The origin and nature of the Directives of Thought

107:0.1 (1176.1)HOWEVER the Universal Father resides personally on Paradise, right at the center of the universes, he is also actually present on the worlds in space in the consciousness of his countless children in time, for he dwells with them as their Secret Mentor. The Eternal Father is at the same time farthest from, and most intimately connected with, His planetary mortal sons.

107:0.2 (1176.2)The Richters are the actuality of the Father's love incarnated in the soul of man; they are, captured in the mortal's consciousness, the unquestionable promise of man's eternal career. They are the essence of man's perfected personality as perfection, which he can already savor in time as he learns more and more to master the divine technique, through which he can begin to live the will of the Father, step by step, through the ascent from one universe to the next, until he actually reaches the divine presence of his Paradise-Father.

107:0.3 (1176.3)God, who has commanded man to be perfect as He Himself is perfect, has descended as the Richter to become man's experiential partner in the attainment of the heavenly destiny thus set. The fragment of God dwelling in man's consciousness is the absolute, unlimited assurance that man can find the Universal Father, in cooperation with this divine Richter who has gone forth from God to seek man and join him in sonship, even as early as the days of his existence in the flesh.

107:0.4 (1176.4)Every mortal who has seen a Creator-Son has seen the Universal Father, and in every one in whom dwells a divine Richter, dwells the Paradise Father. Every mortal who consciously or unconsciously follows the guidance of the Richter who dwells with him lives in accordance with the will of God. Awareness of the Richter's presence is awareness of the presence of God. The eternal fusion of the Richter with the evolutionary soul of man is the actual experience of eternal union with God as a universe partner of the Godhead.

107:0.5 (1176.5)It is the Richter who creates in man that insatiable yearning and that relentless desire to be like God, to reach Paradise, and to worship there before the real person of Deity the infinite origin of the divine gift. The Richter is the living presence that actually connects the mortal son with his Paradise Father and draws him ever closer to the Father. The Richter is our compensatory equalizer of the enormous universe tension caused by the distance with which man is removed from God, and by his degree of partiality, in contrast to the all-encompassingness of the eternal Father.

107:0.6 (1176.6)The Richter is an absolute essence of an infinite being, trapped in the consciousness of a finite creature, who, depending on the choice of such a mortal, can ultimately bring this temporary union of God and man to completion and truly actualize a being of a new order, serving forever in the universe. The Richter is the divine universe-reality that makes factual the truth that God is the Father of man. The Richter is “man's infallible cosmic compass, which always infallibly points the soul in the direction of God.

107:0.7 (1177.1)On the evolutionary worlds, will-creatures go through three general stages of development of being: from the advent of the Richter until they reach relative maturity, on Urantia at the age of about twenty years, Mentors are sometimes referred to as Thought Changers. From then until reaching the years of discernment, at about forty years of age, the Secretive Mentors are called Thought Makers. From reaching the years of discernment until liberation from the flesh, they are often referred to as Thought Controllers. These three stages in the life of a mortal do not relate to the three stages of progression known to the Richter in the duplication of consciousness and the development of the soul.

1. The Origin of the Directers of Thought.

107:1.1 (1177.2)Since Thought Directers are part of the essence of the original Godhead, no one can afford to speak with authority about their nature and origin: I can only communicate the traditions of Salvington and what we at Uversa believe regarding them. I can only explain to you how we everywhere in the great universe regard these Secret Mentors and the entities associated with them.

107:1.2 (1177.3)Although there are differing opinions as to how the Mind Guides are granted, there is no difference of opinion as to their origin; all agree that they derive directly from the Universal Father, the First Source and Center. They are not created beings: they are entities emitted as fragments that constitute the actual presence of the infinite God. Together with their many unrevealed partners, the Richters are pure, unmixed divinity, unlimited, unaffected parts of the Godhead; they are of God, and as far as we can see, they are God.

107:1.3 (1177.4)As to when they begin their separate existence apart from the absoluteness of the First Source and Center, about this we know nothing, nor do we know their number. As to their career before they arrive on the planets of time and take up residence in the consciousness of human beings, we know little, but from then on we are more or less familiar with their cosmic progress, up to and including the attainment of their triune destiny: the acquisition of personality by fusion with a mortal in ascension, the attainment of personality by decision of the Universal Father, or exemption from the known duties of the Thought-Givers.

107:1.4 (1177.5)Although we do not know, we suppose that Richters are constantly being individuated as the universe expands, and as the candidates for fusion with the Richter increase in number. But it is equally possible that we are mistaken when we attempt to assign numerical greatness to the Richters: like God Himself, these fragments of the unfathomable nature of God may also be existentially infinite.

107:1.5 (1177.6)The technique by which the Directers of Thought come into being is one of the unrevealed functions of the Universal Father. We have every reason to believe that none of the other absolute sharers of the First Source and Center has anything to do with the bringing forth of the Father fragments. Richters are simply and eternally divine gifts; they are of God and from God, and they are like God.

107:1.6 (1177.7)In their relationship to fusion creatures, they reveal a transcendent love and spiritual helpfulness that is a profound affirmation of the statement that God is spirit. But in addition to this transcendent service, much more takes place that has never been revealed to mortals on Urantia. Nor do we fully understand what really happens when the Universal Father gives something of Himself that becomes part of the personality of a creature in time. Nor, as yet, has the continuing ascent of the Paradise Fulfillment unlocked all the possibilities inherent in this exalted partnership of man and God. After all, the Father-fragments must be the gift of the absolute God to those creatures whose final destination includes the possibility that they will reach God at the absolute level.

107:1.7 (1178.1)Just as the Universal Father fragments his pre-personal Godhead, so also the Infinite Spirit grants individuality to parts of his pre-consciousness mind to dwell with, and actually merge with, the evolutionary souls of the survival-coming mortals of the mind-fusion series. However, the nature of the Eternal Son cannot be fragmented in this way: the spirit of the Original Son is either diffuse or distinctly personal. Creatures merged with the Son are united with individualized endowments of the spirit of the Creator-Sons of the Eternal Son.

A Thought for Consideration from The Urantia Book