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Paper 5: God's Relation to the Individual
A fragment of God lives within the intellect of every normal-minded, morally conscious human being. This fragment, the Thought Adjuster, guides mortals unerringly through the spiritual journey that leads into the presence of God the Father in Paradise.
God yearns for the association of every created being who can love him. Through the indwelling Adjusters, we can seek intimate personal communion with God's divine spirit as we advance inward through the ages toward Paradise. We cannot fail to attain the destiny God has established for us if we yield to the leading of his spiritual guidance.
The indwelling Thought Adjuster allows us to more fully discern the presence of other spiritual influences. Realization of contact with the Adjuster is primarily limited to the realms of the soul: lack of intellectual consciousness concerning the indwelling fragment does not disprove its existence. Proof of the divine Adjuster's work lies wholly in the fruits of the spirit that appear in the life of the believer.
Worship springs from a creature's spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father's nature and personality. Prayer contains an element of self-interest, but worship exists for its own sake. Mortals worship God, pray to and commune with the Son, and work out the details of earthly life with the offspring of the Infinite Spirit.
Nonreligious activities seek to bend the universe to the service of self; religious individuals seek to devote their activities to the service of the universe. Philosophy and art create bridges between nonreligious and religious activities by luring people into contemplating spiritual realities. Religious experience is essentially spiritual and cannot be fully understood by a material mind; the realities of religion are beyond mortal capacity of intellectual comprehension. Religious experience unifies human consciousness, promotes philosophic substantiation of ideal moral values, and leads to the spiritual satisfaction of worship-the experience of divine companionship.
God-consciousness includes the mind, the soul, and the spirit through the realization of the idea of God, the ideal of God, and the spirit reality of God. The experience of God-consciousness remains the same throughout history, even though the theological definition of God changes with each advancing epoch.
A human mind that possesses the capacity to distinguish right from wrong and to worship God, in union with a divine Adjuster, is all that is required to initiate the existence of an immortal soul. Eternal survival is wholly dependent on the choice of the mortal being. Survival is assured when the mind, soul, and Adjuster together believe in God and desire to be like him.
Personality, bestowed by God the Father, is one of the incomprehensible mysteries of the universe. Capacity for divine personality is inherent in the Adjuster, and capacity for human personality is potential in the cosmic-mind endowment of the human being. Mortal personality is observable as a functional reality only after the mortal mind is touched by the Adjuster.
The material personality and the prepersonal Adjuster together can create an immortal soul; mortal man alone either wills or inhibits the creation of this surviving self. No other being or agency in the universe can interfere with the sovereignty of mortal free will regarding eternal survival, and no creature can be coerced into the eternal adventure against his will.
The Universal Father is personally conscious of all personalities at all levels of self-conscious existence. As gravity is circuited in the Isle of Paradise, as mind is circuited in the Conjoint Actor, and as spirit is circuited in the Eternal Son, so is personality circuited and centered in the Universal Father.