Recently, a UB
list participant stated that "soul is mindless". That statement
instigated this essay, which explores the relationship between soul and mind.
The relationship is an intriguing one, with many subtle differentiations. To
summarize the conclusion I've reached after doing a search for "soul
mind" on my Folio Infobase CD-ROM (produced by URANTIA Foundation): Soul,
rather than being mind-less, is material mind that has been spiritualized
through its own moral decision-making and the guidance of the mind's indwelling
Adjuster. Soul is mind-full in that it has realized more of its own spirit
potential, and therein material mind has transformed into morontial mind. Soul
is distinct from material mind, identifiable as morontia mind, and destined to
be embraced by spirit mind.
Let's start with
origins.
In the universes
God the Father is, in potential, the overcontroller of matter, mind, and
spirit. Only by means of his far-flung personality circuit does God deal
directly with the personalities of his vast creation of will creatures, but he
is contactable (outside of Paradise) only in the presences of his fragmented
entities, the will of God abroad in the universes. This Paradise spirit that
indwells the minds of the mortals of time and there fosters the evolution of
the immortal soul of the surviving creature is of the nature and divinity of
the Universal Father. (25:6)
Statement of
purpose: The spiritual transformation of material mind into soul is really the
adventure of increasing God-consciousness.
The indwelling
Father fragment is called the father of the soul, and the mortal material mind
is called the mother. (8:10) The process in which the father and mother
"evolves the spirit soul upon the material and mortal mind in accordance
with the freewill choosing of the personality" (333:7) is also called
"dualization" of the soul. (1159:5) So we know that soul originates
from the attraction of material mind to spirit reality, but this does not
necessarily mean that soul is itself mindal. We must go further to establish
that.
We quickly come
to the first indication that soul is
the spiritualized potential of the human mind. Mind is first associated with
matter, and if such an association were to dominate the mind at death, there
would be insufficient soul development to survive physical death. Mind survives
as the soul only to the extent that
it has realized its spiritual potential.
“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.” (26:1)
Mortal mind
survives death as the soul. Mind thus yielded to spirit is no longer material
mind, and it is not yet spirit. It is morontial, and it is the soul. But soul
is also associated with mind, so we need to be able to understand how they are
distinct as well as how they are identified with one another. In what sense is
soul associated with mind?
First of all,
material mind is the soil out of which soul grows. But just as the soil in the
ground gives rise to plant life without itself being of the plant kingdom, so
does the soil of material mind help produce the soul, without itself being
soul:
“Though the work
of Adjusters is spiritual in nature, they must, perforce, do all their work
upon an intellectual foundation. Mind is the human soil from which the spirit
Monitor must evolve the morontia soul with the co-operation of the indwelt
personality.” (1216:2)
"Let every
man make sure that the intellectual and moral foundations of character are such
as will adequately support the superstructure of the enlarging and ennobling
spiritual nature, which is thus to transform the mortal mind and then, in
association with that re-created mind, is to achieve the evolvement of the soul
of immortal destiny. Your spirit nature--the jointly created soul--is a living
growth, but the mind and morals of the individual are the soil from which these
higher manifestations of human development and divine destiny must spring. The
soil of the evolving soul is human and material, but the destiny of this
combined creature of mind and spirit is spiritual and divine." (1738:1)
Material mind is
transformed into morontia mind-soul by the spiritizing work of the Adjuster in
the mind on the mind. The soul manifests its unique personal character based on
the accumulated nature of the decisions of the material mind. This character is
preserved in "the creature-mind matrix" that is associated with the
morontia identity of the soul; this unique character pattern of the mindal
matrix is activated as creature-memory upon reassociation with the spiritized
mindal content contributed by the Adjuster upon resurrection.(1236:5)
“The soul of
survival value faithfully reflects both the qualitative and the quantitative
actions and motivations of the material intellect, the former seat of the
identity of selfhood.”(1237:1)
Each person's
material, morontial, and spirit selves depend on mind for their expression and
self-realization; that mind may be material at first, but with voluntary,
continued, and increased embracing of spiritual motivation, that mind is
progressively transformed into something that is no longer materially
associated, yet it survives as mind--morontial mind, or soul. Our midwayer
friends call this evolved material mind "mid-mind":
“The midway
creatures have long denominated this evolving soul of man the mid-mind in
contradistinction to the lower or material mind and the higher or cosmic mind.
This mid-mind is really a morontia phenomenon since it exists in the realm
between the material and the spiritual. The potential of such a morontia
evolution is inherent in the two universal urges of mind: the impulse of the
finite mind of the creature to know God and attain the divinity of the Creator,
and the impulse of the infinite mind of the Creator to know man and attain the experience of the creature.” (1218:6)
We can now move
on to the association of mind and spiritual experience. In a somewhat difficult
passage we are told that: "Man experiences matter in his mind; he
experiences spiritual reality in the soul but becomes conscious of this
experience in his mind." (1136:1) The material mind is able to directly
experience material reality and soul-mind is able to directly experience
spiritual reality; at the same time our mindal consciousness (whether
materially or morontially based) harmonizes, conditions, qualifies, expresses,
and interprets the reality we experience, whether it be material or spiritual
in nature. The human effort to spiritualize mind has access to the aid of
influences like the Thought Adjuster (already mentioned) as well as the Holy
Spirit and the Spirit of Truth. Cooperating with these influences gives rise to
faith-insight, soul intelligence, and the discernment of spirit wisdom,
respectively.(1108:1)
The
"functions of mind, soul, and spirit are closely united and functionally
interassociated" (1142:1), and our understanding of this functional
interassociation depends on our ability to distinguish between these entities
and identify the interactions that constitute their working relationships. For
instance, we read of the material mind's awareness of the presence of post-material
mind (the soul), and the soul's awareness of the influences of mind and spirit.
While our spirit fragment is fully aware of the soul's presence, our material
mind is only partially aware. As the soul evolves in a spiritual manner it
becomes increasingly aware of the association of mind and spirit. (p.1219:3)
This mutual awareness between mind, soul, and spirit is due to mind's
ever-expanding capacity for harmonization, expression, and interpretation as it
becomes capable of associating in morontial and then spirit realms. It is
important to realize that the working relationship between material mind and
spirit does not produce an entity whose nature is some combination of the
characteristics of mind and spirit; rather, the result of this interassociation
is "an entirely new, original, and unique universe value of potentially
eternal endurance, the soul." (1218:1)
Another example
of how mind, soul, and spirit are interassociated is when the revelators make a
distinction between mindal content
and the mindal matrix containing
that content. At death, mindal content and mindal pattern-structure are
separated, to be reconstituted at morontial resurrection. (An analogy might be
the matrix of skeletal bone structure that contains and patterns the content of
bony substance.) At death, the spiritized mindal content ("mind, memory,
and creature personality") is in possession of the Thought Adjuster, while
the "morontial identity of the soul" containing the "creature
mind-matrix" is entrusted to the seraphic destiny guardians. Morontial
soul identity is associated with the unique pattern of the mindal matrix and
the "passive potentials" included therein, not with the spiritized
mindal contents in possession of the Thought Adjuster. (p.533:1, 341:5)
The spiritual
transformation of material mind into soul is really the adventure of increasing
God-consciousness. To the degree that this transformation to soul-consciousness
succeeds, so will the gift of eternal life - spirit-consciousness - be assured?
“The great
challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine
Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the
flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of
self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness
in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of
spirit-consciousness--contact with the divine presence. Such an experience
constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent
truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such spirit-consciousness is
the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God.” (2097:2)
Steven Hecht,
USA