Episode:Our Local System of Inhabited Worlds—Evolutionary Planets (Part 3)

From Symmetry of Soul


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.

Listen to the broadcast

Keywords: Urantia, Evolutionary Races, Sex Equality, Decimal Planets, Brain Types

Opening thought: “The rigors and climatic severity of the glacial era were in every way adapted to the purpose of fostering the production of a hardy type of human being with tremendous survival endowment.” [65:2.16] “Is pleasure…desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.” [3:5.14]

Summary by Brad

On wheat, chaff, and the wind

Are we just chaff in the wind?

Andrea wrote the following evocative assertion in the preceding episode: 

Our morontia self mirrors the part of us that engages in reflective thinking. That is what will survive this life in the flesh. The rest will be as chaff being blown from the wheat. We must trust the wise and gracious hands who take it all, sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and blow the rest away.

We discussed this. All chaff needs to be blown away, yes. But what chaff are we talking about?

  1. Outer-life chaff. My outer life during my time on this world in the flesh is all chaff. My body, my brain, my DNA, none of that survives death. It gets sifted and blown away like chaff in the wind, per God's natural laws. No divine judgment needed, just the "technique" [47:10.7] of mortal death at work.
  2. Inner-life chaff. Do I have chaff in my inner life? Is my inner temple holy and pure? Or have I allowed it to become polluted through my own freewill choice of personally identifying with unholy ideas and ideals? It's dangerous to self-proclaim one's inner temple is clean; in the story of the pharisee and the publican [167:5.1] the pharisee self-declared his inner temple was pure, while the publican humbly asked for mercy.

So, let's say you have chaff in your inner life. Whose responsibility is it to clean it up?

On pleasing fables

Will God do clean up my inner life for me? Well, this certainly is a story I've heard all my life from various sources. Have you? A story like this: 

A man once prayed, "God, come into my inner life and sift the good and the bad for me. In Jesus' name, I command you God to make in me a clean heart." And, yea, that man's inner temple was cleansed whilst that man did idly consume many Cheetos and sit by as God worked this in him.

Um, does that sound like the God we know? Does this story bear up under the scrutiny of the light of an epochal revelation? Well, no. It's a pleasing fable, combined with some "supreme magic" [180:2.4] of uttering Jesus' name. And the 5th ER calls on us, on me, to disabuse myself of pleasing fables, no matter how sentimental or cherished they are. Or how darned inconvenient it may be to me and my ease-seeking self that I've got some hard cleaning up to do.

You see, I am absolutely sovereign in my inner life. Any chaff that's in there was dragged in there by me through my own evil or sinful choices. God does not get in there and clean it up for me. It's the one little measure of energy in the cosmos I'm sovereign over. I am "most truly the architect of [my] own eternal destiny" [103:5.10] in this respect with freewill.

So, what's a guy and his chaff-polluted inner life to do? PRAY. Robustly. Sincerely. "Intelligently—according to light." [144:3.21] This sincere prayer will psychologically reform my mind: it alters my perspective, it improves my management of my mind, cultivates discrimination, promotes better access to Holy Spirit ministry. It lets me see the chaff that must be let go of in my inner life. I can see the difference if I take this responsibility on and if I take delight in cultivating....

We here at SoS know it can be scary to let go of what you've held onto for a lifetime. But fear not: God assures us we'll be supported in righteousness through the "considerable commotion" [100:4.2] of such inner temple cleansing.

Heaven as a bed of clouds?

Whew. With that fable out of the way, let's examine another cherished story: 

A man once willfully engaged in sinful thoughts and behavior. And then three days later, without no shred of repentance, he was hit by a bus and he died. But not to worry! He woke up on the first mansion world with those latter-day sins of his forgotten, because his all-good Thought Adjuster discarded those sinful thoughts that he's willed. In fact, since his morontia self was only good and positive things, he more or less woke up as a divine being, and like everyone else has very little work to do on the mansion worlds. I mean, they're basically just a holiday. Free harps and clouds for everyone."

Does that sound right? Is that the cosmos we've been taught in the 5th ER? Of course not. Yet it's popular! It's even an orthodox view of sorts among many Urantia Book readers. But it's just a warmed-over version of that ancient fable where the "magic" of death [48:0.2] instantly transforms us into perfect beings. Or we might say it's warmed-over Christian universalism. No. In light of the 5th ER this story makes no sense. Actually, it's quite akin to the Lucifer manifesto. "I can do whatever I want in this life and there are no eternal consequences because God loves me and I'll just be perfect no matter what I do." Is that man being the architect of his own destiny?

"But," you protest, "how could God do that to me?? Why would God let me wake up in the afterlife with defects or even a sinful character?" To some extent you're correct: a Thought Adjuster's existentially perfect core would not allow this. But remember the Adjuster also gains experience (remember? they start their training on Divinington [109:1.1]). And that experiential aspect of a Thought Adjuster is always subservient to our will. [110:2.1] Yes, there are abundant "mercy credits" in the universe (thank God) but mercy "is not to be thrust upon those who despise it." [28:6.7]

For those of us committed to living in the light of an epochal revelation, we've been shown this greater light. Would you now "presume to reject it?" Would you "presume on divine mercy" [100:1.8] because you'd prefer to live your own way? Would you rather be "antagonistic" toward God? Be careful! Because if you know better, you no longer have any "excuse for your attitude" [180:3.2] and the light that would save you "can only condemn you if it is knowingly rejected." [180:3.2]

There's a bit of tempering consolation here though: choice and willpower must be in play for the Adjuster to do this soul building. If you're just floating along with the evil drift of the world wholly "ignorant of the light of heaven" [180:3.2], your free will is not in play. But it's not best assume you're a "social automaton" [132:2.4]. No. It's better to assume you have actually have willpower in this life, that you're responsible for your actions, and therefore you can someday be prepared for a "just and merciful reckoning." [176:3.8]

On planetary conduct of our neighbors

A strange adjective, "planetary." This must not be the conduct of individuals on other worlds, or even nations on some "nearby" world. It must be something concerning that world as a whole. We took on some carefully controlled speculation with this word "planetary" as our license. We cannot directly support or refuse these following but we considered these ideas of planetary conduct:

  1. Perhaps our nearby planetary neighbors, the nonbreathers, have made their planet not visible to our telescopes
  2. The relationship of their planet to our planet, in some sanctioned planetary-scale initiative
  3. Other planetary-scale conduct issues disclosed to us, by comparison, including the lesser angels for example.
  4. Maybe the nonbreathers will clean up our space probes and space junk once we lose contact and they become garbage floating in interstellar space (after all, in light and life every ultimaton is precisely managed in the universe)
  5. This is not Star Trek. Even though there are beings on other planets, arbitrary planetary conquests is not allowed. Humans are not sovereign over interplanetary space.

49:4. Evolutionary Will Creatures

At the 50 minute mark we began reading.

We are "up from the humus." In fact we literally till the soil we are "up from" like all breathing humans do on all worlds. Yes, we are also subject to microbial diseases (moreso here than average worlds). We humans stand erect and upright, up from the humus. Even that basic physiological fact of standing upright invites reflection on what it means to be a human who stands up straight. Even the word upright reminds us of the taking hold of the divine law and being righteous. Don't be upwrong.

There's a lot of overcontrol of evolution. Listen to the archive for more, including how our experimental world may have more of this overcontrol shown to us than the average world. The key takeaway is: we should not over-identify with our biological race or even our male-ness or female-ness. Nothing of this world should we over-identify with. And we certainly we should not apply spiritual energy to our mere physical identities; that just makes it that much harder for us to ascend if we have big feet of clay on us.

Our authors call on us to think about our material existence more objectively. They state we have 12 senses, but folk wisdom says there are only 5 senses. Whoa, is The Urantia Book hopelessly in error? Twelve senses? Well, here's a simple case where where you can catch yourself being all-too-eager to dismiss the 5th ER as being in error. Instead, sit with the tension and reflect. Remember that ancient people and their folk wisdom barely separated the mind from the body at all. ...Do you have a sense of balance? That's one. A sense of your own body position? That's another. A sense of pain? Another.

Another objective matter: physical conditions of human bodies on inhabited worlds may vary tremendously, but our mental life is all "very similar." This pattern of transcendence—mind over matter—reminds us that spirit likewise is transcendent of both mind and matter. And personality is transcendent of all mere physical things and mindal things and spirit things; it's a unifier of these things. Personality itself isn't even male or female.

49:5. The Planetary Series of Mortals

Planetary physical types are a rather matter-of-fact observation (that's something we read earlier in [49:2]). But these planetary series (not types) are bigger picture, not just about local adaptation to conditions on a world for physical reasons. A planetary series is about how humans across worlds are related to one another. These planetary series are transcendent of mere local conditions on a world. A serial is not the same as series; there's that precision of language again.

Brad's Notes

  • The experiential component of a Thought Adjuster, this "mother Deity like" part of the Adjuster, is the part that is downstepped enough to actually engage our minds and build our soul. The Adjuster's existential "core" is just too high of a thing to ever have direct contact with us.
  • God and His divine law are standards of goodness, not myself. My desires and pleasures are not a standard of goodness. I must absolutely ensure I am not my own standard of goodness.
  • We read about how biological race can be in the cosmos; some perfect worlds of Havona, serving as a pattern for local systems, cause no secondary Sangik races at all on worlds.
  • Male and female humans have the same access to mint and spirit ministry--the are initiated in equality--but their experiences are vastly different.
  • We're close to the center of the "bell curve" in so many respect precisely because we are an experimental world.
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