Episode:Our Local System of Inhabited Worlds—Administration (Part 5)
This probation nursery of Satania is maintained by certain morontia personalities on the finaliters’ world, one half of the planet being devoted to this work of child rearing. Here are received and reassembled certain children of surviving mortals, such as those offspring who perished on the evolutionary worlds before the acquirement of individual status on the universe records.
Keywords: Urantia, Probationary Nursery, Melchizedek Schools, Representative Government, Morontia Wisdom
Opening thought: [Regarding institutionalized religion,] we have seen that antagonism to superstitious beliefs habitually leads to repudiation of the entire system of which they form [only a] part....[But] dogmas are but temporary forms of that which is permanent. —Spencer, The Study of Sociology, Chapter XII, p.352
Summary by Brad
On the seen and the unseen
On our world we have no visible supermaterial rulers. On worlds that do, maybe it's easy to believe in God, but remember that belief is not faith. Even if you can trust and believe in a visible Adam and Eve on your world, that's not faith. Faith involves following the instructions of the unseen, unseeable Father.
A religionist of philosophic attainment hungers for something else unseeable: truth! Recall that both Jesus and The Urantia Papers are revelations of truth, and truth cannot be seen [132:3.2]. The words of the 5th ER are, yes, the logic of truth, but at best all they can be is a lens through which you can "see the unseeable": truth.
Do you say, "Oh yes, if I had lived 2,000 years ago and could have been in Jesus' personal presence, I would have paid attention to him and I would have focused." Are you sure? For starters, consider you have an epochal revelation in your lap right now; are you reading it—hanging on its every word—as attentively as you say you would have listened to Jesus? Are you even seeing The Urantia Papers? If this reviewer is honest, he knows he could do much better.
On starting with yourself: being... selfish?
We are told to first attend to ourselves and our religion—seeking first the kingdom of heaven. But isn't that selfish? Aren't we supposed to not be selfish? We considered this further.
In the following sense, the word "selfish" (i.e., "regarding the self") is appropriate: In the inner domain I should be concerned only about my relationship to the cosmos, not anyone else's. In the inner domain it's just me and the cosmos, no other persons. All I have been given sovereignty over is myself in this inner life. My job is to take personality control of that self and manage it well so that it conforms with the cosmos.
In this inner domain if I successfully achieve becoming a "polished mirror" for truth so it can shine out from me, automatically the fruits of the spirit will pour forth from me. Yes, "selfishly" through me, flows the cosmos. In finding myself selfishly, I lose myself and then benefit others. (Jesus tried to speak about this with the apostles, but his audience couldn't fathom his words).
But don't take this as "selfish" in the sense of self-seeking, self-loving, self-serving, self-centered. No. The "salvation from self" [101:6.13] that I need is salvation from the material self, the one that doesn't survive death. My animal-origin self naturally seeks to serve itself. My morontia-minded self (that inner domain) can choose to serve the Father, and then it can manage my animal-origin self. The animal-origin self is something that needs parenting, not to be listened to.
On what's taken into the afterlife
Only our Thought Adjuster has memories that carry into the next life. Are we giving our Thought Adjusters anything suitably cultivated they can record here in this life as memories to take to the next life? Are we exercising ourselves in the inner lives? Only to the degree we take delight in cultivating... in this life will there be anything memorable from this life taken to the afterlife.
With no Adjuster memories, we would wake up in the next life with a giant case of amnesia—effectively the same as if we had died the day after we received our Thought Adjuster around age 6. Instead of waking up asking, "Where are all my relatives, and when do I get back to work," we'd just spend 10 days asking, "Who am I?"
However, given the spiritually activated times we live in, it seems less likely it would work this way. There seem to be spiritual consequences (or at least implications) to almost everything in our lives these days. So much afoot today is an "ism," those are ideas with spiritual consequences. We're less animal-like these days than in eons past. We have professed religionists today who are unwitting actual secularists. We have an emergency revelation here for these very reasons.
Remember: God has given us all we need to thrive spiritually in these troubled times into which we were born. It is simply sad to record that so few people avail themselves of what God has given them freely.
45:6 Adamic Training of Ascenders (cont'd)
We completed our study of this section considering the probation/probationary nursery. Details are scattered in several places throughout the 5th ER and we took this opportunity to go on a little journey looking for those places and pondering them. Here are some highlights:
- It's a very, very big nursery. Imagine the surface area of all the land on our world and multiply it by over 150. That's the amount of land given over to running the probation nursery in our local system of 619 inhabited worlds.
- These nursery children depend on the mind of one or both natural parents. Children are literally connected to their natural parents, mindally.
- Children under about age 16 are in the nursery. Paper 47 indicates children retain a mindal connection to their "natural parents" until about age 16. And for as long as this connection exists, a child is resurrected in the nursery, not the first mansion world.
- Children under about age 6 are in the nursery. Children who died "before acquiring spiritual status as individuals" [45:6.7] are resurrected in the nursery. The arrival of the Thought Adjuster is what indicates this "spiritual status" as an individual.
- Even children who died before birth are in the nursery. Children who die "before the acquirement of individual status on the universe records" [47:2.1] are resurrected in the nursery. These "universe records" are associated with birth from the womb [37:3.7]. From the moment of conception onward, there's a child there. Should they die, they are "salvaged" from the vicissitudes of time; before a child even has freewill choice of its own, the Father chooses them, and the Father is outside of time.
- This child must be human, though. If a conceived child's genetics are so malformed that have no potential to become human (only subhuman), they cannot be resurrected because they cannot have a soul.
- These nursery children are not sex differentiated. This is the only thing that sets them apart from normal mortal children, though this reviewer admits this seems like a pretty darn big deal and cannot fathom the life of a non-sex-differentiated child.
- If they survive, their destiny is Paradise citizenship. They cannot become finaliters.
45:7 The Melchizedek Schools
The bar in the universe is set: fusion with the Thought Adjuster on our nativity sphere is the benchmark of judgment. We're a long way from that here. Ergo, we're all born into probation; in this life and the early afterlife we are being tested. The mansion worlds are called "detention planets," [45:7.1] where we go to be educated under a "probation extension" [112:5.6], and we only get this extension if we are "true of purpose and worthy in spirit." [45:7.1] And then, only after we've proven ourselves are we free to go about the universe at large. Religionists have had a sense of this truth for millennia. This is not a universe of universalism; there's no easy, indolent pass to Paradise. But it's also not impossible: just sincerely hunger for truth and thirst for righteousness, and supply favorable conditions to be grown. Avoid all thoughts like, "No one is the boss of me, I'll do whatever I please." Actually, Lucifer said that.
We reasoned that all these unnamed co-ordinates in the universe must be the only way the "numbers game" can work. With only 13,641 Brilliant Evening Stars [37:2.4] in all of Nebadon, unnamed co-ordinates of theirs must be vast and be basically doing all the teaching accountable to the Brilliant Evening Stars in the local systems. Secondary midwayers also have unnamed co-ordinates, and they likewise must do a lot of work on the midwayers' behalf.
Considerable detail is given about how suffrage is handled on Jerusem for electing representatives to the higher-up constellation legislature and the "many elective bodies on Jerusem." After all, representative government is a divine ideal. Michael selecting our world for bestowal was hugely consequential, because today counselors from our very own world oversee voting rights on Jerusem to some degree! These voting rights (and who may be voted for) are apportioned on the basis of a meritocracy. Meritocracy is the pattern on high. Each individual with voting rights gets up to 1,000 votes based on their "mota status," a combination of spirit insight, experiential socialization, and overall morontia wisdom.
There must be much to tend to in all these elected bodies, because the Supreme is always changing and therefore new and amended laws and formulas are always demanded.
We ended where we started: considering "selfishness." Our local system and its headquarters are about this "selfish" need to work on ourselves first (we remembered the intimidating "college of self-evaluation" [45:7.3] that's in our future). So remember the divine ideal of the preeminence of the individual, not Lucifer's preeminence of the community, the greater good, and the oppressed. No: the individual. Put your oxygen mask on first and then help others. Only then can you and your mature "mota personality" [45:7.8] ascend to the constellation worlds and be properly socialized.
Brad's Notes
- The personality record keepers of Salvington are a busy bunch, tracking every human born on every world in Nebadon. This is beyond our ability to imagine, but remember this "enormous corps of recorders" is given everything they need by God to succeed at their jobs, just as we're given all we need by God to succeed at ours.
- Parenting of sex differentiated children is critical (inescapable) in the ascension plan.
- You can't get full parenting credit from parenting duties in the nursery, only one-half credit, seemingly because of the absence of sex differentiation among those children.
- Devaluing meritocracy may be fashionable on our world lately, but that indicates how benighted our world is.
- Meritocracy is the pattern on high.
- Thus, deliberately striving to devalue meritocracy is pursuit of a godless ideal.
- A world's Prince and staff bring guidance for family life and national life, but Adam and Eve guide the science of representative government
- Including the avoidance of exultation of mediocrity so common in unsophisticated attempts at representative government.
- 100 years of "universe time" (local universe time) is about 500 years of our earthly time.
- Mota is motion. It synchronizes with a universe of motion.
- It can be measured qualitatively by morontia wisdom.
- It can be measured quantitatively by spirit insight and attainment of socialization.
