Most new readers of the Urantia Papers experience a feeling of exultation and relief as they learn that even those Urantians in whom the faintest flicker of faith still flickers will receive the chance to go on to the mansion worlds after mortal death. We may even get the impression that, except for a new and better body and a new and better mind, we more or less start off on the first mansion world exactly where we left off here on Urantia. But what actually does survive from our life on Urantia?

Repersonalization is described in Paper 112. The reassembly of our constituent bits and pieces involves, first, the fabrication of a new morontia body and mind followed by the return of our Thought Adjuster, the custodian of our identity, who supervises the return of our personality. Next to arrive is our soul, an entity built up during mortal life by our Thought Adjuster through the conservation of all things from that life having either spiritual value or being essential for our future universe careers. During this transition period, the soul has been in the custody of a special seraphic guardian.

Our re-awakening is likely to be a bit of a shock. We will be so changed, the spiritual transformation will be so great that if were not for the Adjuster and the destiny guardian administering the morontia equivalent of first aid, much of the mortal life would at first seem to be a vague and hazy dream. (1235) So much for our delusions about starting where we left off on Urantia.

What survives of our mortal memories and attributes is the responsibility of our Thought Adjuster whose task is to recall and rehearse only those memories and experiences that are part of, and essential to, our future universe career. What may these be?

We are informed:  "much of your past life and its memories, having neither spiritual meaning nor morontia value, will perish with the material brain; much of material experience will pass away as onetime scaffolding which, having bridged you over to the morontia level, no longer serves a purpose in the universe" (1235).

The mansion worlds are the morontia worlds, morontia being a term covering a vast level that intervenes between the material and the spiritual.The step from material to spiritual is simply too enormous to be bridged directly.

Material beings like ourselves could never cope with these changes that lead to an entirely spiritual existence if it were not for that direct gift we have from God of an actual fragment of himself we know as his "Indwelling Spirit" or "Thought Adjuster."

The presence of this divine Adjuster in the human mind is disclosed by three experiential phenomena:    

• 1. Our intellectual capacity for knowing God -- God-consciousness.

• 2. Our spiritual urge to find God--to be God-seeking.

• 3. The craving of our personality to be like God--the wholehearted desire to do the Father's will." (24)

For better understanding of the next stage in our universe career, we need to be critically  aware that all that is "personal" about ourselves  that survives into the morontia life, is processed by our Thought Adjuster because it has some kind of potential "spiritual value."

The reason for this is that in the spirit world which is to follow our temporary morontia existence, the things of this world, those things associated with material matter, simply have no existence, hence are useless. If we value our experience on this planet and hope to take at least some traces of it with us, then we need to develop a "feeling" for those intangible concepts so frequently referred to as "spiritual meanings and values." The Papers tell us:

"...when an attempt is made to make plain the realities of the spirit world to the physical minds of the material order, mystery appears: mysteries so subtle and so profound that only the faith-grasp of the God-knowing mortal can achieve the philosophic miracle of the recognition of the Infinite by the finite, the discernment of the eternal God by the evolving mortals of the material worlds of time and space." (27)

What applies to "infinite" and "eternal" also applies to "spiritual." Over and over again, the Papers refer to spiritual meanings and values with no further elaboration.

"Spiritual" is a term that has similarities to concepts in our language for which the meaning is "in the eye of the beholder." To specify exactly what we mean by holding that a particular object is more beautiful than another, we would need some scale to judge their relative beauty against our ideal of perfect beauty.

We can think about "spiritual" in a similar way if we make the characteristics and nature of God himself, our ideal of "perfection." But in doing so we are immediately confronted by our absence of real knowledge of the perfection of God--except in so far as that perfection has already been revealed to us.

For this, we have two main sources--personal and individual revelation between each of us and our Thought Adjusters and the revelation of God's nature provided for us in the bestowal life of Jesus of Nazareth. And because of the real difficulties beings such as ourselves have with establishing reliable communication with our Thought Adjuster, that revelatory life of Jesus is our principal source for understanding "spiritual meanings and values" in so far as they can be comprehended by beings whose total experience is dominated by association with matter.

And surely it goes without saying that nothing could be more important for our spiritual progress than an understanding of what spiritual progress really entails.

What is spiritual?

There are two approaches to understanding what spiritual "is." Since God is pure spirit, all that pertains to the character and nature of deity must reflect God's spirituality. This will encompass all deity, including the revelation of the nature of God given to Urantians through the life of Jesus. Our second source is direct statement in the Papers about what spirituality is. The following quotations may be of help:

"But the love of God is an intelligent and farseeing parental affection. The divine love functions in unified association with divine wisdom and all other infinite characteristics of the perfect nature of the Universal Father. God is love, but love is not God. The greatest manifestation of the divine love for mortal beings is observed in the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, but your greatest revelation of the Father's love is seen in the bestowal life of his Son Michael as he lived on earth the ideal spiritual life. It is the indwelling Adjuster who individualizes the love of God to each human soul." (40)

"The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation. Mercy is the essence of the Son's spiritual character. The mandates of the Eternal Son, as they go forth over the spirit circuits of the Second Source and Center, are keyed in tones of mercy." (75)

"The Eternal Son is wholly spiritual; man is very nearly entirely material;" (78)

"Spirit is the basic personal reality in the universes, and personality is basic to all progressing experience with spiritual reality. Every phase of personality experience on every successive level of universe progression swarms with clues to the discovery of alluring personal realities. Man's true destiny consists in the creation of new and spirit goals and then in responding to the cosmic allurements of such supernal goals of nonmaterial value." (141)

"When the spiritual tests of greatness are applied, the moral elements are not disregarded, but the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one's earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness. And the manifestation of greatness on a world like Urantia is the exhibition of self-control. The great man is not he who 'takes a city' or 'overthrows a nation,' but rather 'he who subdues his own tongue.'" (317)

"To finite man, truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom... Advanced mortals have learned that love is the greatest thing in the universe--and they know that God is love. Love is the desire to do good to others." (648)

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"Spirituality becomes at once the indicator of one's nearness to God and the measure of one's usefulness to fellow beings. Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values. Spiritual development is determined by capacity therefor and is directly proportional to the elimination of the selfish qualities of love." (1096)

"The goal of human self-realization should be spiritual, not material. The only realities worth striving for are divine, spiritual, and eternal." (1096)

"One of the most amazing earmarks of religious living is that dynamic and sublime peace, that peace which passes all human understanding, that cosmic poise which betokens the absence of all doubt and turmoil. Such levels of spiritual stability are immune to disappointment. (1101)

"The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. "Without holiness no man may see the Lord." All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God." (1104)

"Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it:

• 1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.

• 2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.

• 3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.

• 4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.

• 5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.

• 6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare.

• 7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.

• 8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul's survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.

• 9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.

• 10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.

• 11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.

• 12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, "Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him." (1108)

"The Supreme is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value." (1278)

"Goodness is always growing toward new levels of the increasing liberty of moral self-realization and spiritual personality attainment--the discovery of, and identification with, the indwelling Adjuster. An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one's fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father's will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him." (1458)

"Goodness is living, relative, always progressing, invariably a personal experience, and everlastingly correlated with the discernment of truth and beauty. Goodness is found in the recognition of the positive truth-values of the spiritual level, which must, in human experience, be contrasted with the negative counterpart--the shadows of potential evil." (1458)

"There is unity in the cosmic universe if you could only discern its workings in actuality. The real universe is friendly to every child of the eternal God. The real problem is: How can the finite mind of man achieve a logical, true, and corresponding unity of thought? This universe-knowing state of mind can be had only by conceiving that the quantitative fact and the qualitative value have a common causation in the Paradise Father. Such a conception of reality yields a broader insight into the purposeful unity of universe phenomena; it even reveals a spiritual goal of progressive personality achievement." (1477)

"Jesus made it plain that he had come to establish personal and eternal relations with men which should forever take precedence over all other human relationships. And he emphasized that this intimate spiritual fellowship was to be extended to all men of all ages and of all social conditions among all peoples. The only reward which he held out for his children was: in this world--spiritual joy and divine communion; in the next world--eternal life in the progress of the divine spirit realities of the Paradise Father." (1593)

"Spiritual destiny is dependent on faith, love, and devotion to truth--hunger and thirst for righteousness--the wholehearted desire to find God and to be like him." (1739)

"The forces of the spiritual world will not coerce man; they allow him to go the way of his own choosing." (1802)

"Jesus is the spiritual lens in human likeness which makes visible to the material creature Him who is invisible. He is your elder brother who, in the flesh, makes known to you a Being of infinite attributes whom not even the celestial hosts can presume fully to understand. But all of this must consist in the personal experience of the individual believer. God who is spirit can be known only as a spiritual experience. God can be revealed to the finite sons of the material worlds, by the divine Son of the spiritual realms, only as a Father. You can know the Eternal as a Father; you can worship him as the God of universes, the infinite Creator of all existences." (1857)

"And the fruits of the divine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-knowing mortals are: loving service, unselfish devotion, courageous loyalty, sincere fairness, enlightened honesty, undying hope, confiding trust, merciful ministry, unfailing goodness, forgiving tolerance, and enduring peace." (2054)

"The teachers of this new religion are now equipped with spiritual weapons. They are to go out to conquer the world with unfailing forgiveness, matchless good will, and abounding love. They are equipped to overcome evil with good, to vanquish hate by love, to destroy fear with a courageous and living faith in truth." (2064)

"The Master's entire life was consistently conditioned by this living faith, this sublime religious experience. This spiritual attitude wholly dominated his thinking and feeling, his believing and praying, his teaching and preaching. This personal faith of a son in the certainty and security of the guidance and protection of the heavenly Father imparted to his unique life a profound endowment of spiritual reality." (2088)

[The purpose in providing these quotations is to aid readers in gaining understanding of what is meant by those difficult to define concepts, "spiritual meanings and values"--the truth being that such are the only components of our mortal existence that survive with us to the next stage of existence. Lest we do the same, it is also worth noting that Jesus had great difficulty in teaching the apostles spiritual concepts for they invariably turned them into rules to be obeyed.]

Ken Glasziou.