LESSON 9: Physical Death — Our First Graduation

The nature of physical death and the resurrection being what they are — something that can only be truly known by those who have experienced it — presents a dilemma of sorts for this lesson. No one alive today is qualified by experience to speak authoritatively about either death or the resurrection. We can only attempt to breach this hurdle by offering some insights from the Urantia Book, which claims to have authoritative knowledge of these two processes.

Jesus taught that death was not to be feared

Every mortal human being has a spirit nucleus. The mind is a system existing around that spirit nucleus and functioning in a material environment. Such a relationship of mind and spirit gives us the potential for eternal personality. There is something real, something of human evolution, which survives death. This entity is the soul, and it survives the death of both your physical body and your material mind. This entity is the child of the human you in liaison with the divine you. This child of human and divine parentage is the surviving element of mortal origin; it is the immortal soul.

At death the identity associated with the human personality is temporarily suspended. The stoppage of material life destroys the physical brain patterns of the mind and terminates mortal consciousness. The consciousness of that creature cannot reappear until a situation has been arranged which will permit the same human personality to function again in relationship with a new form of living energy.

Death adds nothing to the intellectual possession or to the spiritual endowment, but it does add the consciousness of survival to one's experience. Most human beings die because, having failed to achieve the spirit level, death is the only possible way in which they may escape the limitations of time and matter. Having survived the trial life of time and material existence, it becomes possible for you to continue on for eternity.

Love of adventure, curiosity, and dread of monotony — these traits inherent in evolving human nature — were not put there just to aggravate and annoy you during your short time on earth, but rather to suggest to you that death is only the beginning of an endless career of adventure, an everlasting life of anticipation, an eternal voyage of discovery.

The phenomenon of death

Concerning personality survival, there are really three kinds of death:

Spiritual or Soul death is when man has finally rejected survival which is final.

Intellectual (mind) death is whenever the essential mind circuits of human will-action have been destroyed even though there is continuing function of the living mechanism of the physical body.

Physical (body and mind) death is when the material body returns to the elemental world from where it was derived. However, two non-material factors of surviving personality persist: the pre-existent Thought Adjuster, with the memory transcription of the mortal career, and the immortal morontia soul of the deceased human in the custody of the seraphic destiny guardian. It is the reunion of the Adjuster and the soul that reassembles the surviving personality — the morontia self — the immortal soul. Urantia Book 112:3.2-5

Survival choice is indomitable

Eternal survival of personality is wholly dependent on the choosing of the mortal mind, whose decisions determine the survival potential of the immortal soul. When the mind believes God and the soul knows God, and when, with the fostering Adjuster, they all desire God, then is survival assured. Limitations of intellect, curtailment of education, deprivation of culture, impoverishment of social status, even inferiority of the human
standards of morality resulting from the unfortunate lack of educational, cultural, and social advantages, cannot invalidate the presence of the divine spirit in such unfortunate and humanly handicapped but believing
individuals. The indwelling of the Mystery Monitor constitutes the inception and insures the possibility of the potential of growth and survival of the immortal soul. Urantia Book 5:5.13

The resurrection

The mansonia resurrection halls.
From the Temple of New Life there extend seven radial wings, the resurrection halls of the mortal races. Each of these structures is devoted to the assembly of one of the seven races of time. There are one hundred thousand personal resurrection chambers in each of these seven wings terminating in the circular class assembly halls, which serve as the awakening chambers for as many as one million individuals. There halls are surrounded by the personality assembly chambers of the blended races of the normal post-Adamic worlds. Regardless of the technique which may be employed on the individual worlds of time in connection with special or dispensational resurrections, the real and conscious reassembly of actual and complete personality takes place in the resurrection halls of mansonia number one. Throughout all eternity you will recall the profound memory impressions of your first witnessing of these resurrection mornings. Urantia Book 47:3.5

The reconstruction of survivors.
The situation which makes repersonalization possible is brought about in the resurrection halls of the morontia receiving planets of a local universe. Here in these life-assembly chambers the supervising authorities provide that relationship of universe energy — morontial, mindal, and spiritual — which makes possible the reconsciousizing of the sleeping survivor. The reassembly of the constituent parts of a onetime material personality involves:

1. The fabrication of a suitable form, a morontia energy pattern, in which the new survivor can make contact with nonspiritual reality, and within which the morontia variant of the cosmic mind can be encircuited.
2. The return of the Adjuster to the waiting morontia creature. The Adjuster is the eternal custodian of your ascending identity; your Monitor is the absolute assurance that you yourself and not another will occupy the morontia form created for your personality awakening. And the Adjuster will be present at your personality reassembly to take up once more the role of Paradise guide to your surviving self.
3. When these prerequisites of repersonalization have been assembled, the seraphic custodian of the potentialities of the slumbering immortal soul, with the assistance of numerous cosmic personalities, bestows this morontia entity upon and in the awaiting morontia mind-body form while committing this evolutionary child of the Supreme to eternal association with the waiting Adjuster. And this completes the repersonalization, reassembly of memory, insight, and consciousness — identity. Urantia Book 112:5.16-19

Resurrection launches us on our morontia career

Mortal death is a technique of escape from the material life in the flesh; and the mansonia experience of progressive life through seven worlds of corrective training and cultural education represents the introduction of mortal survivors to the morontia career, the transition life which intervenes between the evolutionary material existence and the higher spirit attainment of the ascenders of time who are destined to achieve the
portals of eternity. Urantia Book 47:10.7

The survival of young children

Children who die when too young to have Thought Adjusters are repersonalized on the finaliter world of the local systems concomitant with the arrival of either parent on the mansion worlds. A child acquires physical
entity at mortal birth, but in the matter of survival all Adjusterless children are reckoned as still attached to their parents.

In due course Thought Adjusters come to indwell these little ones, while the seraphic ministry to both groups of the probationary-dependent orders of survival is in general similar to that of the more advanced parent or is equivalent to that of the parent in case only one survives. Those attaining the third circle, regardless of the status of their parents, are accorded personal guardians. Urantia Book 49:6.12-13

An interesting aside

In many cultures it is customary to place the deceased horizontally and facing up, with the hands touching and resting on the chest or belly area. As it turns out, there is more than mere culture or habit behind this widespread and peculiar funerary practice. There is a certain value to doing this, but it must be done at the moment of death or very quickly afterwards. Our Guardian Angels are the ones entrusted with the most sacred task of removing the surviving soul from a deceased physical body, and this they normally do about 3 or 4 minutes after the last brain/mind activity has ceased. The process involves disconnecting the soul from the deceased body's energy circuits. But since the deceased body still contains a significant amount of residual energy in it (it takes a while for this energy to disspiate), the moment the angel "pulls the plug" to disconnect the soul from the body, this residual energy can give them something akin to an electrical shock. One way to help prevent this is to place the hands of the deceased so they are touching. This hand contact creates a closed loop energy circuit through the arms and chest which prevents the residual energy from jumping into the angel.

Much more about the resurrection, where it happens, and how we travel there is discussed in our School of Cosmology.