The Sovereignty of Self

By Dick MacDonald

February 20, 1986

 

The purpose of this study, The Sovereignty of Self, is to direct our attention to the interrelationship of the sovereignties of the governmental world, the religious world, and the inner world of man - the world of creative causation action and reaction.

 

The subject itself is of such a nature its synopsis can easily be expressed in a very few paragraphs.  To begin with it is a study first of a world of nations who steadfastly refuse to give up their individual sovereignties to an international government; thereby perpetuating a fetid atmosphere of international suspicion, prejudice, jealousy, hatred and an alarming decrease in morality in one form or another.

 

Secondly, if we were to transpose all the ills of international governmental policies onto the positive print of the events occurring in the religious world we would find, without a doubt, the same conditions existing regarding its sovereignty.

 

And lastly, we find in each individual these same problems as related to his association with his fellow man.  By retaining his own personal sovereignty, he too is living in a world of his own creation filled with internal suspicion, hatred, and all the other evils that beset his egotistical nature.

 

The solution to the problems of the outer world lie, basically in the surrender of each nation’s sovereignty to a higher authority - a global government of the people, by the people and for the people.  The same may be said of all the various religions; a surrender of their individual sovereignties to a Higher Source.  In man’s inner world his salvation from the evils he is subjected to lie also in the surrender of his personal sovereignty to a final authority - the Will of the Universal Father.

 

Thus we have in a small package this study which will be expanded on by a series of quotations from The URANTIA Book.

 

It should be noted that any kind of discourse, lecture or presentation even though its foundation may be based on a series of quotations from an authoritative source, always reflects in some way the point of view of its originator.  So it is with this study.  While it has been faithfully researched and outlined with many quotations this paper is by no means to be considered conclusive.  The preparation arrived at represents a point of view that may differ in some respects from that of other students.  In any event there will be found in this paper that common factor previously referred to as interrelationship but is the direct parallel that exists between man’s inner world of self and the external world in which he lives experientially.  This thought is better expressed in the following paragraph dealing with brotherhood - the part and the whole:·(138:7)

 

Brotherhood constitutes a fact of relationship between every personality in universal existence. No person can escape the benefits or the penalties that may come as a result of relationship to other persons.  The part profits or suffers in measure with the whole. The good effort of each man benefits all men; the error or evil of each man augments the tribulation of all men.  As moves the part, so moves the whole.  As the progress of the whole, so the progress of the part. The relative velocities of part and whole determine whether the part is retarded by the inertia of the whole or is carried forward by the momentum of the cosmic brotherhood.

 

And it is in this dual world of man we observe the parallel manifestation of sovereignty status with its powerful potential for determining man's evolving estate.  Whether it be nations surrendering or retaining their national sovereignty or individuals surrendering or retaining their personal sovereignty, the result is the same, differing only in magnitude and intensity; the whole or the part - the macrocosm or the microcosm.  This is well expressed in the following quotations:

 

1487:(5)a. 1488:1        War on Urantia will never end so long as nations cling to the illusive notions of unlimited national sovereignty. There are only two levels of relative sovereignty on an inhabited world: the spiritual free will of the individ­ual mortal and the collective sovereignty of mankind as a whole. Between the level of the individual human be­ing and the level of the total of mankind, all groupings and associations are relative, transitory, and of value only in so far as they enhance the welfare, well-being, and progress of the individual and the planetary grand total--man and mankind.

 

 

1491:2-3-4                  War is not man's great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a result. The real disease is the virus of national sovereignty.  Urantia nations have not possessed real sovereignty; they never have had a sovereignty which could protect them from the ravages and devastations of world wars.  In the creation of the global government of mankind, the nations are not giving up sovereignty so much as they are actually creating a real, bona fide, and lasting world sovereignty which will henceforth be fully able to protect them from all war.  Local affairs will be handled by local government; national affairs, by national government; international affairs will be administered by global government.

 

World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign policies, alliances, balance of power, or any other type of makeshift juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism.  World law must come into being and must be enforced by world government - the sovereignty of all mankind.

 

783:(1)1                       War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization's advancement.  Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome.  Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively.  And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society's advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human inter-associations.

 

 

1489:4-5-6                  Peace will not come to Urantia until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind.  Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world.  When all the peoples of Urantia create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail - but not until then.

 

To use an important nineteenth-and twentieth-century illustration:  The forty-eight states of the American Federal Union have long enjoyed peace. They have no more wars among themselves.  They have surrendered their sovereignty to the federal government, and through the arbitraments of war, they have abandoned all claims to the delusions of self-determination. While each state regulates its internal affairs, it is not concerned with foreign relations, tariffs, immigration, military affairs, or interstate commerce.  Neither do the individual states concern themselves with matters of citizenship.  The forty-eight states suffer the ravages of war only when the federal government's sovereignty is in some way jeapordized.

 

These forty-eight states, having abandoned the twin sophistries of sovereignty and self-determination, enjoy interstate peace and tranquility. So will the nations of Urantia begin to enjoy peace when they freely surrender their respective sovereignties into the hands of a global government - the sovereignty of the brotherhood of men.  In this world state the small nations will be as powerful as the great, even as the small state of Rhode Island has its two senators in the American Congress just the same as the populous state of New York or the large state of Texas.

 

1490:(6)3-4-5              There shall be wars and rumors of wars - nation will rise against nation - just as long as the world’s political sovereignty is divided up and unjustly held by a group of nation-states.  England, Scotland, and Wales were always fighting each other until they gave up their respective sovereignties, reposing them in the United Kingdom.

 

Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars - nothing else can.

 

The forty-eight American free states live together in peace. There are among the citizens of these forty-eight states all of the various nationalities and races that live in the ever-warring nations of Europe. These Americans represent almost all the religions and religious sects and cults of the whole wide world, and yet here in North America they live together in peace. 

 

And all this is made possible because these forty-eight states have surrendered their sovereignty and have abandoned all notions of the supposed rights of self-determination.

 

So much for the state of affairs on Urantia resulting as aforementioned by the refusal of nations to surrender their sovereignty to a higher authority - a global government.

 

In our second step as we work inward to a parallel study of the individual’s inner world, it is well to take a look at the religious bridge that seems to be a connecting link between man’s experiential world of effect and his inner life of motivation, creativity and causation.  Whether the bridge is weak, strong, large or small the fact remains that the tutored or untutored are all governed by some concept of morality or religion with or without a label.  The following interesting transcripts expand on this phase of our study:

 

 

The brotherhood of men is founded on the fatherhood of God.  The family of God is derived from the love of God - God is love.  God the Father divinely loves his children, all of them.

 

The kingdom of heaven, the divine government, is founded on the fact of divine sovereignty - God is spirit.  Since God is spirit, this kingdom is spiritual.  The kingdom of heaven is neither material nor merely intellectual; it is a spiritual relationship between God and man.

 

 

If different religions recognize the spirit sovereignty of God the Father, then will all such religions remain at peace.  Only when one religion assumes that it is in some way superior to all others, and that it possesses exclusive authority over other religions, will such a religion presume to be intolerant of other religions or dare to persecute other religious believers.

 

 

1487:l-7                       Religious peace – brotherhood - can never exist unless all religions are willing to completely divest themselves of all ecclesiastical authority and fully surrender all concept of spiritual sovereignty. God alone is spirit sovereign.

 

You cannot have equality among religions (religious liberty) without having religious wars unless all religions consent to the transfer of all religious sovereignty to some superhuman level, to God himself.

 

The kingdom of heaven in the hearts of men will create religious unity (not necessarily uniformity) because any and all religious groups composed of such religious believers will be free from all notions of ecclesiastical authority - religious sovereignty.

 

God is spirit, and God gives a fragment of his spirit self to dwell in the heart of man. Spiritually, all men are equal.  The kingdom of heaven is free from castes, classes, social levels, and economic groups.  You are all brethren.

 

But the moment you lose sight of the spirit sovereignty of God the Father, some one religion will begin to assert its superiority over other religions; and then, instead of peace on earth and good will among men, there will start dissensions, recriminations, even religious wars, at least wars among religionists.

 

Freewill beings who regard themselves as equals, unless they mutually acknowledge themselves as subject to some supersovereignty, some authority over and above themselves, sooner or later are tempted to try out their ability to gain power and authority over other persons and groups. The concept of equality never brings peace except in the mutual recognition of some overcontrolling influence of supersovereignty.

 

The Urmia religionists lived together in comparative peace and tranquillity because they had fully surrendered all their notions of religious sovereignty.  Spiritually, they all believed in a sovereign God; socially, full and unchallengeable authority rested in their presiding head - Cymboyton.  They well knew what would happen to any teacher who assumed to lord it over his fellow teachers.  There can be no lasting religious peace on Urantia until all religious groups freely surrender all their notions of divine favor, chosen people, and religious sovereignty. Only when God the Father becomes supreme will men become religious brothers and live together in religious peace on earth.

 

So we come to understand that these two great influences of mankind, government and religion, are both subject to the same powerful manifestations that follow the surrender or retention of their respective sovereignties. So it is with man.

 

As we approach the third part of this study, to better understand what is really meant by one's personal sovereignty, our attention is drawn to the fact that the individual's bid for immortality is entirely contingent on those freewill choices that enhance his spiritual growth which is often referred to as the developing ‘morontia soul’.  Its development is entirely dependent on one's successive decisions to do the Will of the Father.  In the following extracts is found a common identity between God's gift of freewill choice to His children, and their own respective sovereignty of their mortal will:

 

71:2-3                          The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity; the pre-personal spirit Adjuster also has identity, eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit pre-personality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence the surviving identity of the immortal soul.

 

Having thus provided for the growth of the immortal soul and having liberated man’s inner self from the fetters of absolute dependence on antecedent causation, the Father stands aside.  Now, man having thus been liberated from the fetters of causation response, at least as pertains to eternal destiny, and provision having been made for the growth of the immortal self, the soul, it remains for man himself to will the creation or to inhibit the creation of this surviving and eternal self which is his for the choosing.  No other being, force, creator, or agency in all the wide universe of universes can interfere to any degree with the absolute sovereignty of the mortal freewill, as it operates within the realms of choice, regarding the eternal destiny of the personality of the choosing mortal.  As pertains to eternal survival, God has decreed the sovereignty of the material and mortal will, and that decree is absolute.

 

Here follows more information from quotations found in The URANTIA Book that have to do with the complexities of human nature, its creative causation and its effects on the outer world:

 

1219:(4) thru

1220 (1-4)                   Recognition is the intellectual process of fitting the sensory impressions received from the external world into the memory patterns of the individual.  Understanding connotes that these recognized sensory impressions and their associated memory patterns have become integrated or organized into a dynamic network of principles.

 

Meanings are derived from a combination of recognition and understanding. Meanings are nonexistent in a wholly sensory or material world. Meanings and values are only perceived in the inner or supermaterial spheres as human experience.

 

The advances of true civilization are all born in this inner world of mankind. It is only the inner life that is truly creative. Civilization can hardly progress when the majority of the youth of any generation devote their interests and energies to the materialistic pur­suits of the sensory or outer world.

 

The inner and outer worlds have a different set of values.  Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world.  Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology.

 

Only in the higher levels of the superconscious mind as it impinges upon the spirit realm of human experience can you find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization.  Personality is inherently creative, but it thus functions only in the inner life of the individual.

 

1220:8                         Since this inner life of man is truly creative, there rests upon each person the responsibility of choosing as to whether this creativity shall be spontaneous and wholly haphazard or controlled, directed, and constructive.  How can a creative imagination produce worthy children when the stage whereon it functions is already preoccupied by prejudice, hate, fears, resentments, revenge, and bigotries?

 

1220:9                         Ideas may take origin in the stimuli of the outer world, but ideals are born only in the creative realms of the inner world.  Today the nations of the world are directed by men who have a superabundance of ideas, but they are poverty stricken in ideals.  That is the explanation of poverty, divorce, war, and racial hatreds.

 

In looking back over the material we have just covered it becomes quite apparent that salvation, whether it be in the individual, a family, state or nation, balances delicately on the fulcrum of mortal freewill choice; constructivity or destructivity being the end-result of retaining or relinquishing sovereignty to a higher authority at any and all levels. In the individual, his surrender of sovereignty, is to the nature of God which we refer to as “doing the Will of the


Father.”  In the following excerpts we find “doing the Will of the Father” referred to as a consecration of choice.

 

1221(5)                        The doing of the will of God is nothing more or less than an exhibition of creature willingness to share the inner life with God - with the very God who has made such a creature life of inner meaning-value possible. Sharing is Godlike - divine.  God shares all with the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit, while they, in turn, share all things with the divine Sons and spirit Daughters of the Universes.

 

The imitation of God is the key to perfection; the doing of his will is the secret of survival and of perfection in survival.

 

Mortals live in God, and so God has willed to live in mortals.  As men trust themselves to him, so has he - and first - trusted a part of himself to be with men; has consented to live in men and to indwell men subject to the human will.

 

Peace in this life, survival in death, perfection in the next life, service in eternity - all these are achieved (in spirit) now when the creature personality consents – chooses - to subject the creature will to the Father's will.  And already has the Father chosen to make a fragment of himself subject to the will of the creature personality.

 

Such a creature choice is not a surrender of will.  It is a consecration of will, an expansion of will, a glorification of will, a perfecting of will; and such choosing raises the creature will from the level of temporal significance to that higher estate wherein the personality of the creature son communes with the personality of the spirit Father.

 

This choosing of the Father’s will is the spiritual finding of the spirit Father by mortal man, even though an age must pass before the creature son may actually stand in the factual presence of God on Paradise.  This choosing does not so much consist in the negation of creature will – “Not my will but yours be done” - as it consists in the creature’s positive affirmation: “It is my will that your will be done."  And if this choice is made, sooner or later will the God-choosing son find inner union (fusion) with the indwelling God fragment, while this same perfecting son will find supreme personality satisfaction in the worship communion of the personality of man and the personality of his Maker, two personalities whose creative attributes have eternally joined in self-willed mutuality of expression - the birth of another eternal partnership of the will of man and the will of God.

 

It should again be noted that the surrender of one's will, is, rather a consecration of the will; and does not in anyway diminish his or her identity, individuality or freedom of expression.  In this


regard it is fitting to close this study with the words of Jesus who spoke to his apostle James on this matter as follows:

 

1591:(5) thru

1592:1,2                      One of the most eventful of all the evening conferences at Amathus was the session having to do with the discussion of spiritual unity.  James Zebedee had asked, "Master, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby enjoy more harmony among ourselves?" When Jesus heard this question, he was stirred within his spirit, so much so that he replied: “James, James, when did I teach you that you should all see alike?  I have come into the world to proclaim spiritual liberty to the end that mortals may be empowered to live individual lives of originality and freedom before God. I do not desire that social harmony and fraternal peace shall be purchased by the sacrifice of free personality and spiritual originality.  What I require of you, my apostles, is spirit unit, - and that you can experience in the joy of your united dedication to the wholehearted doing of the will of my Father in heaven.  You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in order spiritually to be alike.  Spiritual unity is derived from the consciousness that each of you is indwelt, and increasingly dominated, by the spirit gift of the heavenly Father.  Your apostolic harmony must grow out of the fact that the spirit hope of each of you is identical in origin, nature, and destiny.

 

In this way you may experience a perfected unity of spirit purpose and spirit understanding growing out of the mutual consciousness of the identity of each of your indwelling Paradise spirits; and you may enjoy all of this profound spiritual unity in the very face of the utmost diversity of your individual attitudes of intellectual thinking, temperamental feeling, and social conduct.  Your personalities may be refreshingly diverse and markedly different, while your spiritual natures and spirit fruits of divine worship and brotherly love maybe so unified that all who behold your lives will of a surety take cognizance of this spirit identity and soul unity; they will recognize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and acceptably, how to do the will of the Father in heaven.  You can achieve the unity of the service of God even while you render such service in accordance with the technique of your own original endowments of mind, body, and soul.

 

Your spirit unity implies two things, which always will be found to harmonize in the lives of individual believers: First, you are possessed with a common motive for life service; you all desire above everything to do the will of the Father in heaven.  Second, you all have a common goal of existence; you all purpose to find the Father in heaven, thereby proving to the universe that you have become like him.