Urantia Book

The Central and Divine Universe

(152.1) 14:0.1 THE perfect and divine universe occupies the center of all creation; it is the eternal core around which the vast creations of time and space revolve. Paradise is the gigantic nuclear Isle of absolute stability which rests motionless at the very heart of the magnificent eternal universe. This central planetary family is called Havona and is far-distant from the local universe of Nebadon. It is of enormous dimensions and almost unbelievable mass and consists of one billion spheres of unimagined beauty and superb grandeur, but the true magnitude of this vast creation is really beyond the understanding grasp of the human mind.

(152.2) 14:0.2 This is the one and only settled, perfect, and established aggregation of worlds. This is a wholly created and perfect universe; it is not an evolutionary development. This is the eternal core of perfection, about which swirls that endless procession of universes which constitute the tremendous evolutionary experiment, the audacious adventure of the Creator Sons of God, who aspire to duplicate in time and to reproduce in space the pattern universe, the ideal of divine completeness, supreme finality, ultimate reality, and eternal perfection.

1. The Paradise-Havona System

(152.3) 14:1.1 From the periphery of Paradise to the inner borders of the seven superuniverses there are the following seven space conditions and motions:

(152.4) 14:1.2 1. The quiescent midspace zones impinging on Paradise.

(152.5) 14:1.3 2. The clockwise processional of the three Paradise and the seven Havona circuits.

(152.6) 14:1.4 3. The semiquiet space zone separating the Havona circuits from the dark gravity bodies of the central universe.

(152.7) 14:1.5 4. The inner, counterclockwise-moving belt of the dark gravity bodies.

(152.8) 14:1.6 5. The second unique space zone dividing the two space paths of the dark gravity bodies.

(152.9) 14:1.7 6. The outer belt of dark gravity bodies, revolving clockwise around Paradise.

(152.10) 14:1.8 7. A third space zone — a semiquiet zone — separating the outer belt of dark gravity bodies from the innermost circuits of the seven superuniverses.

(152.11) 14:1.9 The billion worlds of Havona are arranged in seven concentric circuits immediately surrounding the three circuits of Paradise satellites. There are upwards of thirty-five million worlds in the innermost Havona circuit and over two hundred and forty-five million in the outermost, with proportionate numbers intervening. Each circuit differs, but all are perfectly balanced and exquisitely organized, and each is pervaded by a specialized representation of the Infinite Spirit, one of the Seven Spirits of the Circuits. In addition to other functions this impersonal Spirit co-ordinates the conduct of celestial affairs throughout each circuit.

(153.1) 14:1.10 The Havona planetary circuits are not superimposed; their worlds follow each other in an orderly linear procession. The central universe whirls around the stationary Isle of Paradise in one vast plane, consisting of ten concentric stabilized units — the three circuits of Paradise spheres and the seven circuits of Havona worlds. Physically regarded, the Havona and the Paradise circuits are all one and the same system; their separation is in recognition of functional and administrative segregation.

(153.2) 14:1.11 Time is not reckoned on Paradise; the sequence of successive events is inherent in the concept of those who are indigenous to the central Isle. But time is germane to the Havona circuits and to numerous beings of both celestial and terrestrial origin sojourning thereon. Each Havona world has its own local time, determined by its circuit. All worlds in a given circuit have the same length of year since they uniformly swing around Paradise, and the length of these planetary years decreases from the outermost to the innermost circuit.

(153.3) 14:1.12 Besides Havona-circuit time, there is the Paradise-Havona standard day and other time designations which are determined on, and are sent out from, the seven Paradise satellites of the Infinite Spirit. The Paradise-Havona standard day is based on the length of time required for the planetary abodes of the first or inner Havona circuit to complete one revolution around the Isle of Paradise; and though their velocity is enormous, owing to their situation between the dark gravity bodies and gigantic Paradise, it requires almost one thousand years for these spheres to complete their circuit. You have unwittingly read the truth when your eyes rested on the statement “A day is as a thousand years with God, as but a watch in the night.” One Paradise-Havona day is just seven minutes, three and one-eighth seconds less than one thousand years of the present Urantia leap-year calendar.

(153.4) 14:1.13 This Paradise-Havona day is the standard time measurement for the seven superuniverses, although each maintains its own internal time standards.

(153.5) 14:1.14 On the outskirts of this vast central universe, far out beyond the seventh belt of Havona worlds, there swirl an unbelievable number of enormous dark gravity bodies. These multitudinous dark masses are quite unlike other space bodies in many particulars; even in form they are very different. These dark gravity bodies neither reflect nor absorb light; they are nonreactive to physical-energy light, and they so completely encircle and enshroud Havona as to hide it from the view of even near-by inhabited universes of time and space.

(153.6) 14:1.15 The great belt of dark gravity bodies is divided into two equal elliptical circuits by a unique space intrusion. The inner belt revolves counterclockwise; the outer revolves clockwise. These alternate directions of motion, coupled with the extraordinary mass of the dark bodies, so effectively equalize the lines of Havona gravity as to render the central universe a physically balanced and perfectly stabilized creation.

(153.7) 14:1.16 The inner procession of dark gravity bodies is tubular in arrangement, consisting of three circular groupings. A cross section of this circuit would exhibit three concentric circles of about equal density. The outer circuit of dark gravity bodies is arranged perpendicularly, being ten thousand times higher than the inner circuit. The up-and-down diameter of the outer circuit is fifty thousand times that of the transverse diameter.

(154.1) 14:1.17 The intervening space which exists between these two circuits of gravity bodies is unique in that nothing like it is to be found elsewhere in all the wide universe. This zone is characterized by enormous wave movements of an up-and-down nature and is permeated by tremendous energy activities of an unknown order.

(154.2) 14:1.18 In our opinion, nothing like the dark gravity bodies of the central universe will characterize the future evolution of the outer space levels; we regard these alternate processions of stupendous gravity-balancing bodies as unique in the master universe.

2. Constitution of Havona

(154.3) 14:2.1 Spirit beings do not dwell in nebulous space; they do not inhabit ethereal worlds; they are domiciled on actual spheres of a material nature, worlds just as real as those on which mortals live. The Havona worlds are actual and literal, albeit their literal substance differs from the material organization of the planets of the seven superuniverses.

(154.4) 14:2.2 The physical realities of Havona represent an order of energy organization radically different from any prevailing in the evolutionary universes of space. Havona energies are threefold; superuniverse units of energy-matter contain a twofold energy charge, although one form of energy exists in negative and positive phases. The creation of the central universe is threefold (Trinity); the creation of a local universe (directly) is twofold, by a Creator Son and a Creative Spirit.

(154.5) 14:2.3 The material of Havona consists of the organization of exactly one thousand basic chemical elements and the balanced function of the seven forms of Havona energy. Each of these basic energies manifests seven phases of excitation, so that the Havona natives respond to forty-nine differing sensation stimuli. In other words, viewed from a purely physical standpoint, the natives of the central universe possess forty-nine specialized forms of sensation. The morontia senses are seventy, and the higher spiritual orders of reaction response vary in different types of beings from seventy to two hundred and ten.

(154.6) 14:2.4 None of the physical beings of the central universe would be visible to Urantians. Neither would any of the physical stimuli of those faraway worlds excite a reaction in your gross sense organs. If a Urantia mortal could be transported to Havona, he would there be deaf, blind, and utterly lacking in all other sense reactions; he could only function as a limited self-conscious being deprived of all environmental stimuli and all reactions thereto.

(154.7) 14:2.5 There are numerous physical phenomena and spiritual reactions transpiring in the central creation which are unknown on worlds such as Urantia. The basic organization of a threefold creation is wholly unlike that of the twofold constitution of the created universes of time and space.

(154.8) 14:2.6 All natural law is co-ordinated on a basis entirely different than in the dual-energy systems of the evolving creations. The entire central universe is organized in accordance with the threefold system of perfect and symmetrical control. Throughout the whole Paradise-Havona system there is maintained a perfect balance between all cosmic realities and all spiritual forces. Paradise, with an absolute grasp of material creation, perfectly regulates and maintains the physical energies of this central universe; the Eternal Son, as a part of his all-embracing spirit grasp, most perfectly sustains the spiritual status of all who indwell Havona. On Paradise nothing is experimental, and the Paradise-Havona system is a unit of creative perfection.

(155.1) 14:2.7 The universal spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son is amazingly active throughout the central universe. All spirit values and spiritual personalities are unceasingly drawn inward towards the abode of the Gods. This Godward urge is intense and inescapable. The ambition to attain God is stronger in the central universe, not because spirit gravity is stronger than in the outlying universes, but because those beings who have attained Havona are more fully spiritualized and hence more responsive to the ever-present action of the universal spirit-gravity pull of the Eternal Son.

(155.2) 14:2.8 Likewise does the Infinite Spirit draw all intellectual values Paradiseward. Throughout the central universe the mind gravity of the Infinite Spirit functions in liaison with the spirit gravity of the Eternal Son, and these together constitute the combined urge of the ascendant souls to find God, to attain Deity, to achieve Paradise, and to know the Father.

(155.3) 14:2.9 Havona is a spiritually perfect and physically stable universe. The control and balanced stability of the central universe appear to be perfect. Everything physical or spiritual is perfectly predictable, but mind phenomena and personality volition are not. We do infer that sin can be reckoned as impossible of occurrence, but we do this on the ground that the native freewill creatures of Havona have never been guilty of transgressing the will of Deity. Through all eternity these supernal beings have been consistently loyal to the Eternals of Days. Neither has sin appeared in any creature who has entered Havona as a pilgrim. There has never been an instance of misconduct by any creature of any group of personalities ever created in, or admitted to, the central Havona universe. So perfect and so divine are the methods and means of selection in the universes of time that never in the records of Havona has an error occurred; no mistakes have ever been made; no ascendant soul has ever been prematurely admitted to the central universe.

3. The Havona Worlds

(155.4) 14:3.1 Concerning the government of the central universe, there is none. Havona is so exquisitely perfect that no intellectual system of government is required. There are no regularly constituted courts, neither are there legislative assemblies; Havona requires only administrative direction. Here may be observed the height of the ideals of true self-government.

(155.5) 14:3.2 There is no need of government among such perfect and near-perfect intelligences. They stand in no need of regulation, for they are beings of native perfection interspersed with evolutionary creatures who have long since passed the scrutiny of the supreme tribunals of the superuniverses.

(155.6) 14:3.3 The administration of Havona is not automatic, but it is marvelously perfect and divinely efficient. It is chiefly planetary and is vested in the resident Eternal of Days, each Havona sphere being directed by one of these Trinity-origin personalities. Eternals of Days are not creators, but they are perfect administrators. They teach with supreme skill and direct their planetary children with a perfection of wisdom bordering on absoluteness.

(156.1) 14:3.4 The billion spheres of the central universe constitute the training worlds of the high personalities native to Paradise and Havona and further serve as the final proving grounds for ascending creatures from the evolutionary worlds of time. In the execution of the Universal Father’s great plan of creature ascension the pilgrims of time are landed on the receiving worlds of the outer or seventh circuit, and subsequent to increased training and enlarged experience, they are progressively advanced inward, planet by planet and circle by circle, until they finally attain the Deities and achieve residence on Paradise.

(156.2) 14:3.5 At present, although the spheres of the seven circuits are maintained in all their supernal glory, only about one per cent of all planetary capacity is utilized in the work of furthering the Father’s universal plan of mortal ascension. About one tenth of one per cent of the area of these enormous worlds is dedicated to the life and activities of the Corps of the Finality, beings eternally settled in light and life who often sojourn and minister on the Havona worlds. These exalted beings have their personal residences on Paradise.

(156.3) 14:3.6 The planetary construction of the Havona spheres is entirely unlike that of the evolutionary worlds and systems of space. Nowhere else in all the grand universe is it convenient to utilize such enormous spheres as inhabited worlds. Triata physical constitution, coupled with the balancing effect of the immense dark gravity bodies, makes it possible so perfectly to equalize the physical forces and so exquisitely to balance the various attractions of this tremendous creation. Antigravity is also employed in the organization of the material functions and the spiritual activities of these enormous worlds.

(156.4) 14:3.7 The architecture, lighting, and heating, as well as the biologic and artistic embellishment, of the Havona spheres, are quite beyond the greatest possible stretch of human imagination. You cannot be told much about Havona; to understand its beauty and grandeur you must see it. But there are real rivers and lakes on these perfect worlds.

(156.5) 14:3.8 Spiritually these worlds are ideally appointed; they are fittingly adapted to their purpose of harboring the numerous orders of differing beings who function in the central universe. Manifold activities take place on these beautiful worlds which are far beyond human comprehension.

4. Creatures of the Central Universe

(156.6) 14:4.1 There are seven basic forms of living things and beings on the Havona worlds, and each of these basic forms exists in three distinct phases. Each of these three phases is divided into seventy major divisions, and each major division is composed of one thousand minor divisions, with yet other subdivisions, and so on. These basic life groups might be classified as:

(156.7) 14:4.2 1. Material.

(156.8) 14:4.3 2. Morontial.

(156.9) 14:4.4 3. Spiritual.

(156.10) 14:4.5 4. Absonite.

(156.11) 14:4.6 5. Ultimate.

(156.12) 14:4.7 6. Coabsolute.

(156.13) 14:4.8 7. Absolute.

(157.1) 14:4.9 Decay and death are not a part of the cycle of life on the Havona worlds. In the central universe the lower living things undergo the transmutation of materialization. They do change form and manifestation, but they do not resolve by process of decay and cellular death.

(157.2) 14:4.10 The Havona natives are all the offspring of the Paradise Trinity. They are without creature parents, and they are nonreproducing beings. We cannot portray the creation of these citizens of the central universe, beings who never were created. The entire story of the creation of Havona is an attempt to time-space an eternity fact which has no relation to time or space as mortal man comprehends them. But we must concede human philosophy a point of origin; even personalities far above the human level require a concept of “beginnings.” Nevertheless, the Paradise-Havona system is eternal.

(157.3) 14:4.11 The natives of Havona live on the billion spheres of the central universe in the same sense that other orders of permanent citizenship dwell on their respective spheres of nativity. As the material order of sonship carries on the material, intellectual, and spiritual economy of a billion local systems in a superuniverse, so, in a larger sense, do the Havona natives live and function on the billion worlds of the central universe. You might possibly regard these Havoners as material creatures in the sense that the word “material” could be expanded to describe the physical realities of the divine universe.

(157.4) 14:4.12 There is a life that is native to Havona and possesses significance in and of itself. Havoners minister in many ways to Paradise descenders and to superuniverse ascenders, but they also live lives that are unique in the central universe and have relative meaning quite apart from either Paradise or the superuniverses.

(157.5) 14:4.13 As the worship of the faith sons of the evolutionary worlds ministers to the satisfaction of the Universal Father’s love, so the exalted adoration of the Havona creatures satiates the perfect ideals of divine beauty and truth. As mortal man strives to do the will of God, these beings of the central universe live to gratify the ideals of the Paradise Trinity. In their very nature they are the will of God. Man rejoices in the goodness of God, Havoners exult in the divine beauty, while you both enjoy the ministry of the liberty of living truth.

(157.6) 14:4.14 Havoners have both optional present and future unrevealed destinies. And there is a progression of native creatures that is peculiar to the central universe, a progression that involves neither ascent to Paradise nor penetration of the superuniverses. This progression to higher Havona status may be suggested as follows:

(157.7) 14:4.15 1. Experiential progress outward from the first to the seventh circuit.

(157.8) 14:4.16 2. Progress inward from the seventh to the first circuit.

(157.9) 14:4.17 3. Intracircuit progress — progression within the worlds of a given circuit.

(157.10) 14:4.18 In addition to the Havona natives, the inhabitants of the central universe embrace numerous classes of pattern beings for various universe groups — advisers, directors, and teachers of their kind and to their kind throughout creation. All beings in all universes are fashioned along the lines of some one order of pattern creature living on some one of the billion worlds of Havona. Even the mortals of time have their goal and ideals of creature existence on the outer circuits of these pattern spheres on high.

(157.11) 14:4.19 Then there are those beings who have attained the Universal Father, and who are entitled to go and come, who are assigned here and there in the universes on missions of special service. And on every Havona world will be found the attainment candidates, those who have physically attained the central universe, but who have not yet achieved that spiritual development which will enable them to claim Paradise residence.

(158.1) 14:4.20 The Infinite Spirit is represented on the Havona worlds by a host of personalities, beings of grace and glory, who administer the details of the intricate intellectual and spiritual affairs of the central universe. On these worlds of divine perfection they perform the work indigenous to the normal conduct of this vast creation and, in addition, carry on the manifold tasks of teaching, training, and ministering to the enormous numbers of ascendant creatures who have climbed to glory from the dark worlds of space.

(158.2) 14:4.21 There are numerous groups of beings native to the Paradise-Havona system that are in no way directly associated with the ascension scheme of creature perfection attainment; therefore are they omitted from the personality classifications presented to the mortal races. Only the major groups of superhuman beings and those orders directly connected with your survival experience are herein presented.

(158.3) 14:4.22 Havona teems with the life of all phases of intelligent beings, who there seek to advance from lower to higher circuits in their efforts to attain higher levels of divinity realization and enlarged appreciation of supreme meanings, ultimate values, and absolute reality.

5. Life in Havona

(158.4) 14:5.1 On Urantia you pass through a short and intense test during your initial life of material existence. On the mansion worlds and up through your system, constellation, and local universe, you traverse the morontia phases of ascension. On the training worlds of the superuniverse you pass through the true spirit stages of progression and are prepared for eventual transit to Havona. On the seven circuits of Havona your attainment is intellectual, spiritual, and experiential. And there is a definite task to be achieved on each of the worlds of each of these circuits.

(158.5) 14:5.2 Life on the divine worlds of the central universe is so rich and full, so complete and replete, that it wholly transcends the human concept of anything a created being could possibly experience. The social and economic activities of this eternal creation are entirely dissimilar to the occupations of material creatures living on evolutionary worlds like Urantia. Even the technique of Havona thought is unlike the process of thinking on Urantia.

(158.6) 14:5.3 The regulations of the central universe are fittingly and inherently natural; the rules of conduct are not arbitrary. In every requirement of Havona there is disclosed the reason of righteousness and the rule of justice. And these two factors, combined, equal what on Urantia would be denominated fairness. When you arrive in Havona, you will naturally enjoy doing things the way they should be done.

(158.7) 14:5.4 When intelligent beings first attain the central universe, they are received and domiciled on the pilot world of the seventh Havona circuit. As the new arrivals progress spiritually, attain identity comprehension of their superuniverse Master Spirit, they are transferred to the sixth circle. (It is from these arrangements in the central universe that the circles of progress in the human mind have been designated.) After ascenders have attained a realization of Supremacy and are thereby prepared for the Deity adventure, they are taken to the fifth circuit; and after attaining the Infinite Spirit, they are transferred to the fourth. Following the attainment of the Eternal Son, they are removed to the third; and when they have recognized the Universal Father, they go to sojourn on the second circuit of worlds, where they become more familiar with the Paradise hosts. Arrival on the first circuit of Havona signifies the acceptance of the candidates of time into the service of Paradise. Indefinitely, according to the length and nature of the creature ascension, they will tarry on the inner circuit of progressive spiritual attainment. From this inner circuit the ascending pilgrims pass inward to Paradise residence and admission to the Corps of the Finality.

(159.1) 14:5.5 During your sojourn in Havona as a pilgrim of ascent, you will be allowed to visit freely among the worlds of the circuit of your assignment. You will also be permitted to go back to the planets of those circuits you have previously traversed. And all this is possible to those who sojourn on the circles of Havona without the necessity of being ensupernaphimed. The pilgrims of time are able to equip themselves to traverse “achieved” space but must depend on the ordained technique to negotiate “unachieved” space; a pilgrim cannot leave Havona nor go forward beyond his assigned circuit without the aid of a transport supernaphim.

(159.2) 14:5.6 There is a refreshing originality about this vast central creation. Aside from the physical organization of matter and the fundamental constitution of the basic orders of intelligent beings and other living things, there is nothing in common between the worlds of Havona. Every one of these planets is an original, unique, and exclusive creation; each planet is a matchless, superb, and perfect production. And this diversity of individuality extends to all features of the physical, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of planetary existence. Each of these billion perfection spheres has been developed and embellished in accordance with the plans of the resident Eternal of Days. And this is just why no two of them are alike.

(159.3) 14:5.7 Not until you traverse the last of the Havona circuits and visit the last of the Havona worlds, will the tonic of adventure and the stimulus of curiosity disappear from your career. And then will the urge, the forward impulse of eternity, replace its forerunner, the adventure lure of time.

(159.4) 14:5.8 Monotony is indicative of immaturity of the creative imagination and inactivity of intellectual co-ordination with the spiritual endowment. By the time an ascendant mortal begins the exploration of these heavenly worlds, he has already attained emotional, intellectual, and social, if not spiritual, maturity.

(159.5) 14:5.9 Not only will you find undreamed-of changes confronting you as you advance from circuit to circuit in Havona, but your astonishment will be inexpressible as you progress from planet to planet within each circuit. Each of these billion study worlds is a veritable university of surprises. Continuing astonishment, unending wonder, is the experience of those who traverse these circuits and tour these gigantic spheres. Monotony is not a part of the Havona career.

(159.6) 14:5.10 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 sojourn 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.

(160.1) 14:5.11 Curiosity — the spirit of investigation, the urge of discovery, the drive of exploration — is a part of the inborn and divine endowment of evolutionary space creatures. These natural impulses were not given you merely to be frustrated and repressed. True, these ambitious urges must frequently be restrained during your short life on earth, disappointment must be often experienced, but they are to be fully realized and gloriously gratified during the long ages to come.

6. The Purpose of the Central Universe

(160.2) 14:6.1 The range of the activities of seven-circuited Havona is enormous. In general, they may be described as:

(160.3) 14:6.2 1. Havonal.

(160.4) 14:6.3 2. Paradisiacal.

(160.5) 14:6.4 3. Ascendant-finite — Supreme-Ultimate evolutional.

(160.6) 14:6.5 Many superfinite activities take place in the Havona of the present universe age, involving untold diversities of absonite and other phases of mind and spirit functions. It is possible that the central universe serves many purposes which are not revealed to me, as it functions in numerous ways beyond the comprehension of the created mind. Nevertheless, I will endeavor to depict how this perfect creation ministers to the needs and contributes to the satisfactions of seven orders of universe intelligence.

(160.7) 14:6.6 1. The Universal Father — the First Source and Center. God the Father derives supreme parental satisfaction from the perfection of the central creation. He enjoys the experience of love satiety on near-equality levels. The perfect Creator is divinely pleased with the adoration of the perfect creature.

(160.8) 14:6.7 Havona affords the Father supreme achievement gratification. The perfection realization in Havona compensates for the time-space delay of the eternal urge of infinite expansion.

(160.9) 14:6.8 The Father enjoys the Havona reciprocation of the divine beauty. It satisfies the divine mind to afford a perfect pattern of exquisite harmony for all evolving universes.

(160.10) 14:6.9 Our Father beholds the central universe with perfect pleasure because it is a worthy revelation of spirit reality to all personalities of the universe of universes.

(160.11) 14:6.10 The God of universes has favorable regard for Havona and Paradise as the eternal power nucleus for all subsequent universe expansion in time and space.

(160.12) 14:6.11 The eternal Father views with never-ending satisfaction the Havona creation as the worthy and alluring goal for the ascension candidates of time, his mortal grandchildren of space achieving their Creator-Father’s eternal home. And God takes pleasure in the Paradise-Havona universe as the eternal home of Deity and the divine family.

(160.13) 14:6.12 2. The Eternal Son — the Second Source and Center. To the Eternal Son the superb central creation affords eternal proof of the partnership effectiveness of the divine family — Father, Son, and Spirit. It is the spiritual and material basis for absolute confidence in the Universal Father.

(160.14) 14:6.13 Havona affords the Eternal Son an almost unlimited base for the ever-expanding realization of spirit power. The central universe afforded the Eternal Son the arena wherein he could safely and securely demonstrate the spirit and technique of the bestowal ministry for the instruction of his associate Paradise Sons.

(161.1) 14:6.14 Havona is the reality foundation for the Eternal Son’s spirit-gravity control of the universe of universes. This universe affords the Son the gratification of parental craving, spiritual reproduction.

(161.2) 14:6.15 The Havona worlds and their perfect inhabitants are the first and the eternally final demonstration that the Son is the Word of the Father. Thereby is the consciousness of the Son as an infinite complement of the Father perfectly gratified.

(161.3) 14:6.16 And this universe affords the opportunity for the realization of reciprocation of equality fraternity between the Universal Father and the Eternal Son, and this constitutes the everlasting proof of the infinite personality of each.

(161.4) 14:6.17 3. The Infinite Spirit — the Third Source and Center. The Havona universe affords the Infinite Spirit proof of being the Conjoint Actor, the infinite representative of the unified Father-Son. In Havona the Infinite Spirit derives the combined satisfaction of functioning as a creative activity while enjoying the satisfaction of absolute coexistence with this divine achievement.

(161.5) 14:6.18 In Havona the Infinite Spirit found an arena wherein he could demonstrate the ability and willingness to serve as a potential mercy minister. In this perfect creation the Spirit rehearsed for the adventure of ministry in the evolutionary universes.

(161.6) 14:6.19 This perfect creation afforded the Infinite Spirit opportunity to participate in universe administration with both divine parents — to administer a universe as associate-Creator offspring, thereby preparing for the joint administration of the local universes as the Creative Spirit associates of the Creator Sons.

(161.7) 14:6.20 The Havona worlds are the mind laboratory of the creators of the cosmic mind and the ministers to every creature mind in existence. Mind is different on each Havona world and serves as the pattern for all spiritual and material creature intellects.

The Sacred Spheres of Paradise

(143.1) 13:0.1 BETWEEN the central Isle of Paradise and the innermost of the Havona planetary circuits there are situated in space three lesser circuits of special spheres. The innermost circuit consists of the seven secret spheres of the Universal Father; the second group is composed of the seven luminous worlds of the Eternal Son; in the outermost are the seven immense spheres of the Infinite Spirit, the executive-headquarters worlds of the Seven Master Spirits.

(143.2) 13:0.2 These three seven-world circuits of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are spheres of unexcelled grandeur and unimagined glory. Even their material or physical construction is of an order unrevealed to you. Each circuit is diverse in material, and each world of each circuit is different excepting the seven worlds of the Son, which are alike in physical constitution. All twenty-one are enormous spheres, and each group of seven is differently eternalized. As far as we know they have always been; like Paradise they are eternal. There exists neither record nor tradition of their origin.

(143.3) 13:0.3 The seven secret spheres of the Universal Father, circulating about Paradise in close proximity to the eternal Isle, are highly reflective of the spiritual luminosity of the central shining of the eternal Deities, shedding this light of divine glory throughout Paradise and even upon the seven circuits of Havona.

(143.4) 13:0.4 On the seven sacred worlds of the Eternal Son there appear to take origin the impersonal energies of spirit luminosity. No personal being may sojourn on any of these seven shining realms. With spiritual glory they illuminate all Paradise and Havona, and they directionize pure spirit luminosity to the seven superuniverses. These brilliant spheres of the second circuit likewise emit their light (light without heat) to Paradise and to the billion worlds of the seven-circuited central universe.

(143.5) 13:0.5 The seven worlds of the Infinite Spirit are occupied by the Seven Master Spirits, who preside over the destinies of the seven superuniverses, sending forth the spiritual illumination of the Third Person of Deity to these creations of time and space. And all Havona, but not the Isle of Paradise, is bathed in these spiritualizing influences.

(143.6) 13:0.6 Although the worlds of the Father are ultimate status spheres for all Father-endowed personalities, this is not their exclusive function. Many beings and entities other than personal sojourn on these worlds. Each world in the circuit of the Father and the circuit of the Spirit has a distinct type of permanent citizenship, but we think the Son’s worlds are inhabited by uniform types of other-than-personal beings. Father fragments are among the natives of Divinington; the other orders of permanent citizenship are unrevealed to you.

(143.7) 13:0.7 The twenty-one Paradise satellites serve many purposes in both central and superuniverses not disclosed in these narratives. You are able to understand so little of the life of these spheres that you cannot hope to gain anything like a consistent view of them, either as to nature or function; thousands of activities are there going on which are unrevealed to you. These twenty-one spheres embrace the potentials of the function of the master universe. These papers afford only a fleeting glimpse of certain circumscribed activities pertaining to the present universe age of the grand universe — rather, one of the seven sectors of the grand universe.

1. The Seven Sacred Worlds of the Father

(144.1) 13:1.1 The Father’s circuit of sacred life spheres contains the only inherent personality secrets in the universe of universes. These satellites of Paradise, the innermost of the three circuits, are the only forbidden domains concerned with personality in the central universe. Nether Paradise and the worlds of the Son are likewise closed to personalities, but neither of those realms is in any way directly concerned with personality.

(144.2) 13:1.2 The Paradise worlds of the Father are directed by the highest order of the Stationary Sons of the Trinity, the Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy. Of these worlds I can tell little; of their manifold activities I may tell less. Such information concerns only those beings who function thereon and go forth therefrom. And though I am somewhat familiar with six of these special worlds, never have I landed on Divinington; that world is wholly forbidden to me.

(144.3) 13:1.3 One of the reasons for the secrecy of these worlds is because each of these sacred spheres enjoys a specialized representation, or manifestation, of the Deities composing the Paradise Trinity; not a personality, but a unique presence of Divinity which can only be appreciated and comprehended by those particular groups of intelligences resident on, or admissible to, that particular sphere. The Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy are the personal agents of these specialized and impersonal presences of Divinity. And the Secrets of Supremacy are highly personal beings, superbly endowed and marvelously adapted to their exalted and exacting work.

(144.4) 13:1.4 1. DIVININGTON. This world is, in a unique sense, the “bosom of the Father,” the personal-communion sphere of the Universal Father, and thereon is a special manifestation of his divinity. Divinington is the Paradise rendezvous of the Thought Adjusters, but it is also the home of numerous other entities, personalities, and other beings taking origin in the Universal Father. Many personalities besides the Eternal Son are of direct origin by the solitary acts of the Universal Father. Only the Father fragments and those personalities and other beings of direct and exclusive origin in the Universal Father fraternize and function on this abode.

(144.5) 13:1.5 The secrets of Divinington include the secret of the bestowal and mission of Thought Adjusters. Their nature, origin, and the technique of their contact with the lowly creatures of the evolutionary worlds is a secret of this Paradise sphere. These amazing transactions do not personally concern the rest of us, and therefore do the Deities deem it proper to withhold certain features of this great and divine ministry from our full understanding. In so far as we come in contact with this phase of divine activity, we are permitted full knowledge of these transactions, but concerning the intimate details of this great bestowal we are not fully informed.

(145.1) 13:1.6 This sphere also holds the secrets of the nature, purpose, and activities of all other forms of Father fragments, of the Gravity Messengers, and of hosts of other beings unrevealed to you. It is highly probable that those truths pertaining to Divinington which are withheld from me, if revealed, would merely confuse and handicap me in my present work, and still again, perhaps they are beyond the conceptual capacity of my order of being.

(145.2) 13:1.7 2. SONARINGTON. This sphere is the “bosom of the Son,” the personal receiving world of the Eternal Son. It is the Paradise headquarters of the descending and ascending Sons of God when, and after, they are fully accredited and finally approved. This world is the Paradise home for all Sons of the Eternal Son and of his co-ordinate and associate Sons. There are numerous orders of divine sonship attached to this supernal abode which have not been revealed to mortals since they are not concerned with the plans of the ascension scheme of human spiritual progression through the universes and on to Paradise.

(145.3) 13:1.8 The secrets of Sonarington include the secret of the incarnation of the divine Sons. When a Son of God becomes a Son of Man, is literally born of woman, as occurred on your world nineteen hundred years ago, it is a universal mystery. It is occurring right along throughout the universes, and it is a Sonarington secret of divine sonship. The Adjusters are a mystery of God the Father. The incarnation of the divine Sons is a mystery of God the Son; it is a secret locked up in the seventh sector of Sonarington, a realm penetrated by none save those who have personally passed through this unique experience. Only those phases of incarnation having to do with your ascension career have been brought to your notice. There are many other phases of the mystery of the incarnation of the Paradise Sons of unrevealed types on missions of universe service which are undisclosed to you. And there are still other Sonarington mysteries.

(145.4) 13:1.9 3. SPIRITINGTON. This world is the “bosom of the Spirit,” the Paradise home of the high beings that exclusively represent the Infinite Spirit. Here forgather the Seven Master Spirits and certain of their offspring from all universes. At this celestial abode may also be found numerous unrevealed orders of spirit personalities, beings assigned to the manifold activities of the universe not associated with the plans of upstepping the mortal creatures of time to the Paradise levels of eternity.

(145.5) 13:1.10 The secrets of Spiritington involve the impenetrable mysteries of reflectivity. We tell you of the vast and universal phenomenon of reflectivity, more particularly as it is operative on the headquarters worlds of the seven superuniverses, but we never fully explain this phenomenon, for we do not fully understand it. Much, very much, we do comprehend, but many basic details are still mysterious to us. Reflectivity is a secret of God the Spirit. You have been instructed concerning reflectivity functions in relation to the ascension scheme of mortal survival, and it does so operate, but reflectivity is also an indispensable feature of the normal working of numerous other phases of universe occupation. This endowment of the Infinite Spirit is also utilized in channels other than those of intelligence gathering and information dissemination. And there are other secrets of Spiritington.

(145.6) 13:1.11 4. VICEGERINGTON. This planet is the “bosom of the Father and the Son” and is the secret sphere of certain unrevealed beings who take origin by the acts of the Father and the Son. This is also the Paradise home of many glorified beings of complex ancestry, those whose origin is complicated because of the many diverse techniques operative in the seven superuniverses. Many groups of beings forgather on this world whose identity has not been revealed to Urantia mortals.

(146.1) 13:1.12 The secrets of Vicegerington include the secrets of trinitization, and trinitization constitutes the secret of authority to represent the Trinity, to act as vicegerents of the Gods. Authority to represent the Trinity attaches only to those beings, revealed and unrevealed, who are trinitized, created, eventuated, or eternalized by any two or all three of the Paradise Trinity. Personalities brought into being by the trinitizing acts of certain types of glorified creatures represent no more than the conceptual potential mobilized in that trinitization, albeit such creatures may ascend the path of Deity embrace open to all of their kind.

(146.2) 13:1.13 Nontrinitized beings do not fully understand the technique of trinitization by either two or three Creators or by certain creatures. You will never fully understand such a phenomenon unless, in the far-distant future of your glorified career, you should essay and succeed in such an adventure, because otherwise these secrets of Vicegerington will always be forbidden you. But to me, a high Trinity-origin being, all sectors of Vicegerington are open. I fully understand, and just as fully and sacredly protect, the secret of my origin and destiny.

(146.3) 13:1.14 There are still other forms and phases of trinitization which have not been brought to the notice of the Urantia peoples, and these experiences, in their personal aspects, are duly protected in the secret sector of Vicegerington.

(146.4) 13:1.15 5. SOLITARINGTON. This world is the “bosom of the Father and the Spirit” and is the rendezvous of a magnificent host of unrevealed beings of origin in the conjoint acts of the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit, beings who partake of the traits of the Father in addition to their Spirit inheritance.

(146.5) 13:1.16 This is also the home of the Solitary Messengers and of other personalities of the superangelic orders. You know of very few of these beings; there are vast numbers of orders unrevealed on Urantia. Because they are domiciled on the fifth world, it does not necessarily follow that the Father had aught to do with the creation of Solitary Messengers or their superangelic associates, but in this universe age he does have to do with their function. During the present universe age this is also the status sphere of the Universe Power Directors.

(146.6) 13:1.17 There are numerous additional orders of spirit personalities, beings unknown to mortal man, who look upon Solitarington as their Paradise home sphere. It should be remembered that all divisions and levels of universe activities are just as fully provided with spirit ministers as is the realm concerned with helping mortal man ascend to his divine Paradise destiny.

(146.7) 13:1.18 The secrets of Solitarington. Besides certain secrets of trinitization, this world holds the secrets of the personal relation of the Infinite Spirit with certain of the higher offspring of the Third Source and Center. On Solitarington are held the mysteries of the intimate association of numerous unrevealed orders with the spirits of the Father, of the Son, and of the Spirit, with the threefold spirit of the Trinity, and with the spirits of the Supreme, the Ultimate, and the Supreme-Ultimate.

(146.8) 13:1.19 6. SERAPHINGTON. This sphere is the “bosom of the Son and the Spirit” and is the home world of the vast hosts of unrevealed beings created by the Son and the Spirit. This is also the destiny sphere of all ministering orders of the angelic hosts, including supernaphim, seconaphim, and seraphim. There also serve in the central and outlying universes many orders of superb spirits who are not “ministering spirits to those who shall be heirs of salvation.” All these spirit workers in all levels and realms of universe activities look upon Seraphington as their Paradise home.

(147.1) 13:1.20 The secrets of Seraphington involve a threefold mystery, only one of which I may mention — the mystery of seraphic transport. The ability of various orders of seraphim and allied spirit beings to envelop within their spirit forms all orders of nonmaterial personalities and to carry them away on lengthy interplanetary journeys, is a secret locked up in the sacred sectors of Seraphington. The transport seraphim comprehend this mystery, but they do not communicate it to the rest of us, or perhaps they cannot. The other mysteries of Seraphington pertain to the personal experiences of types of spirit servers as yet not revealed to mortals. And we refrain from discussing the secrets of such closely related beings because you can almost comprehend such near orders of existence, and it would be akin to betrayal of trust to present even our partial knowledge of such phenomena.

(147.2) 13:1.21 7. ASCENDINGTON. This unique world is the “bosom of the Father, Son, and Spirit,” the rendezvous of the ascendant creatures of space, the receiving sphere of the pilgrims of time who are passing through the Havona universe on their way to Paradise. Ascendington is the actual Paradise home of the ascendant souls of time and space until they attain Paradise status. You mortals will spend most of your Havona “vacations” on Ascendington. During your Havona life Ascendington will be to you what the reversion directors were during the local and superuniverse ascension. Here you will engage in thousands of activities which are beyond the grasp of mortal imagination. And as on every previous advance in the Godward ascent, your human self will here enter into new relationships with your divine self.

(147.3) 13:1.22 The secrets of Ascendington include the mystery of the gradual and certain building up in the material and mortal mind of a spiritual and potentially immortal counterpart of character and identity. This phenomenon constitutes one of the most perplexing mysteries of the universes — the evolution of an immortal soul within the mind of a mortal and material creature.

(147.4) 13:1.23 You will never fully understand this mysterious transaction until you reach Ascendington. And that is just why all Ascendington will be open to your wondering gaze. One seventh of Ascendington is forbidden to me — that sector concerned with this very secret which is (or will be) the exclusive experience and possession of your type of being. This experience belongs to your human order of existence. My order of personality is not directly concerned with such transactions. It is therefore forbidden to me and eventually revealed to you. But even after it is revealed to you, for some reason it forever remains your secret. You do not reveal it to us nor to any other order of beings. We know about the eternal fusion of a divine Adjuster and an immortal soul of human origin, but the ascendant finaliters know this very experience as an absolute reality.

2. Father-World Relationships

(147.5) 13:2.1 These home worlds of the diverse orders of spiritual beings are tremendous and stupendous spheres, and they are equal to Paradise in their matchless beauty and superb glory. They are rendezvous worlds, reunion spheres, serving as permanent cosmic addresses. As finaliters you will be domiciled on Paradise, but Ascendington will be your home address at all times, even when you enter service in outer space. Through all eternity you will regard Ascendington as your home of sentimental memories and reminiscent recollections. When you become seventh-stage spirit beings, possibly you will give up your residential status on Paradise.

(148.1) 13:2.2 If outer universes are in the making, if they are to be inhabited by time creatures of ascension potential, then we infer that these children of the future will also be destined to look upon Ascendington as their Paradise home world.

(148.2) 13:2.3 Ascendington is the only sacred sphere that will be unreservedly open to your inspection as a Paradise arrival. Vicegerington is the only sacred sphere that is wholly and unreservedly open to my scrutiny. Though its secrets are concerned in my origin, in this universe age I do not regard Vicegerington as my home. Trinity-origin beings and trinitized beings are not the same.

(148.3) 13:2.4 The Trinity-origin beings do not fully share the Father’s worlds; they have their sole homes on the Isle of Paradise in close proximity to the Most Holy Sphere. They often appear on Ascendington, the “bosom of the Father-Son-Spirit,” where they fraternize with their brethren who have come up from the lowly worlds of space.

(148.4) 13:2.5 You might assume that Creator Sons, being of Father-Son origin, would regard Vicegerington as their home, but such is not the case in this universe age of the function of God the Sevenfold. And there are many similar problems that will perplex you, for you are sure to encounter many difficulties as you attempt to understand these things which are so near Paradise. Nor can you successfully reason out these questions; you know so little. And if you knew more about the Father’s worlds, you would simply encounter more difficulties until you knew all about them. Status on any of these secret worlds is acquired by service as well as by nature of origin, and the successive universe ages may and do redistribute certain of these personality groupings.

(148.5) 13:2.6 The worlds of the inner circuit are really fraternal or status worlds more than actual residential spheres. Mortals will attain some status on each of the Father’s worlds save one. For example: When you mortals attain Havona, you are granted clearance for Ascendington, where you are most welcome, but you are not permitted to visit the other six sacred worlds. Subsequent to your passage through the Paradise regime and after your admission to the Corps of the Finality, you are granted clearance for Sonarington since you are sons of God as well as ascenders — and you are even more. But there will always remain one seventh of Sonarington, the sector of the incarnation secrets of the divine Sons, which will not be open to your scrutiny. Never will those secrets be revealed to the ascendant sons of God.

(148.6) 13:2.7 Eventually you will have full access to Ascendington and relative access to the other spheres of the Father except Divinington. But even when you are granted permission to land on five additional secret spheres, after you have become a finaliter, you will not be allowed to visit all sectors of such worlds. Nor will you be permitted to land on the shores of Divinington, the “bosom of the Father,” though you shall surely stand repeatedly at the “right hand of the Father.” Never throughout all eternity will there arise any necessity for your presence on the world of the Thought Adjusters.

(149.1) 13:2.8 These rendezvous worlds of spirit life are forbidden ground to the extent that we are asked not to negotiate entrance to those phases of these spheres which are wholly outside our realms of experience. You may become creature perfect even as the Universal Father is deity perfect, but you may not know all the experiential secrets of all other orders of universe personalities. When the Creator has an experiential personality secret with his creature, the Creator preserves that secret in eternal confidence.

(149.2) 13:2.9 All these secrets are supposedly known to the collective body of the Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy. These beings are fully known only by their special world groups; they are little comprehended by other orders. After you attain Paradise, you will know and ardently love the ten Secrets of Supremacy who direct Ascendington. Excepting Divinington, you will also achieve a partial understanding of the Secrets of Supremacy on the other worlds of the Father, though not so perfectly as on Ascendington.

(149.3) 13:2.10 The Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy, as their name might suggest, are related to the Supreme; they are likewise related to the Ultimate and to the future Supreme-Ultimate. These Secrets of Supremacy are the secrets of the Supreme and also the secrets of the Ultimate, even the secrets of the Supreme-Ultimate.

3. The Sacred Worlds of the Eternal Son

(149.4) 13:3.1 The seven luminous spheres of the Eternal Son are the worlds of the seven phases of pure-spirit existence. These shining orbs are the source of the threefold light of Paradise and Havona, their influence being largely, but not wholly, confined to the central universe.

(149.5) 13:3.2 Personality is not present on these Paradise satellites; therefore is there little concerning these pure-spirit abodes which can be presented to the mortal and material personality. We are taught that these worlds teem with the otherwise-than-personal life of the beings of the Eternal Son. We infer that these entities are being assembled for ministry in the projected new universes of outer space. The Paradise philosophers maintain that each Paradise cycle, about two billion years of Urantia time, witnesses the creation of additional reserves of these orders on the secret worlds of the Eternal Son.

(149.6) 13:3.3 As far as I am informed, no personality has ever been on any one of these spheres of the Eternal Son. I have never been assigned to visit one of these worlds in all my long experience in and out of Paradise. Even the personalities cocreated by the Eternal Son do not go to these worlds. We infer that all types of impersonal spirits — regardless of parentage — are admitted to these spirit homes. As I am a person and have a spirit form, no doubt such a world would seem empty and deserted even if I were permitted to pay it a visit. High spirit personalities are not given to the gratification of purposeless curiosity, purely useless adventure. There is at all times altogether too much intriguing and purposeful adventure to permit the development of any great interest in those projects which are either futile or unreal.

4. The Worlds of the Infinite Spirit

(149.7) 13:4.1 Between the inner circuit of Havona and the shining spheres of the Eternal Son there circle the seven orbs of the Infinite Spirit, worlds inhabited by the offspring of the Infinite Spirit, by the trinitized sons of glorified created personalities, and by other types of unrevealed beings concerned with the effective administration of the many enterprises of the various realms of universe activities.

(150.1) 13:4.2 The Seven Master Spirits are the supreme and ultimate representatives of the Infinite Spirit. They maintain their personal stations, their power focuses, on the periphery of Paradise, but all operations concerned with their management and direction of the grand universe are conducted on and from these seven special executive spheres of the Infinite Spirit. The Seven Master Spirits are, in reality, the mind-spirit balance wheel of the universe of universes, an all-embracing, all-encompassing, and all-co-ordinating power of central location.

(150.2) 13:4.3 From these seven special spheres the Master Spirits operate to equalize and stabilize the cosmic-mind circuits of the grand universe. They also have to do with the differential spiritual attitude and presence of the Deities throughout the grand universe. Physical reactions are uniform, unvarying, and always instantaneous and automatic. But experiential spiritual presence is in accordance with the underlying conditions or states of spiritual receptivity inherent in the individual minds of the realms.

(150.3) 13:4.4 Physical authority, presence, and function are unvarying in all the universes, small or great. The differing factor in spiritual presence, or reaction, is the fluctuating differential in its recognition and reception by will creatures. Whereas the spiritual presence of absolute and existential Deity is in no manner whatever influenced by attitudes of loyalty or disloyalty on the part of created beings, at the same time it is true that the functioning presence of subabsolute and experiential Deity is definitely and directly influenced by the decisions, choices, and will-attitudes of such finite creature beings — by the loyalty and devotion of the individual being, planet, system, constellation, or universe. But this spiritual presence of divinity is not whimsical nor arbitrary; its experiential variance is inherent in the freewill endowment of personal creatures.

(150.4) 13:4.5 The determiner of the differential of spiritual presence exists in your own hearts and minds and consists in the manner of your own choosing, in the decisions of your minds, and in the determination of your own wills. This differential is inherent in the freewill reactions of intelligent personal beings, beings whom the Universal Father has ordained shall exercise this liberty of choosing. And the Deities are ever true to the ebb and flow of their spirits in meeting and satisfying the conditions and demands of this differential of creature choice, now bestowing more of their presence in response to a sincere desire for the same and again withdrawing themselves from the scene as their creatures decide adversely in the exercise of their divinely bestowed freedom of choice. And thus does the spirit of divinity become humbly obedient to the choosing of the creatures of the realms.

(150.5) 13:4.6 The executive abodes of the Seven Master Spirits are, in reality, the Paradise headquarters of the seven superuniverses and their correlated segments in outer space. Each Master Spirit presides over one superuniverse, and each of these seven worlds is exclusively assigned to one of the Master Spirits. There is literally no phase of the sub-Paradise administration of the seven superuniverses which is not provided for on these executive worlds. They are not so exclusive as the spheres of the Father or those of the Son, and though residential status is limited to native beings and those who work thereon, these seven administrative planets are always open to all beings who desire to visit them, and who can command the necessary means of transit.

(151.1) 13:4.7 To me, these executive worlds are the most interesting and intriguing spots outside of Paradise. In no other place in the wide universe can one observe such varied activities, involving so many different orders of living beings, having to do with operations on so many diverse levels, occupations at once material, intellectual, and spiritual. When I am accorded a period of release from assignment, if I chance to be on Paradise or in Havona, I usually proceed to one of these busy worlds of the Seven Master Spirits, there to inspire my mind with such spectacles of enterprise, devotion, loyalty, wisdom, and effectiveness. Nowhere else can I observe such an amazing interassociation of personality performances on all seven levels of universe reality. And I am always stimulated by the activities of those who well know how to do their work, and who so thoroughly enjoy doing it.

(151.2) 13:4.8 [Presented by a Perfector of Wisdom commissioned thus to function by the Ancients of Days on Uversa.]

The Universe of Universes

(128.1) 12:0.1 THE immensity of the far-flung creation of the Universal Father is utterly beyond the grasp of finite imagination; the enormousness of the master universe staggers the concept of even my order of being. But the mortal mind can be taught much about the plan and arrangement of the universes; you can know something of their physical organization and marvelous administration; you may learn much about the various groups of intelligent beings who inhabit the seven superuniverses of time and the central universe of eternity.

(128.2) 12:0.2 In principle, that is, in eternal potential, we conceive of material creation as being infinite because the Universal Father is actually infinite, but as we study and observe the total material creation, we know that at any given moment in time it is limited, although to your finite minds it is comparatively limitless, virtually boundless.

(128.3) 12:0.3 We are convinced, from the study of physical law and from the observation of the starry realms, that the infinite Creator is not yet manifest in finality of cosmic expression, that much of the cosmic potential of the Infinite is still self-contained and unrevealed. To created beings the master universe might appear to be almost infinite, but it is far from finished; there are still physical limits to the material creation, and the experiential revelation of the eternal purpose is still in progress.

1. Space Levels of the Master Universe

(128.4) 12:1.1 The universe of universes is not an infinite plane, a boundless cube, nor a limitless circle; it certainly has dimensions. The laws of physical organization and administration prove conclusively that the whole vast aggregation of force-energy and matter-power functions ultimately as a space unit, as an organized and co-ordinated whole. The observable behavior of the material creation constitutes evidence of a physical universe of definite limits. The final proof of both a circular and delimited universe is afforded by the, to us, well-known fact that all forms of basic energy ever swing around the curved path of the space levels of the master universe in obedience to the incessant and absolute pull of Paradise gravity.

(128.5) 12:1.2 The successive space levels of the master universe constitute the major divisions of pervaded space — total creation, organized and partially inhabited or yet to be organized and inhabited. If the master universe were not a series of elliptical space levels of lessened resistance to motion, alternating with zones of relative quiescence, we conceive that some of the cosmic energies would be observed to shoot off on an infinite range, off on a straight-line path into trackless space; but we never find force, energy, or matter thus behaving; ever they whirl, always swinging onward in the tracks of the great space circuits.

(129.1) 12:1.3 Proceeding outward from Paradise through the horizontal extension of pervaded space, the master universe is existent in six concentric ellipses, the space levels encircling the central Isle:

(129.2) 12:1.4 1. The Central Universe — Havona.

(129.3) 12:1.5 2. The Seven Superuniverses.

(129.4) 12:1.6 3. The First Outer Space Level.

(129.5) 12:1.7 4. The Second Outer Space Level.

(129.6) 12:1.8 5. The Third Outer Space Level.

(129.7) 12:1.9 6. The Fourth and Outermost Space Level.

(129.8) 12:1.10 Havona, the central universe, is not a time creation; it is an eternal existence. This never-beginning, never-ending universe consists of one billion spheres of sublime perfection and is surrounded by the enormous dark gravity bodies. At the center of Havona is the stationary and absolutely stabilized Isle of Paradise, surrounded by its twenty-one satellites. Owing to the enormous encircling masses of the dark gravity bodies about the fringe of the central universe, the mass content of this central creation is far in excess of the total known mass of all seven sectors of the grand universe.

(129.9) 12:1.11 The Paradise-Havona System, the eternal universe encircling the eternal Isle, constitutes the perfect and eternal nucleus of the master universe; all seven of the superuniverses and all regions of outer space revolve in established orbits around the gigantic central aggregation of the Paradise satellites and the Havona spheres.

(129.10) 12:1.12 The Seven Superuniverses are not primary physical organizations; nowhere do their boundaries divide a nebular family, neither do they cross a local universe, a prime creative unit. Each superuniverse is simply a geographic space clustering of approximately one seventh of the organized and partially inhabited post-Havona creation, and each is about equal in the number of local universes embraced and in the space encompassed. Nebadon, your local universe, is one of the newer creations in Orvonton, the seventh superuniverse.

(129.11) 12:1.13 The Grand Universe is the present organized and inhabited creation. It consists of the seven superuniverses, with an aggregate evolutionary potential of around seven trillion inhabited planets, not to mention the eternal spheres of the central creation. But this tentative estimate takes no account of architectural administrative spheres, neither does it include the outlying groups of unorganized universes. The present ragged edge of the grand universe, its uneven and unfinished periphery, together with the tremendously unsettled condition of the whole astronomical plot, suggests to our star students that even the seven superuniverses are, as yet, uncompleted. As we move from within, from the divine center outward in any one direction, we do, eventually, come to the outer limits of the organized and inhabited creation; we come to the outer limits of the grand universe. And it is near this outer border, in a far-off corner of such a magnificent creation, that your local universe has its eventful existence.

(129.12) 12:1.14 The Outer Space Levels. Far out in space, at an enormous distance from the seven inhabited superuniverses, there are assembling vast and unbelievably stupendous circuits of force and materializing energies. Between the energy circuits of the seven superuniverses and this gigantic outer belt of force activity, there is a space zone of comparative quiet, which varies in width but averages about four hundred thousand light-years. These space zones are free from star dust — cosmic fog. Our students of these phenomena are in doubt as to the exact status of the space-forces existing in this zone of relative quiet which encircles the seven superuniverses. But about one-half million light-years beyond the periphery of the present grand universe we observe the beginnings of a zone of an unbelievable energy action which increases in volume and intensity for over twenty-five million light-years. These tremendous wheels of energizing forces are situated in the first outer space level, a continuous belt of cosmic activity encircling the whole of the known, organized, and inhabited creation.

(130.1) 12:1.15 Still greater activities are taking place beyond these regions, for the Uversa physicists have detected early evidence of force manifestations more than fifty million light-years beyond the outermost ranges of the phenomena in the first outer space level. These activities undoubtedly presage the organization of the material creations of the second outer space level of the master universe.

(130.2) 12:1.16 The central universe is the creation of eternity; the seven superuniverses are the creations of time; the four outer space levels are undoubtedly destined to eventuate-evolve the ultimacy of creation. And there are those who maintain that the Infinite can never attain full expression short of infinity; and therefore do they postulate an additional and unrevealed creation beyond the fourth and outermost space level, a possible ever-expanding, never-ending universe of infinity. In theory we do not know how to limit either the infinity of the Creator or the potential infinity of creation, but as it exists and is administered, we regard the master universe as having limitations, as being definitely delimited and bounded on its outer margins by open space.

2. The Domains of the Unqualified Absolute

(130.3) 12:2.1 When Urantia astronomers peer through their increasingly powerful telescopes into the mysterious stretches of outer space and there behold the amazing evolution of almost countless physical universes, they should realize that they are gazing upon the mighty outworking of the unsearchable plans of the Architects of the Master Universe. True, we do possess evidences which are suggestive of the presence of certain Paradise personality influences here and there throughout the vast energy manifestations now characteristic of these outer regions, but from the larger viewpoint the space regions extending beyond the outer borders of the seven superuniverses are generally recognized as constituting the domains of the Unqualified Absolute.

(130.4) 12:2.2 Although the unaided human eye can see only two or three nebulae outside the borders of the superuniverse of Orvonton, your telescopes literally reveal millions upon millions of these physical universes in process of formation. Most of the starry realms visually exposed to the search of your present-day telescopes are in Orvonton, but with photographic technique the larger telescopes penetrate far beyond the borders of the grand universe into the domains of outer space, where untold universes are in process of organization. And there are yet other millions of universes beyond the range of your present instruments.

(130.5) 12:2.3 In the not-distant future, new telescopes will reveal to the wondering gaze of Urantian astronomers no less than 375 million new galaxies in the remote stretches of outer space. At the same time these more powerful telescopes will disclose that many island universes formerly believed to be in outer space are really a part of the galactic system of Orvonton. The seven superuniverses are still growing; the periphery of each is gradually expanding; new nebulae are constantly being stabilized and organized; and some of the nebulae which Urantian astronomers regard as extragalactic are actually on the fringe of Orvonton and are traveling along with us.

(131.1) 12:2.4 The Uversa star students observe that the grand universe is surrounded by the ancestors of a series of starry and planetary clusters which completely encircle the present inhabited creation as concentric rings of outer universes upon universes. The physicists of Uversa calculate that the energy and matter of these outer and uncharted regions already equal many times the total material mass and energy charge embraced in all seven superuniverses. We are informed that the metamorphosis of cosmic force in these outer space levels is a function of the Paradise force organizers. We also know that these forces are ancestral to those physical energies which at present activate the grand universe. The Orvonton power directors, however, have nothing to do with these far-distant realms, neither are the energy movements therein discernibly connected with the power circuits of the organized and inhabited creations.

(131.2) 12:2.5 We know very little of the significance of these tremendous phenomena of outer space. A greater creation of the future is in process of formation. We can observe its immensity, we can discern its extent and sense its majestic dimensions, but otherwise we know little more about these realms than do the astronomers of Urantia. As far as we know, no material beings on the order of humans, no angels or other spirit creatures, exist in this outer ring of nebulae, suns, and planets. This distant domain is beyond the jurisdiction and administration of the superuniverse governments.

(131.3) 12:2.6 Throughout Orvonton it is believed that a new type of creation is in process, an order of universes destined to become the scene of the future activities of the assembling Corps of the Finality; and if our conjectures are correct, then the endless future may hold for all of you the same enthralling spectacles that the endless past has held for your seniors and predecessors.

3. Universal Gravity

(131.4) 12:3.1 All forms of force-energy — material, mindal, or spiritual — are alike subject to those grasps, those universal presences, which we call gravity. Personality also is responsive to gravity — to the Father’s exclusive circuit; but though this circuit is exclusive to the Father, he is not excluded from the other circuits; the Universal Father is infinite and acts over all four absolute-gravity circuits in the master universe:

(131.5) 12:3.2 1. The Personality Gravity of the Universal Father.

(131.6) 12:3.3 2. The Spirit Gravity of the Eternal Son.

(131.7) 12:3.4 3. The Mind Gravity of the Conjoint Actor.

(131.8) 12:3.5 4. The Cosmic Gravity of the Isle of Paradise.

(131.9) 12:3.6 These four circuits are not related to the nether Paradise force center; they are neither force, energy, nor power circuits. They are absolute presence circuits and like God are independent of time and space.

(132.1) 12:3.7 In this connection it is interesting to record certain observations made on Uversa during recent millenniums by the corps of gravity researchers. This expert group of workers has arrived at the following conclusions regarding the different gravity systems of the master universe:

(132.2) 12:3.8 1. Physical Gravity. Having formulated an estimate of the summation of the entire physical-gravity capacity of the grand universe, they have laboriously effected a comparison of this finding with the estimated total of absolute gravity presence now operative. These calculations indicate that the total gravity action on the grand universe is a very small part of the estimated gravity pull of Paradise, computed on the basis of the gravity response of basic physical units of universe matter. These investigators reach the amazing conclusion that the central universe and the surrounding seven superuniverses are at the present time making use of only about five per cent of the active functioning of the Paradise absolute-gravity grasp. In other words: At the present moment about ninety-five per cent of the active cosmic-gravity action of the Isle of Paradise, computed on this totality theory, is engaged in controlling material systems beyond the borders of the present organized universes. These calculations all refer to absolute gravity; linear gravity is an interactive phenomenon which can be computed only by knowing the actual Paradise gravity.

(132.3) 12:3.9 2. Spiritual Gravity. By the same technique of comparative estimation and calculation these researchers have explored the present reaction capacity of spirit gravity and, with the co-operation of Solitary Messengers and other spirit personalities, have arrived at the summation of the active spirit gravity of the Second Source and Center. And it is most instructive to note that they find about the same value for the actual and functional presence of spirit gravity in the grand universe that they postulate for the present total of active spirit gravity. In other words: At the present time practically the entire spirit gravity of the Eternal Son, computed on this theory of totality, is observable as functioning in the grand universe. If these findings are dependable, we may conclude that the universes now evolving in outer space are at the present time wholly nonspiritual. And if this is true, it would satisfactorily explain why spirit-endowed beings are in possession of little or no information about these vast energy manifestations aside from knowing the fact of their physical existence.

(132.4) 12:3.10 3. Mind Gravity. By these same principles of comparative computation these experts have attacked the problem of mind-gravity presence and response. The mind unit of estimation was arrived at by averaging three material and three spiritual types of mentality, although the type of mind found in the power directors and their associates proved to be a disturbing factor in the effort to arrive at a basic unit for mind-gravity estimation. There was little to impede the estimation of the present capacity of the Third Source and Center for mind-gravity function in accordance with this theory of totality. Although the findings in this instance are not so conclusive as in the estimates of physical and spirit gravity, they are, comparatively considered, very instructive, even intriguing. These investigators deduce that about eighty-five per cent of the mind-gravity response to the intellectual drawing of the Conjoint Actor takes origin in the existing grand universe. This would suggest the possibility that mind activities are involved in connection with the observable physical activities now in progress throughout the realms of outer space. While this estimate is probably far from accurate, it accords, in principle, with our belief that intelligent force organizers are at present directing universe evolution in the space levels beyond the present outer limits of the grand universe. Whatever the nature of this postulated intelligence, it is apparently not spirit-gravity responsive.

(133.1) 12:3.11 But all these computations are at best estimates based on assumed laws. We think they are fairly reliable. Even if a few spirit beings were located in outer space, their collective presence would not markedly influence calculations involving such enormous measurements.

(133.2) 12:3.12 Personality Gravity is noncomputable. We recognize the circuit, but we cannot measure either qualitative or quantitative realities responsive thereto.

4. Space and Motion

(133.3) 12:4.1 All units of cosmic energy are in primary revolution, are engaged in the execution of their mission, while swinging around the universal orbit. The universes of space and their component systems and worlds are all revolving spheres, moving along the endless circuits of the master universe space levels. Absolutely nothing is stationary in all the master universe except the very center of Havona, the eternal Isle of Paradise, the center of gravity.

(133.4) 12:4.2 The Unqualified Absolute is functionally limited to space, but we are not so sure about the relation of this Absolute to motion. Is motion inherent therein? We do not know. We know that motion is not inherent in space; even the motions of space are not innate. But we are not so sure about the relation of the Unqualified to motion. Who, or what, is really responsible for the gigantic activities of force-energy transmutations now in progress out beyond the borders of the present seven superuniverses? Concerning the origin of motion we have the following opinions:

(133.5) 12:4.3 1. We think the Conjoint Actor initiates motion in space.

(133.6) 12:4.4 2. If the Conjoint Actor produces the motions of space, we cannot prove it.

(133.7) 12:4.5 3. The Universal Absolute does not originate initial motion but does equalize and control all of the tensions originated by motion.

(133.8) 12:4.6 In outer space the force organizers are apparently responsible for the production of the gigantic universe wheels which are now in process of stellar evolution, but their ability so to function must have been made possible by some modification of the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

(133.9) 12:4.7 Space is, from the human viewpoint, nothing — negative; it exists only as related to something positive and nonspatial. Space is, however, real. It contains and conditions motion. It even moves. Space motions may be roughly classified as follows:

(133.10) 12:4.8 1. Primary motion — space respiration, the motion of space itself.

(133.11) 12:4.9 2. Secondary motion — the alternate directional swings of the successive space levels.

(133.12) 12:4.10 3. Relative motions — relative in the sense that they are not evaluated with Paradise as a base point. Primary and secondary motions are absolute, motion in relation to unmoving Paradise.

(133.13) 12:4.11 4. Compensatory or correlating movement designed to co-ordinate all other motions.

(134.1) 12:4.12 The present relationship of your sun and its associated planets, while disclosing many relative and absolute motions in space, tends to convey the impression to astronomic observers that you are comparatively stationary in space, and that the surrounding starry clusters and streams are engaged in outward flight at ever-increasing velocities as your calculations proceed outward in space. But such is not the case. You fail to recognize the present outward and uniform expansion of the physical creations of all pervaded space. Your own local creation (Nebadon) participates in this movement of universal outward expansion. The entire seven superuniverses participate in the two-billion-year cycles of space respiration along with the outer regions of the master universe.

(134.2) 12:4.13 When the universes expand and contract, the material masses in pervaded space alternately move against and with the pull of Paradise gravity. The work that is done in moving the material energy mass of creation is space work but not power-energy work.

(134.3) 12:4.14 Although your spectroscopic estimations of astronomic velocities are fairly reliable when applied to the starry realms belonging to your superuniverse and its associate superuniverses, such reckonings with reference to the realms of outer space are wholly unreliable. Spectral lines are displaced from the normal towards the violet by an approaching star; likewise these lines are displaced towards the red by a receding star. Many influences interpose to make it appear that the recessional velocity of the external universes increases at the rate of more than one hundred miles a second for every million light-years increase in distance. By this method of reckoning, subsequent to the perfection of more powerful telescopes, it will appear that these far-distant systems are in flight from this part of the universe at the unbelievable rate of more than thirty thousand miles a second. But this apparent speed of recession is not real; it results from numerous factors of error embracing angles of observation and other time-space distortions.

(134.4) 12:4.15 But the greatest of all such distortions arises because the vast universes of outer space, in the realms next to the domains of the seven superuniverses, seem to be revolving in a direction opposite to that of the grand universe. That is, these myriads of nebulae and their accompanying suns and spheres are at the present time revolving clockwise about the central creation. The seven superuniverses revolve about Paradise in a counterclockwise direction. It appears that the second outer universe of galaxies, like the seven superuniverses, revolves counterclockwise about Paradise. And the astronomic observers of Uversa think they detect evidence of revolutionary movements in a third outer belt of far-distant space which are beginning to exhibit directional tendencies of a clockwise nature.*

(134.5) 12:4.16 It is probable that these alternate directions of successive space processions of the universes have something to do with the intramaster universe gravity technique of the Universal Absolute, which consists of a co-ordination of forces and an equalization of space tensions. Motion as well as space is a complement or equilibrant of gravity. *

5. Space and Time

(134.6) 12:5.1 Like space, time is a bestowal of Paradise, but not in the same sense, only indirectly. Time comes by virtue of motion and because mind is inherently aware of sequentiality. From a practical viewpoint, motion is essential to time, but there is no universal time unit based on motion except in so far as the Paradise-Havona standard day is arbitrarily so recognized. The totality of space respiration destroys its local value as a time source.

(135.1) 12:5.2 Space is not infinite, even though it takes origin from Paradise; not absolute, for it is pervaded by the Unqualified Absolute. We do not know the absolute limits of space, but we do know that the absolute of time is eternity.

(135.2) 12:5.3 Time and space are inseparable only in the time-space creations, the seven superuniverses. Nontemporal space (space without time) theoretically exists, but the only truly nontemporal place is Paradise area. Nonspatial time (time without space) exists in mind of the Paradise level of function.

(135.3) 12:5.4 The relatively motionless midspace zones impinging on Paradise and separating pervaded from unpervaded space are the transition zones from time to eternity, hence the necessity of Paradise pilgrims becoming unconscious during this transit when it is to culminate in Paradise citizenship. Time-conscious visitors can go to Paradise without thus sleeping, but they remain creatures of time.

(135.4) 12:5.5 Relationships to time do not exist without motion in space, but consciousness of time does. Sequentiality can consciousize time even in the absence of motion. Man’s mind is less time-bound than space-bound because of the inherent nature of mind. Even during the days of the earth life in the flesh, though man’s mind is rigidly space-bound, the creative human imagination is comparatively time free. But time itself is not genetically a quality of mind.

(135.5) 12:5.6 There are three different levels of time cognizance:

(135.6) 12:5.7 1. Mind-perceived time — consciousness of sequence, motion, and a sense of duration.

(135.7) 12:5.8 2. Spirit-perceived time — insight into motion Godward and the awareness of the motion of ascent to levels of increasing divinity.

(135.8) 12:5.9 3. Personality creates a unique time sense out of insight into Reality plus a consciousness of presence and an awareness of duration.

(135.9) 12:5.10 Unspiritual animals know only the past and live in the present. Spirit-indwelt man has powers of prevision (insight); he may visualize the future. Only forward-looking and progressive attitudes are personally real. Static ethics and traditional morality are just slightly superanimal. Nor is stoicism a high order of self-realization. Ethics and morals become truly human when they are dynamic and progressive, alive with universe reality.

(135.10) 12:5.11 The human personality is not merely a concomitant of time-and-space events; the human personality can also act as the cosmic cause of such events.

6. Universal Overcontrol

(135.11) 12:6.1 The universe is nonstatic. Stability is not the result of inertia but rather the product of balanced energies, co-operative minds, co-ordinated morontias, spirit overcontrol, and personality unification. Stability is wholly and always proportional to divinity.

(135.12) 12:6.2 In the physical control of the master universe the Universal Father exercises priority and primacy through the Isle of Paradise; God is absolute in the spiritual administration of the cosmos in the person of the Eternal Son. Concerning the domains of mind, the Father and the Son function co-ordinately in the Conjoint Actor.

(136.1) 12:6.3 The Third Source and Center assists in the maintenance of the equilibrium and co-ordination of the combined physical and spiritual energies and organizations by the absoluteness of his grasp of the cosmic mind and by the exercise of his inherent and universal physical- and spiritual-gravity complements. Whenever and wherever there occurs a liaison between the material and the spiritual, such a mind phenomenon is an act of the Infinite Spirit. Mind alone can interassociate the physical forces and energies of the material level with the spiritual powers and beings of the spirit level.

(136.2) 12:6.4 In all your contemplation of universal phenomena, make certain that you take into consideration the interrelation of physical, intellectual, and spiritual energies, and that due allowance is made for the unexpected phenomena attendant upon their unification by personality and for the unpredictable phenomena resulting from the actions and reactions of experiential Deity and the Absolutes.

(136.3) 12:6.5 The universe is highly predictable only in the quantitative or gravity-measurement sense; even the primal physical forces are not responsive to linear gravity, nor are the higher mind meanings and true spirit values of ultimate universe realities. Qualitatively, the universe is not highly predictable as regards new associations of forces, either physical, mindal, or spiritual, although many such combinations of energies or forces become partially predictable when subjected to critical observation. When matter, mind, and spirit are unified by creature personality, we are unable fully to predict the decisions of such a freewill being.

(136.4) 12:6.6 All phases of primordial force, nascent spirit, and other nonpersonal ultimates appear to react in accordance with certain relatively stable but unknown laws and are characterized by a latitude of performance and an elasticity of response which are often disconcerting when encountered in the phenomena of a circumscribed and isolated situation. What is the explanation of this unpredictable freedom of reaction disclosed by these emerging universe actualities? These unknown, unfathomable unpredictables — whether pertaining to the behavior of a primordial unit of force, the reaction of an unidentified level of mind, or the phenomenon of a vast preuniverse in the making in the domains of outer space — probably disclose the activities of the Ultimate and the presence-performances of the Absolutes, which antedate the function of all universe Creators.

(136.5) 12:6.7 We do not really know, but we surmise that such amazing versatility and such profound co-ordination signify the presence and performance of the Absolutes, and that such diversity of response in the face of apparently uniform causation discloses the reaction of the Absolutes, not only to the immediate and situational causation, but also to all other related causations throughout the entire master universe.

(136.6) 12:6.8 Individuals have their guardians of destiny; planets, systems, constellations, universes, and superuniverses each have their respective rulers who labor for the good of their domains. Havona and even the grand universe are watched over by those intrusted with such high responsibilities. But who fosters and cares for the fundamental needs of the master universe as a whole, from Paradise to the fourth and outermost space level? Existentially such overcare is probably attributable to the Paradise Trinity, but from an experiential viewpoint the appearance of the post-Havona universes is dependent on:

(136.7) 12:6.9 1. The Absolutes in potential.

(136.8) 12:6.10 2. The Ultimate in direction.

(137.1) 12:6.11 3. The Supreme in evolutionary co-ordination.

(137.2) 12:6.12 4. The Architects of the Master Universe in administration prior to the appearance of specific rulers.

(137.3) 12:6.13 The Unqualified Absolute pervades all space. We are not altogether clear as to the exact status of the Deity and Universal Absolutes, but we know the latter functions wherever the Deity and Unqualified Absolutes function. The Deity Absolute may be universally present but hardly space present. The Ultimate is, or sometime will be, space present to the outer margins of the fourth space level. We doubt that the Ultimate will ever have a space presence beyond the periphery of the master universe, but within this limit the Ultimate is progressively integrating the creative organization of the potentials of the three Absolutes.

7. The Part and the Whole

(137.4) 12:7.1 There is operative throughout all time and space and with regard to all reality of whatever nature an inexorable and impersonal law which is equivalent to the function of a cosmic providence. Mercy characterizes God’s attitude of love for the individual; impartiality motivates God’s attitude toward the total. The will of God does not necessarily prevail in the part — the heart of any one personality — but his will does actually rule the whole, the universe of universes.

(137.5) 12:7.2 In all his dealings with all his beings it is true that the laws of God are not inherently arbitrary. To you, with your limited vision and finite viewpoint, the acts of God must often appear to be dictatorial and arbitrary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of repeatedly doing things; and he ever does all things well. You observe that God does the same thing in the same way, r

The Eternal Isle of Paradise

(118.1) 11:0.1 PARADISE is the eternal center of the universe of universes and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are real.

(118.2) 11:0.2 The material beauty of Paradise consists in the magnificence of its physical perfection; the grandeur of the Isle of God is exhibited in the superb intellectual accomplishments and mind development of its inhabitants; the glory of the central Isle is shown forth in the infinite endowment of divine spirit personality — the light of life. But the depths of the spiritual beauty and the wonders of this magnificent ensemble are utterly beyond the comprehension of the finite mind of material creatures. The glory and spiritual splendor of the divine abode are impossible of mortal comprehension. And Paradise is from eternity; there are neither records nor traditions respecting the origin of this nuclear Isle of Light and Life.

1. The Divine Residence

(118.3) 11:1.1 Paradise serves many purposes in the administration of the universal realms, but to creature beings it exists primarily as the dwelling place of Deity. The personal presence of the Universal Father is resident at the very center of the upper surface of this well-nigh circular, but not spherical, abode of the Deities. This Paradise presence of the Universal Father is immediately surrounded by the personal presence of the Eternal Son, while they are both invested by the unspeakable glory of the Infinite Spirit.

(118.4) 11:1.2 God dwells, has dwelt, and everlastingly will dwell in this same central and eternal abode. We have always found him there and always will. The Universal Father is cosmically focalized, spiritually personalized, and geographically resident at this center of the universe of universes.

(118.5) 11:1.3 We all know the direct course to pursue to find the Universal Father. You are not able to comprehend much about the divine residence because of its remoteness from you and the immensity of the intervening space, but those who are able to comprehend the meaning of these enormous distances know God’s location and residence just as certainly and literally as you know the location of New York, London, Rome, or Singapore, cities definitely and geographically located on Urantia. If you were an intelligent navigator, equipped with ship, maps, and compass, you could readily find these cities. Likewise, if you had the time and means of passage, were spiritually qualified, and had the necessary guidance, you could be piloted through universe upon universe and from circuit to circuit, ever journeying inward through the starry realms, until at last you would stand before the central shining of the spiritual glory of the Universal Father. Provided with all the necessities for the journey, it is just as possible to find the personal presence of God at the center of all things as to find distant cities on your own planet. That you have not visited these places in no way disproves their reality or actual existence. That so few of the universe creatures have found God on Paradise in no way disproves either the reality of his existence or the actuality of his spiritual person at the center of all things.

(119.1) 11:1.4 The Father is always to be found at this central location. Did he move, universal pandemonium would be precipitated, for there converge in him at this residential center the universal lines of gravity from the ends of creation. Whether we trace the personality circuit back through the universes or follow the ascending personalities as they journey inward to the Father; whether we trace the lines of material gravity to nether Paradise or follow the insurging cycles of cosmic force; whether we trace the lines of spiritual gravity to the Eternal Son or follow the inward processional of the Paradise Sons of God; whether we trace out the mind circuits or follow the trillions upon trillions of celestial beings who spring from the Infinite Spirit — by any of these observations or by all of them we are led directly back to the Father’s presence, to his central abode. Here is God personally, literally, and actually present. And from his infinite being there flow the flood-streams of life, energy, and personality to all universes.

2. Nature of the Eternal Isle

(119.2) 11:2.1 Since you are beginning to glimpse the enormousness of the material universe discernible even from your astronomical location, your space position in the starry systems, it should become evident to you that such a tremendous material universe must have an adequate and worthy capital, a headquarters commensurate with the dignity and infinitude of the universal Ruler of all this vast and far-flung creation of material realms and living beings.

(119.3) 11:2.2 In form Paradise differs from the inhabited space bodies: it is not spherical. It is definitely ellipsoid, being one-sixth longer in the north-south diameter than in the east-west diameter. The central Isle is essentially flat, and the distance from the upper surface to the nether surface is one tenth that of the east-west diameter.

(119.4) 11:2.3 These differences in dimensions, taken in connection with its stationary status and the greater out-pressure of force-energy at the north end of the Isle, make it possible to establish absolute direction in the master universe.

(119.5) 11:2.4 The central Isle is geographically divided into three domains of activity:

(119.6) 11:2.5 1. Upper Paradise.

(119.7) 11:2.6 2. Peripheral Paradise.

(119.8) 11:2.7 3. Nether Paradise.

(119.9) 11:2.8 We speak of that surface of Paradise which is occupied with personality activities as the upper side, and the opposite surface as the nether side. The periphery of Paradise provides for activities that are not strictly personal or nonpersonal. The Trinity seems to dominate the personal or upper plane, the Unqualified Absolute the nether or impersonal plane. We hardly conceive of the Unqualified Absolute as a person, but we do think of the functional space presence of this Absolute as focalized on nether Paradise.

(120.1) 11:2.9 The eternal Isle is composed of a single form of materialization — stationary systems of reality. This literal substance of Paradise is a homogeneous organization of space potency not to be found elsewhere in all the wide universe of universes. It has received many names in different universes, and the Melchizedeks of Nebadon long since named it absolutum. This Paradise source material is neither dead nor alive; it is the original nonspiritual expression of the First Source and Center; it is Paradise, and Paradise is without duplicate.

(120.2) 11:2.10 It appears to us that the First Source and Center has concentrated all absolute potential for cosmic reality in Paradise as a part of his technique of self-liberation from infinity limitations, as a means of making possible subinfinite, even time-space, creation. But it does not follow that Paradise is time-space limited just because the universe of universes discloses these qualities. Paradise exists without time and has no location in space.

(120.3) 11:2.11 Roughly: space seemingly originates just below nether Paradise; time just above upper Paradise. Time, as you understand it, is not a feature of Paradise existence, though the citizens of the central Isle are fully conscious of nontime sequence of events. Motion is not inherent on Paradise; it is volitional. But the concept of distance, even absolute distance, has very much meaning as it may be applied to relative locations on Paradise. Paradise is nonspatial; hence its areas are absolute and therefore serviceable in many ways beyond the concept of mortal mind.

3. Upper Paradise

(120.4) 11:3.1 On upper Paradise there are three grand spheres of activity, the Deity presence, the Most Holy Sphere, and the Holy Area. The vast region immediately surrounding the presence of the Deities is set aside as the Most Holy Sphere and is reserved for the functions of worship, trinitization, and high spiritual attainment. There are no material structures nor purely intellectual creations in this zone; they could not exist there. It is useless for me to undertake to portray to the human mind the divine nature and the beauteous grandeur of the Most Holy Sphere of Paradise. This realm is wholly spiritual, and you are almost wholly material. A purely spiritual reality is, to a purely material being, apparently nonexistent.

(120.5) 11:3.2 While there are no physical materializations in the area of the Most Holy, there are abundant souvenirs of your material days in the Holy Land sectors and still more in the reminiscent historic areas of peripheral Paradise.

(120.6) 11:3.3 The Holy Area, the outlying or residential region, is divided into seven concentric zones. Paradise is sometimes called “the Father’s House” since it is his eternal residence, and these seven zones are often designated “the Father’s Paradise mansions.” The inner or first zone is occupied by Paradise Citizens and the natives of Havona who may chance to be dwelling on Paradise. The next or second zone is the residential area of the natives of the seven superuniverses of time and space. This second zone is in part subdivided into seven immense divisions, the Paradise home of the spirit beings and ascendant creatures who hail from the universes of evolutionary progression. Each of these sectors is exclusively dedicated to the welfare and advancement of the personalities of a single superuniverse, but these facilities are almost infinitely beyond the requirements of the present seven superuniverses.

(121.1) 11:3.4 Each of the seven sectors of Paradise is subdivided into residential units suitable for the lodgment headquarters of one billion glorified individual working groups. One thousand of these units constitute a division. One hundred thousand divisions equal one congregation. Ten million congregations constitute an assembly. One billion assemblies make one grand unit. And this ascending series continues through the second grand unit, the third, and so on to the seventh grand unit. And seven of the grand units make up the master units, and seven of the master units constitute a superior unit; and thus by sevens the ascending series expands through the superior, supersuperior, celestial, supercelestial, to the supreme units. But even this does not utilize all the space available. This staggering number of residential designations on Paradise, a number beyond your concept, occupies considerably less than one per cent of the assigned area of the Holy Land. There is still plenty of room for those who are on their way inward, even for those who shall not start the Paradise climb until the times of the eternal future.

4. Peripheral Paradise

(121.2) 11:4.1 The central Isle ends abruptly at the periphery, but its size is so enormous that this terminal angle is relatively indiscernible within any circumscribed area. The peripheral surface of Paradise is occupied, in part, by the landing and dispatching fields for various groups of spirit personalities. Since the nonpervaded-space zones nearly impinge upon the periphery, all personality transports destined to Paradise land in these regions. Neither upper nor nether Paradise is approachable by transport supernaphim or other types of space traversers.

(121.3) 11:4.2 The Seven Master Spirits have their personal seats of power and authority on the seven spheres of the Spirit, which circle about Paradise in the space between the shining orbs of the Son and the inner circuit of the Havona worlds, but they maintain force-focal headquarters on the Paradise periphery. Here the slowly circulating presences of the Seven Supreme Power Directors indicate the location of the seven flash stations for certain Paradise energies going forth to the seven superuniverses.

(121.4) 11:4.3 Here on peripheral Paradise are the enormous historic and prophetic exhibit areas assigned to the Creator Sons, dedicated to the local universes of time and space. There are just seven trillion of these historic reservations now set up or in reserve, but these arrangements all together occupy only about four per cent of that portion of the peripheral area thus assigned. We infer that these vast reserves belong to creations sometime to be situated beyond the borders of the present known and inhabited seven superuniverses.

(121.5) 11:4.4 That portion of Paradise which has been designated for the use of the existing universes is occupied only from one to four per cent, while the area assigned to these activities is at least one million times that actually required for such purposes. Paradise is large enough to accommodate the activities of an almost infinite creation.

(121.6) 11:4.5 But a further attempt to visualize to you the glories of Paradise would be futile. You must wait, and ascend while you wait, for truly, “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the mind of mortal man, the things which the Universal Father has prepared for those who survive the life in the flesh on the worlds of time and space.”

5. Nether Paradise

(122.1) 11:5.1 Concerning nether Paradise, we know only that which is revealed; personalities do not sojourn there. It has nothing whatever to do with the affairs of spirit intelligences, nor does the Deity Absolute there function. We are informed that all physical-energy and cosmic-force circuits have their origin on nether Paradise, and that it is constituted as follows:

(122.2) 11:5.2 1. Directly underneath the location of the Trinity, in the central portion of nether Paradise, is the unknown and unrevealed Zone of Infinity.

(122.3) 11:5.3 2. This Zone is immediately surrounded by an unnamed area.

(122.4) 11:5.4 3. Occupying the outer margins of the under surface is a region having mainly to do with space potency and force-energy. The activities of this vast elliptical force center are not identifiable with the known functions of any triunity, but the primordial force-charge of space appears to be focalized in this area. This center consists of three concentric elliptical zones: The innermost is the focal point of the force-energy activities of Paradise itself; the outermost may possibly be identified with the functions of the Unqualified Absolute, but we are not certain concerning the space functions of the mid-zone.

(122.5) 11:5.5 The inner zone of this force center seems to act as a gigantic heart whose pulsations direct currents to the outermost borders of physical space. It directs and modifies force-energies but hardly drives them. The reality pressure-presence of this primal force is definitely greater at the north end of the Paradise center than in the southern regions; this is a uniformly registered difference. The mother force of space seems to flow in at the south and out at the north through the operation of some unknown circulatory system which is concerned with the diffusion of this basic form of force-energy. From time to time there are also noted differences in the east-west pressures. The forces emanating from this zone are not responsive to observable physical gravity but are always obedient to Paradise gravity.

(122.6) 11:5.6 The mid-zone of the force center immediately surrounds this area. This mid-zone appears to be static except that it expands and contracts through three cycles of activity. The least of these pulsations is in an east-west direction, the next in a north-south direction, while the greatest fluctuation is in every direction, a generalized expansion and contraction. The function of this mid-area has never been really identified, but it must have something to do with reciprocal adjustment between the inner and the outer zones of the force center. It is believed by many that the mid-zone is the control mechanism of the midspace or quiet zones which separate the successive space levels of the master universe, but no evidence or revelation confirms this. This inference is derived from the knowledge that this mid-area is in some manner related to the functioning of the nonpervaded-space mechanism of the master universe.

(122.7) 11:5.7 The outer zone is the largest and most active of the three concentric and elliptical belts of unidentified space potential. This area is the site of unimagined activities, the central circuit point of emanations which proceed spaceward in every direction to the outermost borders of the seven superuniverses and on beyond to overspread the enormous and incomprehensible domains of all outer space. This space presence is entirely impersonal notwithstanding that in some undisclosed manner it seems to be indirectly responsive to the will and mandates of the infinite Deities when acting as the Trinity. This is believed to be the central focalization, the Paradise center, of the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

(123.1) 11:5.8 All forms of force and all phases of energy seem to be encircuited; they circulate throughout the universes and return by definite routes. But with the emanations of the activated zone of the Unqualified Absolute there appears to be either an outgoing or an incoming — never both simultaneously. This outer zone pulsates in agelong cycles of gigantic proportions. For a little more than one billion Urantia years the space-force of this center is outgoing; then for a similar length of time it will be incoming. And the space-force manifestations of this center are universal; they extend throughout all pervadable space.

(123.2) 11:5.9 All physical force, energy, and matter are one. All force-energy originally proceeded from nether Paradise and will eventually return thereto following the completion of its space circuit. But the energies and material organizations of the universe of universes did not all come from nether Paradise in their present phenomenal states; space is the womb of several forms of matter and prematter. Though the outer zone of the Paradise force center is the source of space-energies, space does not originate there. Space is not force, energy, or power. Nor do the pulsations of this zone account for the respiration of space, but the incoming and outgoing phases of this zone are synchronized with the two-billion-year expansion-contraction cycles of space.

6. Space Respiration

(123.3) 11:6.1 We do not know the actual mechanism of space respiration; we merely observe that all space alternately contracts and expands. This respiration affects both the horizontal extension of pervaded space and the vertical extensions of unpervaded space which exist in the vast space reservoirs above and below Paradise. In attempting to imagine the volume outlines of these space reservoirs, you might think of an hourglass.

(123.4) 11:6.2 As the universes of the horizontal extension of pervaded space expand, the reservoirs of the vertical extension of unpervaded space contract and vice versa. There is a confluence of pervaded and unpervaded space just underneath nether Paradise. Both types of space there flow through the transmuting regulation channels, where changes are wrought making pervadable space nonpervadable and vice versa in the contraction and expansion cycles of the cosmos.

(123.5) 11:6.3 “Unpervaded” space means: unpervaded by those forces, energies, powers, and presences known to exist in pervaded space. We do not know whether vertical (reservoir) space is destined always to function as the equipoise of horizontal (universe) space; we do not know whether there is a creative intent concerning unpervaded space; we really know very little about the space reservoirs, merely that they exist, and that they seem to counterbalance the space-expansion-contraction cycles of the universe of universes.

(123.6) 11:6.4 The cycles of space respiration extend in each phase for a little more than one billion Urantia years. During one phase the universes expand; during the next they contract. Pervaded space is now approaching the mid-point of the expanding phase, while unpervaded space nears the mid-point of the contracting phase, and we are informed that the outermost limits of both space extensions are, theoretically, now approximately equidistant from Paradise. The unpervaded-space reservoirs now extend vertically above upper Paradise and below nether Paradise just as far as the pervaded space of the universe extends horizontally outward from peripheral Paradise to and even beyond the fourth outer space level.

(124.1) 11:6.5 For a billion years of Urantia time the space reservoirs contract while the master universe and the force activities of all horizontal space expand. It thus requires a little over two billion Urantia years to complete the entire expansion-contraction cycle.

7. Space Functions of Paradise

(124.2) 11:7.1 Space does not exist on any of the surfaces of Paradise. If one “looked” directly up from the upper surface of Paradise, one would “see” nothing but unpervaded space going out or coming in, just now coming in. Space does not touch Paradise; only the quiescent midspace zones come in contact with the central Isle.

(124.3) 11:7.2 Paradise is the actually motionless nucleus of the relatively quiescent zones existing between pervaded and unpervaded space. Geographically these zones appear to be a relative extension of Paradise, but there probably is some motion in them. We know very little about them, but we observe that these zones of lessened space motion separate pervaded and unpervaded space. Similar zones once existed between the levels of pervaded space, but these are now less quiescent.

(124.4) 11:7.3 The vertical cross section of total space would slightly resemble a Maltese cross, with the horizontal arms representing pervaded (universe) space and the vertical arms representing unpervaded (reservoir) space. The areas between the four arms would separate them somewhat as the midspace zones separate pervaded and unpervaded space. These quiescent midspace zones grow larger and larger at greater and greater distances from Paradise and eventually encompass the borders of all space and completely incapsulate both the space reservoirs and the entire horizontal extension of pervaded space.

(124.5) 11:7.4 Space is neither a subabsolute condition within, nor the presence of, the Unqualified Absolute, neither is it a function of the Ultimate. It is a bestowal of Paradise, and the space of the grand universe and that of all outer regions is believed to be actually pervaded by the ancestral space potency of the Unqualified Absolute. From near approach to peripheral Paradise, this pervaded space extends horizontally outward through the fourth space level and beyond the periphery of the master universe, but how far beyond we do not know.

(124.6) 11:7.5 If you imagine a finite, but inconceivably large, V-shaped plane situated at right angles to both the upper and lower surfaces of Paradise, with its point nearly tangent to peripheral Paradise, and then visualize this plane in elliptical revolution about Paradise, its revolution would roughly outline the volume of pervaded space.

(124.7) 11:7.6 There is an upper and a lower limit to horizontal space with reference to any given location in the universes. If one could move far enough at right angles to the plane of Orvonton, either up or down, eventually the upper or lower limit of pervaded space would be encountered. Within the known dimensions of the master universe these limits draw farther and farther apart at greater and greater distances from Paradise; space thickens, and it thickens somewhat faster than does the plane of creation, the universes.

(125.1) 11:7.7 The relatively quiet zones between the space levels, such as the one separating the seven superuniverses from the first outer space level, are enormous elliptical regions of quiescent space activities. These zones separate the vast galaxies which race around Paradise in orderly procession. You may visualize the first outer space level, where untold universes are now in process of formation, as a vast procession of galaxies swinging around Paradise, bounded above and below by the midspace zones of quiescence and bounded on the inner and outer margins by relatively quiet space zones.*

(125.2) 11:7.8 A space level thus functions as an elliptical region of motion surrounded on all sides by relative motionlessness. Such relationships of motion and quiescence constitute a curved space path of lessened resistance to motion which is universally followed by cosmic force and emergent energy as they circle forever around the Isle of Paradise.

(125.3) 11:7.9 This alternate zoning of the master universe, in association with the alternate clockwise and counterclockwise flow of the galaxies, is a factor in the stabilization of physical gravity designed to prevent the accentuation of gravity pressure to the point of disruptive and dispersive activities. Such an arrangement exerts antigravity influence and acts as a brake upon otherwise dangerous velocities.

8. Paradise Gravity

(125.4) 11:8.1 The inescapable pull of gravity effectively grips all the worlds of all the universes of all space. Gravity is the all-powerful grasp of the physical presence of Paradise. Gravity is the omnipotent strand on which are strung the gleaming stars, blazing suns, and whirling spheres which constitute the universal physical adornment of the eternal God, who is all things, fills all things, and in whom all things consist.

(125.5) 11:8.2 The center and focal point of absolute material gravity is the Isle of Paradise, complemented by the dark gravity bodies encircling Havona and equilibrated by the upper and nether space reservoirs. All known emanations of nether Paradise invariably and unerringly respond to the central gravity pull operating upon the endless circuits of the elliptical space levels of the master universe. Every known form of cosmic reality has the bend of the ages, the trend of the circle, the swing of the great ellipse.

(125.6) 11:8.3 Space is nonresponsive to gravity, but it acts as an equilibrant on gravity. Without the space cushion, explosive action would jerk surrounding space bodies. Pervaded space also exerts an antigravity influence upon physical or linear gravity; space can actually neutralize such gravity action even though it cannot delay it. Absolute gravity is Paradise gravity. Local or linear gravity pertains to the electrical stage of energy or matter; it operates within the central, super-, and outer universes, wherever suitable materialization has taken place.

(125.7) 11:8.4 The numerous forms of cosmic force, physical energy, universe power, and various materializations disclose three general, though not perfectly clear-cut, stages of response to Paradise gravity:

(126.1) 11:8.5 1. Pregravity Stages (Force). This is the first step in the individuation of space potency into the pre-energy forms of cosmic force. This state is analogous to the concept of the primordial force-charge of space, sometimes called pure energy or segregata.

(126.2) 11:8.6 2. Gravity Stages (Energy). This modification of the force-charge of space is produced by the action of the Paradise force organizers. It signalizes the appearance of energy systems responsive to the pull of Paradise gravity. This emergent energy is originally neutral but consequent upon further metamorphosis will exhibit the so-called negative and positive qualities. We designate these stages ultimata.

(126.3) 11:8.7 3. Postgravity Stages (Universe Power). In this stage, energy-matter discloses response to the control of linear gravity. In the central universe these physical systems are threefold organizations known as triata. They are the superpower mother systems of the creations of time and space. The physical systems of the superuniverses are mobilized by the Universe Power Directors and their associates. These material organizations are dual in constitution and are known as gravita. The dark gravity bodies encircling Havona are neither triata nor gravita, and their drawing power discloses both forms of physical gravity, linear and absolute.

(126.4) 11:8.8 Space potency is not subject to the interactions of any form of gravitation. This primal endowment of Paradise is not an actual level of reality, but it is ancestral to all relative functional nonspirit realities — all manifestations of force-energy and the organization of power and matter. Space potency is a term difficult to define. It does not mean that which is ancestral to space; its meaning should convey the idea of the potencies and potentials existent within space. It may be roughly conceived to include all those absolute influences and potentials which emanate from Paradise and constitute the space presence of the Unqualified Absolute.

(126.5) 11:8.9 Paradise is the absolute source and the eternal focal point of all energy-matter in the universe of universes. The Unqualified Absolute is the revealer, regulator, and repository of that which has Paradise as its source and origin. The universal presence of the Unqualified Absolute seems to be equivalent to the concept of a potential infinity of gravity extension, an elastic tension of Paradise presence. This concept aids us in grasping the fact that everything is drawn inward towards Paradise. The illustration is crude but nonetheless helpful. It also explains why gravity always acts preferentially in the plane perpendicular to the mass, a phenomenon indicative of the differential dimensions of Paradise and the surrounding creations.

9. The Uniqueness of Paradise

(126.6) 11:9.1 Paradise is unique in that it is the realm of primal origin and the final goal of destiny for all spirit personalities. Although it is true that not all of the lower spirit beings of the local universes are immediately destined to Paradise, Paradise still remains the goal of desire for all supermaterial personalities.

(126.7) 11:9.2 Paradise is the geographic center of infinity; it is not a part of universal creation, not even a real part of the eternal Havona universe. We commonly refer to the central Isle as belonging to the divine universe, but it really does not. Paradise is an eternal and exclusive existence.

(127.1) 11:9.3 In the eternity of the past, when the Universal Father gave infinite personality expression of his spirit self in the being of the Eternal Son, simultaneously he revealed the infinity potential of his nonpersonal self as Paradise. Nonpersonal and nonspiritual Paradise appears to have been the inevitable repercussion to the Father’s will and act which eternalized the Original Son. Thus did the Father project reality in two actual phases — the personal and the nonpersonal, the spiritual and the nonspiritual. The tension between them, in the face of will to action by the Father and the Son, gave existence to the Conjoint Actor and the central universe of material worlds and spiritual beings.

(127.2) 11:9.4 When reality is differentiated into the personal and the nonpersonal (Eternal Son and Paradise), it is hardly proper to call that which is nonpersonal “Deity” unless somehow qualified. The energy and material repercussions of the acts of Deity could hardly be called Deity. Deity may cause much that is not Deity, and Paradise is not Deity; neither is it conscious as mortal man could ever possibly understand such a term.

(127.3) 11:9.5 Paradise is not ancestral to any being or living entity; it is not a creator. Personality and mind-spirit relationships are transmissible, but pattern is not. Patterns are never reflections; they are duplications — reproductions. Paradise is the absolute of patterns; Havona is an exhibit of these potentials in actuality.

(127.4) 11:9.6 God’s residence is central and eternal, glorious and ideal. His home is the beauteous pattern for all universe headquarters worlds; and the central universe of his immediate indwelling is the pattern for all universes in their ideals, organization, and ultimate destiny.

(127.5) 11:9.7 Paradise is the universal headquarters of all personality activities and the source-center of all force-space and energy

The Paradise Trinity

(108.1) 10:0.1 THE Paradise Trinity of eternal Deities facilitates the Father’s escape from personality absolutism. The Trinity perfectly associates the limitless expression of God’s infinite personal will with the absoluteness of Deity. The Eternal Son and the various Sons of divine origin, together with the Conjoint Actor and his universe children, effectively provide for the Father’s liberation from the limitations otherwise inherent in primacy, perfection, changelessness, eternity, universality, absoluteness, and infinity.

(108.2) 10:0.2 The Paradise Trinity effectively provides for the full expression and perfect revelation of the eternal nature of Deity. The Stationary Sons of the Trinity likewise afford a full and perfect revelation of divine justice. The Trinity is Deity unity, and this unity rests eternally upon the absolute foundations of the divine oneness of the three original and co-ordinate and coexistent personalities, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

(108.3) 10:0.3 From the present situation on the circle of eternity, looking backward into the endless past, we can discover only one inescapable inevitability in universe affairs, and that is the Paradise Trinity. I deem the Trinity to have been inevitable. As I view the past, present, and future of time, I consider nothing else in all the universe of universes to have been inevitable. The present master universe, viewed in retrospect or in prospect, is unthinkable without the Trinity. Given the Paradise Trinity, we can postulate alternate or even multiple ways of doing all things, but without the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit we are unable to conceive how the Infinite could achieve threefold and co-ordinate personalization in the face of the absolute oneness of Deity. No other concept of creation measures up to the Trinity standards of the completeness of the absoluteness inherent in Deity unity coupled with the repleteness of volitional liberation inherent in the threefold personalization of Deity.

1. Self-Distribution of the First Source and Center

(108.4) 10:1.1 It would seem that the Father, back in eternity, inaugurated a policy of profound self-distribution. There is inherent in the selfless, loving, and lovable nature of the Universal Father something which causes him to reserve to himself the exercise of only those powers and that authority which he apparently finds it impossible to delegate or to bestow.

(108.5) 10:1.2 The Universal Father all along has divested himself of every part of himself that was bestowable on any other Creator or creature. He has delegated to his divine Sons and their associated intelligences every power and all authority that could be delegated. He has actually transferred to his Sovereign Sons, in their respective universes, every prerogative of administrative authority that was transferable. In the affairs of a local universe, he has made each Sovereign Creator Son just as perfect, competent, and authoritative as is the Eternal Son in the original and central universe. He has given away, actually bestowed, with the dignity and sanctity of personality possession, all of himself and all of his attributes, everything he possibly could divest himself of, in every way, in every age, in every place, and to every person, and in every universe except that of his central indwelling.

(109.1) 10:1.3 Divine personality is not self-centered; self-distribution and sharing of personality characterize divine freewill selfhood. Creatures crave association with other personal creatures; Creators are moved to share divinity with their universe children; the personality of the Infinite is disclosed as the Universal Father, who shares reality of being and equality of self with two co-ordinate personalities, the Eternal Son and the Conjoint Actor.

(109.2) 10:1.4 For knowledge concerning the Father’s personality and divine attributes we will always be dependent on the revelations of the Eternal Son, for when the conjoint act of creation was effected, when the Third Person of Deity sprang into personality existence and executed the combined concepts of his divine parents, the Father ceased to exist as the unqualified personality. With the coming into being of the Conjoint Actor and the materialization of the central core of creation, certain eternal changes took place. God gave himself as an absolute personality to his Eternal Son. Thus does the Father bestow the “personality of infinity” upon his only-begotten Son, while they both bestow the “conjoint personality” of their eternal union upon the Infinite Spirit.

(109.3) 10:1.5 For these and other reasons beyond the concept of the finite mind, it is exceedingly difficult for the human creature to comprehend God’s infinite father-personality except as it is universally revealed in the Eternal Son and, with the Son, is universally active in the Infinite Spirit.

(109.4) 10:1.6 Since the Paradise Sons of God visit the evolutionary worlds and sometimes even there dwell in the likeness of mortal flesh, and since these bestowals make it possible for mortal man actually to know something of the nature and character of divine personality, therefore must the creatures of the planetary spheres look to the bestowals of these Paradise Sons for reliable and trustworthy information regarding the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

2. Deity Personalization

(109.5) 10:2.1 By the technique of trinitization the Father divests himself of that unqualified spirit personality which is the Son, but in so doing he constitutes himself the Father of this very Son and thereby possesses himself of unlimited capacity to become the divine Father of all subsequently created, eventuated, or other personalized types of intelligent will creatures. As the absolute and unqualified personality the Father can function only as and with the Son, but as a personal Father he continues to bestow personality upon the diverse hosts of the differing levels of intelligent will creatures, and he forever maintains personal relations of loving association with this vast family of universe children.

(109.6) 10:2.2 After the Father has bestowed upon the personality of his Son the fullness of himself, and when this act of self-bestowal is complete and perfect, of the infinite power and nature which are thus existent in the Father-Son union, the eternal partners conjointly bestow those qualities and attributes which constitute still another being like themselves; and this conjoint personality, the Infinite Spirit, completes the existential personalization of Deity.

(110.1) 10:2.3 The Son is indispensable to the fatherhood of God. The Spirit is indispensable to the fraternity of the Second and Third Persons. Three persons are a minimum social group, but this is least of all the many reasons for believing in the inevitability of the Conjoint Actor.

(110.2) 10:2.4 The First Source and Center is the infinite father-personality, the unlimited source personality. The Eternal Son is the unqualified personality-absolute, that divine being who stands throughout all time and eternity as the perfect revelation of the personal nature of God. The Infinite Spirit is the conjoint personality, the unique personal consequence of the everlasting Father-Son union.

(110.3) 10:2.5 The personality of the First Source and Center is the personality of infinity minus the absolute personality of the Eternal Son. The personality of the Third Source and Center is the superadditive consequence of the union of the liberated Father-personality and the absolute Son-personality.

(110.4) 10:2.6 The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are unique persons; none is a duplicate; each is original; all are united.

(110.5) 10:2.7 The Eternal Son alone experiences the fullness of divine personality relationship, consciousness of both sonship with the Father and paternity to the Spirit and of divine equality with both Father-ancestor and Spirit-associate. The Father knows the experience of having a Son who is his equal, but the Father knows no ancestral antecedents. The Eternal Son has the experience of sonship, recognition of personality ancestry, and at the same time the Son is conscious of being joint parent to the Infinite Spirit. The Infinite Spirit is conscious of twofold personality ancestry but is not parental to a co-ordinate Deity personality. With the Spirit the existential cycle of Deity personalization attains completion; the primary personalities of the Third Source and Center are experiential and are seven in number.

(110.6) 10:2.8 I am of origin in the Paradise Trinity. I know the Trinity as unified Deity; I also know that the Father, Son, and Spirit exist and act in their definite personal capacities. I positively know that they not only act personally and collectively, but that they also co-ordinate their performances in various groupings, so that in the end they function in seven different singular and plural capacities. And since these seven associations exhaust the possibilities for such divinity combination, it is inevitable that the realities of the universe shall appear in seven variations of values, meanings, and personality.

3. The Three Persons of Deity

(110.7) 10:3.1 Notwithstanding there is only one Deity, there are three positive and divine personalizations of Deity. Regarding the endowment of man with the divine Adjusters, the Father said: “Let us make mortal man in our own image.” Repeatedly throughout the Urantian writings there occurs this reference to the acts and doings of plural Deity, clearly showing recognition of the existence and working of the three Sources and Centers.

(110.8) 10:3.2 We are taught that the Son and the Spirit sustain the same and equal relations to the Father in the Trinity association. In eternity and as Deities they undoubtedly do, but in time and as personalities they certainly disclose relationships of a very diverse nature. Looking from Paradise out on the universes, these relationships do seem to be very similar, but when viewed from the domains of space, they appear to be quite different.

(111.1) 10:3.3 The divine Sons are indeed the “Word of God,” but the children of the Spirit are truly the “Act of God.” God speaks through the Son and, with the Son, acts through the Infinite Spirit, while in all universe activities the Son and the Spirit are exquisitely fraternal, working as two equal brothers with admiration and love for an honored and divinely respected common Father.

(111.2) 10:3.4 The Father, Son, and Spirit are certainly equal in nature, co-ordinate in being, but there are unmistakable differences in their universe performances, and when acting alone, each person of Deity is apparently limited in absoluteness.

(111.3) 10:3.5 The Universal Father, prior to his self-willed divestment of the personality, powers, and attributes which constitute the Son and the Spirit, seems to have been (philosophically considered) an unqualified, absolute, and infinite Deity. But such a theoretical First Source and Center without a Son could not in any sense of the word be considered the Universal Father; fatherhood is not real without sonship. Furthermore, the Father, to have been absolute in a total sense, must have existed at some eternally distant moment alone. But he never had such a solitary existence; the Son and the Spirit are both coeternal with the Father. The First Source and Center has always been, and will forever be, the eternal Father of the Original Son and, with the Son, the eternal progenitor of the Infinite Spirit.

(111.4) 10:3.6 We observe that the Father has divested himself of all direct manifestations of absoluteness except absolute fatherhood and absolute volition. We do not know whether volition is an inalienable attribute of the Father; we can only observe that he did not divest himself of volition. Such infinity of will must have been eternally inherent in the First Source and Center.

(111.5) 10:3.7 In bestowing absoluteness of personality upon the Eternal Son, the Universal Father escapes from the fetters of personality absolutism, but in so doing he takes a step which makes it forever impossible for him to act alone as the personality-absolute. And with the final personalization of coexistent Deity — the Conjoint Actor — there ensues the critical trinitarian interdependence of the three divine personalities with regard to the totality of Deity function in absolute.

(111.6) 10:3.8 God is the Father-Absolute of all personalities in the universe of universes. The Father is personally absolute in liberty of action, but in the universes of time and space, made, in the making, and yet to be made, the Father is not discernibly absolute as total Deity except in the Paradise Trinity.

(111.7) 10:3.9 The First Source and Center functions outside of Havona in the phenomenal universes as follows:

(111.8) 10:3.10 1. As creator, through the Creator Sons, his grandsons.

(111.9) 10:3.11 2. As controller, through the gravity center of Paradise.

(111.10) 10:3.12 3. As spirit, through the Eternal Son.

(111.11) 10:3.13 4. As mind, through the Conjoint Creator.

(111.12) 10:3.14 5. As a Father, he maintains parental contact with all creatures through his personality circuit.

(111.13) 10:3.15 6. As a person, he acts directly throughout creation by his exclusive fragments — in mortal man by the Thought Adjusters.

(111.14) 10:3.16 7. As total Deity, he functions only in the Paradise Trinity.

(112.1) 10:3.17 All these relinquishments and delegations of jurisdiction by the Universal Father are wholly voluntary and self-imposed. The all-powerful Father purposefully assumes these limitations of universe authority.

(112.2) 10:3.18 The Eternal Son seems to function as one with the Father in all spiritual respects except in the bestowals of the God fragments and in other prepersonal activities. Neither is the Son closely identified with the intellectual activities of material creatures nor with the energy activities of the material universes. As absolute the Son functions as a person and only in the domain of the spiritual universe.

(112.3) 10:3.19 The Infinite Spirit is amazingly universal and unbelievably versatile in all his operations. He performs in the spheres of mind, matter, and spirit. The Conjoint Actor represents the Father-Son association, but he also functions as himself. He is not directly concerned with physical gravity, with spiritual gravity, or with the personality circuit, but he more or less participates in all other universe activities. While apparently dependent on three existential and absolute gravity controls, the Infinite Spirit appears to exercise three supercontrols. This threefold endowment is employed in many ways to transcend and seemingly to neutralize even the manifestations of primary forces and energies, right up to the superultimate borders of absoluteness. In certain situations these supercontrols absolutely transcend even the primal manifestations of cosmic reality.

4. The Trinity Union of Deity

(112.4) 10:4.1 Of all absolute associations, the Paradise Trinity (the first triunity) is unique as an exclusive association of personal Deity. God functions as God only in relation to God and to those who can know God, but as absolute Deity only in the Paradise Trinity and in relation to universe totality.

(112.5) 10:4.2 Eternal Deity is perfectly unified; nevertheless there are three perfectly individualized persons of Deity. The Paradise Trinity makes possible the simultaneous expression of all the diversity of the character traits and infinite powers of the First Source and Center and his eternal co-ordinates and of all the divine unity of the universe functions of undivided Deity.

(112.6) 10:4.3 The Trinity is an association of infinite persons functioning in a nonpersonal capacity but not in contravention of personality. The illustration is crude, but a father, son, and grandson could form a corporate entity which would be nonpersonal but nonetheless subject to their personal wills.

(112.7) 10:4.4 The Paradise Trinity is real. It exists as the Deity union of Father, Son, and Spirit; yet the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, or any two of them, can function in relation to this selfsame Paradise Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit can collaborate in a non-Trinity manner, but not as three Deities. As persons they can collaborate as they choose, but that is not the Trinity.

(112.8) 10:4.5 Ever remember that what the Infinite Spirit does is the function of the Conjoint Actor. Both the Father and the Son are functioning in and through and as him. But it would be futile to attempt to elucidate the Trinity mystery: three as one and in one, and one as two and acting for two.

(112.9) 10:4.6 The Trinity is so related to total universe affairs that it must be reckoned with in our attempts to explain the totality of any isolated cosmic event or personality relationship. The Trinity functions on all levels of the cosmos, and mortal man is limited to the finite level; therefore must man be content with a finite concept of the Trinity as the Trinity.

(113.1) 10:4.7 As a mortal in the flesh you should view the Trinity in accordance with your individual enlightenment and in harmony with the reactions of your mind and soul. You can know very little of the absoluteness of the Trinity, but as you ascend Paradiseward, you will many times experience astonishment at successive revelations and unexpected discoveries of Trinity supremacy and ultimacy, if not of absoluteness.

5. Functions of the Trinity

(113.2) 10:5.1 The personal Deities have attributes, but it is hardly consistent to speak of the Trinity as having attributes. This association of divine beings may more properly be regarded as having functions, such as justice administration, totality attitudes, co-ordinate action, and cosmic overcontrol. These functions are actively supreme, ultimate, and (within the limits of Deity) absolute as far as all living realities of personality value are concerned.

(113.3) 10:5.2 The functions of the Paradise Trinity are not simply the sum of the Father’s apparent endowment of divinity plus those specialized attributes that are unique in the personal existence of the Son and the Spirit. The Trinity association of the three Paradise Deities results in the evolution, eventuation, and deitization of new meanings, values, powers, and capacities for universal revelation, action, and administration. Living associations, human families, social groups, or the Paradise Trinity are not augmented by mere arithmetical summation. The group potential is always far in excess of the simple sum of the attributes of the component individuals.

(113.4) 10:5.3 The Trinity maintains a unique attitude as the Trinity towards the entire universe of the past, present, and future. And the functions of the Trinity can best be considered in relation to the universe attitudes of the Trinity. Such attitudes are simultaneous and may be multiple concerning any isolated situation or event:

(113.5) 10:5.4 1. Attitude toward the Finite. The maximum self-limitation of the Trinity is its attitude toward the finite. The Trinity is not a person, nor is the Supreme Being an exclusive personalization of the Trinity, but the Supreme is the nearest approach to a power-personality focalization of the Trinity which can be comprehended by finite creatures. Hence the Trinity in relation to the finite is sometimes spoken of as the Trinity of Supremacy.

(113.6) 10:5.5 2. Attitude toward the Absonite. The Paradise Trinity has regard for those levels of existence which are more than finite but less than absolute, and this relationship is sometimes denominated the Trinity of Ultimacy. Neither the Ultimate nor the Supreme are wholly representative of the Paradise Trinity, but in a qualified sense and to their respective levels, each seems to represent the Trinity during the prepersonal eras of experiential-power development.

(113.7) 10:5.6 3. The Absolute Attitude of the Paradise Trinity is in relation to absolute existences and culminates in the action of total Deity.

(113.8) 10:5.7 The Trinity Infinite involves the co-ordinate action of all triunity relationships of the First Source and Center — undeified as well as deified — and hence is very difficult for personalities to grasp. In the contemplation of the Trinity as infinite, do not ignore the seven triunities; thereby certain difficulties of understanding may be avoided, and certain paradoxes may be partially resolved.

(114.1) 10:5.8 But I do not command language which would enable me to convey to the limited human mind the full truth and the eternal significance of the Paradise Trinity and the nature of the never-ending interassociation of the three beings of infinite perfection.

6. The Stationary Sons of the Trinity

(114.2) 10:6.1 All law takes origin in the First Source and Center; he is law. The administration of spiritual law inheres in the Second Source and Center. The revelation of law, the promulgation and interpretation of the divine statutes, is the function of the Third Source and Center. The application of law, justice, falls within the province of the Paradise Trinity and is carried out by certain Sons of the Trinity.

(114.3) 10:6.2 Justice is inherent in the universal sovereignty of the Paradise Trinity, but goodness, mercy, and truth are the universe ministry of the divine personalities, whose Deity union constitutes the Trinity. Justice is not the attitude of the Father, the Son, or the Spirit. Justice is the Trinity attitude of these personalities of love, mercy, and ministry. No one of the Paradise Deities fosters the administration of justice. Justice is never a personal attitude; it is always a plural function.

(114.4) 10:6.3 Evidence, the basis of fairness (justice in harmony with mercy), is supplied by the personalities of the Third Source and Center, the conjoint representative of the Father and the Son to all realms and to the minds of the intelligent beings of all creation.

(114.5) 10:6.4 Judgment, the final application of justice in accordance with the evidence submitted by the personalities of the Infinite Spirit, is the work of the Stationary Sons of the Trinity, beings partaking of the Trinity nature of the united Father, Son, and Spirit.

(114.6) 10:6.5 This group of Trinity Sons embraces the following personalities:

(114.7) 10:6.6 1. Trinitized Secrets of Supremacy.

(114.8) 10:6.7 2. Eternals of Days.

(114.9) 10:6.8 3. Ancients of Days.

(114.10) 10:6.9 4. Perfections of Days.

(114.11) 10:6.10 5. Recents of Days.

(114.12) 10:6.11 6. Unions of Days.

(114.13) 10:6.12 7. Faithfuls of Days.

(114.14) 10:6.13 8. Perfectors of Wisdom.

(114.15) 10:6.14 9. Divine Counselors.

(114.16) 10:6.15 10. Universal Censors.

(114.17) 10:6.16 We are the children of the three Paradise Deities functioning as the Trinity, for I chance to belong to the tenth order of this group, the Universal Censors. These orders are not representative of the attitude of the Trinity in a universal sense; they represent this collective attitude of Deity only in the domains of executive judgment — justice. They were specifically designed by the Trinity for the precise work to which they are assigned, and they represent the Trinity only in those functions for which they were personalized.

(115.1) 10:6.17 The Ancients of Days and their Trinity-origin associates mete out the just judgment of supreme fairness to the seven superuniverses. In the central universe such functions exist in theory only; there fairness is self-evident in perfection, and Havona perfection precludes all possibility of disharmony.

(115.2) 10:6.18 Justice is the collective thought of righteousness; mercy is its personal expression. Mercy is the attitude of love; precision characterizes the operation of law; divine judgment is the soul of fairness, ever conforming to the justice of the Trinity, ever fulfilling the divine love of God. When fully perceived and completely understood, the righteous justice of the Trinity and the merciful love of the Universal Father are coincident. But man has no such full understanding of divine justice. Thus in the Trinity, as man would view it, the personalities of Father, Son, and Spirit are adjusted to co-ordinate ministry of love and law in the experiential universes of time.

7. The Overcontrol of Supremacy

(115.3) 10:7.1 The First, Second, and Third Persons of Deity are equal to each other, and they are one. “The Lord our God is one God.” There is perfection of purpose and oneness of execution in the divine Trinity of eternal Deities. The Father, the Son, and the Conjoint Actor are truly and divinely one. Of a truth it is written: “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God.”

(115.4) 10:7.2 As things appear to the mortal on the finite level, the Paradise Trinity, like the Supreme Being, is concerned only with the total — total planet, total universe, total superuniverse, total grand universe. This totality attitude exists because the Trinity is the total of Deity and for many other reasons.

(115.5) 10:7.3 The Supreme Being is something less and something other than the Trinity functioning in the finite universes; but within certain limits and during the present era of incomplete power-personalization, this evolutionary Deity does appear to reflect the attitude of the Trinity of Supremacy. The Father, Son, and Spirit do not personally function with the Supreme Being, but during the present universe age they collaborate with him as the Trinity. We understand that they sustain a similar relationship to the Ultimate. We often conjecture as to what will be the personal relationship between the Paradise Deities and God the Supreme when he has finally evolved, but we do not really know.

(115.6) 10:7.4 We do not find the overcontrol of Supremacy to be wholly predictable. Furthermore, this unpredictability appears to be characterized by a certain developmental incompleteness, undoubtedly an earmark of the incompleteness of the Supreme and of the incompleteness of finite reaction to the Paradise Trinity.

(115.7) 10:7.5 The mortal mind can immediately think of a thousand and one things — catastrophic physical events, appalling accidents, horrific disasters, painful illnesses, and world-wide scourges — and ask whether such visitations are correlated in the unknown maneuvering of this probable functioning of the Supreme Being. Frankly, we do not know; we are not really sure. But we do observe that, as time passes, all these difficult and more or less mysterious situations always work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. It may be that the circumstances of existence and the inexplicable vicissitudes of living are all interwoven into a meaningful pattern of high value by the function of the Supreme and the overcontrol of the Trinity.

(116.1) 10:7.6 As a son of God you can discern the personal attitude of love in all the acts of God the Father. But you will not always be able to understand how many of the universe acts of the Paradise Trinity redound to the good of the individual mortal on the evolutionary worlds of space. In the progress of eternity the acts of the Trinity will be revealed as altogether meaningful and considerate, but they do not always so appear to the creatures of time.

8. The Trinity Beyond the Finite

(116.2) 10:8.1 Many truths and facts pertaining to the Paradise Trinity can only be even partially comprehended by recognizing a function that transcends the finite.

(116.3) 10:8.2 It would be inadvisable to discuss the functions of the Trinity of Ultimacy, but it may be disclosed that God the Ultimate is the Trinity manifestation comprehended by the Transcendentalers. We are inclined to the belief that the unification of the master universe is the eventuating act of the Ultimate and is probably reflective of certain, but not all, phases of the absonite overcontrol of the Paradise Trinity. The Ultimate is a qualified manifestation of the Trinity in relation to the absonite only in the sense that the Supreme thus partially represents the Trinity in relation to the finite.

(116.4) 10:8.3 The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are, in a certain sense, the constituent personalities of total Deity. Their union in the Paradise Trinity and the absolute function of the Trinity equivalate to the function of total Deity. And such completion of Deity transcends both the finite and the absonite.

(116.5) 10:8.4 While no single person of the Paradise Deities actually fills all Deity potential, collectively all three do. Three infinite persons seem to be the minimum number of beings required to activate the prepersonal and existential potential of total Deity — the Deity Absolute.

(116.6) 10:8.5 We know the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit as persons, but I do not personally know the Deity Absolute. I love and worship God the Father; I respect and honor the Deity Absolute.

(116.7) 10:8.6 I once sojourned in a universe where a certain group of beings taught that the finaliters, in eternity, were eventually to become the children of the Deity Absolute. But I am unwilling to accept this solution of the mystery which enshrouds the future of the finaliters.

(116.8) 10:8.7 The Corps of the Finality embrace, among others, those mortals of time and space who have attained perfection in all that pertains to the will of God. As creatures and within the limits of creature capacity they fully and truly know God. Having thus found God as the Father of all creatures, these finaliters must sometime begin the quest for the superfinite Father. But this quest involves a grasp of the absonite nature of the ultimate attributes and character of the Paradise Father. Eternity will disclose whether such an attainment is possible, but we are convinced, even if the finaliters do grasp this ultimate of divinity, they will probably be unable to attain the superultimate levels of absolute Deity.

(116.9) 10:8.8 It may be possible that the finaliters will partially attain the Deity Absolute, but even if they should, still in the eternity of eternities the problem of the Universal Absolute will continue to intrigue, mystify, baffle, and challenge the ascending and progressing finaliters, for we perceive that the unfathomability of the cosmic relationships of the Universal Absolute will tend to grow in proportions as the material universes and their spiritual administration continue to expand.

(117.1) 10:8.9 Only infinity can disclose the Father-Infinite.

(117.2) 10:8.10 [Sponsored by a Universal Censor acting by authority from the Ancients of Days resident on Uversa.]

Relation of the Infinite Spirit to the Universe

(98.1) 9:0.1 A STRANGE thing occurred when, in the presence of Paradise, the Universal Father and the Eternal Son unite to personalize themselves. Nothing in this eternity situation foreshadows that the Conjoint Actor would personalize as an unlimited spirituality co-ordinated with absolute mind and endowed with unique prerogatives of energy manipulation. His coming into being completes the Father’s liberation from the bonds of centralized perfection and from the fetters of personality absolutism. And this liberation is disclosed in the amazing power of the Conjoint Creator to create beings well adapted to serve as ministering spirits even to the material creatures of the subsequently evolving universes.

(98.2) 9:0.2 The Father is infinite in love and volition, in spiritual thought and purpose; he is the universal upholder. The Son is infinite in wisdom and truth, in spiritual expression and interpretation; he is the universal revealer. Paradise is infinite in potential for force endowment and in capacity for energy dominance; it is the universal stabilizer. The Conjoint Actor possesses unique prerogatives of synthesis, infinite capacity to co-ordinate all existing universe energies, all actual universe spirits, and all real universe intellects; the Third Source and Center is the universal unifier of the manifold energies and diverse creations which have appeared in consequence of the divine plan and the eternal purpose of the Universal Father.

(98.3) 9:0.3 The Infinite Spirit, the Conjoint Creator, is a universal and divine minister. The Spirit unceasingly ministers the Son’s mercy and the Father’s love, even in harmony with the stable, unvarying, and righteous justice of the Paradise Trinity. His influence and personalities are ever near you; they really know and truly understand you.

(98.4) 9:0.4 Throughout the universes the agencies of the Conjoint Actor ceaselessly manipulate the forces and energies of all space. Like the First Source and Center, the Third is responsive to both the spiritual and the material. The Conjoint Actor is the revelation of the unity of God, in whom all things consist — things, meanings, and values; energies, minds, and spirits.

(98.5) 9:0.5 The Infinite Spirit pervades all space; he indwells the circle of eternity; and the Spirit, like the Father and the Son, is perfect and changeless — absolute.

1. Attributes of the Third Source and Center

(98.6) 9:1.1 The Third Source and Center is known by many names, all designative of relationship and in recognition of function: As God the Spirit, he is the personality co-ordinate and divine equal of God the Son and God the Father. As the Infinite Spirit, he is an omnipresent spiritual influence. As the Universal Manipulator, he is the ancestor of the power-control creatures and the activator of the cosmic forces of space. As the Conjoint Actor, he is the joint representative and partnership executive of the Father-Son. As the Absolute Mind, he is the source of the endowment of intellect throughout the universes. As the God of Action, he is the apparent ancestor of motion, change, and relationship.

(99.1) 9:1.2 Some of the attributes of the Third Source and Center are derived from the Father, some from the Son, while still others are not observed to be actively and personally present in either the Father or the Son — attributes that can hardly be explained except by assuming that the Father-Son partnership which eternalizes the Third Source and Center consistently functions in consonance with, and in recognition of, the eternal fact of the absoluteness of Paradise. The Conjoint Creator embodies the fullness of the combined and infinite concepts of the First and Second Persons of Deity.

(99.2) 9:1.3 While you envisage the Father as an original creator and the Son as a spiritual administrator, you should think of the Third Source and Center as a universal co-ordinator, a minister of unlimited co-operation. The Conjoint Actor is the correlator of all actual reality; he is the Deity repository of the Father’s thought and the Son’s word and in action is eternally regardful of the material absoluteness of the central Isle. The Paradise Trinity has ordained the universal order of progress, and the providence of God is the domain of the Conjoint Creator and the evolving Supreme Being. No actual or actualizing reality can escape eventual relationship with the Third Source and Center.

(99.3) 9:1.4 The Universal Father presides over the realms of pre-energy, prespirit, and personality; the Eternal Son dominates the spheres of spiritual activities; the presence of the Isle of Paradise unifies the domain of physical energy and materializing power; the Conjoint Actor operates not only as an infinite spirit representing the Son but also as a universal manipulator of the forces and energies of Paradise, thus bringing into existence the universal and absolute mind. The Conjoint Actor functions throughout the grand universe as a positive and distinct personality, especially in the higher spheres of spiritual values, physical-energy relationships, and true mind meanings. He functions specifically wherever and whenever energy and spirit associate and interact; he dominates all reactions with mind, wields great power in the spiritual world, and exerts a mighty influence over energy and matter. At all times the Third Source is expressive of the nature of the First Source and Center.

(99.4) 9:1.5 The Third Source and Center perfectly and without qualification shares the omnipresence of the First Source and Center, sometimes being called the Omnipresent Spirit. In a peculiar and very personal manner the God of mind shares the omniscience of the Universal Father and his Eternal Son; the knowledge of the Spirit is profound and complete. The Conjoint Creator manifests certain phases of the omnipotence of the Universal Father but is actually omnipotent only in the domain of mind. The Third Person of Deity is the intellectual center and the universal administrator of the mind realms; herein is he absolute — his sovereignty is unqualified.

(99.5) 9:1.6 The Conjoint Actor seems to be motivated by the Father-Son partnership, but all his actions appear to recognize the Father-Paradise relationship. At times and in certain functions he seems to compensate for the incompleteness of the development of the experiential Deities — God the Supreme and God the Ultimate.

(100.1) 9:1.7 And herein is an infinite mystery: That the Infinite simultaneously revealed his infinity in the Son and as Paradise, and then there springs into existence a being equal to God in divinity, reflective of the Son’s spiritual nature, and capable of activating the Paradise pattern, a being provisionally subordinate in sovereignty but in many ways apparently the most versatile in action. And such apparent superiority in action is disclosed in an attribute of the Third Source and Center which is superior even to physical gravity — the universal manifestation of the Isle of Paradise.

(100.2) 9:1.8 In addition to this supercontrol of energy and things physical, the Infinite Spirit is superbly endowed with those attributes of patience, mercy, and love which are so exquisitely revealed in his spiritual ministry. The Spirit is supremely competent to minister love and to overshadow justice with mercy. God the Spirit possesses all the supernal kindness and merciful affection of the Original and Eternal Son. The universe of your origin is being forged out between the anvil of justice and the hammer of suffering; but those who wield the hammer are the children of mercy, the spirit offspring of the Infinite Spirit.

2. The Omnipresent Spirit

(100.3) 9:2.1 God is spirit in a threefold sense: He himself is spirit; in his Son he appears as spirit without qualification; in the Conjoint Actor, as spirit allied with mind. And in addition to these spiritual realities, we think we discern levels of experiential spirit phenomena — the spirits of the Supreme Being, Ultimate Deity, and Deity Absolute.

(100.4) 9:2.2 The Infinite Spirit is just as much a complement of the Eternal Son as the Son is a complement of the Universal Father. The Eternal Son is a spiritualized personalization of the Father; the Infinite Spirit is a personalized spiritualization of the Eternal Son and the Universal Father.

(100.5) 9:2.3 There are many untrammeled lines of spiritual force and sources of supermaterial power linking the people of Urantia directly with the Deities of Paradise. There exist the connection of the Thought Adjusters direct with the Universal Father, the widespread influence of the spiritual-gravity urge of the Eternal Son, and the spiritual presence of the Conjoint Creator. There is a difference in function between the spirit of the Son and the spirit of the Spirit. The Third Person in his spiritual ministry may function as mind plus spirit or as spirit alone.

(100.6) 9:2.4 In addition to these Paradise presences, Urantians benefit by the spiritual influences and activities of the local and the superuniverse, with their almost endless array of loving personalities who ever lead the true of purpose and the honest of heart upward and inward towards the ideals of divinity and the goal of supreme perfection.

(100.7) 9:2.5 The presence of the universal spirit of the Eternal Son we know — we can unmistakably recognize it. The presence of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity, even mortal man may know, for material creatures can actually experience the beneficence of this divine influence which functions as the Holy Spirit of local universe bestowal upon the races of mankind. Human beings can also in some degree become conscious of the Adjuster, the impersonal presence of the Universal Father. These divine spirits which work for man’s uplifting and spiritualization all act in unison and in perfect co-operation. They are as one in the spiritual operation of the plans of mortal ascension and perfection attainment.

3. The Universal Manipulator

(101.1) 9:3.1 The Isle of Paradise is the source and substance of physical gravity; and that should be sufficient to inform you that gravity is one of the most real and eternally dependable things in the whole physical universe of universes. Gravity cannot be modified or annulled except by the forces and energies conjointly sponsored by the Father and the Son, which have been intrusted to, and are functionally associated with, the person of the Third Source and Center.

(101.2) 9:3.2 The Infinite Spirit possesses a unique and amazing power — antigravity. This power is not functionally (observably) present in either the Father or the Son. This ability to withstand the pull of material gravity, inherent in the Third Source, is revealed in the personal reactions of the Conjoint Actor to certain phases of universe relationships. And this unique attribute is transmissible to certain of the higher personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

(101.3) 9:3.3 Antigravity can annul gravity within a local frame; it does so by the exercise of equal force presence. It operates only with reference to material gravity, and it is not the action of mind. The gravity-resistant phenomenon of a gyroscope is a fair illustration of the effect of antigravity but of no value to illustrate the cause of antigravity.

(101.4) 9:3.4 Still further does the Conjoint Actor display powers which can transcend force and neutralize energy. Such powers operate by slowing down energy to the point of materialization and by other techniques unknown to you.

(101.5) 9:3.5 The Conjoint Creator is not energy nor the source of energy nor the destiny of energy; he is the manipulator of energy. The Conjoint Creator is action — motion, change, modification, co-ordination, stabilization, and equilibrium. The energies subject to the direct or indirect control of Paradise are by nature responsive to the acts of the Third Source and Center and his manifold agencies.

(101.6) 9:3.6 The universe of universes is permeated by the power-control creatures of the Third Source and Center: physical controllers, power directors, power centers, and other representatives of the God of Action who have to do with the regulation and stabilization of physical energies. These unique creatures of physical function all possess varying attributes of power control, such as antigravity, which they utilize in their efforts to establish the physical equilibrium of the matter and energies of the grand universe.

(101.7) 9:3.7 All these material activities of the God of Action appear to relate his function to the Isle of Paradise, and indeed the agencies of power are all regardful of, even dependent on, the absoluteness of the eternal Isle. But the Conjoint Actor does not act for, or in response to, Paradise. He acts, personally, for the Father and the Son. Paradise is not a person. The nonpersonal, impersonal, and otherwise not personal doings of the Third Source and Center are all volitional acts of the Conjoint Actor himself; they are not reflections, derivations, or repercussions of anything or anybody.

(101.8) 9:3.8 Paradise is the pattern of infinity; the God of Action is the activator of that pattern. Paradise is the material fulcrum of infinity; the agencies of the Third Source and Center are the levers of intelligence which motivate the material level and inject spontaneity into the mechanism of the physical creation.

4. The Absolute Mind

(102.1) 9:4.1 There is an intellectual nature of the Third Source and Center that is distinct from his physical and spiritual attributes. Such a nature is hardly contactable, but it is associable — intellectually though not personally. It is distinguishable from the physical attributes and the spiritual character of the Third Person on mind levels of function, but to the discernment of personalities this nature never functions independently of physical or spiritual manifestations.

(102.2) 9:4.2 The absolute mind is the mind of the Third Person; it is inseparable from the personality of God the Spirit. Mind, in functioning beings, is not separated from energy or spirit, or both. Mind is not inherent in energy; energy is receptive and responsive to mind; mind can be superimposed upon energy, but consciousness is not inherent in the purely material level. Mind does not have to be added to pure spirit, for spirit is innately conscious and identifying. Spirit is always intelligent, minded in some way. It may be this mind or that mind, it may be premind or supermind, even spirit mind, but it does the equivalent of thinking and knowing. The insight of spirit transcends, supervenes, and theoretically antedates the consciousness of mind.

(102.3) 9:4.3 The Conjoint Creator is absolute only in the domain of mind, in the realms of universal intelligence. The mind of the Third Source and Center is infinite; it utterly transcends the active and functioning mind circuits of the universe of universes. The mind endowment of the seven superuniverses is derived from the Seven Master Spirits, the primary personalities of the Conjoint Creator. These Master Spirits distribute mind to the grand universe as the cosmic mind, and your local universe is pervaded by the Nebadon variant of the Orvonton type of cosmic mind.

(102.4) 9:4.4 Infinite mind ignores time, ultimate mind transcends time, cosmic mind is conditioned by time. And so with space: The Infinite Mind is independent of space, but as descent is made from the infinite to the adjutant levels of mind, intellect must increasingly reckon with the fact and limitations of space.

(102.5) 9:4.5 Cosmic force responds to mind even as cosmic mind responds to spirit. Spirit is divine purpose, and spirit mind is divine purpose in action. Energy is thing, mind is meaning, spirit is value. Even in time and space, mind establishes those relative relationships between energy and spirit which are suggestive of mutual kinship in eternity.

(102.6) 9:4.6 Mind transmutes the values of spirit into the meanings of intellect; volition has power to bring the meanings of mind to fruit in both the material and spiritual domains. The Paradise ascent involves a relative and differential growth in spirit, mind, and energy. The personality is the unifier of these components of experiential individuality.

5. The Ministry of Mind

(102.7) 9:5.1 The Third Source and Center is infinite in mind. If the universe should grow to infinity, still his mind potential would be adequate to endow limitless numbers of creatures with suitable minds and other prerequisites of intellect.

(102.8) 9:5.2 In the domain of created mind the Third Person, with his co-ordinate and subordinate associates, rules supreme. The realms of creature mind are of exclusive origin in the Third Source and Center; he is the bestower of mind. Even the Father fragments find it impossible to indwell the minds of men until the way has been properly prepared for them by the mind action and spiritual function of the Infinite Spirit.

(103.1) 9:5.3 The unique feature of mind is that it can be bestowed upon such a wide range of life. Through his creative and creature associates the Third Source and Center ministers to all minds on all spheres. He ministers to human and subhuman intellect through the adjutants of the local universes and, through the agency of the physical controllers, ministers even to the lowest nonexperiencing entities of the most primitive types of living things. And always is the direction of mind a ministry of mind-spirit or mind-energy personalities.

(103.2) 9:5.4 Since the Third Person of Deity is the source of mind, it is quite natural that the evolutionary will creatures find it easier to form comprehensible concepts of the Infinite Spirit than they do of either the Eternal Son or the Universal Father. The reality of the Conjoint Creator is disclosed imperfectly in the very existence of human mind. The Conjoint Creator is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and the mind of man is an individualized circuit, an impersonal portion, of that cosmic mind as it is bestowed in a local universe by a Creative Daughter of the Third Source and Center.

(103.3) 9:5.5 Because the Third Person is the source of mind, do not presume to reckon that all phenomena of mind are divine. Human intellect is rooted in the material origin of the animal races. Universe intelligence is no more a true revelation of God who is mind than is physical nature a true revelation of the beauty and harmony of Paradise. Perfection is in nature, but nature is not perfect. The Conjoint Creator is the source of mind, but mind is not the Conjoint Creator.

(103.4) 9:5.6 Mind, on Urantia, is a compromise between the essence of thought perfection and the evolving mentality of your immature human nature. The plan for your intellectual evolution is, indeed, one of sublime perfection, but you are far short of that divine goal as you function in the tabernacles of the flesh. Mind is truly of divine origin, and it does have a divine destiny, but your mortal minds are not yet of divine dignity.

(103.5) 9:5.7 Too often, all too often, you mar your minds by insincerity and sear them with unrighteousness; you subject them to animal fear and distort them by useless anxiety. Therefore, though the source of mind is divine, mind as you know it on your world of ascension can hardly become the object of great admiration, much less of adoration or worship. The contemplation of the immature and inactive human intellect should lead only to reactions of humility.

6. The Mind-Gravity Circuit

(103.6) 9:6.1 The Third Source and Center, the universal intelligence, is personally conscious of every mind, every intellect, in all creation, and he maintains a personal and perfect contact with all these physical, morontial, and spiritual creatures of mind endowment in the far-flung universes. All these activities of mind are grasped in the absolute mind-gravity circuit which focalizes in the Third Source and Center and is a part of the personal consciousness of the Infinite Spirit.

(103.7) 9:6.2 Much as the Father draws all personality to himself, and as the Son attracts all spiritual reality, so does the Conjoint Actor exercise a drawing power on all minds; he unqualifiedly dominates and controls the universal mind circuit. All true and genuine intellectual values, all divine thoughts and perfect ideas, are unerringly drawn into this absolute circuit of mind.

(104.1) 9:6.3 Mind gravity can operate independently of material and spiritual gravity, but wherever and whenever the latter two impinge, mind gravity always functions. When all three are associated, personality gravity may embrace the material creature — physical or morontial, finite or absonite. But irrespective of this, the endowment of mind even in impersonal beings qualifies them to think and endows them with consciousness despite the total absence of personality.

(104.2) 9:6.4 Selfhood of personality dignity, human or divine, immortal or potentially immortal, does not however originate in either spirit, mind, or matter; it is the bestowal of the Universal Father. Neither is the interaction of spirit, mind, and material gravity a prerequisite to the appearance of personality gravity. The Father’s circuit may embrace a mind-material being who is unresponsive to spirit gravity, or it may include a mind-spirit being who is unresponsive to material gravity. The operation of personality gravity is always a volitional act of the Universal Father.

(104.3) 9:6.5 While mind is energy associated in purely material beings and spirit associated in purely spiritual personalities, innumerable orders of personality, including the human, possess minds that are associated with both energy and spirit. The spiritual aspects of creature mind unfailingly respond to the spirit-gravity pull of the Eternal Son; the material features respond to the gravity urge of the material universe.

(104.4) 9:6.6 Cosmic mind, when not associated with either energy or spirit, is subject to the gravity demands of neither material nor spiritual circuits. Pure mind is subject only to the universal gravity grasp of the Conjoint Actor. Pure mind is close of kin to infinite mind, and infinite mind (the theoretical co-ordinate of the absolutes of spirit and energy) is apparently a law in itself.

(104.5) 9:6.7 The greater the spirit-energy divergence, the greater the observable function of mind; the lesser the diversity of energy and spirit, the lesser the observable function of mind. Apparently, the maximum function of the cosmic mind is in the time universes of space. Here mind seems to function in a mid-zone between energy and spirit, but this is not true of the higher levels of mind; on Paradise, energy and spirit are essentially one.

(104.6) 9:6.8 The mind-gravity circuit is dependable; it emanates from the Third Person of Deity on Paradise, but not all the observable function of mind is predictable. Throughout all known creation there parallels this circuit of mind some little-understood presence whose function is not predictable. We believe that this unpredictability is partly attributable to the function of the Universal Absolute. What this function is, we do not know; what actuates it, we can only conjecture; concerning its relation to creatures, we can only speculate.

(104.7) 9:6.9 Certain phases of the unpredictability of finite mind may be due to the incompleteness of the Supreme Being, and there is a vast zone of activities wherein the Conjoint Actor and the Universal Absolute may possibly be tangent. There is much about mind that is unknown, but of this we are sure: The Infinite Spirit is the perfect expression of the mind of the Creator to all creatures; the Supreme Being is the evolving expression of the minds of all creatures to their Creator.

7. Universe Reflectivity

(105.1) 9:7.1 The Conjoint Actor is able to co-ordinate all levels of universe actuality in such manner as to make possible the simultaneous recognition of the mental, the material, and the spiritual. This is the phenomenon of universe reflectivity, that unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire throughout a superuniverse, and to focalize, by reflectivity, all this information and knowledge at any desired point. The action of reflectivity is shown in perfection on each of the headquarters worlds of the seven superuniverses. It is also operative throughout all sectors of the superuniverses and within the boundaries of the local universes. Reflectivity finally focalizes on Paradise.

(105.2) 9:7.2 The phenomenon of reflectivity, as it is disclosed on the superuniverse headquarters worlds in the amazing performances of the reflective personalities there stationed, represents the most complex interassociation of all phases of existence to be found in all creation. Lines of spirit can be traced back to the Son, physical energy to Paradise, and mind to the Third Source; but in the extraordinary phenomenon of universe reflectivity there is a unique and exceptional unification of all three, so associated as to enable the universe rulers to know about remote conditions instantaneously, simultaneously with their occurrence.

(105.3) 9:7.3 Much of the technique of reflectivity we comprehend, but there are many phases which truly baffle us. We know that the Conjoint Actor is the universe center of the mind circuit, that he is the ancestor of the cosmic mind, and that cosmic mind operates under the dominance of the absolute mind gravity of the Third Source and Center. We know further that the circuits of the cosmic mind influence the intellectual levels of all known existence; they contain the universal space reports, and just as certainly they focus in the Seven Master Spirits and converge in the Third Source and Center.

(105.4) 9:7.4 The relationship between the finite cosmic mind and the divine absolute mind appears to be evolving in the experiential mind of the Supreme. We are taught that, in the dawn of time, this experiential mind was bestowed upon the Supreme by the Infinite Spirit, and we conjecture that certain features of the phenomenon of reflectivity can be accounted for only by postulating the activity of the Supreme Mind. If the Supreme is not concerned in reflectivity, we are at a loss to explain the intricate transactions and unerring operations of this consciousness of the cosmos.

(105.5) 9:7.5 Reflectivity appears to be omniscience within the limits of the experiential finite and may represent the emergence of the presence-consciousness of the Supreme Being. If this assumption is true, then the utilization of reflectivity in any of its phases is equivalent to partial contact with the consciousness of the Supreme.

8. Personalities of the Infinite Spirit

(105.6) 9:8.1 The Infinite Spirit possesses full power to transmit many of his powers and prerogatives to his co-ordinate and subordinate personalities and agencies.

(105.7) 9:8.2 The first Deity-creating act of the Infinite Spirit, functioning apart from the Trinity but in some unrevealed association with the Father and the Son, personalized in the existence of the Seven Master Spirits of Paradise, the distributors of the Infinite Spirit to the universes.

(106.1) 9:8.3 There is no direct representative of the Third Source and Center on the headquarters of a superuniverse. Each of these seven creations is dependent on one of the Master Spirits of Paradise, who acts through the seven Reflective Spirits situated at the capital of the superuniverse.

(106.2) 9:8.4 The next and continuing creative act of the Infinite Spirit is disclosed, from time to time, in the production of the Creative Spirits. Every time the Universal Father and the Eternal Son become parent to a Creator Son, the Infinite Spirit becomes ancestor to a local universe Creative Spirit who becomes the close associate of that Creator Son in all subsequent universe experience.

(106.3) 9:8.5 Just as it is necessary to distinguish between the Eternal Son and the Creator Sons, so it is necessary to differentiate between the Infinite Spirit and the Creative Spirits, the local universe co-ordinates of the Creator Sons. What the Infinite Spirit is to the total creation, a Creative Spirit is to a local universe.

(106.4) 9:8.6 The Third Source and Center is represented in the grand universe by a vast array of ministering spirits, messengers, teachers, adjudicators, helpers, and advisers, together with supervisors of certain circuits of physical, morontial, and spiritual nature. Not all of these beings are personalities in the strict meaning of the term. Personality of the finite-creature variety is characterized by:

(106.5) 9:8.7 1. Subjective self-consciousness.

(106.6) 9:8.8 2. Objective response to the Father’s personality circuit.

(106.7) 9:8.9 There are creator personalities and creature personalities, and in addition to these two fundamental types there are personalities of the Third Source and Center, beings who are personal to the Infinite Spirit, but who are not unqualifiedly personal to creature beings. These Third Source personalities are not a part of the Father’s personality circuit. First Source personality and Third Source personality are mutually contactable; all personality is contactable.

(106.8) 9:8.10 The Father bestows personality by his personal free will. Why he does so we can only conjecture; how he does so we do not know. Neither do we know why the Third Source bestows non-Father personality, but this the Infinite Spirit does in his own behalf, in creative conjunction with the Eternal Son and in numerous ways unknown to you. The Infinite Spirit can also act for the Father in the bestowal of First Source personality.

(106.9) 9:8.11 There are numerous types of Third Source personalities. The Infinite Spirit bestows Third Source personality upon numerous groups who are not included in the Father’s personality circuit, such as certain of the power directors. Likewise does the Infinite Spirit treat as personalities numerous groups of beings, such as the Creative Spirits, who are in a class by themselves in their relations to encircuited creatures of the Father.

(106.10) 9:8.12 Both First Source and Third Source personalities are endowed with all and more than man associates with the concept of personality; they have minds embracing memory, reason, judgment, creative imagination, idea association, decision, choice, and numerous additional powers of intellect wholly unknown to mortals. With few exceptions the orders revealed to you possess form and distinct individuality; they are real beings. A majority of them are visible to all orders of spirit existence.

(107.1) 9:8.13 Even you will be able to see your spiritual associates of the lower orders as soon as you are delivered from the limited vision of your present material eyes and have been endowed with a morontia form with its enlarged sensitivity to the reality of spiritual things.

(107.2) 9:8.14 The functional family of the Third Source and Center, as it is revealed in these narratives, falls into three great groups:

(107.3) 9:8.15 I. The Supreme Spirits. A group of composite origin that embraces, among others, the following orders:

(107.4) 9:8.16 1. The Seven Master Spirits of Paradise.

(107.5) 9:8.17 2. The Reflective Spirits of the Superuniverses.

(107.6) 9:8.18 3. The Creative Spirits of the Local Universes.

(107.7) 9:8.19 II. The Power Directors. A group of control creatures and agencies that function throughout all organized space.

(107.8) 9:8.20 III. The Personalities of the Infinite Spirit. This designation does not necessarily imply that these beings are Third Source personalities though some of them are unique as will creatures. They are usually grouped in three major classifications:

(107.9) 9:8.21 1. The Higher Personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

(107.10) 9:8.22 2. The Messenger Hosts of Space.

(107.11) 9:8.23 3. The Ministering Spirits of Time.

(107.12) 9:8.24 These groups serve on Paradise, in the central or residential universe, in the superuniverses, and they embrace orders that function in the local universes, even to the constellations, systems, and planets.

(107.13) 9:8.25 The spirit personalities of the vast family of the Divine and Infinite Spirit are forever dedicated to the service of the ministry of the love of God and the mercy of the Son to all the intelligent creatures of the evolutionary worlds of time and space

The Infinite Spirit

(90.1) 8:0.1 BACK in eternity, when the Universal Father’s “first” infinite and absolute thought finds in the Eternal Son such a perfect and adequate word for its divine expression, there ensues the supreme desire of both the Thought-God and the Word-God for a universal and infinite agent of mutual expression and combined action.

(90.2) 8:0.2 In the dawn of eternity both the Father and the Son become infinitely cognizant of their mutual interdependence, their eternal and absolute oneness; and therefore do they enter into an infinite and everlasting covenant of divine partnership. This never-ending compact is made for the execution of their united concepts throughout all of the circle of eternity; and ever since this eternity event the Father and the Son continue in this divine union.

(90.3) 8:0.3 We are now face to face with the eternity origin of the Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity. The very instant that God the Father and God the Son conjointly conceive an identical and infinite action — the execution of an absolute thought-plan — that very moment, the Infinite Spirit springs full-fledgedly into existence.

(90.4) 8:0.4 In thus reciting the order of the origin of the Deities, I do so merely to enable you to think of their relationship. In reality they are all three existent from eternity; they are existential. They are without beginning or ending of days; they are co-ordinate, supreme, ultimate, absolute, and infinite. They are and always have been and ever shall be. And they are three distinctly individualized but eternally associated persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

1. The God of Action

(90.5) 8:1.1 In the eternity of the past, upon the personalization of the Infinite Spirit the divine personality cycle becomes perfect and complete. The God of Action is existent, and the vast stage of space is set for the stupendous drama of creation — the universal adventure — the divine panorama of the eternal ages.

(90.6) 8:1.2 The first act of the Infinite Spirit is the inspection and recognition of his divine parents, the Father-Father and the Mother-Son. He, the Spirit, unqualifiedly identifies both of them. He is fully cognizant of their separate personalities and infinite attributes as well as of their combined nature and united function. Next, voluntarily, with transcendent willingness and inspiring spontaneity, the Third Person of Deity, notwithstanding his equality with the First and Second Persons, pledges eternal loyalty to God the Father and acknowledges everlasting dependence upon God the Son.

(90.7) 8:1.3 Inherent in the nature of this transaction and in mutual recognition of the personality independence of each and the executive union of all three, the cycle of eternity is established. The Paradise Trinity is existent. The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father through the personality of the Eternal Son and by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Son creator partnership.

(91.1) 8:1.4 The God of Action functions and the dead vaults of space are astir. One billion perfect spheres flash into existence. Prior to this hypothetical eternity moment the space-energies inherent in Paradise are existent and potentially operative, but they have no actuality of being; neither can physical gravity be measured except by the reaction of material realities to its incessant pull. There is no material universe at this (assumed) eternally distant moment, but the very instant that one billion worlds materialize, there is in evidence gravity sufficient and adequate to hold them in the everlasting grasp of Paradise.

(91.2) 8:1.5 There now flashes through the creation of the Gods the second form of energy, and this outflowing spirit is instantly grasped by the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. Thus the twofold gravity-embraced universe is touched with the energy of infinity and immersed in the spirit of divinity. In this way is the soil of life prepared for the consciousness of mind made manifest in the associated intelligence circuits of the Infinite Spirit.

(91.3) 8:1.6 Upon these seeds of potential existence, diffused throughout the central creation of the Gods, the Father acts, and creature personality appears. Then does the presence of the Paradise Deities fill all organized space and begin effectively to draw all things and beings Paradiseward.

(91.4) 8:1.7 The Infinite Spirit eternalizes concurrently with the birth of the Havona worlds, this central universe being created by him and with him and in him in obedience to the combined concepts and united wills of the Father and the Son. The Third Person deitizes by this very act of conjoint creation, and he thus forever becomes the Conjoint Creator.

(91.5) 8:1.8 These are the grand and awful times of the creative expansion of the Father and the Son by, and in, the action of their conjoint associate and exclusive executive, the Third Source and Center. There exists no record of these stirring times. We have only the meager disclosures of the Infinite Spirit to substantiate these mighty transactions, and he merely verifies the fact that the central universe and all that pertains thereto eternalized simultaneously with his attainment of personality and conscious existence.

(91.6) 8:1.9 In brief, the Infinite Spirit testifies that, since he is eternal, so also is the central universe eternal. And this is the traditional starting point of the history of the universe of universes. Absolutely nothing is known, and no records are in existence, regarding any event or transaction prior to this stupendous eruption of creative energy and administrative wisdom that crystallized the vast universe which exists, and so exquisitely functions, at the center of all things. Beyond this event lie the unsearchable transactions of eternity and the depths of infinity — absolute mystery.

(91.7) 8:1.10 And we thus portray the sequential origin of the Third Source and Center as an interpretative condescension to the time-bound and space-conditioned mind of mortal creatures. The mind of man must have a starting point for the visualization of universe history, and I have been directed to provide this technique of approach to the historic concept of eternity. In the material mind, consistency demands a First Cause; therefore do we postulate the Universal Father as the First Source and the Absolute Center of all creation, at the same time instructing all creature minds that the Son and the Spirit are coeternal with the Father in all phases of universe history and in all realms of creative activity. And we do this without in any sense being disregardful of the reality and eternity of the Isle of Paradise and of the Unqualified, Universal, and Deity Absolutes.

(92.1) 8:1.11 It is enough of a reach of the material mind of the children of time to conceive of the Father in eternity. We know that any child can best relate himself to reality by first mastering the relationships of the child-parent situation and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. Subsequently the growing mind of the child will be able to adjust to the concept of family relations, to relationships of the community, the race, and the world, and then to those of the universe, the superuniverse, even the universe of universes.

2. Nature of the Infinite Spirit

(92.2) 8:2.1 The Conjoint Creator is from eternity and is wholly and without qualification one with the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Infinite Spirit reflects in perfection not only the nature of the Paradise Father but also the nature of the Original Son.

(92.3) 8:2.2 The Third Source and Center is known by numerous titles: the Universal Spirit, the Supreme Guide, the Conjoint Creator, the Divine Executive, the Infinite Mind, the Spirit of Spirits, the Paradise Mother Spirit, the Conjoint Actor, the Final Co-ordinator, the Omnipresent Spirit, the Absolute Intelligence, the Divine Action; and on Urantia he is sometimes confused with the cosmic mind.

(92.4) 8:2.3 It is altogether proper to denominate the Third Person of Deity the Infinite Spirit, for God is spirit. But material creatures who tend towards the error of viewing matter as basic reality and mind, together with spirit, as postulates rooted in matter, would better comprehend the Third Source and Center if he were called the Infinite Reality, the Universal Organizer, or the Personality Co-ordinator.

(92.5) 8:2.4 The Infinite Spirit, as a universe revelation of divinity, is unsearchable and utterly beyond human comprehension. To sense the absoluteness of the Spirit, you need only contemplate the infinity of the Universal Father and stand in awe of the eternity of the Original Son.

(92.6) 8:2.5 There is mystery indeed in the person of the Infinite Spirit but not so much as in the Father and the Son. Of all aspects of the Father’s nature, the Conjoint Creator most strikingly discloses his infinity. Even if the master universe eventually expands to infinity, the spirit presence, energy control, and mind potential of the Conjoint Actor will be found adequate to meet the demands of such a limitless creation.

(92.7) 8:2.6 Though in every way sharing the perfection, the righteousness, and the love of the Universal Father, the Infinite Spirit inclines towards the mercy attributes of the Eternal Son, thus becoming the mercy minister of the Paradise Deities to the grand universe. Ever and always — universally and eternally — the Spirit is a mercy minister, for, as the divine Sons reveal the love of God, so the divine Spirit depicts the mercy of God.

(93.1) 8:2.7 It is not possible that the Spirit could have more of goodness than the Father since all goodness takes origin in the Father, but in the acts of the Spirit we can the better comprehend such goodness. The Father’s faithfulness and the Son’s constancy are made very real to the spirit beings and the material creatures of the spheres by the loving ministry and ceaseless service of the personalities of the Infinite Spirit.

(93.2) 8:2.8 The Conjoint Creator inherits all the Father’s beauty of thought and character of truth. And these sublime traits of divinity are co-ordinated in the near-supreme levels of the cosmic mind in subordination to the infinite and eternal wisdom of the unconditioned and limitless mind of the Third Source and Center.

3. Relation of the Spirit to the Father and the Son

(93.3) 8:3.1 As the Eternal Son is the word expression of the “first” absolute and infinite thought of the Universal Father, so the Conjoint Actor is the perfect execution of the “first” completed creative concept or plan for combined action by the Father-Son personality partnership of absolute thought-word union. The Third Source and Center eternalizes concurrently with the central or fiat creation, and only this central creation is eternal in existence among universes.

(93.4) 8:3.2 Since the personalization of the Third Source, the First Source no more personally participates in universe creation. The Universal Father delegates everything possible to his Eternal Son; likewise does the Eternal Son bestow all possible authority and power upon the Conjoint Creator.

(93.5) 8:3.3 The Eternal Son and the Conjoint Creator have, as partners and through their co-ordinate personalities, planned and fashioned every post-Havona universe which has been brought into existence. The Spirit sustains the same personal relation to the Son in all subsequent creation that the Son sustains to the Father in the first and central creation.

(93.6) 8:3.4 A Creator Son of the Eternal Son and a Creative Spirit of the Infinite Spirit created you and your universe; and while the Father in faithfulness upholds that which they have organized, it devolves upon this Universe Son and this Universe Spirit to foster and sustain their work as well as to minister to the creatures of their own making.

(93.7) 8:3.5 The Infinite Spirit is the effective agent of the all-loving Father and the all-merciful Son for the execution of their conjoint project of drawing to themselves all truth-loving souls on all the worlds of time and space. The very instant the Eternal Son accepted his Father’s plan of perfection attainment for the creatures of the universes, the moment the ascension project became a Father-Son plan, that instant the Infinite Spirit became the conjoint administrator of the Father and the Son for the execution of their united and eternal purpose. And in so doing the Infinite Spirit pledged all his resources of divine presence and of spirit personalities to the Father and the Son; he has dedicated all to the stupendous plan of exalting surviving will creatures to the divine heights of Paradise perfection.

(93.8) 8:3.6 The Infinite Spirit is a complete, exclusive, and universal revelation of the Universal Father and his Eternal Son. All knowledge of the Father-Son partnership must be had through the Infinite Spirit, the conjoint representative of the divine thought-word union.

(93.9) 8:3.7 The Eternal Son is the only avenue of approach to the Universal Father, and the Infinite Spirit is the only means of attaining the Eternal Son. Only by the patient ministry of the Spirit are the ascendant beings of time able to discover the Son.

(94.1) 8:3.8 At the center of all things the Infinite Spirit is the first of the Paradise Deities to be attained by the ascending pilgrims. The Third Person enshrouds the Second and the First Persons and therefore must always be first recognized by all who are candidates for presentation to the Son and his Father.

(94.2) 8:3.9 And in many other ways does the Spirit equally represent and similarly serve the Father and the Son.

4. The Spirit of Divine Ministry

(94.3) 8:4.1 Paralleling the physical universe wherein Paradise gravity holds all things together is the spiritual universe wherein the word of the Son interprets the thought of God and, when “made flesh,” demonstrates the loving mercy of the combined nature of the associated Creators. But in and through all this material and spiritual creation there is a vast stage whereon the Infinite Spirit and his spirit offspring show forth the combined mercy, patience, and everlasting affection of the divine parents towards the intelligent children of their co-operative devising and making. Everlasting ministry to mind is the essence of the Spirit’s divine character. And all the spirit offspring of the Conjoint Actor partake of this desire to minister, this divine urge to service.

(94.4) 8:4.2 God is love, the Son is mercy, the Spirit is ministry — the ministry of divine love and endless mercy to all intelligent creation. The Spirit is the personification of the Father’s love and the Son’s mercy; in him are they eternally united for universal service. The Spirit is love applied to the creature creation, the combined love of the Father and the Son.

(94.5) 8:4.3 On Urantia the Infinite Spirit is known as an omnipresent influence, a universal presence, but in Havona you shall know him as a personal presence of actual ministry. Here the ministry of the Paradise Spirit is the exemplary and inspiring pattern for each of his co-ordinate Spirits and subordinate personalities ministering to the created beings on the worlds of time and space. In this divine universe the Infinite Spirit fully participated in the seven transcendental appearances of the Eternal Son; likewise did he participate with the original Michael Son in the seven bestowals upon the circuits of Havona, thereby becoming the sympathetic and understanding spirit minister to every pilgrim of time traversing these perfect circles on high.

(94.6) 8:4.4 When a Creator Son of God accepts the creatorship charge of responsibility for a projected local universe, the personalities of the Infinite Spirit pledge themselves as the tireless ministers of this Michael Son when he goes forth on his mission of creative adventure. Especially in the persons of the Creative Daughters, the local universe Mother Spirits, do we find the Infinite Spirit devoted to the task of fostering the ascension of the material creatures to higher and higher levels of spiritual attainment. And all this work of creature ministry is done in perfect harmony with the purposes, and in close association with the personalities, of the Creator Sons of these local universes.

(94.7) 8:4.5 As the Sons of God are engaged in the gigantic task of revealing the Father’s personality of love to a universe, so is the Infinite Spirit dedicated to the unending ministry of revealing the combined love of the Father and the Son to the individual minds of all the children of each universe. In these local creations the Spirit does not come down to the material races in the likeness of mortal flesh as do certain of the Sons of God, but the Infinite Spirit and his co-ordinate Spirits do downstep themselves, do joyfully undergo an amazing series of divinity attenuations, until they appear as angels to stand by your side and guide you through the lowly paths of earthly existence.

(95.1) 8:4.6 By this very diminishing series the Infinite Spirit does actually, and as a person, draw very near to every being of the animal-origin spheres. And all this the Spirit does without in the least invalidating his existence as the Third Person of Deity at the center of all things.

(95.2) 8:4.7 The Conjoint Creator is truly and forever the great ministering personality, the universal mercy minister. To comprehend the ministry of the Spirit, ponder the truth that he is the combined portrayal of the Father’s unending love and of the Son’s eternal mercy. The Spirit’s ministry is not, however, restricted solely to the representation of the Eternal Son and the Universal Father. The Infinite Spirit also possesses the power to minister to the creatures of the realm in his own name and right; the Third Person is of divine dignity and also bestows the universal ministry of mercy in his own behalf.

(95.3) 8:4.8 As man learns more of the loving and tireless ministry of the lower orders of the creature family of this Infinite Spirit, he will all the more admire and adore the transcendent nature and matchless character of this combined Action of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. Indeed is this Spirit “the eyes of the Lord which are ever over the righteous” and “the divine ears which are ever open to their prayers.”

5. The Presence of God

(95.4) 8:5.1 The outstanding attribute of the Infinite Spirit is omnipresence. Throughout all the universe of universes there is everywhere present this all-pervading spirit, which is so akin to the presence of a universal and divine mind. Both the Second Person and the Third Person of Deity are represented on all worlds by their ever-present spirits.

(95.5) 8:5.2 The Father is infinite and is therefore limited only by volition. In the bestowal of Adjusters and in the encircuitment of personality, the Father acts alone, but in the contact of spirit forces with intelligent beings, he utilizes the spirits and personalities of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. He is at will spiritually present equally with the Son or with the Conjoint Actor; he is present with the Son and in the Spirit. The Father is most certainly everywhere present, and we discern his presence by and through any and all of these diverse but associated forces, influences, and presences.

(95.6) 8:5.3 In your sacred writings the term Spirit of God seems to be used interchangeably to designate both the Infinite Spirit on Paradise and the Creative Spirit of your local universe. The Holy Spirit is the spiritual circuit of this Creative Daughter of the Paradise Infinite Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a circuit indigenous to each local universe and is confined to the spiritual realm of that creation; but the Infinite Spirit is omnipresent.

(95.7) 8:5.4 There are many spiritual influences, and they are all as one. Even the work of the Thought Adjusters, though independent of all other influences, unvaryingly coincides with the spirit ministry of the combined influences of the Infinite Spirit and a local universe Mother Spirit. As these spiritual presences operate in the lives of Urantians, they cannot be segregated. In your minds and upon your souls they function as one spirit, notwithstanding their diverse origins. And as this united spiritual ministration is experienced, it becomes to you the influence of the Supreme, “who is ever able to keep you from failing and to present you blameless before your Father on high.”

(96.1) 8:5.5 Ever remember that the Infinite Spirit is the Conjoint Actor; both the Father and the Son are functioning in and through him; he is present not only as himself but also as the Father and as the Son and as the Father-Son. In recognition of this and for many additional reasons the spirit presence of the Infinite Spirit is often referred to as “the spirit of God.”

(96.2) 8:5.6 It would also be consistent to refer to the liaison of all spiritual ministry as the spirit of God, for such a liaison is truly the union of the spirits of God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and God the Sevenfold — even the spirit of God the Supreme.

6. Personality of the Infinite Spirit

(96.3) 8:6.1 Do not allow the widespread bestowal and the far-flung distribution of the Third Source and Center to obscure or otherwise detract from the fact of his personality. The Infinite Spirit is a universe presence, an eternal action, a cosmic power, a holy influence, and a universal mind; he is all of these and infinitely more, but he is also a true and divine personality.

(96.4) 8:6.2 The Infinite Spirit is a complete and perfect personality, the divine equal and co-ordinate of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Conjoint Creator is just as real and visible to the higher intelligences of the universes as are the Father and the Son; indeed more so, for it is the Spirit whom all ascenders must attain before they may approach the Father through the Son.

(96.5) 8:6.3 The Infinite Spirit, the Third Person of Deity, is possessed of all the attributes which you associate with personality. The Spirit is endowed with absolute mind: “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.” The Spirit is endowed not only with mind but also with will. In the bestowal of his gifts it is recorded: “But all these works that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally and as he wills.”

(96.6) 8:6.4 “The love of the Spirit” is real, as also are his sorrows; therefore “Grieve not the Spirit of God.” Whether we observe the Infinite Spirit as Paradise Deity or as a local universe Creative Spirit, we find that the Conjoint Creator is not only the Third Source and Center but also a divine person. This divine personality also reacts to the universe as a person. The Spirit speaks to you, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says.” “The Spirit himself makes intercession for you.” The Spirit exerts a direct and personal influence upon created beings, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”

(96.7) 8:6.5 Even though we behold the phenomenon of the ministry of the Infinite Spirit to the remote worlds of the universe of universes, even though we envisage this same co-ordinating Deity acting in and through the untold legions of the manifold beings who take origin in the Third Source and Center, even though we recognize the omnipresence of the Spirit, nonetheless, we still affirm that this same Third Source and Center is a person, the Conjoint Creator of all things and all beings and all universes.

(96.8) 8:6.6 In the administration of universes the Father, Son, and Spirit are perfectly and eternally interassociated. Though each is engaged in a personal ministry to all creation, all three are divinely and absolutely interlocked in a service of creation and control which forever makes them one.

(97.1) 8:6.7 In the person of the Infinite Spirit the Father and the Son are mutually present, always and in unqualified perfection, for the Spirit is like the Father and like the Son, and also like the Father and the Son as they two are forever one.

(97.2) 8:6.8 [Presented on Urantia by a Divine Counselor of Uversa commissioned by the Ancients of Days to portray the nature and work of the Infinite Spirit.]

Relation of the Eternal Son to the Universe

(81.1) 7:0.1 THE Original Son is ever concerned with the execution of the spiritual aspects of the Father’s eternal purpose as it progressively unfolds in the phenomena of the evolving universes with their manifold groups of living beings. We do not fully comprehend this eternal plan, but the Paradise Son undoubtedly does.

(81.2) 7:0.2 The Son is like the Father in that he seeks to bestow everything possible of himself upon his co-ordinate Sons and upon their subordinate Sons. And the Son shares the Father’s self-distributive nature in the unstinted bestowal of himself upon the Infinite Spirit, their conjoint executive.

(81.3) 7:0.3 As the upholder of spirit realities, the Second Source and Center is the eternal counterpoise of the Isle of Paradise, which so magnificently upholds all things material. Thus is the First Source and Center forever revealed in the material beauty of the exquisite patterns of the central Isle and in the spiritual values of the supernal personality of the Eternal Son.

(81.4) 7:0.4 The Eternal Son is the actual upholder of the vast creation of spirit realities and spiritual beings. The spirit world is the habit, the personal conduct, of the Son, and the impersonal realities of spirit nature are always responsive to the will and purpose of the perfect personality of the Absolute Son.

(81.5) 7:0.5 The Son is not, however, personally responsible for the conduct of all spirit personalities. The will of the personal creature is relatively free and hence determines the actions of such volitional beings. Therefore the freewill spirit world is not always truly representative of the character of the Eternal Son, even as nature on Urantia is not truly revelatory of the perfection and immutability of Paradise and Deity. But no matter what may characterize the freewill action of man or angel, the Son’s eternal grasp of the universal gravity control of all spirit realities continues as absolute.

1. The Spirit-Gravity Circuit

(81.6) 7:1.1 Everything taught concerning the immanence of God, his omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience, is equally true of the Son in the spiritual domains. The pure and universal spirit gravity of all creation, this exclusively spiritual circuit, leads directly back to the person of the Second Source and Center on Paradise. He presides over the control and operation of that ever-present and unerring spiritual grasp of all true spirit values. Thus does the Eternal Son exercise absolute spiritual sovereignty. He literally holds all spirit realities and all spiritualized values, as it were, in the hollow of his hand. The control of universal spiritual gravity is universal spiritual sovereignty.

(82.1) 7:1.2 This gravity control of spiritual things operates independently of time and space; therefore is spirit energy undiminished in transmission. Spirit gravity never suffers time delays, nor does it undergo space diminution. It does not decrease in accordance with the square of the distance of its transmission; the circuits of pure spirit power are not retarded by the mass of the material creation. And this transcendence of time and space by pure spirit energies is inherent in the absoluteness of the Son; it is not due to the interposition of the antigravity forces of the Third Source and Center.

(82.2) 7:1.3 Spirit realities respond to the drawing power of the center of spiritual gravity in accordance with their qualitative value, their actual degree of spirit nature. Spirit substance (quality) is just as responsive to spirit gravity as the organized energy of physical matter (quantity) is responsive to physical gravity. Spiritual values and spirit forces are real. From the viewpoint of personality, spirit is the soul of creation; matter is the shadowy physical body.

(82.3) 7:1.4 The reactions and fluctuations of spirit gravity are ever true to the content of spiritual values, the qualitative spiritual status of an individual or a world. This drawing power is instantly responsive to the inter- and intraspirit values of any universe situation or planetary condition. Every time a spiritual reality actualizes in the universes, this change necessitates the immediate and instantaneous readjustment of spirit gravity. Such a new spirit is actually a part of the Second Source and Center; and just as certainly as mortal man becomes a spiritized being, he will attain the spiritual Son, the center and source of spirit gravity.

(82.4) 7:1.5 The Son’s spiritual drawing power is inherent to a lesser degree in many Paradise orders of sonship. For there do exist within the absolute spirit-gravity circuit those local systems of spiritual attraction that function in the lesser units of creation. Such subabsolute focalizations of spirit gravity are a part of the divinity of the Creator personalities of time and space and are correlated with the emerging experiential overcontrol of the Supreme Being.

(82.5) 7:1.6 Spirit-gravity pull and response thereto operate not only on the universe as a whole but also even between individuals and groups of individuals. There is a spiritual cohesiveness among the spiritual and spiritized personalities of any world, race, nation, or believing group of individuals. There is a direct attractiveness of a spirit nature between spiritually minded persons of like tastes and longings. The term kindred spirits is not wholly a figure of speech.

(82.6) 7:1.7 Like the material gravity of Paradise, the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son is absolute. Sin and rebellion may interfere with the operation of local universe circuits, but nothing can suspend the spirit gravity of the Eternal Son. The Lucifer rebellion produced many changes in your system of inhabited worlds and on Urantia, but we do not observe that the resultant spiritual quarantine of your planet in the least affected the presence and function of either the omnipresent spirit of the Eternal Son or the associated spirit-gravity circuit.

(82.7) 7:1.8 All reactions of the spirit-gravity circuit of the grand universe are predictable. We recognize all actions and reactions of the omnipresent spirit of the Eternal Son and find them to be dependable. In accordance with well-known laws, we can and do measure spiritual gravity just as man attempts to compute the workings of finite physical gravity. There is an unvarying response of the Son’s spirit to all spirit things, beings, and persons, and this response is always in accordance with the degree of actuality (the qualitative degree of reality) of all such spiritual values.

(83.1) 7:1.9 But alongside this very dependable and predictable function of the spiritual presence of the Eternal Son, there are encountered phenomena which are not so predictable in their reactions. Such phenomena probably indicate the co-ordinate action of the Deity Absolute in the realms of emerging spiritual potentials. We know that the spirit presence of the Eternal Son is the influence of a majestic and infinite personality, but we hardly regard the reactions associated with the conjectured performances of the Deity Absolute as personal.

(83.2) 7:1.10 Viewed from the personality standpoint and by persons, the Eternal Son and the Deity Absolute appear to be related in the following way: The Eternal Son dominates the realm of actual spiritual values, whereas the Deity Absolute seems to pervade the vast domain of potential spirit values. All actual value of spirit nature finds lodgment in the gravity grasp of the Eternal Son but, if potential, then apparently in the presence of the Deity Absolute.

(83.3) 7:1.11 Spirit seems to emerge from the potentials of the Deity Absolute; evolving spirit finds correlation in the experiential and incomplete grasps of the Supreme and the Ultimate; spirit eventually finds final destiny in the absolute grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. This appears to be the cycle of experiential spirit, but existential spirit is inherent in the infinity of the Second Source and Center.

2. The Administration of the Eternal Son

(83.4) 7:2.1 On Paradise the presence and personal activity of the Original Son is profound, absolute in the spiritual sense. As we pass outward from Paradise through Havona and into the realms of the seven superuniverses, we detect less and less of the personal activity of the Eternal Son. In the post-Havona universes the presence of the Eternal Son is personalized in the Paradise Sons, conditioned by the experiential realities of the Supreme and the Ultimate, and co-ordinated with the unlimited spirit potential of the Deity Absolute.

(83.5) 7:2.2 In the central universe the personal activity of the Original Son is discernible in the exquisite spiritual harmony of the eternal creation. Havona is so marvelously perfect that the spiritual status and the energy states of this pattern universe are in perfect and perpetual balance.

(83.6) 7:2.3 In the superuniverses the Son is not personally present or resident; in these creations he maintains only a superpersonal representation. These spirit manifestations of the Son are not personal; they are not in the personality circuit of the Universal Father. We know of no better term to use than to designate them superpersonalities; and they are finite beings; they are neither absonite nor absolute.

(83.7) 7:2.4 The administration of the Eternal Son in the superuniverses, being exclusively spiritual and superpersonal, is not discernible by creature personalities. Nonetheless, the all-pervading spiritual urge of the Son’s personal influence is encountered in every phase of the activities of all sectors of the domains of the Ancients of Days. In the local universes, however, we observe the Eternal Son personally present in the persons of the Paradise Sons. Here the infinite Son spiritually and creatively functions in the persons of the majestic corps of the co-ordinate Creator Sons.

3. Relation of the Eternal Son to the Individual

(84.1) 7:3.1 In the local universe ascent the mortals of time look to the Creator Son as the personal representative of the Eternal Son. But when they begin the ascent of the superuniverse training regime, the pilgrims of time increasingly detect the supernal presence of the inspiring spirit of the Eternal Son, and they are able to profit by the intake of this ministry of spiritual energization. In Havona the ascenders become still more conscious of the loving embrace of the all-pervading spirit of the Original Son. At no stage of the entire mortal ascension does the spirit of the Eternal Son indwell the mind or soul of the pilgrim of time, but his beneficence is ever near and always concerned with the welfare and spiritual security of the advancing children of time.

(84.2) 7:3.2 The spiritual-gravity pull of the Eternal Son constitutes the inherent secret of the Paradise ascension of surviving human souls. All genuine spirit values and all bona fide spiritualized individuals are held within the unfailing grasp of the spiritual gravity of the Eternal Son. The mortal mind, for example, initiates its career as a material mechanism and is eventually mustered into the Corps of the Finality as a well-nigh perfected spirit existence, becoming progressively less subject to material gravity and correspondingly more responsive to the inward pulling urge of spirit gravity during this entire experience. The spirit-gravity circuit literally pulls the soul of man Paradiseward.

(84.3) 7:3.3 The spirit-gravity circuit is the basic channel for transmitting the genuine prayers of the believing human heart from the level of human consciousness to the actual consciousness of Deity. That which represents true spiritual value in your petitions will be seized by the universal circuit of spirit gravity and will pass immediately and simultaneously to all divine personalities concerned. Each will occupy himself with that which belongs to his personal province. Therefore, in your practical religious experience, it is immaterial whether, in addressing your supplications, you visualize the Creator Son of your local universe or the Eternal Son at the center of all things.

(84.4) 7:3.4 The discriminative operation of the spirit-gravity circuit might possibly be compared to the functions of the neural circuits in the material human body: Sensations travel inward over the neural paths; some are detained and responded to by the lower automatic spinal centers; others pass on to the less automatic but habit-trained centers of the lower brain, while the most important and vital incoming messages flash by these subordinate centers and are immediately registered in the highest levels of human consciousness.

(84.5) 7:3.5 But how much more perfect is the superb technique of the spiritual world! If anything originates in your consciousness that is fraught with supreme spiritual value, when once you give it expression, no power in the universe can prevent its flashing directly to the Absolute Spirit Personality of all creation.

(84.6) 7:3.6 Conversely, if your supplications are purely material and wholly self-centered, there exists no plan whereby such unworthy prayers can find lodgment in the spirit circuit of the Eternal Son. The content of any petition which is not “spirit indited” can find no place in the universal spiritual circuit; such purely selfish and material requests fall dead; they do not ascend in the circuits of true spirit values. Such words are as “sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.”

(85.1) 7:3.7 It is the motivating thought, the spiritual content, that validates the mortal supplication. Words are valueless.

4. The Divine Perfection Plans

(85.2) 7:4.1 The Eternal Son is in everlasting liaison with the Father in the successful prosecution of the divine plan of progress: the universal plan for the creation, evolution, ascension, and perfection of will creatures. And, in divine faithfulness, the Son is the eternal equal of the Father.

(85.3) 7:4.2 The Father and his Son are as one in the formulation and prosecution of this gigantic attainment plan for advancing the material beings of time to the perfection of eternity. This project for the spiritual elevation of the ascendant souls of space is a joint creation of the Father and the Son, and they are, with the co-operation of the Infinite Spirit, engaged in associative execution of their divine purpose.

(85.4) 7:4.3 This divine plan of perfection attainment embraces three unique, though marvelously correlated, enterprises of universal adventure:

(85.5) 7:4.4 1. The Plan of Progressive Attainment. This is the Universal Father’s plan of evolutionary ascension, a program unreservedly accepted by the Eternal Son when he concurred in the Father’s proposal, “Let us make mortal creatures in our own image.” This provision for upstepping the creatures of time involves the Father’s bestowal of the Thought Adjusters and the endowing of material creatures with the prerogatives of personality.

(85.6) 7:4.5 2. The Bestowal Plan. The next universal plan is the great Father-revelation enterprise of the Eternal Son and his co-ordinate Sons. This is the proposal of the Eternal Son and consists of his bestowal of the Sons of God upon the evolutionary creations, there to personalize and factualize, to incarnate and make real, the love of the Father and the mercy of the Son to the creatures of all universes. Inherent in the bestowal plan, and as a provisional feature of this ministration of love, the Paradise Sons act as rehabilitators of that which misguided creature will has placed in spiritual jeopardy. Whenever and wherever there occurs a delay in the functioning of the attainment plan, if rebellion, perchance, should mar or complicate this enterprise, then do the emergency provisions of the bestowal plan become active forthwith. The Paradise Sons stand pledged and ready to function as retrievers, to go into the very realms of rebellion and there restore the spiritual status of the spheres. And such a heroic service a co-ordinate Creator Son did perform on Urantia in connection with his experiential bestowal career of sovereignty acquirement.

(85.7) 7:4.6 3. The Plan of Mercy Ministry. When the attainment plan and the bestowal plan had been formulated and proclaimed, alone and of himself, the Infinite Spirit projected and put in operation the tremendous and universal enterprise of mercy ministry. This is the service so essential to the practical and effective operation of both the attainment and the bestowal undertakings, and the spiritual personalities of the Third Source and Center all partake of the spirit of mercy ministry which is so much a part of the nature of the Third Person of Deity. Not only in creation but also in administration, the Infinite Spirit functions truly and literally as the conjoint executive of the Father and the Son.

(86.1) 7:4.7 The Eternal Son is the personal trustee, the divine custodian, of the Father’s universal plan of creature ascension. Having promulgated the universal mandate, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect,” the Father intrusted the execution of this tremendous undertaking to the Eternal Son; and the Eternal Son shares the fostering of this supernal enterprise with his divine co-ordinate, the Infinite Spirit. Thus do the Deities effectively co-operate in the work of creation, control, evolution, revelation, and ministration — and if required, in restoration and rehabilitation.

5. The Spirit of Bestowal

(86.2) 7:5.1 The Eternal Son without reservation joined with the Universal Father in broadcasting that tremendous injunction to all creation: “Be you perfect, even as your Father in Havona is perfect.” And ever since, that invitation-command has motivated all the survival plans and the bestowal projects of the Eternal Son and his vast family of co-ordinate and associated Sons. And in these very bestowals the Sons of God have become to all evolutionary creatures “the way, the truth, and the life.”

(86.3) 7:5.2 The Eternal Son cannot contact directly with human beings as does the Father through the gift of the prepersonal Thought Adjusters, but the Eternal Son does draw near to created personalities by a series of downstepping gradations of divine sonship until he is enabled to stand in man’s presence and, at times, as man himself.

(86.4) 7:5.3 The purely personal nature of the Eternal Son is incapable of fragmentation. The Eternal Son ministers as a spiritual influence or as a person, never otherwise. The Son finds it impossible to become a part of creature experience in the sense that the Father-Adjuster participates therein, but the Eternal Son compensates this limitation by the technique of bestowal. What the experience of fragmented entities means to the Universal Father, the incarnation experiences of the Paradise Sons mean to the Eternal Son.

(86.5) 7:5.4 The Eternal Son comes not to mortal man as the divine will, the Thought Adjuster indwelling the human mind, but the Eternal Son did come to mortal man on Urantia when the divine personality of his Son, Michael of Nebadon, incarnated in the human nature of Jesus of Nazareth. To share the experience of created personalities, the Paradise Sons of God must assume the very natures of such creatures and incarnate their divine personalities as the actual creatures themselves. Incarnation, the secret of Sonarington, is the technique of the Son’s escape from the otherwise all-encompassing fetters of personality absolutism.

(86.6) 7:5.5 Long, long ago the Eternal Son bestowed himself upon each of the circuits of the central creation for the enlightenment and advancement of all the inhabitants and pilgrims of Havona, including the ascending pilgrims of time. On none of these seven bestowals did he function as either an ascender or a Havoner. He existed as himself. His experience was unique; it was not with or as a human or other pilgrim but in some way associative in the superpersonal sense.

(86.7) 7:5.6 Neither did he pass through the rest that intervenes between the inner Havona circuit and the shores of Paradise. It is not possible for him, an absolute being, to suspend consciousness of personality, for in him center all lines of spiritual gravity. And during the times of these bestowals the central Paradise lodgment of spiritual luminosity was undimmed, and the Son’s grasp of universal spirit gravity was undiminished.

(87.1) 7:5.7 The bestowals of the Eternal Son in Havona are not within the scope of human imagination; they were transcendental. He added to the experience of all Havona then and subsequently, but we do not know whether he added to the supposed experiential capacity of his existential nature. That would fall within the bestowal mystery of the Paradise Sons. We do, however, believe that whatever the Eternal Son acquired on these bestowal missions, he has ever since retained; but we do not know what it is.

(87.2) 7:5.8 Whatever our difficulty in comprehending the bestowals of the Second Person of Deity, we do comprehend the Havona bestowal of a Son of the Eternal Son, who literally passed through the circuits of the central universe and actually shared those experiences which constitute an ascender’s preparation for Deity attainment. This was the original Michael, the first-born Creator Son, and he passed through the life experiences of the ascending pilgrims from circuit to circuit, personally journeying a stage of each circle with them in the days of Grandfanda, the first of all mortals to attain Havona.

(87.3) 7:5.9 Whatever else this original Michael revealed, he made the transcendent bestowal of the Original Mother Son real to the creatures of Havona. So real, that forevermore each pilgrim of time who labors in the adventure of making the Havona circuits is cheered and strengthened by the certain knowledge that the Eternal Son of God seven times abdicated the power and glory of Paradise to participate in the experiences of the time-space pilgrims on the seven circuits of progressive Havona attainment.

(87.4) 7:5.10 The Eternal Son is the exemplary inspiration for all the Sons of God in their ministrations of bestowal throughout the universes of time and space. The co-ordinate Creator Sons and the associate Magisterial Sons, together with other unrevealed orders of sonship, all partake of this wonderful willingness to bestow themselves upon the varied orders of creature life and as the creatures themselves. Therefore, in spirit and because of kinship of nature as well as fact of origin, it becomes true that in the bestowal of each Son of God upon the worlds of space, in and through and by these bestowals, the Eternal Son has bestowed himself upon the intelligent will creatures of the universes.

(87.5) 7:5.11 In spirit and nature, if not in all attributes, each Paradise Son is a divinely perfect portraiture of the Original Son. It is literally true, whosoever has seen a Paradise Son has seen the Eternal Son of God.

6. The Paradise Sons of God

(87.6) 7:6.1 The lack of a knowledge of the multiple Sons of God is a source of great confusion on Urantia. And this ignorance persists in the face of such statements as the record of a conclave of these divine personalities: “When the Sons of God proclaimed joy, and all of the Morning Stars sang together.” Every millennium of sector standard time the various orders of the divine Sons forgather for their periodic conclaves.

(87.7) 7:6.2 The Eternal Son is the personal source of the adorable attributes of mercy and service which so abundantly characterize all orders of the descending Sons of God as they function throughout creation. All the divine nature, if not all the infinity of attributes, the Eternal Son unfailingly transmits to the Paradise Sons who go out from the eternal Isle to reveal his divine character to the universe of universes.

(88.1) 7:6.3 The Original and Eternal Son is the offspring-person of the “first” completed and infinite thought of the Universal Father. Every time the Universal Father and the Eternal Son jointly project a new, original, identical, unique, and absolute personal thought, that very instant this creative idea is perfectly and finally personalized in the being and personality of a new and original Creator Son. In spirit nature, divine wisdom, and co-ordinate creative power, these Creator Sons are potentially equal with God the Father and God the Son.

(88.2) 7:6.4 The Creator Sons go out from Paradise into the universes of time and, with the co-operation of the controlling and creative agencies of the Third Source and Center, complete the organization of the local universes of progressive evolution. These Sons are not attached to, nor are they concerned with, the central and universal controls of matter, mind, and spirit. Hence are they limited in their creative acts by the pre-existence, priority, and primacy of the First Source and Center and his co-ordinate Absolutes. These Sons are able to administer only that which they bring into existence. Absolute administration is inherent in priority of existence and is inseparable from eternity of presence. The Father remains primal in the universes.

(88.3) 7:6.5 Much as the Creator Sons are personalized by the Father and the Son, so are the Magisterial Sons personalized by the Son and the Spirit. These are the Sons who, in the experiences of creature incarnation, earn the right to serve as the judges of survival in the creations of time and space.

(88.4) 7:6.6 The Father, Son, and Spirit also unite to personalize the versatile Trinity Teacher Sons, who range the grand universe as the supernal teachers of all personalities, human and divine. And there are numerous other orders of Paradise sonship that have not been brought to the attention of Urantia mortals.

(88.5) 7:6.7 Between the Original Mother Son and these hosts of Paradise Sons scattered throughout all creation, there is a direct and exclusive channel of communication, a channel whose function is inherent in the quality of spiritual kinship which unites them in bonds of near-absolute spiritual association. This intersonship circuit is entirely different from the universal circuit of spirit gravity, which also centers in the person of the Second Source and Center. All Sons of God who take origin in the persons of the Paradise Deities are in direct and constant communication with the Eternal Mother Son. And such communication is instantaneous; it is independent of time though sometimes conditioned by space.

(88.6) 7:6.8 The Eternal Son not only has at all times perfect knowledge concerning the status, thoughts, and manifold activities of all orders of Paradise sonship, but he also has perfection of knowledge at all times regarding everything of spiritual value which exists in the hearts of all creatures in the primary central creation of eternity and in the secondary time creations of the co-ordinate Creator Sons.

7. The Supreme Revelation of the Father

(88.7) 7:7.1 The Eternal Son is a complete, exclusive, universal, and final revelation of the spirit and the personality of the Universal Father. All knowledge of, and information concerning, the Father must come from the Eternal Son and his Paradise Sons. The Eternal Son is from eternity and is wholly and without spiritual qualification one with the Father. In divine personality they are co-ordinate; in spiritual nature they are equal; in divinity they are identical.

(89.1) 7:7.2 The character of God could not possibly be intrinsically improved upon in the person of the Son, for the divine Father is infinitely perfect, but that character and personality are amplified, by divestment of the nonpersonal and nonspiritual, for revelation to creature beings. The First Source and Center is much more than a personality, but all of the spirit qualities of the father personality of the First Source and Center are spiritually present in the absolute personality of the Eternal Son.

(89.2) 7:7.3 The primal Son and his Sons are engaged in making a universal revelation of the spiritual and personal nature of the Father to all creation. In the central universe, the superuniverses, the local universes, or on the inhabited planets, it is a Paradise Son who reveals the Universal Father to men and angels. The Eternal Son and his Sons reveal the avenue of creature approach to the Universal Father. And even we of high origin understand the Father much more fully as we study the revelation of his character and personality in the Eternal Son and in the Sons of the Eternal Son.

(89.3) 7:7.4 The Father comes down to you as a personality only through the divine Sons of the Eternal Son. And you attain the Father by this same living way; you ascend to the Father by the guidance of this group of divine Sons. And this remains true notwithstanding that your very personality is a direct bestowal of the Universal Father.

(89.4) 7:7.5 In all these widespread activities of the far-flung spiritual administration of the Eternal Son, do not forget that the Son is a person just as truly and actually as the Father is a person. Indeed, to beings of the onetime human order the Eternal Son will be more easy to approach than the Universal Father. In the progress of the pilgrims of time through the circuits of Havona, you will be competent to attain the Son long before you are prepared to discern the Father.

(89.5) 7:7.6 More of the character and merciful nature of the Eternal Son of mercy you should comprehend as you meditate on the revelation of these divine attributes which was made in loving service by your own Creator Son, onetime Son of Man on earth, now the exalted sovereign of your local universe — the Son of Man and the Son of God.

(89.6) 7:7.7 [Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.]

The Eternal Son

(73.1) 6:0.1 THE Eternal Son is the perfect and final expression of the “first” personal and absolute concept of the Universal Father. Accordingly, whenever and however the Father personally and absolutely expresses himself, he does so through his Eternal Son, who ever has been, now is, and ever will be, the living and divine Word. And this Eternal Son is residential at the center of all things, in association with, and immediately enshrouding the personal presence of, the Eternal and Universal Father.

(73.2) 6:0.2 We speak of God’s “first” thought and allude to an impossible time origin of the Eternal Son for the purpose of gaining access to the thought channels of the human intellect. Such distortions of language represent our best efforts at contact-compromise with the time-bound minds of mortal creatures. In the sequential sense the Universal Father never could have had a first thought, nor could the Eternal Son ever have had a beginning. But I was instructed to portray the realities of eternity to the time-limited minds of mortals by such symbols of thought and to designate the relationships of eternity by such time concepts of sequentiality.

(73.3) 6:0.3 The Eternal Son is the spiritual personalization of the Paradise Father’s universal and infinite concept of divine reality, unqualified spirit, and absolute personality. And thereby does the Son constitute the divine revelation of the creator identity of the Universal Father. The perfect personality of the Son discloses that the Father is actually the eternal and universal source of all the meanings and values of the spiritual, the volitional, the purposeful, and the personal.

(73.4) 6:0.4 In an effort to enable the finite mind of time to form some sequential concept of the relationships of the eternal and infinite beings of the Paradise Trinity, we utilize such license of conception as to refer to the “Father’s first personal, universal, and infinite concept.” It is impossible for me to convey to the human mind any adequate idea of the eternal relations of the Deities; therefore do I employ such terms as will afford the finite mind something of an idea of the relationship of these eternal beings in the subsequent eras of time. We believe the Son sprang from the Father; we are taught that both are unqualifiedly eternal. It is apparent, therefore, that no time creature can ever fully comprehend this mystery of a Son who is derived from the Father, and yet who is co-ordinately eternal with the Father himself.

1. Identity of the Eternal Son

(73.5) 6:1.1 The Eternal Son is the original and only-begotten Son of God. He is God the Son, the Second Person of Deity and the associate creator of all things. As the Father is the First Great Source and Center, so the Eternal Son is the Second Great Source and Center.

(74.1) 6:1.2 The Eternal Son is the spiritual center and the divine administrator of the spiritual government of the universe of universes. The Universal Father is first a creator and then a controller; the Eternal Son is first a cocreator and then a spiritual administrator. “God is spirit,” and the Son is a personal revelation of that spirit. The First Source and Center is the Volitional Absolute; the Second Source and Center is the Personality Absolute.

(74.2) 6:1.3 The Universal Father never personally functions as a creator except in conjunction with the Son or with the co-ordinate action of the Son. Had the New Testament writer referred to the Eternal Son, he would have uttered the truth when he wrote: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.”

(74.3) 6:1.4 When a Son of the Eternal Son appeared on Urantia, those who fraternized with this divine being in human form alluded to him as “He who was from the beginning, whom we have heard, whom we have seen with our eyes, whom we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, even the Word of life.” And this bestowal Son came forth from the Father just as truly as did the Original Son, as is suggested in one of his earthly prayers: “And now, O my Father, glorify me with your own self, with the glory which I had with you before this world was.”

(74.4) 6:1.5 The Eternal Son is known by different names in various universes. In the central universe he is known as the Co-ordinate Source, the Cocreator, and the Associate Absolute. On Uversa, the headquarters of the superuniverse, we designate the Son as the Co-ordinate Spirit Center and as the Eternal Spirit Administrator. On Salvington, the headquarters of your local universe, this Son is of record as the Second Eternal Source and Center. The Melchizedeks speak of him as the Son of Sons. On your world, but not in your system of inhabited spheres, this Original Son has been confused with a co-ordinate Creator Son, Michael of Nebadon, who bestowed himself upon the mortal races of Urantia.

(74.5) 6:1.6 Although any of the Paradise Sons may fittingly be called Sons of God, we are in the habit of reserving the designation “the Eternal Son” for this Original Son, the Second Source and Center, cocreator with the Universal Father of the central universe of power and perfection and cocreator of all other divine Sons who spring from the infinite Deities.

2. Nature of the Eternal Son

(74.6) 6:2.1 The Eternal Son is just as changeless and infinitely dependable as the Universal Father. He is also just as spiritual as the Father, just as truly an unlimited spirit. To you of lowly origin the Son would appear to be more personal since he is one step nearer you in approachability than is the Universal Father.

(74.7) 6:2.2 The Eternal Son is the eternal Word of God. He is wholly like the Father; in fact, the Eternal Son is God the Father personally manifest to the universe of universes. And thus it was and is and forever will be true of the Eternal Son and of all the co-ordinate Creator Sons: “He who has seen the Son has seen the Father.”

(74.8) 6:2.3 In nature the Son is wholly like the spirit Father. When we worship the Universal Father, actually we at the same time worship God the Son and God the Spirit. God the Son is just as divinely real and eternal in nature as God the Father.

(75.1) 6:2.4 The Son not only possesses all the Father’s infinite and transcendent righteousness, but the Son is also reflective of all the Father’s holiness of character. The Son shares the Father’s perfection and jointly shares the responsibility of aiding all creatures of imperfection in their spiritual efforts to attain divine perfection.

(75.2) 6:2.5 The Eternal Son possesses all the Father’s character of divinity and attributes of spirituality. The Son is the fullness of God’s absoluteness in personality and spirit, and these qualities the Son reveals in his personal management of the spiritual government of the universe of universes.

(75.3) 6:2.6 God is, indeed, a universal spirit; God is spirit; and this spirit nature of the Father is focalized and personalized in the Deity of the Eternal Son. In the Son all spiritual characteristics are apparently greatly enhanced by differentiation from the universality of the First Source and Center. And as the Father shares his spirit nature with the Son, so do they together just as fully and unreservedly share the divine spirit with the Conjoint Actor, the Infinite Spirit.

(75.4) 6:2.7 In the love of truth and in the creation of beauty the Father and the Son are equal except that the Son appears to devote himself more to the realization of the exclusively spiritual beauty of universal values.

(75.5) 6:2.8 In divine goodness I discern no difference between the Father and the Son. The Father loves his universe children as a father; the Eternal Son looks upon all creatures both as father and as brother.

3. Ministry of the Father’s Love

(75.6) 6:3.1 The Son shares the justice and righteousness of the Trinity but overshadows these divinity traits by the infinite personalization of the Father’s love and mercy; the Son is the revelation of divine love to the universes. As God is love, so the Son is mercy. The Son cannot love more than the Father, but he can show mercy to creatures in one additional way, for he not only is a primal creator like the Father, but he is also the Eternal Son of that same Father, thereby sharing in the sonship experience of all other sons of the Universal Father.

(75.7) 6:3.2 The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation. Mercy is the essence of the Son’s spiritual character. The mandates of the Eternal Son, as they go forth over the spirit circuits of the Second Source and Center, are keyed in tones of mercy.

(75.8) 6:3.3 To comprehend the love of the Eternal Son, you must first perceive its divine source, the Father, who is love, and then behold the unfolding of this infinite affection in the far-flung ministry of the Infinite Spirit and his almost limitless host of ministering personalities.

(75.9) 6:3.4 The ministry of the Eternal Son is devoted to the revelation of the God of love to the universe of universes. This divine Son is not engaged in the ignoble task of trying to persuade his gracious Father to love his lowly creatures and to show mercy to the wrongdoers of time. How wrong to envisage the Eternal Son as appealing to the Universal Father to show mercy to his lowly creatures on the material worlds of space! Such concepts of God are crude and grotesque. Rather should you realize that all the merciful ministrations of the Sons of God are a direct revelation of the Father’s heart of universal love and infinite compassion. The Father’s love is the real and eternal source of the Son’s mercy.

(75.10) 6:3.5 God is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is applied love, the Father’s love in action in the person of his Eternal Son. The love of this universal Son is likewise universal. As love is comprehended on a sex planet, the love of God is more comparable to the love of a father, while the love of the Eternal Son is more like the affection of a mother. Crude, indeed, are such illustrations, but I employ them in the hope of conveying to the human mind the thought that there is a difference, not in divine content but in quality and technique of expression, between the love of the Father and the love of the Son.

4. Attributes of the Eternal Son

(76.1) 6:4.1 The Eternal Son motivates the spirit level of cosmic reality; the spiritual power of the Son is absolute in relation to all universe actualities. He exercises perfect control over the interassociation of all undifferentiated spirit energy and over all actualized spirit reality through his absolute grasp of spirit gravity. All pure unfragmented spirit and all spiritual beings and values are responsive to the infinite drawing power of the primal Son of Paradise. And if the eternal future should witness the appearance of an unlimited universe, the spirit gravity and the spirit power of the Original Son will be found wholly adequate for the spiritual control and effective administration of such a boundless creation.

(76.2) 6:4.2 The Son is omnipotent only in the spiritual realm. In the eternal economy of universe administration, wasteful and needless repetition of function is never encountered; the Deities are not given to useless duplication of universe ministry.

(76.3) 6:4.3 The omnipresence of the Original Son constitutes the spiritual unity of the universe of universes. The spiritual cohesion of all creation rests upon the everywhere active presence of the divine spirit of the Eternal Son. When we conceive of the Father’s spiritual presence, we find it difficult to differentiate it in our thinking from the spiritual presence of the Eternal Son. The spirit of the Father is eternally resident in the spirit of the Son.

(76.4) 6:4.4 The Father must be spiritually omnipresent, but such omnipresence appears to be inseparable from the everywhere spirit activities of the Eternal Son. We do, however, believe that in all situations of Father-Son presence of a dual spiritual nature the spirit of the Son is co-ordinate with the spirit of the Father.

(76.5) 6:4.5 In his contact with personality, the Father acts in the personality circuit. In his personal and detectable contact with spiritual creation, he appears in the fragments of the totality of his Deity, and these Father fragments have a solitary, unique, and exclusive function wherever and whenever they appear in the universes. In all such situations the spirit of the Son is co-ordinate with the spiritual function of the fragmented presence of the Universal Father.

(76.6) 6:4.6 Spiritually the Eternal Son is omnipresent. The spirit of the Eternal Son is most certainly with you and around you, but not within you and a part of you like the Mystery Monitor. The indwelling Father fragment adjusts the human mind to progressively divine attitudes, whereupon such an ascending mind becomes increasingly responsive to the spiritual drawing power of the all-powerful spirit-gravity circuit of the Second Source and Center.

(76.7) 6:4.7 The Original Son is universally and spiritually self-conscious. In wisdom the Son is the full equal of the Father. In the realms of knowledge, omniscience, we cannot distinguish between the First and Second Sources; like the Father, the Son knows all; he is never surprised by any universe event; he comprehends the end from the beginning.

(77.1) 6:4.8 The Father and the Son really know the number and whereabouts of all the spirits and spiritualized beings in the universe of universes. Not only does the Son know all things by virtue of his own omnipresent spirit, but the Son, equally with the Father and the Conjoint Actor, is fully cognizant of the vast reflectivity intelligence of the Supreme Being, which intelligence is at all times aware of all things that transpire on all the worlds of the seven superuniverses. And there are other ways in which the Paradise Son is omniscient.

(77.2) 6:4.9 The Eternal Son, as a loving, merciful, and ministering spiritual personality, is wholly and infinitely equal with the Universal Father, while in all those merciful and affectionate personal contacts with the ascendant beings of the lower realms the Eternal Son is just as kind and considerate, just as patient and long-suffering, as are his Paradise Sons in the local universes who so frequently bestow themselves upon the evolutionary worlds of time.

(77.3) 6:4.10 It is needless further to expatiate on the attributes of the Eternal Son. With the exceptions noted, it is only necessary to study the spiritual attributes of God the Father to understand and correctly evaluate the attributes of God the Son.

5. Limitations of the Eternal Son

(77.4) 6:5.1 The Eternal Son does not personally function in the physical domains, nor does he function, except through the Conjoint Actor, in the levels of mind ministry to creature beings. But these qualifications do not in any manner otherwise limit the Eternal Son in the full and free exercise of all the divine attributes of spiritual omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.

(77.5) 6:5.2 The Eternal Son does not personally pervade the potentials of spirit inherent in the infinity of the Deity Absolute, but as these potentials become actual, they come within the all-powerful grasp of the spirit-gravity circuit of the Son.

(77.6) 6:5.3 Personality is the exclusive gift of the Universal Father. The Eternal Son derives personality from the Father, but he does not, without the Father, bestow personality. The Son gives origin to a vast spirit host, but such derivations are not personalities. When the Son creates personality, he does so in conjunction with the Father or with the Conjoint Creator, who may act for the Father in such relationships. The Eternal Son is thus a cocreator of personalities, but he bestows personality upon no being and of himself, alone, never creates personal beings. This limitation of action does not, however, deprive the Son of the ability to create any or all types of other-than-personal reality.

(77.7) 6:5.4 The Eternal Son is limited in transmittal of creator prerogatives. The Father, in eternalizing the Original Son, bestowed upon him the power and privilege of subsequently joining with the Father in the divine act of producing additional Sons possessing creative attributes, and this they have done and now do. But when these co-ordinate Sons have been produced, the prerogatives of creatorship are apparently not further transmissible. The Eternal Son transmits creatorship powers only to the first or direct personalization. Therefore, when the Father and the Son unite to personalize a Creator Son, they achieve their purpose; but the Creator Son thus brought into existence is never able to transmit or delegate the prerogatives of creatorship to the various orders of Sons which he may subsequently create, notwithstanding that, in the highest local universe Sons, there does appear a very limited reflection of the creative attributes of a Creator Son.

(78.1) 6:5.5 The Eternal Son, as an infinite and exclusively personal being, cannot fragmentize his nature, cannot distribute and bestow individualized portions of his selfhood upon other entities or persons as do the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit. But the Son can and does bestow himself as an unlimited spirit to bathe all creation and unceasingly draw all spirit personalities and spiritual realities to himself.

(78.2) 6:5.6 Ever remember, the Eternal Son is the personal portrayal of the spirit Father to all creation. The Son is personal and nothing but personal in the Deity sense; such a divine and absolute personality cannot be disintegrated or fragmentized. God the Father and God the Spirit are truly personal, but they are also everything else in addition to being such Deity personalities.

(78.3) 6:5.7 Though the Eternal Son cannot personally participate in the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, he did sit in council with the Universal Father in the eternal past, approving the plan and pledging endless co-operation, when the Father, in projecting the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, proposed to the Son, “Let us make mortal man in our own image.” And as the spirit fragment of the Father dwells within you, so does the spirit presence of the Son envelop you, while these two forever work as one for your spiritual advancement.

6. The Spirit Mind

(78.4) 6:6.1 The Eternal Son is spirit and has mind, but not a mind or a spirit which mortal mind can comprehend. Mortal man perceives mind on the finite, cosmic, material, and personal levels. Man also observes mind phenomena in living organisms functioning on the subpersonal (animal) level, but it is difficult for him to grasp the nature of mind when associated with supermaterial beings and as a part of exclusive spirit personalities. Mind must, however, be differently defined when it refers to the spirit level of existence, and when it is used to denote spirit functions of intelligence. That kind of mind which is directly allied with spirit is comparable neither to that mind which co-ordinates spirit and matter nor to that mind which is allied only with matter.

(78.5) 6:6.2 Spirit is ever conscious, minded, and possessed of varied phases of identity. Without mind in some phase there would be no spiritual consciousness in the fraternity of spirit beings. The equivalent of mind, the ability to know and be known, is indigenous to Deity. Deity may be personal, prepersonal, superpersonal, or impersonal, but Deity is never mindless, that is, never without the ability at least to communicate with similar entities, beings, or personalities.

(78.6) 6:6.3 The mind of the Eternal Son is like that of the Father but unlike any other mind in the universe, and with the mind of the Father it is ancestor to the diverse and far-flung minds of the Conjoint Creator. The mind of the Father and the Son, that intellect which is ancestral to the absolute mind of the Third Source and Center, is perhaps best illustrated in the premind of a Thought Adjuster, for, though these Father fragments are entirely outside of the mind circuits of the Conjoint Actor, they have some form of premind; they know as they are known; they enjoy the equivalent of human thinking.

(78.7) 6:6.4 The Eternal Son is wholly spiritual; man is very nearly entirely material; therefore much pertaining to the spirit personality of the Eternal Son, to his seven spiritual spheres encircling Paradise and to the nature of the impersonal creations of the Paradise Son, will have to await your attainment of spirit status following your completion of the morontia ascension of the local universe of Nebadon. And then, as you pass through the superuniverse and on to Havona, many of these spirit-concealed mysteries will clarify as you begin to be endowed with the “mind of the spirit” — spiritual insight.

7. Personality of the Eternal Son

(79.1) 6:7.1 The Eternal Son is that infinite personality from whose unqualified personality fetters the Universal Father escaped by the technique of trinitization, and by virtue of which he has ever since continued to bestow himself in endless profusion upon his ever-expanding universe of Creators and creatures. The Son is absolute personality; God is father personality — the source of personality, the bestower of personality, the cause of personality. Every personal being derives personality from the Universal Father just as the Original Son eternally derives his personality from the Paradise Father.

(79.2) 6:7.2 The personality of the Paradise Son is absolute and purely spiritual, and this absolute personality is also the divine and eternal pattern, first, of the Father’s bestowal of personality upon the Conjoint Actor and, subsequently, of his bestowal of personality upon the myriads of his creatures throughout a far-flung universe.

(79.3) 6:7.3 The Eternal Son is truly a merciful minister, a divine spirit, a spiritual power, and a real personality. The Son is the spiritual and personal nature of God made manifest to the universes — the sum and substance of the First Source and Center, divested of all that which is nonpersonal, extradivine, nonspiritual, and pure potential. But it is impossible to convey to the human mind a word picture of the beauty and grandeur of the supernal personality of the Eternal Son. Everything that tends to obscure the Universal Father operates with almost equal influence to prevent the conceptual recognition of the Eternal Son. You must await your attainment of Paradise, and then you will understand why I was unable to portray the character of this absolute personality to the understanding of the finite mind.

8. Realization of the Eternal Son

(79.4) 6:8.1 Concerning identity, nature, and other attributes of personality, the Eternal Son is the full equal, the perfect complement, and the eternal counterpart of the Universal Father. In the same sense that God is the Universal Father, the Son is the Universal Mother. And all of us, high and low, constitute their universal family.

(79.5) 6:8.2 To appreciate the character of the Son, you should study the revelation of the divine character of the Father; they are forever and inseparably one. As divine personalities they are virtually indistinguishable by the lower orders of intelligence. They are not so difficult of separate recognition by those whose origin is in the creative acts of the Deities themselves. Beings of nativity in the central universe and on Paradise discern the Father and the Son not only as one personal unity of universal control but also as two separate personalities functioning in definite domains of universe administration.

(79.6) 6:8.3 As persons you may conceive of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son as separate individuals, for they indeed are; but in the administration of the universes they are so intertwined and interrelated that it is not always possible to distinguish between them. When, in the affairs of the universes, the Father and the Son are encountered in confusing interassociations, it is not always profitable to attempt to segregate their operations; merely recall that God is the initiating thought and the Son is the expressionful word. In each local universe this inseparability is personalized in the divinity of the Creator Son, who stands for both Father and Son to the creatures of ten million inhabited worlds.

(80.1) 6:8.4 The Eternal Son is infinite, but he is approachable through the persons of his Paradise Sons and through the patient ministry of the Infinite Spirit. Without the bestowal service of the Paradise Sons and the loving ministry of the creatures of the Infinite Spirit, beings of material origin could hardly hope to attain the Eternal Son. And it is equally true: With the help and guidance of these celestial agencies the God-conscious mortal will certainly attain Paradise and sometime stand in the personal presence of this majestic Son of Sons.

(80.2) 6:8.5 Even though the Eternal Son is the pattern of mortal personality attainment, you find it easier to grasp the reality of both the Father and the Spirit because the Father is the actual bestower of your human personality and the Infinite Spirit is the absolute source of your mortal mind. But as you ascend in the Paradise path of spiritual progression, the personality of the Eternal Son will become increasingly real to you, and the reality of his infinitely spiritual mind will become more discernible to your progressively spiritualizing mind.

(80.3) 6:8.6 Never can the concept of the Eternal Son shine brightly in your material or subsequent morontial mind; not until you spiritize and commence your spirit ascension will the comprehension of the personality of the Eternal Son begin to equal the vividness of your concept of the personality of the Creator Son of Paradise origin who, in person and as a person, onetime incarnated and lived on Urantia as a man among men.

(80.4) 6:8.7 Throughout your local universe experience the Creator Son, whose personality is comprehensible by man, must compensate for your inability to grasp the full significance of the more exclusively spiritual, but none the less personal, Eternal Son of Paradise. As you progress through Orvonton and Havona, as you leave behind you the vivid picture and deep memories of the Creator Son of your local universe, the passing of this material and morontia experience will be compensated by ever-enlarging concepts and intensifying comprehension of the Eternal Son of Paradise, whose reality and nearness will ever augment as you progress Paradiseward.

(80.5) 6:8.8 The Eternal Son is a grand and glorious personality. Although it is beyond the powers of the mortal and material mind to grasp the actuality of the personality of such an infinite being, doubt not, he is a person. I know whereof I speak. Times almost without number I have stood in the divine presence of this Eternal Son and then journeyed forth in the universe to execute his gracious bidding.

(80.6) 6:8.9 [Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.]

God’s Relation to the Individual

(62.1) 5:0.1 IF THE finite mind of man is unable to comprehend how so great and so majestic a God as the Universal Father can descend from his eternal abode in infinite perfection to fraternize with the individual human creature, then must such a finite intellect rest assurance of divine fellowship upon the truth of the fact that an actual fragment of the living God resides within the intellect of every normal-minded and morally conscious Urantia mortal. The indwelling Thought Adjusters are a part of the eternal Deity of the Paradise Father. Man does not have to go farther than his own inner experience of the soul’s contemplation of this spiritual-reality presence to find God and attempt communion with him.

(62.2) 5:0.2 God has distributed the infinity of his eternal nature throughout the existential realities of his six absolute co-ordinates, but he may, at any time, make direct personal contact with any part or phase or kind of creation through the agency of his prepersonal fragments. And the eternal God has also reserved to himself the prerogative of bestowing personality upon the divine Creators and the living creatures of the universe of universes, while he has further reserved the prerogative of maintaining direct and parental contact with all these personal beings through the personality circuit.

1. The Approach to God

(62.3) 5:1.1 The inability of the finite creature to approach the infinite Father is inherent, not in the Father’s aloofness, but in the finiteness and material limitations of created beings. The magnitude of the spiritual difference between the highest personality of universe existence and the lower groups of created intelligences is inconceivable. Were it possible for the lower orders of intelligence to be transported instantly into the presence of the Father himself, they would not know they were there. They would there be just as oblivious of the presence of the Universal Father as where they now are. There is a long, long road ahead of mortal man before he can consistently and within the realms of possibility ask for safe conduct into the Paradise presence of the Universal Father. Spiritually, man must be translated many times before he can attain a plane that will yield the spiritual vision which will enable him to see even any one of the Seven Master Spirits.

(62.4) 5:1.2 Our Father is not in hiding; he is not in arbitrary seclusion. He has mobilized the resources of divine wisdom in a never-ending effort to reveal himself to the children of his universal domains. There is an infinite grandeur and an inexpressible generosity connected with the majesty of his love which causes him to yearn for the association of every created being who can comprehend, love, or approach him; and it is, therefore, the limitations inherent in you, inseparable from your finite personality and material existence, that determine the time and place and circumstances in which you may achieve the goal of the journey of mortal ascension and stand in the presence of the Father at the center of all things.

(63.1) 5:1.3 Although the approach to the Paradise presence of the Father must await your attainment of the highest finite levels of spirit progression, you should rejoice in the recognition of the ever-present possibility of immediate communion with the bestowal spirit of the Father so intimately associated with your inner soul and your spiritualizing self.

(63.2) 5:1.4 The mortals of the realms of time and space may differ greatly in innate abilities and intellectual endowment, they may enjoy environments exceptionally favorable to social advancement and moral progress, or they may suffer from the lack of almost every human aid to culture and supposed advancement in the arts of civilization; but the possibilities for spiritual progress in the ascension career are equal to all; increasing levels of spiritual insight and cosmic meanings are attained quite independently of all such sociomoral differentials of the diversified material environments on the evolutionary worlds.

(63.3) 5:1.5 However Urantia mortals may differ in their intellectual, social, economic, and even moral opportunities and endowments, forget not that their spiritual endowment is uniform and unique. They all enjoy the same divine presence of the gift from the Father, and they are all equally privileged to seek intimate personal communion with this indwelling spirit of divine origin, while they may all equally choose to accept the uniform spiritual leading of these Mystery Monitors.

(63.4) 5:1.6 If mortal man is wholeheartedly spiritually motivated, unreservedly consecrated to the doing of the Father’s will, then, since he is so certainly and so effectively spiritually endowed by the indwelling and divine Adjuster, there cannot fail to materialize in that individual’s experience the sublime consciousness of knowing God and the supernal assurance of surviving for the purpose of finding God by the progressive experience of becoming more and more like him.

(63.5) 5:1.7 Man is spiritually indwelt by a surviving Thought Adjuster. If such a human mind is sincerely and spiritually motivated, if such a human soul desires to know God and become like him, honestly wants to do the Father’s will, there exists no negative influence of mortal deprivation nor positive power of possible interference which can prevent such a divinely motivated soul from securely ascending to the portals of Paradise.

(63.6) 5:1.8 The Father desires all his creatures to be in personal communion with him. He has on Paradise a place to receive all those whose survival status and spiritual nature make possible such attainment. Therefore settle in your philosophy now and forever: To each of you and to all of us, God is approachable, the Father is attainable, the way is open; the forces of divine love and the ways and means of divine administration are all interlocked in an effort to facilitate the advancement of every worthy intelligence of every universe to the Paradise presence of the Universal Father.

(63.7) 5:1.9 The fact that vast time is involved in the attainment of God makes the presence and personality of the Infinite none the less real. Your ascension is a part of the circuit of the seven superuniverses, and though you swing around it countless times, you may expect, in spirit and in status, to be ever swinging inward. You can depend upon being translated from sphere to sphere, from the outer circuits ever nearer the inner center, and some day, doubt not, you shall stand in the divine and central presence and see him, figuratively speaking, face to face. It is a question of the attainment of actual and literal spiritual levels; and these spiritual levels are attainable by any being who has been indwelt by a Mystery Monitor, and who has subsequently eternally fused with that Thought Adjuster.

(64.1) 5:1.10 The Father is not in spiritual hiding, but so many of his creatures have hidden themselves away in the mists of their own willful decisions and for the time being have separated themselves from the communion of his spirit and the spirit of his Son by the choosing of their own perverse ways and by the indulgence of the self-assertiveness of their intolerant minds and unspiritual natures.

(64.2) 5:1.11 Mortal man may draw near God and may repeatedly forsake the divine will so long as the power of choice remains. Man’s final doom is not sealed until he has lost the power to choose the Father’s will. There is never a closure of the Father’s heart to the need and the petition of his children. Only do his offspring close their hearts forever to the Father’s drawing power when they finally and forever lose the desire to do his divine will — to know him and to be like him. Likewise is man’s eternal destiny assured when Adjuster fusion proclaims to the universe that such an ascender has made the final and irrevocable choice to live the Father’s will.

(64.3) 5:1.12 The great God makes direct contact with mortal man and gives a part of his infinite and eternal and incomprehensible self to live and dwell within him. God has embarked upon the eternal adventure with man. If you yield to the leadings of the spiritual forces in you and around you, you cannot fail to attain the high destiny established by a loving God as the universe goal of his ascendant creatures from the evolutionary worlds of space.

2. The Presence of God

(64.4) 5:2.1 The physical presence of the Infinite is the reality of the material universe. The mind presence of Deity must be determined by the depth of individual intellectual experience and by the evolutionary personality level. The spiritual presence of Divinity must of necessity be differential in the universe. It is determined by the spiritual capacity of receptivity and by the degree of the consecration of the creature’s will to the doing of the divine will.

(64.5) 5:2.2 God lives in every one of his spirit-born sons. The Paradise Sons always have access to the presence of God, “the right hand of the Father,” and all of his creature personalities have access to the “bosom of the Father.” This refers to the personality circuit, whenever, wherever, and however contacted, or otherwise entails personal, self-conscious contact and communion with the Universal Father, whether at the central abode or at some other designated place, as on one of the seven sacred spheres of Paradise.

(64.6) 5:2.3 The divine presence cannot, however, be discovered anywhere in nature or even in the lives of God-knowing mortals so fully and so certainly as in your attempted communion with the indwelling Mystery Monitor, the Paradise Thought Adjuster. What a mistake to dream of God far off in the skies when the spirit of the Universal Father lives within your own mind!

(64.7) 5:2.4 It is because of this God fragment that indwells you that you can hope, as you progress in harmonizing with the Adjuster’s spiritual leadings, more fully to discern the presence and transforming power of those other spiritual influences that surround you and impinge upon you but do not function as an integral part of you. The fact that you are not intellectually conscious of close and intimate contact with the indwelling Adjuster does not in the least disprove such an exalted experience. The proof of fraternity with the divine Adjuster consists wholly in the nature and extent of the fruits of the spirit which are yielded in the life experience of the individual believer. “By their fruits you shall know them.”

(65.1) 5:2.5 It is exceedingly difficult for the meagerly spiritualized, material mind of mortal man to experience marked consciousness of the spirit activities of such divine entities as the Paradise Adjusters. As the soul of joint mind and Adjuster creation becomes increasingly existent, there also evolves a new phase of soul consciousness which is capable of experiencing the presence, and of recognizing the spirit leadings and other supermaterial activities, of the Mystery Monitors.

(65.2) 5:2.6 The entire experience of Adjuster communion is one involving moral status, mental motivation, and spiritual experience. The self-realization of such an achievement is mainly, though not exclusively, limited to the realms of soul consciousness, but the proofs are forthcoming and abundant in the manifestation of the fruits of the spirit in the lives of all such inner-spirit contactors.

3. True Worship

(65.3) 5:3.1 Though the Paradise Deities, from the universe standpoint, are as one, in their spiritual relations with such beings as inhabit Urantia they are also three distinct and separate persons. There is a difference between the Godheads in the matter of personal appeals, communion, and other intimate relations. In the highest sense, we worship the Universal Father and him only. True, we can and do worship the Father as he is manifested in his Creator Sons, but it is the Father, directly or indirectly, who is worshiped and adored.

(65.4) 5:3.2 Supplications of all kinds belong to the realm of the Eternal Son and the Son’s spiritual organization. Prayers, all formal communications, everything except adoration and worship of the Universal Father, are matters that concern a local universe; they do not ordinarily proceed out of the realm of the jurisdiction of a Creator Son. But worship is undoubtedly encircuited and dispatched to the person of the Creator by the function of the Father’s personality circuit. We further believe that such registry of the homage of an Adjuster-indwelt creature is facilitated by the Father’s spirit presence. There exists a tremendous amount of evidence to substantiate such a belief, and I know that all orders of Father fragments are empowered to register the bona fide adoration of their subjects acceptably in the presence of the Universal Father. The Adjusters undoubtedly also utilize direct prepersonal channels of communication with God, and they are likewise able to utilize the spirit-gravity circuits of the Eternal Son.

(65.5) 5:3.3 Worship is for its own sake; prayer embodies a self- or creature-interest element; that is the great difference between worship and prayer. There is absolutely no self-request or other element of personal interest in true worship; we simply worship God for what we comprehend him to be. Worship asks nothing and expects nothing for the worshiper. We do not worship the Father because of anything we may derive from such veneration; we render such devotion and engage in such worship as a natural and spontaneous reaction to the recognition of the Father’s matchless personality and because of his lovable nature and adorable attributes.

(65.6) 5:3.4 The moment the element of self-interest intrudes upon worship, that instant devotion translates from worship to prayer and more appropriately should be directed to the person of the Eternal Son or the Creator Son. But in practical religious experience there exists no reason why prayer should not be addressed to God the Father as a part of true worship.

(66.1) 5:3.5 When you deal with the practical affairs of your daily life, you are in the hands of the spirit personalities having origin in the Third Source and Center; you are co-operating with the agencies of the Conjoint Actor. And so it is: You worship God; pray to, and commune with, the Son; and work out the details of your earthly sojourn in connection with the intelligences of the Infinite Spirit operating on your world and throughout your universe.

(66.2) 5:3.6 The Creator or Sovereign Sons who preside over the destinies of the local universes stand in the place of both the Universal Father and the Eternal Son of Paradise. These Universe Sons receive, in the name of the Father, the adoration of worship and give ear to the pleas of their petitioning subjects throughout their respective creations. To the children of a local universe a Michael Son is, to all practical intents and purposes, God. He is the local universe personification of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Infinite Spirit maintains personal contact with the children of these realms through the Universe Spirits, the administrative and creative associates of the Paradise Creator Sons.

(66.3) 5:3.7 Sincere worship connotes the mobilization of all the powers of the human personality under the dominance of the evolving soul and subject to the divine directionization of the associated Thought Adjuster. The mind of material limitations can never become highly conscious of the real significance of true worship. Man’s realization of the reality of the worship experience is chiefly determined by the developmental status of his evolving immortal soul. The spiritual growth of the soul takes place wholly independently of the intellectual self-consciousness.

(66.4) 5:3.8 The worship experience consists in the sublime attempt of the betrothed Adjuster to communicate to the divine Father the inexpressible longings and the unutterable aspirations of the human soul — the conjoint creation of the God-seeking mortal mind and the God-revealing immortal Adjuster. Worship is, therefore, the act of the material mind’s assenting to the attempt of its spiritualizing self, under the guidance of the associated spirit, to communicate with God as a faith son of the Universal Father. The mortal mind consents to worship; the immortal soul craves and initiates worship; the divine Adjuster presence conducts such worship in behalf of the mortal mind and the evolving immortal soul. True worship, in the last analysis, becomes an experience realized on four cosmic levels: the intellectual, the morontial, the spiritual, and the personal — the consciousness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their unification in personality.

4. God in Religion

(66.5) 5:4.1 The morality of the religions of evolution drives men forward in the God quest by the motive power of fear. The religions of revelation allure men to seek for a God of love because they crave to become like him. But religion is not merely a passive feeling of “absolute dependence” and “surety of survival”; it is a living and dynamic experience of divinity attainment predicated on humanity service.

(66.6) 5:4.2 The great and immediate service of true religion is the establishment of an enduring unity in human experience, a lasting peace and a profound assurance. With primitive man, even polytheism is a relative unification of the evolving concept of Deity; polytheism is monotheism in the making. Sooner or later, God is destined to be comprehended as the reality of values, the substance of meanings, and the life of truth.

(67.1) 5:4.3 God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman.

(67.2) 5:4.4 The domains of philosophy and art intervene between the nonreligious and the religious activities of the human self. Through art and philosophy the material-minded man is inveigled into the contemplation of the spiritual realities and universe values of eternal meanings.

(67.3) 5:4.5 All religions teach the worship of Deity and some doctrine of human salvation. The Buddhist religion promises salvation from suffering, unending peace; the Jewish religion promises salvation from difficulties, prosperity predicated on righteousness; the Greek religion promised salvation from disharmony, ugliness, by the realization of beauty; Christianity promises salvation from sin, sanctity; Mohammedanism provides deliverance from the rigorous moral standards of Judaism and Christianity. The religion of Jesus is salvation from self, deliverance from the evils of creature isolation in time and in eternity.

(67.4) 5:4.6 The Hebrews based their religion on goodness; the Greeks on beauty; both religions sought truth. Jesus revealed a God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness.

(67.5) 5:4.7 The Zoroastrians had a religion of morals; the Hindus a religion of metaphysics; the Confucianists a religion of ethics. Jesus lived a religion of service. All these religions are of value in that they are valid approaches to the religion of Jesus. Religion is destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience.

(67.6) 5:4.8 The Greek religion had a watchword “Know yourself”; the Hebrews centered their teaching on “Know your God”; the Christians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ”; Jesus proclaimed the good news of “knowing God, and yourself as a son of God.” These differing concepts of the purpose of religion determine the individual’s attitude in various life situations and foreshadow the depth of worship and the nature of his personal habits of prayer. The spiritual status of any religion may be determined by the nature of its prayers.

(67.7) 5:4.9 The concept of a semihuman and jealous God is an inevitable transition between polytheism and sublime monotheism. An exalted anthropomorphism is the highest attainment level of purely evolutionary religion. Christianity has elevated the concept of anthropomorphism from the ideal of the human to the transcendent and divine concept of the person of the glorified Christ. And this is the highest anthropomorphism that man can ever conceive.

(67.8) 5:4.10 The Christian concept of God is an attempt to combine three separate teachings:

(67.9) 5:4.11 1. The Hebrew concept — God as a vindicator of moral values, a righteous God.

(67.10) 5:4.12 2. The Greek concept — God as a unifier, a God of wisdom.

(68.1) 5:4.13 3. Jesus’ concept — God as a living friend, a loving Father, the divine presence.

(68.2) 5:4.14 It must therefore be evident that composite Christian theology encounters great difficulty in attaining consistency. This difficulty is further aggravated by the fact that the doctrines of early Christianity were generally based on the personal religious experience of three different persons: Philo of Alexandria, Jesus of Nazareth, and Paul of Tarsus.

(68.3) 5:4.15 In the study of the religious life of Jesus, view him positively. Think not so much of his sinlessness as of his righteousness, his loving service. Jesus upstepped the passive love disclosed in the Hebrew concept of the heavenly Father to the higher active and creature-loving affection of a God who is the Father of every individual, even of the wrongdoer.

5. The Consciousness of God

(68.4) 5:5.1 Morality has its origin in the reason of self-consciousness; it is superanimal but wholly evolutionary. Human evolution embraces in its unfolding all endowments antecedent to the bestowal of the Adjusters and to the pouring out of the Spirit of Truth. But the attainment of levels of morality does not deliver man from the real struggles of mortal living. Man’s physical environment entails the battle for existence; the social surroundings necessitate ethical adjustments; the moral situations require the making of choices in the highest realms of reason; the spiritual experience (having realized God) demands that man find him and sincerely strive to be like him.

(68.5) 5:5.2 Religion is not grounded in the facts of science, the obligations of society, the assumptions of philosophy, or the implied duties of morality. Religion is an independent realm of human response to life situations and is unfailingly exhibited at all stages of human development which are postmoral. Religion may permeate all four levels of the realization of values and the enjoyment of universe fellowship: the physical or material level of self-preservation; the social or emotional level of fellowship; the moral or duty level of reason; the spiritual level of the consciousness of universe fellowship through divine worship.

(68.6) 5:5.3 The fact-seeking scientist conceives of God as the First Cause, a God of force. The emotional artist sees God as the ideal of beauty, a God of aesthetics. The reasoning philosopher is sometimes inclined to posit a God of universal unity, even a pantheistic Deity. The religionist of faith believes in a God who fosters survival, the Father in heaven, the God of love.

(68.7) 5:5.4 Moral conduct is always an antecedent of evolved religion and a part of even revealed religion, but never the whole of religious experience. Social service is the result of moral thinking and religious living. Morality does not biologically lead to the higher spiritual levels of religious experience. The adoration of the abstract beautiful is not the worship of God; neither is exaltation of nature nor the reverence of unity the worship of God.

(68.8) 5:5.5 Evolutionary religion is the mother of the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity to revealed religion, including the bestowal of Adjusters and the coming of the Spirit of Truth. The evolutionary picture of human existence begins and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one evolutional and biological, the other revelational and periodical. And so, while religion is normal and natural to man, it is also optional. Man does not have to be religious against his will.

(69.1) 5:5.6 Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind; hence the function of theology, the psychology of religion. The essential doctrine of the human realization of God creates a paradox in finite comprehension. It is well-nigh impossible for human logic and finite reason to harmonize the concept of divine immanence, God within and a part of every individual, with the idea of God’s transcendence, the divine domination of the universe of universes. These two essential concepts of Deity must be unified in the faith-grasp of the concept of the transcendence of a personal God and in the realization of the indwelling presence of a fragment of that God in order to justify intelligent worship and validate the hope of personality survival. The difficulties and paradoxes of religion are inherent in the fact that the realities of religion are utterly beyond the mortal capacity for intellectual comprehension.

(69.2) 5:5.7 Mortal man secures three great satisfactions from religious experience, even in the days of his temporal sojourn on earth:

(69.3) 5:5.8 1. Intellectually he acquires the satisfactions of a more unified human consciousness.

(69.4) 5:5.9 2. Philosophically he enjoys the substantiation of his ideals of moral values.

(69.5) 5:5.10 3. Spiritually he thrives in the experience of divine companionship, in the spiritual satisfactions of true worship.

(69.6) 5:5.11 God-consciousness, as it is experienced by an evolving mortal of the realms, must consist of three varying factors, three differential levels of reality realization. There is first the mind consciousness — the comprehension of the idea of God. Then follows the soul consciousness — the realization of the ideal of God. Last, dawns the spirit consciousness — the realization of the spirit reality of God. By the unification of these factors of the divine realization, no matter how incomplete, the mortal personality at all times overspreads all conscious levels with a realization of the personality of God. In those mortals who have attained the Corps of the Finality all this will in time lead to the realization of the supremacy of God and may subsequently eventuate in the realization of the ultimacy of God, some phase of the absonite superconsciousness of the Paradise Father.

(69.7) 5:5.12 The experience of God-consciousness remains the same from generation to generation, but with each advancing epoch in human knowledge the philosophic concept and the theologic definitions of God must change. God-knowingness, religious consciousness, is a universe reality, but no matter how valid (real) religious experience is, it must be willing to subject itself to intelligent criticism and reasonable philosophic interpretation; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the totality of human experience.

(69.8) 5:5.13 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.

(70.1) 5:5.14 The ability of mortal parents to procreate is not predicated on their educational, cultural, social, or economic status. The union of the parental factors under natural conditions is quite sufficient to initiate offspring. A human mind discerning right and wrong and possessing the capacity to worship God, in union with a divine Adjuster, is all that is required in that mortal to initiate and foster the production of his immortal soul of survival qualities if such a spirit-endowed individual seeks God and sincerely desires to become like him, honestly elects to do the will of the Father in heaven.

6. The God of Personality

(70.2) 5:6.1 The Universal Father is the God of personalities. The domain of universe personality, from the lowest mortal and material creature of personality status to the highest persons of creator dignity and divine status, has its center and circumference in the Universal Father. God the Father is the bestower and the conservator of every personality. And the Paradise Father is likewise the destiny of all those finite personalities who wholeheartedly choose to do the divine will, those who love God and long to be like him.

(70.3) 5:6.2 Personality is one of the unsolved mysteries of the universes. We are able to form adequate concepts of the factors entering into the make-up of various orders and levels of personality, but we do not fully comprehend the real nature of the personality itself. We clearly perceive the numerous factors which, when put together, constitute the vehicle for human personality, but we do not fully comprehend the nature and significance of such a finite personality.

(70.4) 5:6.3 Personality is potential in all creatures who possess a mind endowment ranging from the minimum of self-consciousness to the maximum of God-consciousness. But mind endowment alone is not personality, neither is spirit nor physical energy. Personality is that quality and value in cosmic reality which is exclusively bestowed by God the Father upon these living systems of the associated and co-ordinated energies of matter, mind, and spirit. Neither is personality a progressive achievement. Personality may be material or spiritual, but there either is personality or there is no personality. The other-than-personal never attains the level of the personal except by the direct act of the Paradise Father.

(70.5) 5:6.4 The bestowal of personality is the exclusive function of the Universal Father, the personalization of the living energy systems which he endows with the attributes of relative creative consciousness and the freewill control thereof. There is no personality apart from God the Father, and no personality exists except for God the Father. The fundamental attributes of human selfhood, as well as the absolute Adjuster nucleus of the human personality, are the bestowals of the Universal Father, acting in his exclusively personal domain of cosmic ministry.

(70.6) 5:6.5 The Adjusters of prepersonal status indwell numerous types of mortal creatures, thus insuring that these same beings may survive mortal death to personalize as morontia creatures with the potential of ultimate spirit attainment. For, when such a creature mind of personality endowment is indwelt by a fragment of the spirit of the eternal God, the prepersonal bestowal of the personal Father, then does this finite personality possess the potential of the divine and the eternal and aspire to a destiny akin to the Ultimate, even reaching out for a realization of the Absolute.

(71.1) 5:6.6 Capacity for divine personality is inherent in the prepersonal Adjuster; capacity for human personality is potential in the cosmic-mind endowment of the human being. But the experiential personality of mortal man is not observable as an active and functional reality until after the material life vehicle of the mortal creature has been touched by the liberating divinity of the Universal Father, being thus launched upon the seas of experience as a self-conscious and a (relatively) self-determinative and self-creative personality. The material self is truly and unqualifiedly personal.

(71.2) 5:6.7 The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity; the prepersonal spirit Adjuster also has identity, eternal identity. This material personality and this spirit prepersonality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes as to bring into existence the surviving identity of the immortal soul.

(71.3) 5:6.8 Having thus pr