The Inner World of Mankind

William spoke this morning about the progressive and spectacular humanity that could inhabit our world at the close of this fifth age. Let's assume success. Let us assume that during this next age our planet's proto- cultures are so improved and integrated that, as the sixth epoch dawns, Urantia's children have targeted Light and Life as a planetary goal. But on page 1220 of The URANTIA Book, we read, The advances of true civilization are all born in this inner world of mankind (p.1220)

If mankind's real progress depends upon some inner world, then curiosity compels us to ask: what is this inner world of mankind? Of what is it made? How is it made? Can we help with its construction? These are the questions we now consider.

With William's broad overview in mind, let's sharpen our focus upon the phenomenon itself, a planet-wide humanity with a common culture and a shared inner world. As we start to look closer, we note something interesting straight away. Some intangible orchestration, a fabric of coordination, exists throughout this inner world. Our first insight is intuitive - we understand that this nebulous presence has something to do with the "rule of the Most Highs". But let's look closer still. One crucial insight comes when we've zoomed our focus all the way down to the fundamental element of Urantian humanity, to that unit of which any such humanity must be made: the individual. We see that any shared inner world that mankind achieves will involve the integration of the private inner worlds of billions of us. We discover that to gain an understanding of the inner world of mankind, we must first understand the inner world of one.

Our planetary potential depends upon the quality of us, and we will find that our quality depends intimately upon our framework of concept and motivation. In the pages that follow, we try to find the source and understand the nature of this frame. We do not expect to arrive at a complete understanding by lunchtime, but let's see how far we can get.

The role of conceptual frameworks

Mankind has not yet shared an “inner world”. So far, the inner worlds of Urantia's tribes and nations have been fragmented and local. Instead of a rich tapestry of truth and fact, the backdrops to these partial inner worlds have been more or less crude collages, woven from dreams, fears and ambitions, sometimes sprinkled through with dislocated gems of revelation. The heritage these tribes and nations have passed to their children has been a complex reflection of shared delusions, augmented with whatever skills and techniques each generation had acquired. But as we enter this fifth epoch, we have an opportunity to change this unimpressive cycle. In cooperation with Michael, his Most Highs, and the United Midwayers of Urantia, and armed with the truths offered via the Urantia Papers, there is at last a real hope that we can begin to mark out a frame appropriate for this intended and inevitable planet-wide inner world. Once such a frame is in place the fabric of truth can anchor to it, then weave itself through the minds of all sincere and normal mortals. Such a tapestry would form the basis for a valid inner world - with center stage reserved for the truths of Michael and the facts of Nebadon. Once such a frame is in place, acceleration of our culture towards Light and Life can begin. How do we proceed? How might we contribute to this noble construction? Clearly, this notion of an inner world applies not only to that potential shared heritage of all mankind, but also to the private worlds we each build. However, while it is possible for an individual to rapidly accept and adapt to a new reality, creating paradigms for a planetary humanity, or even a societal group, is a slow and complex process. So we begin by considering how an inner world is created within each of us by the seven adjutant mind spirits, then lit by Michael’s Spirit of Truth - our inner stage is built from near divine material. But how do we furnish these private apartments? How do we open these unseen rooms to our fellows? By what process do we as individuals engage a shared reality? For the most part, our fantastic dreamscapes, woven from experience, from truth and myth and fact, remain private – personal evolutionary essays. They represent our conscious effort to understand, and to respond to, the challenges of life. [How much this essay is influenced by the spirit of Michael, and by the echoes of Adjustment that well-up from within, remains mysterious.] Of course, we are free to make a mess of this interior design. But remember the Adjuster guarantee - our best efforts, however many or few, are salvaged and organized into the fabric of our soul. One wonders how fear or hesitation can coexist with such a level of security.

The set of inputs to our private inner worlds are diverse, and their interaction is complex. To keep such a system stable, there needs to be coordinating factors, some set of integrators that continuously rebalances and restores a dynamic normality. As we explore this internal interaction, we find there are at least three systems in place - a triad of complementary influences that help keep us on an even keel. The first is mainly an integration of subconscious stimulation; the second is an organization of our conscious motivation, while the third is a coordination of superconscious inspiration. Our attempt to understand the way all these components conspire to generate our inner world must proceed with small steps. The first of these small steps along the path to insight and deeper understanding is to spend a few minutes reflecting on how our adjutant-based minds were made.

Evolving the human mind

As we can read in Paper 36 (p.396) and Paper 65 (p.730), when a world is selected for human habitation, a group of Local Universe Sons known as Life Carriers are given the responsibility of starting and overseeing the evolutionary chain that culminates in a planetary humanity. The many details involved in this operation make an intriguing story, but of interest to us today is how the Life Carriers conspire with the seven adjutants to create an arena for conscious human thought.

“The seven adjutant mind-spirits always accompany the Life Carriers to a new planet, but they should not be regarded as entities; they are more like circuits. The spirits of the seven universe adjutants do not function as personalities apart from the universe presence of the Divine Minister; they are in fact a level of consciousness of the Divine Minister..." (p.402)

The first problem confronting these Life Carriers is how to make matter responsive to mind - how to make a complex physical arrangement responsive to something as intangible as the ministry of the adjutants; how to make biochemistry responsive to an urge; how to initiate an instinctive reaction, then later a delicious emotion or heroic deed, within the salty fluids of a new planetary life implantation. Their approach was to do it gradually. At first, their patterns of life had to be able to react to the compulsions of the Master Physical Controllers. Next, they dialed up responsiveness to each of the seven adjutant circuits - the prime targets for their evolutionary efforts. Their intricate and sequential complexification of neural patterns and associated hormonal recipes eventually led to mankind. "The seven adjutant mind-spirits are called by names which are the equivalents of the following designations: intuition, understanding, courage, knowledge, counsel, worship, and wisdom. These mind-spirits send forth their influence into all the inhabited worlds as a differential urge, each seeking receptivity capacity for manifestation quite apart from the degree to which its fellows may find reception and opportunity for function." (p.401) "These mind-spirits send forth their influence into all the inhabited worlds as a differential urge, ..."

The Vorondadek author of Paper 36 paints an intriguing picture: as the Life Carriers tweak the animal genotypes, the adjutant circuits are independently seeking to encircuit these evolving forms. This suggests that adjutant interaction requires an interface, and that each adjutant requires a different one. This also implies that the Life Carriers' task is to produce differentially tuned organic centers that can respond to and accommodate the differential urges of these seven adjutant circuits. What manner of organic interface, what kind of neural psycho-biochemical configuration, might this require? Will our medical practitioners ever be able to exploit it? Have healers through history been able to repair or enhance it? Whatever this interface is and however it works, Papers 36 and 65 imply that these centers for adjutant interaction exist, and that it is through this set of centers that the adjutants reach inside us to generate our stage for conscious thoughtóthat ship on which "the human will is captain".

Using the human type of mind

“In the mortal experience the human intellect resides in the rhythmic pulsations of the adjutant mind-spirits and effects its decisions within the arena produced by encircuitment within this ministry.” (page 1286)

So what is going on? How do the urges and influences of the adjutants, a level of consciousness of the divine Minister, become for us a system of mind? To what degree are we influenced by these adjutant pulsations? If our “intellect resides in” them, in what sense are we free to independently respond to our experience of life? “Always should the domains of the physical (electro-chemical) and the mental response to environmental stimuli be differentiated, and in turn must they all be recognized as phenomena apart from spiritual activities” (page 739)

One of the advances of psychology over the last few decades has been to discover the relationship between our biochemistry and our “state of mind”. Consider the effect of hormones and their use in various therapies.

“But many seemingly mysterious adjustments of living organisms are purely chemical, wholly physical. At any moment of time, in the blood stream of any human being there exists the possibility of upward of 15,000,000 chemical reactions between the hormone output of a dozen ductless glands.” (page 737)

Our emotional climate

It appears that as humans, we inherit an intellectual arena stocked with pre-packaged tendencies - the  motivations engendered by the "rhythmic pulsations of the adjutants". The main contribution of these circuits may be to create, via interaction with our endocrine system, an emotional climate for our intellectual arena. As children, we establish a basic set of reactions to these inherited tendencies. Then, with these fundamentals in place, the drama of the human condition begins - the struggle of our wills to orchestrate the response of this complex package to the ceaseless demands of living. And it is these wilful, moral responses that allow the Thought Adjuster the excuse to capture for itself another thread in the morontia fabric of its future garb. “You should understand that the morontia life of an ascending mortal is really initiated on the inhabited worlds at the conception of the soul, at that moment when the creature mind of moral status is indwelt by the spirit Adjuster. And from that moment on, the mortal soul has potential capacity for supermortal function, even for recognition on the higher levels of the morontia spheres of the local universe.” (p.551)

Our genetic endowment, together with our learned reactions to adjutant stimulation, define the quality of our interface to the adjutant system. They also condition the capacity of the adjutants to create for us a more or less ideal emotional climate within which we then struggle with our lives, a sequence of endless decisions.

An attempt to symbolize the human condition

Michael's consort, the Divine Minister of Salvington, provides our first mind system by motivating the organized biochemistry of the Life Carriers with the inspiration of her adjutant circuits. Later, when our sufficient choices and decisions have allowed the Adjuster to weave a new morontia base, this soul becomes available as a new seat for our identity, an improved base of operations for our ascending personality. “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.” (pp. 1232,3)

At birth, we have a package of biochemical pathways and an impinging orchestration of impulses. The opportunity of childhood is to allow us to develop responsiveness to this system of impulses, to tack out our first set of behavioural pathways. Onto this initial pattern we try to hang the fabric of experience. Sadly, some of us spend our entire mortal span without ever successfully aligning to the fundamental adjutant pattern. However, if enough groundwork gets done, the job can be completed in the humidicribs and nurseries of the mansion worlds. (See “the system dematerializing spheres”, page 539) By the time we have stabilized and to some degree mastered the environment provided by the adjutants, our soul will have made significant progress. Even at this early stage, this new vessel is available to us as a base of operations.  Should we be sufficiently enthused to make the leap, we will find ourselves ministered to by the next “level of consciousness” of the Local Universe Divine Minister, in addition to or instead of the set of adjutant circuits. As our personal vessel develops, we gain access to appropriate systems and levels of mind. When, or if, our seat of identity is transferred to our soul, we are a new creature functioning upon an upstepped system of mind. And “... such divinely watered souls are all but independent of material environment as regards the joys of living and the satisfactions of earthly existence.” (page 381).

Somewhat unexpectedly, on page 482 we are told that as we “spiritize”, the mind systems we use become less responsive to linear gravity.

The soul of adjusted humans

“Thus is the stage of the human mind set for the reception of Adjusters, but as a general rule they do not immediately appear to indwell such minds except on those worlds where the Spirit of Truth is functioning as a spiritual co-ordinator of these different spirit ministries. If this spirit of the bestowal Sons is present, the Adjusters unfailingly come the instant the seventh adjutant mind-spirit begins to function and signalizes to the Universe Mother Spirit that it has achieved in potential the co-ordination of the associated six adjutants of prior ministry to such a mortal intellect.” (p. 1187)

The inputs to our private inner worlds are diverse, and their interaction is complex. Fortunately, we are provided with systems of integration and factors of coordination to help us keep the system stable.

As described on page 1187, one such integrating role is sponsored by the seventh adjutant mind-spirit, and seems to be an integration of subconscious stimulation. A second is established by the framework of concept and the system of beliefs on-stage in the arena of our conscious will. These provide momentum and intellectual inertia, and help organize our conscious motivation. And a third is the action of the Spirit of Truth, which we might describe as a coordination of our superconscious inspiration. Apart from interfering with their function, we can have no effect on the nature of the first and third factors. So it is the second factor, the universe frame we inherit or adopt, that we need to consider. The content of this inner world is the set of adjustable parameters targeted by The URANTIA Book. This is the site to place the lever of our efforts -  to help lift or up-step the image of reality projecting on the minds of each individual. As fellow mortals in a bruised and twisted world, we may help each other in many ways. But as early recipients of The URANTIA Book, and as volunteers in this project of the Most Highs, this image of reality projecting onto billions of human minds is what we can affect. Like a powerful private myth, it can be adjusted. Let's reflect on the implications. When an entire culture shares an inner myth, it becomes a paradigm. But inner myths and paradigms are similar, in that they are both descriptions of reality that have been adopted by a person or a group. In past epochs, cultures spun myths to act as their description of things, their universe frame. Even today, people from many quarters are exploring the idea that, to make progress beyond our current material fascination, humanity needs an epic backdrop, a new version of reality that is large enough to arouse the upcoming generations, and that is consistent enough to be describable. This is precisely what we find in The URANTIA Book. These Papers offer a set of truths able to act as foundation for the inner world of humanity’s fifth epoch. With the help of the Most Highs, and with the motivation of Michael's Spirit of Truth, we can at last supersede our ad hoc efforts. “Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from…” (p.1110) But the problem remains of how we share our private inner worlds with our fellows. How does your truth become mine; how does your description of reality become the start of my new myth; how do the echoes of truth we hear from within and without help us change? Even though as individuals we may converse with our Adjusters and cavort with Michael’s spirit in an ecstasy of intuitive experience, how can we, as a community, share these private descriptions, and by so doing, enlarge our private little worlds? This communal task requires some accessible form, and a language familiar to the group. Again, this problem, potentially, is solved by the Urantia Papers. They provide a set of concepts ideal for rebalancing our inner worlds. They provide a description beautifully tuned to help us coordinate, integrate and elevate the myths and ideologies that currently sustain and restrain the cultures of our world. And they provide the jargon necessary to help us share descriptions of our deepest experiences and hopes. There is a way that things are. There is some biological interface that the adjutants exploit; there is some interface between this subconscious realm and the arena of human will; there is some relationship between the human will and soul. And soul can be touched directly by the presence of Deity within. In each epoch, cultures try to evolve some way to describe these things, but time after time,  the stimulus of both deep human insight and epochal revelation has unraveled to lower  volutionary levels. We readers are riding the fifth wave - the fifth attempt made by our benefactors to stimulate and up-step our view of reality. As early recipients of this deepened perspective, we ought rapidly to repair and redecorate our own internal worlds, then get on with this business of launching Urantia’s Fifth Age. As readers, each of us have had this seed of revelation planted within. It is around this seed, upon this core of fundamental truth, that we have begun to build the first halting, evolutionary versions of this fifth epoch frame. The difficult next step is to so extend our small understandings, our private inner worlds, that we can contribute to the establishment of this “inner world of mankind” - a worthy contribution to the advance of true civilization. Future generations will live within some paradigm. As readers dedicated to the Father and our Michael, we are powerfully equipped to help the Most Highs build it. 

Some Definitions

Revelation: A technique employed to save vast blocks of time.

Human Mind: A series of techniques allowing wilful interaction between this level of Personality and its provided context.

Morontia Soul: A tapestry woven by our Thought Adjuster, translating into substance our best human efforts. It serves as an embryonic foundation for our after-death Self. The “Soul” is a technique they use to dredge a race of cosmic citizens from the frothy, phenomenal shallows of spacetime.

Thought Adjuster: Holographic fragment of the First Source and Centre, of origin upstream of the differentiation of Pattern and Personality. Pre-personal. Attains personal status by riding a “human” through its adventures in the dreamscape of incarnate life, piloting it through the morontia preparation, and fusing with it to become one durable reality: a being of eternal and surprising potentials.

Michael Of Nebadon: A creator in spacetime. Originator, sustainer and perfecter of his vast, sub-galactic kingdom: Nebadon. Currently doing in the Finite that which his Father does in the Absolute. His life on our planet as Jesus of Nazareth was his final exercise in experiencing the natures of the beings he has created, and for whom he is responsible. Source of the Spirit Of Truth.

The Divine Minister: Initially, existed as a localised presence of the Third Source and Centre, in which state she materialised the plans and patterns Michael had for his kingdom; Immediately after his declared intent to begin the projection of Life into his kingdom, she became his “Personal Creative Associate”; After Michael’s final bestowal upon his creation, after his universal recognition as a Master Son, she became “distinct and recognizable by all contacting individuals”. Source of the Holy Spirit. Michael is independent of time; his consort is independent of space. Working together, they can effectively be present in any place or time of their mutual creation, the local universe of Nebadon.

The Life Carriers: The local universe sons entrusted with designing and carrying creature life to the planets. After their implantation of new life on a planet, they are free to foster its evolution only until that culmination: a being responsive to all seven adjutant circuits, a creature able to wield Will: a human.

The seven adjutant mind circuits (a level of consciousness of the Divine Minister): These circuits are that technique of mind ministry provided to the lower orders of intelligent life within Nebadon. The Life Carrier’s task is to evolve neural/biological patterns which can be animated by the independent and differential urges of these seven circuits. In effect, the seven adjutant mind circuits are the targets for the evolutionary efforts of the Life Carriers.

Our Local Universe: An organised, sub-galactic region ruled by a Son of the order of Michael; that subdivision of the Milky Way pervaded by the Divine Minister, Michael’s creative consort.

Mansion worlds: System nurseries provided to assist the backward mortal survivors from young planets.

Personal: Anything responding to the gravity circuit of the First Source and Center.

Spirit: Anything responding to the gravity circuit of the Second Source and Center.

Mind: Anything responding to the gravity circuit of the Third Source and Center.

Physical: Anything responding to the gravity circuit of the Paradise Source and Center.

Faith: Responsiveness to superconsciousness.

Dogmatism: A mammalian intellectual reaction. An almost sub-human trait.