The Urantia Book
The Local Universe
Mighty Messenger
40. The Ascending Sons of God
9. Spirit-Fused Mortals
40.9.1 Ascending Spirit-fused mortals are not Third Source personalities; they are included in the Father's personality circuit, but they have fused with individualizations of the premind spirit of the Third Source and Center. Such Spirit fusion never occurs during the span of natural life; it takes place only at the time of mortal reawakening in the morontia existence on the mansion worlds. In the fusion experience there is no overlapping; the will creature is either Spirit fused, Son fused, or Father fused. Those who are Adjuster or Father fused are never Spirit or Son fused.
40.9.2 The fact that these types of mortal creatures are not Adjuster-fusion candidates does not prevent the Adjusters from indwelling them during the life in the flesh. Adjusters do work in the minds of such beings during the span of material life but never become everlastingly one with their pupil souls. During this temporary sojourn the Adjusters effectively build up the same spirit counterpart of mortal nature - the soul - that they do in the candidates for Adjuster fusion. Up to the time of mortal death the work of the Adjusters is wholly akin to their function in your own races, but upon mortal dissolution the Adjusters take eternal leave of these Spirit-fusion candidates and, proceeding directly to Divinington, the headquarters of all divine Monitors, there await the new assignments of their order.
40.9.3 When such sleeping survivors are repersonalized on the mansion worlds, the place of the departed Adjuster is filled by an individualization of the spirit of the Divine Minister, the representative of the Infinite Spirit in the local universe concerned. This spirit infusion constitutes these surviving creatures Spirit-fused mortals. Such beings are in every way your equals in mind and spirit; and they are indeed your contemporaries, sharing the mansion and morontia spheres in common with your order of fusion candidates and with those who are to be Son fused.
40.9.4 There is, however, one particular in which Spirit-fused mortals differ from their ascendant brethren: Mortal memory of human experience on the material worlds of origin survives death in the flesh because the indwelling Adjuster has acquired a spirit counterpart, or transcript, of those events of human life which were of spiritual significance. But with Spirit-fused mortals there exists no such mechanism whereby human memory may persist. The Adjuster transcripts of memory are full and intact, but these acquisitions are experiential possessions of the departed Adjusters and are not available to the creatures of their former indwelling, who therefore awaken in the resurrection halls of the morontia spheres of Nebadon as if they were newly created beings, creatures without consciousness of former existence.
40.9.5 Such children of the local universe are enabled to repossess themselves of much of their former human memory experience through having it retold by the associated seraphim and cherubim and by consulting the records of the mortal career filed by the recording angels. This they can do with undoubted assurance because the surviving soul, of experiential origin in the material and mortal life, while having no memory of mortal events, does have a residual experiential-recognition-response to these unremembered events of past experience.
40.9.6 When a Spirit-fused mortal is told about the events of the unremembered past experience, there is an immediate response of experiential recognition within the soul (identity) of such a survivor which instantly invests the narrated event with the emotional tinge of reality and with the intellectual quality of fact; and this dual response constitutes the reconstruction, recognition, and validation of an unremembered facet of mortal experience.
40.9.7 Even with Adjuster-fusion candidates, only those human experiences which were of spiritual value are common possessions of the surviving mortal and the returning Adjuster and hence are immediately remembered subsequent to mortal survival. Concerning those happenings which were not of spiritual significance, even these Adjuster-fusers must depend upon the attribute of recognition-response in the surviving soul. And since any one event may have a spiritual connotation to one mortal but not to another, it becomes possible for a group of contemporary ascenders from the same planet to pool their store of Adjuster-remembered events and thus to reconstruct any experience which they had in common, and which was of spiritual value in the life of any one of them.
40.9.8 While we understand such techniques of memory reconstruction fairly well, we do not grasp the technique of personality recognition. Personalities of onetime association mutually respond quite independently of the operation of memory, albeit, memory itself and the techniques of its reconstruction are necessary to invest such mutual personality response with the fullness of recognition.
40.9.9 A Spirit-fused survivor is also able to learn much about the life he lived in the flesh by revisiting his nativity world subsequent to the planetary dispensation in which he lived. Such children of Spirit fusion are enabled to enjoy these opportunities for investigating their human careers since they are in general confined to the service of the local universe. They do not share your high and exalted destiny in the Paradise Corps of the Finality; only Adjuster-fused mortals or other especially embraced ascendant beings are mustered into the ranks of those who await the eternal Deity adventure. Spirit-fused mortals are the permanent citizens of the local universes; they may aspire to Paradise destiny, but they cannot be sure of it. In Nebadon their universe home is the eighth group of worlds encircling Salvington, a destiny-heaven of nature and location much like the one envisioned by the planetary traditions of Urantia.
10. Ascendant Destinies
40.10.1 Spirit-fused mortals are, generally speaking, confined to a local universe; Son-fused survivors are restricted to a superuniverse; Adjuster-fused mortals are destined to penetrate the universe of universes. The spirits of mortal fusion always ascend to the level of origin; such spirit entities unfailingly return to the sphere of primal source.
40.10.2 Spirit-fused mortals are of the local universe; they do not, ordinarily, ascend beyond the confines of their native realm, beyond the boundaries of the space range of the spirit that pervades them. Son-fused ascenders likewise rise to the source of spirit endowment, for much as the Truth Spirit of a Creator Son focalizes in the associated Divine Minister, so is his “fusion spirit” implemented in the Reflective Spirits of the higher universes. Such spirit relationship between the local and the superuniverse levels of God the Sevenfold may be difficult of explanation but not of discernment, being unmistakably revealed in those children of the Reflective Spirits - the secoraphic Voices of the Creator Sons. The Thought Adjuster, hailing from the Father on Paradise, never stops until the mortal son stands face to face with the eternal God.
40.10.3 The mysterious variable in associative technique whereby a mortal being does not or cannot become eternally fused with the indwelling Thought Adjuster may seem to disclose a flaw in the ascension scheme; Son and Spirit fusion do, superficially, resemble compensations of unexplained failures in some detail of the Paradise-attainment plan; but all such conclusions stand in error; we are taught that all these happenings unfold in obedience to the established laws of the Supreme Universe Rulers.
40.10.4 We have analyzed this problem and have reached the undoubted conclusion that the consignment of all mortals to an ultimate Paradise destiny would be unfair to the time-space universes inasmuch as the courts of the Creator Sons and of the Ancients of Days would then be wholly dependent on the services of those who were in transit to higher realms. And it does seem to be no more than fitting that the local and the superuniverse governments should each be provided with a permanent group of ascendant citizenship; that the functions of these administrations should be enriched by the efforts of certain groups of glorified mortals who are of permanent status, evolutionary complements of the abandonters and of the susatia. Now it is quite obvious that the present ascension scheme effectively provides the time-space administrations with just such groups of ascendant creatures; and we have many times wondered: Does all this represent an intended part of the all-wise plans of the Architects of the Master Universe designed to provide the Creator Sons and the Ancients of Days with a permanent ascendant population? with evolved orders of citizenship that will become increasingly competent to carry forward the affairs of these realms in the universe ages to come?
40.10.5 That mortal destinies do thus vary in no wise proves that one is necessarily greater or lesser than another, merely that they differ. Adjuster-fused ascenders do indeed have a grand and glorious career as finaliters spread out before them in the eternal future, but this does not mean that they are preferred above their ascendant brethren. There is no favoritism, nothing arbitrary, in the selective operation of the divine plan of mortal survival.
40.10.6 While the Adjuster-fused finaliters obviously enjoy the widest service opportunity of all, the attainment of this goal automatically shuts them off from the chance to participate in the agelong struggle of some one universe or superuniverse, from the earlier and less settled epochs to the later and established eras of relative perfection attainment. Finaliters acquire a marvelous and far-flung experience of transient service in all seven segments of the grand universe, but they do not ordinarily acquire that intimate knowledge of any one universe which even now characterizes the Spirit-fused veterans of the Nebadon Corps of Completion. These individuals enjoy an opportunity to witness the ascending processional of the planetary ages as they unfold one by one on ten million inhabited worlds. And in the faithful service of such local universe citizens, experience superimposes upon experience until the fullness of time ripens that high quality of wisdom which is engendered by focalized experience - authoritative wisdom - and this in itself is a vital factor in the settling of any local universe.
40.10.7 As it is with the Spirit fusers, so is it with those Son-fused mortals who have achieved residential status on Uversa. Some of these beings hail from the earliest epochs of Orvonton, and they represent a slowly accumulating body of insight-deepening wisdom which is making ever-augmenting service contributions to the welfare and eventual settlement of the seventh superuniverse.
40.10.8 What the ultimate destiny of these stationary orders of local and of superuniverse citizenship will be we do not know, but it is quite possible that, when the Paradise finaliters are pioneering the expanding frontiers of divinity in the planetary systems of the first outer space level, their Son- and Spirit-fused brethren of the ascendant evolutionary struggle will be acceptably contributing to the maintenance of the experiential equilibrium of the perfected superuniverses while they stand ready to welcome the incoming stream of Paradise pilgrims who may, at that distant day, pour in through Orvonton and its sister creations as a vast spirit-questing torrent from these now uncharted and uninhabited galaxies of outer space.
40.10.9 While the majority of Spirit fusers serve permanently as citizens of the local universes, all do not. If some phase of their universe ministry should require their personal presence in the superuniverse, then would such transformations of being be wrought in these citizens as would enable them to ascend to the higher universe; and upon the arrival of the Celestial Guardians with orders to present such Spirit-fused mortals at the courts of the Ancients of Days, they would so ascend, never to return. They become wards of the superuniverse, serving as assistants to the Celestial Guardians and permanently, save for those few who are in turn summoned to the service of Paradise and Havona.
40.10.10 Like their Spirit-fused brethren, the Son fusers neither traverse Havona nor attain Paradise unless they have undergone certain modifying transformations. For good and sufficient reasons, such changes have been wrought in certain Son-fused survivors, and these beings are to be encountered ever and anon on the seven circuits of the central universe. Thus it is that certain numbers of both the Son- and the Spirit-fused mortals do actually ascend to Paradise, do attain a goal in many ways equal to that which awaits the Father-fused mortals.
40.10.11 Father-fused mortals are potential finaliters; their destination is the Universal Father, and him they do attain, but within the purview of the present universe age, finaliters, as such, are not destiny attainers. They remain unfinished creatures - sixth-stage spirits - and hence nonactive in the evolutionary domains of prelight-and-life status.
40.10.12 When a mortal finaliter is Trinity embraced - becomes a Trinitized Son, such as a Mighty Messenger - then has that finaliter attained destiny, at least for the present universe age. Mighty Messengers and their fellows may not in the exact sense be seventh-stage spirits, but in addition to other things the Trinity embrace endows them with everything which a finaliter will sometime achieve as a seventh-stage spirit. After Spirit-fused or Son-fused mortals are trinitized, they pass through the Paradise experience with the Adjuster-fused ascenders, with whom they are then identical in all matters pertaining to superuniverse administration. These Trinitized Sons of Selection or of Attainment at least for now are finished creatures, in contrast to the finaliters, who are at present unfinished creatures.
40.10.13 Thus, in the final analysis, it would be hardly proper to use the words “greater” or “lesser” in contrasting the destinies of the ascending orders of sonship. Every such son of God shares the fatherhood of God, and God loves each of his creature sons alike; he is no more a respecter of ascendant destinies than is he of the creatures who may attain such destinies. The Father loves each of his sons, and that affection is not less than true, holy, divine, unlimited, eternal, and unique - a love bestowed upon this son and upon that son, individually, personally, and exclusively. And such a love utterly eclipses all other facts. Sonship is the supreme relationship of the creature to the Creator.
40.10.14 As mortals you can now recognize your place in the family of divine sonship and begin to sense the obligation to avail yourselves of the advantages so freely provided in and by the Paradise plan for mortal survival, which plan has been so enhanced and illuminated by the life experience of a bestowal Son. Every facility and all power have been provided for insuring your ultimate attainment of the Paradise goal of divine perfection.
40.10.15 [Presented by a Mighty Messenger temporarily attached to the staff of Gabriel of Salvington.]