize and as­so­ciate the di­ver­gent fac­tors of the mind of man. The Ad­justers sim­ply can­not, in a sin­gle life­time, ar­bi­trar­ily co-or­di­nate and syn­chro­nize two such un­like and di­verse types of think­ing as the hu­man and the di­vine. When they do, as they some­times have, such souls are trans­lated di­rectly to the man­sion worlds with­out the ne­ces­sity of pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of death.

• spiritual flames instantly consume material body

110:7.2When a hu­man be­ing has com­pleted the cir­cles of cos­mic achieve­ment, and fur­ther, when the fi­nal choos­ing of the mor­tal will per­mits the Ad­juster to com­plete the as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man iden­tity with the mor­ontial soul dur­ing evo­lu­tion­ary and phys­i­cal life, then do such con­sum­mated li­aisons of soul and Ad­juster go on in­de­pen­dently to the man­sion worlds, and there is is­sued the man­date from Uversa which pro­vides for the im­me­di­ate fu­sion of the Ad­juster and the mor­ontial soul. This fu­sion dur­ing phys­i­cal life in­stantly con­sumes the ma­te­rial body; the hu­man be­ings who might wit­ness such a spec­ta­cle would only ob­serve the trans­lat­ing mor­tal dis­ap­pear “in char­i­ots of fire.”

• translation

112:7.3Fu­sion with the Ad­juster is usu­ally ef­fected while the as­cender is res­i­dent within his lo­cal sys­tem. It may oc­cur on the planet of na­tiv­ity as a tran­scen­dence of nat­u­ral death; it may take place on any one of the man­sion worlds or on the head­quar­ters of the sys­tem; it may even be de­layed un­til the time of the con­stel­la­tion so­journ; or, in spe­cial in­stances, it may not be con­sum­mated un­til the as­cender is on the lo­cal uni­verse cap­i­tal.